bmcnicho

@Danioover9000 1:53:00

@Nilsi I can tell from the language you’re using that your perspective is largely inspired by Nietzsche. It’s quite ironic that Nietzsche famously had major health problems, was financially dependent on family members, was unsuccessful with women, and spent the last decade of his life in an insane asylum. And yet in my view Nietzsche was still one of the most brilliant philosophers in history. All of my wisdom comes from flawed sources, I think the point of this work is to synthesize the best available ideas in a way that works best in your own life. Not that it’s invalid to point out that some details of Leo’s personal life might be cause for concern, but we really don’t have much information, so it’s largely speculation. And I think it should be expected that going that deep with psychedelics is bound to cause some degree of destabilization

https://typefully.com/portalintojamie/onUwvMA It might be a little off on the specific details, but there’s a surprising amount of genuine wisdom here. These neural nets are progressing quickly, this model is based on GPT 3.5 by OpenAI, and GPT 4 is expected to be much more advanced and will be released sometime next year. I see both immense potential and immense danger in these technologies

I understand that most people are not yet open to these types of radical understandings, however, I’m sure that there are many who would be open, but just haven’t yet found the proper sources of information There is the issue of being misinterpreted. I’m sure there are many types of minds where only having a partial understanding could be worse than no understanding. For that reason, maybe talking to people individually is more appropriate than public statements. It’s worth considering that gatekeeping within past spiritual traditions likely existed for a reason Despite the profound nature of our realizations, I suppose these things are likely to be lumped into the dismissive category “new-age” by the average person, and not have much impact. Also, our more radical claims could lead to conflict and reputational damage. Finally, something that I’m still unsure about is the claim that “the purpose of the dream is to wake up”. That is my own belief, however, I think the purpose of the dream could also be to continue dreaming. I wouldn’t want to ruin someone’s dream if they were enjoying it.

@Consept I don’t necessarily feel the need to spread anything, it just feels wrong to keep it a secret if it could benefit people. I know that going around telling everyone that they’re dreaming isn’t going to get the message across, though. Maybe it is the case that only certain individuals will fall into the circumstances to begin pursuing these things. Although I do see a certain elitism to keeping these teachings contained within insular communities

@Tudo In my experience, ayahuasca is more direct than mushrooms. For my first couple ayahuasca trips, I experienced some pretty strong blockages, and wasn’t able to get a lot out of it. In contrast, I’ve done mushrooms 6 times at doses ranging from 1 - 4.5 grams, and all have been mostly positive. Mushrooms are more light and playful, and I’m still able to access minor insights when I’m not ready for deeper ones. Mushrooms can be immensely powerful at high doses, however, my third and most recent ayahuasca trip was deeper and more complete than anything I’ve experienced on mushrooms so far So yes, ayahuasca has a lot of potential, but I would be prepared for a more harsh experience

Besides continuing the work and practices that we’re currently doing, is there anything specific that would be helpful in preparing for the course? Like prerequisite types of psychedelic experiences, or cultivating a certain mindset etc.? Would you recommend that someone listening to your course would have already mastered the more fundamental aspects of spirituality, or is that not required? This is a very intriguing new direction that I wasn’t expecting! I wish that people on the forum were more open instead of engaging in such strong speculation and judgment based on the short description you gave

@Batman True, but there’s an important difference between being aware of God’s presence and not being aware of it. Ayahuasca can be a quick way to bring an unaware person to that realization

That’s a solid insight! It’s a good way to reframe the issue. I believe that all binaries and dichotomies can be transcended, Carl Jung called this the “Hidden Third”. I think that’s Peterson’s conception is accurate in reference to a particular moment or situation. In that case, there is an important trade-off between chaos and order in terms of how to handle it. However, what seeing them as opposites doesn’t take into account is growth over time. That’s where I think your quadrant model is more complete. It could be said that Peterson accounts for growth by saying “keep one foot in order and let the other step out into chaos”. Such that new territory once explored becomes the new order, allowing for further exploration. But I think seeing complexity as a combination of order and chaos is a more clear conceptualization. This also made me think of the flow state model. It’s a bit of a different topic, but the skill axis can be thought of as order and the difficulty axis can be thought of as chaos. Thus the embodiment of complexity would put you in a flow state https://images.app.goo.gl/yw9RAfftBvVwV8Be7

