Fran11

Great piece of advice. That would be a nice balance, progressively spending less time with them, but when I do, give my best to make sure it's a high quality time and they feel I care about them. Very true. I noticed this problem a coulpe years ago, that after spending some time on a social interaction, then when I was left alone, my mind still kept entangled with it. What helped me to greatly reduce it is noticing as quickly it arises and giving up my interest on that recent social interaction (desire that I had done something different, desire for more interaction, wondering things about those people, etc.) Thank you all for your replies guys, very much appreciated as always.

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do. I kinda feel bad about completely cutting them off becouse we've been together for so long, and they don't mean wrong. But as you say, we just took different paths in life, and the distance beetween our values and interests grows more and more. Thanks for replying, I appreciate it

Yeah, but following that analogy, you guys are like saying you cannot even reach that little handul of sand without Psychedelics Like I said above: My point is that Spiritual developement is Infinite even without using substances, although of course the progress is much slower (but lasting) without them, nobody disputes that.

Man I respect you a lot and I don't mean to come off as dense or offensive, but why are you so close minded about the limits of Spirtiual developement? Have you spent a couple years doing daily Imagination, Magic, Energy Work, Occult and those kind of more "vivid" practices so you can confirm that it's as limited as you think? Of course Psychedelics will always take you much higher your baseline, but you are greatly underestimating how high that baseline can go. You are free to disbelieve of course, but It's possible to do crazy things like becoming an inanimate object (which I have done) and even more amazing things like remote viewing (wich I haven't achieved yet but I know people who can).

Understandable. Hope it's been useful anyways

If hardware really was a limitation for Consciousness, then you wouldn't be able to reach Infinite Consciousness even thourgh Psyches becouse every hardware is limited Plus, you can separate your subtle bodies from your phsysical body (as in astral travels) and the brain and neurochemistry limitations will be long gone at that point. I'm suprised even you have such a materialistic view about this. I bet in a coulpe years of developement you will change your mind about this.

IME, the only way is thourgh very intense Imagination developement. I personally started doing Consciousness work before I even knew about Spirituality because of art. I recommend you check out the sensory concentration excercises in Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics. You'll notice that Imagination has sort of "levels of density", very much like Psychedelic hallucinations look faint at low doses, but they become very solid and concrete as you up your dose. You have to condense your Imagination as much as possible, that's the sign of progress. You'll notice your Mindfulness and Consciousness grow along with it.

What I ment is that I have reached the same level of consciousness that before would take a moderate dose of LSD for me to achieve. Now having that baseline, that same dose takes me even higher, as it usually happens to everybody with Psyches if they do Consciousness work. A great way to "lock-in" the Psychedelic consciousness is trying to recreate those levels of Imagination the days after the trip IME. It's like steroids for Imagination developement so they are still extremely useful for me.

Yeah you are right, but if you reach the same levels of Consciousness and Imagination, and can completely replace "reality" with your Imagination at will... what do NTs matter?

That can be done by Visualizations and high Imagination developement. Believe it or not I've been into those practices for five years now and my sober consciousness is at the level of a moderate dose of LSD. And before I just had a normie consciousness so I don't think I was born with any special hardware. I don't say this to brag but to encourage others that it is possible. Part of the reason people highly underestimate how high sober consciousness can go is because they explore Psychedelic states but then their daily sober practices constist manily of dry concentrations which take you in a completely different direction...

For non-enlightened beings, almost every thought has an implicit "I", the personal thinker. That's why in order to experience non-dual consciousness we need to either completely still the Mind (by Meditation), or rise our consciousness to the point where false identifications are not possible even if the Mind is active (by taking Psychedelics for example). An enlightened Sage can think and talk to you without "coming out" of non-dual consciousness becouse his Mind is rewired in such a way that thoughts no longer create the sense of duality, plus his Consciousness is so high that it cannot confuse itself with thoughts anyomore.

Yes, thoughts are consciousness just like the "external world", but the default way of thinking causes identification with the thoughts and creates a false sense of duality (subject-object illusion), that's why sometimes we talk about silencing thoughts / stilling the mind. For example, having a car in your direct experience is no problem becouse it won't make you feel like you are just a car, but with thoughts you get identified, and that splits your experience into subject-object. Why does consciousness gets identified with thoughs? - Becouse they are much subtler (less dense) forms of cosciousness than "physical objects", so it's harder to realise them as just objects of perceptions. They feel "too close". - And becouse of their specific form / content: "I" in the personal construct sense (often called "I-thought"). None.

I understad why some cultures might feel ofended and it's a conscious attitude to put oneself in their shoes and be comprehensive and respectful. But in practice cultural blendings and transformations are natural and inevitable. I mean, should cultural costumes have copyrights or what?

This opens the door to so many teasing possibilities I don't even know where to begin

I see. I'm not into the details of Brazil's politics, but the downturn of the economy must have definetly been an important factor. The economy has been badly damaged by the managing of the COVID situation (we're around 40% povery now), and still we've just reached the count of 30.000 deaths so it wasn't very effective for protecting our health either.

We've got to deal with immature people in everday life as well... so it's a good exercise

What do you think it's their motivation? Hello from Argentina BTW

Yeah that's disgusting, I've learned to identify those kind of users and just ignore them and cut the conversation right away instead of enaging in endless arguments... It's better to just let their egos have the last word and don't waste time with them.

That's just projecting your own Concentration skills onto others. You can develop your Concentration to the point where you can reach Samadhi in sober Meditation.

No need for a separate entity, God (aka YOU) wills the thoughts into existance.

Yes, that's a good way to put it because no concept can do justice to reality. This is a complicated issue and it requires accessing high levels of consciousness and very careful contemplation to really understand.

Consciousness isn't deterministic. But when it restricts itself to the Human dream it doesn't have unlimited Free Will either. There are degrees of Free Will according to level of Consciousness and Ego-Idenfication. The reason people argue that they can't stop/direct their thoughts and that proves no Free Will, is becouse they are trying to do so from a place of Ego-Identification and low Concentration abilies. Of course you can't stop/direct thoughts when you feel like you yourself are a thought. If you rise your level of Consciousness and develop your Concentration, you can stop your thoughts/direct them the way you want. That's Will. To the objection that the impulse to Concentrate came from no-where in the first place... yes, it came from no-where, and what made that exact impulse come out of no-where and no other, is precisely your Will. And to the objection that impulses/thoughts are determined by previous experiences... they are not determined, but they certainly are influenced and the choice is limited. That's why I say that within the Human-dream Free Will is not Infinite. The "No-Self" perspective is useful becouse it helps to realise the unreality of the Ego, but it's not the ultimate. You do have a Self... it's God So don't get too stuck on that once it has served it's propose, and go deeper.

Lesson from this thread: Be kind to dream people just in case LOL

I actually have. It would be creepy as fuck