hundreth

You are hilarious, man. Here you are commenting and evaluating Leo's video through the lens of what? Leo's videos! It's like a dream within a dream. There's no "ground" to ground to.

Depends who you ask. I'm wrestling with this myself, but leaning towards yes. This isn't the only goal though, one among many. On one hand, you have those who argue for ultimate relativity and this makes "good" and "evil" arbitrary concepts. That may be true, but there are also themes deep inside us subconsciously, inside our humanity, inside our being that guide us towards a "better" way. There are ways to live that lead you into a life of despair, and ways to live that enrich your experience and those around you. That's a pretty good goal if you're going to choose one. If you've actualized yourself as part of a community, then as an individual, and ultimately are able to transcend your community, there's a great chance you are an agent of "good." At the end of the day, this is a choose your own adventure, this just happens to keep coming up over and over as the most enjoyable, challenging, and meaningful way to play the game. Have fun.

So are things 'out of balance' so to speak or is it necessarily this way?

Hey guys, this is something i'm working on understanding and reconciling with everything I've learned these past few years. For the most part, in these circles we have this suggestion to separate oneself from society and focus on inner being / non duality. This is a kind of freedom or liberation from externalities, societies, cultures, expectations, etc and allows one to just be present and bask in the grace of being. Now, this is all lovely, except I see a recurring theme in my own life and in those around me. Especially those one generation older than me (I'm 32.) In my own life, my parents each have their own struggles. My mother has chronic health issues, my father struggles with alcoholism. My mother is also very burdened taking care of my grandmother, who not surprisingly has even more serious health issues. Among others in my family and friendships, I see many take on a huge responsibility and devoting a large portion of their lives and well being towards caring for their parents. I fully understand there are situations where it warrants completely cutting off from parents especially if they are toxic. For most, there's this giant gray area and it seems a necessary burden and moral imperative to care for your parents. Though, this can sometimes feel like a bottomless pit. So I wonder, what do consciousness and non duality seekers have to say about this? Is this just another arbitrary societal illusion? Is this just a barrier to higher levels of consciousness? Is there a greater truth and inherent morality that involves caring for others as an expression of non duality? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Thanks @Ocean. Your comment lead me to re-explore the chop wood, carry water proverb and with this practical situation I feel I understand it in greater depth.

I don't deny it, I'm just attempting to reconcile this with the message of "go live in a cave." On the other hand, for most of us, even though caring can be a learning / growth experience that brings about understanding, this can feel like an obligation at times. Any time you're "required" to take an action that doesn't seem to follow where you want to be expending your energies, this can feel like an obligation. I'm sure there are many out there who have transcended such feelings, but I'm speaking on behalf of myself and the layman. So there's this sort of chicken and egg, caring can lead to transcendence, but transcendence leads to caring.

I'm an INTP as well. I used to get caught up in all of this nonsense. An INTP behaves this way, an INTP behaves that way. An INTP has these strengths, an INTP has these weaknesses. If you continue down this path, you will get stuck inside an echo chamber and self fulfilling prophecy of who or how you are supposed to be. I don't recommend it. Especially considering you already know you have a tendency to get stuck in thought. You're just adding more thoughts to get stuck in, and these are the worst kind, because they seek to define you. Meditate, become directly aware of your individual processes and transcend them.

I really don't agree with this idea that the forum should be some kind of metaphor for spirituality or enlightenment. If you want to keep deconstructing the forum and approaching nothing just shut the whole thing down lol

I'm not sure why you highlighted my usage, but to that point I'm all for removing the counts. I made another post advocating for quality over quantity. I believe the upvote button helps remove unnecessary "I agree" posts. Keeping the rep counts private (on both user level and post level) removes the group think while maintaining feelings of connectedness.

Here's a thought, and I don't know if it's possible or not given the forum's feature set. Is it possible to enable the upvote functionality but keep the count private? Thereby removing the Group Think but maintaining the connection aspect of it.

Overall I don't like the change. I agree with removing those ranking titles and total rep count, etc. Having the rep counts on individual posts is useful. There's a reason why websites like StackOverflow are so damn useful. In addition to being useful for highlighting good posts, you join the forum to connect with others and relate thoughts, experiences, etc. Up-voting individual posts is a way to say "I'm resonating with what you're saying!" This is satisfying to both the upvoter and the upvotee. I find myself reaching for the button often when browsing. I don't usually feel like writing a post to agree with someone is useful. The upvote button is a way for content consumers to have a voice in the discussion as well without further cluttering it. On the other hand, the user based rankings and titles were not useful. They favor high frequency posters and reward quantity over quality. Also, what happened to forum notifications, mentions, etc?

