Forestluv

Threads merged @AlphaAbundance Please don’t start multiple threads on the same theme.

At the personal level, there is a benefit to being ignorant. If you were at a magic show, would you like to learn how the magic trick works? Or would that spoil the fun?

You seem confident in your ability to distinguish what is real from what is imagined. I'm curious: how do you differentiate between real and imagined?

@Ibn Sina I wish you the best along your journey ? ❤️

A positive orientation can help, yet I’ve also found it important to decondition stuff that was programmed into me. As well, actions are really important. Taking the actions of someone who is healthy. One thing I did was train for a marathon. For the first couple of years, I felt like an imposter - some guy pretending to be a marathon runner. Yet then a funny thing happened. After running marathons for years, I was training newbies for their first marathon. People regularly came to me for advice about training, injuries and nutrition. Then one day I suddenly realized “Holy shit, I’m a marathon runner. This is it”. All that action transformed my mind, body and spirit. . . . So what actions can you take to transform your mind, body and spirit? The next 10 years will pass whatever actions you take. Why not take actions that will transform you into an amazing person?

@Aakash Similar to you, I like to explore ideas and conceptualizing. I could easily go 8 hours straight conceptualizing. Alone or with others. It’s just how I’m oriented. For many years I sought for some “it”. Some meaning or truth. Yet ultimately, it’s all meaningless. It’s like building a sand castle. I would build sand castles wanting to construct a castle that was “it”. Yet like you said in a preposterous, it’s pointless. What’s the point of building a sand castle? It’s meaningless and that can be heart-breaking. Yet the meaninglessness makes it so meaningful. Last summer, I was on the beach building sand castles with my three young nieces. The meaninglessness of it was profoundly sad. Whatever we constructed would soon be washed away to nothing. Yet that is also what made it so beautiful. It was the intimately beautiful sadness of Now. So, I ‘m not naturally a fan of Now. I naturally find it boring af and my mind wants to conceptualize. One nice thing about a medium dose of psychedelics is that it can deactivate the hyper conceptualization in my mind. And it transforms Now from boring af to the most fascinating thing EVER. Even something like watching an ant crawl on the ground is the most amazing thing. So amazing I want to call strangers over to see it. Zero conceptualization. Pure presence and being in awe. This is a whole new world. It is my favorite aspect of psychedelics - more so than the razzle dazzle stuff. Pure presence that is so deeply intimate it makes me want to cry or giggle. It sounds like you have also had glimpses into this Now. It is a new whole world. Yet like I said, my natural state is to think and conceptualize. It takes effort for me to relax and disable this and sidestep the onset of boredom with Now. Yet when I do, Nowness is Wowness.

nothing *+* everything?

Well said. I would just add that love is groundless. . .

@Aakash means "just kidding". You are good.

Yes, an expansion of the Golden Rule. . . Nice. . . I like this framework with animals. I observe a lot of humanism in the world. This is a pointer toward trans-human awareness, yet I think most people would still contextualize it within a human mindset. Yet it's great to encourage people to try to see other perspectives. We could extend the analogy to trees as well. Imagine the earth as a giant organism and the Amazon Rainforest is the lung of the organism. You don't now what type of "cell" you will be in the giant organism - how have to design the physiology or the organism. . . Fun stuff

This was tough to surrender. I really wanted my 5-meo experience to Mu-ville to have been "real". . .

Ssshhhh!!! (Don't spoil the fun for those unaware of how the magic trick works )

Sure. Imagine I told you that my co-worker, Bob, was rude to my other co-worker Sarah today. Would this bother you? Why not? Imagine I said that mice are ugly, stupid and disgusting. Would this bother you? Why not? Imagine you had a dream in which you are a character named Paul. . . Paul is in a bar and everyone laughs at him because his zipper is down and his underwear is showing. You wake up and get along with your day. Are you bothered about what happened to Paul in the dream? Why not?

