kinesin

@dflores321 There's nothing wrong with it, it just is. No, this community has shown itself to be clearly against such a thing. But honestly I expect this community (or rather, the wider nonduality community) to produce at least one offshoot which holds abandoning the dream via physical death to be the highest aim, and it wouldn't be the world's first death cult by a long shot.

@tatsumaru Imo, he's an individual who is latching onto truth with egoic motivations. I believe that with or without people like Aubrey de Grey, the world is on course to eliminate physical ageing eventually regardless - I believe that is objective truth. Aubrey, like many people, wants to live longer and to avoid his own individual pains and degeneration of ageing, and I think that's his real motivation. As to whether the elimination of ageing is a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing - I think the only fair thing to say is that it's a thing, like all things. Good or bad are polarities to which all things are beholden, regardless of what they are.

Because in the 'real world', Leo doesn't want any of his viewers to get the wrong idea and kill themselves. He doesn't want to promote suicide and he doesn't want to be judged by others as promoting suicide. There's a contradiction though, because when you say that 'life', 'fun', 'sensations', 'meaning' etc are all just a dream, the people who really take that onboard tend to come to the conclusion that there's no *real* point in continuing the dream. To me, it falls into the category of self-preservation, albeit a slightly absurd one kind of like when people on drug forums describe their trip experiences as happening to 'SWIM' (Someone Who Isn't Me) in a naive attempt to avoid legal ramifications, when really anyone with half a brain knows exactly what's going on regardless.

For all the talk of 'false self' and 'ego', you guys seem to be interpreting death solely from the perspective of the self. Of course from the perspective of the self death is an illusion which never happens - after all how can the self even observe its own death if it isn't around to see it? It's like trying to touch your own shadow. This is only one side of death, however. When I asked earlier to consider your death from the perspective of your own mother, I was suggesting that as a serious practice you can do. Dream and reality are inherently linked - it isn't 100% real and it isn't 100% dream, but both simultaneously. If you contemplate your own death from the perspective of your mother, the only conclusion you can possibly reach is that from such a perspective, death is undeniably absolutely real.

It sounds to me like you had a certain threshold where anxiety would start to emerge, and this time you simply allowed it to happen and by doing so, you realized that it was just an 'empty threat' all along. I'd imagine that after this, you might not even notice it but you'll probably have reduced anxiety in some situations which might previously have caused you discomfort. You managed to let go of a real fear. As for the 2nd part, it seems that after letting go of that fear you were able to get into a deeper state of concentration than you had before, and you fell into a trancelike state. I used to have those experiences myself during meditation, and for me it was in part because my attention was very tightly focused on certain senses such as my hearing or my vision. It was a little like pointing a camera at a screen displaying the camera output and creating an infinite loop, or like holding a microphone up to a speaker and getting feedback which keeps growing in intensity. If you're able to do that, I'd take that as a sign that you've developed quite good concentration and no longer need to train your focus by forcing it to remain on a single thing. When you snap out of such an experience it's expected to feel a little disorientated. For me now when I meditate, my focus shifts around naturally from thing to thing, and I simply watch it move around. One moment it'll be on my hearing, the next on my breath, then my vision etc etc.

@Adodd Time is a dimension of change, as viewed from the perspective of something which has the ability to write memories (the human brain). Memory gives us the illusion of past, our brain's processing abilities give the illusion of future, but in 'reality' there is simply a continual process. Only now exists.

That's nothing more than a belief. Start a daily meditation practice and you'll start to realise that wellbeing is always available from within, and that you don't have to be dependent on external factors.

@rd5555 Stop looking forward, abandon your 'vision' and bring your awareness to the here and now. Those feelings of satisfaction and peace which you imagine you'll have one day after achieving your vision, you can experience them right now.

@Steelheart I suppose some of the more common manifestations of that would be failing to accept and deal with difficulties and issues as they arise. Remaining ignorant of them, in denial or simply telling ourselves that we’ll get around to it ‘one day’. Problems grow over time when we don’t address them, and many people (possibly most) allow problems to grow far too big until they become all-encompassing, and only then do they seek to try chipping away at them. By that time the problem has often become too big to put right.

@Steelheart Meditate every day. Use writing as a thinking tool at least 2 or 3 times a week. Spend time with your family. Practice gratitude. Be out in nature, observe your surroundings, look at the birds and the clouds. Accept the appearance of difficulties when they arise, and don't hesitate for too long in doing what is required to deal with them. Don't have too many friends, a handful is more than enough. Don't stretch your time too thin. Don't knowingly do things which will contribute to misery in the future. Make your living space look nice. Learn to cook good food, and share it with others. Play around, sing and dance. Most importantly, allow yourself to be unhappy if you're unhappy. A constant state of happiness isn't realistic or even preferable, pain and suffering is part of life and just as much (if not more) value comes from it than from happiness.

Mata Amritanandamayi, or 'Amma', has hugged over 33 million people. She's been doing it every day since the 1970s, often for as long as 20 hours a day.

@machiavelli If you want to bring people awareness to a danger in the world, focus on environmental pollution from chemicals such as phthalates atrazine. These would have gotten you dismissed as a conspiracy theorist not too long ago but in recent years phthalates in particular gave gotten more mainstream attention following some extremely concerning research into how they disrupt sex hormone production in humans and animals, and now you can campaign against them all you want and nobody will dismiss you as a nutjob - infact generally most normies consider environmental activism to be a good thing, so it'll even work in your favour. By contrast if you talk about EMF, public awareness isn't there yet and you'll just ruin your own reputation. If I were you I'd just leave the campaign to the people who go out and physically destroy 5G towers. They're already doing a pretty good job of it.