I think less of myself, but I'm feeling myself more than ever

I think of enlightenment as binary, but awareness levels in gradients. You "know" the truth. You're enlightened. But do you truly believe it? Do you embody it? What level of awareness do you have of the truth? I'd venture to say almost everyone on this subforum is enlightened, but how many of us live in such a way? Myself included. Most of the time, I feel like I'm "me" and separate from my surroundings. I get glimpses.

I used to have similar feelings about comic books, wanting to have mutant powers like an X-Men and help people. I definitely had a phase of my life where I felt like I was stuck, and not having deep, meaningful experiences. Over time, just following your standard school -> job -> career trajectory I was presented with several calls to action and adventure. I had to choose to accept these. Choose to leave the corporate job for a Start Up. Choose to leave the start up and move my entire life to Israel for a year and a half. Choose to travel, experiment with psychedelics, have an intense relationship, etc. Over time I found out the real world is just as magical and adventurous as those fictional worlds are. Will those adventures bring you ultimate fulfillment? No, but they will teach you 1000x more than sitting around and reading on the internet will. Life has beaten me with a stick so many times, it's the ultimate teacher. Just be ready for those calls to action, and when adventure calls, make sure to pick up the phone and accept!

Unfortunately I don't know what kind of shrooms these were or the exact dosage. I'm a foreigner living in Israel, and I did things the old fashioned way. I bought them from a questionable dealer, and kept them for months until the right time. Don't worry though, these shrooms were fantastic! I've had quite a few Psilocybe trips before, but never solo. Still, I know I always feel the most grounded in nature when I'm on shrooms, so I went to HaYarkon park in northern Tel Aviv. I biked to a nice secluded area, locked my bike up, and prepared to sit and meditate. To contemplate on who I am, experience No Self. Not to go too far, get lost, lose my bike, get into trouble while I'm on shrooms, etc. I sat down, ate them, and started to meditate and follow the plan. Within 10 minutes of them kicking in, I was off wandering in a completely different direction - in a state of blissful awe and curious exploration. Everything was so vivid and beautiful, really magical. I couldn't stop moving. I had completely abandoned the plan. No self?? Who gives a shit? My inner child was let out. As I was on my journey, a thousand insights were hitting me at once. They were so deep and plentiful, I couldn't even hold them. Why had I abandoned the plan? I had all these fears. Don't get lost, don't deal with people much, stay in my lane nearby and stick to the agenda. It suddenly dawned on me, our EGO is simply our inner parent which we develop to keep us safe and allows us to manipulate the world. Without our egos, we would simply be directionless children. The catch is, even a child needs boundaries to feel safe. We NEED our egos to give us the lines for us to color in. I was walking endlessly, and another fear popped into my mind: "Aren't you going to be exhausted if you keep walking in this heat?" - and my inner child went "Hell nah!" Onward I went, and I realized I had all the energy I needed. It was driven by this child like desire to play. As it turns out, we generate and absorb life force when we're tapped into our child like desire to play. I'm generally a low energy guy, and have a lot of trouble maintaining the will to follow through on things. I realized my inner parent was way over powering my inner child to the point where it was literally stifling my "life force." It still feels odd using that term as it's the first time I've ever felt the need to use it, based on the inexplicable feeling I had on the shrooms. When your inner parent or EGO is too strong, you literally stifle your ability to generate and absorb the life force around you. It's almost like you can't breathe the air that's around you. When you don't have enough play and exploration in your life, you are literally starving for life force and dying. I now knew what I needed to balance. I learned how to parent myself from my parents, and I desperately need to let go of control to find my life force in the only place you can find it - CHAOS. As children, you play in the wilderness, you get your hands dirty, you literally thrive in chaos. Our ego brings ORDER to the chaos and attempts to guide our inner child. It's very much like coloring within the lines. Without the lines, there is no form. Too many restrictions, and the art can't breathe and express. The thing is, all the life force you thrive on is deep inside the LIMITLESS CHAOS. I now understand this is why people who go through near death experiences or other extreme circumstances come out with a new appreciation for life. Our ideal selves are the perfect marriage of ORDER and CHAOS. As I kept walking alone, I was in such a blissful awesome state. I felt this deep desire to hug someone and share this, but I was alone. It's not as if anything was "missing" - but I really wanted to share this beauty. The insight arrived, duality is a GIFT we've given ourselves to be able to love and share. Duality is not the enemy, this is what we've chosen. We quite literally are all the "children of god". I now realized those words were divine. As I've said, I was in a very playful explorative state, and the mushrooms are a very playful spirit. It felt as though the shrooms spirit told my inner parent "Go sit down, I will guide him from here." So Ron shut the fuck up and the shrooms spirit took over, reminding me what it was to be a child and sharing hundreds of insights with me. It felt like I was plugged into the source of truth, but the spirit was giving me the answers in my own voice. Why was the spirit talking to me in my own voice? Then it hit me, I was talking to myself. The answers were all within me, but the only way I would understand them was through the channel of "another." In other words, of course I experienced the truth through the "other" - DUALITY IS ALL I'VE EVER KNOWN! Without duality, we quite literally would be nothing. There were so many other insights gained, but I'm sharing some highlights to keep this from being insanely long. If these words resonated with you, I can't take any credit for them. They were given to me, and forms of the experience we all share. When you experience the beauty of being, the only thing to do is share it. Love to you all. - Ron

Thanks for the response. Regarding the New Age movement, I'm honestly not sure. You have alluded to the New Age movement in some of your videos as the ideas starting to make sense, and in your posts on the forum you've pointed to someone moving from a scientist to a New Ager as if that was a forward progression.