None of it happened. . . Deep realization alert. . . None. . . of. . . it. . . happened. . .

Thank you. I wasn't aware it was a "thing". Yet I think I took it one step further with my alien society, lol.

In a relative sense the words have value. Yet the words also have no more relevance than bird chirps. There are multiple straight forward approaches. A straight forward approach to Paris will differ than a straight forward approach to scuba diving. As well, there is depth within straight-forwardness. In terms of SD, the entrance is Yellow. The Buddhist quote you posted infers it. You bring up a very important point here. In SD, this is one of the keys to transitioning into yellow. It is not about understanding partially. It is about fully understanding the partial-ness. These are all constructs. We are all constructing. You, me, Buddha, Jesus and all the sages. Everyone. The entire relative world is a process of construction and deconstruction. You are doing awesome. I encourage you to continue your development, growth and maturity. I'm pointing to something you are not yet aware of. But you are really close. If one can only view the quote through a single lens - all other lenses will appear to be misinterpretations. It is not either / or. I can see the beauty in the Buddha's quote. I wrote it for goodness sakes!!! This is not a criticism of Buddha or the quote. No expression is totality. Every expression is a component of totality. It's not about partially understanding the quote. It's about fully understanding the partial nature of the quote in a larger context. That would assume that a nondual statement can exist independently. It cannot. It is a component of an infinite whole. This is why the term pointer is used. Another way of looking at it. How can one describe "Nowhere"? As soon as a statement is made, it is a "somewhere". The best we can do is to be somewhere and point to Nowhere, because we have to be somewhere to point to Nowhere. One cannot point to Nowhere from Nowhere. This is another important point. At the higher levels of consciousness, there is a transcendence of spiritual literature, spiritual teachings and spiritual beings. You transcend all of it. You are all of it. You have access to the source of all that you are reading. You are that source. Why read Buddha's writings if you are Buddha? Why follow the footsteps of a sage when you are all sages? Once you realize this True Nature, the gloves are off. You will no longer be limited to following any teacher or literature because you realize you are the source of all teachers. Then the gloves come off. . . a whole new infinite expansiveness to explore is revealed. This is holistic Omniscience. I think there will come a day when you realize this. . .

I am not judging them to be military weapons. I say this based off of the men who actually designed and created ARs. They classified them as "military weapons". As well, I would consider a weapon that can shoot up to 100 rounds per minute of bullets with enhanced lethality to be a "military weapon". Even the designers of ARs said so. That is not the type of "protection" I am talking about. As well, an AR15 is sufficient, yet not necessary, to protect oneself from a bear. You seem to continuously group ARs as a generic gun. This creates a binary construct which eliminates degree. We could do this from the opposite direction as well. An environmentalist could say "animals in the woods are not a threat to humans". Do you see how this binary frame of "animal or not animal" eliminates degrees. On one end of the continuum, their are bunny rabbits in the woods that are non-threatening. As well, there are 500 pound bears in the woods that are threatening. And there are many animals along these two extremes - for example, the danger of a non-poisonous snake would be in between bunny rabbit and 500 pound bear along the danger continuum. You can feed yourself without an AR. If you are dependent on an AR successfully hunt, you are not a very good hunter. Of course. That is the perspective of a man that is staunchly pro-gun. Even if that was true, the public backlash in indicative that it is NOT the view of "most people". I am not saying that your perspective is wrong. I think it is true for a person conditioned in a gun family and community. An expansion of consciousness does not mean one needs to reject a particular perspective. This is the main energy of attachment/identification - their is a belief that if one recognizes the truth of an opposing view, then that must mean my view is wrong. It is not the case. This is an aspect of "yellow" in SD. Here, there is no "owner" of a perspective - there is merely perspectives. A yellow individual is comfortable holding multiple views and not being attached/identified with any of them. This seems paradoxical at first, yet then it isn't. So, I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying your perspective is relatively true based on your pro-gun conditioning. Someone else may have a relative truth based on anti-gun conditioning. Someone else may have a relatively true perspective based on being a victim of gun violence. A yellow-level meta view would not become attached/identified to any of these perspectives. In doing so, there is a holistic perspective that incorporates multiple perspectives. . . I know a couple people that think hunters are murderers. From one perspective they are correct, from another perspective they are incorrect. Due to their anti-gun conditioning they would be unable to see your perspective. To them, I offer your perspective and I have said many of the things you have said in this thread as I highlight this perspective. We could create a continuum in which one extreme is 100% anti-gun in which all guns are illegal and on the other extreme 100% pro-gun in which all guns and open carry for all guns is legal. This is a continuum and the vast majority of people are long the continuum. Very very few people are 100% anti-gun or 100% pro-gun. For example, you identified as "pro-gun" yet I wouldn't put you as 100% pro-gun. For example, do you think it should be legal for someone to enter a kindergarten class open carrying two fully automatic machine guns? Of course not. This is totally unnecessary and would be traumatic to the children. So you are not absolutely pro-gun. . . Yet, you seem to be further pro-gun than the collective consciousness in the country. As well, I think current gun regulations are also further along the continuum than the collective conscious of America - in part due to a history of American gun culture, pro-gun lobbyists and over-representation of rural voters in congress and the electoral college. To be representative of a consensus consciousness, there would be stronger gun regulations to tilt the scale back into balance. Yet this does not mean we go to the other extreme of 100% anti-gun and ban all guns. . . . This perspective would be difficult to see when one has been immersed in a pro-gun environment their entire life.

