Gnosis

These kinds of experiences are very common in all kinds of religious and spiritual congregations. They do not reflect the "authenticity" of the teacher or religion or tradition, etc. These are just real phenomenon that are outside of secular people's worldviews. I'm somewhat sensitive and even when I've been around religious congregations by chance, I've had similar experiences although not as overt as yours. There was this time my thoughts involuntarily completely stopped for maybe an hour straight while I was sober, up and about? It felt like someone scooped into my mind and took out the linguistic processing unit. Someone was trying to talk to me and I couldn't reply or process their words. This was in a religious congregation. I'm not religious.

There's much more to "sober enlightenment" as well. It depends on the depth of the discussion. Actually, much of Leo's criticisms of Buddhism comes from not having studied it in enough depth and width. There's actually a lot more there that is simply not highly evident to the general Western public due to insufficient English scholarship. Unfortunately just by virtue of Buddhism being a traditional methodology, most of what you will find will indeed be largely religious ideology. In Buddhist books you'll primarily find simplistic explanations of doctrines and lists of precepts just like any other religious text. This is the first thing people come across after Wikipedia pages so suffice to say that internet discussions of "Buddhism" is not what I'm referring to when I say "Buddhism." The main issue with Buddhism or any traditional methodology is the enormous developmental gap between certain highly regarded historic masters who left behind literature and the status quo. I'd also like to point out that it's inevitably easy to misunderstand some of Leo's points, which come from high level construct-awareness. There's a difference between just shitting on other positions and construct-awareness. That difference is probably not apparent to you. Also there is very real "contradiction" or differences in opinion when it comes to high level spirituality. I think most people are not aware of this at all. i.e. That "highly enlightened" people can disagree in very stark ways. Look, maybe he's gone off the deep end, but that doesn't make your misunderstanding of his points something other than misunderstanding.

Arriving to the D&D club as a beginner.

Your life is already over! Get over it man!

Change the context and he's suddenly your best friend!

Anything you hold can be dropped!

I'm sorry to say, but you don't understand anything. Next time you take a dump, look a bit more closely!

If the tree is "actually imaginary", I don't see the problem. Unfortunately, that's imaginary also.

If it overwhelms you, let it overwhelm you. But the truth is, at some point it all starts to look like a load of crap. What you thought as gold was actually crap; what you thought was crap was actually gold. That's how it is.

Your statements are flawed! I'm at home right now. Mind I add, @RMQualtrough there are no "meds" here.

I've harmed plenty of innocent people in my time.

