Carl-Richard

@James123 Yup. Fear of death is a reflection of the ultimate attachment, to life itself.

Enlightenment is baseline non-duality. Non-duality is a lack of distinctions, notably between self and other. Self-referential thinking is a central mechanism of how your mind makes distinctions between self and other. Ergo, non-duality at baseline means lack of self-referential thoughts at baseline. And with that, comes a certain change in experience. It's simply the case that enlightened people don't spend their time at rest worrying, ruminating or torturing themselves with what ifs or could have beens or should have beens.

Thoughts that are "strongly" focused around the personal self. They tend to use propositions like "I/me/my". For example, thoughts identifying oneself with a personality trait ("I am a curious person") or thoughts identifying some personal experience you have had ("I went to the store yesterday"). They tend to be repetitive and negative when they focus on unfulfilled goals ("I went to the store yesterday and forgot to buy milk, damn it"), and more generally threats to your survival ("why did I say that stupid thing?", "she hates me, damn it", "what if I fail at the test?", "I am a failure"). So it's not that enlightenment makes you unable to think. You will be very capable of thinking productive thoughts, planning, solving problems. It's just that your resting state will be virtually free from self-concerned and generally repetitive and negative thoughts. You can still think about yourself if it's relevant to some task, but your resting state will not be a fruitless circling of personal stories, worries and rumination.

Do you think it's possible that there exist sense perceptions that are currently hidden to you?

There are certainly several ways to interpret "a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening". But I would posit that many of these do technically include a significant experience of oneness or non-duality, which again has varying degrees of profundity, which you could actually quantify: the frequency of self-referential thoughts (self-referential thoughts over time). The fewer self-referential thoughts, the more profound the experience. You could place such experiences on a continuum, which technically stretches through all of human experience, even the most negative aspects, down to the deepest levels of depression, despair, psychotic self-hatred and terror. But of course, we're most interested in the upper parts of the continuum, and for that, I would include for example (from low to high): awe experiences (e.g. being struck by profound beauty, mindful nature experiences) deeply concentrated states with high energy (e.g. flow states, musical trances, sex, some psychedelic states) or profound stillness (e.g. seated meditation states) highly transformative experiences that people would rate as more profound than the previous experiences, even sex and psychedelics (read about this e.g. here), which is probably what most people would refer to as "proper" awakening experiences and of course enlightenment itself where self-referential thoughts are virtually eliminated at baseline. I understand the compulsion to scoff at these "lower" experiences and not want to include them in the concept of awakening (because they're not "spiritual" enough"), but if you want to be rigorous and use the measure of self-referential thoughts (which is arguably "the" measure of non-duality), there is no consistent reason to make a typological distinction between them. It's simply a continuum of more self-referential thoughts to less self-referential thoughts. I think this scoffing tendency is actually more about a spiritual "aesthetic" (call it New Age) than a substantial point. For example, you would probably be more likely to perceive awakening experiences associated with closed-eye meditation focusing on the breath as more "legitimate" than somebody sitting on a mountain top and taking in the view, or hell in Church taking in the sermon. But these are only differences in form. While some forms (e.g. techniques) may be more conducive to elevating one's consciousness, as you know, non-duality itself is beyond form, and in the final analysis, it should not matter where you are having the experience. You can be more or less skeptical of people's claims depending on which forms are present, but regardless, the experience is still possible irrespective of forms. And as for forms, as stated in my previous post, we are naturally inclined towards these experiences, as humans. They are our evolutionary bedrock. Self-referential thinking is a mindblowningly new invention; some estimates say only 50-70k years old. It would only be surprising if we were not able to slip back into these primordial habits of existing beyond the self-reflective self. In fact, it's surprising that we're not slipping back constantly. Or actually, it's not so surprising when you compare the amount of thoughts (in general) between modern people and pre-modern tribal people. I remember seeing a figure of 60k thoughts vs. 1-6k thoughts, however, the 60k number could be dubious (here is an internet rabbit hole about that). According to the same dubious source (although my own reading generally agrees with it), most of these thoughts are repetitive (85%) and negative (79%), which skews towards self-referential thoughts. In other words, modern society is essentially a collective unenlightenment practice. Survival, especially in modern society, seems to select for that in a big way (thinking a lot about ourselves; self-referential thinking), at least how things are now. Yup. That's somewhere on the upper parts of continuum like I suggested above. It's usally not permanent. Like said with the "letting go"/attachment business, it's usually not as simple as putting yourself in high consciousness states. The real hurdle is the attachments. The attachments keep you returning to the lower states.

We have to remember the distinction between awakening and enlightenment again. Awakening, if we include the subtlest of glimpses, is actually not uncommon at all. It's in fact very common. In a 2009 Pew research poll of the US population, 49% said they have had "a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening": https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2009/12/29/mystical-experiences/. 30% of them were non-religious. I know some people personally who have had them sober and who don't seem to practice any spirituality. However, like I said, enlightenment and the spiritual path in general is usually a process of dedicated focus and practice. Pursuing what is implied by the glimpses is very different from merely having them. Awakening is indeed a very fundamental part of the human psyche, but we have just become terribly good at tuning it out, distracting ourselves and forgetting when it does happen.

