Consilience

This is even more fun than a woman asking a man out.

Nope. This is just straight up false.

@K VIL2 @FlyingLotus This is one of my favorite stories. It was definitely in one of Leo’s videos but I too don't remember which one. However, it’s also in Peter Ralston’s “Book of Not Knowing,” which is where I learned about it first. - In ancient China a terrible and ferocious warlord was ransacking the country side. Coming upon a Zen monastery his army began killing and pillaging. When the warlord entered the inner courtyard he found the abbot of the monastery sitting in a chair. The abbot said firmly, “Get out of my monastery.” The powerful warlord walked up to the abbot, sword in hand and said, “You don’t understand. I could kill you without blinking an eye.” The abbot replied, “No, you don’t understand. I could die without blinking an eye.” After this, the warlord became a devotee of the abbot. ... Fucking savage ??

Isn’t Dirty Dan from Spongebob?

Shinzen Young teaches that after a certain threshold in one’s practice, there tends to be an exponential take off. It seems like you’ve hit this threshold.

What the fuck ?

How long are you practicing and how many minutes are you practicing per day? I assume by practice it’s some form of meditation.

The biggest thing that’s changed in my experience is that there is a seeking without seeking taking place. A recognition that where I am is perfect, is the absolute, yet an understanding that how this perfection shapes the rest of my life is an ever unfolding, ever deepening journey. Going meta on what already is has infinite degrees, yet all degrees are known to be held in perfect equilibrium. The paradox of the path. Seeking without seeking. ?‍♂️

First, super interesting report. Thank you for sharing. I would say yes. Meditation ultimately starts "changing" the way sensations appear across different phenomenological "dimensions." This would be due to a mind that's cultivated powerful levels of mindfulness (concentration + sensory clarity + equanimity) which is a trainable, achievable skill revealing an underlying equilibrium across all perceptions and states of consciousness. A follow up question would be, if this never ended would that be an issue?

100%

This guy. ??

Biggest piece of advice I could give is immediately schedule your next retreat after completing the first. Doesn't have to be with the same organization, teacher, or even lineage. Maybe do a Zen Sesshin next, for example. Just a silent meditation retreat of some kind. I'd highly recommend doing at least 1 retreat per year. If you're 22 now and did this until 32, your entire life would be radically transformed by 32. And you'd still have an entire lifetime to live.

By recognizing you’re already aligned with the will of God. There is no individual will to align with God’s - that would imply you’re somehow going against the intelligence of the Universe. You are not. The idea that you could exert a will in contrast with the will of the whole is a position steeped in illusion, fantasy, and projection. What we can do, however, is recognize that this ‘Will of God’ is already and has always and will always be what is happening at deeper and deeper levels. All of these stories about personal will are not needed to behave, move, speak, and act in the world. Letting go does not mean surrender the ego’s will, or somehow killing the ego until “there’s nothing left.” There’s already nothing there. Letting go means recognizing the underlying reality that you can’t do anything, there was never a choice in the matter. All blame, guilt, shame, frustration, envy, jealousy, pride, arrogance, etc is based on this false premise of “personal will.” So letting go simply means recognizing there is nothing to change because the will of God is already manifesting perfectly, completely, and wholly. Even in the grips of delusion and sense of objectified consciousness, even that is God’s will. Practically, walking meditation while placing attention on the fact that you aren’t doing the moving is a powerful way to begin seeing this clearly. Or speaking while recognizing the words are flowing without your having to think of the words beforehand, they simply flow, you don’t control anything. The sharper our attention can pierce into the subtly of experience, the more deeply we see all desire and intention to act is driven out of a spontaneous emergence of perceptive experience, leaving 0 room to exert control or manipulation. Yet when entranced by the illusion of control or manipulation, or even the idea that you could stop controlling or manipulating, all you do is control and manipulate.

Randomness implies that reality could have been anything other than what it is right now. This is a misunderstanding of reality. Reality can only ever be what it is. There is no such thing as randomness, or cause and effect. Yet here we are. F.I.S.H. Ta-daaa.

