Forestluv

@DrewNows Developing close friendships with women was helpful for me.

Thats not who You are. That "you" is a construction programmed into us. We know this because in young children, that "you" isn't there. A story of "me" is constructed over the years. There is transcendence to that.

You forgot who you are. . . It's more like You remember who You are.

Years are a map, not the territory. Yes, but oh so fascinating. . . Ooohhh yea. . .

I found it interesting that the libertarian caller did not want to explore what his government-free dream world would actually be like. One would think if it was a libertarian utopia, he would want to talk about it. Someone like AOC would talk for hours about her vision for humanity, yet this caller kept a large distance from his libertarian vision. Sam had to keep pulling him back - asking what this libertarian reality would actually look like.

@Jahmaine Perhaps as more people awaken, new methods of transmission will arise. I don’t know of any consistent, effective way to transmit. There are many many variables involved. People like Leo and Rupert Spira are doing as well as humans can do. If we can develop new effective ways to transmit, that would be helpful. Yet in a way we already have a master transmitter with 5-meo that is light years ahead of verbal transmittance, imo.

To me, it’s like trying to show someone a beach with a single grain of sand. If you are curious, perhaps try some 5-meo. Ime, it is 1000x as powerful as any teacher or spoken words. One could learn more in an hour with 5-meo than I could teach them in a year.

@Jahmaine It can’t be described as “The experience of infinity is like A”, because that would also be saying that infinity is not “b, c, d, e, f, etc.”. Infinity includes and transcends all things. This is why direct experience is key. Any imagination is very limited. The closest I could come to an experiential contextualization is Nothing and Everything. Yet that won’t be satisfying to a mind.

@Annoynymous The mind likes to think in opposites. Either I am fully aware and present all of the time, or I am lost in thought all of the time. From a personal perspective, I’ve found it helpful to have reasonable goals. Expecting to go from a continuously thinking chatterbox to abiding thoughtless presence is an extremely high standard. It’s like going from a couch potato to an Olympic gold marathon runner. Rather, I found more realistic goals helpful. At one point, I estimated that 90% of my life was lost in thought of past/future and lacked presence. My goal was to decrease that to 50% over a three month period. Everyday, I had “Now workouts”. They started with 30min a day increased to 2hrs a day. I told my mind can do what it wants the rest of the day, yet for the next 30min. it’s a Now Workout. Just like we were going to lift weights at the gym. My Now workouts included things like meditation, gardening, self massage, yoga and watching nonduality videos. In the beginning, there were only a few gaps here and there (a few seconds). Over time, my mind got better and better at it. I remember one day I was walking in nature and my mind effortlessly relaxed. Then I suddenly realized “It’s Now! And I’m not even doing a Now workout!”. Thoughts arise Now, yet for me thinking was the biggest hindrance. It’s so easy to get mesmerized and captivated by thinking. So I put a lot of practice into relaxing the mind body, slow down thinking and develop an observer awareness to thoughts - such that there wasn’t attachment and identification to the thoughts. As well, there may be underlying conditioning/karma that keeps sending impulses and needs to be released.

Yep, and so am I. Observe it happening now. Appearances of “me” arising Now. Just like traffic noise, bird chirps and a toothache arising Now. It’s easy to get immersed into the story of “me” and want to arrive somewhere that is not Here and Now. Yet all there is is Here and Now. This is it. Of course. Desire is human nature. Observe that desire happening now. What is it? It can be beautiful and it can be annoying. Is there wanting all the time? Haven’t you ever been present now without wanting? Perhaps in a flow state playing a sport or musical instrument. Perhaps admiring a beautiful work of art. Or being immersed in music or a movie. Here, there is no time or “me”. Just what is happening Now, without wanting a “better now”.

The self is oriented toward “what’s in it for me?”. The self wants to arrive somewhere. The self will not be satisfied with awakening to Here and Now because there is no place to arrive Here and there is no self construct Now. Ideas of past, future and “me” are simply happenings Now. Just like snow falling to the ground.

