TimStr

@MM1988 You can get Leo's list of recommended books. Most of the theory should be there. Here's the thing with radical honesty and relationships. It basically boil some down to becoming more polarizing and authentic. By being radically honest, you constantly show to other people, who you are and how you feel. You put much more emphasis on communicating your stance in this world. Of course, many people won't resonate with that. But the ones that do, do even more so. So you're trading your many shallow superficial relationships for fewer but more meaningful ones. Because you're taking a more defined position in this world people can decide more clearly, if they can identify with you or not. Sure, you may receive more hate from the people that can't. But you will also receive more love from the people that can. And trust me, it's a hell of a relief, if you stop kissing anybody's ass. Regarding not getting any insights about yourself: radical Honesty is a highly practical concept, so try it and apply it in your life, before making any judgment about it giving you insights or not.

@Nadosa My advice would be: Don't worry about it too much. I guess, you are getting to the point where your enlightenment work tries to teach you the lesson of no free will. You can not be conscious 24/7 because, there is no you in the first place. Letting go of the need for control might be the way to go. Joshu Sasaki Roshi's (one of Shinzen Youngs teachers) definition of enlightenment gets to the root of the issue: It's not about forcing to maintain max. level awareness all the time. But to tune into the "natural" changing flow of your consciousness more.

What kind of meditation technique are you currently using? Just as @Joseph Maynor said, it's not that common to hear people talk about an ego death experience induced by meditation. Perhaps you would benefit from some more mindfulness oriented meditation. I guess ego death is easier to face, if you're able to see it for just, what it is.

Your ego is not some thing within you or some part of you. It is you! It's all of you! So why is ego death frightening? It's because YOU WILL DIE! You, that entity that is reading these words and hearing them in his head will end! Forever! And you will not come back! Never! That experience of you, being alive, that you are just in will be over! I am not getting at this from a philosophical or conceptual point of view. This is actually how it feels! Of cause, if you encounter ego death on psychedelics or meditation, after some time, your ego might come back. But when you're at the very brink of it, it will feel, like it's the end, and you won't ever come back. It will feel terminal. You will die! Sure it's too much for you to handle, because you won't survive it! It will kill you. Enlightenment is the most lethal thing for the ego. Notice: I am not saying this, to freak you out, but to show you, that, what you've encountered is perfectly alright. That's what it's about. It should feel that way. If you find that you're not ready for this, don't worry, that's perfectly normal, the ego is there for survival, you probably won't ever be ready. I wouldn't say, that ego death is so common on meditation. I have never encountered it that way. So congratulations, you're making some real progress. In you're mind, you're probably saying something along the lines of: "Oh man, can't I have the insight without ego death. I am ok with anything, if I can avoid this. Please leave this little flame, here on this side of my eyes burning." But, if you want to drive enlightenment home you have to suffer through that. And if you're brave enough and conquer your fear death you will come back victorious! And there won't be anything left, that can harm you ever again. Except, that it won't be you, that comes back. Bummer. Watch Leo's video on 2C-B for additional explaination and words of encouragement.

@elias @Annica Short update on this one: Two weeks ago, I made a post to announce the meetup, which was almost instantly deleted. And I received a message from Leo himself, that he isn't on board with us organizing any sorts of public meetups. It's ok, to meet individual people, but getting crowds together in the name of actualized.org might get him into trouble. But I am still interested in meeting you guys from germany, so if you're from Stuttgart or happen to be around, make sure to send me a PM.

There are all sorts of different ways to organize your practice. Feel free to experiment and play around Imo, there are to main things to consider: What technique(s) suits your personality type? Nobody can tell you that, you have to find out through trial and error. Just as @ajasatya pointed out, if you want to know, if doing two techniques in one session works for you, try for a couple of months and then evaluate. What way of practice suits your life situation best. There are many ways to set up your practice. Key is, that you make it easy for yourself to integrate it in your daily life. If you have to go out of your way to have a meditation session, every day, chances are that missing out on days becomes more frequent. Here is a video from Shinzen Young, that offers a pretty comprehensive outline of meditation practice: Personal experiences: I often practice ceveral techniques in one session. Vipassana and Self-Inquiry (for me they work together great) I tend to do do nothing practice in the evening, since that's more effortless for me. I do more doing type of practice in the morning. I do 5 to 30 min of concentration practice in the beginning of every session, to sharpen my mind. It's a great catalyst for my practice.

