look_inside

When responding to one of your “but Leo,,,” questions in your video you responded to the question of what a follower might think if you were killed. You answered that from your point of view you would just transition to some other form, but that “from your point of view…”. You use this "your POV phrase" as if we had one. I am confused. Why would you comment about my POV when you believe that I don’t have one? Just like my dream characters don’t have a POV, as they are only an idea of mine, I don’t have a POV in your world view, so why are you talking to me as if I do? Is it because you are just being polite? Or is it because you aren’t really sure whether I exist? Or maybe you are just being somewhat lazy about your language? I’d suggest that if you really believe your followers don’t exist, you should be more precise about the language you use and not refer to the follower's POV. Switching back and forth this way sows doubt as to whether you deeply believe what your are saying. OTOH if you are just being polite, you should realize that you are insulting my/our intelligence by so blatantly contradicting your core belief .

I don't mean to be rude but why even bother posting something like this? Computers aren't real, but here we are tapping away... This is what I can't stand about these types of forums. 90% of what gets said is just not useful,,, maybe more like 99%. Anyway, don't worry. I'll go away and live you folks to it. Have fun.

?Who said I don't believe it? And anyway, what I believe isn't the point at hand. The point is: if I DO believe it, I wouldn't refer to other people's POV, because within that belief system, that statement would make no sense, and would corrupt and undermine my whole message.

In several videos Leo tells the viewer that they are imagining the universe, including themselves. It doesn't take long for a person to hear this and ask the following question: Since there are other people in the universe, one can assume that they also have an experience that they are also imagining. Is their imagined universe consistent with mine? If yes- where did this consistent version originate from? and where is it held? And how is it held consistently in the face of anyone's ability to imagine it differently? If no- then how do we interact with others as if there were a consensus version that we can agree on? Otherwise, if there is no consensus version, are we talking about some version of solipsism where there is only one point of view, and it is ours? Gotta say, this possibility is pretty unsatisfying to me as a model. I do understand the idea that we are all actually one, and maybe there really aren't "others" to consider. But even this being the case, we still need to deal with the fact that there are other characters in the this drama we call life,, don't we?

I'm done. No more rope a dope Q&A for me. Have a nice day.

You are being fantastically unclear. Are you saying there are others in reality that are also imagining? or not? Isn't this the crux of the issue? not whether imagination is super intelligent or just a little intelligent.

OK, lets run with that... Dreams are my specialty being a lucid dreamer... In my dream, lets say all the characters are an aspect of me. So following your suggestion, in my life everyone is an aspect of me as well. Cool. Conversely, those other people, if they are participating in the same reality as I am, and if they are independent actors like me, see me as an aspect of their dream. We can't both be the "imaginer" of this dream we are living. So doesn't this boil down to how many actual entities are there? Do I have free will? And do any of the 8 billion others who populate this planet? If more than one of us has free will, we need to come to terms with consensus. Or,,, If I just think of this as a dream then it is just me. Problem solved. But that that means there are no other independent beings involved, and I don't think that's the case, Do you? If we are intellectually honest, we can't just wave our arms and make this issue disappear. We have to account for it and explain it. If that has been done anywhere here in text or video I would love to have someone point it out. I don't want to make people have to repeat what might be the same old tired subject. OTOH- if there is no accounting for it, we have just one more incomplete ontology. Lets face it, all ontologies have dark corners that go unexplained or are inconsistent, but consensus is a monumental thing that is in the center stage with a spotlight on it, not a dark corner.

Not to be too flippant about this but most of the interplay on sites of this type are mental masturbation. Such is usually the nature of discussions the orbit around philosophy and spiritual topics. This is why I'm trying to ask very defined questions, and am looking/hoping for very direct and applicable answers. Typically for every direct answer I expect to see 3-4 answers along the lines of "love is all there is" or "stop looking, you are already there" or "you are everything". Even though all of these may be true, they dance around the hard questions for which there is usually an comprehensible answer.

Starstruck- There are a few things that you can do to improve dream recall. 1- Keep a dream journal. Write down at least an outline of every dream you have. 2- Go to bed with the desire, an intention, to remember your dreams 3- Dreams some in 90 minute cycles. You will exit REM about 90 minutes after you go to sleep. You may not become totally awake, but you will come close to it, which is called the "hypnopompic" state. You can pump up the process by setting an alarm for 90 minutes which will cause you awaken. Write down the dream. 4- If you awaken, don't move a muscle. Don't open your eyes. Review the dream in your mind for a few minutes. This will make it less apt to fade away. Then write it down. If you want to, rather than awaken and writing it down, you can choose to, with practice, re-enter the dream from this state. Dreams are funny things. If you show an interest, a desire to pay attention to them, you seem to be able to grow this skill. Some part of your consciousness is in charge here, and it "listens" to what you want. Show that interest, and practice, and these skill will grow. We all dream, have no doubt about that. This is a matter of caring enough to pay attention. Once you get better at this you can see patterns in your dreams that are meaningful and useful for analysis. Once you get better at dream recall, you can take this further by doing something amazing. You can glimpse what is actually happening in consciousness and in reality itself: you can become lucid in the dream. And when you do, you will see that you are in a solid "world" that is unbelievably "real". You will realize that it is most likely being created by the same mechanism as waking reality. It is this fact that clued me into the fact that this is the mechanism behind our waking life experience. It was the thing that confirmed to me that there are no objects, nothing physical at all in reality. In my mind, Lucid dreaming is one of the best non-drug assisted ways to see the truth behind reality. Or at least to gain a first hand experience the non-physical nature of it.

