There is an auto-ban at 20 points, but in many cases that's far too late. People find ways of being toxic without necessarily breaking any formal rules.

Unfortunately what I found after 7 years of running this forum is that toxic people never make behavioral adjustments, and actually get worse and worse over time. And if you politely tell them to shape up, they take it personally, develop a grudge against you, and start behaving like monsters.

@vanish Be careful. Do not do anything to harm yourself physically.
You are here to solve the puzzle of life, not to escape it.

Do not bastardize these teachings. You are acting irresponsibly, out of lack of proper and full understanding.
Don't do anything to physically harm yourself or anyone else.
Take a break for any personal development work and re-ground yourself in something enjoyable.
Whatever nihilistic mood you're in right now will pass.
Do not taint spirituality with such irresponsible behavior.

Wow! Lots of opinions on this issue.
I've read them all and will take them all into consideration when making my decision. As of now I'm leaning towards pulling the trigger and killing the entire reputation and Thumbs Up system. We can give it a test run for a week, and if it really sucks, we should be able to go back to the old system ats any time without losing data.
Changing 8000+ usernames is not an option. Usernames must remain as they are. And it's important to be able to distinguish usernames for purposes of weeding out spammers and trolls. It's too hard to police randomly generated usernames.
Some of your other suggestions are also not technically feasible. While reality may be infinite, this forum software is anything but.
Daily posting limits are doable. We could set of limit of like 5-10 posts per day, to keep people from mentally-masturbating too much. It's a rather radical limitation. Not so sure about this one. Part of the problem would be that there won't be any clear indicator of how many posts you have left per day, and most newbies wouldn't even know there was a limit. It's very rare that forums has such strict posting limits, so it would be counter-intuitive and confuse most people. They would bitch and moan about not having enough posts. And ironically, that would only eat up more of their posts.
The "Featured" status is not dependent on reputation or likes, that is a tag which Mods must manually apply. So that isn't going away.
5-star ratings at the top of each thread are also an option.

There’s no ‘you’!!! Just projection! 
“Leo”, I hope ‘you’ make a billion dollars waking up - I truly truly do!!!
Much love ? 
“Your state”. Priceless!!!! ? 
“When I became conscious of”!!!  Holy stop!!! ? 
I have never forgotten that. 
For real, ribs hurting. 
“That” is thoughts!!!! 
♥️