Most teachers do not teach post-awakening work. Teaching what they do, they already lose the majority, and their words fly over people's heads. There are people attending these "Satsangs" who literally do not understand a word. The material you're looking for, is unironically probably better found in selective traditional literature, of which, there is no easy way to determine if the text is "post-awakening" unless you yourself already recognize a lot of nuance. And certainly the literature itself will not be describing itself as "post-awakening material". I've found certain Chan Buddhist "recorded sayings" (of some masters') texts to express these levels of insight. And Dzogchen, regarded as the highest teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, also expounds upon and expresses these levels of insight and development. There's also a contemporary Catholic contemplative called Bernadette Roberts who wrote several books which could probably be considered "post-awakening material". Carole Griggs and Ted Strauss also have a developmental model which includes mapping of post-awakening territory, although I do not know how much actual material (textual or otherwise) regarding it is available. I've also noticed Leo in some recent videos touching more on some "post-awakening"-related themes. In traditional literature, these levels of insight and development usually either come across as extremely sobering, to the point of a layman not even being able to tell if the text is talking something "spiritual", or elaborately radical and seemingly exaggerated, to the point where you can read 20 lines and not understand a single one, and be under the impression that the text must be exaggerating its description. In informal contexts or contemporary texts, the themes may also be non-spiritual, in the sense that the text is talking about something very practical and not about mystical things. There is no lukewarm ground of such a text speaking about "oneness" (in the lofty sense), or "I Am", or "everything is interconnected", or any such common mystical ideas. In that sense, these texts usually appear unattractive to laymen and newer students because they do not make considerable efforts to appeal to their conceptual fantasies. Take note that I'm intentionally generalizing here. There are also certain kinds of non-binary; multi-truth-valued logical or linguistic structural resemblances that texts from these high levels exhibit, but this is esoteric, nuanced and difficult for me to describe in detail, and furthermore, this is not exclusive just to these high level texts. These structures mostly derive from Indian Logic/Fourfold negation/Nagarjuna; there are also variants such as the logic of the verses in the Diamond Sutra. Also not exclusive to texts at these levels but interesting nevertheless, are certain kinds of structures to an inquiry and answer, most notably, an answer which undermines the foundation of the inquiry, such as, "What is right and what is wrong?", "One journey, many paths.". Related to this, is a kind of structure to an inquiry and answer, wherein the answer simply points to immediate consciousness, which may additionally also undermine the foundation of the inquiry, such as, "What is the mind that the Patriarch bought from the West?", "An Ox is giving birth, take a look at it.". An example which both points to immediate consciousness and simultaneously undermines the foundation of the question is: "Is the cup half-empty or half-full?" "It's a beautiful cup." This stuff is very subtle. I think this is the first time I've ever explicitly described this in some detail. This is also a kind of meta-analysis of stuff that is already very obscure in the first place, which makes this even more obscure than it already is, which is frankly quite funny. If what you deeply care about the most is the Truth, that is the "fastest way" to liberation. The matter is, realization is not a side-step-able thing. Deep realization is fundamentally required. Really, the way you phrased the question comes across as a misunderstanding. Liberation here is just a word which describes the result of even deeper degrees of realization than what you're using the word "realization" to refer to. Liberation means freedom. Freedom is simply no longer being attached to conceptual notions of "the Truth" and no longer maintaining falsehood. To do that requires you to first recognize what not to attach to (i.e. "the Truth"), and secondly, on top of the foundation of some already deep integration and embodiment, most likely decades of non-outsource-able cogni-psycho-physiological work related to understanding and unraveling the patterns of falsehood still producing suffering in your "ordinary state of consciousness". This quote is not actually the word of Dōgen, but rather Dōgen quoting an older Chan (Zen) saying attributed to Qingyuan Weixin. Last note: Regarding the sources of my three quoted questions and answers. The first question and answer is me quoting "myself", or rather quoting an inquiry I was contemplating, which was "answered" visually through an advertisement catchphrase I happened to see at that exact time. The second is a quoted dialogue from the recorded sayings of Chan (Zen) Master Zhaozhou (Joshu). The last quote about the cup is from a certain documentary I forgot the name of, in which a man quotes his dying grandfather, and this is apparently what he answered. So as you can see, the source is really not nearly as important as your orientation and motivation. As they say, when you're ready, anything will be the answer.

The irony is all of formal logic is in some sense, predicated upon what is written being "True". When, there is in fact nothing more "false" than conceptual symbols. You might call it the very definition of falsehood. Just know that everything is upside-down, downside-up, leftside-right, and rightside-left, and you'll unironically have good footing on the path. The east wall beats on the west wall. They were dancing all along.

