lmfao

@Nahm To me, an "illusion" is any belief or distortion in awareness that causes resistance to reality as it is.

@Shadowraix I am trying to talk from direct experience. I believe what I'm saying is just a natural extension of the realisation that everything is now. I would be lying if I said that my motive behind typing these messages wasn't ego driven, but I'm at least trying to make sure I don't let that distort what I say too much.

@Leo Gura I can't edit my previous comment with the desired quote so I'm sending this separate message to just elaborate. You believe that you are God right, and that you are reality and reality is everything in your consciousness right? You can't prove that other people have their own POV and their own thoughts. God is everything in your direct experience, right now. As far as God is concerned, the thoughts of other conscious beings do not exist! You seem to think that the existence of other conscious beings is a given and I think you use the word "God" (which represents all of reality) in logically contradictory ways in the sense that you think God is everything in your experience yet you also think that God is the point of view of "other people" when the point of view of other people is not in your experience. On the one hand you seem to be saying God is everything in your experience but then you're also saying God is this seperate experience and POV. But this separate experience and POV doesn't exist! It's a concept! The existence of another POV is a concept and is not in your direct experience, and is therefore not God.

@Leo Gura I 100% agree. What I'm having an "issue" understanding is your definition of "creature". I'll use words other than "creature" to communicate my view. Edit: I do not know if other people in my conscious experience are centres of conscious experience or are not centres of conscious experience. Either way, the thoughts and actions of my ego are as much me as the actions of other people. However, I do not know if these other conscious beings exist and have thoughts to begin with. To believe such a thing is to be conceptualising. All I know for certain is that reality, which is me, is this cloud of thoughts, feelings, sensations and is just a happening. What do you mean by "forever"? "Forever" implies the existence of a infinitely extended past and future. The notion of "forever" is rooted in the concept of "time". I might come across as pedantic but I think I'm pointing to something important. Who knows if the big self it will take on an infinite number of forms. The way "I" see it , all I know for certain is that the big Self has the one form in my present moment experience because the past and future don't exist. The idea that reality is in flux and hence constantly changing form is an illusion if you accept that time is an illusion. I feel like with any discussion/debate on this forum, if the two of us were to sit with each other and shut our mouths and listen to the sound of a gong we'd reach a mutual understanding of the beauty of existence but the moment that mouths open there's always misunderstanding. Words are a tricky thing.

@Roman Edouard I haven't watched that video of Leo's but I agree that Leo's claim is unsubstantiated if that is what he said (all beliefs are technically unsubstantiated but you get the point that I don't agree with it). However I perhaps have a different line of reasoning to you? I'll just put out my view of things in contrast to trying to "debunk" what you said because I think we might be agreeing with each other. For you, Roman Edouard, everything in your experience is inside of your consciousness. People can conceptualise all they want about reality (ie saying that it is material, spiritual, logical, infinite, finite), but all reality is for a fact is this present moment experience you have with your thoughts and concepts about reality being subset of all the information that composes reality. You can think of reality as literally being mathematically equal to the mathematical sum of all sensations, thoughts, sense data, and emotions in your consciousness. I used the word "mathematically" in my previous sentence to show that I'm conveying the idea that reality is LITERALLY 100% composed of all the contents in your consciousness. Reality=consciousness. If you're familiar with maths and like to mentally masturbate then you can think of reality as a vector composed of an infinite number of dimensions, since you would need an infinite number of numbers to define the exact configuration of reality. I can elaborate more on that claim if you want. All of reality is just this amalgamation of stuff in your consciousness. You only have your present moment precisely because the term "present moment" is refers literally to how everything is. Your thoughts and concepts about reality are another facet and component of this one consciousness, which makes the truth value of your thoughts no more greater than random sounds or colour you experience. And paradoxically enough I'm trying to use words to communicate this to you. Time doesn't exist because all you have and ever will have is now, this "truth" is extremely clear its just that our minds are always distracted and are attached to thoughts which is why we always forget this. Tomorrow never comes. Realising time doesn't exist isn't a matter of scientific inquiry, its a matter of introspection. To feel in your bones that time in is an illusion is extremely profound and hard hitting. It makes you see that causality is an illusion since causality needs a past, and all you live in is uncaused, completely and utterly spontaneous moment which you did nothing to create. Random tangent, the spontaneity of reality is extraordinary. This is because there is something, our present moment experience, in contrast to nothing. Why is there something in contrast to nothing? Back to the thread topic. In my first person experience, I cannot prove solipsism to be false. This alone is enough to say that the idea that the idea I will live the same experience as another person around me is not "provable". All there is is this now experience, all other concepts (e.g saying "I will live as a bird") are just noise within this experience. @Leo Gura I agree with what you are pointing towards. The true self is all of reality, as it is right now. OK Leo, but what do you mean by "creature" here? The idea that there exist external biological organisms which are centers for conscious experience is a concept which I cannot prove. You, Leo Gura, are appearing in my consciousness as a creature but I do not know that you are actually another conscious being. I am Leo Gura but I do not know if Leo Gura is conscious. The falsehood of solipsism is a practical truth but when aiming for Enlightenment we want the person to stop conceptualising and abstracting all together. To even say a statement like "you'll live forever" is extremely fuzzy verbal territory to root in actuality because implicit to that statement is notions of time when time is an illusion. I'm not saying that the statement is "wrong" it's just that that the verbal communication comes across as too complicated

