Consilience

@Jack River How does one begin on the path if there is no initial desire to understand? What was your journey like in the beginning? Did you spontaneously drop all desires and identifications, or was there a force, a curiosity of some sort pushing you to learn?

It's more like the subconscious mind is an "uncognized" aspect of our direct experience; as in we have hidden, unconscious beliefs, concepts, and assumptions all tugging on our attention, all directing our experience of life in various ways. The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston goes into a lot of detail with this "uncognized" mind and how through contemplation, we can uncover hidden emotional, social, and self-survival programs, beliefs, assumptions, etc. we unknowingly walk around with. For example, let's take anger: often times people confuse certain circumstances as the cause of the emotion of anger, but if you look closely enough, you'll notice that external stimuli do not "cause" the emotions of anger - the circumstance and the emotions are quite distinct. We only assume that we "should be" angry at something, but WHY are we angry? Why do we equate external circumstance, X, with anger? So basically, start deeply contemplating your emotions, your self images, your beliefs and try to get at the root beliefs that you may be unconsiously walking around with. This is a pretty brief overview, and probably poorly worded, but hopefully it helps. There's definitely A LOT to this subject, and much I personally am still trying to learn and contemplate.

Ive seen this debate before - it’s excellent

I eat a vegan diet. As long as you’re supplementing with the appropriate nutrients, it’s completely healthy. In terms of social situations, what matters more - fitting in socially or supporting the meat and diary industry? I honestly dont understand how anyone who claims to be spiritual could support these industries if there’s the option not to but to each their own. Notice how easily the mind can justify any behavior though; it’s a lot easier to conform to social programming than to look at the truth of these industries.

@Joseph Maynor thank you for the questions. Im just going to have to contemplate all of this as you suggest...

What do you mean that experience is illusory here? Why would pure, present moment experience not be consciousness? And why are you seperating your self from it? That distinction seems like a conceptual duality

This is an interesting concept you’ve outlined

@ajasatya While I actually prefer vaping to smoking, Ive never felt that smoking takes away from its healing potential, at least in terms of psychological healing. Nor have I found smoking it to be anymore addictive than vaping..? Im not sure if you’re speaking from your own experience but Im fairly certain it would come down to the individual. In terms of OP, yeah cannabis can be used as a spiritual tool as long as it’s in moderation. Daily smoking or even frequent use really takes away from its potential, at least for me. Plus my body literally feels healthier when I dont frequently use. But... the potential is definitely there. Im not confident I would have ever stumbled upon consciousness work had it not been for my experiences with the plant.

Well I can't take any credit. Like I said, it was from the Vinay Gupta who claimed he was enlightened. It IS a really creative manta though - incredibly simple and if you have a visual mind, it brings about a very peaceful image of sunflowers haha. I really like the attitude of "even if it kills me" haha. Strong determination sitting is the way to go when meditating

Go full circle with nihilism. It doesnt matter that it doesnt matter; really let thst one sink in dude. The next step is to realize happiness is not contigent upon meaning but instead is found by fully accepting what is and BEING. The fact that your wrestling with nihilism means youre on the right track. But keep going further and realize that meaninglessness is just as meaningless as meaning and that happiness isn’t actually derived from it

Sunflower got the idea from a dude named Vinay Gupta, who claimed to be enlightened and it just sorta stuck haha. Now it’s transformed into being a very powerful way to quiet monkey mind and remind me that happiness is found in the present moment and quite literally nowhere else.

Btw I just re-read my post and its worded in a very declarative way as if Im spouting answers. I actually am very open to being off the mark, or completely wrong haha. This is an interesting topic and is quite confusing

