Exystem

@Aether Phoenix Yes there are risks. Don't get scared about potential risks, look what you can handle and be true to your intuition. Self-inquiry can be a radical deconstruction process. People come from different places, it doesn't work the same for everyone. Some people didn't have the emotional/psychological stability in their childhood to develop a clear sense of self. For example, if your parents were not emotionally available, had episodes of extreme delusion or emotional swings, were manipulative, overprotective etc. this could lead to complex trauma and an instable core. For example, if your mother was bipolar, you may have attuned your emotions completely to those of your mother in order to vibe and relate with her. So now you may have difficulty to seperate your emotions from the people around you. You don't know what you really want, what are your own needs and feelings and what are the ones coming from those around your or your projections of these. In this case, you would need radically different form of therapy (structural work) than if you had the chance to develop a stable core and clear sense of self (in which case you can do procecedural work like personal development. Some people first need to get really grounded, get a sense of who they are, what they actually need, what seperates them from others around before they deconstruct their vague sense of self to early, which hasn't even fully functionally developed yet. They may try to solve psychological problems spiritually, which can create a lot of trouble. There are good parts of a stable "self", you don't want to get rid of your survival instincts for example or, as I pointed out before, the clarity which feelings you can perceive in a room full of people belong to you and which are your projections because of the mimic expressions of others. For people with severe trauma in the childhood especially it may be very important that they first get a very structured environment (that's why psychatric clinics can be effectice), where they have such clear processes and know exactly when they relate with whom and what happens next etc. that they have so few triggers from the outside that they get a sense of themselves, so the voice of their own needs and feelings can now be heard. I took that extreme exanple just to demonstrate that people are at different starting points when they get into such practices like self inquiry. Sadly, many spiritual teachers have absolutely no clue about (complex) trauma, psychological disorders, dissociation, derealisation, depersonalisation etc. Most of them don't even know that for some practices like simple meditation there are serious contraindications. For people with special kinds of depression or anxiety issues meditation can be harmful! But lots of spiritual teachers assume their listeners come from a similar place, have similar intentions and are in similar sates of mind. A student may look calm from the outside, but inside they fully press the gas and the break pedal at the same time, they may be in freeze mode most of the time instead of the assumed social mode. They don't get when the teacher speaks of "peace within" and when they hear the word "void" they associate rather the nihilistic, depressive void they are used to, a lack of feelings and aliveness most people can't even imagine. And then they may believe it's their fault, they msut do something wrond and it's not the teachers cluelessness and incapability to relate to someone like them. Seekers like these actually need psychological help, their nervous system is stuck in fight or flight mode or even worse in a freeze Mode, they need to get in intinmate contact with their feelings and needs and not the opposite, dissociating from their reality even further. It's crucial to know what you want from the technique you practice. Is it truth, or release from suffering? If it is the latter, it may be a hint that what you actually need is some kind of psychological relief, and your spiritual endevors may even push you further away from your goal. The problems with self inquiry can be of various kinds. It can become a practice that dissociates you further from your feelings and reality in general. If you actually do it because you want to escape from your human condition, if you wish and wait for a magical resolution of your problems, this is a good hint that you actually practice spiritual bypassing which will bite you in the ass. You may also get to a nice place where everything feels fine as long as you abide in that state which can prolong spiritual seeking unnecessarily. If you believe you should find a self, some core, you are on the wrong track. You may encounter some deep hidden trauma, a part of yourself where lots of surpressed emotions lurk in the dark, which can be very overwhelming if you feel through that (sounds like that in your case). The key here is: 1. Become clear of your intentions! Do you actually run away from something, project some fancy state into the future where your self dissolves and then everything will be fine forever? As you wouldn't try to learn to manifest water if you are thirsty, but walk to fountain and if your thirst is stilled, then you may try out manifestation, the same way you should go about spirituality and psychology/physiology. Become clear of what you (your body and psyche) needs and if you are satisfied and stable enough (survival is safe), then you can most effectively practice spirituality. 2. Be as authentic in your close relationships as you can. Introduce forms of dialogue that tie you to the consensus world in some sense (like honest sharing for example) so you have a check-up and reality-comparing-mechanism for the relative world. You don't want to be the only one who sees unicorns. No self is fine, but you still want to be able to say: "Please hand me the butter!" 3. Ground yourself! Connect regularly with nature (walk barefoot for example), eat enough and look for a healthy diet with all nutrients - micro and macro, Sleep enough and good (!!!) - a friend of mine once said: "what is the difference between a psychosis and a normal state of mind? - two days no sleep.", make sports and get stuck energies into flow, practice mindfulness stuff that connects you to intimately your senses. Self-inquiry is a beautiful practice and it can help along the journey. For most people it is a great tool to get to the core. But it's not a patent recipe for eceryone. It's important you have good guidance, know how it works and whats the intention behind it, and you practice it with self-compassion and not in a performance-driven, aggressive style. Stay connected! Wish you the best <3

I would say it points to the realization of scale invariance, perfection and the illusion of space and time. You can zoom in and out forever. Everything is an expression of infinite perfection.

