WorknMan

https://www.actualized.org/insights/taking-down-solipsism-video

I remember him saying he was making the video and I had been looking forward to it, but before I had a chance to watch it, it was gone Are there any other good resources you can recommend, that covers the same ground?

https://deadline.com/2020/06/sacha-baron-cohen-crashes-right-wing-event-leads-singalong-1202972079/ Stage green is currently having a field day with this, but it seems very counter-productive to me. I don't think the way to get people to change their beliefs is by mocking them. But, maybe I'm wrong about this - what do you guys & gals think?

If you're going to use weed for this work, I would recommend edibles. If you can't cook it for logistical reasons, get yourself a vaporizer and try eating ABV... works well on peanut butter crackers Start low on the dosages though, and work your way up.

This is not universally true across the board.

I thought this was pertinent, due to Leo's recent video on corruption. Specifically, corruption in science. This article goes to show that sometimes, corruption isn't even caused by humans. (Well, not directly anyway.) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/chemists-discover-cross-platform-python-scripts-not-so-cross-platform/

I don't know if this topic has been talked about here, but I'd like to hear from the yellow crowd :) I've noticed a trend happening where people (esp. on the left) are trying to get certain groups like anti-vaxers and white supremacists deplatformed wherever they happen to show up, with the latest efforts I've read about revolving around 8chan. I'm curious what this community thinks about these 'brute force' methods to silence people; is this a good strategy to deal with very toxic ideologies, or will denying people the ability to express themselves and be heard ultimately backfire and cause more problems than it solves?

There is some evidence to back up what this poster is saying. Here's John MacArthur (a preacher that I greatly respected when I was at stage blue) talking about Trump before the primaries: But he ended up voting for Trump anyway: Insofar as stage blue is concerned, voting for Trump was a better choice than voting for whom they considered to be the devil incarnate who supported the murder of unborn children. Having said that, even when I was at stage blue, there was no way in hell I would've voted for Trump. Heck, I didn't even support George Bush Jr.

I find that weed (ABV in particular) is a very good tool for contemplation. On it, I've managed to drop just about all my beliefs. The only one I'm still holding on to (albeit not voluntarily) is consciousness being 'brain stuff'. I imagine that weed edibles would be even better, but I live in an apartment in a red state, so making cannabutter would be a bit tricky without alerting the neighbors. But with ABV, you can just take some and sprinkle on a peanut butter cracker, and you're off to the races I'd much rather do psychedelics if I had access to some, but we work with what we have.

As I understand it, at least in our experience as humans, the brain is responsible for things like thoughts, emotions, sensations, and all that good stuff, whereas consciousness/awareness was just the experiencer of all of these things, without any motivations to speak of, other than to be. Or in other words, it acts as a 'container' for everything in our direct experience. Is that basically the gist of it? Because I've heard consciousness described in two different ways - as a silent observer, and as a thing that has values (truth, unity, etc), desires (such as to know itself), and takes actions (such as sending probes into itself). Is it just a silent observer when using a brain as a window into sensate reality, and a thinking 'entity' (for lack of a better word) in its infinite form? Or do I just have this completely wrong?

I mean limited insofar as I can't experience reality from the point of view of anyone else but me. As in, even if we're technically both the same entity, I can't, in human form, inhabit your experience to see what you see and feel what you feel.

Well, @Inliytened1 said 'Reality is a Mind (consciousness) imagining itself through different perspectives'. I can only speak from my limited perspective, where consciousness (true self) is separate from the mind (false self), but still feels like 'brain stuff' (even if it technically isn't), and is lodged firmly in my skull. Other than being present, it seems to have no other properties to speak of.

https://youtu.be/Zf8EMhT6fdE

Same. Watching people go through their little dramas and yell back and forth at each other about politics feels like a dream that I woke up from. But at the same time, I don't judge any of them, nor do I feel superior to them. I wish I could help them, but I don't know what to say to them. So I usually don't talk to them.

All that is known, or could ever be known, is experience. (Or in other words, experience is all that can be known.) Struggle as we may with the implications of this statement, experience itself must be the test of reality. If we do not take experience as the test of reality, belief will be the only alternative.

Specific activities are bad and good; every action has its price, and its pleasures. Recognizing both sides, you become realistic and responsible for your actions. Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, making a choice based on that recognition, and then living with that choice without concern. As for murder, do you reckon it's really worth spending the rest of your life in prison? I've had desires to kill as well, but if it's anything like sex, then doing it isn't going to scratch the itch for very long, so I'd hardly say it's worth it.