@Dobi Nondual realizations are often uncomfortable to a mind and body that was dualistically conditioned it’s entire life. It can feel groundless and the mind often makes up all sorts of stories trying to figure things out for a sense of grounding. It can take some time to acclimate. Ime, over time those nondual experiences became less and less uncomfortable and became more and more fascinating and magical. There was a shift from trying to figure it out to trying to experience more of it. Also, dosages are relative. I am sensitive - 125ug LSD would send me into a full nondual realm. For others, 125ug is a light snack.

I like it in terms of developmental stages. We could consider yellow as more “innovative” than Orange, since yellow is at the leading edge of psychotic all development in society. In some contexts, I would consider what is emerging out of yellow to be more innovative than Orange. For example, yellow thinkers may come up with new systemic models to describe climate change that might integrate ecology, economics and social structures. Yet in other contexts, I wouldn’t consider “innovative” sufficient to be considered yellow. For example, someone could design a new video game unlike any that has designed. So it is innovative, yet it could still be an technological orange-level video game designed to get teens addicted and make the developer lots of money. So, I guess it depends on how the term “innovative” is being used.

Consider degrees of dependence and different dynamics. Imagine a couple is mutually supportive. Sometimes one person is is in emotional distress and their partner is supportive. Sometimes the other person is emotionally distressed and their partner supports them. It’s mutual and in balance. To me, this seems healthy. Now consider an extreme: one person is emotionally distressed 100% of the time and their partner gives 100% support. This will suck all the energy out of the person. And it doesn’t feel healthy. If the person wanted to be a caregiver100% of the time, they could become a nurse. The other extreme of 100% independence would also be problematic. A person that is 100% independent would have difficulty forming human connects with another. In particular, they would be hyper-adverse to being vulnerable or asking for assistance.

I’m not asking about all the vertical lines in the graph. I’m not sure what the Y axis represents. E.g. in the first chart 2.5% of what are “early innovators”? 2.5% of the people in a general population?

Yours as well

It's not hard at all to say what they're doing is evil. That is very very easy to say. It is much much harder to see things through another perspective. In this case, through the perspective of the Chinese government and much of the Chinese populace. Not at all. The spiritual path does not require that a person becomes complacent. For example, a spiritual person could act as a diplomat between the two sides. This spiritual person may see how the Chinese treatment of the Uighur people is evil from one perspective and not evil from another perspective. Perhaps this person could help illuminate these perspectives allowing better understanding between the Uighur and Chinese people. This would not be complacent tolerance. This would actually be very grueling difficult work - it would probably put the spiritual person's life in danger.

It seems like you have a desire to let go of thought loops and intellect and to "see". If so, observe the mind trying to control the narrative. Letting go of that can take practice. One thing that helps me is to simply observe. Thoughts appear Now, yet they are very sneaky and it's easy to get lulled into "la-la land" with thoughts. . . In contrast, feelings and the breath are always Now. A great way to get grounded in Now is to keep returning back to feelings and the breath - and to let go of the thought stories. I don't try to repress the thinking, I just let go of it. As if it is a child yelling for attention. Eventually it will calm down. You mentioned meditation, which is a great practice. Meditation provides great contrast of "la-la land" to Now. Anything that relaxes the mind and brings us to presence can be helpful (such as the breath). Sometimes I will light a candle and stare at the candle. After a while, the thoughts quite down and I'm actually observing Now! For example, rather than thinking about what I should have done at work - I am Now observing how my breath affects the flickering of the candle! It's amazing. Then all the different colors in the candle. Also how the candle dances. This is all happening Now. . . Sometimes I will go into nature and just sit and watch nature happening Now. Other times I will go to an art gallery and stare at art. Quite often feelings arise and an essence arises. Again, this is all happening Now. To me, this all counts as "meditation".