@Leo Gura I agree 100% with your Metaphysics. Reality is a hallucination grounded by nothing. I don't understand the condemnation of science and the propping up of religions / New Age ideologies. Science is in the business of explaining the world of appearances in our dream reference state. It does a very good job at this. It doesn't claim to answer questions beyond this. Science is a tool. You condemn science for not dealing with Metaphysics, that's like condemning a hammer for not being a screwdriver. Here's where it gets more perplexing to me, religions and New Age ideologies also believe in a material world that is "real." Religions generally have a foundation of a "real" material world created by a divine creator. For the New Agers, it seems that Aliens have become their gods, and they are mostly concerned with how Aliens have manipulated our material world to "create" us. All three of religion, New Age, and science make claims about our world of appearances. For example, abrahamic religions claim the world is 6000 years old. The New Agers believe aliens built the Egyptian pyramids. They are both immensely concerned with "truth" related to this dream appearance. Science's methodology is a lot better suited to making sense of this realm. When scientists discover tons and tons evidence that the Egyptians themselves built the pyramids and no Aliens are required, the New Agers are the ones who can't handle this truth. Now I'm not claiming that science has all the answers, even when it comes to this appearance world, but if your major critique is the metaphysical foundation of a material reality, then all three are guilty. Just because the other two dabble with immaterial ideas while being completely wrong about this appearance world, doesn't make their foundations any stronger. At least science has some level competency in dealing with one frame of reference. New Age ideals on the other hand, they haven't touched truth in any frame. They simply believe what they want to believe. There's a world of a difference between not attaching to appearances, and attaching to all appearances. What is it about the New Age movement that makes it a stronger reflection of truth in your opinion? Really want to understand. Thanks.

Good idea! Weed causing paranoia is not a mental illness, it's just what weed does to those who love to be in control. Get some beginner level truffles, and take a dose in Vondelpark. It will be awesome.

Yes, the Jews do the same and have strict rules about the slaughtering process to avoid suffering, but it's unclear how much this intention has been muddied up by modern farming techniques. I'm personally trying to cut back on the meat but it's extremely difficult for me, since I enjoy the food and it feels so natural eating it given how I grew up. Hopefully I can get to a point where I consume meat on special occasions and feel deep appreciation. This might sound dumb, but I also wonder about the moral implications of eating vegetables. This is an honest question, and I know many fruits and vegetables have a symbiotic relationship with species who eat them, but is it possible we are indirectly harming yet another living being? At the end of the day, you continue living by consuming another life. It's much easier to relate to the plight of an animal, and I can completely understand how we alter this creature's natural lifestyle in favor of our selfish eating habits, but I question the implicit moral high ground of eating fruits and vegetables over meat, our habits aside.

It's a game of hide and seek.

For me it was sugary cereals, pastas, and soda. It's amazing how much crap I was ingesting.

Oh my god. I had the same experience, though slightly worse. My doctor loaded me up with strong antibiotics that destroyed my immune system for years. He could have just told me to drink more water and lay off the sugary garbage food.

I did this once before with my ex girlfriend in Israel. He gave us the usual dose of 5 points. Everyone reacts differently to it. For me, it gave me a really strong fever, I turned beet red, and I felt intense pressure in my head like it was about to explode. This was somewhat unpleasant, but was oddly relaxing and also felt good at times. Definitely a weird experience. On the other hand, my girlfriend at the time was vomiting profusely. I can tell you from knowing her personally, she has had tons of emotional baggage to deal with - this could be why. For me the effects subsided by the following morning and I felt mostly normal. My ex swears she doesn't get sick for the 3-4 months following a Kambo session. I didn't pay much attention to whether my immune system was immensely boosted or not afterwards. I generally don't get sick often, and didn't feel like it did too much for me. For my ex, it was immensely helpful. Go figure. Just goes to show you how everyone is different.

The 5-MEO inhibits the parts of the brain which allow you to function as an "individual" part of the whole. Your brain hides the truth for functional purposes.

I would say for me, the biggest difference is that my decisions in life aren't driven by FEAR. This affects all aspects of life.