I’m curious what people think of this, because before I got into spiritual stuff, he was the philosopher I had read the most of. Leo did list existentialism as a less valuable branch of philosophy, however he didn’t mention Nietzsche by name I’ll start with an obvious point against Nietzsche: that he very famously did not personally embody the things he talked about. That’s a clear trap that we should avoid, using grandiose ideas as cover for personal deficiencies. It can also be questioned if his frequent writing style of ego-fueled angry rants is really what we want to see in a philosopher, although I’m sure some could see it as a valid stylistic choice Another clear trap that Nietzsche fell into was dualism. While his Will to Power idea may have some relative validity, making intense dualistic struggle such a key pillar of his worldview is an obvious point against him Now for some points to Nietzsche’s credit. He definitely believed in the pursuit of Truth above all else. In fact many believe that it’s what led to his insanity. He criticized those who saw philosophy as a way to improve human life, believing one must follow the Truth even if doing so would make things much worse for people. In at least this respect, he represents well what Leo considers a great philosopher to be Nietzsche also had great critiques of previous philosophers, accusing many of being so biased that their bodies of work were essentially “writing their own autobiographies”. Nietzsche was so against past authorities, that his main philosophical project was to reject all past values and create new ones completely from scratch. This type of thinking was revolutionary for the time, and led to the later development of postmodernism. While Nietzsche was ignorant regarding spirituality and eastern philosophy, he did have his own idea, Amor Fati, or love of fate, which was the belief that there is nobility in embracing all aspects of life, no matter how painful or difficult Finally, while there are potential issues with his ideas surrounding the Ubermensch, it does represent a desire in common with Leo to transcend human limitations These are my main thoughts on him, but I would like to hear other people’s perspectives

@JosephKnecht I should clarify and expand on my point regarding Nietzsche’s ignorance of the East and spirituality. There was definitely a strong transcendental spirit to his work, however in my view he had an incomplete understanding of transcendence. His main criticism of Buddhism and the East was that in his view it practiced “standing on the sidelines of life”. He contrasted this against against his view of Amor Fati and voluntarily embracing the Will to Power. The key piece he was missing was the central pillar of true spirituality: that human suffering can be transcended through the recognition that the separate self is illusory. His approach instead advocated for digging in deeper into dualistic suffering, and regarding that struggle as Good. While the Ubermensch is certainly an aspirational idea, Nietzsche seems to describe it as an evolutionary, philosophical, or socio-cultural project, rather than something that one can become directly conscious of and embody personally.

@Vibroverse Yes, that’s important to point out. Nietzsche’s writings would often bring out conflicting aspects of a given topic. Such that the intended message of a given passage was sometimes the precise opposite of what it appeared initially. Nietzsche is therefore frequently misinterpreted, and I almost certainly have some misconceptions about his views

I’ve experienced strong blockages on ayahuasca twice now. It felt like there was something within me preventing me from accessing the deeper levels. I’m confused because at roughly equivalent mushroom doses I’ve never had this problem, and I’m wondering if there’s a reason for this. I had the intuition while feeling blocked that it has something to do with ayahuasca being more “direct”, although I’m not sure if this is accurate. I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on this before making a third attempt. I made a list of potential things I could be afraid of, but none of them necessarily felt like the complete answer. It seems odd to me that I would react so differently to two very similar molecules. Also, I’m wondering if the process of being blocked like this while tripping could be damaging in some way. Maybe it’s a sign to wait until I’ve developed more before trying again

I’m not saying that it isn’t a valid topic, of course all worldviews have their excesses and limitations, but I think that 3 hours was more than enough time to get the point across. I’ll state upfront that I’m personally to the left of Leo, however we probably agree on about 90% of political issues. I acknowledge that some of Leo’s criticisms of the Left were important and worth bringing attention to. However, others seemed a bit misinformed and lacking context in my view. I could go into specifics, but that’s not really my main point I do question the timing of releasing this right before the midterms. Republicans are likely to take control of one or both houses, and 75% of their candidates on the ballot deny the results of the 2020 election. Republican politicians on the national level are much more radical than their average voters, and are conducting an unprecedented, dangerous, anti-democratic movement. By contrast, Democrats in government are mostly center-right and propose mostly mild reforms, while the “radical-left” are almost exclusively college students on twitter with zero political power I guess what I’m wondering is, if Leo wanted to make a political video, why of all the things going on in the world right now was this what was worth focusing on? I do acknowledge that most of Leo’s audience is already on the Left and could benefit from hearing this, but there’s also younger viewers who might not have fully formed opinions yet. I think it could be potentially harmful for them to hear centrist-sounding criticisms from someone who is rightfully perceived as being high consciousness I did enjoy Leo’s series on Conscious Politics, and think it’s a topic worth exploring more in the future. However, I do question the relevance of Leo’s personal political views to the broader topics here of self-actualization and spiritual development

@petar8p I asked if you had heard of those comments because I was charitably assuming that you weren’t openly praising someone who is essentially a black Nazi. The black Hebrew Israelite thing is an unhinged conspiracy theory

@petar8p Did you not hear about Kanye’s recent anti-Semitic comments? Plus he’s been a Trump supporter for years and has one of the largest egos out of any celebrities. It’s clear that he has untreated bipolar and needs to stop making public statements and go back on his meds I don’t know much about Kanye, so it’s possible he has worthwhile takes on other topics, but “epitome of human intelligence and character” seems pretty laughable

@Tyler Robinson That would mean each of your spawns only lasted an average of 3.5 days each