This question reminds me of one of the topics Rupert Spira talks about a lot which is the "knowing" aspect of awareness. That awareness "knows" itself through being, almost like awarness is self aware, it knows it is aware by being aware of its own awareness. Here's a video where he discusses it: "What is this Mind?" This mind is simply more contents within consciousness, but our inner "knowing" has mistakenly identified a disctinction within this experience as itself. Rather than knowing all of consciousness to be the True Self, awareness has known a duality (the mind) to be itself. The mind also has self preservation qualities about it. That is to say, the mind operates in ways in which it propagates its own survival just as DNA does. In this regard, mind is acts in line with Darwinian Evolution just as the rest of the body does. So as the "knowing" of oneself to be the mind continues, so too does the power of the minds ability to hold that light on knowing onto the mind. Ultimately the mind seems to be a mechanism of survival, acting in ways to manipulate the light of knowing, as Rupert discusses, to shine on it and only it. I'm also not really differentiating mind and ego here, so I would say mind = ego in this context. Who is this "you" that the Mind is deceiving and distracting? The inner awareness that permeates all conscious experience. But this awareness has an intelligence about it, or seems to. This awareness seems to have not only awareness of any conscious experience, but also self awareness. Awareness OF the awareness, or KNOWING of awareness. And to reiterate, this knowing is what the mind hijacks.

“I” wish I was advanced enough in my understanding to even understand Leo’s and Joseph’s discrepancy lol

Thank you for asking questions. Overall I agree though- it’s all found within and no books are needed

@Jack River Yes yes!

Because sometimes people are so wrapped up in concept land, they’re not in a position to understand self/thought or go metta enough to see the concepts they’re wrapped up in. Does one concept cancel out another? Of course not. Concepts do not cancel anything nor do they act at all. They point awareness and mind in various directions. Is understanding the concept maker/making work to end these patterns of beliefs? From my experience, YES. The only reason I was ever sent down this path was through CONCEPTUAL understanding of what concepts actually are. Concepts actually point towards their own nature; once the conceptual understanding of concepts has set in, one may find value in being. Prior to that understanding, one might also believe spirituality, being, truth are all beliefs when in fact, the opposite is what is required. You can use concepts to leverage yourself out of concept land. And then the only thing left is to BE.

Mmm... more like deconstruct concepts. But language is entirely conceptual so it’s using concepts to deconstruct concepts lol

@Violinpracticerdude have you considered the possibility that there is no “you” experiencing? If no, id contemplate this heavily. You should also read “The Book of Not Knowing” by Peter Ralston dude. I feel like it’s a perfect book to introduce spiritual concepts for the rational mind and takes a very pragmatic approach towards what REAL spirituality is getting at. At the very least it’ll give you a lot to think about.

@Violinpracticerdude The experiences are what they are. But if you want to find the roof of spirituality start questioning the hell out of WHO or WHAT is witnessing those experiencing? Divert all of your rationality and focus on what is witnessing every bit of your direct experience. Not beliefs about who you think is witnessing it (ie a self) but actually directly experiencing the witness to not just spiritual experiences, but every day experiences as well.

@Emanyalpsid @Violinpracticerdude Try shedding all of your beliefs about reality and seeing it as it is a priori to any of your biases and then talk to us about the supposed “church” lolol. It’s telling that neither of you responded to my post. I hope you both find what you’re looking for.

@Fuku Awesome!

@StephenK Thanks!

What’s really ironic about the idea that spirituality is escapism is that for me, I literally hit the limit of rationality and modern science which pushed me to explore alternative explanations of reality and consciousness. It had zero to do with escape and everything to do with discovering truth. You should watch Leo’s blog on metaphysics and epistemology. Look into the hard problem of consciousness, contemplate the true profundity of the idea that the map is not and can’t ever be the territory by definition, really wrap your mind around the fact that symbolic representation is always SYMBOLIC, eg not the thing it represents. Science, language, rationality are contingent upon ralationships and concepts, they are LITERALLY nothing more the constructs within the domain of mind. Reality is being itself though, not mental activity. Best advice I could give is go down the rabbit hole of rationality. You’ll eventually become so rational you’ll have no choice but to see the limits, and flaws of logic and reason and why using the traditional systems of thought you’ve been programmed with since birth wont cut it if you want to really understand the absolute nature of reality. And in the end, become so rational you become a mystic because that’s where it will ultimately lead.

@PsiloPutty Thanks you! I can 2nd the mantra meditation. It's very effective at stilling the mind.