Jamie Universe

Leo's said before that there's different stages of enlightenment, and also mentioned a diagram/picture of a bull or something. I looked it up on the internet and didn't find anything (though I honestly didn't look very hard). Does anyone have this picture/diagram?

@smd "Crazy" is a subjective, conceptual label. Its important to know this. Because right now it sounds like your in a sort of "what's the meaning of life?" sort of half-ass philosophy, bull shitting everywhere. Its important to know what you mean by "crazy" because otherwise your just going to say philosophical sounding stuff, and wonder. In reality, what @YaNanNallari said is pretty much true. What you really mean by crazy (at least that I picked up on) is that he's strategically bad. And you think that he's crazy because strategically his first idea seems like a bad idea, but then you wonder, if this is actually a more 'right' and strategically better way? If you want the truth to your question, its that his idea, and your idea are both strategically bad. Or both "crazy" what you need to realize and change about your mindset is that relationships don't provide everlasting happiness, relationships are 'material' Which aren't 'bad', but don't provide the happiness you want Instead adopt an self-actualized mindset, realize how relationships are fucking people over in life. People believe in them to much.

@FelixTheCat I had depression for like a year or two and my minds 'reason' was because of all the school crap going on 1. Turns out I'm gay (and you can imagine all the other shit that followed) 2. Maybe I had mental disorder? If I did, I'm pretty sure its gone now, I might've also just had some weird beliefs I believed in for no reason. Which are also gone now But mainly I think my depression was based off this sort of feeling/belief that life was pointless etc. etc... And then I did enough philosophy to realize that it wasn't, and that all the pain was in a sense easily fixable. Point is, I had a perspective change, I stopped complaining about my life like a victim, and started treating it like an obstacle that I could overcome. sort of like what @Akim said. See if you believe that your doomed to fail and die without ANY promise of getting back, that's going to reflect on you emotionally. But if you believe that "Yes I could get diagnosed with a terminal disease tomorrow, but I could've also been run over by a car yesterday, and I never thought of that and it never affected me, so why should I care about the billion ways I could die right now?" then your going to see that you worry less. Me personally I friggin logic all my minds arguments to death. I find that all the worrying/panicking/negative emotions, a lot of times comes from a bad argument.

1. Walk up to someone (or yourself if your talking from enlightenment context) 2. say "I love you!"

Alright, and thanks!

@Faceless I got the same question

1. You decide what is the main courses and the side dish, in that scenario your valuing one thing over another, value is subjective, meaning I could value dirt over gold, who values 100 bucks more, a millionaire or a hobo? 2. You can't value it that much until you've actually experienced it, they talk about infinity and bliss, but enlightenment is not something imaginable,

There is no right or wrong, except that that's a complete lie. There's no right or wrong as some cosmic force, as some people believe it is. But there is a good and evil that you make, unless your chill with murdering your entire family right now. So then what makes a decision? What to choose? In a sense you already have, it sounds to me like you don't really worry about going to the dark-side because of there's "no good and evil" and don't join the Light side because nothing worth that much that you can see. My point is, you've got to make a decision. And you either choose the one where it seems like its good, but you know its actually bad. Or choose the one where it will seem bad at first but will payoff x 1000000000 later on. But the pay off really is just the fixing of any problem you might have. And so whenever your tempted to go to the dark side, remember young Padawan, for the dark-side misleads you, this is in its nature, to seem better, whereas its actually a trap.

When we look in front of us we can in a sense see both the 2d dimensional and 3d dimensional aspect. The same way we can look at a painting and see the 3d dimensional aspect, but also the 2d dimensional aspect. When we look at the painting, we can tell that the 3d dimensional part is an illusion, we know that the painting is on this flat 2d surface. So if we can paint what we see, exactly as it is. We can say that what we see is also 2d dimensional, that we're in a sense always looking at a painting. So you could conclude that we're always looking at 2d, and that 3d dimensional is just an illusion. But you should also consider that 3 dimensional exists, meaning this concept that something can have 3 dimensions can exist. And it so happens that your brain computes what's happening in front of you as 3 dimensional. And so it sounds like your trying to figure out which one it is. 2d vs. 3d. And my take on it, is that you can (technically) see both in front of you You can see how your direct experience is 2d (using the painting example) And you can see how your direct experience is 3d (Less sure about this point) And your trying to plot one against the other saying "2d makes 3d" or "3d makes 2d" is a duality. Whereas the both exist simultaneously. Both are concepts, because yes there is something there, something that makes these things appear 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional. But yet you can change whether you see 2d or 3d (at least if your looking at a painting). A painting makes 3d out of 2d (the actual canvas, then the 3d illusion) your view makes 2d out of 3d (seeing a flat surface in your 3d world view) If I were to draw any conclusions from what I just said. I would say that 3d/2d are both neither a conclusion of sight, yet they are just ways of perceiving reality (since you can choose between them), and they're might be 4d... 5d... 6d.... x Infinity. P.S. Not 100% sure this is correct, and I also haven't had any awakening experience yet

