Carl-Richard

True or false: dumb himbos get laid more than nerds.

A.k.a. it's autistic.

Bruh

Who said you can't use Discord?

This 11 year old with a 2550 rating on the TV should be a pimp then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang

I'm seeing way too much unnecessary confusion about many things, particularly words like awakening or enlightenment, and how it relates to things like spirituality or psychedelics. I would like to maybe present some clarity of language. One of the biggest virtues of teaching is clarity of communication, and while spirituality is in some sense doomed to fail from the start in that aspect, the way this problem is being exacerbated by conflating what I think should be treated as two separate categories is certainly not helping. What are these two categories? One I will call "spirituality", which is familiar to most people, and the second I will call "psychonautics", which I believe is Leo's "main shtick". I say "main shtick" because it's of course not a full representation of his work, but it's certainly his main area of focus and that which he thinks makes him original. I'm also not going to criticize or devalue any of these aforementioned things. I only wish to shine light on the problem of language that is occurring between how Leo chooses to talk about his main shtick and a more collectively established area of inquiry which I call spirituality. Spirituality – "growth > states" In a nutshell: purifying and deepening your default state of consciousness. Examples: Sadhguru Osho Rupert Spira Adyashanti Eckhart Tolle Ramana Maharshi A very general definition of spirituality, which I'll borrow from Kenneth Pargament, is "a search for the sacred". How this is usually expressed within various spiritual traditions (from the world religions to the New-Age) is that you seek to align your life with the sacred and integrate it into yourself as a person. More importantly, when it comes to the mystical traditions and their emphasis on the direct experience of the sacred, their concern is not as much with the experiences themselves, as the potential growth one can gather from these experiences, as well as an eventual goal of merging with the sacred. In other words, the concept of a final destination (often called "Enlightenment") is generally preferred over a temporary glimpse (often called "Awakening"), and it's tied to a gradual process of refining yourself as a person, of self-transformation and self-transcendence. Psychonautics – "states > growth" In a nutshell: experiencing the highest states possible. Examples: Leo Gura Terrence McKenna Martin Ball Psyched Substance Psychonautics, on the other hand, refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research cabal in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the accompanying experiences. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychonautics The reason I'm characterizing Leo's main shtick as "psychonautics" rather than "spirituality" is because of the emphasis on "having the experiences" vs. "integrating them"; states vs. growth. The reason I think psychonautics is largely distinct from spirituality, is that if a state is not properly integrated into yourself and made into a platform for organic growth, then it's either forgotten or outsourced to the intellect. When given the option between intellect or integration, the former is the less spiritual option. So what is going on when Leo says "none of your gurus are awake", or "this is not God-realization", or "I have awoken to God many times"? Well, he is talking about a "temporary experiential state", with a definite start and an end, and it's induced by psychedelics. It's not the same thing as refining your "organic state" (your baseline, your default state) through other means like meditation. Therefore, for any of these two parties (spirituality or psychonautics) to dismiss either one as "not awake", is a category error. Again, I'm not here to pick favorites, and I'm not going to deny the possibility of refining or deepening one's psychedelic trips over time, or of the general impact they can have on one's psyche, or the potential benefits for spiritual growth. I'm simply spelling out how I think these two things should be treated as distinct categories. If I were Leo, I would try to make my language much more accommodating to the dominant paradigm (which I've called spirituality, and which most of his viewers have a connection to). Language does not exist in a vacuum, and language that confuses or misleads is bad use of language.

I don't see at all how the spiritual teacher pointing their finger at the absolute changes the fact that they're pointing with their human fingers for other humans to look, all in the relative realm, and that this is a source of problems.

Are the spiritual teachers backing the ASI clueless? Who passes your bar? It isn't a magic pill. It just helps.

Ask ChatGPT ?

"Hua-hua, you puny human! When only you see through your human limitations, you'll be laughing like me!" *sips orange juice through his human mouth hole*

Says the human.

This absolute-relative conflation brain rot should literally be bannable. To even allow it to spread is ethically dubious in itself. We're humans, teachers exist, students exist — end of story. Spirituality is a human need. That's why you're here. It doesn't have privilege over other human needs. It doesn't get special treatment. You can let psychopathic teachers mindfuck you all you want, but I will fight that shit to the death.

You start to wonder though when people start insinuating that abuse at the hands of a teacher might be a necessary part of awakening.

Healthier. You don't raise consciousness by raping people.

Most people imprint a large amount of society's values as they grow up. For these people, joining a cult is not a neutral thing. If they were instead brought up in a cult, then the cult becomes more analogous to the larger culture. It's mainly the process of exposing people to experiences that radically offends their values which starts to become ethically concerning, e.g. the process of being separated from one's community, one's family, one's friends, one's notions of bodily autonomy and sense of reality. That is the main reason why "cult" is such a naughty word and why it matters. And this is only a culturally relativistic analysis. You can certainly make more absolute cases for things like sexual abuse. You can also make the case that society is inherently healthier than a cult, because its values are relatively stable through time and need to reflect the inherent needs of the people on at least a basic level. The reason why cults often collapse is because they fail to do that.

Vague? Maybe in some places. Simple? Sure. But we still see those kinds of violations happening. History tells us that. We're simple creatures, and people who adopt teacher positions are certainly very often not saints. The fact that the codes are "obvious" and that the violations are taboo creates very nefarious dynamics for when the violations do happen: the social stigma and the reputation risk around speaking up, real victims not speaking up or not being believed, etc.

Point out which of the 24 codes you find problematic.

They're experts on religion, and it makes sense to me. You didn't derive your ideas on spirituality and religion completely by yourself either. Hyper-individualism has a limit ? The scientific literature on secularization points to concepts like "religious complexity", which describes among other things a shift away from traditional and collective types of religion towards new individualistic types ("New Age"). So at least in countries with increasing secularization, this is a trend. You can keep telling people that, but they'll still log on Actualized.org every day.

The problem with old religion is mainly the mismatch with the current culture. Other than that, the rigidity could be attributed to the traditionalist and authoritarian worldview. If we replace it with liberal values, it'll probably be less stagnant, kinda like our democratic institutions.

You're talking about the mystical experience of pure oneness. Spirituality has beliefs and practices just like religion. I subscribe to the understanding of Kenneth Pargament and Brian Zinnbauer. They both agree on their definition of spirituality: "an individual or collective search for the sacred". They disagree on the definition of religion. Pargament defines it as "a search for significance in ways related to the sacred", while Zinnbauer defines it as "a search for the sacred within a traditional context". In any case, spirituality is treated as a central sub-component of religion. My and others' wish to revitalize religion is just to replace the collective/traditional components with something that is more relevant to current society, and attempts at establishing universalized ethics that is grounded in some of society's values is a step in this direction. The growing popularity of a hyper-individualistic spirituality is a byproduct of our culture evolving past the rigidity of old institutions, and it's only a transitory period. The end result is necessary and inevitable. The mental and social isolation that modern spiritual people are subjected to is hugely detrimental, and that is why we flock to this forum. The insistance that individualism will keep the teachings pure or unridden from dogma is short-sighted, because it's really only a question about scale. Dogma is inevitable when people have an innate need to seek guidance and grounding from outside sources. There are only two choices — culture or cults, roughly speaking.

Says the libertarian ?

Why?

I'm 100% describing religion. We just need an updated version, not the 2000 year old stale versions.

This is exactly why spirituality and cults go hand in hand. Once you separate spirituality from all notions of social responsibility, you need to reconstruct the needs that society fulfills outside of society. Instead of doing that, see the needs for spirituality and the needs for safety and integrate them.