@BreezeWW the closest thing I use to an aid for meditation is just gong sounds. It's simple but I think it does the job depending on my mood.

Today is my third time taking modafinil: Just writing this post to say that I think negative effects of armodafinil I experienced have gone away. I woke up at 4:30 am today [ 4 hours ago from this post upload] and took 150 mg of armodafinil at 6:30 am. I felt armodafinil kick in, but its not nearly as overwhelming as the first time I took it. Its a good drug since it doesn't feel overwhelming at all really. Its potent yet during my second and third taking the drug as a full pill, I don't have much side effects like racing thoughts and monkey mind like I did when I first took it. Armodafinil is strong but I think that in most circumstances you won't be getting in negative effects, although everybody is different. The wakefulness you get can feel somewhat subtle depending on your dosage and how long it's been since you took it and your personal tolerance. Like even 12 hours after I've taken a full dose, I won't notice that I have anything in my system until I come around to doing any task involving attention and I think "damn I feel hyperfocused".

@Atic Wow its like you read my mind and know what I do all the time. @Charlotte although I think the example conversation wasn't detailed and in depth enough to give me a satisfactory understanding of what's going, I think I have one anyway. I mean of course you were also being hyperbolic and were just conveying the essence behind your conversations in contrast to how your conversations actually plays out which would make the sentence I typed before this one false. Like @Aticsaid @Charlotte (I accidentally typed "@Charlotte" instead of just "Charlotte"), what's going on is that what you find interesting about a particular topic is not what other people find interesting. It is for this reason that your attempts to discuss a topic with someone results in you going in a direction which is not what the other person expected and is familiar with. To elaborate what I said in the previous paragraph, its almost as though you and the other person are talking past one another. I know that when I have discussed a topic with friends, I tend to take a topic to a deeper philisopical and logical level then what other people are interested in with regards to that topic. Here's another way of looking at it which is a bit different from what I said above. The information a person has about an objective topic is tightly associated and joined to their subjective perspective on the issue and they think that their subjective perspective is an objective given from the information, when in fact that is false. We all do this to a degree and the degrees to which we do it vary on the subject. When you say something which questions their subjective perspective the other person thinks you are questioning something objective. Imagine a Turqoise hippie trying to talk to a hardcore atheist materlist about spirituality and the nature of reality.

@Equanimitize Yeah exactly. This comes back to the question of whether sociopaths and psychopaths are born or made and whether anything can be done about it. From the research I've seen online, sociopaths are made yet there are a small fraction of people who are born with low/zero empathy and are called psychopaths. On Quora you have self professed psychopaths answering questions and writing in detail what their emotions are like and how their mind works. One example is https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker . In conjunction to zero empathy and impulsivity, psychopaths also feel no anxiety and sadness generally (there are always degrees to which you are a psychopath as well). However, not all psychopaths end up becoming "evil doers" and neither is that the case for sociopaths.

