Carl-Richard

A state of no-mind is one devoid of all thoughts: thoughts about the past, the future, the self, concepts, feelings, emotions. Answer what is usually the case, not one-off occurrences (unless that is your only option). If you're unsure if you've entered a no-mind state, answer "never". Comment your meditation habits below: how often you meditate, how long you've meditated for, how long your meditation sessions are, the ways you like to meditate. Fun arbitrary rating system I thought about (not important): Tier 1 meditator: choice 1. Tier 2 meditator: choices 2, 3, 4. Tier 3 meditator: choices 5, 6, 7. Tier 4 meditator: choices 8, 9, 10.

You can turn off the perceptions associated with being a human being. That is what the question is about.

Let's say you were to cease to exist forever tomorrow at 12 am, no pain involved. You have no problem with that?

https://www.spiritual-integrity.org/ethics/ There is a similar honor code for organizations: https://www.spiritual-integrity.org/org-ethics/

I gotta say, most of these "advice" are pretty cringe.

Nothing wrong with meditating a little to gain some distance and sort your thoughts. The problem would be if you start using it consistently to avoid solving your problems. If you intend to solve your problems, then it's only good.

Nope. As long as relative views exist, they will fight for infinity. You think you understand relativity since you're lecturing me on it, right? Well, I think I understand relativity pretty well too, yet here we are fighting about it.

You can do that by asking a question, but then your role is primarily listening. If you think you know the thing, you just speak about it. I'm advocating for clearly differentiating the contents of your mind, and that will be reflected in your actions. If you speak about something you know very little about while signalling that you're very confident, that would be a lie, and you end up confusing yourself and others. Essentially, you want clear signalling and a coherence between internal and external signals.

Something I've learned to do is to only speak about things that I'm very confident that I understand. I think it makes you comes off as smarter as well, even though that is not the point (I hope ?). It's a lesson in being comfortable with the limits of your own knowledge and being true to yourself. A side effect is that way you'll rarely get called out for not knowing what you're talking about, or walking back things you have said, or having trouble being understood (or understanding yourself). Generally, it makes your mind more ordered and less neurotic.

Dynamical systems theory is a framework. It can tell me a lot of things. But in order for it to tell me something about a particular thing, you have to present a particular system and its constraints. For example, for the theory of evolution by natural selection, the constraints are variation, inheritance, selection, time and adaptation. What are the constraints for sex understood as a dynamical system?

@Razard86 All your posts are just the same point repeated ad nauseum. "Woah dude, everything is relative".

No, you just said you want to drop ethical codes. This is obviously looping at this point, but I feel that the "solution" thing you're doing is a language game. It's this simple: you don't want ethical codes, neither now nor tomorrow, but you want something else ("root solutions", whatever that is).

Why are you acting like finding the root solution for things is 1. such a radical thought, and 2. incompatible with symptomatic solutions? It's the idea that we can drop everything else and invest everything in root solutions and thinking we'll get there which I'm calling utopian, not the attempt to find root solutions.

The only problem is that now you're off into utopian fantasies again. We're stuck with blunt tools for now, but no tools is worse.

Ah. That didn't really tell me what you think sex is. It tells me which frameworks you use to understand sex. You can use those frameworks to understand many things, not just sex. What kind of system is it?

"Rule #1: Don't fuck your students." "You're lying about the absolute! You're confusing the students, making spiritual teaching harder for the teachers!" I think this is just ridiculous. We should not put people in jail, just find the root cause. Very myopic, not very systemic. Anyways, this is looping.

Because the absolute is so fragile, as if it hasn't endured for all of human history, and as if it isn't the formless basis of all of reality, and that if a spiritual teacher wants to use it to satisfy their mammalian needs, we would be damned to question that. At least people on this forum aren't using the absolute to justify things like suicide...

So only when it comes to spiritual teaching, you want to remove the best alternative we have for assuring a basic level of social safety before we even have the slightest idea of a replacement? Well, I hope you'll never become a spiritual teacher then

Now you're doing something funny. Are you saying after all this time that we should have ethics codes for spiritual teachers?

Laws and ethics are limiting human expression in many ways, but currently we don't have any better alternatives for assuring some basic level of social safety. You don't get rid of the best alternative just because it isn't perfect. You also don't even have a slightest idea of what a better alternative would be.

What are you talking about?

Enlighten us. In the meantime while you work out your utopian fantasy world of enlightened saints, we normal people who live in reality will create rules which are easy for people to understand and follow. It's ridiculous that when we talk about normal everday stuff, everybody is like "yeah, laws and ethics are important", but when somebody mentions spirituality, everybody goes full relativistic libertarian nihilist. It's actually a mind virus.

And that is where you lose me. This thread has done nothing but confirm my suspicion that ethical questions around spirituality is absolutely necessary. If a spiritual state was given nuclear codes, I would evacuate the planet faster than the members of Heaven's Gate.

And why is that? Is it because if you ask people prior to joining the organization "would it be ok if we were to kill someone for your awakening?", many people would be skeptical? Do you think if you ask people "would it be ok if we had sex?", many people would be skeptical as well? Because I can envision both of these things happening (killing and sex) once you trap them into some teacher's orbit and slowly erode their boundaries over months and years, certainly if they've conceded their friends, family, money or any normal sense of autonomy. Non-dual mindtricks makes all of that exceedingly likely.

So spirituality is above ethics. Is spirituality above the law? Can I literally kill for someone's awakening?