Hello - I guess because of how much Actualized.org content I consume and just my own contemplation and introspection, I've come to see with crystal clarity just how un-holistic and stage Orange our medical establishment is. As such, I feel like I have this bias and automatic skepticism towards how doctors handle treating certain illnesses. I was recently diagnosed with H Pylori; I'd been having pretty bad stomach issues for awhile, it felt like ulcers and pretty much constant pain after eating. The pain started subsiding about 2 weeks ago but has still lingered around. After having gone to see a general physician, they had me do a stool test as well as a blood work to see if we could determine what was wrong. Turns out I tested positive for H Pylori. The docotor's treatment is basically 2 weeks of heavy antibiotics, a proton pump inhibitor to manage acid reflex and then retesting at the end of that cycle. The thing is, I'm worried about that... It feels like the treatment is the equivalent of taking a grenade to my gut and hoping for the best. There is 0 doubt that this kind of treatment would also wipe out 'good' bacteria. For anyone who is well versed in nutrition and health, is following this treatment option really a good idea? Or would the unintentional damage caused from the antibiotics NOT be worth it? I mean it seriously feels like such a bullshit treatment option, wildly un-holistic. Like this is seriously the best we have..? We're just going to go in and fuck shit up and hope for the best.

Intentionally spreading your suffering to others is not an act of self love. Fully acknowledging, feeling, accepting, processing and letting go of the pain another caused you would be. Creating a boundary and enforcing that boundary would be an act of self love. Forgiving another would also be an act of self love. Propagating suffering is not. It’s actually incredibly simple, deceptively simple. Hence why the ego loves to over think this, bullshit itself, and justify these types of immature, hurtful responses.

Self deception 101. Healthy egoism would be willing to feel your emotions without dissociation or the need to lash out. Hurting another person because you didnt get what you want is literally childish. Self love would recognize the anger as hurt, and the hurt as a valid human emotion to fully feel. Nothing about hurting a girl who hurt you is healthy or in alignment with self love. Stop bullshitting yourself and take responsibility. If you don’t, you’ll never become the man needed to be with a high quality woman.

Completely agree with this analysis. Techniques such as vipassana, do nothing, or self inquiry I have found to be more helpful for "awakening" but a shamatha practice has and continues to be great for integrating, unifying, harmonizing, and grounding these insights into lived experience.

This is such a misunderstanding... Lol. You’d probably learn a lot opening yourself up to the teachings of the Buddha. It’s actually a ridiculously pragmatic vision of life that involves an insane level of consciousness when one follows the 8 fold path, or at least the meditation part. Usually people don’t understand why these teachings are so powerful until they deeply suffer; we are all very fortunate to live in a time of so much comfort and ease - it gives a false perception of just how bad it can really get and the extend to which our lives and happiness are built on a fragile house of cards. The cessation of rebirth would be the equivalent of completely realizing death and birth are imaginary, using Leo language.

Desire is not the root of all suffering, that’s not really an accurate representation of the 2nd noble truth, at least as far as I understand them. Tanha is the root, which is more accurately defined as “craving” rather than “desire.” Desire can exist without craving. The root of craving could be traced back to attachment. And it’s not necessarily “all life” is suffering. More so that life necessarily involves suffering. But see the extent to which suffering pervades life is vastly underestimated and misunderstood, so even this truth has many, MANY, layers of increasing depth and nuance. From an intellectual pov, yes all of this seems quite simplistic and black and white. Not very useful or important.

The deeper Ive gone in meditation, the more Ive come to appreciate them. Their depth and significance are very subtle.

/thread Thank you sir, this is pretty much the perfect response.

Why would someone kill themselves if death is imaginary? You're creating, value, meaning, and "shoulds" where there are none. You can't derive an ought from an is. Philosophy 101 bruh.

Lmao. So happy I didnt follow the female advice in this thread and instead started learning and implementing the principles of pickup. Granted, Ive been very selective about what teachers to learn from. Id argue the pickup material I consume is much higher consciousness than most. I suspect the pickup the females here are bashing is the sleazier kind which is what is most common. Pickup done well is a spiritual practice. The vulnerability, authenticity, and fearlessness required to approach a stranger is amazing. When two strangers meet and there’s sexual chemistry involved, it’s truly just the universe sorting itself out; when the man can rest in complete surrender and ease within this sorting out process, that is a powerful man.

It is a bit of over complication however it was an invaluable investment to learn the system. All the complicated step involves is making subtle distinctions about the various dynamics of mind involved with constructing your experience during meditation so yes complicated, but well worth the investment to learn. I spent a year really devoted to the techniques in this book, it still is paying off today even though I dont strictly practice it anymore. Combing that system with Shinzen’s Unified Mindfulness system is like a perfect cocktail for awakening via meditation but start with TMI. Once you've really gotten a handle of TMI, stages 7-10 territory, reading Rob Burbea’s seeing that frees and working through Rob’s jhana retreat on dharma seed is also a great next step in addition to Shinzen’s stuff. Wishing you well on your journey. Thank you for putting in the work. ?