BipolarGrowth

@OneIntoOne there’s certainly some truth to it.

Looks like a decent list. Bhikkhu Candana does a lot of Sutta readings and translations which I find to be really high quality. Here’s his video on the Ānāpānasati Sutta which is probably one of the most important to know:

Well, God can’t control anything either. Control, free will, agency, a sense of self, these are all just clever tricks of an illusion which likes to appear like impermanence does not tick faster than a nanosecond. Not even a single sensation lasts longer than the micro-moment in which it arises. When you can actually feel this, control, free will, agency, and an amalgamation of staggered sensations appearing as a unified self are an amazing punchline to a joke which leaves no room for there to be a person to laugh at it.

Well, if it’s something like anxiety or paranoia, surrendering to these feelings can potentially reduce them as they are ultimately a rejection of what is and accepting what is might counteract some of the severity. If it’s euphoria that is causing one to be psychotic, surrendering to euphoria which is causing one to embrace reality can just lead to more out of control euphoria. In that instance, it is usually best for people to take steps to make them less euphoric by going against the impulses the euphoria is generating, and this is rarely done by the person themselves as their state feels so good that they would not want to resist what it is leading them to do.

If the psychotic break is caused by negative emotion, this might work. If it’s caused by positive emotion, surrendering to it can make things worse in my experience.

Why does there have to be a point? Why would it be any less if there was no point?

@Siedah I would assume it would include ego death, possibly to a greater degree.

Well no one here has actually physically died in this dream, so you’re not going to get anything but speculation in answers here. Near death experiences are not total physical death of the human body. Psychedelic experiences are not total death of the physical body. Meditation experiences are not total death of the physical body.

This thread sounds like someone adopting Leo’s beliefs as much as any of the others ?

This is great advice.

Nice brah ??

Something that makes you feel good and meanwhile does minimal harm to others is never meaningless. Joy is plenty meaningful. Unless you plan to do consciousness work for 12 hrs per day, you have time to pursue some passions. See pursuit of passions as a welcomed break from enlightenment work and enlightenment work as a welcomed break from pursuing passions.

Frank Yang Bhikkhu Candana

Nibbana is not necessarily another word for nothingness in Buddhism. The 7th jhana is typically called nothingness, but cessation and nirodha samapatti (the cessation of perception and feeling) are seen as being synonymous with Nibbana in the view of some Buddhists. “In” those forms of Nibbana, there is no experience at all whereas the 7th jhana is experienced. Non-experience is most certainly not worse than experience. Suffering is literally impossible “in” non-experience.

Yeah, it is pretty clear that Leo does not have psychosis. Psychedelics certainly touch on similar things to psychosis. Sometimes psychosis can be more powerful than even heroic doses though. There’s a pretty good chance that if you have the genes for a psychotic mental illness that psychedelics or weed will trigger those genes.

Here’s an old video where I describe what some of my manic episodes were like: I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 1 with psychotic features. Psychosis is essentially just behavior so far outside the norm that it is deemed unacceptable by society caused by radical states of consciousness.

It’s basically what happens when dopamine and serotonin are at increased levels usually for a sustained period of time. Systems that affect adrenaline and cortisol can also go into hyperdrive especially when there is reduced sleep for a while. This definitely creates different states of consciousness and doing consciousness work can blur the line between psychosis and awakening. It’s pretty common for people who do this work to experience both psychosis and awakening at the same time.

I would go on an eight year long spiritual quest culminating in a severe reduction of symptoms and need for medication. Wait a second, I already did that ?

Not wanting anything at all.

You can essentially use non-experience in place of nonexistence when reading my posts. A lot of people seem to resonate with source in the same way I think you’re describing it here. To me, source = appearance as I see there as being no other moment than this and nothing other than what is perceived, felt, thought, sensed, etc. in this moment. So essentially whatever you experience in the moment is the source of that experience in my view of things.

There will likely just be another experience of some sort. The specifics of what that will be like are impossible to know.

I’m not talking about nothing, nothingness, void, or anything of the sort. I’m talking about nonexistence. I’m talking about the lack of consciousness, the lack of experience, the lack of anything whatsoever. It is completely the opposite of anything experiential. Nonexistence is impossible to be experienced, and if you view experience to be all there can be, then nonexistence is certainly impossible in that framework. I hardly ever talk about nothing, nothingness, void, etc, so if you interpret me as saying something about any of those things, it’s likely that there’s a misinterpretation/miscommunication or difference in definitions.

I’m essentially saying the same thing. Existence is the only thing that can have a perspective. Nonexistence doesn’t exist from the perspective of existence. Nonexistence cannot have a perspective. There is no experiential thing that can contact nonexistence. Nonexistence is pure imagination. But there can be a strong appearance of nonexistence actually occurring in a sense, and this appearance of nonexistence can have profound effects within existence.

I could talk about that for an hour easily, but here’s a good thing which encapsulates a lot of what I might say: From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine#Madhyamaka “Nāgārjuna based his statement of the two truths on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta. In the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, the Buddha, speaking to the monk Kaccayana Gotta on the topic of right view, describes the middle Way between nihilsm and eternalism: By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one.[29]” I would say that what is is neither existence nor nonexistence. Going through cessation showed me that whatever I am or this is transcends and includes both of these polarities. In another sense, I would say that existence and nonexistence cannot have any true relationship. They can never touch one another to have a relationship. There can only be the appearance of a relationship from the perspective of experience/existence.

1. If Infinity was the first that ever existed, how did it become aware of itself? “Infinity” is the first, middle, and last thing to ever exist, and it is simply what is experienced right now. There is literally nothing else than what is now. 2. Did Infinity imagine itself before it came aware of itself and, if so, how would this be possible? Infinity never imagined itself. Infinity never became aware. “Infinity” is experience as it is this very moment. And by the time you read this sentence, that very moment you first read “this very moment” in the previous sentence, the moment you thought occurred never did occur. This is the illusion of time and memory. 3. If my consciousness is a microcosm of Infinity, would it not be more accurate that "I am part of Infinity" instead of "I am Infinity"? (Like a drop of water being part of the ocean, I assume doing a 5-MeO trip is like the drop of water dissolving into the ocean.) There is no microcosm or macrocosm. At best, there’s simply a cosm, if you care to put a name to it which never works.