I've been born into a fundamentalist christian environment I know exactly how religious people think, I've spent hundreds of hours in discussion with then. Anyone who doesn't already clearly see what a narcissistic antichrist-like figure Trump is, is so deluded, almost nothing will wake them up. Sorry man but that's very bad reasoning imo. You seem to have a very naive idea how religious people think. No one will question their god because of some failed expectations, they will rather blame demonic shadow powers. I will not answer to this thread anymore, it's just a very stupid idea not worth to engage further.

Do you see any problems with that reasoning?

Sorry but this is such a bad test I didn't even finish it because it's a waste of time. Anyone who has some clue about diagnostics will laugh at this

True. But in certain terrains of thought it narrows the branches of the possibility-tree of all the answers which have not a high value in tackling specific personal development or philosophical questions. The classic AI may tell you way more irrelevant and obvious stuff and not be so confronting. I had the feeling this leo AI was way more on point but that impression may come from my little interactive exposure to AI in recent times, maybe it just generally improved.

Btw I love these kind of conversations, thanks man <3 Yeah the idea of "the unconscious" may just be another layer of deception. Like people who repeatedly report to dream in black&white actually report to dream in colour if asked instantly after waking up - this backwards rationalization/recontextualization/interpretation to fit the data into a coherent narrative may be the same principle at play here. Everything "pops into existence" and your mind just creates a consistent/logical story to justify it. I think what Leo tried to point out is that every story you create about "how things come into existence/what the source is" is actually just another *popped*-concept, so the mind creates the next consistent narrative. Everything is *popped*, including the mind. This is the AUM, the infinite *pop*, the alpha and the omega, without beginning or end. The idea that there is linear chain of plops is just another *pop*, so every story of source or behind the scenes or unconscious - just *pop*. Chris Langan goes into great detail about the mechanics of the plopping so to speak. I think it is one of the best ways to put the whole thing into words - a radical nondualist would say G.O.D as an entity is a construct, it's another illusion. I am not sure if Leo would state the opposite - unawareness of oneself is just a state of consciousness G.O.D. imagines. In a way both are two sides of the same coin, the absolute and the relative. But I intuit that I share the same headknots as you do at that point. I am still not sure about this myself.

You are right. But when it comes to contemplate about your own life, implement the insights and really think about the stuff in depth, it is quite nice to be able to interact with an AI like it is a coach, someone who asks you the right questions back, attacks your reasoning and points out holes, inspires you which concrete steps you can take to embody it, and so on. You have to learn to interact with the AI in the smartest way possible to extract the full value. It is a skill of its own and maybe it soon will become the most valuable skill world wide to interact with AIs in the most intelligent/wise way. Most people will use AI to replace the effort of original thinking, like people stopped caring about basic math as much since the development of the calculator. But some people will use it to boost their intelligence and originality

@Keryo Koffa If I had to summarize my understanding of his view on solipsism in a non confusing way I would say: "The experience to be you (a being called human + its environment called experiential bubble/world) actually takes as much imaginative power/intelligence/space as the experience to be the whole universe. Each experience happens only here&now, and at the same time there is no other here&now. The only apparent difference is the state of consciousness. Right here&now the state of consciousness imagined by infinite intelligence is that of "human experience" - so this is all there is. There is no objective reference point, there are no other things/beings outside of it to compare it to, it has no scale and you can imagine to zoom infinitely into every direction inwards & outwards. Infinity with no real center. Everything imagined "being apart from it" is an illusion, it's illusions/dreams all the way down, it's an infinite fractal/hologram consisting of nothing but illusions/dreams, a giant hallucination of nothing. In a way, the only game in town for you as infinite intelligence is to change your state of consciousness and therefore become more or less aware of your dreamlike nature." I don't know if he would agree to this but that's how it sounds to me (although it was very briefly summarized, would take more nuance to put the whole view into words of course). Does it sound like that to you or where would you disagree?

