Consilience

This perspective is great. On rare occasion, I will feel this perspective with meditation but unfortunately monkey mind continued to be a very problematic feature of my meditation sessions. Since then Ive been doing deliberate practices aimed at settling my mind’s energy and training attention’s focusing. My intention is to be able to reach deep states of samatha and then returning meditation to its purest form which is just Being.

Unfortunately I don't have any book recommendations, but what I've started doing during my meditation sessions (I do 1 hour per day) is the first 45 minutes I will exclusively focus on my breath, but that last 15 minutes, I let my attention expand into awareness while simultaneously allowing the feelings of gratitude and love to unfold. It's interesting, my background with spirituality is totally intellectual. I only stumbled into Leo's content because of a deep intellectual curiosity into the nature of consciousness. For better or for worse, Leo's content has always been more intellectual for me. It's almost like his work and videos act as a way for me to "open my 3rd eye" so to speak. However, on my first LSD trip I was shown infinite love and infinite gratitude, and what was so astonishing was not only did the LSD show me these things, but I had the insight that it was my mind which broke my connection to these things. I had finally started to "open my heart chakra." The very nature of reality is one of total, complete infinite acceptance, love and self gratitude, which is wildly unexplainable to the logical mind. It is the human mind, the human ego which clouds consciousness, or God from seeing this fact and yet nevertheless these facets of reality persist. For anything to Be requires Being to fully Accept what is. In terms of recommended practices: Actively practicing gratitude inside and outside of meditation is huge. Practicing acceptance of whatever form is arising too. This acceptance will eventually snowball into love. And finally, contemplating the nature of Love, Gratitude, Reverence, and Acceptance while on psychedelics. I hope this helps <3 And also, thank you for sharing your journey thus far. It was an incredibly interesting read

Do you feel grateful for what you’ve learned? Do you feel grateful for your individuated, illusory moment of living this lifetime of nexusoflife? Your awakening process seems to lack love and gratitude for what God, you have done. Love and appreciate what it is you have done. You certainly have reached levels of consciousness 99% of humans havent reached, at least that’s what your post makes it sounds like. But it can always go deeper. And particularly deeper into what Existential Love is. Total absolute acceptance of what is. Total acceptance of form, acceptance of formlessness, and reverence and gratitude for all that exists or doesn’t.

@Truth Addict @kieranperez Cute finish

Tbh this response didn't answer what I was asking at all. Why does reality appearing logical, consistent, stable, or anyway at all mean anything? How do you know you aren't dreaming this all up? How do you know this isn't just be simulated?

I'll definitely have to check it out. Thank you for the recommendation

Why should this mean reality’s not a fantasy or dream? Why does consistent, continuous, “logical” (there’s literally nothing logical about existence existing though), stability, etc... mean it’s real? Do you see how arbitrary of a definition you're giving real here? What if despite these traits you’re describing it WAS a dream? What if the dream of God was stable, consistent, logical, etc.?

It is interesting, true. But let me point this fact out. In the most Absolute sense, this post is correct, however also in an Absolute sense, there are two “destinies” for humanity, if you will. Destiny 1) is the continued expansion of consciousness as we are doing in this community, and across time. If you look at humanity, particularly through the lens of Spiral Dynamics, it is quite clear that humanity is transforming, so in the relative sense there is transformation taking place or Destiny 2) which is total extinction of the human race. Perhaps this 2nd destiny is inevitable anyways. Here’s the key insight- there are only tw outcomes for humanity, continued expansion or extinction. Destiny 1 is the only way humanity isn't going to kill itself off through some mass scale ecological meltdown or through some irreversible war. We have to expand consciousness, awareness, love, self understanding as individuals and as a collective- how do we do this? Well actualized.org is a great resource and there are many others. Like I said though, Destiny 2 may be inevitable in the end. Maybe all of our efforts for growth are in vain but... yeah well we already knew that because we’re all gonna die. However, until that happens there’s literally nothing else to do besides try to raise the collective consciousness of humanity. Yeah you could sit on the sidelines and do nothing, watching by with the Truth that nothing really matters and all is perfect, or you could work your ass off at self realization and life purpose, thus raising the collective conscious of the world as you self actualize and give your unique individual gifts back to the Universe. Life Purpose and trying to “make a change” in this light is a form of gratitude, a recognition of just how precious an opportunity it is to be alive and able to give back to existence. You can either seize this momentously rare opportunity YOU have as an individual to help shape the collective Destiny towards 1 (or 2) or you can watch the world go by passively. Each option is equally perfect. Each option need not be illusory. This idea that there is nothing to do is valid yet it lacks taking Nihilism full circle. There’s nothing to do is synonymous with there’s everything to do. Each is perfect. Each is not the Absolute and thus both are illusory in some way shape or form. - just a side note, it is a false dichotomy to think that self actualization work, life purpose, is antithetical to understanding Absolute Truth. All is Truth.

