Echoes

@Leo Gura You mentioned your brother a few times in your videos and said that he is very scientific minded. Does he watch your videos and has his understanding and trust in science changed since he has you as a brother?

What is the greatest thing blocking our capacity to learn? Ignorance? Thinking we already know? Arrogance? Is it really possible to learn as fast and as effective as a 2 year old? I would certainly love to have this ability again!

@YaNanNallari @YaNanNallari But what characteristics of the "enlightened nature" exactly? The openess to new input as consequence of not knowing? But then, the 1-2year old instinctively assumes that input is leading to understanding is leading to better navigating reality. Also, the 1-2year old has a whole different neuronal structure. His whole structure is set to "Take in as effective and as much as possible, need to navigate reality successfull as fast as possible" like a sponge. Whereas the adult persons neuronal network is more like "Reality navigated successfully for X years, why change?" I wonder if it is really possible to achieve this openess as an adult, especially when you know that you can't know anything. And that there are infinite potential perspectives to learn, where ultimately no is true

@kieranperez On what parameters do you conclude that you haven't conquered yourself? Negative habits, inability to take action seem to point towards the conclusion that you are not satisfied with your current circumstance. Otherwise, what is a positive habit? What is the action going to get you? In some ways the description of suffering IS the suffering. For example, the sentence "being a slave to my own unconsciousness" generates mental imagery and feelings of weakness, powerlessness, victimhood. Which then makes you act in certain ways that confirm your story. Be careful what stories you tell yourself. The metaphors used to describe suffering often are the suffering. Ask yourself: What do I want in life? In this way you can identify the specific beliefs you have that hold you back from the things you want. If you dont know what you want, you keep stumbling in the dark forever. Analyzing yourself, "healing" yourself, purifying yourself endlessly. Finding one thing after another to infinity. It's necessary to a certain amount, but you have to know what you want ultimately. Otherwise it becomes a trap: "If I have fully healed and conquered myself, I go out to the world and get what I want and be content and happy ever after"

@Shroomdoctor Yea me neither, but from time to time the nostalgia gets me. Do you know Käptn Peng? He frequently adresses topics like nonduality and "true self" in his songs.

@Shroomdoctor Lol, yesterday I started to listen to some old VBT stuff again and now you post this video here crazy coincidence. Do you know him from VBT? Watched a few videos from him years ago there but didn't follow his music since then.

the current estimated world population is: 7.6 billion humans. But there is no way anyone could actually see and count all those 7.6 billion humans for himself. It is rather the case that in the field of awareness, there is an infinite number of different humans that can appear and disappear and be experienced. There might not even be a planet on which there could live 7.6 billion humans. So is the number of 7.6 billion humans just a complete made up fiction with no reality at all? Are there actually infinite human beings?

@Hardkill Have you read "Models: How To Attract Women Through Honesty" by Mark Manson? Check it out if you have not. Dominant topics in the book are: Vulnerability, Non-neediness, honesty, self respect, narcisissm. From what I read in your posts you could really get value out of this book.

@egoless You think there is no separation in experiencing. Yet you ask your appearances the question of why appearances exist. How could your appearances have an answer to what they are to you or why they are existing? All these appearances could do is generate more appearances in form of the "alphabet" for you.

@egoless In fact, or do you just believe this because someone told you? How do you know absolutely that there is no different experience than yours happening?

thats the whole point. Nobody knows anything. Not even so called nonduality teachers. How can anybody know anything about your current experience/life right now? nobody has been there yet. nobody has been you yet

@Toby I cant link it for some reason, but it's called "After enlightenment, what's left, what's the point?" at around 3:50

Appearances are a sort of metaphor of the self. Like: "I can be this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, ad infinitum". Nothingness, or the self, being pure potentiality, experiencing love with it's potential actualized. But really, what I just said is bullshit. The only correct answer would be "why not?". That's why they call it the divine play of lila. It's just a play, entertainment, total mystery. It is very very strange that anything happens. The thinking process wants to avoid this grotesque strangeness of "wtf? why??!" because that would destroy all it's games of pretending control and knowing something. You will never be able to cover up the strangeness with a story that makes sense

@Nahm @Nahm You know, I had "those moments" where I realized actual Now or absolute reality. Where everything is spontaniously happening, and a playful silence underlying everything, and now distinction between observer and observed. Where reality has this weirdly slow pace of happening, and everything is here now. (really, EVERYTHING is here now). I saw it sober and on LSD, but it's all just memory story now. The physical universe comes back and it is very convincing. Especially the absurd relativity of it all. Being a monkey on a rock, living among monkeys in a city with stuff like coca cola, television... animals like butterflys existing. Bathrooms existing. Dusty corners of rooms existing. Dead spiders under a bucket existing. The relativity is almost grotesque. One view is that it's all infinity and of course it includes this relativity. In whatever "state of metaphysics" one is in, is believed to be absolute and real. Right now the physical universe seems to be a real possibility to me. Whereas a few months ago I thought otherwise. It goes back and forth, but I don't know anything for sure. The state you are describing is the final dive into what society would call "insanity", but that itself is arbitrary parameter