I regret to inform you guys that I made the decision to demote Nahm from being a Mod. Since he is one of the biggest members of this community I know plenty of you may be upset by this, so here's my explanation:
I have noticed over the last few years that Nahm's posts/advices were becoming more and more out of touch with people. Like he was talking at them or through them, not meeting people at the level they were at. Often his posts were cryptic and ambiguous to the point of confusion. I made several private messages to him about this over a year ago, hoping that he would see the problem and correct it. His posts and replies were becoming so out of touch at times that even I had trouble understanding him. It felt more and more like he was communicate from inside his own spiritual bubble, unable to see how his posts were failing to land with normal people, or even myself. Often I would read one of his posts and just have no idea what he was trying to say or how it would help. And if I fail to understand a post, I know 90%+ of others will not understand it or be helped by it. This failure to understand is not from lack of consciousness but from the style in which Nahm chooses to express himself.  The issue isn't that Nahm is not a developed or conscious guy, but the obscure and nonsensical way he communicates.
I turned I blind eye to this for several years, hoping it would correct itself naturally. Unfortunately it has gotten worse. The parroting of neo-Advaita platitudes in response to people's relative questions and problems has become too much, especially recently. When I explained this problem to Nahm via PM and tried to communicate with him about correcting it, he started to spout those same vapid neo-Advaita platitudes at me. This is not the kind of communication I can stomach from my Mods. It also became clear to me that he was not interested nor capable of changing his ways. Nor do I want to force him to change his ways if he doesn't do so of his own recognizance. The issue here being that platitudes such as "there is no you" or "that is just a thought" do not help people and in fact start to do the opposite. I do not like neo-Advaita style teachings and I do not want this forum to turn into the kind of place where some normie asks a straight forward question and the response is something like, "There is no you, that's just a thought, there is no one to awaken." These kinds of teachings do not lead to the God-realization I am trying to guide people towards.
With that said, I have no personal ill feelings towards Nahm. He's got many wonderful qualities, most of all is his big heart. I have met him in-person and he's a great guy to hang out with. I know he's coming from good intentions, but his style of teaching nonduality simply does not align with what I am trying to teach about God-realization and the future direction of Actualized.org teachings about awakening. I know many of you love Nahm and I know he has helped many of you in various ways. I appreciate that and his service to this community since the forum's inception back in 2016. Unfortunately he can longer be a Mod and the situation may devolve to the point where I have to ask him to leave this forum entirely because he keeps parroting the same neo-Advaita platitudes in every situation and I don't know how much more of that I can tolerate. Honestly, I've been tolerating it for months already. I tried to turn a blind eye to it because he has a long history here, he's helped many people here, I consider him a friend, and many of you guys look up to him. But it's just clear to me that this is not going to work out long term because our styles are so different. What he teaches is not what I teach. And I am okay with that to some degree -- not everyone has to agree with me or teach spirituality like me -- but the vacuous neo-Advaita talk has become too much recently. This is a great example of the problem of conflating relative and absolute matters to the point of disconnect with the normal people. When a store clerk asks you to pay the bill, the proper response is not, "There is no one who can pay the bill, and no bill to pay."
I know some will be upset by this and will disagree with my decision here. So, whatever your feelings are about this situation -- good or bad -- share them here or forever hold your peace. We will not be able to move on from this until the air has been cleared. So take the time to do that now.
I'm sorry it has come to this. I wish Nahm the best. Nahm, I sincerely thank you for your years of service to this community. Really. You put in so much of your heart into this. And we all saw that.
Attached is a screenshot of my last communication with Nahm on this matter so that you understand why I made the decision I did:
https://i.imgur.com/3WKAELm.jpeg
This was not a decision I wanted to make.
Note: do not attack each other over this.

This community is built to enable self-actualization. More than just a place to hang out and blabbermouth, this is a call to transform your life. Make your life count, seek the profound, inspire others to do that same, and die with a smile on your face, knowing you lived well.
Self-actualization is a nuanced attitude towards life.
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Make sure you do the (personal development) work and don't just waste time on this forum. Then you'll have cool stories to share and this forum won't be so boring.

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#1 Rule: Don't Be A Jerk
Speak to people with respect. Be conscious and nice.
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Post carefully. This forum has unusually strict moderation. If you misbehave you will be banned swiftly.
Be ware that this forum is not a free-speech zone. Unlike some places on the internet, this forum is strictly moderated to keep it high-quality. Not only do we enforce basic anti-trolling guidelines, we go further to enforce quality of posting. If you repeatedly post low-quality stuff, disinformation, or ignorance, you will be banned without warning. What determines "high-quality" posting is, of course, subjective. Nevertheless, discriminations must be made to ensure high-quality.
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This is not a free-speech zone and we will definitely "censor" you and ban you if your presence here drags down the overall quality of the forum.
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Thanks!

Can you hear the sound of silence. I can. It sounds like a very quiet screeching sound. Like small insects far away chirping but right in your space. That's the best way I can describe it. Like a very quiet whistling sound that penetrates the room you're in. If the room is quiet and there is no noise like the tv or music on, I can hear it. Like dead silence. That's when it's more pronounced; that's the only time it becomes audible to me.
I don't hear it all the time, though. Once, when I remembered, I was sitting in my room in dead silence and was listening for it but I couldn't hear it. I'm sitting here now and it is very loud. Not loud as in loud, because it's still silent, but loud enough to notice. I hear it more times than when I don't. It's like if you had on a silent sound from like a sleep app with rain falling or something, only this sounds like a very screeching sound like insects chirping in the air.
Anyone else ever hear this silence. It's very soothing. It's not coming from anywhere. It's just silently penetrating the room. 
No I don't have tinnitus or an ear infection. This sound is coming from outside the ears, more like up in the ceiling if I was to pinpoint a specific location but it's not really coming from anywhere. No, I don't have crickets in the attic either.
 
