TheAlchemist

The thing is, although tempting, these problems aren't gonna be solved on a case by case basis, since they are so strongly interrelated; they need to be looked at from a larger whole, more holistically, a solution upstream/at the root is required. So the solution to climate change, if thought of holistically, will likely be the solution to tons of other problems that result from unsustainable practices. And it seems like humanity collectively is now agreeing upon climate change being the most urgent and important environmental problem to solve, so that is the best avenue to make those structural changes that are necessary to ensure sustainability. I'm not saying all humans agree that it is the biggest environement related problem, but it is gathering the most force out of the different environmental concerns. Arguing about the details of climate change is missing the point, this movement has something far more powerful at its core: a new set of values that is emerging in culture at a large scale, and these people with these values no longer accept some of the bullshit that has been fed to them, they demand structural changes, they demand actions and they strongly desire sustainable solutions to ensure the continued thriving of the human race. This is because they have an intuitive sense that what we are doing now is dysfuntional, and will produce problems down the line if nothing happens.

@impulse9 I would err strongly on the side of caution with this one. As a species we are long overdue to take a look at and reform our unsustainable (like infinite gdp growth) practices anyways. So shifting towards sustainability won't be a lost cause no matter what. Let's say climate change is no big deal like you suggest, what now? You get a nice big pat on the back for being right, but we are still stuck with unsustainable nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, biodiversity loss along with unsustainable land and freshwater usage. This is a much deeper problem, a problem deep in the roots of how we funtion as a species and how we relate to our environment; debating about some consequences of the infected roots wont be productive, we need to look at the causes behind this all.

@impulse9 weather is chaotic, not as much climate. Climate is much less chaotic and patterns in regards to how CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels have impacted average global temperature are quite well understood. We know and can make quite reliable models on how changes in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will affect the climate. At least that is very well established, unless you suggest tree ring and ice core measurements are not reliable indicators of historical climate around the world. The models that are the the basis of the scenarios have been refined throughout recent decades and have become quite accurate in predicting general trends in climate. Weather predictions one week ahead are chaotic and way less accurate than general scenarios about how different levels of greenhouse gases will affect the global climate decades or centuries into the future. General larger-scale trends are quite orderly and much easier to model than small-scale events, which are increasingly complex and chaotic the smaller the scale is. This applies to pretty much any system.

"If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen." He is simply referring to the importance of integration; for a serious explorer to never go back would be as ridicilous as a biologist glimpsing a cell through a microscope and never looking through it again because he "got the message".

Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19 (Study) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537021003242 Frequent neurocognitive deficits after recovery from mild COVID-19 (Study) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33376990/ Can COVID Cause Brain Fog and Cognitive Deficits? - A new study suggests COVID may cause cognitive deficits for some. (Article) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-mishaps/202107/can-covid-cause-brain-fog-and-cognitive-deficits

I was raised up a Christian, went through the usual route of questioning and becoming atheist because the literal interpretations seemed too magical and simplistic. Now that I have had some spiritual and nondual insights, some of the biblical stories have started to make a lot more sense. Not in the literal sense, but as metaphors that represent mystical states of consciousness. It's really exciting to hear or read about some biblical story I had almost forgetten about, and then having it make a ton of sense from a totally new perspective. For example, the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve live in a paradise created by God, in bliss, basically in heaven on earth. Then along comes the snake boi (satan) and convinces them to eat from the tree of good and evil (duality). They take the bite and suddenly feel separate from their surroundings, they become aware of their nakedness (ego mind, identification with the limited self). They become capable of feeling shame/imperfection. They enter the barren lands of suffering/imperfection and there starts the story of man. But in the background, even in the traditional Christian worldview, there is the one source (God) of everything, including Satan. So the separation was just a single mad thought (as ACIM would state). It popped up in Gods mind, and that created a dream, an illusion of being separate from the source. Although from Gods pov, it never even happened as some event, because it is still happening within the oneness, and isn't seperate from it. Satan=separation/ego/scarcity/fear God=oneness/perfection/love Christians say it is blasphemous and even satanic to call yourself God, but from this other interpretation the only satanic thing would be the belief in being seperate from God, since that idea of seperation is the source of all evil and it is what Satan (ego) represents. So perhaps awakening is just becoming aware of the whole (God) and seeing that no separation ever even happened, just an imagination of it. I'm still not totally sure why these stories are so sticky in human minds though. Is it because a) they simply have survival value for the ego or b) people gravitate towards them because they have deep intuitions that they are pointing towards some truth, like their infinite Self. Perhaps a bit of both?

