kinesin

@kever Avoiding alcohol completely outside of rare social occasions/celebrations is probably the best way to use it. I do believe that when used very rarely, alcohol can have certain spiritual benefits, and also creates a brainstate which loosens inhibitions among groups which leads to greater cohesion. Anyone who's ever gotten drunk with friends and shared intimate information with one another knows about that. As far as drinking more often than that, it depends on how much you trust the data on its safety. In the UK for example the official medical advice is that anything less than 14 units of alcohol per week is pretty much safe (though not 100% obviously). 14 units is 7 glasses of wine or 14 single shots of 40% spirits. I would imagine that those numbers would be very different if the UK didn't happen to be a drinking culture, however. Why do I mention physical safety when you asked about spirituality? Well, keeping your body healthy is part of the spiritual practice. Another thing to consider would be how alcohol affects you personally. Does having a drink lead to changes in your behaviour, thinking, or the things you do? Are those changes spiritually beneficial or detrimental? Do they help your spiritual progress, or hinder it? Only you can answer this question for yourself. Acutely speaking, alcohol is utterly incompatible with traditional spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga or prayer. Don't believe me? Have a couple of drinks and then sit down to meditate, and see what happens. The 'monkey mind' is greatly increased, focus and awareness are practically gone.

@Giulio Bevilacqua I know what you're going through, I've been there myself. You'll be alright. It might seem scary right now, things feel very different, you're not sure how you can reintegrate back into life again with such a perspective... all of your fears right now are perfectly normal. I promise you though, that this fear will pass. Your feelings of uncertainty will pass and you'll feel safe and peaceful once again. Just give it time. You're realising now that things simply happen without input from 'you', that 'you' can sit back and watch yourself type out a thread like this, that your arms move as if by their own accord - so where does the fear fit in to all that? It's just another process like all the rest. Just another thing that comes and goes, only fear feels more 'real' because it's so firmly rooted within us. That's an illusion though, the fear that the fear won't ever end is just another part of the fear. It will end. When going through a difficult time, all you have to do is let time pass. Keep feeding yourself, keep drinking water, keep going to bed at a reasonable hour, keep doing all the mundane day to day things to keep your body in order and wait for the difficult time to pass. Sometimes it can take a while, but it will pass, nothing lasts forever. Just take a breath and let it happen, you're going to come out of this wiser than you were before.

Yes and yes. Imo psychedelics, meditation, yoga, study, other practices and also just general 'life' all have their proper roles on your spiritual development toolbelt. The issue arises when people start to think that a tool is either good or bad, or when they use the tool in ways that aren't beneficial. Psychedelics are no replacement for meditation, and they should be used sparingly. One of the most current analogies which is used to describe the function of psychedelics is 'neural annealing', which borrows a term from metallurgy wherein a metal is heated just beyond its recrystalization temperature causing the atoms to rearrange their positions. Once cooled, the metal then exhibits new electrical properties due to its more evenly balanced lattice structure. This analogy of annealing also applies to the way psychedelics induce a high energy state within the brain which overwhelms the usual activity in the default mode network resulting in changes to neural structure, and enabling broader connections between previously disconnected areas of the brain. If you anneal a metal again and again without any time in between, you don't really achieve much. Similarly, the most benefit can be gained from a psychedelic trip when it's done sparingly with the intention of breaking down and reintegrating neural structures which have formed over a number of months. EDIT: Here's a better description of annealing than I was able to come up with -

You seem to be under the impression that a person who truly recognises the absence of free will would behave differently. Why would that be the case? You're a human being, so naturally you're going to do all the typical things a human being does like get mad, feel regrets etc. Even after you recognise the lack of free will, you're still a human being.

@Tim R Now welcome to the curse of trying to share insight from the mundane perspective and having spiritual newbies tell you that you couldn't possibly comprehend the 'higher levels' they're on

@Godhead Just write more, and do it attentively. When you write something out, read it back to yourself - generally if the grammar or formatting is bad it'll feel stilted or awkward in some way. In my experience good grammar is a byproduct of properly ordered thinking, so if you want to improve it, focus on organising your thoughts. I just had a quick look over your comments though and I have to say, your grammar is fine. Do you see problems with it? Why do you believe you need to be able to achieve 'perfect' grammar?

