Anton Rogachevski

As an introvert for me all those are true, but i guess it's not a rule of thumb. Great and precise definition!

No idea, what's yours and how is it transcended? I like to think I'm not in any pardigm since it's not of any use.

True dat

Can't a person be authentically introverted and not very expressive?

@Leo Gura Is it possible to practice surrender sufficiently before the trip or is the trip necessary to teach you to surrender?

Can you really separate the spiritual from the psychological?

I mean you really can't question it. Any argument will be reduced to: "just a thought" or "everything is imagination" or "you are a materialist" or "you are thinking too much and over analyzing" or "who's asking?". Of course we are separating here the actual practice of non-duality from it's ideas. Please, don't get me wrong here, I'm a seeker myself, and a very diligent one. I've been on this path for more than 6 years, and my skepticism comes from a loving place. Speaking of Open-Mindedness this value got me very very far, and I believe that a healthy skepticism plays an important role in keeping an open mind. Why? Because in order to open your mind to new possibilities you must have the ability to question your current paradigm.

What troubles me lately is the function of a brain to turn off the ability to distinguish reality from imagination. It happens everytime we dream, because the weird things in a dream would immediately be recognized as not real in a conscious state, but in order for the dream to keep going we gotta have the ability to ignore the weirdness - to perceive it as normal and real. Guess what, the brain is activating that function using its own secreted DMT. Now who's to say that psychedelics don't do just that: turn off the brain's ability to distinguish imagination from reality. This is a scary thought because it threatens all the insights we bring back. Of course one may take enlightenment to be a purely subjective experience which affects one's own relationship to mental objects and still get all the cool benefits - wouldn't that be quite reasonable to admit?

@Nak Khid Thank you! Very good insight.

Let us not forget about the power of hypnosis and placebo. If you read or listen to teachers don't you think hypnosis is taking place?

Is Consciousness a stream of Awareness?

@Serotoninluv Very cool! Thank you for sharing. @Mu_ Just pushing the boundaries of mind. I get what he's saying. I suspect it might be a grand ideology that seekers buy into, and end up reaching through confirmation bias via altered states. I also suspect that the problem is that I'm too grounded in the materialist paradigm, since I have not had many higher states.

@Serotoninluv I guess I'm divided exactly there: a part of me is really eager to dismiss reality completely, and the other part wants to use reason to simultaneously ground it in material reality. That's super cool. How do you do lucid dreaming while awake?

You are welcome!

What lead you to assume there is one at all?

@Serotoninluv Can't say for sure there is "Real". It seems as though there is.

Yes it is all within the subjective experience, but why would I assume it's not somewhere out there too?

You may keep pretending that your subjective actuality is all there is. I won't blame ya, It sure seems that way subjectively.

@Nahm Got it. There's no awareness either - I guess we're back to square one.

@Nahm Why though? Both actuality and logic are absolutely subjective so to speak. One subjective appearance is trying to to depict another subjective appearance with a third subjective appearance. Surely if one wanted to disqualify an argument which threatens his worldview it would be easy to dismiss it all as "just thoughts."

@Nahm Sure a "Paradox" is the braking point of logic in trying to depict actuality.

@Nahm I can't see a difference, there's awareness ok, but what is there but awareness?

All of which paradoxically means that "Awakening" is the ability to induce a lucid dream state while awake.

Or so it appears from an absolutely solipsistic subjective point of view, which makes total sense.

@The observer When you dream you take all the imagined things to be real because of the dream state. When you wake up you see that it was imaginary. If you take DMT you can have imaginary things seem real while awake. Like a feeling of love, it will feel real, leading you to conclude that: "reality is love."