Tim R

@Someone here Didn't you read my post?? To speak of a "Present moment" would set up a duality, wouldn't it? If there's a "present moment", then there must be something which is not present, right? But how could there "be" anything (presence = being) which is not present, aka which is not? There can't!! Non-existence doesn't exist! Existence is absolute, there is no opposite to "it". That's infinity. No boundaries, no beginning, no end. That's what the "present" actually is. The present is just another word for Being. Present/ Presence= Being = Infinity All you have to do is realize that the present is not a temporal thing. You have trouble realizing what the present is because you think it's (part of) time. Time does not exist. But you must take this insight beyond philosophy.

@Someone here What makes you so sure that time exists? I know you've heard this over and over so I'm not going to repeat any of it here. Past, present, future - all these exist in your mind and nowhere else. Yes, even present. Even "Now" is a thought. And me talking about infinity and nothingness, all that is also just thought. "What is?" Wrong question, it can't be answered. Think of it, with what would you answer it? Obviously just with more of what is. It's a bottomless, infinite mystery. So my question to you is; What makes you think that there is such a thing as "now"? What if it's something like "up" or "left" or "tall" ? An abstraction? A projection? A thought? Maybe "it" is just that and nothing more?

What has no beginning and no end? Now. That's Infinity. How could "now" begin? When would it begin? Obviously never. And when does "now" end? Also never. When would it end? Now?? So you see, "now" is not like a frame. A frame is finite. It begins and ends. Now is in-finite. How do we make sense of something which is not finite? Does such a "thing" even exist? Does "the present moment" even exist? Yes and no. "It" doesn't exist. There is no "NOW!!" like a split second. No "present moment" which comes, exists for a fraction of a second and then goes like you imagine silence CLICK silence But infinity does exist. More accurately; Infinity = existence. What you call "the present moment" is actually just existence. It's infinite fluctuation. "It" never happened. There is only existence, but existence doesn't "happen". Coming into existence = Going out of existence = Neither of both actually ever "happen" because "both" are infinity = Emptiness There is only infinite happening = Nothing happening You must understand what infinity means if you want to understand the present moment.

@Holygrail Oh but the realization of nothingness can go deeper. You've just begun to get in touch with Emptiness and so far, your understanding is almost exclusively on an intellectual level. You still believe in "somethingness" if you're honest with yourself. Only because you have seen through a belief intellectually, doesn't mean that you feel it. But you can. You can feel yourself as nothing and the world as nothing, or both. You will lose your sense of weight. The world may appear like a dream or a hologram. It can be a bit frightening at first, but even that is only because you still think the world is supposed to be something?

Sorry mate but that's just BS. Having bad eye sight is also Truth.

@Goldzilla Wtf bro. You're not actually suggesting that if he had "integrated" the practices, he wouldn't need glasses?

I like her too, but still think she's a bit too Neo-Advaita for my taste. This whole "you are enlightened, there's nothing for you to do"-schtick is not helpful in most cases and mostly just creates delusion and suffering in beginners. If you want to find, you must seek. You must even seek when your very seeking is what prevents you from finding. Because only by realizing that you can't find, you will find. What she says is of course true and you can't find what you've never lost. But you think that you have lost something. So what "finding" means in this context is not "regaining what was lost", but realizing that you have never lost anything to begin with! But you must find that out!!

@KennedyCarter Red meat doesn't cause cancer tho. There are studies which suggest that the consumption of red meat is associated with certain types of cancer. But that's not at all the same as "red meat causes cancer". Always do your own research, don't just believe what you have read or heard somewhere.

@ivankiss That's beautiful and truly wholesome. Uniting "illusion" and "reality" requires Love. For this duality, which one has so worked on creating previously, must finally collapse as well. The Zen Master Dōgen says: "Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters."

@Holygrail Yes, you got it. When "nothing" and "something" collapse, Nothing remains.