To me it sounds quite relative, but from what I suspect since he's aware of infinite intelligence there's actually no real difference between "others having feelings of their own" and "everyone is a NPC" since you as infinite intelligence would know the feelings and perspectives anyways in the sense of experiencing/being them in some way or another. And I guess he would not go in line with my (humoristic) shallow reasoning beforehand since the question of how far "karmic bonds between dreams reach" seems difficult to answer, if we accept the concept of karma in any way. Glad Leo has high integrity and huge context awareness to not fall for relative-solipsistic lines of reasoning

I guess he doesn't believe in the existence of anyone else "living on" after he dies. In this case actually he could play the clever devil and sell the rights now (before his death, provided he doesn't get killed) in a lottery where each member can buy the money-equivalent probability to win the whole thing. Who else would bet a buck? XP

Understandable, this development could take bad turns and twists But it could exactly go into the opposite direction. I used the leo bot as a coach, asking specific questions about my personal journey, let it extract the self-deception mechanisms at play (from specific scenarios), show counter-strategies and play devils advocate in relation to my reasonings.

@krockerman That would be great, I would really appreciate it!!! I was chatting with it and was quite impressed by its accuracy and it passed the vibe check Let's give it a boost, hope you guys like it as much as I do: Join the petition for Leo bot 10.000 @Keryo Koffa @Ero @Jowblob @Razard86 @Joshe @nuwu @Nemra @Yimpa @Xonas Pitfall @Salvijus @DocWatts @Carl-Richard @NoSelfSelf@Schizophonia @Michael569 @Sugarcoat @bambi @Davino @Emerald @r0ckyreed @dodohahn @Dodo @Lila9 @What Am I @Water by the River @Ishanga @Princess Arabia @CARDOZZO @Buck Edwards

How cool! It's genious Thanks @krockerman

Projection on your side.

That's true. The greatest gifts often come unforced. I first thought you wanted to escape life, projection on my side. I associate mahasamadhi with the idea that you're finally done with life, but of course there are other conceptions.

Gautama once said: why meditate for 30 years to walk over water when you can use a bridge?

If you are able, well that's nice. But between being able and wishing to be able is a huge difference. Why striving to die smoothly while you can live smoothly?

@TruthFreedom Your whole reality would come to an end the moment you would actually get serious about it. But you believe talking to people would get you out of your dream. I had many lucid dreams, it started when I was a child. Sometimes I had a nightmare and got the intuition it may be a dream. Then I did a technique and woke up. But it only worked a few times until the technique got worn out. My dream reality accomodated to my new level of awakeness/suspicion. In the end I had to line up to 10 different techniques to get out of the dream, it was a nasty process. Don't believe your dreams are made to make you realize it is a dream. You underestimate its power. Dreams are made to make you convinced they are real. And don't expect that when you wake up from one dream, you are now in reality. I had inception style dreams, woke up 3 times in a row, each time realizing the dream nature beforehand again, but still dreaming. The very fact that I argue with you shows that you keep fooling yourself. How many moments are you willing to invest? You are not really serious about it, that's what I say. But you don't need to be serious, it's ok. From your pov: if you were dreaming, no one expects from you to be serious about waking up, so there is nothing wrong about believing the dream is real. No Zen master can blame you: You bad boy don't want to wake up!

@Yeah Yeah from a solipsists pov there is no real life and there are no babies having dreams. Dreams occur on different layers. In the REM-phase you dream vividly, close to daily life experiences. In deeper sleep phases you are still dreaming, but more about abstract forms, diffuse feelings and ambiguous contents, according to scientific research. More like the low resolution, blurry scheme-style perception you would expect a baby to have.

Life is my actual real path, and it contains meditation, inquiry, yoga, psychedelics and contemplation. But mahasamadhi as a goal.. for real?

Spirituality, depending on its definition of course, ends the moment you realize there is nothing else but the present moment, there is no time, there are no words, it's illusions all the way down. It ends the moment you don't think about it. And then you may get hijacked again to believe there is something beyond ... As I said, depends on the definition. But if you consider it a time based process, it always ends now.

Well I kinda feel stupid just to reply to this thread but here we are @TruthFreedom When you dream, do you believe all the characters have their own thoughts? Do you believe they still exist when you wake up? Do you believe someone who tells you your dream wasnt real does not apply enough logic to his reasoning? Don't believe in solipsism, it's not for you. The fact that you listened twice to Leos episode and still have no understanding of the matter could be a sign that your nervous system just couldn't handle the realization and you would have a psychotic breakdown. So better stay away from solipsism.