Bill W

Yes. This I vote for. Same runs true for "direct experience". Direct experience is only as reliable as the interpretation your mind makes of your "direct experience". You can't run from your own self-bias, although I'd imagine some people can reduce this self-bias to an extremely low level such as Adyashanti or similar, but must take years of training.

First thing is to realise porn is not the real problem. Masturbating is not the real problem. You have a spiritual malady. In fact, it may even be pointless working directly on the porn as it will just be replaced with something equally as problematic for you until the spiritual malady is addressed. And you can definitely still work on actualization and development while battling the porn issue, do don't give yourself that excuse that all your progress is ground to a halt and you are are at the complete mercy of your addiction. That's you (I do it as well) giving yourself a nice Get Out of Jail Free card as a reason to not work on other areas of your life. You have the desire to quit but the desire doesn't have the required power to materialise.

You are hitting the mental masturbation hard at the moment. I hope you have a happy ending. EDIT: Sorry dude, that is virtually trolling you. Don't mean to be nasty. Perhaps you need to know these things and I don't.

@skywords I really enjoy your content and the focus on the harmonious relationship between head and heart. I think I have a view that differs in a way, but the central theme is similar? For me the heart is an organ with a purely mechanical purpose. From the neck down I have no spirituality, it's just a body. But in my mind, there is a "heart" perhaps. It is part of my brain that is my spiritual centre or perhaps you could call it my soul? A place that lies pretty dormant unless intentionally activated and well fed with spiritual nourishment.

Well this one cannot be anything but true Enlightenment is just in your head

The illusion is the illusion which means there is actually no illusion to begin with, so drink up and do the work but drop the mental masturbatuon

So it turns out to be human after all. The search continues I guess!

Maybe the book already exists but in an alias? This will be his 67th book when it does come out. Just banter Leo. Seriously I wonder if it's now too late for Leo to write a more basic self help book? However the market is saturated with that and I imagine he wants to go more for a niche option and can't blame him. I'm sure he wants to bring out something that's trailblazing to a degree. I wonder if it will include about psychedelics? I guess so? Or would that potentially turn off a big group of potential buyers?

Haha, although you've made me think that I am perhaps more like my dad than I care to admit! I actually only just added this to my signature about 30 minutes ago. I stole the idea off Twitter (I haven't used Twitter in years) but I remember a funny bio that said "all views are my dads". I think this was in response to the "normal" bio that said "all views my own"

I am not enlightened. Please don't ask me anything.

@Haumea2018 Man, that's good stuff there. It's taken me about 20 years to work out that I won't overcome my suffering by trying to add the right things. I used to think i just hadn't read the right self-help book yet, or once I escaped by parents I'd be okay, or if I just had the "right" employment, or the right antidepressant/anti-anxiety drug. Finally the penny dropped, and I realised I have a lot of shit to let go, surrender and jettison. There needs to be wholesale clear out. Makes me think of installing a new antivirus. You wouldn't install something like that new over the old one would you? You have to remove the old one first for the new one to work. Thanks for your post @Nahm I will quit while I'm behind if it's all the same with you. Appreciate your efforts though. Will get back to you I am sure

Yes Nahm. I believe it to be a concept. If it makes sense to you and helps you and/or others, run with it.

Most people cling to something and some are very precious about what they cling to, often referring to it as Truth. EDIT: That's not to do with your post Nahm.

Nonduality beliefs and ideas

It doesn't need to make sense to me Nahm. I respect your beliefs and ideas. There is a lot of wisdom on here for sure. I guess we are at different stages of self-development and many of us will have very different ideas to what this self-development is or should be, and how we might get there, or make progress towards getting there. Speculation about where famous people are on the Spiral Dynamics seems worthless to me, but it might be me who is missing out and others who do this might be benefiting. In a few months time I might even be flooding the forum with YouTube clips and assigning colours to them, calling them orange or yellow or a mix! Certain ideas I thought were hokum a few years back, I'm now love and am all over like a rash

"The maximum amount of minimalism is what you should aim for" ???

@Spiral Wizard has been digging up very old topics. Some are being locked down. There is a prompt that advises you not to do this but he might be ignoring that. And I totally agree with Preety on this. There is an obsession with this whole spiral dynamics. I can see the sense on working on your own level but to continue to diagnose others their allotted colour is just people conforming to their instincts of judging and labelling things. Drop the analyse of others. I mean what is the point? Unless you do it for a living and are a therapist or certified coach ?

Beautiful. This belief of yours is poetic. A gift.

I think it's all mental masturbation. Intelligent mental masturbation but masturbation all the same.

I find all beliefs on the forum including your beliefs interesting. There is always a different way of looking at things. The problem is when you think your belief isn't a belief. It happens. The concept then takes on a life of it's own. Taking a concept and trying to make it real is very appealing because the mind wants to settle on an explanation and the removal of doubt.

or on a more serious note as Anna points out in a roundabout way, we are all entitled to our own opinion but we are not entitled to our own facts! Okay that's all the input I can give. Hope it helps ??‍♂️?

@Preety_India If unconditional love and full acceptance of others is not working, then just remind your boyfriend that everybody is entitled to your opinion

@Preety_India thanks, works for me! When I try and stick to them!

@Surfingthewave That's nice thanks. Nice topic. For me, having a dependency on alcohol and sleeping pills led me to Alcoholics Anonymous, and a general reboot on how to deal with my suffering. I became interested in things I'd never considered before such as spirituality, religion, and I had the realisation that I can't acquire and implement better ways of living unless previous ways were surrendered, let go, and jettisoned. Keys elements/quotes from AA Selfishness is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear and self-delusion. Self-righteousness and avoiding looking at your own shortcomings, the very thing we condemned in others, was our own evil. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. We impose our instincts on others. We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. We must place spiritual growth before the satisfaction of instincts. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God’s help, continually surrender these hobbling liabilities. Then we can be set free to live. We must be sure to remember that we cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense of another. Honesty with ourselves and others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.

Other areas will be left to our imagination