You beat your meat and sleep? Surely you do more things. You are on here after all. Describe what you do in a day.

Yet you wake up in the morning and eat food and start moving for some reason. What is the abstract extension of that expression? Meaning. You've simply deconstructed the idea of an universal form of meaning, or maybe you are dissatisfied with your current position in life and extrapolate this sense of meaninglessness to all of reality. Regardless, what you then need is to identify your personal form of meaning which is tied to your innate drives and capacities. What are you really good at that you feel naturally drawn towards, as naturally as waking up in the morning and eating food? Pursue that and grow in that. To say that meaning is something you create is not quite accurate. It's rather that you sometimes have to go out of your way to discover it.

What do you do in a day?

Translation: how have intellectually curious introverted people become more social? Have they? 😆 I've definitely learned how to not steamroll people with my peculiar interests, but rather try to find common ground, which for me would be tapping into Si a lot (I remember learning about MBTI and quite deliberately trying to do this), i.e. when somebody tells about a personal experience they have had (which seems to be most of socializing), try to tell them about a personal experience you have had that connects with theirs somehow. What comes very natural to me is to connect it to an abstract idea and then start lecturing about that idea, but people often don't like that. But that might just be a result of getting older and seeing what works and doesn't work in social situations and learning about MBTI and deciding to put some of the concepts into practice, not so much about Leo's ideas.

It's definitely a thing.

The biggest themes on the forum are probably Spiral Dynamics (a pretty obscure developmental theory), non-duality ("reality is One thing"), and systems thinking (thinking in a very abstract way — but don't ask too much about how; they will say you're over-intellectualizing and wasting your time 😃😃). These only partially overlap with Leo's main focus. Leo also has his own spin on spirituality (Alien Consciousness) which some pretend to understand but nobody actually understands. Then you have the classic conflation of personal solipsism ("my limited screen of sensory perception is the only thing that exist") with cosmic solipsism ("pre-sensory, trans-personal, unlimited consciousness is the only thing that exists", a.k.a objective idealism or non-duality). This never fails to make its appearance at least once every other thread in the spirituality section. Then you also have the conflation of epistemological nihilism ("I know nothing", or really just "I don't know how to use language" — the language game that cannot stop shooting itself in the foot) with non-duality. We surely talk a lot about ostensibly non-duality here. Then you have enlightened leftism ("leftism kinda good, conservatism kinda bad"), enlightened pickup ("women kinda this, women kinda that"), and enlightened personal development ("what does my horoscop- I mean Spiral Dynamics chart say about my life?"). As for my personal favorites of Leo's videos: 40 Signs That You Are Neurotic Understanding How Paradigms Work Understanding Absolute Infinity Spiritual Enlightenment - The Most SHOCKING Truth You'll Ever Hear How To Meditate - The No Bullshit Guide To Meditation

How is he so predictable?

Somebody who doesn't say they don't exist.

Nobody ate the soup. Nihilistic language game is a language game. It's possible to speak about enlightenment like a normal person.

Virtually every spiritual guru except Ramana went on the spiritual path. And Ramana awoke at a certain point in time. Neo-Advaita is a partial picture, and ironically it's a kind of technique. Different techniques are useful at different places on the path. Who?

Ah yes, the Neo-Advaita guru, the guru who was apparently always enlightened and never went on the spiritual path. Mmmmyes... More seriously, Neo-Advaita pointers are useful for some people, for example people who have been on the path for a long time and have developed an attachment to the techniques and could benefit from letting go of them. I addressed this problem earlier. However, other people on the path should of course continue using techniques. If you can't close your eyes and sit still for 10 minutes, letting go of the techniques is probably not the best option.

Because I've been close to what I've intuited as enlightenment. And it agrees with the general religious and scientific literature and opinions by contemporary gurus.

I think judging whether someone has had a "legitimate" awakening glimpse or not is not that important. Glimpses can vary in strength and profundity quite widely. What I think is more important is that many people make the mistake of having an awakening glimpse and then thinking they're enlightened. This is understandable, as especially one's first awakening (depending on the profundity) tends to lead to a lasting change of some kind, and it can be experienced as quite radical. However, enlightenment is usually much more radical than that and comes much later after many many glimpses. When the glimpses start happening by themselves and outside of any control or intention (and you're not on drugs), that is a sign you're getting closer to enlightenment. I also think this mistake becomes more prevalent when there are drugs involved, especially drugs like weed that you take regularly and makes you "more present". And it becomes even more prevalent when there are egoic drivers involved, e.g. you want to be enlightened to fix some problem.

When I think perception, I think the processing of sensory phenomena. When I think of Truth, I think truth beyond the senses, as the senses are limited. So no People who talk about solipsism usually get very hung up on the idea that other meat bags do not come with a limited sensory experience.

I would posit we're not talking about solipsism, but that is just me

Do what you can do to the best of your ability.

Word use indicative of the problem You had an insight, an intuiton, maybe a thought. Is that really what people mean by solipsism though? 🤔🤔

He probably went from being a person experiencing life to life experiencing a person 😆

Awakening is a radical but largely temporary experience of elevated consciousness or non-duality. Enlightenment is when the non-dual experience is your resting state.