I just found this Meta-Analysis on the relationship between breakfast and its impact on mental health. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33314992/ Results: The total sample size of all selected studies was 399,550 individuals with age range of 6 to ≥65 years old. We found a significant positive association between skipping breakfast and Odds Ratio (OR) of depression (pooled OR: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.34-1.44), stress (pooled OR: 1.23; 95% CI: 1.04-1.43) and psychological distress (pooled OR: 1.55; 95% CI: 1.47-1.62). In contrast, there was no significant association between skipping breakfast and anxiety in all age cohort (pooled OR: 1.31; 95% CI: 0.97-1.65). However, subgroup analysis based on age stratification showed that there was a significant positive association between skipping breakfast and anxiety in adolescences (pooled OR: 1.51; 95% CI: 1.25-1.77). Conclusion: In conclusion, skipping breakfast was positively associated with odds of depression, stress and psychological distress in all age groups and anxiety in adolescence, underlining impact of breakfast on mental health. Wasn't sure if this belongs in "Self-Actualization" or "Health, Fitness, Nutrition", because it's actually a rather important issue so I thought it's better if many of you know about this, since we have a lot of rather young members here and surely a lot of people who skip their breakfast. It seems to be a rather modern phenomenon.

He released this video almost 4 weeks ago and it has over 300K views. Usually his videos top out somewhere between 30-70K views, how did this video generate this (relatively) enormous amount of views? Is there something more down to earth about it? Not really, right? Or is it because of this dope ass thumbnail?? Congratulations Leo, it's been a while since your videos made almost 100K clicks a week. You could probably easily make over 1M views within a month with videos like "how to get laid" or something like that... And I guess many of your subs crave this practical kind of stuff, not just how to get laid but this type of self-actualization stuff in general. Guess most of your subs are from your first few years on YT.

By thinking that it knows what's up, society engages in a perpetual cycle of delusion which is transmitted through the generations and which only finds an end in individuals who break out of the socially reinforced ways of perceiving reality.

Yes of course. There are hundreds of factors. The point of my thread was to get the skippers among us who experience psychological distress to rethink their habits - because I usually skip breakfast and I've noticed that if I don't do that, I tend to feel better. So to those of you who are like me: experiment! "This is in contrast with the results of a study indicating that breakfast skippers had better quality of life and lower levels of stress and depression than breakfast eaters who ate a poor or very poor quality breakfast. In addition to breakfast skipping, quality of breakfast is another factor affecting mental health. Inconsistent findings mentioned above might be explained by different quality of breakfast eaten. It has been shown that individuals who ate a good quality breakfast containing cereal or other grain based products and dairy products, had higher scores of quality of life and lower scores of stress, depression and psychological disorders than those who consumed a poor or very poor quality breakfast." This however seems to indicate causality between life quality and breakfast. Having a shitty breakfast will mess with your hormones and even your neurotransmitter production and make you feel like crap. I actually think the causation originates from skipping breakfast (in most cases). I even think that for people who skip breakfast because they are psychologically stressed, having breakfast would partially mitigate their psychological ailment. Eating is just too fundamental of a human need and I can't imagine how not satisfying that need in a proper way would make you feel better?

Nice

No it's not. I've experienced both and I can tell you that they are very tricky delusions. They are not the recognition of emptiness/nothingness. In DP you still identify with many things and ideas, which is why DP makes you suffer. You still think that you are "inside your head". That you are the witness, separate from that which is witnessed. In fact, this separation is extremely strong in DP. In DR you still cling (not consciously of course) to the duality of real-unreal. That really depends on the psychiatrist. The problem with modern day clinical psychology and psychiatry is that they don't know very much (or anything) about these things, which is why they treat them as "anomalies" (which they are of course!). But anomaly =/= pathology, and even the psychiatrist knows that. No-self can't make you suffer. Only self can suffer. The problem with "categories" like schizophrenia is that they are used (nowadays fortunately less often than in the past) for psychological phenomena which are not accounted for in Western psychology. So it really doesn't matter if I experience some spiritual awakening and a psychiatrist would label me as "potentially psychotic" or whatever. Isn't that so? What does he know about no-self? What does he know about consciousness? What does he understand about thoughts? About Love?

And I guess we'll just ignore that you approach completely lacks any nuance. "Don't take psychedelics, bad idea". Really?

