Socrates

@Leo Gura So you mean I shouldn't go smoke some 5meo with Dr. Octavio as my first psychedelic experience?

@Dodo Does your head tilt on the left?

We all need to practice our unconditional love.

@SFRL You complicate it too much. There is nothing magic about animal products in terms of nutrition. Everything you can get from animals you can get from plants minus the fats and cholesterol. Also an athlete's primary goal is not health, his goal is to win not to reach 90. There is enough scientific evidence proving the superiority of a vegan diet. Everything else is either an excuse, cultural influenced bias or just ignorance.

It is not crazy at all. Steve Jobs said lsd was one of his best experiences. If tou take into account the power of psychedelics and spirituality in general you can for sure out-inovate the average ceo. Even a 7 day retreat in the woods would work wonders for you. The tool sure works now you just need to experiment to find the best way.

Leo killing it as always

Still feels futile to me. I really feel like i am spinning my wheels. How is it supposed to feel when you are making progress in self inquiry?

@Noname Sorry to say that it but is not your job to help him. You follow your path and you can't afford babysitting everyone around you. You keep growing and either the people around you grow with you or you outgrow them and become a burden. Speaking from experience you are postponing your growth with the alibi of "helping a friend". If he is really close to you, straight up talk to him and be honest, harsh and tell him how the stuff goes. If he doesn't change move on or you are going to lose from the situation.

@Leo Gura The freakiest things happen to me when I focus extensively on one object. I literally hallucinated yesterday, the colors became brighter and the object I was focusing upon had this flow feel to it. I can't hold it for too long though. Also weird when I focus on a dark area of the room my peripheral vision slowly blacks out and then my whole vision blacks out. I literally see only black in a room with light.

@aniss What i have realized is that you shouldnt take their words on face value. Throughout your journey you imrpove yourself and you probably assume that people do the same and have similar live views with you. This is not the case with parents as they are really toxic when they talk shit and dont follow the path. Look at it as the only thing they know, their ignorance and wrong notions of reality lead them to this kind of behaviour. You cant blame them for that cause their current actions are based on their habits leading to this day. It is not a problem that was discovered yesterday per say but a psychological cancer that was evolving in the confort and entertainment of their lifestyle. You cant solve something that took decades to be created neither is your job to do so.

@Afonso You cant do it "too intellectually". Hech, You cant even do it "too -anything-". If it is conceptualized it is not it. Thats why i made the post in the first place and thats why concsious traction is so important. The truth is important but our technique is not evolving along. I doubt you can achieve enlightenment without firstly conceptual understanding it then concsiously getting a grasp of it and then being it. Lets not even call it "improved technique". We need a more detailed technique that's all.

@Leo Gura I would love to hear your opinion about the books Peterson suggests https://jordanbpeterson.com/2017/03/great-books/

@Loreena And all this IF they even stable on personal development. That said is not meant to bring down the people that found it later but to highlight the fact that the earlier you get on board the better. Heck, even the fact you are on board it is a blessing. Now that I approach it from a meta perspective I realize how important it is, this is the stuff we should be doing in school, not the bs math and physics we will never use again. I had an insight yesterday as well that you can probably raise enlightened kids if you do it the right way as the "self" has not been yet created.

Self inquiry feels futile for me. Maybe i need more theory in order to have the conscious traction. After watching Leo's enlightenment experience video I feel like the technique needs improvement or some specificity, it's too vague otherwise. If for example we mix those small exercises with self inquiry we can skyrocket our results. Even breaking down the process for example do the "spaciousness" technique until you are conscious of it. Then do the "imaginary line" technique until you are conscious of it and so on. After you have established concsious traction you do self inquiry.

@Leo Gura But if -insert "your" name- dont control the body, who controls the body? This is getting weird

Although in general i am preety resiliant to criticism but when unconscious family members and their friends judge my decisions i get so fucking triggered and use my pd and spiritual knowledge to prove them wrong. I know this is boarderline zen devilry but why does it happen and how do i fix it?

@Nahm I am currently practising mindfulness meditation though. I noticed it sometimes gets manipulative and i create my thoughts instead of just being aware of them. Would you suggest switching up my practice?

Good stuff guys n girls, i appreciate it. To give some more in depth info I am calm but my thoughts during this situation are quite negative so to speak. Stuff like: "if you cant prove them wrong maybe they are correct" "If they are correct oh boy have you messed up already" "They try to leach something of you" And Stuff like that... I dont identify with those though but those are responsible that I want to prove them wrong but in order to do that i use judgments and criticism but the point still doesnt get across. It feels like there is a gap between us and either i need to use strong language to be understood or not at all. This ends up by me thinking i am even wasting my time because we cant actually communicate, there is no value provided for either side and i end up being dogmatic with my beliefs which leads nowhere.

In regards to good and bad, the answer is that there are still consequences in place and karma still exists. Leo talks about it in the Zen devil video but he didn't mention it here for some reason.