 
, 

Just to clarify, this forum does not track editing history of posts or PMs. So whatever edits happened are lost.
This is one of the reasons why editing of posts is only allowed for the first 48 hours. No edits after that. In the past some members have abused editing to change the substance of their posts, which is why editing is automatically locked after 48 hours.
I am actually not sure if PM editing is locked at all. I assume it's a 48 hour lock, but maybe even not. Mods and Admins don't have locks like normal accounts.

@Leo Gura Hi Leo! This is SoonHei's sister using his account trying to find out why he took the step that he did. I can confirm that he did in fact die on May 3rd by jumping off of a bridge.
His message to his wife was: "Oh I was never ending it. I was just continuing it. I just wanted to jump. Love you all. See you soon."
Similar message to what he sent to the person who started this thread (first post).
Now most important, SoonHei asked NAHM very directly before committing this act. I really wish NAHM had guided him better. SoonHei could not have been clearer. I will attach screenshots of their conversation in my next post.
If someone can tell us what he was trying to do, please do.
We cannot explain to you the shock of his death. We cannot wrap our heads around why he would do this. SoonHei was someone who has literally saved others from depression and suicide. We keep hearing stories from people that he helped in their darkest hour. I can tell you for a fact that he did not suffer from any mental illness or depression. Sunny was SO SO full of life.
He has left behind a 3 month old and a 20 month old. It is hard to even look at his 27-yr-old wife who was barely out of the post-partum phase with her baby. SoonHei was a very central part of our family. The most kind-hearted soul. An amazing son, a wonderful husband, the most supportive brother, and above all, a one-in-a-million father.
I feel like our whole family will go into depression...

