Lilia

@gettoefl I love how joy found its way into this mixture.

@Breakingthewall Do you think alien minds would do maths differently? I don't just mean picking different symbols for shared concepts like addition etc., but perhaps highlighting aspects of reality that humans have no access to due to the way a human mind is configured.

Perhaps the trigger is not niceness or its lack, but fakeness. If someone's nice and it's their authentic expression - no problem with that. If someone's not nice and it's their authentic expression - no problem either. It's even not registered as 'not nice'. I see it as a quirk, and a very attractive one. (Take Peter Ralston.) What I think is problematic is when someone acts out a behaviour that is not authentic to them and sticks to it because they think it will get them something. Sure you met 'asshole' gurus who put on the whole act of assholeness just to prove to you how beyond niceness they are.

I would also like to know what it's like to be Leo.

Oh yeah! There was this picture book that touched me very deeply when I was a kid. It was about geography. The first page showed a little guy exploring a globe. The globe had a pleased smile on its face. The story went: 'Petryk loves looking at his globe. The globe loves it when it is being looked at.'

Extra thoughts: Speaking of relative intelligence, I don't think there's a 100% way of telling how intelligent anyone really is without: a) introducing some criteria; b) going into another's perspective (aka channelling them); c) conceptualizing their perspective and finally, d) comparing it with your own using the introduced criteria. Other than that, I would rely on intuition, while remaining aware of the conceptual nature of the entire endeavour. There could always be a fun twist revealing a conscious purpose behind someone's apparently 'dumb' behaviour. Also, someone who sounds intelligent may be a 'ChatGPT person' - knowledgeable when they speak, but actually regurgitating what they learnt from others. Relative intelligence may also be proportional to the degree of Infinite Intelligence embodied.

I hear your point. When I hear someone say that the majority of people are dumb, I can't help wondering: How do they know? Have they spoken to everyone, or is it just a generalisation based on the interactions they've had, run against some preferred measurement system? And is there even a correlation between intelligence and behaviours an organism exhibits? If so, what behaviours correlate with intelligence? If we posit collaboration, then ants or bees will rank much higher than humans. If the ability to represent qualia with symbols, then we will score higher. Perhaps, one question is: Why do we think that some behaviours indicate intelligence more than others? Success at survival requires intelligence, and people with phones in the place of hands are probably very good at it.

Perhaps they want to re-unite with where they came from

That is not what I meant by the direct experience of consciousness.

@HMD @UnbornTao @LastThursday @AerisVahnEphelia Thanks for your insights, guys. Did you understand what maths was about (i.e. a language, a symbolic representation of transformation etc) when you were a kid? Back then, how did you explain to yourself what it was about?

The things I mention happen in a waking state, although I can see how in a dream they may be also possible.

I think your friend can figure out consciousness only through direct experience. It does not look like direct experience as a way of knowing is something he has experienced yet. No wonder he doesn't trust in its validity as a method. Perhaps he could stay open to new ways of knowing, other than those he has experienced before (reading, questioning, dialoguing, etc). After all, he is good at staying open

Good question. I'm also learning how to navigate such conversations without sounding like a condescending schizo.

@HMD Perhaps you heard Leo mentioning in his blog once how he became a cartoon wolf. In that post, he claimed he was actually being that cartoon wolf, not just imagining what it would be like to be one. When I read that, I immediately recognised the kind of shift in consciousness he was pointing to. He meant literally becoming fragments of consciousness other than the physical body which he normally identifies himself with and feeling through their prism. From my perspective, I have experienced what it is like to become and be a consciousness of a comet, a rock forming in a cave, electricity, radiation, fog, seasons and various natural phenomena, a mitochondrion in a living cell, etc. For lack of a better word, becoming these phenomena, being them and feeling them as if from the inside would be selective identification. It's like you're travelling in yourself, assuming different positions within yourself. At first, I didn't know how to make sense of those experiences. They are very weird and unlike anything that my human mind ever knew. Now I can have them at will and often do so because it's fun and refreshing. So it looks like we're talking about a transformation of sorts. And maths is good at describing transformation. So I wonder if there could be a pattern of changing state in that specific way that could be communicated mathematically, with minimum distortion.