This is great stuff. . . I am not saying this is wrong. I am saying that there is a transcendence of all this. At the deeper level, you are nibanna - you are Buddha. You are the source of Buddha. Why interpret the words of Buddha's teachings? You are Buddha! You wrote those words! If it is all peace, how can peace not be suffering? A being that has not embodied it, will not be able to recognize it. Once it is embodied, it is very obvious. This is related to Wilber's "pre/trans" fallacy. This is a block. To expand beyond a contracted thinking mode, one would need to care about expanding. They would also need to be open and willing. I understand what you are saying. I am telling you there is a deeper level. You have created a construct you call "Enlightenment" in which there is suffering and the realization and complete acceptance of that suffering. This is a fairly deep "level", yet it goes deeper. Enlightenment and peace IS suffering. Not the presence of suffering. Enlightenment and peace IS suffering. At the human level, this will be very hard to realize - especially if one has been conditioned through literature and teachings to believe the highest level of Enlightenment and peace is not suffering. This is deeper than Buddha. It is deeper than Buddha's teachings. Your construct and the Buddhist teachings you cite are creating a distinction between "suffering" and "non-suffering". That is fine, yet there is a deeper level. You would need to let that go to realize a deeper level through direct experience. EXACTLY. That is a door to transcendence that you don't currently don't recognize. This isn't about analysis. This is about what that which is prior to the analysis. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!" I'm not analyzing the words. I know what they mean because. . . I wrote them!!! That quote is true. Consider it a ladder. Using a ladder to climb to a new level is great. That quote can help a person expand. Yet there is more. That quote is both true and not true - you are only seeing the straightforward useful truth in it. You are not seeing the falsity in it. Don't surrender your authority to a being like Buddha that you have created. You are Buddha! You already recognize and understand the truth in the statement. Now let's consider the falsity. When we consider non-truth, that does NOT mean that it is false. The human mind is conditioned to think in opposites. For example, if a coin is tails then it is not heads. Yet a coin is both tails and heads. When I point to heads, this does not mean that tails is false. Here, when we point at the non-truth of the statement, it does not falsify the truth of the statement. "There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides" This is true. It is also not true. For example if the journey is the destination, how can one finish the journey? The quote is only one side of the coin - that is that there is a journey toward a destination. Once finishing the journey and arriving at the destination, one has "abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.". This is one side of the coin. I am not saying this side is wrong. I am trying to show you that there is another side of the coin. This isn't something to be found in spiritual literature or spiritual teachers. It is to be directly experienced. Contraction into one side will prevent realization of the other side. For example, in Buddha's quote, there is a journey and a destination in which grief, fetters and suffering is abandoned. Can you see how this truth is limiting? This is extremely difficult to do, yet also extremely simple and obvious because it is right NOW. There is no journey. You are focusing on a journey with a destination - and imagining the destination should look a certain way. That is fine. Yet the journey itself is also the destination. This is the other side of the coin. The destination is also Now. The destination of Now includes holding on to grief, fetters and suffering. Peace is the grief, fetters and suffering Now. Enlightenment is the grief, fetters and suffering of Now. Buddha's quote expressed the other side of this coin (which is also true). The deeper level is to see both sides and the entire coin. No. I am not saying your words are scientific - I just used the scientist as an example. I would consider your expressions within a transition zone. Again, it is not the words you are using, it is how you are using the words. It is the relationship with the words, not the words themselves. All words have relative meaning. I cannot place objective meaning onto any words you use. I can see that this is being perceived as judgement - and from one perspective it is. The reason I am firmly trying to convey is because you seem really really close to a big breakthrough into an expanded consciousness that few humans realize or that may take decades to realize. I also think there are many seekers on the forum at this transition. This breakthrough is not limited to constructs of enlightenment, peace and bliss. It is much deeper and broader. How could I not desire that for my fellow humans?. . . Yet I also understand that if I try to force, it can be counter-productive. There is a time to back off.

