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

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

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 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.

Hi again, I thought I'd share this little gem with you I found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU This is an excerpt from a TED talk in which neuro scientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes how she very consciously lived through a stroke during which her brain's left hemisphere slowly stopped functioning and the right hemisphere took over. It is a very touching account which has striking similarities to how experiences of temporary awakening/enlightenment are sometimes described. This made me think that the process of enlightenment or awakening could boil down to us moving from left brain dominance to right brain dominance. One eye opening book about this topic in relation to our consciousness I can deeply recommend is the "Return To The Brain Of Eden" by Wright & Gynn. According to Wright & Gynn moving from left to right brain dominance might actually be achieved most efficiently by sleep deprivation (which I won't be able to try as I work with children and need to be very alert all the time unfortunately). Anyway - it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this Lynn

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

Hello to Leo and everyone else on here! I am new to this forum and would like to ask a question regarding the true nature of self. A little bit about my background: I am 41 years now, had a severe burn out about 2 years ago after which I had to let go all of which to me defined myself all my life. My passions, my gifts, my addictions. I never thought it was possible that such a thing happened. It felt like there was a car crash inside my head and I was standing by watching it with a mix of horror and entertainment. This was when my second life began. A life without a meaning. The time was right for me and I wanted to start reading wise lines by old men. So I read Herman Hesse's “Steppenwolf” which caught me cold in my deception and self pity. Intrigued by his way of writing I read “Siddharta” and this is how I stumbled across buddhism. One thing led to another and I learned about Taoism, read Eckart Tolle and the likes and elegantly finished it all off with Jiddu Krishnamurti who's down to earth no bullshit way of writing made me realize that I could live without the ornamental and ritualistic sides of buddhism. I had learned to watch my thoughts and recognize the destructive sides of my ego. My life had gained a completely new quality. I could not understand how I had been so blind and wrong my whole life before. Anyway, it's been almost two years and many books & insights later when I stumbled across Leo's videos on youtube. And one evening here something happened. I had just finished watching those detailed enlightenment videos of Leo and was now listening to a lecture by Sam Harris about free will when it hit me: Not suddenly, but slowly I was starting to feel the reality of matter and elements around me and in me, the actual reality of my body being a bunch of just matter temporarily aligned to form a functioning system and my “Self” being nothing more than a part of this as well. Or rather not even that. It dawned on me that me, the living self that seemed so well defined and solid is actually just an illusion, a byproduct of all this matter in me. And that along with Sam Harris's free will discussion made it click. This is what it might feel like for an artificial intelligence to become aware of its artificial nature, to realize that it is only a simulation, nothing more. I felt a feeling of growing panic and dizzyness in me as I realized that the Pilot and the Machine had switched places. So I was just a projection of my internal background processes and my SELF was continuously trying to catch up with what was being presented from the inside, trying to pretend it was the author of everything. The more I wanted to reach inside my mind and find something solid to hold on to, the less there was anything tangible there. There was only nothing. Emptiness. Not even emptiness, just not anything. This realization was almost physical, it came from my gut and made me feel dizzy and nauseous. Without a real self that was in charge of everything it now felt as if I was being dragged along by my body and mind without much control at all. A trapped feeling almost. At that time I assumed that this was my ego panicking and refusing to let go. There was no bliss and no magic. It was more like I was lost in an ocean and my lonely island of support and orientation had just sunk and disappeared. I had to literally drag myself out of that feeling by distracting myself with music and moving around in the apartment, because I felt so overwhelmed. Now, 2-3 days later I have talked about this a lot with my wife which helped me coming to terms with this all. As I write this now I am experiencing a slight unease again but it's much less intense. I have re-watched Leo's enlightenment “the shocking truth” video again and this time all of his statements registered on a whole new level in me, it all made perfect sense to me. So here's my question: How do I proceed? I am not meditating or following any structured approach to enlightenment. But I have a deep deep urge to feel and experience the truth of reality. These things I realized and experienced a couple of days ago are with me now most of the time, but more on an intellectual level as opposed to a physical experience. I am aware my panic was my ego refusing. But this has decreased over the last days. I feel like I peaked through a window and I do not want to loose this again. Everyday life is ripe with temptation and distraction to lure you back into ignorance. Do you have any tips on how I could proceed in order to go deeper on this? Or at least stay on track? If this had happened through some kind of structured approach like meditation or psychedelics, I'd have a better clue how to proceed, but I don't have that practice. It would be very nice to read your thoughts on this. This forum is like a treasure trove to me Greetings from Hamburg Lynn PS: Sorry for the VERY long post!!

Thanks a lot for your helpful and kind replies! I am very aware that both the desire to hold on to any experience as well as the quest for knowledge and awakening are both ego driven. And I guess you're very right Mr Lenny, more meditation it is! I understand that it's most effective tool for self inquiry. I just rarely find time to meditate without being disturbed by someone or something. But I will somehow make space for that in my life! Meditation has done me good before, just I had not used it for self inquiry. And thank you Leo for chiming in. As you say, I've barely scratched the surface, yet it's already shaken my foundation quite a lot. I think it's Socrates who said "I know that I know nothing" and that is exactly how I feel these days. But this is intriguing. Every journey starts with a small step and I look forward to whatever I (or whatever my Self is) might encounter on the way. *edit: Ha! I just saw that Mr. Lenny has that very same quote from Socrates in his signature. And I thought I was the only person on the planet that knew about Socrates! Damn you again, education system!