You're interpreting Leo's words too loosely. (i.e. Nowhere does he equate the immediate experience "layer" with the "relative".) The video in question is one of the most lucid and advanced videos from the past few months. To be frank, it's very hard to understand every statement Leo makes in the video, and he makes some advanced points that will most likely completely go over your head. The "Absolute" and the "relative" need to be clearly distinguished. Moreover, it must also be seen that this distinction in reality is superficial and substance-less. Unfortunately, this is not a logic course. You cannot ask the forums, "What am I missing here?", and expect someone to clarify the issue formally and completely. It's only very recently, after I briefly took the time to learn some formal logic myself, that I realized a lot of Leo's manner of discourse comes directly from his background in formal philosophy. He points out logical fallacies like "straw man" and "begging the question", which actually for years I didn't understand a word of. In my opinion, I don't think these ideas from formal logic and argumentation are the most applicable (beyond a very basic level), in the context of what Leo teaches. Most humanly fabricated arguments about "reality" are inductive arguments. This is an argument which argues that its conclusion is probable. An inductive argument, however, says nothing directly about what is true. In fact, formally speaking, an argument in the first place, cannot be evaluated as "True" or "False", but rather only as "valid" or "invalid". An argument's conclusion can be evaluated as "True" or "False", but this evaluation is independent of its premises and indeed of the whole argument. For instance, scientific consensus is usually viewed as valid support for an inductive argument. However, we know from "history", that scientific consensus can be false. Does this invalidate all arguments which use scientific consensus as support? No, because the arguments are inductive. Are these inductive arguments relevant if your only interest is the truth and nothing else? In a sense, no. The whole endeavor of logical reasoning is in a sense intended to bring you "closer" to the truth and avoid unnecessary folly. This is a distinct endeavor from discovering the truth directly and as-is.

@OneHandClap Thanks for the praise. As you've said, in retrospect, the whole Enlightenment business is just a lot of fantasies! It's not surprising, as it's entirely intertwined with cognitive development, which evidently is in some sense, just ever-evolving fantasies about "self" and "world".

Concentration is a meditative state. That is, various states of consciousness can be classified as "concentration". This is temporary. Equanimity is a kind of harder-than-rock solid untouchable-ness. It's a natural non-resistance to anything and everything, relative to simply being completely untouched fundamentally. This is temporary also. Clarity is when you've reached the rock-bottom of Reality, and as a result of direct experience, clearly distinguish completely the "relative" and the "Absolute". What you thought was "Absolute", turns out to be relative. This clarity is a kind of clear-cutting wisdom. Any slightest fixation with this "clarity" is temporary. In other words, this "clarity" won't matter down the line also. Down the line, I suspect various "habits" drop over the course of many many years. These are not very overt bad habits like smoking, unless the habit is strongly supported. It's subtle habits of every kind in every corner of the psycho-physiology. As "consciousness" learns more about "itself" in the thick of life, it continues to "wise up" and adapt. In other words, I suspect this rather slow process is a different developmental line from what's colloquially called "Awakening". This is the "toilet seat path" of "Enlightenment". Every day you just do your business, and remember to wash your hands.

If you're referring to Spiral Dynamics Memes, from my experience these are exaggerated for the sake of differentiation. I like to think about every two SD stages as a single cognitive stage with two expressions. For me this hits closer to home. The behavior of people start to make much more sense, when you consider Red-Blue as a single stage, Orange-Green as a single stage, and so on. In some sense, only an Orange person can have Green ideas. It's harder for a truly Blue person to have Orange ideas, because that in a sense requires him/her to construct an entirely new sense of self. Whether "you have" "an innate set of values" is a non-issue, considering you are similarly constructing "yourself". "Life" is not "meaningless", considering you are similarly constructing "life". Or more abstrusely, the "values" and "yourself" refer to the same activity of construction and appearance; the "meaningfulness" and "life" refer to the same activity of construction and appearance; and all these stand on equal ground. There is no "list". The reason it conceptually appears to you that the activity of constructing values involves "choosing" from a list is because you're not giving "values" and "yourself" equal footing when it comes to construction. You're not realizing that relative to the activity of constructing and cognitive development, these terms are identical.

This line is amazing!

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

Selflessness is the result of complete surrender and a kind of brutal willingness to be with whatever life is. There is no selflessness outside of motivation. It's simply a fundamental change in your motivation to live, to put it bluntly. If you were to actually be completely without self, the term would lose all its context and there would be nothing to talk about.

Outside of searching and finding, where is the genuine person?

Infinite postulations possible with physics. No postulations possible with metaphysics.

Turquoise is a great bias, isn't it.

An enlightened mind is the same as some recording. To be frank, I intentionally edited out "(the path)" in my post. It's a case of an attempt to simplify and remove ambiguity simply muddying the waters more. To write out the sentence in its full convolution/nuance, I would label it in the following way,