A lot to reflect on here. Thanks. This is great. Insightful analogy. Who says what is the "right" interpretation though? Consensus? Biblical scholars? The bible didn't come with a manual of interpretation. And if there's consensus about some interpretation, it's not a real sign of its truth, rather it would more often be a sign of its falsehood, since most of us are very much engaged in survival and would choose the interpretation that best helps us get by in day to day life, regardless of its truth. I don't find your interpretation necessarily inconsistent with my understanding, I don't really see where you see it differently. We were with God = Oneness --> fallen sate = separation (self created/imagined, still happening within God) --> suffering --> end of suffering = recognition of mind that is one with God. The fallen realm is still "happening" within God, it can never have a true ground of reality of its own since God is everything and infinite. So maybe you are saying that humans actually split off from God and created their own reality outside of God, I'm considering that the split never even happened, the apparent "split" was just an imagining of a boundary that is still actually inside the largest whole. But you also suggest that hell is a state of mind, so perhaps you also see that a state of mind is always happening within a mind, which could be seen as Gods infinite mind. The other option would be that there would need to be two separate minds, the mind of man and the mind of God. This would mean that the mind of man is as real as the mind of God. I would interpret this belief to refer to Satan. In the biblical stories Satan thinks it can be as powerful/real as God, which would be like the human ego mind thinking that it can be as real and powerful as God. God talks about how it will banish Satan (“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet,” -Romans 16:20). The whole reality (ground under your feet) of Satan (the ego) will be destroyed when God is recognized. yeah, I guess that's the pre-trans fallacy, anything that has even a whiff of pre-rational dogmatic religiosity is like a toxin for the mind in full on rationality mode, even though it might be including and transcending the rationality.

@machiavelli

Shit, the loophole has been discovered already!

#1 - I'm not sure how experienced you are with tripping but if it is your first time I strongly recommend a lower dose, maybe half of that max. If you get stuck in a negative thought loop, or you feel like you're going overwhelmingly deep into shadow work land; move your body, stretch, just move! Music can guide you, I can send you an amazing tripping playlist with intrumental music if you like that will take you deep. Download the music, and turn off the internet so you wont be interrupted. #2 -

It's such a relief that there is always the possibility of dropping every story. Also a nice practice is trying to drop all knowledge and just chilling or contemplating in a state of "I don't know anything at all about anything". Any explanations that rise up as thoughts, just correcting them with "wait I don't actually know that" no matter how obvious they seem. What's the danger? There's nothing to lose, everything to gain. It can be totally threatening to the "grand story" if it goes deep though. That's why we should have an annual day of not knowing on the forum, a day where everyone takes the position of not knowing anything and everyone corrects each other if they grasp on to some kind of knowledge.

Understanding/realizing God on a direct experiential level seems much more powerful to me than trusting or believing in God as an abstract idea. I don't fully understand God in my current state of consciousness, but I trust in the possibility of fully understanding/realizing God. In some sense I do trust in God, after I realized fundamental perfection on a dmt trip experientially. It was so powerful that after that it's been pretty much impossible for me to believe that anything in the universe can be fundamentally flawed or broken in any way. So for me it seems that trust is something that is important if it has a ground in direct experience. Or rather, trust comes as a direct result of it and is not even a choice in the direct experience. Basing trust on further layers/abstractions outside of the ground of direct experience is more shakey and requires belief. But then again perhaps totally trusting God (even if it's just an abstract idea) could somehow be a path to realizing God directly? ? But my intuition is that trusting the idea of God (the map) can distract and divert from realizing and being open to the actual direct consciousness of God (the territory).

This is awesome, I also realized this in the context of getting out of a rut/thought loops. When you feel stuck in negative thought loops it's very powerful to start speaking your thoughts out loud and to have that type of conversation with yourself. It is the most immediate way I have found to change your state. I might be feeling totally frustrated, depressed and lethargic, and then in just a few minutes of talking my thoughts out loud I will feel the complete opposite; totally open, enthusiastic and full of life. It's so much easier to analyze and detach from your thoughts when you are putting them "out there" through speech, compared to when you keep them in your head, and assume those thoughts are you. Really shocking how well it works.

