Consilience

What your calling a “simulation” is made of the same metaphysical substance as the hypothetical “reality” creating this proposed simulation. This is what simulation theorists can’t see and fundamentally the false axiom simulation theory rests on. As such, you can become conscious of the fact that there is no such metaphysical duality as “simulation” and “reality.” It’s all one. If you want to know what reality is, you have to go deeper and see past this mind constructed duality. From a very authentic perspective, this duality isn’t even a possibility - alas, this is what you need to become conscious of.

A question for you in response to your rant - what is Free Will?

From a certain perspective yes. From a certain perspective no. You’ll need to contemplate this for yourself until it’s understood. Psychedelics help haha

Boom. Cant get much more concise than this ??

Yes. You’ve got to detach yourself from them. And by detach, I mean feel their pain, feel their presence, be with the pain you feel, and let it go. As counter intuitive as this sounds, you’re creating a shadow out of your family and their level of consciousness. You’re judging them as bad and self actualization as good. Drop this dynamic, drop this duality. In order to continue your journey you’re going to have to face the existential truth that everything your family is and everything going on is perfection, there’s nothing wrong with it. Only until you can start accepting your family will you be able to get out of this rut. Again, drop this duality that self actualization is somehow better or superior to the dynamic of your family. Accept that your family is walking a different path and on a different journey and they are no less deserving of your love and compassion as anyone else. This advice DOES NOT MEAN you start letting your family walk all over you. It doesn’t mean you start conforming to their habits and behaviors. It doesn’t mean you cower if they try to bully you out of your journey. And It doesn’t mean you have to start spending all your free time with them. It simply means accepting them and acknowledging it’s okay. It’s okay. They’re okay. As long as they are not physically, emotionally, or mentally abusing you through directed action and speech, it’a your responsibility to let go. If they are abusing you, well that’s another matter and Im not qualified to give advice. Regardless, you’ll need to keep doing the basics even while living with them: - meditation (1 hour every day) - contemplation - exercise - nutrition - sleep - reading - introspection - etc. Let your presence in the household be one of humility, meaning don’t go around shoving this work in their face, but don’t hide it either. Set an example, if they’re genuinely interested, they’ll ask. You’d be surprised how one person can affect the dynamics of the collective consciousness. Be a kind, loving, fearless energy for your family. These next 7 months are an amazing opportunity for growth and learning if you let it be. I wish you well on your journey. ❤️

This is awesome! ?

Been recently going through a transformation with weed too... I too “struggled” with daily use but during my usage, I didnt feel struggle, I fucking loved getting high. I loved the expanded sense of awareness, the heightened perception, the creative thoughts, the subconscious mind bubbling up into consciousness... And tbh I still love weed. It feels like my mind is designed to respond extremely well to weed. But what’s finally kicked my daily use was quitting for 45 days straight all while keeping up a persistent meditation schedule. Through meditation, I started getting really good at keeping tabs on how my mind was doing. Meditation, particularly the method I use, focuses on staying aware of the mind itself, whether it feels dull, unfocused, foggy, etc., or whether it feels sharp, focused, and unified. So what happened was that during my hiatus with weed, I started observing how much suffering I was putting myself through with daily use and how damaging it was for my mind. If you look at my profile I made a thread outlining all the benefits I observed from a 30 day break. For me, it wasnt until I was able to REALLY observe the obsessive clinging my mind had to weed, the amount of suffering I put myself through, and how much better my mind felt without weed was I able to give it up. And I was only able to truly see this from my meditation training. Somehow I just haven't been able to see the damage until very recently. Ive tripped on psychedelics and they’ve given me pretty strong indications I need to quit the daily use but I never integrated those lessons. Truly I had to see the “high” of sobriety before I could give up the high of weed, and Ive only been able to tap into this natural high from meditation. I do 1 hour per day of a formal sit. Basically, I had to see the damage and find a better high than the high from weed, and I found this through meditating. Unfortunately, your journey will be different than mine so idk if this will work. However I understand where you're at with weed, it’s such a bittersweet substance, ally, and enemy. Good luck on your journey, and as cliche as this may sound, never underestimate your willpower. If you truly want to quit, you will find a way despite your past failures.

