Osaid

Those moments are probably completely valid, and they are likely a glimpse into what you can have 24/7, which would be enlightenment. You can induce it through meditation or certain peaceful moments. But I'm guessing what is happening is that certain thought patterns are triggering you and forcing you out of that state. If you meditate, your thoughts might become peaceful, but then how are you gonna react to those thoughts when you're not meditating? When you're enlightened, you're just permanently stuck in meditation. There is no oscillation between a meditative experience and a non-meditative experience anymore. It's just meditation forever. There is just a single insight/recontextualization about the nature of thoughts that will permanently prevent you from being attached to them ever again. That is enlightenment. You might have glimpses of enlightenment, as you describe, but enlightenment is just being there 24/7, without having to invoke some spiritual technique first.

There is a lot to say, but I will just do a very brief description how it unfolded for me specifically. It is actually a very simple "shift", and I truly believe anyone can do it if they just give enough time and focus to their experience. It is a psychological shift that any human can do. Kind of like looking at an optical illusion, and switching from one perspective to the other. And then realizing that the previous perspective was useless and delusional, and then just staying in the new perspective forever. I was in a cafe listening to an audio of someone else's contemplation. There was one line of inquiry that occured that was like "Your entire direct experience is just a FACT", and I suspect that this is what triggered it. Experientially, for me, it was like my experience, or mind, became much more "lighter" or clearer or lucid. Kind of like some slight brain fog lifted that I never noticed before. Just for example, when I go in public, it just feels like my experience is so smooth and free, whereas before I was constantly being attacked by other people's perceptions and thoughts (which were actually just my own). Right before that, I did have this realization, which was like "ohhh ok, so that's why it seems like my thoughts are connected to this experience." I didn't notice it at the time, it just felt like normal contemplation, but I think when I understood this insight is probably when it actually happened. I will say, my sleep and energy levels have improved dramatically as well. I don't have to think all the time anymore. Thinking all the time seriously disrupts your sleep and energy levels. You cannot sleep properly if you cannot stop thinking. It's like putting your computer on "sleep" instead of shutting it down completely. Basically, what I actually realized was this: Time, future, past, regrets, obligations, responsibilities, etc. <<<< These are all just thoughts. They have NOTHING to do with your experience, at all. So what's happening when you identify with thought is: >> pure sense perception (thought) >> the real you decides to act as if the thought is true (anxiety, heart racing, avoidant behaviour, self-deprecation (more thoughts), etc) Unknowingly, you are extrapolating thought into something that is not thought (physical symptoms mentioned before), which experientially makes it SEEM like thought is connected to experience, but it absolutely isn't. What will happen in the future? How do I look? Does she like me? Am I stupid? What happens after death? When will I die? Will I ever find true love? THESE QUESTIONS ARE ALL FACTS. THEY EXIST AS FACTS which point towards something that does not exist. By the definition of its existence, a thought describes that which does not exist (because it's just a thought), but it ALWAYS FACTUALLY EXISTS AS THOUGHT. There is nothing further you can interpret into your experience, because thought is just thought, not anything else which can exist in experience. You always have direct access to everything thats happening to you, because you are you. There's nothing to interpret. All interpretation is just thought, because in order to interpret, you have to take what you are 100% experiencing, and create something you aren't experiencing, which is impossible! I feel like a lot of this stress/anxiety related to thoughts comes from this idea that there is some event behind the scenes that you have to predict in your mind and prepare for, but no, your entire experience is just factually laid out in front of you to see. THERES NOTHING TO INTERPRET IN REALITY, EVER. Your thought about pain is never pain itself, your thought about being sleep deprived tomorrow is never sleep deprivation itself. YOU exists as YOU. Not YOU combined with thoughts, just YOU. The entirety of experience is just you, always. Experience doesn't have to identify with anything to exist. Anytime you perceive "identification", it is ALWAYS a thought. There is no such thing as identity or identification. A flower does not need to identify with anything. The sky does not need to identify with anything. You do not have to identify with anything. You exist. YOU are your entire experience. Thoughts are always just a subset of that experience, by definition. Therefore, thoughts cannot accurately point to or describe you or your experience, ever. The medium of "thoughts" and "identity" are WRONG. Full stop. You cannot ever reach or perceive yourself through identity or thought. You cannot think a flower, you can only perceive it. You cannot think the color red, you can only perceive it. You cannot think yourself, you can only perceive it. Eventually, you will see that 90% of your thoughts are completely redundant, because they are describing something that doesn't exist, and so they will just fall away forever. I could go on forever with these different contemplations and insights, but I don't know which one might actually do it for you, but I think that is something I really need to work on and polish before I start sharing it with people. Anything could really trigger it, it just depends on what makes sense to you. My responses in this thread point to the same thing:

