Consilience

Understand the hard problem of consciousness, which is a philosophical topic. Next, become directly conscious of the fact that reality has and always necessarily will be perceived as contents of consciousness. Any ideas or thoughts about objects or physicality is itself more contents within consciousness

That would be very expensive if everyone flew

Id be down for Seattle!

1) It’s perfectly fine to enjoy your practice. I feel like sustaining 3 hours per day is plenty of difficulty for now. The biggest thing is dont get lost in the bliss. Are you trying to feel good or are you trying to observe what’s true? 2) I would dedicate a specific time during your meditation to be examining emotions, and another segment towards surrendering and letting go. It sounds like you’re over thinking this one a bit. 3) This is a great question. From my experience, it depends. Ive found that quality is more important than quantity for meditation. So maximizing quality is key here. However, Ive also found there to be a non-linear increase in efficacy as the mediation practice lengthens such that I suspect 1 super solid 12 hour session would yield greater growth than 12 1 hour sessions. But! This doesnt take into account time and also like... there’s no way id be able to sustain a 12 hour session at this moment, so the 12 1 hour would actually be more helpful given the quality principle. Hope this helps.

For 2) Definitely checkout Peter Ralston's work. He has been one of the most helpful resources I've found for understanding the self structure and emotions from an enlightenment perspective. As for 1), I think Leo is making the distinction between self identity being relative and then all intellectual perspectives being relative, which is distinct from self knowledge. That's a good question though.

Yo. An insight I had during meditation today that I felt like sharing - Distinction is infinite. Observe this within direct experience. No matter where we observe, no matter how finely we constrict our concentration, or how broadly we let our awareness expand, the depth and types of distinction continue to manifest and manifest ad infinitum. Conscious experience is infinitely divisible from the macro and micro, no matter what perceptual sense, more and more distinctions may be drawn. Become conscious of this right now. Separation is division amongst an infinite field of distinction. Whenever separation manifests, it does so by dividing a set of distinctions from another set of dictions. Observe this within direct experience. For example, self and other is a division within an infinite field of distinctions. Separation may be formed around any myriad of distinctions, because remember, distinction is infinite in all directions of experience. Separation is free to take advantage of this phenomena in an equally infinite number of ways. However, relative to the totality of direct experience, there is no such thing as separation, there is only direct experience. There IS ONLY direct experience. Verify this right now please. Furthermore, please directly experience how direct experience cannot be separate from itself, because... it is itself. If we classify a set of distinctions as separate from another set of distinctions, this DOES NOT allow for separation from the total field of direct experience, because remember: there is only direct experience. In this light, separation does not exist as direct experience, it exists as a metta distinction amongst an infinite field of distinctions, but nevertheless always apart of the whole of direct conscious experience. Separation is only a conceptualization of direct experience; separation is a conceptual web around direct experience classifying and dividing an infinite pool of distinctions into a metta distinction, but there is no such thing as separation of direct experience as a whole, despite how it may be divided. Anyways... Now I'm looking at my dog and realizing he is literally just as "me" as the egoic self is... Lol.

Yes! It is all one movement, propigating self survial. Tbh Im not aware of this 24/7 but especially when meditating it becomes very obvious.

It’s not a thought story. It’s an observation of direct experience. Even if god awareness is the 1 aspect of direct experience which is permanent, it is still not separate from that which is aware. It is all just.... itself. That’s my obseration at least. When I look out into the world, or when Im at home meditating, there is no separation, just flucuations of impermanent phenomena and the awareness that observes it all. But all of it is happening as a whole. When concentration slices through and registers distinction, we can form thought stories like “a separate self.” But when you actually observe direct experience in its totality, there is nothing separate. It is all just itself. This requires no thinking to observe as far as I can see.

And the kicker is that none of this that you describe is separate from itself. It’s all happening simultaneously, in each moment as a collective untit of consciousness. Nothing that’s actual is ever separate from itself.

This is a really interesting question that Im honestly unsure of.

Right. Im trying to let this observation fully sink in.

