Principium Nexus

@jse Good exercise and eating healthy are profound in boosting mood and health. Supplement wise Vitamine D, Vitamine B complex, Omega 3-6-9 and L-Tryptophan are good but you have to make sure he is not taking anything that can interfer with any meds he is taking. SSRIs can be lethal in combination with 5HTP and cause bad results. Lately I have been doing Kundalini Yoga which helps me alot with my mood. Try it out and see if it works.

You might have heared this a million times, just be yourself. Confidence is the most sexiest thing a man or women can have, it means that they truely stand for something and are willing to go for that. If you are certain of what you want in a relationship this will only clear things up and strenghten what you can provide for eachother. However I do think that acting more offensive also gives the impression you have things to lose and probably also some fears and are willing to protect those. In a relationship i think it is prefered to be a bit more relaxed since you want both sides to be in agreement most of the time, but standing for what you think is ofcourse no problem. Some men probably like women which are taking the lead and some like to be more leading in the relationship themselves. Important is that you listen to your feelings, your intuition is often your best indication.

So in short, let him visit a professional medical doctor. I wish him all the best!

Are there any (experienced) meditators that have tried meditation inside a floatation chamber and what are your experiences? I know meditation can be done anywhere anytime but this can probably take you with ease to much deeper levels.

I don't think we should directly dismiss it. Some theories suggest that the egyption tombs inside the main chamber of the piramid were not actually to burry anybody but were places to meditate in. For example the middle of a gigantic pyramid of stone is probably the darkest and most silent place you can find and would be an ideal place to find the closest to the most deprived sensory experience. I know meditation is a tool to focus and that it can be done anywhere but being in something that comes close to true silence (magnetically, soundwise, light, air) you have ability to observe the slightest changes in your conciousness. These changes you could say are therefor the most basic or fundamental things you can experience in being between non-dual and duality. I have to try a floatation yet myself so I will leave a report when done. History often speaks of visonary cave man, finding the light in utter darkness from within. Still curious what potential this has to offer.

Ego is like a fart your trying to hold in to look good. When you learn to let go it will get messy, but in the long run you will feel much lighter and confortable.

@ashashlov You have to check out the VICE documentary on Sensory Deprivation Tanks!

Don't go with those people in discussion, just show them what is valuable by direct experience. If a person is a close friend, take them with you on a journey, party or anything that you both enjoy.

It could be anything, you will probably know the best what the cause is. All we can do is speculate.

I'm really wondering what important aspects are repeated in everyday life by monks, sages and also how a day of Leo's life would look like. The general outline would be interesting to know which might be a good reference or basis for people wanting to follow a similar path.

@Leo Gura You have to check out this game currently under development called Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, it's unlike any game I have seen before and is about schizofrenia. What's really cool is that people are able to see how something like that disease is experienced.

Nothing lasts especially not with this mindset, but you probably have to discover that yourself.

Often in discussions I notice that we are all talking exactly about the same thing but some people are just referring to a different layer of the onion. It really depends on what you think you are referring to. For example enlightenment could be defined from the the most absolute oneness, which means there is no such thing because it is everything at the same time, total completeness, a void with unlimited potential. Looking from a day-to-day society experience without all the fancy concepts of spirituality you could call it something that has a positive transformative power that is clearly seen by other people and which eventually is embedded in how you act, think and perceive all the time. From a religious perspective it could be that when you become enlightened you will become like the holy persons described in many text. Give people vision and radiate pure compassion, love and a large understanding. So what do you guys think, from what perspective are you looking at this definition?

@Dodoster Because it is continuous and undisrupted doesn't mean it doesn't occur. We recognize it and it is always happening, same as being your true self. If enlightenment is continuous and a process that has no absolute beginning, then still we can label certain events as more transformative than others. If I were to tell someone how I obtained certain knowledge then I can improve the speed of his learning abilities. If this "certain knowledge" would be called an enlightening experience or understanding than we could say this knowledge would always be significant enough to provide someone with a big transformative insight or his/her life in general. Enlightenment is seen and words fail to fully comprehend it's completeness.

@Dodoster How can something not happen and still be recognized? It still has to happen but what it's definition is might be very broad. What I question is how specific can we be? Are we just solely speaking about a certain experience or has it do to with the transformation of a person that is significantly enough to speak of something extraordinary?

I think it is mainly subjective because as the term says it can "enlighten" your life and there are many ways to do that. I think we cannot define what a single word is, there are to many interpretations which are equally true, but if we were to use a description of some certain situations with certain requirements, then having a more clear understanding what is meant and is much easier to agree on. A cool idea might be to start a poll and then ask a wide variety of people what comes to their mind if they think about enlightenment. In normal life words also have their meaning because many people agree that this word has the same definition, otherwise it would be a complete mess. If someone says he want to buy a chair and gets for example a table then we have a big problem. Fundamentally we have to agree on some facts what we think that this words means and resembles. The majority of the people who are not that into reading lots and lots of books about spirituality and consciousness will probably come up with a different definition than persons who have spend much time into these areas. If we would just ask the top 10 most respected spiritual persons what they think it means and get a general definition from than we have something that can be agreed upon, making it slightly less subjective but providing a clear indication what direction it is pointing towards.