To be clear, I only said allow yourself to be intolerant of fools. Don't force a positive outcome (such as forcing yourself to love fools) but likewise don't force a negative one. If your current form considers fools to be evil then this is fine, but if that changes and you find your views softening or becoming more empathetic to them, that's fine too. All of these thoughts and feelings are simply expressions of your human nature - these are traits and behaviours which evolved, they're built into your physiology as part of the wider perfect universal system.

Allow yourself to be intolerant of fools - the idea that you should be perfectly equanimous is a misconception perpetuated by those who have falsely claimed enlightenment in the past, and unfortunately gave the wrong impression that an enlightened being is essentially nonparticipatory in nature. Imperfect, undesireable human behaviours are part of our nature which evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and we should accept them gladly.

Intelligence is often a barrier to awakening, because an intelligent brain excels at creating elaborate mental models which the mind then mistakes for truth. Awakening doesn't require any thinking or processing at all, infact it requires a transcendance of those acts.

This is an opinion, and quite a vague and confused sounding one at that.

@justfortoday This is spiritual ego. You say one moment that it's merely belief, then the next you call it truth. There's nothing wrong with believing that you know the truth, however there is a difference between believing you know it and actually knowing it.

Never pay much attention to a person's words. A person can appear incredibly wise when communicating - saying truthful saying after truthful saying. Truly though there is only one way to know if a person has access to genuine truth, however, and that's to observe their actual life. When a person presenting themselves as spreading teachings does so without giving much impression of their life or using examples from their day to day experience, you should be skeptical. Many people use spirituality as an escape from their life, and although such people can often say truthful things, this is not the way.

@Inliytened1 It's the reduction of everything to dream which I take issue with, because to say such a thing only misleads people. I'm not saying that everything cannot accurately be reduced to a dream - it can, but without simultaneously accepting it as real only half of the truth is being expressed. I've seen people in this forum rejecting the reality of illusions for no other reason than they've been told that that's what they should do. They've been told that the end state of awakening has them permanently aware that everything is just part of the dream, and when they dip back into viewing it as real, they chastise themselves as if they've temporarily forgotten 'the teaching'. This is a problem. (if someone could respond to this telling me that the 'problem' is actually just part of the dream that'd be great, thanks)

@Carl-Richard Why is that a bad thing? Why does it even matter if the teaching self-terminates, considering it's just another part of the dream?

@Javfly33 Both are true simultaneously. Ever noticed how in people who claim to be experiencing continual oneness, that their actions often betray subtle signs that they actually still see distinctions? This is because only delusions of the mind can convince a person that the nature of reality is one or the other. It was a delusion to believe that everything is distinct, and a delusion to believe that everything is one. It is both at the same time.

I'm past that already. I went through the dream phase around 6 years ago and have long since reintegrated it. Don't fall into a trap of believing that just because I disagree that the dream realization is the end state means I don't understand it or am rejecting it. If you believe that, all you're doing is blocking yourself off from deeper insights. Everything is a dream, sure. But what do you find yourself doing, once you attain a constant state of detached mindfulness? You 'sit back' and watch reality play out. You watch yourself go places, you watch yourself saying things, you watch your hands typing on the keyboard, you watch your eyes scan over the words. In short you live the dream as if it were reality, because it is reality. Truly, it's the only reality which exists. What's the value in continually stating the obvious and telling people that everything is imaginary? That kind of behaviour is expected from a person who is new to the idea and still finds it shocking and exciting. The solipsist "no you don't get it, everything is just imaginary!" position is an inherently contradictory one because though it can be seen to be constantly treating the dream as if it were real, it denies that it's doing such a thing. Every day I see people in this very forum telling me that everything is just part of the dream, and they get angry when I disagree, and very rarely do they seem to be able to accept that if I'm a dream character who happens to disagree, then what difference does that make to anything? Let go of the dream hypothesis, and learn to reclaim reality within the dream.

