Tim R

@Adamq8 There are four underlying assumptions: - death is real and "happens" to "you" - there is such a thing as experience and it has an opposite: non-experience - experience "ceases" to be when you are dead - non-existence Contemplate those. Let's say your right and when you die, experience completely ceases to be. And it will be as if you had never been alive. But what would it be like to "stop"? Well you can't even call it "stop" because it didn't ever stop. There is no contrast. There never wasn't any "start", so there is no stop. Contemplate that. Maybe experience can never cease because it never began. Tell me, is the present moment something that is beginning or ending? Or is it timeless? How can something timeless "end"? And what about non-existence? How can non-existence "exist"? Is there such a thing as non-experience? And what is experience anyway? Are you experiencing the universe? Or is experience identical with the universe? And who are you? Are "you" something that can die? Are you bound by time? Or are you just an illusion and so your death? So there's a couple of things for you to contemplate. Always be careful with underlying assumptions when making metaphysical claims. What do you mean?

Here's a new perspective for you on spiritual traditions. We in the west are kinda spoiled when it comes to spirituality. We have it so comfortable. But when you look at the Aghori, you realize just how bizarre some spiritual practices can be. And how utterly foreign this is to us. Amazing documentary.

@cookiemonster But don't you see that the killing of this one chick is the manifestation of love for all chicks? And believe it or not, even for the killed one! Let me try to explain; You have correctly recognized that the stork did it for probably some good reason, like limited food supply etc. The mother loves her children and her own survival. So what is she supposed to do? Keep them all and therefore let all of them become sick or die because she couldn't provide enough food for everyone? Then where would be the love? This act is not loveless. It's the other side of love that we people don't like to look at. Love isn't always pleasant, but nevertheless, it is love. You are still attached to Love as this romanticized notion of Love as a pleasant, warm, cuddly emotion. But love is much more than that. Love includes the unpleasant. When you love your children, you sometimes have to be harsh to them - not in the sense that you purposefully want to inflict something unpleasant upon them, but something that they from their limited point of view will perceive as harsh and unloving, but which actually is a manifestation of your love for them. To give an example, let's say your child wants to eat a bunch of candy. And you say "okay, you can eat one or two snickers (or whatever)." And then your child starts complaining because he/she wants more. But because you love your child and you don't want him/her to become unhealthy and the teeth to fall out, you have to do something which the child will perceive as unloving and harsh (forbidding more candy) - but only because he/she isn't yet mature enough to recognize the love in this act. You see? Now you might say "but you can't compare refusing candy with killing your child!!" Actually I can. It's the exact same principle. Both are acts of love, the question is only: Are you mature enough to see that? Are you mature enough to get over the superficial appearance of doing something seemingly unloving and recognize the actual love behind it?

@StarfoxEpiphany It's very god that you have realized that it's not helpful or good to do these things. But then you need to move on, not "stop being a progressive". Again, I don't even know what you mean by that. But I hope you haven't retreated back into some sort of conservatism where you now dislike progressivism. This dynamic is very common among younger people these days; they grow up in stage Blue/Orange, start moving into Green and then experience a backlash which catapults them back into (sometimes an even deeper form of) Blue. The healthy thing of course would be to move on into Yellow. But then you are still, in a sense, a progressive. Only a stage Yellow progressive instead of edge case Green.

@StarfoxEpiphany And what exactly is it in this quote that made you "stop being a progressive", whatever that means? Because what Huxley is saying there has nothing to do with progressivism. Anybody could fall for the trap of doing evil in the name of good. Don't be foolish.

@Vagos How about not engaging in debates with such people? Oh right, that won't do (I'll explain later). Debates are an utter and complete waste of time. Ignorant people will not be convinced and no amount of reasoning will change anything about that. You need to be wise enough to understand that or you're just as foolish as them. It's a lovely relief to stop giving a f*ck about other peoples opinions and world views. My life is way too short to convince fools of what I think to be right, true or good. Is that really how you choose to spend your precious time? You'll soon be dead, remind yourself of that next time you're about to engage in some stupid debate. You seek approval. You want to convince other people because actually, you want to convince yourself. You want to know that you're right. You want to feel it. And when you're denied that feeling of approval and righteousness (*cough* self esteem *cough* ) and instead are confronted with this impenetrable wall of ignorance, you feel rage. You're attached to your opinions. See, if I truly know something to be true, I don't need to convince anybody of it. Stop taking yourself so goddamn seriously. Nobody cares. Learn to do the same thing.

Every coin has two sides

@Nahm Can't describe how much "yes!!" I'm feeling rn? beautiful.

Rest assured they don't. Obviously you should never overdo it with anything, but in the case of psychedelics, it's not because they'd otherwise "destroy your nervous system". They also have nothing to do with how old you look.

@Gianna You very well know the answer to that. Sitting quietly... there it is

Sounds like a bunch of unquestioned assumptions to me...

@RMQualtrough What's that supposed to be?

@Someone here My friend, you have deluded yourself. You don't know who you are and you think you're alone. If you actually knew who you are, you wouldn't be "terrified of being alone". Sometimes it's good news to be wrong. Snap out of it.

@Someone here Terrifying? To whom?