Leo's blog entry got me thinking. Imagine the following dialogue at the doctors office: Doctor: "I'm sorry to tell you this, but we found this advanced tumor in your brain. It's growing in a dangerously fast rate. You might not have that long to live anymore...." Patient: "Cool story bro, you should definitely write that down! Doctor: "I understand this must be shocking for you, but we will do everything we can..." Patient: "No, you don't understand. You are literally just hallucinating a story inside of this infinite hallucination machine. It has no grounding in reality whatsoever." I understand that no story is true. Because it consists of just noises made out of thin air. The noise "cancer" is not the actual unknown unspeakable phenomenon. The noise "Cancer" is supposed to be a symbol for the phenomenon. As Korzybski said "Whatever we may say will not be the objective level, which remains fundamentally un-speakable. Thus, we can sit on the object called 'a chair', but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object." Now, with "objects" like a tumor, chair, pencil, etc. it is relatively easy. It's really just colour/light (But of course, not "colour"/"light" ) and it is not isolated. There are no isolated "objects". The isolated object is just created with language. "This colour-form combination is a tree!" "Really dude? Isn't it just also colour-form like, well, everything?" But what about stories like "Outside of my experience" or "death" or "soul" or "planet earth"? Do they symbolize anything? The noise "soul" might be just a noise, and not even a symbol, because what is there in actual experience that this noise is supposed to symbolize? The same goes for God. Or Nothingness. Or time. the languages cannot succeed at building a model of "reality" faster than experience occurs. What we think we observe is limited to what we can translate to each other via the slower than "reality" tool of our languages. What about "outside of my current experience" or "Objective Universe"? Might those terms symbolize something that might be a "reality"? At my current stage of contemplation I think it is forever unknown. There might be "outside of my current experience" There might be "Objective Universe". Those terms could be abstractions of something unknowable. There might be nothing seperate from consciousness, but there might aswell be. It's an open question, even if it sounds like nonduality has "figured it out" and is the final answer to consciousness. It can seem like "nonduality teachers" really know something and are the final consciousness authorities.. you gotta be fucking kidding me, lol. atleast I was believing this nonsense... It's just a desparate attempt to escape the obvious reality of slowly aging to death, paradoxically through story-telling of stopping the story-telling. So what value do stories offer us? It is neither good to ignore nor to believe in any story. But they seem to give us a valuable map for the territory (Even if you think about it, there is no map, but only territory, the map is also territory.. you know what I mean) I'm especially interested in what you guys think about concepts like "outside of my experience" "other minds" "Physical universe". Are they abstractions/symbols for something that is in one form or another a reality? Like the word "Cancer"? Or are they just noises, not words/symbols standing for nothing at all?

@Nahm Every word is limiting the infinite potential/now by trying to frame it or attributing it some sort of quality. "this is like this or that" But it's just open potential and not that. Language seems to collapse at this point. But would you say "I write a text with my keyboard right now" is a self imposed limitation? In the sense that, the alphabet-noise output is doing what it's supposed to do: trying to communicate the abstraction of what appears to be happening.

@Leo Gura God/Reality/infinite creation itself is the fool then. It's not like there is a person inside of this infinite creation that is somehow not appreciating the generous opportunities it was given - It's reality itself who is pissing itself off. I mean, why would there be suffering at all? like, at ALL?!

Came across this gem today and felt the desire to share it. "In the midst of his career as an artist and photographer, Robert Saltzman experienced a sudden and profound awakening—a deep vision into the actual nature of “myself.” That abrupt change in point of view, along with a subsequent long illness and slow recovery, changed the course of his life."

@Fuse This guy really helped me to deal with similar thoughts and suffering. His other videos are worth watching too if you like his style

@Marinus It's a psychosomatic condition called Paruresis - Basically a specification of social anxiety. The stress and tension constrict the sphincter and this leads to the inability of emptying the bladder. This condition can occur in various degrees...some people can't even pee when they are at home in their own toilet when they are people in the room next to them. What can help are relaxation and visualization techniques like autogenitc training for example. Also you really have to contemplate into the matter of how the thoughts of other people are affecting you. Make a commitment with yourself to reach absolute social freedom in this lifetime or die trying

Just wanted to share a short insight I had today Last night I had a dream where I lost something. I can't remember exactly what it was...but it was something of perceived value, like my smartphone or my wallet. I was searching for it desperately but couldn't find it. As I woke up, the feeling of -something important is missing and you have to find it- was still there for a few seconds... kinda in the mode where you are half asleep and half awake. Then I forgot about it. In the shower the memory came up again, together with the realization that that's what I'm doing my whole life: I'm searching for something important to complete me. But the important thing exists only in the dream of my life story. In the dream of thoughts. There isn't actually anything missing right now. There was never anything missing outside the thought-dream. I only dreamed up that something was missing. Dreamed up approval, the perfect girlfriend, enlightenment, the ultimate state of health, etc... Thinking I can find "it" in these things is the same as wanting to go back to my night's dream to find the smartphone/wallet and finally achieve contentment

@Jonson I think this video can give you a helpful perspective

I'm struggling with this at the moment. In direct experience, you could say that others are me. I only have the perception, the voice and my assumptions of their thoughts and intentions (which are actually my thoughts). Now, the experience of "another" seems to arise in me (In experience that I am having), and therefore the other and me are one. Other bodies are, like my own body, and basically everything, facets...metaphors...exemplars of the (no)-self out of a range of infinite metaphors - So everything is the one self. My problem is this: The "other" is not the body, not the language, not the thoughts. It's the mystery of another perspective, another experience of reality taking place, the inaccessible question mark of and if another perceiving is happening. And this perspective or experience is not my own -> there is separation. When I see others as myself it feels like cheating. It feels like robbing them their individuality. They become so innocent suddenly, like "Oh, you are an experience in me, you have no existence outside of this experience" It almost has a solipsistic flair. So yes, everything I have of them (perception/thought/language) is me you could say. But what about the inaccessible consciousness? It's what keeps the separation and feeling of fear intact. Can anybody relate to this?