When it comes to smoking DMT, LSD is going 0-60 in 6 to 8 hours. DMT is going 0-120 in 6 to 8 seconds Think of it like a roller coaster where you go up a hill slowly, vs. one where you blast off immediately (like Top Thrill Dragster). If you've ever seen the Butterfly Effect, the transition is similar, like this (minus the spinning), starts at 40 seconds: You literally go to hyperspace about that fast, similar to what is shown in this clip, and it feels like dying. As in taking the last hit feels mentally like jumping off the edge of a cliff. A smoked DMT trip only lasts for about 5-15 minutes, though it'll take you about an hour to feel normal again.

I've never tried 5-meo, but I've probably smoked DMT 12-15 times and had a nearly instant ego death on almost every breakthrough trip. Unfortunately, my mind would splinter into a thousand pieces and I remember almost nothing after that. It's like I would die, 'blank out' for several minutes, then come back, feeling like I had just gone through a near-death experience. I remember there were visuals, but I have no recollection of what I saw, other than it was like a demented fun house. Anyway, after many tries of this, I eventually said 'fuck it' and gave up. This was about 4-5 years ago, before I knew anything about enlightenment (or plugging), so I wasn't even sure what I was trying to get out of it. But that's as close to a mystical experience as I've had, and I don't have access to psychedelics anymore.

Question about Exercise #8: Should 'can' in bold say 'can't' instead, or am I just misunderstanding what it's trying to say?

I first tried psychedelics about 5 years ago, before I found this site and knew nothing of enlightenment at the time. I had smoked cannabis before and done a lot of reading about tripping, and I still wasn't prepared for the mind fuck. I'd heard a lot about ego death, but didn't have a clear concept of what that actually meant. (IMO, people really like to over complicate it.) And then I literally experienced reality without an 'I', and was like, 'Oh, so that's what that is' Still, I didn't really understand what self as illusion meant. I had the stage orange realization that if I could destroy the self, then I could rebuild it into whatever I wanted. I've since come to understand that doing so is a waste of time, because there actually isn't a 'self' to rebuild. Anyway, I don't really know what point I'm getting at here... just relaying what the experience of being a new psychonaut was like If I had to give you any advice... something I wish I knew when I first started... go read the lyrics to the song 'Tomorrow Never Knows' by The Beatles, and follow their instructions.

I got to thinking about this after watching Leo's latest post-retreat video and reading the notes from his blog, as honesty and selflessness seem to be incompatible at times. Like, say you have someone in your life (maybe even a spouse or close relative) that you really don't want in your life anymore, but you fear that telling them how you really feel might cause them a great amount of emotional turmoil, esp. if they're already emotionally unstable as is. So, what if you tell them and they go jump off a bridge or step in front of traffic? Or even worse, go on a murder spree. Is that really a win for the greater good? Being that honest certainly doesn't seem like a selfless act, leading me to believe that sometimes, you have to choose between the two.