@RossE I know this was nothing special or unique for me and I think everybody can get a similar experience. Understand that I don't think this is "the truth" or something that really happened (ofcourse I don't know for sure) but I value what insight it gave me about the connection between two different states of experience. It is not about the content, it's about how you perceive experience and what bridges those two phenomena (non-duality and duality). You are right I cannot go anywhere, but I can change how I experience or view that exact same experience. From what I understand is that these experiences and not only mine, show you that your perception of how you perceive things to be is equally or maybe even more important than the content.

@Leo Gura They sell them fresh in holland and they are not dried. On reddit they say the following about potency "3g of dried cubensis = 10g of fresh truffles." so you might get an indication of how strong it is.

@Egoisego I do agree with you, each emotional state is equally important and interesting. They are all natural responses to improve your well being eventually and become better in survival. On youtube there is also now some debate about forced positivity because people seem to obviously like those videos more but this forced thing is actually quite harmful. It's maybe little off topic but I think it was worth noting since we are talking about the importance of any emotional state right? However, I think positive emotions do turns us on and reinforce good or useful behaviour. If Leo talks about the love he feels he just refers to the fact that the experience was complete and useful. Which could in turn be an useful indication for people to know what can improve their lives and what not. The debate we are having might be about how truthfully perspective really is? Proclaiming false perspective due to knowledge that was incorrectly established. That debate is subjective and I do think neither really can have the best truthfully view.

@Egoisego I agree, but we live in a society where some knowledge to proceed with life is more valued (emotionally, intellectually, ect.) than some other knowledge. I think in the core all experience is equally valid, but what matters is the context, the meta that gives it meaning in this relative or dualistic world. Enlightement does not exit in non-dual reality, but in our ego driven world where we value some experiences over others it might actually exist. What its well-defined definition is we cannot say since we don't know everything yet in human terms, but we can speak subjectively of "an personal enlightmenent" that is significant enough to give it a term.

@Egoisego There is not much harm to provide knowledge in the first place. All he does it provide us with different perspectives which are all equally true in some way. You have to decide what resonates the best with your understanding and if that helps you to live a better life then thats all you need. What do you mean with "Once again am my thoughts left at the endstation of "everything is real" "it is what it is.", I didn't completely get what you mean by that? EDIT: So you think that enlightement is the actual process of learning itself and therefor there is no absolute understanding of what enlightenment is?

@Egoisego Still I do like all the topics he talks about, it is all part of the journey to broadening your perspective. Like you say most people are not that unique, but that is reinforced since you are in school and in society in general. I think that any debate is interesting that arises from these topics, they all show insight of the current state of being of people, their perspective and what an possible approach could be to show them how they can look differently at the world.

I must acknowledge that I get slight symptoms of PTSD because of First Person Shooting games like Counterstrike. Some of the games require a huge amount of skill, focus and can be quite nerve wrecking. After playing for some hours (sometimes with some coffee) I feel very alert but also get disturbed by loud noises and get somewhat put back into this really alert state which is annoying because you cannot relax. This is also the main reason I'm playing less and less FPS games.

@Egoisego I think Leo is doing a great job at getting people to really think about themselves. Like you say we are already enlightened deep within us, but we first have to acknowledge that if we want to feel that way or be it. Enlightment maybe is about being able to think for yourself with a deeper understanding and background knowledge of reality and that is all he is providing. He cannot show you what it is, everybody has to find that for themselves.

@WaveInTheOcean The real question might be, does the tree really have any locality? What is distance, time, separation? You could say that tree was there physically but actually there is no tree. The concept of something being is just your own reflection of self. Your identity defines how you look through the lens of the mind and project of how you preceive reality to be. You created a distinct concept of the tree, that has it's mental boundaries like the edges of the tree and maybe where it goes into the ground. But in reality concepts are only weak comprehensions of something that has no ending nor beginning. The tree is just made up, not to say it doesn't exist, but it's real truth is that it boundaries will never end. Where do you stop defining what the definition of a tree is? Are the leaves that fly away still part of the same tree? Is the water that went through it roots still part of it absolute presence? The environment makes the tree and the tree in turn the environment. The tree is part of everything in the same regard as everything component of the tree. What i'm getting at is that in true reality without concepts that are comprehended by the mind there is no separation or locality. You are just looking at the same thing from a different angle. I know this goes quite deep (down the rabbit hole we go again) but I think you can see how I come to this conclusion. Speaking in human terms, my imagination got so wild I didn't know wheter I was experiencing the projection of the tree or I was just experiencing what I think a tree is? They say "god" created the world by speaking the first words (or concepts), you might see where this now comes from. My craziest idea is that being is repeated at all scales in the universe. You could think of atoms like mini universa and you are the galactic total sum of all those realities. We all together again inhibiting this world "the body of god" you could say, which could be a being just like us. We interact with it's body and therefor he also influences our lives at cosmic scales. If he gets sick or the "galactic state" tends to go in unharmonious directions, we might as well suffer because we are its inside organs