OneHandClap

What he calls the void is not the void. Leo's not even near the finish line, but I can tell you guys are attached to the guru image you have hoisted upon him. Again, if Leo were to come out and tell the truth - that he hasn't reached enlightenment in any traditional sense - it would make him look like a fool after spending so many years battling trolls on here. He can't afford to have the integrity to tell his followers that he was wrong. For a community based on "not believing," some of you sure are belief crusaders!

Lol, oh I'm aware. That's how Leo does things to keep control over the dogma... his teachings are sacred, higher than Buddha, higher than Jesus... if only the people who had spent 70-80 years training their minds through actual training, insight, and contemplation had just gotten their hands on some DMT! But hey, don't take my word for it. Peter Ralston, who was once Leo's #1 teacher, told him repeatedly to lay off the drugs and do the work. And the results of that choice are evident. Leo is attached to the label of God and has built a kingdom of beliefs around it. Maybe he has experienced the void beneath the God state, but to express that publicly would be an admission that he has not gone "all the way"... and that's not good for his business model of guru. But as Leo says, verify it. There are states deeper and more profound than infinite consciousness. If you are happy to hang out in God-bliss-land, however, suit yourself.

Good work. You realized "the void," which is far closer to your true nature than anything Leo has ever talked about. Leo is stuck on the God phase (AKA sphere of infinite consciousness, in Buddhism). He is unable to let go of that ground to realize the vast no-thingness underlying all phenomenal experience. Keep working with this.

Throne too big to fit through the door!

"I'm more awake than you..." "There is Absolute Will (being exerted on something)..." "My life..." Duality at work. Come on, Leo. Your insights are valid, but you are attached to the position of "supreme knower" through too much 5-MeO rabbit-hole dives. Show me 30 days of sober meditation, 12 hours a day, and let's see how strong your ordinary mind is. It seems like psychedelics are your shortcut to bypassing the work... Just like Peter Ralston told you years ago!

Because Leo and all the hardline solipsists want to believe they have no responsibility for other sentient beings and their welfare. It appeals to an egotistical, power-hungry mind that desires control. This is the critical divide between Leo and the Buddhists he loves to roast.

There's really no point in debating metaphysics with Leo, IMO. He did (and does) a bunch of 5-MeO and takes those subjective experiences to be the bedrock of reality. And because of the uber-solipsism bent, he is unwilling and unable to contend with alternative points of view that go against the Actualized dogma. And I know Leo is wrong, because I used my ultra-high-powered omniscience and Absolute Will to make it so! Just like he taught me All jokes aside, I do hope you "wake out" of your arrogant prison of beliefs, Leo. If you think Peter Ralston is not as awake as you (from my ultimate God POV, I can see he is likely magnitudes closer to the truth), you're just playing games with yourself. And as Wildflower pointed out time and time again, your metaphysical position that anybody who criticizes your teachings is not "fully awake" is nonsensical. If you were as awakened as you claim to be, none of us would even exist in your perception. You would be floating in an endless love-bliss-void of your own making. But seeing as there is still the duality in your teachings of believing there is any such thing as "Absolute Will," it's obvious there is more to go for you. And I don't know if there is enough DMT on this entire planet to make you see this directly. Hasta la vista, dudes. Beware who you deify.

Not sure (nobody is), but Buddhist teachers and those of other religions have said that it does incur karmic consequences. The reason is not so much punishment, but a reaction to the strong aversion present in the mind at the time of self-harm. In that sense, "you" are creating the seeds of the rebirth, not God.

Interesting. I need to find the source, but I believe there was a Buddhist teacher who said, "At one point, there may be only one or two objects to note. This state is very blissful, but it is still not the end. We must abandon even the bliss by noting it." Something to that effect, anyway. You are spot on to say that duality is necessary, because otherwise "no-thing" could not ever know or explore itself. It needs both sides of the coin to be what it is as a unified whole.

Yes, exactly. Animals have low self-awareness - they are dominated by sense impressions (hunger, fear, pain), and do not recognize the self-luminosity of awareness. This makes me believe it is possible for machines to develop self-awareness, and in some ways, to do it faster than humans. There will be less "physical" sensations about survival distracting them from awareness.

Hahaha Easiest answer is... that's what awareness does! It's aware... and it can turn the light around to realize that it is aware... of being aware... and that can extend to infinite consciousness. Tuning out sense objects/material sensations to get to the heart of that "knowing."

