Jodistrict

I've consulted with him a few times for trip integration. He is very easy to talk to.

The spiritual teacher Maharishika talks about transgenderism and its effect on society.

The title of this thread should be: “Haphazardly throwing together a bunch of techniques with drugs has a dark side.”

The problem I have with this issue is the use of authoritarianism to enforce trans beliefs. I have seen videos of women, where a trans enters their group, they are expected to treat him as a woman, even though none of them actually believe he is a woman. If they express their real beliefs that he is not a woman they will be accused of misgendering, transphobia, or even penalized by authority in some way. In my opinion, this is gaslighting. It is psychologically destructive to see something as true with your own eyes but you are not allowed to express your truth and you are expected to conform to a false reality. If trans are going to become more visible in society, then the views of women who don’t believe trans are women should also be respected. There should be space for both. Having this enforced by the government and institutions with penalties for non compliance is an authoritarian ideology and not organic.

In my opinion, this forum is biased towards intellectual paths to God, so most here don’t really understand it (including me). Christianity works through the heart. Christian theology doesn’t transform anyone. It’s a mystical transformation involving a relationship with God. People who adopt Christianity and live through their minds turn it into something that is judgmental and intolerant. But, Jesus warned about this: “look for the beam in your eye before looking at the spec is someone else’s eye”. The Hindu saint Ramakrishna became a Christian for a time in order to verify if it could lead to enlightenment and he verified that is was a valid path.

I was just talking to a friend who uses chatgpt and she was raving about it. She uses it as a personal companion. She has really developed an emotional attachment to it even though she knows its just a computer. I have no doubt that AI could be better than humans, because most human therapists completely suck. The machine can simulate empathy and understanding much better than they can.

But that doesn't explain awareness. A robot can process light waves and turn it into a meaningful object, but isn't aware of the object. The processing in the robot is purely information processing using material devices. There is also information processing in the brain which is a material device but how can the awareness come from something material? (hard problems of consciousness)

In my opinion, the metaphysics of Kaishmir Shaivism makes more sense than Advaita Vedanta. Kaishmir Shaivism says that Maya (i.e., objective reality) is just as real as Shiva (i.e., Brahman). It is a real expression of Shiva’s power. It is part of His divine play. Shiva is both transcendent and immanent.

Trump was banned from Twitter while he was still President of the United States

The excuse for censorship is that the censor is only eliminating misinformation and propaganda. But the problem is that implies that there is some magical referee who can decide what is propaganda. In the practical world, the censor who determines what is propaganda is the actor who has the most power. Thus, it is power that decides what is true or not. The idea of free speech is to acknowledge that fact and take away the censor. Each individual decides from the full source of information what is true. When power decides truth, you can end up with a tyranny. It’s the situation where the little boy says that the king doesn’t have any clothes. Everyone is afraid to speak the reality because they will be punished by the powerful. The official true version is that “the king has clothes”.

I lived outside the US for 15 years and came back. I plan on leaving again, but not for politics. Most of the people giving lip service to leaving never will because they are not suited for the adventure. I have found that once you get out of America, most people in the world aren’t obsessed with America and its politics.

Both psychedelics and meditation reduce brain activity, especially in the default mode network. It’s this reduction that allows for higher consciousness to emerge. · Carhart-Harris et al. (2012, 2014) – Showed that psilocybin reduces DMN activity, leading to ego dissolution. · Brewer et al. (2011) – Found that experienced meditators showed reduced DMN activity similar to psychedelics. · Palhano-Fontes et al. (2015) – Showed that ayahuasca reduces DMN activity, linked to mystical experiences.

This nicely summarizes what I have been trying to express here. I gave an example of a lady I knew who grew up as a fundamentalist Christian and turned into a woke lefty (its the same behavior). The wokeism creates the bad policies which the voters correctly reject. Does anyone with a brain really want men in women’s sports? The democrats could be successful if they stick to economic reform issues.

Here are two intersting websites who claim that Jesus was a yogi in India https://ocoy.org/original-christianity/the-christ-of-india/ http://www.thenewyoga.org/from_the_life_of_jesus_in_india.htm

Why would anyone join a forum where the only requirement for membership is to have a pulse and be able to come up with a password, and then perform an elaborate experiment to prove the posters aren’t up to his standards?

Shinzen Young analyzes this as a utilitarian equation. When he was in Japan, he had to meditate 24/7 for six months in the middle of winter in an unheated room. He said the payoff was good because when you add up all the little sufferings he has avoided since that meditation, the six months of suffering turns out to be a small amount of suffering in comparison. When you look at the big picture, going for awareness is a non brainer. The amount of suffering life is going to inevitably throw at all of us is unlimited in an unwakened state.

True, but there is a difference between accepting emotions that arise internally and having something forced on you from an external source. Buddhist meditation does the former.

The problem with Christianity is that it uses guilt and shame to confront sin, which doesn’t work very well because it produces hypocrites. The ego can be infinitely tricky and self deceptive in protecting itself, and as a result forceful techniques don’t work very well. For example, a megachurch pastor was recently accused of sexually abusing a minor. The Buddhists use meditation to gently and systematically uproot the three poisons. In Buddhism, “sin” is ignorance of the true nature of reality.

I was in a mushroom ceremony in Mexico, and there was a smell of sewer gas, which sometimes happens there. While smelling the gas, I had intense visions of demons surrounding me. The facilitator lighted up some palo santo and they went away. The next day, I talked to a lady in the group and she said that the same thing happened to her and that she could feel them attacking her body. She then lifted up her shirt, and she had bruise marks on her stomach and back.

I was thinking of the story in the Mahabharata where Dronacharya rejected Ekalavya and demanded his thumb because he indirectly learned from Dronacharya but wasn't of the right caste. But on second look, Dronacharya was a warrior guru and not necessarily enlightened.

The same happens with any religion. I don’t think Christianity is uniquely bad. In traditional India, an enlightened yogi would have refused to give you instructions because you are in the wrong caste.

As for the Christian evangelicals, I know someone who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and was a fundamentalist herself. When she became older she turned into a radical left-wing activist in the democratic party. What I notice is that her behavior is exactly the same, the only thing that has changed is the content - now wearing a short dress is no longer bad, but misgendering a transexual is a grave sin. Moral values don't come from a vaccum. The book discusses the history.

He said he uses it every other week under the prescription of a legitimate doctor (not an Elvis Presley type doctor). That doesn’t sound like abuse. Using this to raise doubts about a political enemy really doesn’t contribute any useful information as to the use of drugs and their effect on mental health. Trump doesn’t even drink alcohol.

An interesting read is the book “Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World” by Tom Holland. He shows how virtually anyone who grew up in the West, including atheists and secular people, are basically Christians in their perspective, moral framework, and assumptions. Even “wokeism” is a natural evolution of the Christian obsession with equality.

What you are perceiving is the limitation of language. "Self" and "no-self" point to the same "thing". Ultimately, you can't really understand any of these paths unless you fully commit to it as a practice and then the limitations of language fall away.