No you are not doing it wrong. This is precisely correct. This meditation system is about allowing the mind to train itself. Bringing your attention back to the breath is mind. Getting distracted in the first place is the mind too. You’ll notice that the mind is both the source of focus and the source of being un-focused. So don’t over think it or second guess yourself. This method is, at its core, about the mind training itself so that the intention of stable focus is the intention that actually manifests. A key existential insight - you aren’t the one training the mind, again the mind is training itself. Pretty spooky but fascinating hehe

@Matteo Something similar yes. In the book, the object of focus is the breath at the nostrils. And really, the minimum he recommends is 45 minutes. I do 1 hour per day and noticed an immediate improvement within 1 week. In the book, he characterizes 10 stages of meditation practice, I progressed through stages 1-4 very quickly due to my prior meditation experience, 5 was about 1.5 months and Ive been at stage 6 for around 2.5 months but starting to see glimpses into 7/8. I suspect the later stages will take a good bit of time to manifest. Essentially at first, your goal is to pick a meditation object, the breath is a nice one, and hold your attention there. The moment you see your mind has wandered, acknowledge this “aha!” moment and then gently return to the breath. You want to get really good at noticing when you’ve lost focus, getting good at having ‘aha’ moments. Eventually you’ll get so good at noticing that you’ll be aware in the moment of your attention shifting away, which is the goal. As your attention gets more stable, feelings of pleasure, happiness, and joy begin to bubble up. You’ll also become much more effective at contemplation and get better at tripping on psychedelics, better in the sense that you’re able to contemplate more deeply and handle challenging experiences with more equanimity and acceptance. The book has more techniques outlined as you progress through the stages that will help you along your journey. Again, this has been my experience.

If you want an actually effective meditation approach look into samatha practice outlined in The Mind Illuminated. It directly works towards transforming your mind, perceptions, and emotional system. Ive seen enormous results from practicing so far and look forward to continuing it in the years to come. Typically meditation alone doesnt do much. This samatha practice starts by working to stabilize your attention span. Only until your mind can actually stay focused for extended periods of time do the true benefits of meditation start to unfold. So after you’ve worked towards this stabilization process, you work towards increasing mindfulness, basically increasing the potency of your perception. This has massive carry over into everyday life a life starts to become much more vitalized, it’s like your conscious is being sensitized. Eventually as your mind becomes unified (a process I dont care to write up about) you begin to have the ability to generate pleasure, happiness, and joy during your meditation with ease, which makes the sits incredible. Eventually these pleasurable, happy, joyful qualities start to permeate into life off the cushion. Once your mind has achieved this state of samatha, your ability to contemplate and introspect has dramatically increased. In my experience, this approach to meditation has made everyday life feel like Im micro dosing psychedelics, or have a light buzz from weed without the mental fog. Bad habits have been falling away, good habits are spontaneously arising. Im not trying to overstate the benefits but this has been my experience. If you want to learn how to truly, consistently transform the mind, get the book, follow the steps outlined.

How much meditation do you do? How stable is your attention span? Are you working out? Diet? How much sleep? Do you spend time in nature? Do you have powerful friendships? How often are you fapping/masturbating? Do you know what happiness is existentially? Odd questions maybe but each of these can play a huge role. These were just off the top of my head.

Thank you for sharing this with the forum

Ive found mushrooms to be more challenging than LSD. Interesting ?

No reply to my comment? Also funny you post a video of Adyashanti considering he teaches meditation aka a practice. And again JUST TO BE CLEAR - there is truth to what you’re getting at here with your post. I acknowledge and see this. The dogma, however, is your ego.

"Practices have no value at all..." Egoic dogma "Practices perpetuate the belief of the illusory self." That's like saying eating food perpetuates the belief of an illusory self. When one can meditate while recognizing they are not the one meditating, true meditation begins. Practice and truth are not incompatible, it's ego that thinks they are not. "You cannot practice dropping the illusory self, either it happens or it does not." True, but you can create conditions that facilitate this event being more or less likely to occur. Inquiring "Who am I?" is more likely to reveal THIS than sitting and watching reality TV all day. Therefore, practices can help. "Spiritual seeking is just another form of spiritual materialism." True, but seeking is a part of the path. It's spiritually egotism to dismiss its value. If one never begins seeking, one will never awaken to truth. How do you not see this? “Those who are actively seeking enlightenment will not find it because the act of looking for it is the distraction from it.” ― Enza Vita This is true. But if one never learns about enlightenment and begins seeking it out, they will most likely remain within the veil of ignorance. I hope you can begin appreciating the relativity of what's at play here. You can tout all you want about how useless practices are, but this doens't mean all practices are about enlightenment. Believe it or not, there is much more to life than your singular enlightenment. There are realms of consciousness and mind that one can discover that have nothing to do with the absolute. Dismissing duality, dismissing practices, dismissing life, is just a form of spiritual egotism that I've seen perpetuated by a number of individuals on this forum over time. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for veganawake, but I do see dogma in this post. Lot's of dogma. I will reiterate, if it weren't for beginning practices and seeking enlightenment, I would not know what I know now. I won't say I'm enlightened, but I do not feel separate from enlightenment. And I have my practices to thank for my discoveries along the way. Edit: But even communicating what I mean is impossible because of language. The practices aren't "mine" and "I" do not do them, however the practices continue to persist, survival continues to persist, and I am none of it. And the practices are what revealed this truth.

