Derrida

This notion that veganism is not for everyone, doesn't sustain everyone with enough "energy" and depends on your body type or something like that sounds like the usual pseudo science that you hear from self proclaimed 'enlightened people', who think they have somehow transcended the empirical through mere introspection. Sure, of all the people in the world there are perhaps some where a pure vegan diet might be problematic, but for the vast majority who claim so, it's most likely bs. If you feel like a vegan diet doesn't sustain you, there might be other mistakes that you're making, after all there isn't just one kind of vegan diet. Your digestion needs time to adapt to new food, it doesn't just happen in a few days. Someone who's been vegan for a long time and starts eating meat again would get a heavy stomach from that as well.

@Serotoninluv I think that cleared some things up for me, thank you "For example, religious people and Leo both seemed to talk about irrational “woo woo” stuff at times. Yet I could tell the difference between a religious zealot and Leo. The key for me was that religious zealots were irrational and could not have a reasonable/logical conversation. However “woo woos” like Leo were able to use reason/logic, so I was able to tell that they were at a higher level and I was missing something. " Personally I had some discussions with religious people who were very good when it comes to reason or logic (as far as I could judge that at least). I think generally picking holes in someone's worldview is pretty hard, because even the most crazy shit can still be logically possible. Plausibility is of course another matter, but plausibility also tends to be subjective .. I mean to a degree at least. @Raptorsin7 I dunno, have all people who are more advanced in the practice the same opinion on these matters? Nothing to discuss? You also have a point of course. No worries, I think I've satisfied my need to philosphize for the time being.

So I discovered Leo’s videos on Youtube a few weeks ago and I’m not sure what to make of it overall. On the one hand I dig his more practical videos and his more light psychological videos. The guided meditation of him for example was probably the best meditation I ever had. On the other hand his more ideological videos, or videos that supposedly go ‘deeper’ I find rather far-fetched. This applies to spiritual teachers in general though. The way I see it they tend to to be overconfident in their knowledge, wisdom etc. And people who normally tend to be sceptical and heavily scrutinize other belief systems like for example Christian belief systems buy into everything those spiritual teachers tell them, perhaps simply because they like what they hear. The way I see it, enlightenment is not much more than a mental state where you’re more detached from certain urges you have, which allows you to act more rationally and in a sense more freely. However, no matter what mental state you’re in, your reasoning is still limited to your faulty human brain, you’re still a flawed human being and susceptible to self-deception. I also doubt that the secrets of the universe and of existence itself open up to you just because you can meditate well. In fact, did I say ‘enlightened’ people act more rationally? Well in some ways they might, but in other ways their overconfidence in their ideology might lead them to pretty absurd conclusions, because again, they still rely on their faulty human brain and their reasoning is still susceptible to biases, like it is for every human being. It’s a bit similar to this ‘rationality cult’ I discovered a while ago, I mean sites like lesswrong. They have a few rigid and simplistic principles that they identify as ‘rational’ and think that simply applying those principles make them somehow superior beings that can figure out problems that people have thought about for thousands of years on the fly. It basically results in a form of Dunning–Kruger effect, and it yields dumb shit like this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks. In case I'm not allowed to link here, just google torture vs dust-specks An example of an overconfident claim in Leo’s philosophy that kind of falls into the same bucket for me would be this: his belief that suffering is just an illusion and not all that serious. Well ok, maybe he’s right about that, I can’t contest this belief with absolute certainty. But what if he’s wrong? If people make such far-fetched claims, one thing to look out for is imo this: Are they actually intensely suffering themselves in their own lifes? Or are they just living in first world countries and sitting comfortably on their asses while proclaiming their grand theories about life and the universe? I don’t want to come across as too provocative here, but that’s what it comes down to in the end, doesn’t it? So what do you think, are there people on this forum who agree with me, or somewhat agree with me? Also another thing that would interest me: Are there actually people who can voluntarily turn off their breathing and suffocate themselves, as Leo claimed in one of his videos? Because I don’t believe that either