Think of it from your own mother's perspective, and you'll have half of the answer.

@ivankiss from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagal_tone#Respiratory_sinus_arrhythmia The vagus nerve mediates activity between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Your breathing rate and pattern is under your direct conscious control, meaning that learning to be aware of your breathing at all times will give you a high degree of insight into your physiological state, and learning to control your breathing in specific ways will give you absolute control over many bodily processes which are still mostly considered to be autonomous by medical science. Trust me, this knowledge is the key to understanding the significance of breathing. Hardly anyone is aware of this, it's at the absolute cutting edge of breath mastery. There will be many other answers in this thread, but this is the only one you need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasympathetic_nervous_system Slow, deep inhalation leads to sympathetic nervous activity. Slow, deep exhalation leads to parasympathetic nervous activity.

@Mafortu A roughly comparable analogy which comes to mind is when an addict finally reaches sobriety. What is their state during the grip of addiction? Lack of control, desperation, inescapable cycles of suffering, ignorance. In most cases, before they get better they have to hit rock bottom. What does that look like? Chaos, terror, shame, regret - big dramatic occurrences, crying relatives, screaming, police involvement... followed by a subtle collapse into introspection. Then comes realization, the recognition that something will change, or maybe it already has, followed by resolve. What comes after that? Plain old unsalted, unbuttered sobriety. Day to day existence, for the rest of your life.

That isn't enlightenment, those are the experiences which help us on the path toward enlightenment. Yes, I've had my fair share of those... those are the times when you make grand public gestures, where you cry loudly and giddily proclaim to others "I am enlightened!" only to realize much later that it was simply a stepping stone and that really, you were infact a long way from enlightenment during that peak experience. Enlightenment is the calm after the storm, not the storm itself.

@Dazgwny A genuine answer as to whether I'm enlightened or not? It doesn't make a difference whether I say yes or no. The rest of your comment is a reiteration of things I already said earlier in the thread. He's had an experience, and I think we can both agree that whatever that experience consisted of, he's giving it too much weight. I'm offering a counterweight to his current thinking because, as shown in the video he uploaded where he's handcuffed to a bench in a police station, he says he's "fully enlightened". Considering the clear signs that he's actually experiencing a mental health emergency, I think that gently attempting to reframe his current thinking as symptomatic is the healthiest response. You can say that I haven't been friendly or warm enough with him, but he's already gotten plenty of that from others. People tend not to respond to well to being disagreed with, so consider thinking about my input here in a slightly different angle - I'm not expressing 'my' disagreement, I'm simply a conduit manifesting disagreement which, considering the polarities inherent in all things and perspectives, has to exist.

@Dazgwny Sure, why not.

Either that, or you have misunderstandings about what those sources were actually talking about, and you're mistaking the experience you had for being the same one they were talking about. You haven't 'become death', you simply had a transient novel experience which your ego is now lending far too much significance to.

Your fear of physically dying during meditation is an irrational worry. You won't die by accidentally accessing the wrong state of consciousness. Next time you get the feeling that it might happen, just let it happen and chances are you'll experience a cessation experience.

It's a sign of overidentification with the self. People encounter an 'avatar' which they believe pertains to some (illusory) aspect of their self, and they cling to that similarity, thereby furthering their own identification with the illusory self by grounding it in an external source (the avatar). So rather than saying "I have X personality trait, I am X kind of person" they say "I am an incarnation of X entity" which basically means the same thing, because the entity is nothing more than a construct which represents a certain type of personality. When you've reached higher levels of awakening, such ego delusions fall away and you realise that you can be anything, or nothing. It's all nothing more than illusory perspectives.

@BipolarGrowth I didn't come 'in arms', I'm trying to bring you toward more grounded insight. By my understanding, enlightenment doesn't cause behaviours which scare other people or make them worry about you. Enlightenment is mundane, it's 'boring' even. There's no sobbing, no peak experience, all of these are signs of the process toward enlightenment, but not enlightenment itself. The process can be traumatic, it's often dramatic, but with enlightenment comes stability and balance. All that can be said really is that you had a set of experiences. You're still in the experience currently, and from this perspective you view yourself as enlightened... but 3, 5 or 10 years down the line you'll look back on this as being a part of a wider process. You'll learn lessons from this about the practicality and sensibility of extreme emotions. In my view, enlightenment is only possible by making such 'mistakes', because our errors direct us toward the truth. Speaking of errors - your previous video on youtube shows that you recently got arrested. How did that happen?

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, recording yourself sobbing in a sushi restaurant might be more symptomatic of your bipolar than a sign of any genuine spiritual awakening? Do you think there's a possibility that getting angry and saying "fuck you you dumb piece of shit" to those people who point that out might be a sign that you haven't actually reached the state of loving-kindness and acceptance that you think you have? There seems to be a disturbing trend in this community where people think that recording emotionally charged videos during a spiritual crisis and showing them publicly is a sign of true spiritual awakening, almost as if to do so has become part of a ritual which makes the awakening 'real'.

@integral If you're meeting 13 year-olds at the park and telling them that Hitler's actions were morally relative and that rape is an act of self-love, you're playing a dangerous game.

@spiritual memes Become obsessed with watching as much Jordan Peterson content (2017 Personality lectures and 2017 Maps of Meaning lectures) for the next 3 years. He's the king of stage blue. 3 years should be more than enough to embody and integrate that stage, after which you should be ready to let it go.