I like the comment in the video "How would you design a society if you did not know your place within that society?". If someone can truly surrender into this, it is a great frame to reveal personal dynamics. Imagine designing this society. . . be careful, you don't know if you will be a gun advocate or a victim of a mass shooting. You don't know if you are an insecure hyper-masculine male or an LBTQ that has suffered stigmatization and attempted suicides. You don't know if you are a criminal, a victim of crime or a police officer. Whether you are black or white. . . The hard part is fully surrendering one's identity. For example, a privileged white person may say "OK, I can imagine that. . . I don't know what person I will be in the society. I will design a society with "equality and justice for all" that way, whoever I am, I will have equality and justice". Yet what this person doesn't realize is that "equality and justice for all" is going through a privileged white filter. "Equality and Justice for all" will appear very differently through an LGBTQ, female, POC filter. That is the second level of realization. A half step might be image you have to design an alien society of the "paltik", "smethod" and "rifblin" beings. Since we don't identify as "paltik", "smethod" and "rifblin" beings, we would start off without identifying with any of the groups. They all start off equal. The challenge is to maintain this non-bias as we begin to learn more about each group - as we learn about each group, the personal/human tendency is to start identifying with one group. For example, the paltiks may have black hodflets, while the rifblins have white hodflets. This would introduce the first opportunity for identification/bias toward one group.

