r0ckyreed

Buddhism is a mental trap and so is blindly following any teacher like Ralston, Gura, Spira, or whoever. Those characters are teachers but it is up to the self to decide whether to wake up or remain asleep. I still haven’t deconstructed the external world yet despite my meditation, contemplation, and trips. For me, the stuff behind my head is as much real as the stuff in front of my head.

Peter Ralston argues (which I kinda agree with) that perceptions, colors, sounds, etc. are part of survival. We perceive relative to survival. Our nervous system was adapted to sounds and colors because those senses flourished survival.

I just did with the examples I gave. If someone scares me from behind, then it is implied that they existed behind me before I was aware that they touched me. Are you really going to say that what is behind you doesn’t exist because you aren’t perceiving it now? Because I can turn my head and that stuff exists. This isn’t a strawman. This is just how consciousness works. When I go out to my car and find it has been vandalized, I don’t just assume I am hallucinating it. I assume that someone vandalized my car while I was unaware. I can even view camera footage of that happening that wasn’t in my awareness before. Things have causality to it. Please help me understand how I could be wrong here. I just don’t see how my human perceptions are all that exist. I could lose all my perceptions, but that doesn’t mean sound or color no longer exists. It just means I have lost access to them and no longer exist in my experience.

The things that exist behind me. I can blindfold myself, put hearing-blocking headphones on, and walk down 5th avenue in NYC and there will still be cars that exist that will run me over. How exactly can I get run over if reality is only what I perceive? How could a car drive without a person and their mind that I do not have access to? Maybe it is an AI that is driving it, but in most cases, it is a human mind that is operating the vehicle. That human driving the car has a race, gender, and story I will never know about. Your toilet exists right now even though I cannot perceive it. You have sex with women that happens behind closed doors. The women getting pregnant from sex happened even though I’m not aware of it. All the children born or are the result of 2 people having sex, of which I never experienced. I have never witnessed a murder but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.There’s so much I don’t experience, but yet it exists. Thats what I mean by the external world.

Yes but that is “when” I do. And I hallucinate “when”. I’ll think about this some more. But in all my contemplations I couldn’t quite break the “external world”.

I think Peter Ralston is correct in the sense that all our perceptions are about survival but Leo is right in the sense that perceptions are Truth.

But you just made a blog post that “you” are God is not the ego but the “universal self.” If all I perceive is reality, then aliens by definition don’t exist. But this contradicts Infinity. Infinity entails aliens exist even though I haven’t encountered them yet.

I think the hang up is the confusion of you as the individuated ego and you as God. The ego-mind isn’t God since it’s a finite expression of The Infinite. Everything I perceive is survival and Truth. But my perceptions are not all encompassing. I have no access to certain things within reality right now. For instance, I do not know whether you have a cat or not. That cat exists or doesn’t exist regardless whether I know it exists or not. If I say “your cat doesn’t exist because I dont perceive it,” You can take a picture or video of your cat to prove me wrong. Or I can fly to Las Vegas to meet your cat. I could say Las Vegas doesn’t exist because I’m not perceiving it. But I have videos, memories of Las Vegas as well as the potential to fly there. Of course, it’s always going to be in my consciousness by definition. But perceptions are always pointing to things beyond them like in a dream.

But I could imagine you are a cult leader. That doesn’t make it true. Many people imagine all sorts of untrue stuff.

I think what @BlessedLion is trying to say is there wouldn’t be a “you guys” not grasping. They couldn’t grasp since they are a dream NPC character programmed by whatever my mind is dreaming. So essentially, I am dreaming of actualized.org forum with Leo Gura teaching others about solipsism and awakening. But Leo Gura and all the others would be dream characters/NPCs relative to the Consciousness hallucinating them. What I dream doesn’t have a separate consciousness. It is my Consciousness. Leo Gura and all on this forum is an extension of my Consciousness. I cannot access “their” experience because my Consciousness is hallucinating it. Whether or not I am “firewalled” into my own consciousness similarly to being confined in a prison from the rest of the world, I cannot ever know. But when I am firewalled into a prison, I know that there is an “external world” that I do not have access to that I am missing out on. There are beautiful waterfalls, there is Oregon, but I’m stuck in a prison where I cannot see the sun, trees, and lakes. My Consciousness is experiencing being walled off from the world, but it doesn’t mean the “world” doesn’t exist. I should not take the limits of my consciousness for the limits of reality. Being in that prison is like one of Plato’s Cavemen. They are walled off from a different reality, “Other minds”, “external world”. I think Blessedlion is saying the solipsism claim is akin to being one of Plato’s Cavemen thinking the Cave is all that exists and there are no trees, lakes, or other minds but just you in the cave. In this Allegory, there are no other cavemen but you.

Lambos are waste of money. So are Corvettes. It’s just a status symbol. The kind of woman that I want wouldn’t care what kind of car I drive.

Lol 😂

Enlightenment is always evolving I think. If you think about it, the insights the Buddha attained where categorized as “enlightenment.” But the Buddha scratched the surface of Infinity. No matter how deeply you “awaken” you will always only scratch the surface since Infinity has no end. But even then, God-Realization is deeper than the classical awakening just due to it being more direct and deeper.

Yeah I’ll do that next time. My friend stored the honey in the refrigerator, which I think could’ve exposed it to moisture via condensation?

Nice! What kind of Toyota you driving? Did you buy it new?