alifesurreal

Sarcasm does not help. To clear a few things up: It is not true that psychedelics have no addictive potential. While not physically, they can have a psychologically addictive potential. re: recreational use - while it doesn't seem possible to do a proper dose of 5-MeO for recreation only, most of the other psychedelics can be used recreationally. And I do believe that even a supposedly spiritual psychedelic journey does have recreational aspects to it. Hell, even meditation does! That being said, one single psychedelic experience can permanently alter the way your mind and thinking works. The visual candy you focused on in the gently sarcastic post above is the most benign part about a psychedelic experience. It's what goes on in your mind during and after - how you integrate this experience in your view of life and reality for the years to come that matters most. Sometimes one single experience is enough for one life. For some people trauma or near death experience etc can have similar effects. Just those are maybe not as recreational I have Al-Lad, Eth-Lad and 1P-LSD at home - it's legal in my country. I do intend to use it one day both recreationally as well as for exploration. Might be I get my ass handed to me when I expected recreation or I just experience shallow awe and joy when aiming for inner exploration - we'll see... Either way, things aren't simple. They aren't just black or white. No need to be radical about either the pro or the con. Just make up your own mind and try not to impose upon others what they should believe or not.

This here makes me feel happy and strong:

the notion of trying to get rid of the ego entirely might be leading in the wrong direction. just make peace with the ego and try to see it for what it is: a specialized tool that enables us to get around and interact in this particular domain of reality with its inherent set of patterns and parameters. No more no less.

watching... thanks!

Haha, same here - I stumbled across this TED talk by accident right after I started this thread

Thanks for chiming in! I'm aware of the point you're making and I agree with it! I feel a bit like a fish that's being told about those fabulous mountains and deserts outside the ocean which he has no way of ever seeing unless he finally leaves the realm of the ocean and his own familiar existence behind. re: psychedelics - I am currently working my way up the ladder. Still in the very very low range with lots of care being taken as I have huge respect for these. But eventually the day may come that I (dare to) break through and then I guess I'll have to revisit this thread

Oh great!! Thanks for this - I will check him out!

I am considering this possibility as well, I just think things might be a bit more nuanced as in the reality we perceive has its own rules which make sense within that frame of reference. But that does not have to mean that this reality seizes to exist when nobody's looking. I really liked the comparison with the computer desktop in the ted video - that our reality is like a desktop, and what we cannot see is the code behind it which actually creates this interface in such a way as to be usable for us with our particular set of perceptive tools. So if I jump in front of a train, it will kill me. Even if I have my eyes closed and the train shouldn't be there. Because this reality is very real as long as I am a participant in this domain. Outside this domain, like for example on a quantum level or beyond I am not even alive at all as life in itself is just a concept, right?

You may be right! I am currently watching a TED-talk about this and now things start to make a bit more sense for me: Do We See Reality As It Is? I can agree with reality being vastly different from what we perceive. Still working on the "it's ALL an illusion and hence not there" part

I have been on the path for roughly two years now – gradually learning and experiencing new angles to the relation between reality and consciousness. Two days ago I watched Leo's latest video, the rant about naive realism (which i loved!) and while it helped me greatly to further my process, I noticed a slight bit of irritation or maybe doubt growing in me. Now I am hoping to get some clarification/help by posting this here: As I understood it, it is stated (in Leos video as also in several other sourecs) that the reality outside our mind & perception does not exist. In a video linked in another thread ("Is There an Outside World?"), Rupert Spira points out that the only way we can access the reality outside our minds and bodies, is through our experience and senses as we cannot experience reality unfiltered as raw data. I agree with that. But it seems that Spira (as well as Leo) deduce from this that the outside reality may actually not exist at all. And I have a slight problem with this argumentation. It sounds to me like the message is: Just because we cannot experience reality unfiltered through our senses, reality as we know it is overthrown in its entirety. And this does seem a bit random to me. This leads to a burning question for me: Are those very rare and few individual experiences of awakening and enlightenment in this world enough to disprove myriads of information about reality gathered from human experience every day? For example: How does a an unexpected accident fit in here? Let's say a person gets struck by a falling tree, completely unaware and unprepared. This person's reality ends abruptly and without warning. If there is no world outside our mind, what was it that lethally struck this person on the head? If you infer that this accident's only a figment of our own imagination/reality and that this person never existed in the first place, wouldn't that be a bit too convenient? I mean, I do firmly believe that reality is way different than we think it is – but I am worried that this way of arguing is a flat out denial of reality instead of an exploration of its true nature. And isn't denial as egotistic as anything? I may be wrong, but doesn't non-duality mean that there is no difference between the observing subject and the object and that the subject/object distinction is misleading? How can we deduce from this that nothing exists outside our minds? This reverse logic seems a bit unbalanced. I understand the importance of open-mindedness, yet as these ideas are presented via egotistic tools like language and logic, they also need to make sense to some extent and be able to withstand critical questioning. (unless I've simply misunderstood it all completely ) To sum it up: Leo, or anyone reading this, please help me out here as I feel I may have either misunderstood or confused things, or there are indeed aspects in those videos about reality that need further explanation. Thanks

I watched the video yesterday and it was one of the best I've seen so far from Leo. Of course ymmv etc... A good rant can have it's power and inspiration - I don't think it matters if it involves ego or not. Either way, that video inspired me to revisit things like the Higgs field and Higgs Boson findings, empty space and quantum mechanics etc. with what Leo said in mind - and that alone was very good for my personal process..

Thanks a LOT for these practical tools! I kind of extended that first exercise and started visualizing how it would be if I were able to continue drawing that line beyond my skin? I continued the line into my head, and when I realized that I'd actually pass right through my head without touching anything tangible, that gave me a very direct experience of the empty/hollow nature of that "self". Thought I'd share this as it helped me move forward in my process

But how long is this moment? Do we create an illusion of a continuos experience out of infinitely small fractions/moments? And how does the neurological delay of our perceptions come into play? Just wondering as I've noticed recently when I was in bed listening to the sounds of the city how my brain was creating a flowing experience out of infinitely small pieces of instant sounds. It felt like my brain had a temporary ram-like memory of instant perceptions which were continuously pieced together in order to form a recognizable perception. Like there had to be a minimum length of a perception in order to be experienced at all. Made me feel like most of my continuous perception of the now was not actually the now, but from a chached version of it sampled at a frequency determined by the resolution of my brain.

I am very much looking forward to this!! This left/right brain perspective got me thinking a lot - even down to changing my diet etc. Basically trying anything that supports the pineal gland and helps moving more to the right side On a side note, a nice (and amusing) thing I discovered: You all surely know that feeling - you go to another room in your appartment in order get something there when suddenly your mind goes blank and you don't remember at all what it was you were going to get there... I used to find that quite unsettling, making me worry about my brain/my stress levels. Well, my brain still sucks, but I now cherish these moments! Because instead of desperately trying to make my brain remember the thing, I just let go and do nothing. I enjoy the fact that at that moment while I'm standing in that room, there is absolutely NOTHING going on in my brain. Like it's in stand-by mode, like a derailed train waiting to be put back on track. Maybe this is a bit similar to these moments that those paradoxical buddhist koans try to achieve - either way, just thought I'd share this with you Lynn

Hey guys, today I've rewatched the above video together with my wife and it almost made both of us cry as it was so touching. I did not get any reactions to my post, so I'm wondering if anyone here actually did check out the video? Lynn