Bejapuskas- Please don't take this wrong, but this sort of feels like a cop out. If me and my brother both agree that there is a racoon living in our back yard we have consensus. If we disagree then we don't. And if we disagree I can point at the racoon to prove it. He MUST agree, or we have an unreconcilable factual discontinuity in reality. This for the most part doesn't happen in our world, especially on big and obvious things. Now, of course he could be experiencing a totally different reality where he can prove to me that there is no racoon. However this is a different model of reality where each of us has totally different experiences. In this pair of realities there is no overlap, no need for consensus: we each define all the aspects of our personal reality. Perhaps even with different laws of physics etc. This is solipsism: where each of us inhabit a life where we are the only valid actor. All other actors in this (my) reality are not actually having an experience at all, or at least are not in control of their experience. My question is: what is Leo describing?

Thanks Tim. No surprise this has been covered. I gotta improve my search skills I guess. I have searched but don't find a thread that covers this. Can you point me to one?

Thanks BipolarGrowth. This is spot on. Just what I wanted. It is a shocking description, but one that is focused like a laser, and will give a new thinker something the REALLY think about!

So I've been on this path for about 10 years. I'm mostly OK poking around Leo's content and picking what I want. But I come across people all the time who hear bits and pieces of what I've discovered and who would like to get introduced to the whole subject matter (things like of the nature of consciousness and of reality) and I would like to point them in a direction to get them introduced to the territory. Can anyone suggest a good place for someone with only minimal familiarity with the topics to go in Leo's collection to start?

Thanks. Interesting but not really thinking this is a good intro for someone to understand the real nature of reality. This is more like a good introduction to philosophy. I guess I need to keep looking.

Thank you folks for your responses. Very appreciated. OTOH none really got to the actual questions other than very indirectly. This is not a surprise as these topics are by their very nature convoluted... Good news is: I watched Leo's video on awakening and the "how to" of it. And he talked about the process of "separation" where we let go of our fake self and realize that our true self is something very different: emptiness. And that this separation process must be followed by a process of re-integration where the two things (our fake and real selves) come back together, but this time in a form where we realize our true nature. And while integrated, we can again experience all the same things in a life that we did before we began our work, but we can now enjoy these things with a sense of detachment. So this is the best of both worlds, we might say. So the "post attachment" life is not one that is permanently devoid of all the people and things we love. Rather it is re-connected with them but in a different way. I have a feeling most of the answers to the questions I have, or will have, can be found in this video material. So I'll need to continue to work my way through it. Now I gotta get back to the work of putting my attention on attention.... : )

OK First post, so please have pity on me... : ) Can someone help me reconcile what Leo is describing with bodily death? Leo talks about a loosing of identity and a merging back to the infinite at the moment of death, but this is in stark contrast with thousands (maybe millions) of accounts of near death, shared death, actual death (as recounted in channeled materials) where there are a range of experiences that involve something similar to a non-physical but seemingly bodily and dualistic experience with others. For a multitude of reasons I find it hard to believe that these accounts are all fabrications. In more than one video Leo talks about our "physical" death as the end of our ego and the beginning (or resumption?) of non-dual existence. So how would it be possible to be totally realized and non-dual, while also having an experience in a non-physical plane? An experience where one might experience relationships, plan further incarnations and live a type of life.

Thanks Shin- Yes. This I get. Many years ago based on research and experimentation, I reached the conclusion that matter and energy are illusory. They are only ideas around which the experience of physical reality is formed. I think of it as the scaffolding on which our experiences can occur. It gives us a stage on which we can play our our individual dramas. Here's the question I am trying to get at: If those who physically die, immediately reach a state of non-dual existence, then what are they doing having a dualistic experience? There seems to be an objective experience happening following death since there are cases where it can objectively be shown to have occurred. It seems as though many or most experiencers seem to simply move to a non-physical state of non-dual existence where a life-like story continues. Feels to me like this dual to non-dual transition is not a binary thing that happens spontaneously at death, but rather a thing that we need to work on, perhaps over many iterations of birth-death. ? Also the question still remains for me: if/when we reach this state of non-dual existence, especially considering its unsurpassable bliss, why would we even consider acting in a non-dual way again? Why would we be put that garment back on? Of course the "we" is no longer in existence, but it seems like some intention toward more dualism cycles is still in play. Would this cycle between convergence and divergence just represent the "design of the system" and not intention? And finally: where is the history of all that has occurred stored? We can't deny that experiences have occurred, right? Physicality aside: things have happened. Love has been exchanged, emotions have been felt. There are many examples where one incarnate can recall the experiences of another. This implies that this information doesn't vanish when someone has becomes "realized".