“There was a young man who said "God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that a tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad." Reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

@Alan Reji Imagine you as a human could love everything. What would that look like? Well, you would embrace and accept everything as it is, 100% here and now, without needing reality to be different in any way. Even if reality would be somehow different, you'd also accept and embrace it, totally. Existence is Love. Because existence never says "no", to anything. The moment something exists, reality has already accepted and embraced its existence by virtue of "allowing" its existence. Reality doesn't need itself to be any particular way, because it is everything there is. It can be whatever it wants to be, because there is no limit to reality (since there can't be anything "outside" reality to limit it/set a boundary). This is the infinite nature of reality. Reality is infinite love. It is it. Love is not something "on top of" reality/existence. Existence itself is Love. I personally haven't yet experienced "god", so I won't use that word. But I'm speaking from direct experience when it comes to seeing that existence is love, and so I'm equating Existence = God. The reason why hate, greed, war, evil, brutality, etc. exist is because they actually don't. This might sound very subversive thing to say, but you asked for it, so here we go; inspect "evil". What is it? What is its source? Let's for a moment set aside this whole Love thing and just look at evil. What do you mean when you say "evil"? And why do other people mean something else when they say evil? This gives you a clue. "Evil" or "bad" is all that, which in some way hinders, disrupts or threatens your own survival. Not only your survival as a physical organism, but also (and especially!) the survival of your identity, which includes your psyche, your ideas, your attachments, your beliefs, etc. So whatever threatens all that, you will deem evil or bad. So, evil springs from selfishness and attachment to identity. However, this limited identity that you've constructed is an illusion. If you would see through the illusion of your identity/self, you would become selfless. Literally. And this selflessness is what reality is. Because reality is not finite, it's infinite. No boundaries. No rejection. Only 100% pure, selfless acceptance of everything that is. It's Love. And everything is that.

Why would you have to mention Leo when talking about Spiral Dynamics?

Where do you want him to criticize Leo from? @Gesundheit2 From no particular position. I for example don't subscribe to any one teaching, school or dogma and neither does Leo (maybe his own lol), so that's really the only place you could come from. I'm not defending Leo here, but I don't think that he will dismiss the critique "no matter what". I've uttered my criticism over a couple of things he has said and I don't think he dismissed these things. When the critique is well-founded, he is rather open to it. I kinda agree with you on that one, but not necessarily in the case for Leo. He doesn't teach conclusive concepts. Obviously he needs concepts to communicate his teachings, but what he's pointing to is not concepts. (...and I don't think that's what this guys was saying anyway, he was going more in the direction of "Leo has misunderstood something and then build a house of misunderstanding on that basis").

I think the general point he's making - namely the fact that a foundation of ignorance will distort everything one builds on top of that - is important, reasonable and valid. @Dazgwny I don't think he's "full of shit", that's inconsiderate and leaves out the valuable things he said. However, everything he said in this video can basically be condensed into: "Leo has Miccā Diṭṭhi (wrong views)". That's it. He just says that Leo's views are wrong. He doesn't say what exactly he thinks is wrong with Leo's views. He seems to cling to the Buddhist teachings. The whole frame within which he interpreted and criticized Leo's view is that of Buddhism. So that's not a good thing. He needs to step outside Buddhism.

Detachment is not a kind of unfeeling or isolated distance to what is going on in the world or to reality, People wonder how it is possible to cultivate virtues like compassion and empathy while at the same time being detached. But the truth is that detachment is not some kind of dualistic form of detachment, in other words, you don't "distance" yourself from the world, as if you would isolate yourself. You don't say "I don't care". You don't say "no" to the world. Actually, detachment is saying "yes" to the world. Why? Because detachment goes hand in hand with intimacy. The duality between detachment and intimacy is an illusion and will eventually collapse, when you inquire long enough. Detachment (i.e. also intimacy) is somewhat like the relationship of a mirror to the reflection it contains. On the one hand, the mirror is completely detached and not influenced from and by its reflected content, on the other hand, the intimacy between the mirror and the contained reflection is total. In fact, it is so close and so intimate, that there isn't really any difference between the two. You are aware of the mirror in terms of it's reflection and vice versa, you see the reflection as the result of there being a mirror. You can never truly attach yourself to anything. In fact, attachment is a great illusion. It can seem that you're attached to people, things and ideas, but in reality, you're like the mirror. The mirror is not attached to its reflection. The point is therefore not to let go of attachments, but to realize that the attachment itself was an illusion the entire time? And I'll go so far and say that "Indifference" is actually a form of negative attachment. Because it's avoidance. And avoiding something is not being detached. So, if you were truly detached, you wouldn't have to avoid anything. Notice, how this is also the attitude of Love.

Very solid and healthy Green, definitely some Yellow as well.

@Swarnim Nice, good work. Try not to get (too much) hung up on bliss. Its a great thing and shows that you're doing the right work, but it can lead you to believe that "bliss" is the goal. And that ordinary everyday life is somehow "inferior" to this blissful state of consciousness. In Zen they warn about this and say: "The monk who has attained Satori goes to hell as straight as a flying arrow." So when you think you have "attained" the goal/enlightenment/bliss or whatever - therein lies the trap. Because it sets up a duality. So, you let the bliss come - and then you let it go.

He has had a massive backlash. His green shadow is enormous and he is deeply ingrained in stage blue and red. The way he talks about women or "effeminate" men is just next level ignorance. He talks about things which he doesn't understand in the least (I'm not condemning him for that).

@blankisomeone You need a reason to believe that the game is real.