Your problem isn't that your bad at having relationships, in-part of the reason your so unhappy is because you chase this fantasy that's designed to fool and hurt you, the problem is within you, not within what you don't have. Imagine you do get a relationship, lots of relationships degenerate into chaos, and you'll end up even more unhappy than you were before. Sure it could go well, and I'm not saying you shouldn't pursue this. What I'm trying to show you is that the problem lies with your need for a relationship. When you want something, and you don't get it. What happens? Are you happy? So how about when you want something bad, and its over a longer period of time? Also Meditation isn't really supposed to work for a long period of time, so don't worry about that. I would consider going to the other part of this forum in the enlightenment/meditation section and asking what your doing wrong if you feel self-doubt. People tell you not to care what other people think of you because most of the time their opinions are irrelevant to you. But in that case his/her opinions were relevant.

Its to nerdy... But I'll tell you it involves dancing

I have this exact same problem. I find it kind of hard to decide, because from what I hear, enlightenment is this unimaginable state of awesome being. But on the other hand you have all the stuff your mind wants to do. Strategically (from what I know) enlightenment is the better option because of all its benefits. But I still want to do all this other stuff. What I'm going to do, is pretty much both for now, and see what happens. If it ever comes to a point (which it probably will) where I have to decide between enlightenment/self-actualization and my other stuff. I'll probably choose enlightenment, because from what I hear, the other option will leave me wanting more. But unless you choose to become a extreme hardcore enlightenment junkie and spend all your time meditating in a cave. There will be time to do other stuff.

As I see it, you have a reason for not making those changes in your life. You continue to harm those individuals for some reason. Yes you may feel more empathetic towards them, you may be more open to their perspective. But their are billions of animals on this planet, for which you wouldn't want to put your entire life into that. Its not your priority. Because I mean, one could ask. If Leo is so enlightened and is everything, then why isn't he out there trying to find a way to save the whales? That's probably because he has a reason not to As for gaining more consciousness. I'm not a hundred percent sure... but I would define consciousness as some kind of knowing. And if you know about the animals alternate perspective, and you know the reasons for not necessarily preventing the harm done to this individual. Then your more conscious as I see it. Also I'm a vegetarian, I started when I was pretty young. And though I'm not that strict/picky with what I eat. I haven't faltered since I've started, and my reason, as it continues today, is that I love these animals to much to let them be eaten. And that wasn't based off any first-hand experience (at least that I can remember). If your trying to become more conscious, then just ask questions, contemplate. Become more open-minded, consider that there could always be something more that your missing.

Ok so I hear this word a lot on this forum. For a while I thought it was one thing, then it changed when I heard other stuff... So I'm curious to know what your definitions of consciousness are. Or what context you would use consciousness in.

I remember seeing a chart Leo made about enlightenment, and apart of this chart had all the ways to get to enlightenment. One of which was through the beauty of nature. Which surprised me because I remember around 13/14 years old (I think) I was really depressed and suicidal, and one day I just got really mad at it all, and decided to get exercise and hike. Which was a big deal back then, because I played video games in literally all of my free time. And it was some where around 7 pm, and I climbed this smallish hill, and all nature around me felt like some spiritual/mystical experience. And without getting into the details of all of it. That was how I viewed nature every time I was outdoors. It was like that for several months (or a year) I think and then that spiritual connection with nature dropped off and I don't really feel that anymore, but I still love nature. So my main question here is, did I have some sort of enlightenment experience? Or what the hell happened? I'm not very old, not a ton of life experience. I don't really know what I hope to obtain through this post. I guess just knowledge of what happened, or your opinions and thoughts.

Interesting... I haven't had an awakening experience yet. All your replies will definitely serve as motivation for any work I do.

Great story! I've done affirmations before with lots of success. I tried a visualization for enlightenment once but I realized that I couldn't really imagine enlightenment, so that ended quickly.

