Danioover9000

@andyjohnsonman That's ok, let yourself explore other options. If contemplating is putting too much tension and headache, go do letting go/ do nothing meditation. It isn't a long journey for nothing.

@mp22 You've raised a good point. I didn't noticed that before...

I voted neutral, but actually it's been quite good for me. I'm introverted and mostly keep to myself, and this year I isolated myself a bit more from people so I don't really freak out over the lock down here. I also have some OCD over cleanliness so it's weirdly normal for me to isolate and explore myself all over.

@andyjohnsonman That's good! The LSD trip acted like a preview to what your journey looks like later. It took something like LSD to briefly untangle these mental strips this 'I' clouds all over the place to appreciate how your life or this world isn't just dualities, it's more than that.

@andyjohnsonman Nothing wrong with the drawing, but thinking makes it so.

@andyjohnsonman For a newbie, it's A. For someone that's intermediate, it could either be A or B for Them. For an expert, beginning to be more into liberation, either both A and B are true, or A and B are neither the case. Keep going in this journey, and every possibility of AB and not AB were contingent on a belief of 'I', and no 'I' makes it at least more clearer than when you were at in the beginning.

It's only feeding your subconscious mind more bullshit. In this case, disturbing bullshit. At some point, you might want to cut this stuff out, because it's easy to desensitize yourself and create an addiction to it.

Isn't this a breaching privacy guidelines?

I've done this challenge for 90 days and I do recommend giving it a go. I've experienced lots of energy and freshness while it lasted. Just be careful not to jump straight to freezing temperatures without the gradual exposure, you'll get frost bite and severe aches in you joints ,and for men, sudden shrinkage of penis. Any women reading feel free to share.

@PlayTheGame Salvia isn't really a psychedelic, it's a delirient. It's like confusing cocaine, hard drug, for Psilocybin mushrooms, a psychedelic, and guess how dangerous that would be to misidentify some substance. It's not good to take if you do have severe DP/Dr of any other disorder. Delirients are poisonous plants as well. Datura is a classic delirient that's lethal.

Before awakening, type box, make videos. After awakening, type box, make videos. Also, the void written isn't the void.

I'm happy this thread has managed to tackle awakening without going into a non duality war.

@PlayTheGame As long as the psychedelics and spiritual techniques you're doing are not over the top, then it might be safe to continue while under DP/DR. If DP/DR is at an intense degree, then either tone down psychedelics/spiritual methods, opt out psychedelics for regular meditation or stop and take a break for a while. If the disorder is that serious, seek help. And thanks for posting, I sometimes need self hugs too. @arlin It may be either a higher degree of DP/DR, or you are suffering from mild DP/Dr but also experience another disorder or a situation that's creating this anxiety on top of DP/DR. If it's not too much, dial back the self inquiry/psychedelics/other methods and switch to regular meditation. If it's severe, seek professional help. One last thing, do not do Salvia if you experience intense forms of DP/Dr and any other disorder, period. End of discussion.

@PlayTheGame I think it depends on how experienced you are with spirituality and meeting spiritual masters face to face. Meeting these masters is important because the issue is not about awakening, it's about getting examples in real time, because that can help you develop an intuition on who is and isn't awake. However, Because awakening is like enlightenment, which is beyond one's mind, then it's important to go and directly interact with such people. Have you met Leo in person? Because if all you have of Leo is only the videos you see of him, then it is not sufficient. There are many factors that causes a person to change, in this case Leo's radical skepticism to close minded authoritarian claims of being more awake/ that spiritual teacher is not awake. However, that's insufficient to dismiss him outright because such a dismissal is out of personal style. Criticism of Leo isn't just because his authoritarian style and claims, it's also about how some topics, warnings and bans are handled by moderators, and the quality of such threads, and personal dogmas against mods/Leo, among many other factors besides Leo's style. I think Leo's rebuttals to some of these criticisms are not sufficient to say Leo is intentionally malicious on dismissing criticisms, it's because if you read some of these criticisms carefully, they are small and illogical to take seriously. If you're having problems dealing with the forum, then it's treating this forum anything else than this way: search for high quality materials, verify the materials, review if such materials work or not, and repeat, keeping in mind forum guidelines and treating users lightly, like how in Chinese Go (Weigi, Shodan, Baduk) stones are sometimes treated lightly in a game, otherwise if stones are heavy(too many stones in one area, too inefficient) risks over concentration and if those stones die, that's alot of points lost.