@integral It looks like what you did with that experiment was a sort of immediate translation: you skipped the part where you'd be quietly saying English words to yourself and instead called up their French equivalents from the get-go. Am I right? In my experience, when I'm translating like that, it feels like I go straight to the meaning of the phrase, feel it and re-represent that meaning with another language's symbols. I do not have to speak the words to myself quietly like I do when I'm reading in the language they're written. It's rather like unpacking the meaning and repackaging it in another box. Another curious phenomenon I have noticed is that I can read and/or inner-speak in anyone's voice. I can do Leo, Donald Trump or even some of my friends from kindergarten. Saying that, I can't reproduce their voices, and my impersonation skills suck. It's like a song you hear in your head with all the music and stuff, but good luck reproducing it out loud

I learnt English in that way. When I was in my teens, I fell in love with a podcast for learners of English titled 'Luke's English Podcast'. It was run by a British guy, and I was listening to it non-stop. At some point, I noticed I could substitute my inner voice with his at will. For example, if I wanted to check my English for mistakes, I had him say the phrase in question in my head and just saw how he said it. As time passed, I merged the two voices and learnt to voice over my thoughts in his accent, such that people began to ask me what part of the UK I came from. Truth be told, I see my British character as different from my 'inborn' one

@HMD Hey there. I love the way you put it. I can see how people could be squabbling over the meaning of a word like 'happiness', but not about 'plus' or 'multiply'. At least somewhere there is peace. I wonder if maths could ever single out and describe a pattern of selective identification such as turning into a cartoon wolf. Or can it only do patterns that belong to the same state of consciousness more or less?

One way that works for me is trying to relate to others' actions by remembering there was a time in my life when I acted the same.

@SQAAD I think there's obviously a progression towards relief in one's own life and human history. It looks like God is up to something! If God didn't give a hoot, why would He/She strive towards happiness when assuming the form of creation?

@Carl-Richard I hear what you are saying. After all, wouldn't transmission be the ability of a form of Source to produce a recognition of Itself? If the presence of a teacher can induce the direct experience of the Primordial State in a student, and that's enough to call the transmission effective, I'll grant you that But would it have a transformational effect on the student's sense of self? Or would it remain a 'something the guru gave me, for which I've got to go and see my guru again?' That varies hugely, I think, and depends on the student's level of development. Btw, in my experience, the most successful transmission-ers have been non-human. As Leo puts it, something as mundane as a toilet or a screw can trigger God-realization. Which is also a sort of transmission, if we would frame it that way!

Hello everyone. I would appreciate high-quality book recommendations on God-realization the way Leo teaches it. Thanks very much!

@Illusory Self Thank you for starting the thread. I have been pondering the same question and learnt a lot from the responses here. For me, effective teaching is about effective communication. To tell an effective teacher, I would observe: Does the teacher make the effort to bridge the gap between themselves and the student's level of development? For instance, in Ukraine, where I live, most people practice Purple or Blue spirituality. So even if they get glimpses of what they are, they paint it in pagan or traditional orthodox colours. It is up to the teacher to understand this and not expect their students to interpret the teaching from, say, the Turquoise standpoint, where the teacher may be. Even if super-well-spoken teachers such as Eckhart or Rupert came to teach in Ukraine, their communication would be way over most people's heads. Some people may memorise the words of the teachings, but very few will experience what the words point to. To bridge the gap, it's effective if the teacher can speak the questioner's 'language'. You can use pretty much any cultural scheme to communicate enlightenment, given you understand the scheme from the inside well enough. Rupert Spira does it well. Whether the student asks a question in 'scientific terms' or 'the law of attraction terms', Rupert will pick up their language and try to use it throughout his response to communicate with that individual. The least effective way of teaching IMO is when a teacher speaks down at a student and expects the student to step up to his or her level of consciousness without even trying to meet the student where the latter is. I also doubt the efficacy of 'transmissions'.

I would describe it like this: your head gets replaced by the Universe. This Universe is experienced as interconnected and wondrous ever-loving self-aware signals. Not only is it self-aware light; it is also self-aware sound, taste, thought, emotion, and all other modes of it, which people normally call 'our senses'. The body is one such self-aware signal. All signals differ from each other in form, but at their core, they are all experienced to be identical.

Perhaps we need to make it safer for each other to not know and stay curious. Some time ago I created this practice for myself where I would practice saying 'I don't know' and 'Can you explain this in simpler terms, please?' when talking with people. I taught myself to: 1) not justify my not-knowing; 2) refrain from obsessive nodding, especially when I don't understand; 3) be okay with people making assumptions as to my level of intelligence. I discovered that one of the reasons I was so scared of being openly curious was that I didn't want people to presume I was stupid. Another practice I developed for myself is non-judgemental listening. If I'm honest, I never know why someone is saying what they are saying. Could there be a better time to master not-knowing? On such occasions, if it's appropriate, I purposefully choose to not-know, sit back and simply listen to how the Void responds on my part. All in all, not-knowing is truth. One can either practice it or overlook it. In my experience, the more I consciously live truth's attributes, the more fun my experience gets.

@Moksha Thanks very much for that!