@Leo Gura I understand the value of systems thinking. Like I said, many of your criticisms were valid and worth considering. These include the Left not really understanding conservatives, getting fixated on niche issues that are off-putting to a general audience, and being idealistic to the point of rendering themselves naive and ineffective However, the other parts where you were basically calling poor people lazy and stupid is not Tier 2. You can hear those kinds of talking points on Fox News. Ultimately, politics is all about survival biases. I think it’s worth acknowledging when personal biases are coming through. I’m less concerned with individual disagreements than with, in your case, literal enlightened centrism, as you’ve actually entered enlightened states

@Thought Art My main issue with Leo’s video was his defense of business leaders and capitalist hierarchy. The language he used was drawing a link between poor=low value and wealthy=high value. Perpetuating the myth of meritocracy and not properly acknowledging that power structures and access to opportunity is primarily what determines someone’s position in society @Leo Gura I am interested in understanding other perspectives. I do question your tendency to portray yourself as being above politics while actively engaging in political messaging on real world issues though

I read somewhere that LSD might plateau at around 1000ug due to filling all available receptors, but I haven’t verified that. I have no idea what would happen at those kind of mega-doses. At a certain point, blacking out and not remembering much might become more likely though

There was a thread on this topic about 4 years ago, but I felt like I had a bit more to add Basically the idea is that if you typed out random characters for a long enough amount of time, that you would eventually end up with everything that ever has been written and everything that ever could be written. That the number of combinations of English characters on a typed page are astronomically large, but not infinite The same can be done with images, because there’s a finite number of color pixels in a standard size photograph. This works such that you can upload any image to the Gallery of Babel website and it already has a precise position within its algorithmically generated series of random images. Try it! It’s super cool! https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/imagesearch.html What I’m wondering about is that in the previous thread, Leo said that Reality/God didn’t work like this. That reality isn’t an infinite set of all possible permutations, but rather an intelligent process This seems from my limited perspective to suggest a duality between intelligence and non-intelligence. If Reality is both Absolutely Infinite and completely unbiased, then why wouldn’t the astronomical majority of, for example, conscious visual experience in existence be completely random dots? Every conceivable object or structure would then be an infinitesimal rarity in comparison. And why wouldn’t every other conceivable sense or form of consciousness operate similarly? @Leo Gura Basically I’m wondering what you mean by the word “Intelligent”. Does this imply that Reality has a bias against non-intelligence? Such that reality consists of far less unintelligible noise than would be expected from a process of an infinite number of random permutations?

@amanen Does what you’re getting at have anything to do with different sizes of infinity? The way I understand it, Absolute Infinity would also include an infinite number of “smaller” infinites within it. My question was implying that if reality was assembled in a completely unbiased way, then the amount of infinite noise would be far “larger” than the amount of infinite meaning But your response made me consider the possibility that sizes of infinity could be a relative phenomenon. If Reality is truly unlimited, then of course the number of intelligent scenarios could outcompete the noise. Maybe it’s like a version of the Omnipotence Paradox; if Reality is truly infinite, then any infinity must be capable of being greater than any other infinity

There were a series of Supreme Court decisions that created the modern money in politics issue. The most well known is Citizens United, decided in 2010, and ever since there’s been progressive democrats wanting it to be overturned. This is largely what catalyzed public awareness of this issue However, there’s a few other lesser known cases that would also need to be overturned to substantively address the issue, the first of which was decided in 1976. In the decades before then, money in the political system was much better regulated. I’m not familiar with the history going back further than that though. Obviously, the government being controlled by an elite class is the norm throughout world history. I guess before modern times, political campaigning was a lot different, as it didn’t depend on purchasing advertising slots from massive television networks

@LSD-Rumi I know that the stuff at the drug store is unsafe, but I’m not sure about the pure chemical. I tried to do some research but couldn’t find much. Probably not worth the risk if there’s other available alternatives, however I heard it has unique effects, so I’m a little conflicted

It occurred to me that most of us have similar goals in regards to how to use psychedelics which differ from most online communities which are more geared towards recreation. My impression is that most people here are looking for, in descending order of importance: 1.) Spiritual Development/Metaphysical Insight 2.) Personal Growth/Psychological Understanding 3.) A Responsible Positive Experience I think a general outline of how to go about pursuing this could be useful for a lot of people. For example, I’ve done 8 total trips on 3 different substances ranging from low to fairly high doses, 2 of which were ego deaths. I want to go deeper on this path, but am starting to become aware of just how radical these substances can be There are a number of questions that arise regarding which substances to take, how often, and at what doses. When does someone need to take a break to integrate, and when do they need to push things further? Where is there a risk for mental instability, and when does someone need to access deeper insights? Also what sorts of intentions should people be setting at different stages of the journey? Obviously, the answers to these questions will be specific to each individual, but I’m wondering if there’s any general guidelines that could point someone in the right direction. I want to develop a personal philosophy towards psychedelics, but I’m not sure where to start. The idea of “just do what feels right” seems a bit vague to me. I’m wondering if more experienced users currently have such a philosophy for themselves Leo currently is at a much more intense level with psychedelics than most people are ready for, so I’m wondering how someone would gradually and safely build up