FreeRangeEarthling

I haven't been on actualized.org for a long time, and am curious about Leo's current level of consciousness. I'm aware he's continued to have a lot of very profound ever-deeper awakenings on psychedelics. His aim as I understand it was to establish a stable baseline level of enlightenment through his psychedelic use; being an unconventional route, I'm curious how that's worked out so far. I've seen comments on the forum implying he's enlightened these days, but haven't personally seen him claim this anywhere (bear in mind I've missed a lot of videos!!). I was just wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of where he's spoken to this (or maybe Leo will respond himself...). Note: I'm not talking about transient experiences (I know he's had plenty of those), only interested in abiding non-dual awareness. Just curious. Thanks!

No, I guess not. Just not really relevant to the discussion. Anyways I got what I needed from this thread. No-one has told me they think Leo is in an advanced state of consciousness and it sounds like the psychedelic path has backfired for him. Not much point in debating whether that matters, I doubt I'll convince those who don't think so anyway. So I'll be off. Best of luck on your journeys!

Sure. Not a helpful point when discussing the usefulness of a teacher tho. 'At some point' implies you do think there is a role for a teacher, so I stand by my point that you should assess the teacher's credentials.

If you're deluded, you need a teacher who is not hopelessly deluded. So you do your best to figure out who can help and who cannot. Just saying 'deal with it' doesn't help.

Example of why it's important to think: Yes you have to verify everything yourself. But you have to choose which hypotheses to test. Let's say Leo says makes some claim and the way to verify it is through some hardcore psychedelic protocol. Well, if you reflected on what he was saying and decided you thought he'd gotten hopelessly lost and deluded, you might decide not to do the protocol. If you just decided to test it without rational evaluation, you might yourself get hopelessly lost and deluded at which point it might be too late. Which was the sensible option?

Let me rephrase then: I don't buy the 'he might as well be enlightened' argument at all. If you're not enlightened, you're not enlightened. I agree, but I also think we should use our brains. If you don't think there's any value to thinking/ discourse, why are you on a forum? That's exactly why we should question whether they are, which is what I'm doing. Are you a student of Leo's? If you are I have to take your 'just focus on yourself' argument with a pinch of salt. Whoa. When a new forum member questions the teacher and gets instantly accused of being obsessed/ 'just leave the teacher alone don't question him', alarm bells are ringing.

The cynic in me wonders if the whole 'enlightenment is bullshit' thing is an ego survival strategy to circumvent the problematic hypocrisy of teaching awakening when you yourself are not awake. Buy hey, what do I know.

And that's what we're doing. I was never suggesting we can actually know. But if we're going to use teachers (I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you might be a student of Leo's), we need to try and judge whether they're in a position to teach us. People who end up in cults believe there's no need to assess their teachers, I disagree. And in the absence of omniscience we'll have to use our own faculties. Judgment implies beliefs, because that's how you judge, so I admit I gave you a trick question, at least from my perspective. I think it's perfectly valid and indeed important to question how awake Leo is. Maybe my standards are too high but I don't agree with the 'he's had some awakenings so he might as well be enlightened' argument at all.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Still, I'm grateful to Leo for having explored that territory, it's definitely useful learning for me, just the opposite of what he maybe intended How do you judge Leo's level of consciousness? And what is your estimatation (again, I'm talking about an abiding level, not ephemeral experiences)?

Well, I'm glad I checked in here but it makes me sad to see that. Gotta be honest - that's exactly what I would expect from the experiment of replacing the tried-and-tested path with balls-to-the-wall psychedelic use. Seems like he's been pretty arrogant recently, I thought maybe that was a teaching-style but it looks a bit like ego-mania now. Leo, I wish you all the best.

Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Aren't enlightenment and awakening the same thing? Either way, winding up chasing experiences and giving up on lasting change sounds like a bad advert for the psychedelic path. And if you're not into non-duality, I guess you're into duality, which means ego. Deciding you don't believe in enlightenment or nonduality before you've achieved enlightenment screams ego-backlash to me. Sounds like he's got a little lost. But maybe I've misunderstood...