Scream into a pillow/some mattresses

Shed the stories from your mind. The stories are the real addiction. The stories about how fapping is bad, how fapping "drains" you and how it makes you somehow a worse person. The next time, after you watch porn and fap, when you feel the most disgusted with yourself, do the most difficult thing. Go in front of the mirror and tell yourself how much you love yourself, and really try to feel into it. If it clicks for you like it did for me , you might just erupt into laughter when you realize how utterly absurd it was to carry all that self-hate just because you jerked off. And then when you keep doing that, the elaborate stories you tell yourself will fade away and it will become a total non-issue.

Sweden reminds me a bit of Osho's ashram, when they brought in tons of homeless people and thought they could just turn them into spiritual hippies in a few months. Definitely seems to be some naive green going on there, they have brought in immigrants from tough life situations at a very large scale, without adequate integration strategies and ways to avoid segregation of those populations. The totally open borders strategy is in principle very admirable, but in practice unsustainable for a state (unless very similiar cultures), which even Sweden has had to admit as it put in place stricter immigration policies after 2015. That being said, I don't know anywhere near enough about the reasons behind increased gun violence in Sweden to say for sure that the immigration policy is a main culprit, but it does seem to be quite strongly linked to the issue. Norway and Finland have similiar societies and cultures, yet there doesn't seem to be such a problem since they both have taken proportionally much less immigrants in, and with much better integration and segregation avoidance strategies. Note: The talk about Sweden having "no-go zones, as in areas where the police and ambulances cannot go because they're so dangerous is a myth/propaganda spread by right wing groups to promote the narrative of Sweden going to shit "because of the immigrants" https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/6630452

This might sound a bit whacky, but I have often wondered how much of the anti-vax movement stems simply from discomfort with sticking needles into the body, and that discomfort being attached to elaborate stories that are just coping mechanisms to avoid that uncomfortable feeling. That might be one of the original causes (usually unconscious) for the suspicion, then dozens of other ideas/memes get attached to the original one. I have a difficult time imagining the anti-vaxx movement being such a big thing if "vaccines" were deployed simply as a nasal spray or oral pill. Fortunately that seems to be the direction where vaccine technology is headed towards in the future.

What would you love to know more about in regard to the relationship between Geography and society/environment/development/politics/self-actualization/Life-purpose work etc.? Currently I am planning my topic for my Geography Masters thesis, which will give me the opportunity to dive deep into some topic and spend hundreds of hours studying and doing research related to it. So if there's anything related to Geography that you would love to know more about, I would love to know! For example one area of research that came to mind was to look at the changes in people's values related to environmental issues from the world values survey, and use the Cook-Greuter Ego development model to see if higher degrees of ego development are associated with an increase in environmental concern in a certain geographic area. What do you think?

"It is also my conviction that this book, if its ideas spread, will cause deep suffering and confusion to a lot of kind and intelligent people, in so many, so delicate and devious ways. ....... Over the years I have seen so much pain associated with wrestling the metamodern perspective. People get obsessed, they resist, they rage, they condemn, they belittle, they self-censor and find reasons to feel terribly affronted. I acknowledge that this is because my theories deeply insult the prevailing moral intuitions that people have. I spit straight in the face of their political identities, both on the Left and Right, from anarchists to conservatives. It is the solemn duty of the philosopher to piss on all that you hold dear and sacred, to show you that your gods are false." -Hanzi Freinacht Lol. Already love this book, what a breath of fresh air.

heaven is here when the mind is clear into love I dissolve my fear heaven is here when the mind is clear our concentration draws us near the promised land is not found on a map gotta draw the mind back pull out of the trap move back retreat make direct contact it's hidden in this moment buried right where you're at lost in a strange land caught up in this game plan trying to find my way back to the train station looking outside but it's not a place, man it's a state of mind graceland

