Telepresent

@electroBeam Fuck it. Do the opposite. Your mental/emotional state wants you to stop for a bit? Stop for a bit. Maybe use the time writing, or reading, or napping, or eating chocolate, or pleasing yourself, or whatever. If it's right to return you'll return. Why force yourself to do something that isn't working? If you want to make sure you're doing something spiritual/contemplative, there are other ways

You must feed... I must feed... we must feed...

I haven't yet found that for myself (please understand I'm not calling you wrong, I'm describing my progress!) Is this something you've found for yourself? Because I've heard it said a fair bit, and certainly I can recognise the self wanting to defend itself, or establish legacy, but Oh. That's the point isn't it? In the knowledge of impermanence, trying to establish legacy to last beyond the physical life, remain in memory, and let's not think too much about the heat death of the universe because then meaninglessness really rears its head. Thank you

I don't have any problem with inert matter being able to receive input, calculate, determine outputs, and send those outputs out as actions to other physical objects - hell, that's exactly what is happening in my phone as I write this! The thing that did it in for me was: where is this conscious experience happening? Because I know it is happening. I know sensations exist. It's about all I know. Conventional wisdom would have us accept that this is the result of the actions of a brain's input-output process. Ok. Where? Really, ask yourself, where does this conscious experience take place? It's not 'in the brain', because what happens in the brain is electro-chemical synaptic firing. And that's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing white and black and hearing speech and so on. So then I have to ask, does the brain somehow create an extra, non-physical dimension? Because that's the only way the "brain generates consciousness" argument can work: each brain manages to generate an entirely new non-physical sensory dimension, and oh yeah we have no suggestion at all that this is the case. We have to not look at this because it starts not making sense very damn fast. Of course the other option is that this sensory dimension always existed, just waiting for the moment that this precise brain was created to plug into it. Or maybe it's a time-share with other brains from history, so maybe it plugged into a dinosaur once, and then a bacterium, then a fish. But it was pretty damn clever of the universe to create the precise number of non-physical sensory dimensions it would need to accommodate every single brain and other sentient process through all of existence, just so that physical experience could be experienced as consciousness... which, I might point out, there is NO rationale for in the physical model. Why is consciousness necessary in a physical universe? The processes should work just as well without it, shouldn't they, if consciousness is a byproduct?

Yet surprisingly hard to really accept

Ooh, also: ego is a thing

Something went wrong there! I mean that I - the ego - is a product of mind. A product of consciousness. And yet ego likes to speak of 'my mind, my consciousness', as though it is prior to them or owner of them

@Viking I guess the question is, are you thinking these things, directly knowing them a little bit but mostly thinking them, or directly experiencing them a lot and thinking them a little? I'm in 'directly knowing a little bit (I.e. for about 0.1 seconds at a time) and then mostly thinking'. You've identified what I think is a key point, in defining what you mean by 'I' on your post. I'm frankly amazed that every time I've suggested people might want to investigate which "I" they are talking about (as the term seems to be interchangeably used - sometimes in the space of a sentence - to refer to both character and perceiver), I just get buzzwords thrown back at me. Almost as if people don't want to question their I. Hmm...

The mind is 'mine', rather than I am a product of mind. Or consciousness is 'mine', rather than I am a product of consciousness. Seems pat or basic but is, perhaps, critical

@Charlotte In not bothering to read through this whole thread (sorry!) but I'll say there is no method but to ask, at all times and in every way, "what IS this? What is going on?" Think about it, write about it, forget about it and then remember it (and you will forget it A LOT), and immediately interrogate the answers. As soon as mind says "x is y", then you ask "what is y?" At all times in all ways

@WildeChilde All you can do is read the books, and take what is useful to you. Don't take him as an authority (in fact he addresses this). Learn to deal with his contradictions (on fact he addresses this). Ultimately McKenna paints an incomplete, unsatisfactory, contradictory and confusing picture. The future I go, the more I think that is the point

Ack, excuse me. I'm being rude and not answering your meaning. Forgive me

Examine

Then go for it. Don't ask permission

@Truth Addict you're thinking. Spend a lot of time thinking about what thinking IS in your experience

Sounds like you're being skeptical, which is a good first step. I'm riffing here, but maybe send in a friend with a fake identity and story - or fuck it, why not go in with a fake story and identity of your own? If their advice depends on provided details, it's probably crap. If it's spiritually true and valuable then it won't matter you've gone in under false pretenses. Don't know how you can avoid giving them your money though. Perhaps ask a psychic?

And people like Jed McKenna suggest closer to two. Don't base your progress on a say-so. By all means if you think 5-meo is the way to go, go for it. Just know as close or clear as you can

Yup. Be very careful of anyone who says "do this". Challenge, learn, come Challenge again! Don't accept any answer! Don't accept this answer! ... oh ... um ... Just don't believe upfront and be careful of promises

Ok I haven't watched that video, so my response is incomplete. I have argued many times that people (& most importantly from my pov, I) confuse the mind-based I, and the experiential I. Perhaps awareness can't exist without isolation. That doesn't mean that anything else must exist. Dig

Everything is a judgement. Discuss

@Sahil Pandit so why even post this? This question applies as much to me as you

First of I just want to confirm that I don't argue for any perspective of 'truth', 'reality', etc. I have to take it on faith that you exist, that you think/feel/experience anything at all. I have to associate the words over this page with another person who has another conscious experience which responds to these words. And if that's true your truth is as true as my truth. I can only speak from my truth. You can't. You can't. If you think you must or that's what enlightenment is, that's your mental shit to get past. Nobody ever told you you would feel the experience of being an elephant. They may have suggested the worried of being an elephant is part of the same infinity that the experience of being you is. But that's up to you to determine. Let go of the idea that you have to experience the elephant. That's in your head, not in anything anyone told you. You've got a strong grasp of infinity and what it means. How seriously have you taken the idea that finite you and infinite you may be different things?

@Dino D A lot of good questions. And all I can suggest is to think about context. If infinity is, then there must be the experience of you not experiencing anyone else's thoughts, just as there must be the experience of you experiencing everyone's thoughts. I agree, don't buy into clever answers that stop you investigating, but also be skeptical of your own ideas, your own answers. Which I? You the thinking entity which is attached to and defined by the body-mind-definition? No, it's not being any of these things. It's being the body-mind-definition you think of as you. Is the absolute being those other things? Maybe. I don't know

@egoless I'm afraid I don't know anything about that. Except to say that as long as I am dealing with my conscious experience, I have the ability to consciously interact with what is happening