There is something beyond the words. In terms of SD, immersion and analysis of words is stage Orange. At green and above, non-intellectual modes arise. Imagine observing a painting. There is a nonverbal relationship between observer and painting. A type of essence. There is communication. Now imagine a scientist observing the painting and saying "you are analyzing the ink on canvas". If we try to tell the scientist there is an emergent property beyond they ink and canvas, he won't "get it" because he is contracted within his paradigm. It's not about analyzing the pointer. That would be like saying there is nothing else to analyze but the ink and canvas of a painting. There is a nonverbal essence to the painting. It's not really an "anaylsis". It's a different mode of being. Imagine the scientist saying "You don't understand. I am pointing to something ineffable. Look here. Look how this part of the painting is 30% blue ink, 40% red ink and 30% green ink. Notice that the artist used a broad brush for this portion of the green ink.". . . It would be clear that the scientist is still contracted within a paradigm. He doesn't quite "get" the emergent property of the painting. Now. . . imagine the artist who created this painting. Imagine the artist try to describe the ineffable essence through words. Compare this to the scientist trying to describe what the ineffable essence of the painting is. These are two very different orientations. Do you think an artist could tell the difference between the creator of the work and the scientist? Of course. It's not about the words, it is about how the words are used. There is a conflation between nonduality/duality and absolute/relative going on here. It is not the words, it is the underlying conflation. The realization and knowing of this does not come intellectually. You have repeatedly spoke of the attainment of peace/bliss and the cessation of suffering. If there is no one to attain peace/bliss and no one to be free of suffering - *who/what* is it that attains this peace/bliss and becomes free of suffering? If Enlightenment is both the presence and absence of suffering, why seek the cessation of suffering? If peace is suffering, why seek peace through the cessation of suffering. You are already peace while suffering - why seek peace outside of the suffering? The motivation is the secondary question. There is a prior to that, which you skipped. . . Have you directly experienced pure peace/bliss while experiencing awful suffering? This is the most important orientation expressed so far because it is so direct. This is a place of immense consciousness expansion into deep levels. If you don't think peace is suffering, then you are within a contraction of conditional peace. This is where the direct experience is so important. There is the knowing of absolute peace of suffering. The absolute peace of pain, anxiety, panic and terror. This is realized at a deep level because it is fully transcendent of the person/human. It's not the words. It is the knowing of the peace. This is not serotoninluv trying to describe what absolute peace is like through words. This is absolute peace trying to express itself through words. There is unconditional eternal peace Now, regardless of what is happening. If one places conditions on this peace, they will not come to know this peace. For example, if a being is suffering they may think "this is suffering, not peace". This will block them from the deeper realization. You keep returning to thoughts and analysis. There are modes beyond thinking and analysis, that you don't seem to be aware of. Here, you are not picking up on the post-intellectual modes being conveyed. I am not saying you are wrong. I'm saying there is something that you are missing. . . Imagine a person that speaks Arabic fluently. Do you think this person could recognize a Norwegian tourist that does not speak Arabic? What if this person says "No, no! I'm actually Arabic and speak Arabic. Here are a few Arabic words. . ." Do you think the native Arab would be able to recognize this? Of course. It would be completely obvious because he has the direct experience of being Arabic and is fluent in Arabic. He is not a farmer from rural Canada imaging what Arabic is like. These are very different orientations.