@Leo Gura what is worth more to you, gaining insights into the nature of God, or full blown stabilized Enlightenment? The kind Ralston spoke of when he went all super saiyan zen (he acted all angry about states)?

In addition to keep up your practice, Id also recommend reading the mind illuminated if you’re interested in achieving a calm and focused mind for this work.

Very interesting Leo. Thank you for being transparent with us.

Applied metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology. A first person, existential investigation of direct experience.

Thank you for sharing ?? What an inspiring read

I feel like I understand the Intent of Ralston’s message here but it feels inappropriate to not acknowledge that some states of experience are more conducive towards existential realizations than others. Perhaps I misunderstand how to contemplate from his perspective but... yeah. For example, focus is HUGE. Good luck realizing your true nature if your attention is continually dragged away from one thought to the next. Why is this not acknowledged? I don’t know.

I must admit, my ego felt riled up watching, but it just goes to show how much more work I have to do. Very interesting video.

Oh damn just realized someone else posted this. Fee free to delete mods

Bingo

Definitely Kotor 2. Game had so so so much philosophy in it... I dont think Id ever have gotten into spirituality as an adult if not playing that game so thoroughly as a kid.

? nah no triggering but your response makes me laugh. Have a great day good sir. Im glad you’re aware that no one is aware and that you’re aware awareness is a lie

@Truth Addict then why say something as silly as “there’s no actual awareness” ? Who is aware at this supposed lack of awareness?

That’s the paradox of formlessness (awareness). It is literal nothing. You cannot point to nothing and yet it is the underlying nature of reality. Whenever one tries to talk about it yes of course duality arises. Real awareness, real formlessness, real nothingness can only be pointed to with language, and one can only become conscious of this absolute via itself. Awareness knows itself by being itself, awareness cannot point to itself. This is the key insight you misunderstand. To deny awareness is to deny your very direct experience.

This is amazing What’s your YouTube channel? Id love to check some of your videos out

"Epistemological realism is a philosophical position, a subcategory of objectivism, holding that what you know about an object exists independently of your mind. It opposes epistemological idealism. Epistemological realism is related directly to the correspondence theory of truth, which claims that the world exists independently and innately to our perceptions of it. Our sensory data then reflect or correspond to the innate world." - Wiki Epistemological Idealism is in line with what this community's approach to epistemology is. At least, that's what I'm assuming. Hadn't heard of this until tonight and felt like giving my armchair philosophy rant. What frustrates me about this perspective is that it very clearly is institutionally taken on by mainstream science and philosophy. I recall asking my philosophy of mind professor back in university what the academic philosophy's viewpoints where on materialism vs. idealism vs. dualism and he said the overwhelming majority of philosophers were materialist, which if the case, would mean their views on epistemology would correspond to this form of epistemology. But see their is a huge problem with this viewpoint. This form of epistemology requires the fact of an objective, material world to even work, even though a material world is already assumed within the arguments of this epistemology. The entire argument is circular, each stance relying on the other being an axiom. In other words, in order for epistemological realism to be a "correct" epistemology, it would require materialism as a starting point (axiom) and then vice versa. Moreover, it completely dismisses the subjectivity of our conscious experience. There is no such thing as "independent of your mind" unless one is referring to a state of no-mind, in which case there is no such thing as "independent of conscious experience." I don't see how it's possible to deny subjective conscious experience and I don't see how all of these high level thinkers don't how irrational this supposedly rational metaphysics is.nHow is it that the majority of academics don't see that all of our experience, OBJECTIVELY, *is* conscious experience? The 5 bodily senses and our minds all are various forms of consciousness... Yet because brain states correlate so consistently with conscious experiences they make the metaphysical assumption that consciousness is simply the brain, and that there exists an object-ive physical world. However, WHY does everyone miss the fact that this is, in the strictest, and even most rational sense (which is what these type of mind's tend to cling to), an assumption, an axiom, a metaphysical starting point taken on by faith? Where is the attachment to materialism coming from? Why so many great minds of humanity clinging to this philosophical assumption?

No response to my response? I was genuinely looking forward to objections haha

Where do brains appear? Awareness Where does the world appear? Awareness Where do mystical experiences occur? Awareness The distinction you must make is form vs. formlessness. Notice that form (physical brian states) can only interact with more form (conscious experience). But equally notice, that form cannot directly interact or manipulate formlessness (awareness). Form is great at interacting and manipulating itself, the 6 sensations (sight, taste, touch, sound, smell, mind) are all this entangled amalgamation we call reality. What you have to become conscious off is formlessness and moreover, that this formlessness is not only the underlying nature of reality, but it exists a priori to ALL forms within reality AND that form does not ever manipulate formlessness. Formlessness is infinite nothingness. Form only interacts with more form in a strange loop like manor (watch leo’s strange loop video to understand this phenomena more deeply) Sorry if this sounds redundant but Im trying to drill home this distinction is needed to understand why brains do not generate consciousness. Brains correspond with various experiences but not consciousness itself. I wont even say create conscious experiences because causality is its own rabbit hole not worth getting into.