It's true that you can't always know that, but: in most cases, you actually do know about it. You don't just live a mentally sound life without any issues or salience whatsoever and then bam! suddenly you're psychotic because you've taken 3g of mushrooms. It doesn't work like that. If you have a predisposition for psychosis, you probably have something else too. Dude. No. I would agree with you on the dp/dr thing, but most certainly not on the rest. I have had all my awakenings spontaneously and while I was sober. This has nothing whatsoever to do with psychotic predispositions. Seriously, how do you come up with this stuff? Do you even know what an actual psychosis is? The difference is that with spiritual awakening, you deconstruct your mind in a conscious way. Spiritual enlightenment is not predisposition for psychosis. You really have to explain that one to me. Wouldn't necessarily say so. Spiritual enlightenment has been known and recorded by humans for thousands of years. In most cases, there actually is. Because in most cases, you will have some sort of symptomatic which gives you a clue that there's something slightly off. If not that, someone in your family has had psychotic episodes.

That's wrong, period. This is a relic from the 60s, where politicians used to fear-monger with "acid-casualties". Psychedelics can't make you schizophrenic or psychotic. They can only trigger already existing predispositions for psychosis (schizophrenia is considered to be a form of psychosis). Which is why you should better not take psychedelics if you have struggled with mental problems of this kind. But for a healthy individual, your point does absolutely not apply. The science on this issue is very clear: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114568039 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114565653 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747247/

"You're so stupid, don't you realize that you are God?" Look at this. This is absolutely fascinating. How Jordan reacts to hearing that he might be God. Immediate retraction into a context of clinical psychology. "Let's not get into anything spooky here" kind of attitude? He suspects it, he's interested in it, he wants to know but he's not ready yet. He wants to push himself a bit and he definitely does. Lately he's been talking unusually much about psychedelics, have you noticed? Great discussion, damn I love this stuff❤ I think the day will come that Jordan will have a mystical experience that will shake him to the core. He's too curious, he must know. And I'd bet my money that he has either seen Leo's video on him or that he will see it in the near future. I even think that he has already discovered it after he has discovered Leo, because in his question for finding out about God he must've come across at least one of Leo's videos on God. Only of course he can't start talking about that because Leo's stuff is - as we all know - too radical for talking about it on his podcast. It's fascinating to watch his development. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that he nearly died a year ago and that got him in touch with transcending survival and now he's interested in mysticism. Who knows. Let me know what you guys think?

- On the nature of illusion - Is illusion real? Duality illusion - reality - What are illusions, why do they exist and how they work - Giving and explaining a few examples of illusions, starting with basic stuff like the value of money and getting into more existential things like time or the sense of self, the mind, etc.

i think some of you seriously need to read into what "cult" actually means. This is getting ridiculous.There's a guy on YT and his internet forum. That's it. What bloody cult?? Only because there's a few people on a internet forum who can't think for themselves, that doesn't justify throwing cult accusations around. @AdeptusPsychonautica There's nothing wrong with pointing out dangerous or potentially harmful behavior - in fact, that's obviously a very good thing. But the way you misinterpreted, misrepresented Actualized.org, Leo, the forum, the members and then went on to insult "the vast majority" of Actualized.org members as "fucking imbeciles"is just embarrassing and childish. Your video was mostly not a thoughtful critique, it was about "I'm right, you're wrong". I'll say it again, that's embarrassing and very childish. Your generalizations of the members of this forum are outlandish. There are many mature and wise people here and I'm sorry that you've been harassed by some member(s), but that doesn't justify the way you spoke about the members and Actualized.

What makes you think that gender is not a construct?

You're right, we are not conscious. The truth is much funnier. We are consciousness - just like you. If you think that we are something like unconscious "NPCs" in "your dream", then congratulations, you're deluded and have not yet understood the essential nature of consciousness.

Well said? However, it's not possible to prevent confusion entirely. And if we're going to engage in discussions about various spiritual topics, we have to consciously take into account that there will be confusion, no matter how careful and responsible our choice of words may be. I disagree. "More accurate" is your interpretation as the listener. I don't think you can accuse someone of making "inaccurate statements" when it comes to such ineffable aspects of reality (and yes, they're no more ineffable than talking about ice cream, but let's pretend they are). So there's that problem. Language is inherently limited and when talking about god, consciousness and love, you will be seen as woo woo and nonsensical (to "normies" or people like Adeptus), no matter what you say (of course that doesn't mean that we should be totally careless)