@Leo Gura Obviously the things i describe bellow are just my point of view. Firstly to give credit where credit's due all those videos bellow have great foundation and reasoning to be made and the basic statements of all of them are perfectly correct but unfortuantly the subjects were spread too thin and that means the message recieved varies too much from individual to individual. Also i understand the difficulty of this content especially in regards to context. You are giving advice and you have to present it in such a way that it would be digested by everyone wherever they are in their personal development/spiritual journey. These videos stand out because the advice is too far fetched which results in leaving grey areas behind. Judgment - How You Ruin Your Own Happiness: This video is subtly black and white. The problem here is that the whole position of "reality is perfect accept it as it is" doesn't have any margin for change (or at least it is not stated). This is a common paradox of self-help as well. You are perfect, accept yourself as you are but you can be more perfect. Although in this video this was not adressed. I mean yeah rapists-thieves-terrorists are a part of reality but the next paradigm of accepting reality as it is, is to make something better which would be an ideal world without them. If you don't adress the existence of this paradigm i previously mentioned, you misguide people in an extremely passive position which is not ideal. If you check the comments you feel like the video didn't cover the fact that you need to judge to make desicions. Also the "words are just thoughts" position yes it is true but at the end of the day is not practical and it doesn't help anywhere. This also defeats the purpose of language because as good and evil are just thoughts so is every word in the dictionary but we still would use them to communicate. Also statements like "Rape and violence simply exist. Maybe one day they won't exist. But that doesn't change anything. Today they exist. So what? That's reality" are extremely misguiding. With that mindset you basically say that you can't do anything about reality to improve it which is at least irresponsible. What if MLK or Abraham Lincoln have held that positon? Fuck them they are blacks this is reality, fuck them they are slaves this is reality. This is just a continuation of this "perfect reality" idea. This statement would only be acceptable in an ideal world with no unjustice or at least a society of coexistance on the same level of the spiral dynamics scale. This is a deliberate act of detachment to the problems of reality which robs you of any responsibilities and these problems are let to be solved by others. This just promotes an egoic self-sentered mindset which is supposedly the enemy of our work here but still it creeps up to us. Lastly there was no mention on the objective good and bad which has nothing to do with ego. Good Vs Evil - Why Evil Doesn't Actually Exist: This is probably the definition of armchair philosophy. It doesn't help practically anywhere. This follows the same paradigm of the judgment video. It follows the same pattern of detachment from responsiblity and word games like "words are just thoughts" which at the end of the day does not offer anything. It also follows the same position of "reality is perfect accept it as it is" and you also compare people to lions (?!?!). It makes more sense that humans are not a part of reality at all than that we are a part of reality no matter what we do. The problem here is the detachment from reality. The examples used in the video don't cover the wide range of good vs evil scenarios. Why not use more onesided examples like the Holocaust or slavery which the "good" side is more obvious. You deliberately choose examples where the "good" side is not obvious and this might mislead people. The problem with the buddhist thesis "reality is neutral" position is that if a new Hitler came into power the Monk wouldn't do anything. When you are passive you take the side of the winning side and that puts you in a bad position when the winners are the "bad" ones. If you still deny the good and evil you basically say "i will be enlightened, fuck the kids in africa*, this is reality at the end of the day, can't do anything about it". This position which is a pattern on all these videos pretty much drops your responsibility for all the "objectively" wrong doing in the world and conveniently allows you to continue your journey. *replace kids in africa with any other real life worldwide issue. PS These videos all have great advanced ideas but are potentially dangerous in the world we live in. Even when you state that they require an open mind this doesn't help anywhere. In order to have those kind of ideas you need a whole society of self-actualizing people and at least green level on spiral dynamics. If i say i want to help the kids in Africa which want to satisfy their basic needs, is that ego? no it isn't. It is the good that has to be done IN ORDER to help the world reach green/self-actualizing as a whole and eventually (far down the road) adopt these ideas. Although these ideas are accurate there is too much room for error meaning that the risk to reward ratio is too high to confidently publicize them. You are just providing a tool for ignorance and lack of responsibility. This may not be your goal but still this needs some clarification.

@Leo Gura How could you "convince" a guy like Sam Harris to at least give the non-rational side a chance. I am asking this question because when i discuss spirituality people often get argumentative and ask for logical and rational reason to meditate etc.

Idealy should you keep your eyes open or closed during mindfulness meditation/self inquiry?

@Sky Saturated fats are unhealthy. If you research further the studies that "prove" the opposite they are either using a non-viable way of study or are supported economically by the meat and egg industry. You just go as deep as possible until you find the answer. The hard thing is to keep an unbiased attitude when doing the research which is the root cause of this misunderstanding. As far as feeling the diet I would agree on the surface but you may also going to need some blood tests before and after the diet change just to double check.

@Leo Gura Indeed I am. Should I self-inquiry before or after my meditation?

@Leo Gura I don't seem to have experienced anything like this, how can I also achieve those results? What kind of work do I have to do?