This is my treatise on enlightenment; I woke up this morning and felt compelled to write this. If anybody in the know actually reads the whole thing, please provide feedback in regard to how off the mark I am. I have pretty thick skin so am open to criticism. Anyway, without further ado... There is a sort of existential restlessness in all of us; a sense of separation that most people refer to as 'the void'. I don't think a lot of people really stop to think about what this void actually is, but it certainly preoccupies a lot of their time, and I doubt there's a person reading this who doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, if peoples' first prime directive is to survive, their second prime directive is to fill this void. They figure out all sorts of ways to do this - some turn to religion, some look for love, some devote their life to the service of others, some go on political crusades, some try to become famous and/or make as much money as they can, etc. Once this void is filled, we call that 'happiness'. But, here's the problem; this void is permanent, and if you put your happiness into impermanent things and you lose said things, then it's right back to shitsville for you, and you will have to start all over. This is what we colloquially refer to as suffering. And even worse, in the back of your mind, there is that little thing called death, which is when the void swallows you whole, for eternity. So the insanity of life stems from trying to run from something that is going to catch you sooner or later. There have been billions of people who have lived on this earth, and not a single one of them will ever escape it. (With the possible exception of Chuck Norris... that man will probably kick death's ass.) Thus, is it any wonder why so many millions of people, many of whom are stuck in wage slavery and lead meaningless lives, have to pop happy pills just to get through the day, or just say 'fuck it' and put a hollow-point bullet through their temple? We have constructed an entire society who's job is to distract you from what I described above. But, no matter how much money you make or how many hot chicks you manage to bang, or even how many people love you, at some point, that thing you've been running from all your life will be staring you right in the face. So, what to do then? Well, we need to take a closer look at the nature of this void. I think most skeptics who don't believe in souls or an afterlife would say it is where your consciousness goes when you die. So then, where EXACTLY is the void? 'Well, it doesn't actually exist', many people would say. But if it doesn't exist, why the fuck do people spend all their lives running from it? And moreover, how does your consciousness actually get there (as in, does it travel by bus or take an Uber), and what happens to it when it arrives? What you're basically saying is that there is this thing called non-existence where the void is, and that is where your consciousness goes after death. But if there was a place called non-existence for your consciousness to go to, wouldn't it be part of existence? I'm going to suggest that this void DOES exist, and that it's possible to fill this void permanently. And THAT is what enlightenment is. It is unity where there once was separation. But, saying you can fill the void is a bit of a misnomer, because you ARE the void. 'WHAT?', I hear the people gasp. You see, your consciousness doesn't go to the void, because it's already there. This void is not nothingness or non-existence, but it is an infinite, intelligent, formless singularity from which all things arise. If you doubt me, just think about it for a second - if you have a self aware thing and a non-self aware thing, doesn't it make more sense that the self aware thing came first? So instead of consciousness being in reality, it's actually the other way around, making reality an infinite hallucination or dream. So the little Wizard of Oz in your head you call 'me', your identity... the thing known as I or self (and what people involved in consciousness work call ego), is nothing but a fiction. And what you REALLY are is pure consciousness that is observing reality through a body and a brain that it does not directly control. (Hence, no free will.) So rather than consciousness being localized to your skull, it's more of an all-encompassing, 'universal consciousness' that all of our brains are jacked into. When enlightenment happens, there is a permanent shift from your ego to this universal consciousness, which people who have experienced it (either temporarily or permanently) liken it to waking up from a dream. It will be the most profound thing to ever happen to you, and will be beyond compare, even if you manage to live the kind of life that most people only dream of. And when you are enlightened, you can pursue your passions in life without this neurotic desire to feed an ego that can never be satiated, and which will otherwise lead you around by the nose your entire life, like a dog on a leash. 'Well, great... sign me up!', you say. 'How do I get enlightened?' Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, it's not that simple, because technically there is no 'you' to be enlightened. The process is similar to being struck by lightening. You can't make it happen - it just happens. There are some things you can do to help it along though, and the site where I'm posting this too has a lot of videos describing how to do that, along with a couple of sticky forum posts. Now, I gotta be honest - unless you're lucky enough to have enlightenment spontaneously happen to you (which is about as likely as literally getting struck by lightening), it's going to take awhile, and as someone who's been blindly stumbling down this path for a long time, it can be downright unpleasant at times. You're going to have to shed every belief you've ever held sacred, like a snake shedding its skin. As Jed McKenna says, 'enlightenment is Detaching. Detaching from everything you love, everything you are, and everything that characterizes your membership in the human race. And that's just for starters'. At a certain point down this path, you will get to a point where you can't turn back, and from that point on, you will be like a vampire walking among humans. You will only exist in modern society as sort of an interloper, seeing reality as it actually is, instead of through a lens that distorts it, as 99% of the population does. BUT, there are lots of enlightened people out there (you may even live next door to one), and I don't know of a single one of them that has said they regretted going through the hell it takes to get there. I think probably its biggest benefit is that you will no longer fear death. And, although I'm not entirely convinced yet that enlightenment is actually a thing, it seems like something worth pursuing. If you don't think so, that's fine. Go out and make your millions, or whatever it is you want to do. If you ever get to the point where you realize none of that shit is filling the void anymore, you can always come back here. We'll wait for you. And, that is all - good luck! Peace and love to you all

I don't really understand the question, but I think... in general.

I tried strong determination sitting once, after watching Leo's video on the subject. I went for over an hour, until my ankle made me tap. I can sit for long periods of time without much trouble. What I CAN'T do is keep my mind still for more than 5 seconds; the fucking thing is like an energetic 3yo on a heroic dose of speed. It goes 90mph from sun up to sun down. All day, every day.

Also, are you SURE what you have is actually LSD?