Gnosis

Actually the really funny thing is I don't think I've seen a single other person do cold approaches here. It's pretty interesting to me how rarely actual pickup is practiced (I assume outside of places like Vegas).

Yup.

Can you see where someone above you is at? And frankly on the topic of these types of posts, which we've seen so many of over the years on this forum, Leo should think carefully about how this "phenomenon" reflects on his own teaching style. This is sincere criticism. I make no claims about myself with this statement.

@Enlightement

The mind is something else than transfer of energy between matter.

It's clear to me that nothing is clear to you.

Comparing reduction of self-referential thoughts to "awakening" in any way broader than the most narrow possible definition is like comparing a peanut to a helicopter.

At my "stage of development" the former is less outrageous of a statement than the latter. However Leo intentionally chooses to make the latter statement rather than the former. This makes him an interesting character.

Isn't the issue here that you yourself do not understand or know how to articulate what you've realized? That's the only reason to make all these assertions via negativa. Whether or not the statement itself is true is irrelevant to my point, because the only possible function of such a statement is to declare that the reader is wrong. What good is such a statement beyond this? Granted, maybe precisely what people need is to just have the simple cognitive power to understand that they're mistaken, but fundamentally you haven't communicated whatever it is you wanted to. This whole statement is like second-rate wine that's only served when the first-rate wine is on too tall of a shelf to reach.

This is spot-on criticism, Leo's arrogant "style" turns off people who don't either: 1. Accept his words at face value. 2. Tune out the arrogance. 3. Tune into the arrogance as entertainment. There are only a few ways an audience can go about it, and option 1 would be the wrong thing for the audience to do according to Leo's own standards and advice. So perhaps the criticism here is actually that Leo's communication style and self-assuredness at times will allow for option 1 to exist no matter how much he declaims about the importance of "thinking for yourself" and not taking his teachings on as a belief. In other words, there's a dissonance between his teachings and his style of communication. I'm sure he himself is aware of this to some extent.

You're talking out of your ass.

Simply put, postmodernism is not thorough deconstruction of concepts. Relativism is itself a concept. The postmodern kind of relativism when adopted tends to be less like relativism and more like a gravestone planted firmly in the ground. Of course cognitive development can go beyond postmodernism. Cognitive development is of course also a concept. At any rate, good developmental psychology is at the very least produced from analyzing massive amounts of data and surveys. Postmodernism is not. Why might someone prefer developmental psychology over postmodernism? Because it's like comparing the selection of alcohol at restaurant to a single pack of beer. Both are of course fantasies.

Just admit defeat, my guy.

Would you want to study under such a teacher?

"One evening the Master sat cooling himself on the veranda. Again I brought him a verse I had written. "Delusions and fancies," the Master said. I shouted his words back at him in a loud voice, whereupon the Master seized me and rained twenty or thirty blows with his fists on me, and then pushed me off the veranda. This was on the fourth day of the fifth month after a long spell of rain. I lay stretched out in the mud as though dead, scarcely breathing and almost unconscious. I could not move; meanwhile the Master sat on the veranda roaring with laughter." — Hakuin Ekaku

You are dreaming of drops and oceans. Can a drop dream of drops and oceans? I know you're not one for technical accuracies, but this one's an important one.

Another support for my argument is that on Discord, the rules and guidelines for a server is the first thing you see upon joining. On the forums here, it is not. Basically, you can clearly state what kind of community you're trying to cultivate in a place that users will actually be guaranteed to see. Discord servers are also extremely customizable and you can enable/disable specific features per channel. All this has to be tested so I'm not saying it will guarantee better results, however from what I have seen in Discord communities, a more coherent environment where discussions and differences in opinion tend to be more civilized is very possible.

Untested assumptions. There are also discussion threads in Discord now, so that format is available too.

I second a Discord server. I think you'd be surprised to find that a Discord server may actually be easier to moderate than the forums. A Discord server takes place in a virtual environment that appears more like an "actual environment" than the forums as long as it's moderated and there are regular users willing to make high quality contributions; this essentially has the effect of reducing the chances of people just posting whatever nonsense they want in a "vomit-like" fashion. This also makes it easier to discern extremely immature users or users who actually have little intention other than trolling. I also want to point out that an unfortunate consequence of heavily advocating for psychedelics (even though Leo has never advocated for irresponsible or recreational use), is that it exacerbates the trend of dysfunctional and immature individuals seeking the community, simply due to the association of psychedelic use with degenerate trends in culture. "Serious spiritual seekers" from a more traditional background who are in fact mature and developed, might avoid the community perhaps not even out of prejudice towards psychedelics but just because of the visibly low quality of the forums. Obviously psychedelics are central to Leo's approach to this work and I haven't given any proper solution here, but would just like to explicitly mention this.

Sure, I understand that you speak from direct experience and that's both more valid and valuable. However, it does not change the fact that you simply do not understand my point. I thought your pursuit was pure understanding? Maybe it'll help you refute Buddhism even better in the future if you understood it. Or you could keep referring to a straw-man Buddhism. That's fine too, it's not like the internet as a whole knows much better than that.

"Buddhism" is not "Nirvana." Leo's criticisms of "Buddhism" is fine because in practice no one here will waste time doing a scholarly study of Buddhism to find the gems there. But my criticism of him not having done so is irrefutable until he actually understands my point. "Buddhism" is Omniscience spoken about from various limited contexts. It's not most of Buddhism, but it's there. Leo is too gung-ho on distinguishing his teachings from everything else. I'll even say that's fine, but that doesn't mean my point is invalid.

Largely agree with this. I see the same issues with these statements as those made by dogmatic MBTI adherents on the internet. Is there no cure to reification? At least pick a theory that's a little less arbitrary. Frankly, I don't know what it is with Jung, but people seem to be magnetized by his ideas to the point of assuming they understand them better than Jung did. Jung himself fully acknowledged that his ideas were arbitrary, yet every pseudo-neo-Jungian on the internet wants to assume they're more intelligent than Jung.

The fear of going insane in a genuine investigation into truth is not a fear, it's an intuition. That intuition is correct. You're not going insane. You are insane. Not following through with it is the definition of insanity. When you follow through with it all the way—sanity. How else will it work when the name of the game is endless self-deception?

What a weak awakening it must be to not even have the freedom to be caught up in our own imaginary nonsense.