I wouldn't call it a "fear". I think it is rational to make illegal a military weapon that has little utility. For example, machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers and military tanks and nuclear bombs are illegal for civilians. I suppose there is some underlying basal fear for survival, yet I think it is a rational argument. I think the counter-argument is irrational. . . And it is not "potential" damage. It is "real" damage. One does not need an AR for "protection". This is extremely far on an extreme. Someone who believes they need military weapons of war to "protect themselves" is living in a consciousness that does not have a lot of overlap with a larger consensus consciousness. For example, let's go a bit more extreme. Imagine a person that desires military tanks and nuclear weapons to "protect themself and their family". Would you consider this to be irrational? I think the vast majority of Americans would consider this irrational and would not want to live in an environment in which people personally owned military tanks and mini nukes. Military tanks might be a lot of fun, most Americans don't want people owning military tanks. The primary problem isn't responsible use of military weapons - that is a secondary issue. The primary problem is the minority percentage that uses military weapons irresponsibly. As an analogy, many Universities ban alcohol consumption at football games. The majority of people drink responsibly and caused no problems. Yet the minority of drinkers got drunk and caused severe problems. There is a balance between the individual and the collective. From an individual perspective, a responsible drinker may say "Why should I be deprived the right to have a beer at a football game? I'm not doing anything wrong. And only 5 drunken fights broke out during our last game and only 4 people were stabbed and only one person died. There are more people that died in a car crash that day!!". So from the perspective of an individual perpective of a responsible drinker, it is unfair. Yet this person is contracted within their personal perspective. They cannot see or understand the perspective of others, because the perspective of others will go through their own personal perspective. The individual wold need to remove this filter. Further, the individual cannot see the collective perspective of football fans. Similarly, you are contracted in a personal perceptive which you have been conditioned into. There is a reason you have your perspective and people in El Paso have another perspective. If a person is attached to their personal filter, they will not understand and empathize with the perspective of others. If you lived in a community without guns and gun-related recreation - you would have a different conditioning and a different perspective. If all the children in your local schools were gunned down in a mass shooting, you would have new conditioning and an evolved perspective. One cannnot imagine this cognitively because this it is non-intellectual - it is direct experience. . . You are a man that has been conditioned within a gun family and community. That conditioning has created a filter in which you interpret reality. With this conditioning and filter, I don't disagree with your perspective - it is relatively true. Your perspective is exactly perfect for a man that has been conditioned in a gun environment his entire life. This is a perfect example of interpreting through a filter created within a pro-gun environment. Yes, it is "beyond you" because of immersion into a pro-gun contraction. If you had never seen a gun and volunteered helping victims of ARs, it would not be "beyond you". This was a poorly-written tweet which was quickly deleted. When a being is immersed within a paradigm they often perceive and extrapolate extreme counter positions as normal and normal positions as extreme. For example, a male that is insecure about his masculinity will often try to compensate by being "toxically" masculine. This is the filter to which he interprets reality (similiar to a pro-gun filter to interpret reality). The toxic masculine male will view the minority extreme feminists as the normal standard for what feminists are. On the flip side, they will interpret normal efforts for gender and LGBTQ equality as being "extreme". Here, the view that objects like planes literally have intention and by themselves are capable of instigating destruction is a rare view (as seen by the reaction to the above quote). However, through a pro-gun filter, it will be interpreted as a mainstream view of the people perceived as opposition. Notice how you earlier commented that "most people" that disagree with you hold this view.

I understand that. I have a lot of experience in nonverbal zones. You seem to think I am analyzing the pointer, which I am not. I know the distinction between dualistic terms used to point and that which is being pointed to. There is a difference between nonduality trying to express itself in dualistic terms and duality trying to express what nonduality is like in dualistic terms. It is not your words you use as a pointer, it is more about the realization that you are holding the pointer, rather than omniscience holding the pointer. This is just my sense: there is an essence about your posts that is conflating - it has aspects of both. I'm not concerned about the words used. I'm concerned with the source of those words and the filter through which those words pass. For example, you have written a lot about attaining peace/bliss and the cessation of suffering. *Who/what* attains that peace/bliss? To "whom/what" does suffering cease? Who/what decides what is "suffering" and what is "peace"? You seem to have a subtle underlying personal/human framework that I don't think you are aware of. For example would you agree that "peace is suffering?". Not at an intellectual level, through direct experience. Have you directly experienced pure peace/bliss while experiencing awful suffering? If so, what is the motivation to seek conditional peace/bliss? If peace is suffering, who/what desires to end suffering? And why? Why seek the footsteps of wise enlightened beings when you have access to the same source as them? Tapping into that source transcends all spiritual literature and sages - because it is the source of all spiritual literature and sages.

@Hansu I would say the "vertical axis" would be more like "rising above" the horizontal axis and doing things like questioning assumptions. What does "authoritarianism" and "libertarian" even mean? Also, looking through the lens of other people. What is "equality" from the perspective of other people? Not just imaging what another perspective might be like while I am grounded in my own perspective/conditioning - yet really getting into that other perspective. For example, I imagined what might be the perspective of poor people living in a village in Honduras. Then I spent a month living with a local family in a poor village in Honduras. I lost the grounding of my perspective and this allowed space for expansion.

@Hansu Rather than constraining yourself to a left/right horizontal axis, you may want to explore a vertical axis.