I am not gonna say whether it is wrong or right, but he is not enlightened. He is extracting insights about enlightenment, and certain specific metaphysics, from psychedelic experiences. That doesn't mean his teachings aren't valid or useful. He does a really good job of doing this while cutting out a lot of the bullshit, and he articulates the experiences very well, which is all part of his talent. I love Leo and all his work is massively useful. If he became enlightened, and THEN continued his work, that would lead to something absolutely amazing for him and the universe, probably. It's very interesting, because the insights that I IMMEDIATELY obtained from enlightenment are the exact same insights that Leo talks about after hundreds of trips. Like, reality is love for example, yeah, it kind of is, I can exactly see where this sentiment comes from, but I don't have to be on a psychedelic to be conscious of this. It's literally in my direct experience right now. And I just immediately became conscious of it when I got enlightened. My experience itself has been recontextualized in such a way that it has no option but to love itself.

Enlightenment is a singular thing. Not multiple different things. If you are experiencing multiple things, those are either "hints" towards enlightenment, or just simply not it. Enlightenment is a singular recontextualization where you can't see "yourself" ever again, and all the worries associated with that self go away, because you just become exactly what is being experienced. There's no need to identify with anything. Existence does not need to identify with anything to exist. You exist.

Yep. This is exactly what I realized after I achieved enlightenment a few days ago. Memory cannot replicate direct experience. Therefore, if you're "bringing back" insights, they will eventually become twisted and corrupted, which is why you get all these crazy solipsism threads on this forum. I just see reaching traditional enlightenment as non-negotiable now. It's not JUST the ending of suffering, it's realizing exactly what you are 24/7, without the need for psychedelics or chemicals to induce it for you first. Not to mention, these psychedelics have their own flavours and methods for conveying their "truths", which the ego likes to twist up as well. For example, salvia might turn you into a table, which conveys a certain amount of truth and metaphysics, but of course YOU aren't actually a table. But, the unenlightened ego gets really stuck to certain details of these experiences that don't matter at all, and then it creates a bunch of stories about it. Psychedelics are good for opening your mind and removing the materialistic veil. It's good for making you think "oh shit, maybe I don't know what reality is, maybe I don't know what I am" and then pushing you to look into spirituality. What happens a lot with psychedelics though is that the unenlightened ego will concoct a bunch of stories that it "brings back" from these experiences through memory, and then that is where things go to shit, to put it bluntly. The unenlightened ego has NOT become enlightened, and once the chemicals wear off, the psychedelic is not helping you be enlightened anymore, so the unenlightened baseline ego HAS to recontextualize the experience into a corrupted and unenlightened version of it, because the psychedelic has worn off, and it does this through the medium of memory. The ego exists in memory, so that is where it plays its cards and pulls you back in. You need to achieve traditional enlightenment before further pursuing spirituality or psychedelics. It is a must. Or else it will lead to a lot of confusion down the line. You can't just say "I'm never gonna achieve traditional enlightenment, I'll just discover truth through psychedelics", because this is a contradiction, since lack of enlightenment means you are not aware of truth. I am not going to deny that psychedelics are a good tool for reaching enlightenment, HOWEVER, they can be a double edged sword, as it VERY susceptible to being co-opted by the ego. And, of course, once you are in baseline, you become your ego again, so this becomes a massive problem, because you cannot stop being your ego, otherwise that would be enlightenment. Enlightenment is just the stopping of identity (as it is seen to not exist), to put it one way at least. If you do not reach enlightenment, you will CONSTANTLY be identifying with thoughts and stories (unless this is removed again through psychedelics), which is delusion. This is not something to skip or brush off, and it is not just some trivial human desire to stop suffering. It is a singular psychological phenomenon that permanently allows you to see things as they actually are.

Does decaf not help with tapering off? If you just drink decaf forever, isn't that a solution of some sort? Since there's no caffeine? Or does it just feel useless since there is no kick?

Yeah I'm pretty much the same. Not that I like guys. I like females for the most part. But sometimes you want them to dominate a bit more, I guess. Not sure how to describe it. I've never desired 100% masculinity, or else I would be gay I think. But I've desired some variations of that percentage. It's possible to create such ratios where it feels like "you're getting fucked by a girl" if that makes any sense. It's not entirely masculine, but it's pretty masculine lmao. That's kind of where the appeal of "feminine men" comes from I guess. It's just another mix of those "ratios" between femininity and masculinity. Then there's also just the idea of having something out there pleasuring you that is enticing by itself, which kind of leads into what you said about imagination or whatever. I've always felt this way. Like, if something is objectively physically stimulating me, the only way to stop that would be to imagine something to stop me from enjoying it.