Ideologies can require very nuanced thinking though, even if ultimately false

Orange. Taking logic and rationality to its fullest extent requires a subtle and nuanced mind, at least that was my experience back when I was caught up in stage orange. You cant excel at subjects like philosophy, math, engineering without being able to think incredibly logically, even before systems thinking comes into play, but often times these subjects have very subtle/nuanced details utilizing various forms of logic and or rationality.

This is a really good insight. Hating on the ego is actually just another layer of self identity; our goal is to transcend and discover the nature of ego, not become egotisitical about hating on the ego. Ego hate is actually a very counter intuitive egoci trap people can easily fall into imo - great insight d00d

Really great explanation.

Even from a perspective of self, what is a preference? It’s a variation of desire right? So what is a desire? Desire is a clinging to a thought or idea about the future. So what is clinging? More thoughts? So thoughts generating clinging-thoughts generating positive feelings which were what the preference consisted of. Preferences seem to be generated out of the concept that a certain future x may be achieved by certain actions y. But the underlying nature of a preference is that we confuse the outcome “x” as being positive or negatice, but if you look at any outcome of the future, it’s neither good or bad, so the underlying structure of a preference is based on... more thoughts which themselves don’t exist in the outside world. Maybe none of what Im saying makes sense or resonates. Either way I think contemplating the nature of preference is the next step, not whether or not there is no self. Preferences clearly exist in some form, so unraveling their nature can be done from the perspective of a self or no self.

Wow this was a really interesting read... @Jack River what are your thoughts on this dude? You frequently mention that intention only feeds thought and therefore psychological time which leads you to claim intention should be dropped. This outline makes a strong case that intention should be sustained in the beginning though. Thoughts?

@Andreas You think Putin is beyond Turquoise or even embodies Turquoise? Lmao

@pluto Great post... Very simplistic

I defintely agree. Humanity is reaching an inflection point where we’ll either collectively slingshot oursleves into a new era or plunge into a new dark age or possibly extinction. If we fuck up AI, fuck up genetic engineering, fuck up the economy, fuck up the planet beyond healing, and generally just fuck ourselves... we’re fucked haha. My point is A LOT could go wrong, but assuming the stars align, we could enter into a new “golden age” previously unrivaled. Exciting times to be alive!

@Erlend K Well ignoring the fact that 1/4th of CO2 emissions is still a large amount, CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas, and greenhouse gas emission isn't the only problem with the meat, diary, and agriculture industries. Deforestation (we're essentially killing off the lungs of planet Earth with this one), fishery exploitation, mass extinctions and loss of biodiversity, depletion of freshwater sources, animal cruelty, an insane obesity and health epidemic... You want to talk about fixing the environment? Start by fixing how we sustainable feed 7+ BILLION people on this planet, plus feed the animals used to feed the glutenous desires of meat and diary consumers. The meat and diary industry is one of the most wasteful, stage orange, industries humanity willfully and collectively ignores. Not only is it one of the (if not THE) leading source of environmental degradation, it produces an unfathomable amount of suffering so... You all can pick. I suspect if we can make it into the next century, humanity will look back and simply ask, "Why?" lol

You don't have to agree with the data, but it doesn't change what the data indicates. Edit: You have to consider the greenhouse gas emission that would normally be recycled from plant mass (aka forests) that is now NOT being recycled out of the atmosphere due to deforestation, deforestation that is a direct result from the demand for meat and diary. Also if you look into the amount of methane livestock produce, its quite insane. So look into it imo and let the scientific research speak for itself, not some dude on the internet haha. But yes, everything else from health and wellbeing, to living more ethically are other benefits as well. You gotta make sure and do your research when it comes to health though - veganism lacks certain nutrients an omnivore diet would cover such as B12, omega-3s, vitamin D3, etc.

A massive societal shift towards veganism would help drastically slow down environmental degradation. But no one wants to hear or admit that the meat and diary industries are the main drivers of deforestation, water usage, and green house gas emission.

Fuck I never realized this about concentration but I understand what you meant about techniques awhile back... something clicked when I read this thank yout pt. 2 dawg! The thing is though, if one were to rest in a state of awareness, isn’t this the same mechanism of concentration, except like... infinitely expanded? So an open awareness of all of the present moment would be total expansion of a state of concentration. Concentration and awareness are both resting in the present moment. The difference is awareness is completely undivided.

@Jack River Thank you for the insights d00d