While it's possible, Because China still maintains bio weapons labs and also treats most of their wild life in their food markets like trash, it's not likely. Around the 1950's, most of the Chinese population were starving, they didn't have enough domestic animals to feed off of. The government then legalized hunting and serving wild life as food. Later, along with the paranoia of dealing with capitalism and competing with western military, they kept their bio labs operational. That's about 70 years worth of 'habit' that the Chinese collective ego operates on. Nowadays, to an outside culture, that's already a bad habit to outgrow (with environmental movements and most military moving on from on bio weapons application). The Chinese culture has a long way to go to outgrow their food markets and current military practices. It worked very well then, not so much now.

What I've learned so far in this thread: Main issues: who is really awakened, who isn't? How do we know any one teacher is truly awake? All teachers and their teachings are false? How do we verify for ourselves without losing too much time? Also issues about authority to teachers and students. Issues on misunderstanding awakening from other states, enlightenment, paranormal experiences ect. Side issues that seem random, coming out of left field: masculine and feminine and what governs truth/untruth(possibility/impossibility), how to do contemplation properly, being a personal god vs an external god, solipsism, nihilism, questioning existence and sentience, the whole Viper's nest of trying to word, define and re-define God for yourself, using language magic to divine god, touching on ideas and beliefs as mind viruses that spread, reconciling old beliefs with new ones, and how God practices on different universes and how you've done this once upon a time too. Also the issue of threads getting off into tangents on other issues that hardly have anything to do with main issue.?

@PlayTheGame I do have depersonalization disorder and some derealization around evening and the 'visual Snow'. What I can tell you is that there are distinctions between this disorder and spiritual concepts like no self, non-duality ect...But only you could make those distinctions. It's important to tell the difference now because it's easy to conflate this disorder to some spiritual concepts. The good news is that very few people will ever experience permanent depersonalization derealization, and sometimes it comes and goes. For a newbie, it's important to clearly understand these seperations. I've done self-inquiry in the past, and it intensified this disorder, but I managed to keep myself together. Talk to a really good therapist and seek professional help if you suffer the more intense forms from it.

Because the road got fed up of being eaten all the time.

I think he did mention that he'll update most of the enlightenment exercises.

In this case, yes, because we're lucky to have the internet and other spiritual paths shown to us and we have it easy. At that time, it's not a waste of time, it's very valuable for them, and it's more serious then. But really, who knows?

@Artaemis Jesus Christ ?. We're all talking about wether Leo's right or wrong calling Sadhguru and all teachers as not fully awakened we're focused on talking about awakening, and out of nowhere BAM! "Leo's like Hitler, we gotta balance the masc with the fem! Watch out!" ???

Actually, Leo brought up an example using Peter Ralston's story of how he asked for no Nova Cain while in the dentist getting a root canal, and I think the example with his friend is on the blog post, who had recently became enlightened, vomited during the 5-Meo-DMT trip on a full stomach. I remember it might be on Leo's strong sitting meditation video, or a meditation video. Personally, It's extremely difficult to tell if one person is more awake than the other. Instead, I spend some time drawing a tree with my elephant friend doing his best painting a tree.

It could very well be as simple as this: this is his passion. One, among many, of his values is understanding. Because he loves understanding reality, he can dedicate most of his time and energy developing how he understands, how he researches, how he thinks easier than somebody who doesn't share that same love of understanding. This flourishes into eventually his website and his spiritual path. So the big take away is find what values you love and develop in that direction.

I suggest reading up on the history of the Spanish fly and other plagues that mankind had faced in the past. What I found interesting is that the factor that drove the high mortality rate in the Spanish flu was the following: lack of social distancing, lack of proper healthcare at the time, slow lock down of carriers and underestimating the lethality of a new pandemic (mostly viruses but sometimes bacterial and rarely fungal) to that of a common illness. Interestingly, Australia at that time was far better than the countries with the highest mortality rate, simply because they forced all ships to dock at least a mile away from ports, so that they could send a boat with doctors to verify passengers if they have Spanish flu like symptoms or not.

Oh ok. Thanks for the information. I guess I'm more sensitive. This is a first for me.