Let me quickly explain, how this question arose for me: For some time now, I tend to stumble about all sorts of "conspirative" theories. I have a couple of friends that are somewhat into it and I also get approached by random people in the street, that are trying to sell me on their alternative world views. Everything from 9/11 was an inside job, chemtrails and the toxicity of flourinated water which seem to be kind of common theories to far out stuff, like nazi zombies living on the back of the moon and a friend of mine, who believed, that he was part of the MK Ultra program and thought, he was designed to be a weapon of mass destruction of the US government (he had to spend one year in closed mental institution). Especially the last two are way past the boundary of what the common masses would call insane. However, I just couldn't cope with the answer: "All of this is delousion!" There must be a bigger lesson to be learned. Probably half a year ago, I had a shift of how I relate to this: In my opinion, conspiracy folks are not much different than "ordinairy" people. They had certain model of how some aspect of the wolrd (politics, health, pharmacy, government) works, that they clung to. Then, they got presented with some alternative data (the conspiracy) and changed their mind, to accept the new "conspiracy" model. HOWEVER I see non of them truly learning the lesson. For me, when I heard about some of the theories, my mind went: "Oh, I believed this, but here is another reality to believe in, that is contradictory to the first one. So in fact, neither of them is the actual truth, but my understanding of truth has to expand, in order to encompass both of them. That means, both, the old and the new model are just theories that point to the actual truth, but truth can't be found in any of them." I find the perspective, that there is no actual truth, to be much truer, than any perspective to cling to as truth. So here is my question: May it be worth it to research conspiracy theories to deliberately shatter some of my believes about politics, world history and government? Knowing more different theories, but clinging less to them for me seems to be one way out of the web of believes. Also this might play into the concept of not-knowing.

@Amit Now this is a tricky one! Let's first make a CRUTIAL destinction between the content and the contour of thoughts (I got this from Shinzen Young). By content we define the actual content of the thinking, you're experiencing, what the thought is about. By contour we define define the actual experience of the thinking. How many thoughts come to you in e.g. 10 seconds. Were they are located in you're awareness space. How big they are... Now the answer to your question "Are thoughts also reality?" is very simple. The contour of thoughts is real, the content is illusory. If you really want to grasp this deeply, you can do mindfulness meditation on your thoughts. (This is part of the Mahasi Sayadaw school of vipassana meditation.) Sit down with closed eyes and turn your awareness to your thought stream. Pay attention to the nature of the numerous sensation that make up thoughts. What do thoughts feel like? How big are they? What do they look, smell, taste, sound like? How long do they last? Where are their edges? At any given moment, are they more auditory, visual or physical. The key here is that you get engaged with the contour of the thoughts, otherwise you will simply flounder in content. If taken seriously, this practice is one of the fastest cures for monkey mind.

@Leo Gura Wow, sounds like it has to be experienced, to grasp it. So, I assume, this is basically how stage turquoise thinking works. Does this kind of knowing then somehow get translated by your mind? Because, that was what I experienced on AL-LAD. Some sort of mystical truth is experienced and then translated into conceptual language by the mind. So mystical truth becomes conceptual insight, if the mind is able to grasp it. An I think, that‘s why it is important to learn the theory of non-duality. For the mind to become a better translation device and actually make "sense" of what is experienced, because otherwise, it just spits out nonsens all the time, while tripping. But in a sense by translation into conceptual language the mind actually makes nonsense out of the mystical experience, because the experience is much "truer", than its conceptualization.

@Maxx @see_on_see @Falk Like I said, I want shatter my believes by using the conspiracy theory to point out to myself, that there are different "truths" out there to believe in and that all of these are not actual Truth. Yep, you‘re definately right, but my idea was, to use the stories, to expose mainstream theories as being just stories, I started to believe in, as well. Breaking down my web of believes by exposing myself to counter-believes and grasping that both of them are just believes but not actual truth. Yep, that's my main concern as well. That they would just feed into my ego because it would use them to feel superior. However, I think, that I am quite aware of that.

@Lord Bwyra Great big post or yours, I really liked it. You just spoke from a place of pure fascination and awe. Being a musician myself, I got touched by this a lot! And I got motivated as well, so thanks man!

Yep, that's the approach, I have in mind. @Leo Gura Makes sense to get this one handeled first, since this is the ultimate conspiracy. In your videos about psychedelics you're talking a lot about the barriers of real vs. unreal and sanity vs. insanity breaking away. How does this manifest in your experience, while tripping? Like, what do you hear, see, feel... after you corssed that point?

Yeah, this also corresponds to the paradox of Doing vs. Being. The ultimate Do Nothing can become an effortless Doing. Also, the distinction between mind, body and self are a very clear way to put it.

I think of it this way: If you truly beliefe, that you are ok, you also accept your interiour motivation for growth and transformation. And then it's no about correcting mistakes but about being the continuous change that you already are. By being totally ok with yourself, you become a resistanceless outlet for the innate creativity of reality. Adyashanti is a great example for someone that has truly realized, being ok with himself. BUT for him, being ok not just a belief but an actual truth.

You would master self-acceptance and yet at the same time continue to work on functioning optimally in the world, because at some point became able to hold the paradox of acceptance vs. continuous improvement.

All of us surely would! But most of the time, stuff like this fails, because noone steps forward and takes leadership. Let's make it as simple as possible. We need to agree on two things: 1. A date: 3rd of october is coming up. Why not meet at Tag der deutschen Einheit? 2. A location: That's probably the most difficult part. I know, that there are a couple people from Baden-Württemberg, I've read, that there are some in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin. I guess, there would be some austrian and swiss people, too. So let's do it like this: Anyone who is free on 3rd of october and genuinely willing to commit to investing time and money into a 3-5h trip send me a PM with your location. I will try to figure out a city, that is fairly accessable to all of us. (I guess, we will end up with something like Kassel or Frankfurt, cities relatively centeral in germany.)