@SoonHei To his sister, thank you for replying and confirming his death. As of now, I am inclined to believe you that it is true. Although I have no further proof of it. I'm sorry for your loss and I understand it is confusing why a spiritual and happy person would do such a gratuitous thing.
There is nothing spiritual about jumping off a bridge. It's clear from his messages that he understood his dream would end. So that's exactly what happens. The dream of life ends. The dream of life is a beautiful gift and ending it prematurely for no good reason (such as extreme suffering) is a ridiculously unnecessary thing to do. Life is meant to be lived out, not ended prematurely. Spiritual awakening can be had here and now, without need of any physical harm to the body. That is the entire point of spiritual work and practice. If jumping off a bridge was valid spiritual practice, then there wouldn't need to be any teachings. The teaching would just be: go jump off a bridge. And obviously no spiritual person teaches that.
It frustrates me when people misuse spiritual teachings in such gross and obvious ways.
Connor is mentally ill, batshit crazy, and has no integrity. Do not associate my teachings with Connor in any way. He broke everything I told him and I warned him about. I warned him back in December 2020 by phone that what he was doing was antithetical to my teachings. The things he was doing went against the core of what I teach and warned about in my Become A Zen Devil video, and many other videos. He was chronically abusing psychedelics in ways that I warned against from day 1 in my video: How To Use Psychedelics For Personal Development, and elsewhere. He also lied to me multiple times. He lied to me about his chronic psychedelic use, he lied about mental illness, and more.
You need to distinguish between what is true and what is convenient from a social POV.
It is true that everything is Good and Love. This truth make zero prescriptive claims. It does not justify anything and it does not tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
Do not frame this situation such that speaking truth is discouraged or impossible. Myself and others are not going to lie about what is true just because someone might jump off a bridge. The idea that reality is a dream/illusion has been spoke of by mystics and sages for thousands of years, and this understanding is commonly available to anyone who reads spiritual literature. Do not act like Actualized.org invented this notion. All of the spiritual masters you revere and love: Ramana Maharishi, Eckhart Tolle, and whoever else -- have told you that reality is an illusion/dream.
Again, this is absolutely true. This is what serious spirituality claims. But it makes no prescriptive claims.
It is not like Actualized.org is the first to say that reality is Perfection. This has been said by spiritual teachers and mystics across time.
In all of my work I have never acted like relative truths and social issues are unimportant. In fact, I embody the opposite. I speak about Conscious Politics so much because relative social issues are very important. Nobody following my work should get the idea that a healthy society is unimportant or that criminality or doing suffering to others is acceptable.
This is so obvious that to even shoot a video stating so would be seen as needlessly obvious. Do I really need to release a video in which I say: "Being a criminal is not good and you should not harm other people? Do not rape or torture others. Do not jump off a bridge." Would anyone who was serious about criminality, rape, torture, or jumping off a bridge watch such a video and listen to it? You see, this is a game that cannot be won.
Also, much of my work is not about spirituality but personal development, building a good life, being active in life, living a life purpose, and improving your health. I have never discounted the importance of building a good life, even as I talked about awakening and God and so forth. In fact I have warned against using spirituality as an escape from mastering survival. I talk about the importance of building a Stage Blue foundation.
But in the end, if someone decides that they don't want to play the game of survival any more and just want to rest with God, who are we to stop them? From our POV that seems foolish and unnecessary, but if a spiritual seeker wants to end his dream, that is his right and I will not invent some fantasy for why he is morally wrong in doing so. He is not wrong. I would just tell him not to do it because life is a precious gift and ought to be enjoyed, not escaped.
A) Truth, consciousness, and awakening are not philosophies. And it has been stated ad nausea not to take them as beliefs or philosophy. The dangers of ideology have been explained by me perhaps more than any other spiritual teacher. All I do is talk about the dangers of ideology.
B) Great detail is put into the teachings/videos to explain how self-deceptive the ego-mind is, how selfish it is, how many traps in this work there are, and further elaborations.
The fact is that the ego-mind will use whatever stories it wants to justify its selfish actions. If someone wants to blow themselves up for Jihad, they will find a way to justify it in their minds. My work goes into so much length about the ease with which the ego-mind will justify selfish activity and corrupt and co-opt spiritual truths.
In the case of Jihad, I specifically teach about the difference between Lesser Jihad and Greater Jihad.
There is no contradiction at all.
It is simply true that everything is Good and Perfect. This is what awakening reveals. But how you behave has consequences and there are relative truths. If you stick your hand in a fire, it will burn.
What Connor did was "bad" only in a relative sense, from a social POV. There is no contradiction here.
It's not that I tell him whatever fits my agenda. It's that his ego-mind says whatever it wants to justify however it wants to behave. And this is have taught a lot: that your own mind will trick you and justify whatever selfishness is wants without limit.
I also teach how there are many POVs and perspectives, absolute and relative, and that absolute and relative should be not be conflated.
It is simply true that reality is a dream. I will say this and teach this whether you decide to torture someone or not. If you decide to torture someone, those consequence are 100% on you, even though its all a dream. Dreams have consequences.
It is important to give people warnings about misunderstanding the teachings. And will certainly do more of that in the future, as I have in the past. BUT, all spiritual work has inherent risks, especially when done at mass scale, this is unavoidable and such teachings cannot be made fool-proof. I have also said that many times in the past. No matter what is taught about spirituality, there will always come along some fool, mentally ill person, or criminal who takes the teaching and uses to justify whatever selfish action he wants.
When Eckhart Tolle teaches something, "Just be in the now", some fool somewhere will take that to mean, "I can just off a cliff and just be in the now and things should go okay for me". Or when some Christian mystic says, "God forgives all sins and doesn't judge you", some criminal will take that to mean, "Okay, so if I kill my neighbor God will just forgive me and there will be on consequences."
Where does it end? How many disclaimers and warnings must be given? The problem is that an ego-mind who is self-deceived will not be interested in any warnings or disclaimers or even reason. Meanwhile reasonable people will find the disclaimers tedious and so obvious as to be unnecessary. The mind has an infinite capacity for denial and it will do whatever it wants to do. We should take measure to prevent genuine misunderstanding of the teachings by reasonable and well-rounded people, but we cannot foolproof this work against people who are criminal, insane, or simply desire to end their life.
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I want to make it clear that I take this issue seriously and I am not just here to issue some blanket, self-serving defense. I want to make my teachings safe for all reasonable people, and I want to make clear to people the inherent risks of spiritual work. I have done that in the past in my videos, but I am also interested in being even more clear and explicit about it in the future precisely because the relative social consequences have always mattered to me, and my teachings are meant to reduce suffering and selfishness in the world. It disappoints and frustrates me when spiritual teachings are corrupted or misused, and when spirituality or psychedelics are given a bad name by irresponsible people. But the fact is that corruption and misuse of spiritual teachings is not anything new or unique to Actualized.org. Mankind has been corrupting and abusing spiritual teachings for 2000 year. And that is not going to stop in our lifetimes. But that is not a reason to stop teaching. But I will definitely teach with greater care to preempt misinterpretation as much as possible. It's just not easy to anticipate every possible misinterpretation. It never even crossed my mind that someone would decide to "consciously jump off a bridge". It's hard to even take such an action seriously unless after it occurs.
I have said in the past that my teachings will be corrupted. Because that's what the mind does. And this will not be the last time my teachings are corrupted. The reason I record long videos is to provide sufficient depth and detail to avoid future corruption. But the nature of the beast is such that people will still find ways to corrupt my teachings and the longer the videos, the more excuse they will have to say, "But your videos are too long, so I didn't watch them." I have never been under any illusions that my teachers will be corrupted by some minds. That is how this works. I have videos explaining why this corruption is inevitable.
But again, this is not an excuse. I will adjust my teachings to make them clearer and more foolproof in the future.
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A final important point:
Let us not overlook that there is the possibility that SoonHei made a sober, conscious, sovereign choice to end his dream. In which case, as much as we might disagree or not like that, that is really not our call. And it is not correct to automatically assume that what he did was wrong or delusional. It could have been delusional, but it also could have been a conscious choice he made which was right for him. There is no way for us to know.
This is not an excuse or a justification for anything. Rather, given his own words, if we are to take his own words seriously and give him the benefit of the doubt, then there is the possibility he made a conscious, sovereign choice to move on into the next dream, or into Infinity, or whatever he imagined. Personally I think it was not a good choice and if he asked me about it I would have told him to not do something so stupid. But who am I to know what is right for him?
So the point is, this situation is more complex than it seems.

