Fran11

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

No, the exact content isn't as important as the way in which it's framed and justified IMO. It's not the same saying something like "Women generally tend to be more emotional than men becouse of brain chemistry, so they tend to perform better at different jobs than men" than to say "Women are all emotional and irrational nutcases, and should never be allowed to do X job". The content is somewhat similar, but one comes from a place of genuine non-judgamental analysis, and recognizes it's a limited generalization which doesn't apply in every case. The latter doesn't provide any supporting argument and it's judgamental, hateful and absolutistic. But yeah drawing an exact line would be extremely diffcult. Thanks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus

There is not one absolutely right perspective on this of course. But I feel the line should be drawn according to wether the speech is coming from a genuine non-judgamental place of thoughtfulness, or out of an emotional and phobic reaction. For example, saying "I think X group/minority/ethnicity/gender is prone to having X trait becouse of..." in a not judgamental way, although could still be offensive to those people, I wouldn't consider it hate speech nor I think it would be healthy to censor it. Whereas a speech along the lines of "X group/minority/ethnicity/gender are all a bunch of evil and stupid weirdos and should not existst becouse their presence bothers me" is clearly coming from a place of phobia and hate and drags society down.

I will focus on Psychology as an example, becouse I remember making a point about this on the forum, and it's a good time to elaborate becouse it ties in beautifuly with the series Leo is currently releasing. On a thread about Law of Atracttion, a user was arguing for phsychological explainations of LOA, as if those somehow contradicted or were incompatible the spiritual ones. Really, what happens Psychology studies the mind by making models, and Mysticism studies the mind by direct consciousness. (Although everything is Mind, here I'm calling "mind" the low-density forms of consciousness wich the layman would also conder "mind"). What we consider mind is a low-density/amorphous/fluid/sublte form of consciousness. Matter is just a more condensed/gross/concrete form of the same Mind. This is why Magic and The Occult are great disciplines for colapsing the difference beetween mind and matter and realizing the imaginary/mental nature of reality. This is also easy to realise on Psychedelic trips. As you up your doses, Imagination becomes progressively more concrete and dense. So, the point is that the phenomena which Psychology stuides in an asbtract way, actually happens on a subtle plane on consciousness of which you can be conscious in various degrees. Scientific models decieve us so deeply that we convience ourselves of the existance of abstract human constructs which are never found in actuality. The deception goes so deep, that professionals study the mind without really knowing what it actually is at all. Mind is not some hidden structure sitting somewhere inside your brain, consisting of and Ego, Supergo and Id, and performing actions such as Attention, Cognition, etc. That's a model. Yes, it's useful, consistent, can make predictions, etc... But it doesn't exist in actuality!!!

Perception is existence. There's no existence and it's perception. I'm not gonna try to convience you of this, nor should you take in on faith if you haven't had that insight. It has been discussed extensively on many Leo's videos and other threads. Not to be rude but it's just not this thread's point.

Of course it is, I love studying it and it's extremely useful. I'm focusing on the limitations and traps of modeling in science in general here, using psychology as an example. I'm not throwing them away or saying they are inadequate. Just like consciousness of your sensorial experience can be radically increased, the same is true with mental phenomena. No models involved.

Welcome

Nice picture, would be great for the series. A representation is also an actuality, but the problem comes when you confuse the actuality of the representation for the actuality of the thing it represents.

COVID statistics comparisons are not easy to interpret, and are almost always presented in a very biased way according to what the presenter is trying to "prove". The major traps I see are: - Using Absolute Numbers instead of Per Capita Corrections. - Comparison of countries in different Stages of the Pandemics (Europe's Second Wave VS Other Countries' First Peak). - Not taking into account Population Density, nor Living Conditions and Infrastructure. These are factors which greatly differ from country to country and affect the spreading of the disease indenpendently of the Government's measures. And their effects are not quantified becouse that would be extremely difficult. So, all the conclusions about Government's effectiveness based on simplistic numeric comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt.

That's in part becouse the Libertarian ideology draws the freedom line by making a simplistic distinction beetween direct and indirect causes. It's the same with economics. They will only consider something a restriction on freedom if it's something done directly by an individual or the state (high taxes, armed robbery), but not if it's an indirect consecuence of the workings of whole system (difficulty to start a small bussiness, or to rise from povery).

Definetly! Integration is the ultimate mastery. Contemplating how each of the energies can enhance something is very useful, I like it. Nice feedback

I've been working on this for years now, and I want to share with you this simple 3 step method I came up with: 1. Learn how to identify these energies (and lack of) both in yourself and others. - Start by identifing them in yourself. Become really good at this. You should be able to feel them as clearly and distinctly as you feel heat and cool, don't be fuzzy. This is crucial. - Notice how they fluctuate troughout the day, and what thoughs and situations make them do so. - Notice that you (and everybody else) lean more towards one of them. Even tough the energies constantly fluctuate, you spend much more time leaning towards one side of the spectrum than towards the other. - Notice that many men, although they outter appearence may be very masculine, lean towards the feminine, and the opposite with women. Don't let superficialities and social conventions fool you, learn how to isolate the energies. 2. Learn how to charge yourself with both. - Imagining you are other people/animals This is the easiest method. Choose a person or an animal which you strongly identify with one of the energies and imagine you are it. You should feel yourself being filled with that energy. - Direct invocation When you've mastered the previous method, you can directly concentrate on the energy you want to charge yourself with, and be filled with it. You can also imagine that you are breathing that energy while visualizing it in some color which you feel represents it. Don't do it only with the energy you have more difficulites integrating, you must master both to perfection. 3. Be mindful of your energies troughout the day and adjust moment to moment. Once you can quickly charge yourself with whatever you need, it's up to you to judge what kind of balance you need for the different situations you face. Sometimes it will be better to polarize towards one side of the spectrum (for example, if you are playing some rough sport, you are better off polarizing towards the masculine), but most of the time you'll wanna gravitate around the center. There's so much that could be said about this topic, but it would make it too long. Let me know if you have any questions, or other useful methods. Hope it's helpful!

Great, stick to whatever perspective works for you.

Yes, I understand your perspective. I don't consider mantaining Mindfulness throughout the day a practice, it should feel like the opposite of a practice really. Is letting go of all neurosis and patterns and letting your actions flow spontaneously. My point with Step 3 is that once you have learnt how the Energies work, then just out of mantaining a certain level of consciousness, the balancing in daily life will come naturally and intuitively. Is not that you have to be constantly thinking about it.

No, I don't recommend approaching it that way. Mindfulness should be light and effortless, if you mantain a certain degree of it throughout the day, it will be smooth and spontaneous to balance the Energies (after having learnt how to charge yourself with both). That's my approach. But now I see how it could be misinterpreted becouse of how I worded it, so it's good to have the opportunity of clarifying.