Carl-Richard

Credits to The_Alchemist for finding this picture: Perfect illustration of the differences between Yellow vs. Orange, Kuhnian philosophy vs. logical positivism, revolutionary science vs. normal science, scientific genius vs. popularizer, paradigmatic vs. formal operational cognition, epistemological awareness vs. blindness.

Perfect illustration of the differences between Yellow vs. Orange, Kuhnian philosophy vs. logical positivism, revolutionary science vs. normal science, scientific genius vs. popularizer, paradigmatic vs. formal operational cognition, epistemological awareness vs. blindness. Mind if I post it in stage Yellow examples thread with your name in the credits?

You're in the stage where you're trying to grasp the truth with your mind, which is inherently confusing. You must instead ground yourself in experience, become the thing you're so confused about. It also doesn't hurt to learn the finer distinctions between the relative and The Absolute. Nihilism, as a result of learning about nonduality, only happens when you're trying to appropriate The Absolute (non-duality) within the relative (duality), by trying to fit an infinite object into your finite mind. I've tried to boil down this fallacy in another thread which I hope doesn't make things more confusing :

Stay in school, don't do drugs

You still have prarabdha karma to burn through . Realization doesn't wipe the slate completely clean. It only doesn't complicate it further.

Karma is not about justice in the western sense of the word. It's more about Newton's third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It's much more mechanical than you think. In that sense, you only ever get what you "deserve" because that is all that could ever be.

Have anybody tried establishing a connection across dreams? Like people could condition themselves to call another person who is also dreaming while waiting to pick up the phone. Apparently, the DMT space is often shared by close friends who are tripping together, so I don't see how the dream space couldn't follow the same rules.

Why this fascination with poverty? Look ahead, not behind

This is some impressive non-dual fencing action

So let's call this motivation then

I initially wrote this down somewhere else, but I think it could serve as a helping hand for new people on the forum who aren't too familiar with non-duality, God, The Absolute, relativity etc.. Here I'll mainly present what I like to call "the Relative-absolute fallacy", which is in my opinion a very fundamental problem behind a lot of confusion around spiritual questions. It's obviously a well-known concept by most people here already, but I think it can beneficial to formalize it for some people: Similar to Ken Wilber's "Pre/trans fallacy", which is about conflating pre-rational views with trans-rational views, the Relative/absolute fallacy is about conflating relative perspectives with The Absolute perspective. This is the main source of confusion in the forms of spirituality that deal with the implications of non-duality (Oneness). An alternative name would be "the Dual/non-dual fallacy". Non-duality is most widely known through the conceptualizations of the eastern mystical traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, but it has been known by mystics from all types of religions through the ages. There are generally two levels to the fallacy: 1. The first level is the conflation that happens when you don't have knowledge about the distinction between the relative and The Absolute (dual/non-dual). This applies to pre-rational religious people (Wilber). The way that traditional religion interprets various holy texts is itself a good example: For example, Jesus' descriptions of God's non-dual qualities in the Bible are interpreted through a dualistic lens and conceptualized as an external being that is separate from its creation. Non-duality posits that God is infact not separate from its creation, and therefore you are God. 2. The second level happens when you do have knowledge about the distinction between relative and absolute (but it's obviously not complete knowledge). This applies to (aspiring) trans-rational people (people who emerge out of a rationalist mindset and adopt a spiritual mindset). A common example is to think that because nothing really matters, morality doesn't matter, and therefore it's fine to for example hurt other people. This is to conflate "the relative" with "The Absolute". From The Absolute perspective, yes, nothing really matters (or everything matters equally), but morality can only ever be defined "relative" to a certain value system in the first place. By taking the absolute perspective, you're deliberately stepping outside of all value systems. "It's fine to hurt other people" would be a moral statement, which means you're actually invoking a relative perspective. One way to know when you're stepping out of The Absolute and into the relative is the moment you start discriminating and creating preferences in a deliberate manner: hurting other people > not hurting other people; nothing matters > everything matters; me > other people etc.. What can you do to avoid running into this trap? Well, truly the only answer is more spiritual practice (and careful use of psychedelics). However, a good rule to have when you're confused about something would be to ask yourself whether you're conflating the relative and The Absolute. Remember that these things can only be "understood" in a trans-rational sense, through direct experience, not merely through deduction. Rationality on its own is not sufficient to grasp the significance of non-duality, but these tools can hopefully still help to clear up some confusion when trying to deal with the conceptualizations of non-duality

Wake up, eat, class, eat, heavy weight training (every other day) or reading, eat, read if lifted weights, eat, time off, sleep. or Wake up, eat, heavy weight training (every other day) or reading, eat, read if lifted weights, eat, time off, sleep.

Hahaha brilliant

Then we should just shut down this forum then

You'd be surprised . Well, it used to be mindfulness meditation, "do nothing", and what I call crying meditation. Sometimes mantra meditation. Nowadays I just sit.

Sitting.

It's not that you're wrong, it's that you're being closeminded. The problem is that people take your advice and still end up with the same problems. Then what to do? More practice, yes, but I see it happening over and over again where people ask the same questions and get the same answer: "you have to distinguish between the relative and the absolute". Are you saying this answer is counterproductive? All I've done is give a formalized summary of that answer which people can use as a tool to identify where they're stuck. How they can solve that problem is of course more about actual spiritual practice (like I mentioned in the final paragraph). In that sense, it's more like a diagnostic tool than a final cure. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to have more tools in your toolbelt.

The "easy" way: take psychedelics, study epistemology. The hard way: develop deep knowledge about one field and general knowledge about extremely many fields.

39:04-40:40 Reminds me of one time I talked about the difference between a Yellow approach to environmental issues like veganism vs. a Green approach, namely by taking a stategic, large-scale, "cold-hearted", statistical approach with the right values in mind, instead of merely changing your personal consumer habits as a compassionate emotional response to visceral images of things like animal suffering or social injustice. That way it cuts through the traps of confusing real solutions with adopting an identity.

Then again, they're only separate in a relative sense, not in an absolute sense, hence the confusion . Strange-loopy stuff.

To find something that aligns with both #1 and #2 in a good way requires a higher spiritual drive that must nevertheless be cultivated. This is what is called passion, love, desire for truth. It's an integrative force that pulls everything upwards in unison, but it fades if you let the two aspects get out of balance. It's a non-linear, interactive, transactional process. Work on finding the balance.

There are generally two ways of interpreting "doing what you want": 1. Being a slave to your impulses. 2. Working towards the goal you want. The former obviously doesn't require much long-term commitment, and it's a central part of your life, so it shouldn't be neglected, but it could negatively impact your goals. Goals require long-term commitment and sacrifices. Without a goal, your life will follow a path of degeneration instead of a path of growth. However, you can't really achieve your goals by completely ignoring your impulses. That will turn you into a hollow shell of a human being. It's about finding the correct balance between the two. There is an interesting dynamic called "the rock-bottom theory" which says that if you just follow your impulses like a slave without tending to anything else in your life, sooner or later you'll hit such a low point that you'll either end up dead or completely change your life around. So in context to the two points I've listed, this theory posits that sooner or later, #2 will naturally emerge out of #1, but it's obviously a dangerous strategy. Some people only learn it the hard way. For example, it's one of the only ways to get out of life-long drug addiction. You realize that it's either #2 or you lose everything. I believe that this dynamic can work in different degrees (you don't necessarily have to become homeless to get the point). In other words, keep "doing what you want" (#1) until you learn first-hand why you need some #2 in your life. Two good examples of this theory is Steve-O and Brandon Novak (from Jackass). I really recommend this first video:

Keep doing that then.