I disagree, Leo, I think you actually don't understand it very well at all. Yet again you're mistaking your own views for the 'truth'. If you're to ever proceed beyond this stage, you're going to have to let go of these preconceptions at some point. Your actions continually contradict the things you claim to understand.

Part of the reason is because for me, such insights aren't usually shared, they're created solely for the process of my own development. I have a folder on my computer containing thousands of .txt files where I write my thoughts regarding such things (some of which similar to the content of this thread), and nobody else sees them because I never wrote them to be shared, but rather to gain insight through the process of writing. I'm a big believer in the power of writing for the development of insight, however I understand that most of the time when people write, it's being posted directly for others to read. With this perspective in mind, I believe OP's motivation was to further develop his own understanding by putting it in writing. Writing is only half of the equation, however, and when sharing writing, interpretation should be the main consideration. My earlier comment prompts OP to look deeper into the 'interpretation' side of this thread. I do indeed have the idea that ideas shouldn't be shared until they're 'perfected'. For me this means if I write about something, I generally won't consider sharing the idea with others until I see that it still remains true at least a few years down the line. What's the value in sharing realizations only to further realize down the line that they were missing some core component of insight, or rooted too firmly in a misunderstanding? When I mention 'value' here I'm speaking about true value to others, insofar as 'true value' means insights which will genuinely bring real truth and understanding to others.

@justfortoday So what were the motivations?

@justfortoday I'm not questioning your belief, I'm saying that eventually you'll realise that enlightenment is simply a process which happens to some people, and not to others. Think of it this way - before you had these insights, if you would have read a thread like this, what would you have gained from it? Would you have taken onboard all of the intended communications? Would it have influenced your development in any major way? Your development was a *process*. It didn't come from a single thread, a single book, a single youtube video - it came from living your life and experiencing a whole range of different mindsets and experiences over a number of years. You want to share the realizations you've gained - sure that's a noble goal, but I'm saying it's misguided in practical terms. You have just as much chance of a person reading this and completely taking the wrong message from every part of it as you do someone taking all the 'right' messages. Of course some who already agree with the claims will agree with what you've written and show you support for having done it, but does that contribute to your motivation for posting it? Look inward and ask yourself honestly, what are the motivations for posting it?

@Someone here When you say the word 'imaginary', I get the impression that you might also be saying 'irrelevant' or 'unimportant' Rather than me trying to communicate to you directly, do you mind if I give you a little exercise? I want you to write at least a paragraph, maybe 2, detailing how your mother would respond to your death, conceptually and emotionally. Embody her perspective (imaginary though it may be) and write about how real or unreal her feelings of loss would be and how the rest of her life might change. What would she say about the suggestion that nothing was actually lost, and that you were imaginary all along? Be as honest as possible - really try to get into her mindset.

I call this the 'sermon on the mount' phase. Keep going (not that you have any other choice) and this desire to explain it all to others will fade away.

It is possible that you aren't very 'good looking'. Sure you could brainwash yourself into seeing beauty when you look in the mirror, but is that really the best course of action? My advice is to do self-inquiry into your feelings about beauty in a much more general sense, specifically to find out how much importance you place on beauty compared to other traits which a person or thing could have. I would guess that considering you're experiencing this dilemma, you value beauty quite highly and tend to interpret things (even things in nature) in terms of their beauty. Ask yourself, what other traits could a person judge those very same things by, other than beauty? If someone else valued another trait above beauty, how would that person judge your appearance with that trait in mind? Tldr; you judge your appearance too harshly because you value aesthetics too highly. Find a different value which allows you to come to a more positive conclusion when judging your appearance by that value instead, and the positive feelings you reach won't be fake.

@Adodd Yeah, it's a vague answer. If you'd asked me 5 years ago I would have written a whole thread's worth of paragraphs on it, but now I can't bring myself to do it. Also I've had a beer, and that isn't conducive to proper explanations of the nature of time. I will say though, I don't believe that time actually exists. All measurements are byproducts of perception.

@Zion No, I don't believe it's possible to accelerate yourself toward rock bottom in order to bounce off of it faster. The fact that you're even considering such a possibility shows me that you may be approaching that bottom in some way, however.