People who criticize Lex are like people who criticize white bread.
Lex has his vanilla style and he does fine work overall. His job is not to grill people.

Hating on Lex Fridman is like hating on white bread.

You can get a hole-in-one on your first shot. That doesn't make you a good golfer. Only a fool would confuse one for the other.

Great quote. I'm stealing that one.

@Pro24 Just try. It sure isn't unhealthy. Cold doesn't even give you fever. Fever can be a different matter, where physical activity especially can make it worse. But you can do everything with a cold. But all of this is useless advice, just try if you want an answer.

No.
They are underdeveloped because they never developed themselves in the first place.
If you take a parasite off a baby it will still be a baby. The parasite didn't make the baby, it's just exploiting the baby's weakness.
You can take the British Empire out of India, but Indians still wipe their ass with their bare hands.

Yup. You just need massive experience until it stops being a thing you worry about or second-guess.
Are you insecure about how to wipe your ass? No. Cause you've done it 10,000 times.
Anything you do 10,000 times becomes confident. And anything you do once or twice is insecure.

I agree with everything you've written. It's basic common sense, people are unnecessarily debating. 

Yup.
I also eat animals.
I also buy bombs for Israel to bomb Palestinian babies.
You know that factory sweatshop labor goes into making your phone, yet you still buy and use phones.
You also know that people are exploited to make art, film, music, yet you continue to consume and enjoy it.
The hell that goes into making art is distinct from the enjoyment of the art. Most Hollywood film production is a nightmare to work on. The employees working at Disneyland are in hell, yet you still take your kids there and enjoy the show. That's how capitalism works.
The process that goes into making porn is distinct from the beauty of the porn end-product, in the same way as a Disney cartoon. Your children don't care about the sweatshop labor that was needed to hand draw a cartoon. The cartoon is still great even if someone was killed to make it. In the same way that a basket of chicken wings is delicious.

There seems to be nothing exciting here. Just old bs philosophies..each one of us have our own concepts and we are holding on to them. And repeating them 1000 times. 
If there's something juicy here, lemme know.
Edit : It was a temporary boredom. Actually it's a love hate relationship. Overall I need this forum. @Sandhu @Thought Art @Butters  
Some moderator had hidden this thread, but then it appeared after a while, I don't know how.