Anderz

@LastThursday The only view of time I have found that makes sense to me is that there is only the now. And all the past blasts into existence instantly in the now as information. A simple analogy I use is to list all natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... infinitely fast. When will that process end if it starts now? The answer is: the process will never end! Because there isn't any last natural number.

@Member I have never heard of those terms before. Interesting stuff. I found on the Wikipedia pages you linked to something called growing block universe: The growing block universe is similar to how I see it! With the additional constraint that all the past is information in the now and only information in the now. So the past is real but there is no past stretching back from the now.

Oh crap, I came to realize that physical death is actually possible. That might sound like a crazy idea since physical death is totally taken for granted as something inevitable today. My realization is very simple yet it's totally different than the common view. It's more like Leo's advanced explanations of reality. Have I ever been asleep? According to my model, actually no. You may think: what?! Here is where the simple yet controversial part comes in. Manifested reality is now and only now. My personal memories of having been asleep last night are real, but those memories are only information in the now. And information cannot be asleep. So I have never in actuality been asleep. It's also true that even though I have never been asleep, I will fall asleep in the future when we take cause and effect into consideration. The same with physical death! Nobody has ever actually died, ever! Information cannot die and all the past is, is information. And even though nobody has ever died, it's possible to physically die in the future, in a similar way to how it's possible to fall asleep in the future. The good thing is that it's still possible that many of us alive today may avoid physical death, because the future is more advanced, more evolved than the past, so things can change radically even in a near future, especially since the material level of our world has reached a very fast progress of technology and information. The Great Awakening of humanity is at hand!

Miracles can greatly speed up dissolving the pain body. Although as ACIM says, miracles should be involuntary. That's logical since miracles go beyond mere simplistic cause and effect from past to future which is the ego perspective. So I can't muster up a miracle by using my own thinking, but I can expect miracles to speed up the transformation of the pain body. In fact, ACIM says that miracles are natural and should be expected, something like that.

Another benefit of Gurdjieff's intentional suffering which Eckhart Tolle calls conscious suffering is that it deliberately puts awareness on the pain body. The habitual, instinctual and unconscious activation of the pain body only produces a temporary relief and after that the pressure in the pain body starts building up again. With conscious suffering the pain body is gradually transmuted and diminished. Some people have called it spiritual alchemy, where suffering is transformed into inner peace. Easier said than done in practice since there is an enormous amount of transmutation of pain needed,

The presenter of the pain body video, Jay Uecker, said in another video that the coronavirus crisis is showing us collectively the illusion of control. Something like that. And that made me think of Dr. Fausti as the boss of collective ego control. What will happen then is that Dr. Fausti will fail somehow, sooner in the form of false claims, or later in the future where Dr. Fausti will be revealed as a false form of control. And it's interesting how the illusion of ego control is related to fear, which is precisely what fuels the coronavirus crisis in my opinion. And even the egocentric and narrow focus on economic growth as the main growth factor globally has hit a brick wall almost. So what will happen is that the coronavirus crisis will be overcome through some more inclusive form of control.

It's useful to think of the pain body as a part of the ego. So the ego is an even broader term than pain body and it fits directly into A Course in Miracles which talks about ego vs the Holy Spirit.

Eckhart Tolle has said that what he calls the pain body is emotional. That made me think that what Wilhelm Reich called body armor is the physical extension of the pain body. Here I found a video where the presenter expands the concept of pain body to include physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual pain. And the pain body is related to the shadow, he said. The explanation in the video sounds very similar to what I call ego tensions. I like this more comprehensive concept of pain body presented in the video, and it's a fairly well-known term, so I can use that instead of calling it ego tensions. What I have discovered, and mentioned before, is that there is also numbness that goes along with the pain body. And it's the increased numbness that makes the pain body awaken in order to prevent too much numbness.

Yes, I have experienced enormous amounts of energy stored in tensions in the body and mind. Wilhelm Reich talked about deadly orgone (DOR) as a stagnant and trapped form of energy. Higher consciousness makes the stuck energy able to flow again. But then what about the need for contrast? Is it possible that even the shadow will be included and not just transcended? It probably depends on definitions. I have defined the shadow as the part of the ego that will be transcended and not included. But the valuable part of the shadow, that which gives contrast, that will be preserved! Even negative emotions such as fear and anger will be preserved, when looking at it from an integral perspective. I wrote something earlier about how the fear will be harmless, like when watching a horror movie or riding on a roller coaster. Similar things with anger and other negative emotions.

@DrewNows That's an interesting point. And with the ego having so much shadow material, it makes the liberation from it a stark contrast. And also, it seems that the shadow material has to be removed gradually, because so much energy is released.

I disagree with Ben Goertzel's ideas about the future in this video, but he makes Leo seem incredibly old-fashioned and conservative in comparison. And notice how wrong Leo's predictions about the future are if Ben is only the slightest correct when it comes to the amount of progress at least. It's hard to predict what will happen in the future, but the trend of accelerating progress is clear and as Ray Kurzweil said, actually inexorable. So to fail to take exponential progress into consideration and to believe that society will be structured similar to today 40 years from now is most likely wrong.