I usually don't stop the video while taking notes, only if its a big point to write down and if he's already going to something else. But sometimes I notice writing bullet points that are an exact outline of what was said. Example: - Non-duality is in-communicable because try and imagine explaining what color is to a color blind person What you should do - Non-duality incommunicable - analogy: explaining color to color blind It might not seem like much, but the shorter your bullet points you can make, the more efficient. Though you don't want to do this at the expense of not getting the point acorss.

I do some random weird shit for fun... Sort of embarrassed to tell anyone though, its sort of like at an all time level of nerdiness that you haven't heard of before.

This forum is really good, 1 specific reason in-particular. All your replies and posts are recorded. When you write down a huge reply or post you can review it later and self-reflect on it. Which honestly sounds pretty boring and it doesn't seem like you'll get much out of it. But I've done it twice now, and its actually pretty interesting because in a sense you attack your mindset, with your mindset. Its especially useful when you make any sort of reply that's an argument, and then you go back over it, and look for what is wrong. Technique: 1. Find something you've written down before that was you directly talking to someone 2. Do an analysis on it - You don't have to do anything specific, but some things you can try: - Look for what's wrong within that previous mindset of yours - Anything you noticed about it (which is sometimes useful because you can sometimes deeper your understanding of your own knowledge) - Counter argument yourself (even if what you said is right in your view) Some notes: Open mindedness is key for this. The whole point is to either expose something about yourself or open your mind. And so you must attack your own argument with an open mindset. You can tell if your close-minded if you find yourself instantly agreeing with the stuff you said. The exception is that you may not find what you did wrong or you might not notice anything right away. But you can't do an analysis on your mindset with the same mindset. - works best with any comment/reply you were really engaged in - Everything is subject to open-mindedness, especially your closest beliefs, which is why this works kind of well because you have a solid record of your close-mindedness

Well I don't know if I'm the right person to give advice to you, I'm still a beginner. But first, Leo did talk about depersonalization in his "The dark side of meditation" video, and I'm pretty sure he said it was temporary/there's books and stuff to get out of it. I recommend you watch that part of the video (again if you've already watched it.) And secondly I don't know if this will work for you. But as I see it you have a choice to depersonalize from yourself or not. I mean you used your mind to depersonalize, you definitely could use it to re-personalize. I really suggest you just type "how to fix de-personalization" into your search engine though. I think de-personalization is considered a "temporary by-product" but I wouldn't worry to hard. If its depressing or scary, think of it as something fixable and temporary.

From what I hear your argument and belief to choose to be human (or with ego) is based off a bad experience with god/everything. But from what I gathered more people than you have experienced god and have had a good experience. And I don't mean to say this in a jerky way (because its just going to come off as mean since I can't express complicated emotion with a reply). But More people with More experience would say otherwise to your belief in this post Of course I did not have the experience you did. I don't know all the specifics of it. But your describing God as bad/you had a bad experience. So I at least want to point out the logical fallacies in your argument. You should really try to be open minded about this. Here's the definition of open-mindedness: willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced. I'm not saying what you saw wasn't real. But I'm asking you to consider what I said above, EVEN if your 100% percent sure EVEN if your not even sure why/how it could be incorrect, or what to do to figure out its incorrectness and EVEN if what you saw is correct 100% in every way

Its kind of hard for me to give you any 'direct' advice. But it sounds like your being in a sort of forced relationship with these people, at which point you've got to decide how to cut them out. Either leave your job, don't talk to them, or some other solution.

I've felt that before too. In Leo's "deeper comprehension" video. He talked about how you have trouble setting up a meditation habit because of lack of understanding, not because of lack of willpower. And it only makes sense now that I've started contemplating instead of, kind of trying to will power your way through. So you should try contemplation on those problems

Ok so my current mindset is sort of like this. Me: I'm lazy, and don't want to meditate Me: Nope your meditating (with a sense of need/or do) Me: Ok. Alright. And now I'm meditating 20 minutes a day and its working beautifully. Now I only just recently realized that this was infact deprived from Leo's video "Deeper levels of comprehension." Let me say that you do need to contemplate the question "Why aren't I motivated/working towards (blank)?". For me it came as a realization. "The fact that you are sitting here talking about why you aren't meditating, instead of meditating, is why you can't meditate." And then it sort of hit me that this idea of discipline is sort of interesting. That this idea that you just need to "Do it" was underestimated by me a lot. And maybe contemplating/thinking about it fixed the problem, or maybe it was a sort of willpower. And even though its probably not meditation for whomever reading. Just think If there's some problem in your life right now, why are you attempting to mentally masturbate on this forum (even though it might be useful.) instead of just sitting down and contemplating about your issues?