Dismissing basic questions as too shallow or beside the point to address can also be a good way to further one's own hallucination, if one is in a hallucination that is. I have no doubt that on this forum people discuss the intricacies of enlightenment in great depth, so that questions like the ones I pose here might be uninteresting to some. Thing is, it ain't really deeper if the fundament is unstable. Having said that, I get what you're trying to convey, what I believe or think doesn't matter as long as I don't get the experience. I hope getting the experience won't require that I abandon my scepticism altogether though. Otherwise that would be similiar to Christians telling you: You need to open yourself to God ( = believe in him) in order to experience him so that you can believe in him. Well .. shit. So it's basically a similiar experience like a baby or an animal has it, but an enlightened human can still employ his higher faculties of thinking in order to garner wisdom from that state? I mean a baby isn't really enlightened right (a baby certainly isn't always at peace)? What's the difference? Bruh, do you even lift? You need to watch more Eckart Tolle videos man. No seriously, thanks for clarifying that (also for dropping a few names). By embodiement you mean actual realization rather than just thinking about it theoretically in your head in a way of "the duck isn't big, the duck is just a duck" or "the thought x is just a though x", like just saying the words in your head? Anyway it's an interesting technique, I already tried it a bit myself. Well, colors, sensations, qualias are subjective, but you could still maintain they exist in a subjective way, for the subject. You're saying they don't exist because they're hallucinations? Even if that's the case, If you don't know that a hallucination is a hallucination, it's just as real to you as anything else, right? So I don't think an argument like for instance "suffering is just a hallucination, so it's not that serious" is valid. I'm also not sure if there isn't room for different interpretations, as in how you determine what's the hallucination and what is real. If you have the state of a normal human and the state of an enlightened human, you could say the state of the normal human is a hallucination and the state of the enlightened human is real. Another interpretation however would be that both states are real, and the enlightened human has imply used the power of his focus to shift to another, more sophisticated state. This reminds me of an experiment, where mice could give themselves electric shocks via a mechanism that would at the same time release dopamine in their brains. The result was that the mice started to enjoy the electric shocks, and they wouldn't stop giving themselves electic shocks until they died. It's probably in a way a similiar experience to S & M, although of course much more extreme. Interpreting an experience differently, reframing it in order to view it in a more positive light or simply associating it with positive feelings can be powerful I guess. But there are limits to everything. If you don't have hardcore drugs at your disposal to manipulate your brain chemistry (or even then) I don't think there is any human being who would enjoy being burned at a stake, enlightened or not. ..Perhaps worth a try, thanks for the tip Not really hyperrationality, but more clarity which might lead to more rational behavior as a side effect. And of course not being controlled as much by one's emotions. I hope so, but perhaps it's in the end also make-believe to some extent, in the sense that, what you believe becomes ultimately also what appears true to you. That would at least explain why there are so many people totally convinced of different religions etc. Yes I know you're not supposed to believe in anything, but I'm not sure if that's really possible either. I'll get into it

So you say. I'm cautious, also because I've met a few people already who were totally convinced of their (contradicting) worldviews because of this or that experience they've made and this and that insight they had. Anyways I will continue trying to figure things out for myself on this path, it's not like I have anything else to do :)). Although I could still start worshipping that thunder god .. BTW. I can't help but notice you still haven't answered my more concrete question. I can't force you to do that of course, never mind Thanks for your videos

I've heard of this approach to meditation from Yuval Harari, he differentiates between the things that really exist (or at least come before) and the things that are constructed in our mind and are thus in a way illusions. . Since the ego itself is a construction, that can be quite effective in that regard I guess. That is an elegant way to put it, rings true. By realization of the "prior", you mean getting conscious about the a priori things, before we form our constructions? And seeing past the constructions means a certain loss, but also liberates (and frees from attachments)? I don't quite understand the part where you're saying one doesn't need to convince oneself of things like A is B in the enlightened mode of seeing things (you mean only the obvious stuff like A is A is still relevant in that mode of .. consciousness?). Or convince oneself that suffering is an illusion. Isn't that rather because complex, constructed concepts like "suffering" and "illusion" don't exist on that level of thinking, so you can't convince yourself of them in the first place? You also seem to talk about concepts and ideas here and I agree that they're in a way constructed by the brain in several layers. But what about sensations? Is there really an a priori to red and green (not as ideas, but as sensations). We just know that red is different from green and that's it. Similarly pain is a sensation that is best defined as the very thing that we want to avoid. It's something that goes deeper than our complex constructed thinking, it's not part of our big brain but more part of our animal brain, if you want to talk physiologically. Now I know that there are also more complex forms of .. suffering, that only arise because of our interpretations (or illusions so to speak). For example we're only afraid of pissing off our boss because we're afraid of losing our job, getting homeless and dying on the street (well we aren't necessarily, just an example). If we don't make that connection, or make different connections, there is no fear and no suffering from that. However, I'm not convinced that all suffering relies on our interpretations. If you cut yourself, that will simply hurt and that's it, no matter how you interpret it. Well ok, I've read once that mindfulness meditation can get rid of 90% of chronic pain or even more. But I guess that's more of a longterm thing, physiologically speaking, you train your brain over time to adapt to your pain. However it's probably not that easy to train your brain in a short period of time to adapt to pain and ignore something that it's hardwired to pay attention to. So I hope I didn't go completely autistic on your quite poetic post and completely missed your point, but that is my take on what I've understood. @Bazooka Jesus The last few paragraphs are also my answer to you.

Thanks man, also for the sources, I'll look into it I see, so you're saying things like "suffering is an illusion" are on a similiar level of immediate ... knowing for an enlightened person (in case you think that too and consider yourself enlightened of course) as "now is now"? Wouldn't that require that you can completely resist and withstand any pain though? Because if you let pain and suffering affect you, how can you at the same time intuitively know that pain and suffering are illusions?

I'm trying, though I'm still wondering how sure you're of some of the things you say (and other people who make similiar claims). Like for example the part with the world and suffering being a illusion. How sure are you of those things, is it the same level of certainty like "I think therefore I am" or "I exist" ? (also the part with people stopping their breathing, you wouldn't put that in your videos nowadays, or would you?) Thing is, I don't even believe it's possible to derive some of the more metaphysical claims of eastern philosophies simply from direct experience and/or reasoning, meaning there will always be a component that you will simply have to believe (which might not necessarily be a bad thing, I'm just saying). Perhaps a plausible belief, but not absolute certainty. I mean, how are you supposed to derive something like "suffering is an illusion, the world is an illusion" from direct experience? Seems to me that such a conclusion would still depend on your subjective interpretation, how you interpret the experience of your personal enlightenment, satori, awakening whatever. And it wouldn't suprise me if people can have have the same experience, mental state which we would call enlightenment, but still adhere to very different worldviews. Thanks for the warm welcome btw.