I want to say that your work has inspired me to look at the world again with a mysterious sense of wonder that I have always had, but that I have not found others who could relate to it with. It has helped me more than any other individual source to make sense of the world and to identify many of my own biases and ways in which I trick myself. It has given me a framework and something to relate my psychedelic experiences to, which has been immeasurably valuable in minimizing unnecessary suffering from the solitary nature of this work and for having some kind of map on where it might be good to look. I have three points that I have been thinking about for some time. 1. I think a lot of this drama and controversy just ties into a few key things in your videos. I don't think the negative reaction is primarily due to what you say in your videos, but rather due to how you say it. And it's not even anything very big, it's just these subtle expressions and ways of saying things which trigger people. As an example you might say I am God vs. You are God. This is a small difference but to an outsider the former word choice causes a whole other level of triggering. There are many people online who say even more radical stuff than you, but because of how they say it, there isn't as much uneasiness and backlash. So I think a lot of the drama could be eliminated with subtle tonality changes and word choices that don't need to affect the content itself. Maybe it's a sacrifice in authenticity, but it might result in calmer waters and be a net benefit. 2. Many people use this forum as an emotional unloading/venting place. I think this is one of the main causes of distraction here. Emotions are unloaded as baggage to other people without their consent and this is taken as some fundamental right that people hold, so that might be something that should be regulated to some extent at least. I mean posts and comments that have no genuine intention at looking at things from a new perspective or to actually solve the issue, they are just pure expressions of frustration, anger or bitterness. This brings me to my third point/suggestion. 3. Some kind of barrier of entry to the forum. I have been a part of many online communities, and the best ones have been the ones with some barrier to entry. This is probably not easy to implement in the forum, but a questionnaire when creating an account would be golden. Just basic questions to see if the user has read the rules of the forum and to see what their intentions are in using the forum. This can filter out a lot of spammers and trolls who don't have the energy to even look at the rules or have no interest in real development and learning. Also I think it's important to keep allowing criticism, at least when there is a genuine desire to find some common ground. It seems to me that for example @AdeptusPsychonautica's criticisms have been mostly good faith, with a desire to find some common ground. You would much rather have Adeptus as the (sometimes annoying) person pointing out potential problems than someone who was truly with bad intentions. And somebody needs to serve that function, that niche of pointing out criticism will inevitably get filled with a community as large as this. So having someone like Adeptus (who often acts in good faith) is a real blessing compared to what it could be. So it's good to keep good diplomacy with the "opposing" side, which will inevitably emerge regardless of who it is.

@The Mystical Man I have found that the best way to "transcend" a lower desire is not to run away from it and resist it as much as possible, but counterintuitively to embrace it totally and to let go of any resistance that arises. I was obsessed with nofap for 5 years, I had countless "streaks" of over 50 days and even a 6 month streak. And sure, there were some benefits, it can work as a kind of defibrillator for your system, kind of like fasting, giving you all this ape energy because you're not reproducing and your body system goes into basically panic mode to get you out there. But overall I found it to be doing much more damage than good. I was just repressing and resisting my desires, and as Carl Jung wisely said; whatever you resist, persists and grows in size. It can become a very unhealthy obsession, where your self-worth becomes tied to it, and you start thinking of it as the solution to all your problems. Really it is largely a distraction from the real, deeper work that needs to be done. It is a simplistic solution, and it sucks because 99.9% of people who do nofap will never permanently stop fapping, so they are stuck in this trap of thinking that it will solve all their problems, yet they can never achieve it. That can go on for years and decades, until it is reflected upon more and you snap out of it. At least that is how it has been for me.

@Tim R I was at a live event of his in Finland a few years back where he was asked about psychedelics. He likes to cite Jung who said: "be careful of unearned wisdom". He is terrified of psychedelics because of their chaotic nature, he seems to have this story in his mind that psychedelics could unravel everything we have built and cause a collective decent into madness. As Leo pointed out in the new video, his life-mission is to basically remind us of the value/usefulness of stage blue orderliness, so psychedelics can be seen as threatening that. I don't think he will ever sincerely try psychedelics again at this point as he seems to feel it's too threatening for his image and identity, but then again he is also a highly curious and open individual so it's not impossible.

I like how Daniel pointed out how science is pretty much a subset of philosophy. Certain philosophical ideas and metaphysical assumptions that have embedded themselves into the methods of science and are largely not questioned. So it's not just materialism, there's a whole soup of philosophical ideas that most modern scientists have an addiction to and take as "obviouly true". We can do science from radically different philosophical assumptions than it is being done from now, for example something like phenomenology is pretty much dismissed nowdays, but from a solipsistic position it would probably be one of the best methodologies.