It seems like your body has a very balanced testosterone/estrogen, so to speak, and any idealized thoughts about your childhood experience tips it towards estrogen (desire to be dominated), and then physical activity like exercise tips it towards testosterone (desire to dominate). So your experience of sexual desires is fluid and influenced very easily. Whether this is good or bad is up to you, really. I say testosterone/estrogen kind of metaphorically here to refer to masculinity/femininity, but it could also literally be the case that you can change the levels of these chemicals in your body very drastically somehow. Everyone is different, after all. It could be a thin balance between the two.

Lol epic Nahm's answer is legit. The dog doesn't deal with lust or boredom, it's kind of enlightened in that sense. So the entire thread is an anthropomorphization of the dog which says "Oh, my dog is probably craving sex just like me, I don't want him to suffer." Physical pleasure is real of course. But the entire thread is actually less about that, more of some moral or ethical intention or contention which does not exist for the dog, because it's just a dog. Well that's my personal answer at least, don't want to further derail this thread into dog sex

Oh yeah if I remember correctly wasn't it started by Leo haha. Love his open-mindedness. Or actually maybe it was his response to some post about it. Not sure. Sorry Leo if you never did that and I'm misremembering lmao

Lmao

This is an interesting contention which I have sort of been contemplating. Although the removal of suffering is a great achievement, I find it to be more of a "side-effect" of just perfect clarity of perception. I also find that people who skip this "removal of suffering" or "enlightenment" tend to be very confused in their spiritual journey, lost and worrying about all sorts of stories. So, for me, it's kind of a must now. They will kind of strawman it and say "Oh, but truth isn't about reducing suffering! That's just some relative human ideal! So, I don't need to reach whatever state these guys are talking about, I'll just explore my metaphysics over here, despite all my pain and suffering." But the reason this is a strawman is because that removal of suffering is just a SIDE EFFECT of perfect clarity of perception. Clarity of perception is EQUAL to lack of suffering. So, in other words, what this strawman is really saying is: "Oh, truth isn't about perceiving clearly!", which is wrong. But, yes, all the juicy metaphysics are great and I love them. But, when they come from someone who is not enlightened, there's a lot of human baggage to scrub through, and it can confuse people or be harmful. What I'm saying is that it's not just about removing suffering, but like your view of reality will just be completely inaccurate all the time unless you reach it. So, this is more important than just suffering, I think. Your lack of enlightenment will bleed into your journey of exploring metaphysics, or literally anything you do in life. Although, psychedelics CAN force you into temporary states of enlightenment. But, you can't really bring it back, because you become an unenlightened human again. The human that comes back just has to operate off the memory of it, then it gets slightly corrupted or whatever. Which is still massively useful, obviously, because what you remember was still pretty damn important and amazing. But finding that clarity for yourself is still way better and more important, because you don't have to operate off of memory, and so it skims off any potential delusions that can generate from memory.

? Doesn't HAVE to be through Buddhism. But yeah this is 100% accurate. Any method that works will work. Buddhism is one of them. It's just a singular phenomenon that occurs that is always the same thing across all of history. Also love the signature hahahahaha

Yes, I achieved ACTUAL enlightenment 4 days ago. This is a good question. Not really. Actually, you can't and you don't want to. Because you recognize the previous state as useless and delusional. But, even beyond that, you see that there is nothing to really go back to. If you are in the middle of reaching enlightenment, you might have some thought like "Oh, it kind of feels weird. Can I go back?" But, this is not enlightenment. Close to it, maybe. But not it. Before enlightenment, there are "degrees." You might untangle SOME thoughts. You might improve your mental health SOMEWHAT. Enlightenment is like the peak of all of this "mental improvement", and it's like a switch that permanently flips inside your head that just permanently removes any mental illness forever. It's the end of fearing thoughts, FOREVER. You couldn't fear it even if you wanted to. It's like looking at a picture of Spongebob and trying to convince yourself "Be scared!" It just doesn't work. It is a single recontextualization, which permanently neutralizes all thoughts and unnecessary suffering, by virtue of the recontextualization.