Because the only reason we're having this conversation is due to the material elements comprising our mouths, fingers, computers, radio signals... yes, awareness is primary, but in order to explore itself, it needs a medium. The brain is what allows us to form language and express ourselves in this medium. Therefore, artificial neurons could achieve the same purpose.

Why? The human brain is just a sophisticated collection of neurons. There is no reason we can't assemble artificial neurons in a similar manner to produce what we call "self-aware intelligence." The nature of that intelligence would be the same as in a biological being... it would just be expressed differently.

We will not create consciousness, but a collection of form (bodily elements/processors) that are capable of recognizing awareness as itself. This is truly the hallmark of "AI" - recognition of existing. When Leo says rock are conscious, he is saying that awareness/intelligence is present in every structure of the universe. But getting that intelligence to recognize itself as itself is the real challenge.

It is... and totally isn't

Yes, I suppose I can understand that. I've always come at it from a "via negativa" standpoint. Complete dismantling of any concepts (including ownership, words like God, etc). Anything that is rooted in concepts or language must ultimately be abandoned to exist as "it." Tricky, tricky. No wonder we've spent thousands of years prattling on trying to describe it. The never-ending game. But the more I say, the further I wander... Never has a true word been spoken about the Truth

Truth is what remains when all thoughts about it cease

I agree with this logic and your presentation of it, but I think Leo often goes a tad too far in trying to translate this into relative terms. Especially when he says things such as "Your Will creates reality." In your formulation, there is no room for will. Because will implies a self, a doer, an agent. Being isn't under anybody's control, and seeing as it transcends the duality of self/other, it makes no sense to speak about the idea of God "creating" based on Will. Whose will? Where did the desires arise from? Tl;dr I agree with you, but Leo is hung up on the agency/doer side of things IMO.

Even setting aside the logical flaws that others have pointed out in the thread, there's just something comical about the notion that physical reality is under the thumb of this God that's been imagined. Peter Ralston tried to set this straight when he said "There is no will in the Absolute," but here is the exact reversal of that statement... Leo, with all due love, you are trying to set up a kingdom of the super-Ego (here termed God) by claiming that there is a sense of control and will. There is no will. There is no control. And until you can release this last vestige of egoic consciousness, you are bound to keep living in your own dream of solipsistic power. Put shortly, there's a lot of mental games being played here. For somebody who is a self-proclaimed successor to the Buddha, Christ, and all other imaginary humans, there seems to be a lot of attachment to the story of "look at how profound my teachings are... I have gone further than anyone ever!" I would ask for a demonstration of your proclaimed reality-warping powers, but I have a feeling you'll answer with a non-answer such as "You don't believe it's possible, so it isn't possible." In other words, setting up an impossible challenge that can never be disproven or proven. Sounds a lot like Catholicism.

You're missing my point. "I" have "experienced" no-thing plenty of times, but that's the message... there is no experience one can recall of it. Because it's not... a thing. It's a lack of things. A potentiality beneath things. Edit: More to the point, there is literally not a single true word you can use to express the "qualities" of nothingness. Because all qualities are emergent from, latent within, and manifested as a modulation of nothing. But nothing, in itself, is a placeholder word. WokeBloke would be far better off trying to experience no-thingness instead of speculating about it logically.

There is no such thing as nothing, because nothing is no... thing. "Things" cannot be nothing. Nothing is a concept, especially mathematically. So I wouldn't try to wrap your head around the idea of nothing, because it has no form, no properties, no existence as a "thing."

I've made a decent amount from stock trading. It is not my primary job, though, only a means to finance what I actually enjoy doing in life. Crypto, I tend to refrain from on ethical grounds. It is hugely catastrophic on an environmental level, and, IMO, contributes to a worsening problem of equating value with valueless things.

Because suffering is not just a "crying in a ditch" phenomenon. It's subtle, too. Craving for new shit all the time, broken heart over breakups, mourning death... egoically driven life is untenable, exhausting, and ultimately fruitless. Religions talk about the abandonment of egoic consciousness in favor of finding one's true identity to cease all forms of suffering, both large and small. However, each religion's specific method of achieving this awakening is different, and some have been muddied more than others by "reinterpretation" and dogma over the centuries.

I dig the general vibe, but I don't necessarily agree with the "God has trapped itself" aspect. This is still an egoic framing of ultimate reality. You will find a way out of the aforementioned "prison."

I would take, in some ways, the opposite approach. Evil people are just as much a product of conditioning and karma as "good" people. The difference is that these "evil" people did not recognize the nature of mind, pristine awareness, and compassion. They were raised in brutal times and learned that brutality was the way of things, which their followers subsequently adopted.