Welcome to the forum. I was hiking one time with a busy mind. The very beginning (first hour or so) of the hike I was having serious problems keeping my brain "quiet", but once I was able to center myself nature became probably the deepest I have ever had. It was amazing what was revealed. At one point, a group of dragonflies hovered right in front of my face. The sun was setting and beams of light emerged from the forest trees and radiated off the dragonfly wings. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. I stood there in awe - experiencing the magic of the moment. Yes.

I think you did a great job explaining it. I've had similar experiences. For me, this is indicative of a desire to protect the self and control the narrative. This often happens when my thinking mind is losing control of the narrative and wants to regain control. This is a common appearance in the grey area of "ego death". Perhaps we could call it "ego dozing". From the perspective of the ego, this is like dozing off while driving on the highway. To the ego, dozing off at the wheel is dangerous and threatening. It will want to maintain control to help the mind and body. This is a form of love. The ego wants to protect the mind and body from harm. Yet what the ego doesn't understand is that the ego is actually the passenger in the car and the actual driver is not trying to harm the passenger.

I actually think this may be an insightful exercise. Have someone create a mess full of things. So messy that it looks like One giant mess. Now watch the mind try to create distinctions and boundaries to separate the One giant mess into separate things. The mind may see something that looks like a face - "Ok, maybe that is a face. . . maybe its a stuffed animal and I can't see it's arms and legs because it is covered up with other things". "Or maybe it isn't a face. Maybe what looks like eyes are actually portions of two ping pong balls and the nose might be a piece of twisted duct tape". . . In general life, our minds are very very good at automatically creating object boundaries and separation. It is how we evolved and have been conditioned. It is super helpful for survival. If that thing that sorta looked like a face was actually a camouflaged lion, being able to make that distinction would come in handy. If we want to de-condition hyper-dual perception, this messy nondual practice can slow the process down, so we can actually observe how it works in real time. Rather than it happening in 0.01sec., it is now happening in a much longer process - perhaps minutes. This can give insight into how the mind creates distinctions.

I've contemplated this area and this is what appears for me. . . A duality of two opposites is a major realization, yet is is a very low resolution map. It is the most basic map we can create. For example, we could say New York City is east and draw a straight line to San Francisco which is west. This is as basic as it gets. To give our map higher resolution, we can add in cities along the NYC to SF line. For example, Omaha Nebraska falls on the line midway between NYC and SF. Yet this map is still very low resolution - it doesn't include any cities off the line - what about Toronto? Well, Toronto is west of NYC - yet it's not so simple. We now need to add in a North / South duality. This greatly expands the playing field. Yet it is still limited. What about Moscow? That doesn't fall between NYC and SF. . . In practical terms, we do this with gender by creating two points called "masculine" and "feminine" and drawing a line between the two. Thus, everyone falls somewhere on the line between masculine and feminine. Yet just like the NYC to SF line, this is a very low resolution map that is highly limited. It is only an east-west dimension. What about "places" north of the "masculine" - "feminine" line? This is off the line - it has a masculine/feminine component (east/west), yet also a new component (north/south). As well, there is plenty to be discovered beyond our current limits of the masculine/feminine points. What is east of our NYC east point? What is east of our masculine point? What is west of our feminine point?

If we create a framework that “real is alive and matters” and “imagined is dead and doesn’t matter” and we interpret everything as imagined - of course it will be dead and not matter - that is what our storied framework tells us. Yet there is much more to explore and access if you desire. Or you can stay within the current framework if you like. It’s up to you. You offered an analogy to lucid dreaming. I’ve realized I’m dreaming and consciously entered the dream. To me, it’s not how you describe it at all. For me, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s an infinite magical world to explore. I spend a lot of time practicing skills to enter dreamlike states.

@Conscious life The frame I find most beneficial is that self actualization is transcending the person and personal development is developing the person. Imagine playing a character in a movie. It’s all staged, yet you think it’s real. Suddenly you realize “Wait a minute. . . This is just a movie. I’m playing a character in a movie. This isn’t Me”. That is the self actualization. Yet the movie goes on and You get to develop that character, if you like.