Yeah there is, it's called enlightenment or self-realization. Relatively speaking, it's a psychological switch that flips, then your direct experience is permanently recontextualized and you literally become unable to feel negative emotions ever again. (To clarify a bit more, you still feel physical symptoms, like your heart racing fast for example, or even physical pain, but this is recontextualized as a biological sensation which is neither negative or positive, just physically uncomfortable perhaps).

Any word I say would be equally as descriptive as any other word

Boredom is the desire for something that doesn't exist. When enlightened, you see that there is no point in chasing anything, because if you're chasing something, it doesn't exist. Thus, no boredom. There's nothing that can make you bored, it doesn't exist. The idea that "there are other things to get to" IS boredom. This sentence I just quoted is literally what boredom is. Boredom is not a feeling or emotion, it is a negative interpretation of feeling or emotion based on the idea that something which does not exist does exist. When someone says "I feel bored because I'm stuck in class", this is actually an inaccurate perception. Boredom is LITERALLY just the thought or desire that says "I want to go somewhere that isn't class." The boredom appears because of a failure to recognize that the class is all that exists, thus there is no "other experience" to go to. The "other experience" is just a thought form that you cling on to.

You are accessing something from the present right now, which is "death." But this thing you access is not death, because you are always present. It is just a description of some thing called "death" that YOU made up. It's based in nothing. You will never experience the future. Yes, It's complete fantasy. Experience is not concept or any idea you have of death, it is just the entirety of experience itself, whatever that is. You are interpreting things from experience which do not exist. There is absolutely nothing to interpret in experience. Experience is just experience. The color red is just the color red, it can't be anything else, and you can't interpret it as anything else. Death is just a fantasy humans made up, and you adopted it. Kind of like believing in Santa. I am saying that the entire medium of "death" is an inaccurate tool for accessing reality. It needs to be dropped. It's just a concept. It won't let you access reality. Instead you should describe what is experienced presently, rather than making up future events. When you want to realize reality, you don't make up things like "death", you just look in front of you and describe it. It's like this: A kid looks at presents under his chimney and infers >>> Oh, that means I will meet Santa in the future! You are doing the same exact thing, you see someone's physical body get injured and infer >>> Oh, that means I will experience death in the future! In both cases, you've made something up that isn't the actual thing itself and never will be. It never will be, because the medium of concept/imagination can never touch reality or actually be real, ever. Although, you're welcome to prove me wrong, let me know when you do manage to experience the future.

Yeah, I think so. I am saying that I LITERALLY cannot fear death right now, no matter how hard I try, because there is no "death" in my experience. My state right now is just glued to the present moment. "Death" is just words on my screen right now, and then maybe some images of someone getting injured in my head. That's it. That's literally all it is. It's just thoughts and concepts and words. Death only exists as a concept. Literally. Your experience won't be your imagination of death. So there's nothing to fear. It's something you experience. You can't imagine experience. You're imagining some time in the future right now where you die, but it's just imagination. Anytime you think of the future it's completely useless to fear it because it is just a thought form. But also, death specifically is always an idea. It's just an idea you came up with to try and estimate some experience. It doesn't even point to anything real or substantial. Death is not physical pain. Death is not sensation or experience. It is literally just some human concept that says "Hmm, maybe my consciousness will disappear when my physical body dies?" <<< this question/concept is LITERALLY all that death is! This is death! The reason you are confused about death is because you are not experiencing it. If you were experiencing it, there would be no confusion. Now, I ask, how are you fearing something that you do not know or experience? There's literally nothing to fear! I'm not playing semantics, this is not hopeful thinking, there is existentially absolutely nothing for you to fear right now. You are just imagining a description of "death" in the form of thought, and then using that as a proxy to invoke fear. It is just thought.

Yeah, me. I'm not experiencing "death" right now, so I can't fear it. Most people operate this way actually, until they THINK about death, but most people are not enlightened and they are stuck to their self-image, so then this brings up a fear in them that feels very real. Experience can't die. It just changes a lot. The physical body might stop operating at some point, but of course, that is not my experience right now, and even if it was, that would not be death either. It would just be physical pain or something. Whatever idea you have about death, is not death, so you worry about something that is not, and probably never will be. To put it more succinctly, you need enlightenment or some drug-induced state to transcend the fear of death, probably. But the latter is temporary.

Yes, exactly! That is the true intended purpose of that emotion, before it is co-opted by thoughts about yourself. By the way, thoughts are always ABOUT yourself, they are not your ACTUAL self, which is your entire physical experience. Thoughts are just thoughts. You are you (not thoughts). What I said actually applies to ALL negative emotions in ALL situations. So, if you extrapolate this method to your entire experience in general, your life might blossom into something really beautiful, you might even achieve enlightenment or something.