Something I find missing in Leo's videos is the perspective of accelerating progress throughout human history and even through biological evolution. This is especially important today as technological progress really is starting accelerate leading to increased automation and the need for things like universal basic income. Ray Kurzweil has something he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns:

Here I discovered something new. Maybe Leo has already covered the topic in a video, but Ken Wilber calls it cleaning up. It has to do with cleaning up the shadow material we have within us. And I came to think of how the shadow is billions of years old! Because it includes all history and evolution. Ken Wilber mentioned that historically, the recognition of the shadow is a recent discovery, only some 100 years and is therefore missing in the major spiritual traditions. Obviously, to me, the shadow is the same as ego tensions, and is the part of the ego that needs to be transcended without being included. It's only the cleaned up ego material that will be preserved and integrated.

Second tier thinking can easily become an ego trap! At least for me. I need to remind myself of focusing on my intentional suffering practice instead of as an ego mind try to do second tier thinking. When my suffering has dissolved and there is inner peace, then I can again examine the topic of second tier thinking and other forms of higher thinking. The ego is really, really tricky and sneaky!

Is there a higher form of thinking above ego thinking? Yes, that's the case from an integral perspective where thinking is transcended and included. Ken Wilber has talked about high-vision logic and higher mind states. I will take a look at this video to see if Wilber mentions transcending ego thinking:

I looked up what ACIM says about lies, and found some quotes, but also this passage which is more fundamental: That's an amazing contrast to the common view of life. That ACIM quote might at first seem incomprehensible, yet it's simply nonduality. An all-inclusive perspective includes change, but we cannot isolate the change out of the whole and have it be an independent and separate phenomenon. An analogy is a wave on an ocean. The wave doesn't have an independent existence. And with nonduality the "ocean" is changeless. Nonduality itself is changeless, for if it changes then it goes from one state to another, which is duality, from "what it is" to "what it is not". Change and relativity exist within nonduality, but as a wholeness it cannot change because time is duality.

Leo said something interesting that I missed the first time in his video about how we lie. He said that the old self has to die before we can raise our awareness. Yes! I see the logic of that now. Fortunately the liar in us is not who we really are! Of course, from a nondual perspective we are the lying part of ourselves too, since we are everything, but from a developmental perspective the lying ego will be transcended. The lying ego is our social conditioning acting, thinking and expressing itself. It's society as a collective ego that has hijacked our mind, and we become an individual ego as a part of that larger collective ego. It's interesting how we lie on the internet all the time, and it's not only acceptable, it's the taken for granted "natural" nature of humanity. An internet troll is merely someone who has gone too far so that the social blanket of lies becomes too visible, haha.

The more in ego consciousness we are, the more we lie. And mostly subtle lies. Even subtler than say a phony smile, which as Leo explained, is a form of lie. The ego needs to protect itself all the time, so for example coming up with some excuse, diversion or manipulation to buy time, that's a form of subtle lie. Even subtler is the ego's behavior in the form of "testing" others. And maybe the biggest heap of subtle lies is how the ego always has to be indirect, for to be direct means to become vulnerable to the ego. And that kind of subtle need for protection makes the ego lie all the time basically. I will listen again to what Leo says in this video about how we lie:

There is a saying: Those who say do not know and those who know do not say. I can say, because I don't know yet. And I say that the ego is like an ice cube made of tensions. And those tensions are a result of the ego believing it needs to control reality as a separate ice cube. The tensions produce suffering which in turn results in thinking in an attempt to escape the suffering. It's a delusional trap! Thinking, like the ego, is only a temporary stage of development for humanity. Thinking is like training wheels. There is another saying about watching thoughts in the mind like clouds passing over the sky. That's a psychological depersonalization disorder! That's those who don't know parroting what some spiritual authority has told them.

I wrote earlier about how the ego becomes passive when there is lots of inner peace and contentment. And as a corollary of that thinking is fueled by suffering! And this means that Gurdjieff's method of intentional suffering can be used for transcending the thinking mind. Instead of as in ordinary mindfulness practice just observe the thoughts, the intentional suffering also includes directing conscious attention away from the thoughts and into feeling the suffering inside oneself. The usual habit is for the mind to become absorbed in thinking. Eckhart Tolle described how thoughts suck in all awareness into themselves. It's not us using our minds, it's the thinking mind using us, he said. Good point. And the thinking mind thrives on our inattention of the underlying suffering. So the trick is to expose the suffering to oneself and thereby break the spell of habitual thinking. I will try this method to see if it can remove the suffering and what happens to the thinking mind.

I have found Tony Parsons' nonduality teaching extreme but he said something I can relate to, that the sense of being a contracted individual can melt into the whole of reality. Very interesting! It seems like a practical possibility to me. Tony described it as a huge relief.

A danger with inner body awareness practice I discovered that can be worth documenting is that when suffering in the body is made conscious it can fuel the thinking mind and produce depressive thoughts. And the thoughts hijack the awareness so that the connection with the inner body is lost. So the result is a state of depression where the inner body awareness practice is forgotten and one's consciousness becomes trapped in ego thoughts. Fortunately in my case I could return to my mindfulness practice and connect with my inner body again. So the danger is that the practice can increase ego consciousness because of the awakened dormant suffering which starts to fuel depressing thoughts. With the knowledge that this can happen it becomes easier to return to the inner body awareness practice which solves the problem.

I'm amazed at how Eckhart Tolle can explain very advanced concepts in simple terms. He said in this interview that he believes that the coronavirus crisis provides an opportunity for humanity to wake up spiritually:

I doubt that transhumanism is the way of the future, but I like how Ben Goertzel said that 50 years from now we will think it's obvious that we should live as long as we want. It's still a radical view compared to most people today, but I believe Ben is correct and that things will change a lot within the next few decades.