Oppositionless

@Yimpa 😂😂

this is how the first blog post is coming so far. not quite sure where to go next but it's close I'm open to feedback , just please be kind lol : How I Used Spirituality to Avoid Development, and an Unconventional Take on Spiritual Bypassing There’s a difference between believing something profound and experiencing something profound. And there’s an even bigger difference between experiencing something profound and becoming someone profound. I began engaging with spiritual ideas at a young age. It began in Catholic school, I would go to church and feel moved, sometimes to tears. I felt as if I was making contact with something beyond myself, maybe God, or maybe just an indescribable something which transcended my material life and was simultaneously full of love. When I was 15, a friend of mine who was older and cooler than me introduced me to his new religion, called Wicca. He told me about magick (as opposed to magic) as a ritualistic method of advancing ones life by harnessing universal forces. He also introduced me to the power of psychedelic drugs, and astral projection, which is the ability to consciously eject the perceiving self from the physical body. This was simply the coolest thing I ever heard of. I didn’t join his religion but I began reading, and watching videos. I tried, and failed, to astral project until I got sick of trying. I learned about nonduality, the idea that the self (the ego) is an illusion and that transcending it leads to liberation, the end of suffering. While I was learning, I was also developing a not-so-subtle feeling of superiority. I was in high school and later college, and I believed that the people around me, even my friends, were ever so slightly lesser than me, that I was wiser and more enlightened than them because I had the secret knowledge and they did not. Underneath this was, ironically, a profound sense of inferiority. I had high-achieving friends with tangible, physical plans for their lives. They wanted to be lawyers, doctors, engineers and knew the steps to accomplish their goals. And something else was developing. This was an all-consuming need to discover the ultimate answers to life, the universe and everything with rigorous research, logic and debate. This was actually the beginning of my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but that wasn’t separate from an authentic spiritual desire. Some days I would spend up to 8 or even 10 to 12 hours locked into an internal quest for certainty regarding my new spiritual knowledge. If I found someone on the internet who disagreed, often on YouTube, I would post take-downs in the comment section. When I got a notification that someone had responded to my comment, I felt terror. Had they proven me wrong and thus undermined my entire ikigai? Hours upon hours of philosophy, and a handful of weird experiences along the way led to, not enlightenment or truth, but anxiety and many, many sleepless nights. Something needed to change, not for some hypothetical goal called “enlightenment” but simply for a decent, non-neurotic relationship with life and my own mind. Before I go into the specifics of how I began to change, I want to address spiritual bypassing as a phenomenon. This is, as the title suggests, an unconventional take on spiritual bypassing. Most people who spiritually bypass don’t have Existential OCD, they aren’t spending 12 hours a day in YouTube metaphysics debates. But the core thread, of using spirituality to avoid real growth, is quite common. There are as many examples of spiritual bypassing as there are spiritual seekers, and almost every seeker does it or did it along their journey. Some other examples include the person in an unhappy relationship who uses positive psychology to gaslight themself into believing their relationship is actually helping them, or the psychedelic user who trips faster than integration can keep up, taking ever-higher doses in the hope of finally “arriving.” Surrender, Courage, Discipline, Compassion. For me, bypassing was about creating a sophisticated artifice of spiritual knowledge to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty, and with uncertainty, tangible action and development. For others it could be quite the opposite, using spiritual ideas or experiences to avoid the uncomfortable certainty life sometimes gives us. Either way there is an avoidance of reality going on, and being avoidant towards reality stalls personal development. This leads to the first virtue which has been changing my life: Surrender.

I've done that too and it was great. What I found even better was that while I do that I'm also mindlessly raising my state of consciousness. The past few months I have become a consciousness-raising robot.

Not calling you out, but this illustrates the point. The fact that in your brain you automatically equated what I said, philosophy and contemplation, with spirituality as if they're the same, is the problem I'm pointing out. Truth is everywhere! It's not just in your head!

@theleelajoker I was just thinking about how actually Daniel Ingram's stages of insight actually makes sense of my current situation better than OCD. Called out. Lol.

The belief that "understanding" ie creating elaborate mental representations of reality is the only right way to value Truth. Failure to recognize the simplicity of Truth. What would happen if you just took a break from philosophy and contemplation for a month?

Non negotiables: 1 blog post a week 1 YouTube video a week reach out to two potential practice clients a week IMO spiral dynamics post yellow breaks down . Yellow is the peak of SD imo . Because what it calls turquoise is simply nonduality / awakening ☯️😊

@JoshB Second this. And Tai chi!! Your meditation might not have changed your state very much. Both of these practices work the subtle energies. Kriya cultivates Yang and Tai chi or qigong cultivate Yin. BTW there's some confusion with this word Kriya. There is Kriya yoga, and Kundalini Kriyas. They're different, but probably both are good, but I've only done Kriya yoga. Kriya yoga is a seated technique, Kundalini kriya is more active!

Some people are genuinely ugly, but most of the people I vibe with are just anxious and a little (or a lot) sad.

@Eskilon That was a really nice video. Title was kinda click baitey lol. For those who didn't watch it, Dakota gave 5 meo to three different Sadhus. Two of them had profound experiences. So the ratio isn't 100% non-response but 33%. The guy who didn't get much from it, you can just look into that guy's eyes and see the realization. And after talking to him Dakota says something really deep: "There's a difference between experiencing something profound and becoming someone profound." When people don't respond to psychedelics, I'm mindful of the genetic component, but looking into that Sadhu's eyes I'm convinced it's more than genetic for him. Dude is simply There. Becoming someone profound isn't flashy, often isn't fun, and isn't easy, but it's the core of spirituality.

Indeed. But it's precipitated by experience. Not an experience but a lifetime of experience. Surrender, courage, discipline, compassion. Any spiritual path or technique is ultimately a footnote to Truth or Life. What are you embodying while undertaking these practices?

I agree but that might give the wrong impression. It's always a free choice, God's will is never forced upon someone. You can cultivate the type of attitude with practice that channeling God's will is a joy. Well I would say the surfer is impressive for his mastery, the climber is impressive for his bravery, especially if he tries again given the fall (assuming the analogy doesn't break down bc he dies). In another thread I said I see meditation as good because it takes discipline, psychecelics are good because they take courage.

@Oeaohoo A .1% increase in baseline consciousness could be the difference between depression on the brink of suicide and genuine peace, a sense of purpose, and a heart full of gratitude. I'm less than 1% higher in my baseline from when I was at my lowest. But I live in a different reality. If you're more interested in the truth angle than the liberation angle, then there's plenty of that too.

Self-Realization happens in an instant, but it usually doesn't stick. In Yoga it's called Nirvikalpa, vs the abiding state of Sahaja. Nirvikalpa is, in the context of serious practice, common. Sahaja is quite rare. And then beyond Sahaja there are levels of baseline consciousness which are indescribable but can be glimpsed through psychedelics- this is sometimes called Turiyatita or the God-state. If I were to give an argument against psychedelics, it would be that they might make people ambivalent about raising their baseline state (although for me it was quite the opposite). Which is a tragedy, raising the baseline is far more important than glimpses.

@Oeaohoo just do the best you can with the tools you have available. If you raise your baseline by 5% over the course of many years everything will fall into place and your life will be beauty incarnate. When I use the word genetic I'm not just referring to physical genetics. I'm essentially referring to Rupert Sheldrake's idea of morphic fields, which encompasses the physical, astral, causal, ancestral, past life etc all rolled into one. The True Self is available to anyone who does the work, you just might not reach uninterrupted ecstasy in this life, and that's okay, part of the spiritual path is letting go of outcomes. Which is hard.