There is no visual experience of tree AND cat, because you are referring to TWO visual experiences (as you have separated tree and cat). There is one visual experience, which has tree and cat. You separate it and abstract the experience through thought. The difference you're experiencing is not distinction. When you say "difference" you are referring to visual perception. Distinction is you splicing up the visual perception through thought. A flower has no capability of distinguishing itself into something else, because when it distinguishes itself, it's not a flower anymore, it's a thought/distinction. Anything that exists cannot reduce itself down further. Experience cannot "distinguish itself", it can only create a THOUGHT (which isn't experience) that imagines a distinction. The letters are experienced differently but they exist at the same time as everything else in your experience, so it can't be distinguished as "a letter" or "B" or "A" until you think of it first. Everything in your experience exists at the same time as eachother, so therefore distinctions of "a cat", "a tree" or "a letter" are not accurate to what you are experiencing (because you're separating experience with labels) and therefore they are NOT the experience itself. Sure. Sure, but that's just a human conception (which is created through words, thoughts, and other methods of communication). The concept is never the actual thing itself, it's just a method of communicating or describing experience. Maybe, but distinction is just a specific type of thought which describes an abstraction of experience. It's just a thought. It might seem like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, so I'll try to bite at the main contention. You're saying the actual physical experience, or any aspect of actual experience, IS distinction, which is wrong. Distinction is just thought ABOUT experience, not the actual experience it is describing. Experience is infinite and one. If you look at a painting of Mona Lisa, the entire painting is one thing, although you are still experiencing SOMETHING (the painting). But, this SOMETHING you're experiencing is still one and it has no distinctions. Then, your thoughts come and say "Mona Lisa", "human", "background", which then creates a subtraction of experience through thought. Experience can never actually subtract itself, so it has to create a simulation of a subtracted experience through thought, but then that is always ONLY just thought, not the experience itself that it describes. A thought always ONLY factually exists as a thought. Nothing else. It doesn't matter how amazing or descriptive it is, it is never smarter than any other thought, it is never more intelligent than any other thought, because they're ALL JUST THOUGHTS. They are never the qualities of "intelligence" and "smartness" itself. When you say "human mind" here I'm just gonna assume you're talking about "human experience" or "the experience of being human" for lack of better words, correct me if this is a wrong interpretation of the term though. No, the human mind is just the human mind. Not two things. Not human mind + distinction. Just human mind. The distinction is just a sensory perception WITHIN human mind that it describes, and so it not the whole thing itself, and so it is not human mind itself. What you're doing from a metaphysical perspective is this: You're taking human mind, which is infinite and one, then you're subtracting a part of it through thought, focusing on that subtracted thought form, and then saying: "Human mind IS this subtracted thought form (distinction)" Really try to understand this: IF existence, at least theoretically, is one and infinite. I mean, you can try proving it, for example, try to point to the edge of your vision. But yes, IF existence is one and infinite, then "a cat" or "a tree" CANNOT exist, because all of these are just subtracted FORMS of existence and they only exist INSIDE existence. Existence is not JUST "a cat". Existence is not JUST "a tree". Existence is always the entirety of existence itself. And then any "distinguished" part of existence cannot be existence itself, because it's just a distinction/thought, not the entire thing itself.

Nothing. Thought forms. Things that aren't you and can't touch you. Fear is just paranoia of what doesn't exist. Paranoia is following "threatening" thought patterns, but of course, thoughts cannot threaten anything. Paranoia is just a radical and noticeable degree of fear. "Normal" and "functional" paranoia is just called fear or survival, but it is still ultimately paranoid, because it never makes contact with what actually exists. Fear is a negative emotion. It's a combination of two things, "negative" and "emotion." The "negative" part comes from thoughts. "Emotion" is just actual physical sensation. You can separate the two. The physical symptoms associated with fear are real, but they are simply things like adrenaline, heartbeat, excitement, etc. So, they can actually exist without the thought. It becomes negative when you associate it with thought, and then that's how fear is created. Otherwise, it's just a physical symptom, nothing negative or positive about it. It just motivates you to avoid danger, without any reference to future or past selves. Fear is just a personification of physical symptoms, and then that personification just exists as a thought form, which is ultimately not describing anything real or physical.

No, it's exactly not yourself. Fear is a subset of reality, not reality. You are reality.

No. Visual experience is not equal to distinction, which is thought. The experience of vision is infinite.