If I had taken on this mentality at the beginning of my journey, I would've been defeated before I began. Try to not to be swept away in absolutism, the ego loves moralizing and creating definitive answers when there are none (look at politics as a great example.) The ego hates admitting relativity. For example, my meditation practice is not about finding truth. It is about slowly transforming the mind. While this practice isn't necessarily useful to recognizing THIS as you frequently point out, it does help embody the actuality of THIS. When the mind stops projecting 100s of thoughts every minute, when the mind starts to reign itself in and slow down, reality is seen more carefully. In this way, the practice doesn't pull one away, but helps connect to the source of being, the source of reality. Contemplation, as a practice, is about becoming conscious, but it's also admitting you don't know. While it's true that THIS is it, THIS is everything, THIS is being fueled by an insurmountable amount of mind, of projections, of good/bad, craving/aversion, distractions, beliefs, assumptions, life story. Until one contemplates the amount and significance of how the mind is warping one's experience of THIS, THIS cannot be seen fully. There is deep truth to what you're getting at here. Truth has nothing to do with practices. But it would be foolish to dismiss the value of practices, of techniques along this path. Moreover, everyone's path is different. For you, perhaps dropping all practices is what you needed. But this is certainly not the case for everyone.

Disagree with the weed usage negatively affecting trips. Ive recently cut way back on my usage but when I took LSD for the first time, I was getting high every day. Still had a beautiful trip. The difference perhaps was that I was meditating 1 hour every day (still am) and doing self actualization work. How much do you meditate? Do you do yoga? How’s diet and exercise? Do you know how to effectively concentrate while sober? Do you work towards your life purpose Purification work is beyond merely using weed but I would recommend quitting the frequent weed use for sure. This is also why I don’t like the idea of tripping with someone, your empathy on psychedelics can become so much stronger that the trip can start revolving around other people rather than your experience and contemplation. Meditation training is also a must imo, or at least knowing how to process and let go of thoughts. Thoughts have insanely powerful effects on experience while tripping. You’ve got to be ready for good, bad, insane, all the thoughts without being attached to them. If you cant do that sober good luck doing it while tripping. Take some time to revitalize your spiritual work and personal development before your next trip and consider tripping alone. It’ll be worth it.

Do a 1 hour strong determine meditation sit and let us know whether it’s masculine or feminine. Tbh though, it had qualities of both. It helps me be more masculine though but also helps me tap into more femininity.

I contemplated this exact topic recently. Ill list my train if thought: Why do I get AA? Because Im afraid. What am I afraid of? Rejection Why do your fear rejection? Because if I see a girl Im attracted to, I want her to be attracted to me back. Why? Because I see a possibility, I see a potential for two people to impact the other’s lives and I want her to see/feel that opportunity as well. Why does even this matter? Because I don't want to be alone. So I determined, for me, AA is coming from a place of neediness for someone to be attracted to me, neediness for my feelings to be reciprocated, and a neediness to be in a relationship. This was all quite interesting to observe as I didn’t realize these emotions where present in my experience until I looked under the hood. Much easier to process and let go of conscious emotions than unconscious ones.

Used to have a similar attitude. Began consciousness work and started noticing more and more synchronicities (these “messages” you’re referring to). Now I have way too many synchronicities to discount and ignore them. I almost think there are various ways of interpreting and different lessons available within one synchronistic event, and different synchronicities can be more or less strange/powerful. Id suggest just being open to learning lessons from the events of your life.

Take responsibility but let the past go.

After my meditation session I go take a shower and begin my day. Eventually the distinction between meditation and not meditating will be gone as @Shin alluded to.

Peeling back layers of content to get to actuality can be deceptively challenging. Especially when it comes to analyzing how our experience is being influenced by microscopically subtle thought patterns and beliefs. Self-psychoanalysis has been a very important practice towards understanding actuality vs. content/interpretation.

Ahh the ol no free will trap ? Spoiler alert: it’s both and neither! Wicked strange... makes no sense. And yet...