I consider emperor Nero a zen-devil, too. He and Marcus Aurelius shared the same teacher, Seneca. The latter two are to be considered two of the main figures in stoic philosophy. I am not sure if they practiced some form of non-dual inquiry, but guessing from the way, they lived their lifes, I think, that they were somewhat spiritually realized. At least regarding the detachment aspect of enlightenment. But all three of them lived out their stoa in a different way. Seneca was more the yogi kind of guy and others wanted to learn philosophy from him, Marcus Aurelius went full on life purpose, becoming a great conscientious but at the same time extremely modest emperor after Neros death, and Nero himself just went all nuts, burned Rome several times and ordered Seneca to commit suicide.

@Max_V Here are a few ways that work to inspire me (I am a musician): Explore, what other artists are doing. Just spend some time going to galleries, browsing the internet or watching a movie. Get some input. Face the blank canvas. Sometimes it's not actually lack of inspiration, that's holding you back, but resistance to the work of coming up with something. Set a timer for 2h or do and commit to spend that time to do nothing else but drawing. (That's basically what The war of art by Steven Pressfield is about.) Challange yourself to do something new. Maybe try not to create a character but something you have never drawn before. Meditation. Whenever I sit down to meditate my monkey mind sort of goes through a few phases. At some point it tries to distract me with creative ideas about whatever I thought about a lot, that week. It works great with the first tip. Hope that helps.

@Joseph Maynor How about smiling? Sounds like a valid way to me, to deal with the issue, you wrote in the title of the thread.

@Shiva I will relocate to Stuttgart this September, would be a pleasure to meet you!

Objective causality starts to break down if you break down your minds tendency to rationalize and conceptualize. If you say, that it must have rained at night, because the ground is wet, that seems true for you, because your mind is used to think that way. It's because the concept rain exists in your thinking. Try to imagine how your world would be if that wasn't the case. How would your world be without the concept of rain? How would it be with no concepts at all? The fact, that it might be hard to imagine shows you, that you're stuck in this way of thinking. Your stuck in your concept of reality and unable to see it for what it actually is. Now it may be useful to conceptualize to some degree in order to function in the ordinary world, but conceptualizing gets in the way of truth seeking.

@sleeperstakes Some clarification first: Pickup is essentially about making a girl want to have sex with you. Dating includes but is not limited to that. I find, that Radical Honesty (read Brad Blanton) is another great concept to be applied to dating. In your post, you're talking about relationships, though, which is a whole different story. Do not expect to be good at having healthy relationships, just because you are good at dating. For having a healthy relationship it's more about non manipulatory relating (read David Daida for that) and being detached (read Marcus Aurelius) than having dating skills. In fact, there are many pickup guys, that never have a successful relationship, because their pickup mindsets eventually get in the way, so it might even be counter productive for you. I think one of the biggest lies, humans keep telling to themselves, is that they're naturally good at something, they haven't done. I find this to be true especially for relationships. Expecting, that your first few relationships are going to fail, is a healthy sobering attitude because being close to another human being (besides your family) is a skill that has to be developed. So don't get upset about your failures. Take every new relationship as an opportunity to practice and learn.

@Ilya Firstly, you can't become absolute infinity because you already are it. But I guess, this answer won't satisfy you. Secondly, don't expect, that these kind of realizations have any particular order, they're all absolute, and thus the concept of no self and of absolute infinity are basically just different ways to concepualize the ultimate nature of reality, like two sides of the coin. I find that there's not really any hierarchy to them, it's more a matter of recognizing what you experience as one or the other. Personally, I have hints of infinity on various psychedelics but haven't had an experience that I qualify for true no self, yet. So my practical advice to you would be: do psychedelics

@WaterfallMachine Get into Shinzen Youngs work, he offers you a whole periodic table of mindfulness techniques. Nobody can tell you what will work for you, you have to figure it out for yourself. But I can recommend a few things, that worked for me. Fist thing, you could try is just basic mindfulness with labeling (see, hear, feel). The point of this is to create a continuous stream of concentration that you can shine on one event after another in your experience. This may help you with the general overwhelm. Another thing, you could try, is what Shinzen calls Focus on Flow. Instead of labeling specific events you focus your attention on the continuity of experience. You basically create one big conceptual object out of it, that you then concentrate on. For example, whenever I have to move through large crowds (at train stations, airports, etc.) I focus on the flow of the movement in my entire visual field. I try to see the movement of every person and also the movement of the space around me relative to me as I am walking. This allows me to navigate through crowded places very effectively and effortlessly and I enjoy it to feel kind of merging with the general movement of the scene before my eyes.

I can recommend anything by Alejandro Jodorowsky, especially The Holy Mountain. The best movie about enlightenment I've seen and one of the most grotesque, mind blowing, awe-inspiring and excruciating movies out there. Expect being blown away. Also I am a fan of Stanley Kubric (check 2001: A Space Odyssey, Eyes Wide Shut and Clockwork Orange), the Wachowskis (Matrix, Cloud Atlas), Charlie Kaufmann (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa), Ken Russell (The Devils) and also Christipher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception, Prestige, Memento).