@Outer I can't get rid of the video I've accidentally embedded below because it's on mobile. A lot of what you said might be right. I scored 1st percentile from understandmyself.com The description didn't really jive with me but I assumed that the description was just innacurate but the test and results were valid. If I do have autism though it is very discreet to the point where no one suspects or notices it except for me and one other person. I think that "autism" is just the excuse I use for not having the same temperament and interests as those around me.

I wouldn't mind seeing you make a video on sociopathy and psychopathy. Gives people a guide on how to spot them and it also might be a good for you to communicate advice to people you think "suffer" from sociopathy or psychopathy. Sociopathy might just be something you decide to reference in a future shadow work video, I know I'd find it interesting at the very least.

@CreamCat it's always been my impression that most people in the west go through stage red as very young children and quickly get absorbed into stage blue religion. At least that's what happened with me. But to be fair puberty and testosterone could make you red.

@CreamCat It wouldn't surprise me if what you said was true. I feel like I have a red "shadow" in me which partially motivated me to ask this question. It makes me wonder what exactly "empathy" and "conscience" is. One way which might be useful of phrasing it is that if I was in stage purple my empathy would have a very small area of range (the tribe) but if I'm in Turqoise my empathy extends to all of reality itself. I find this topic interesting because I wonder how other people experience things compared to how I experience things. Like I wonder how if I process empathy is different from most people because I'm 1st percentile in agreeableness and perhaps mildly autistic (although no one usually picks that up). I wonder if I have or used to have some sociopathic traits as well. It is for that reason that I detect aspects of "zen devilry" in me.

Zen seems hella hype.

I think that the main part of becoming enlightened requires the awareness of "what reality really is". And in paying attention to what reality really is, I find that our egoic notions and beliefs about time, "what is real" and also of causility to be huge barriers in our awareness. There are so many angles I could try to talk about this but I'll just go for one. I want you to just try this experiment to get what I mean. Wherever you are, find an object nearby you and just get close to it. Just look at it. You might be seeing a water bottle in front of you. Now close your eyes and keep them closed and ask yourself "Is a water bottle in front of me?". Whilst your eyes are closed you certainly have the memory of the water bottle, but the water bottle is literally not in your experience anymore. This is by no means a trivial finding. Try a variation of this experiment. Everyone has their own mental catalogue of memories of the past. Now consider the fact that as far as the present moment is concerned, those things that you think that happened LITERALLY DO NOT EXIST. The only thing that exists is your memory of the events. Now here's something that might drive you mad. Just say the word "cat" out loud. Now just realise that after you have finished saying the word, you have absolutely zero proof that you ever said the word cat in the past. The belief that you ever said the word cat is a delusion! This is true for absolutely all events and experiences, not just for situations where you say the word cat! Being in the present moment requires a radical rexontextualization and I hope these thought experiments pointed someone to that idea. -------------------------------------------------- Besides what I've just mentioned here, this all becomes far more absurd when you question the nature of what is the present moment. Let me ask you. Suppose that you believe that time doesn't exist and all you have is the present moment. In the absence of time, how does ANY perception and experience exist at all? Could flux be an illusion if time doesn't exist? Because if there's no time, then things have no capacity by which to change. In the abscence of time just what is reality then? Does anything exist at all in the abscence of time? "Thinking" about these questions is pointless. Just meditate my niggas. I don't have a fucking clue what's going on with reality and experience but maybe you'll find out.

@Jack River I changed the title of the thread lol, because it was innacurate.

@Serotoninluv @Serotoninluvn@Serotoninluvn First time I've heard of this. Yeah that hand exercise sounds good. @EvilAngelnp my dude

@Anton Rogachevski Everybody is born with different traits. Some people are born with naturally high levels of empathy, others with naturally low. Some are born disagreeable whilst some are born agreeable. Some are born more creative, some are born less neurotic, some are born more conscientious and etc. So it is that someones deeply embedded traits play a huge role in how someone progresses along the spiral. Since I feel my own particular personality to be confusing I am reluctant to think that the categories "warrior" and "herbivore" are very useful. I feel like most people within these categories are there because of their upbringing and this honestly seems to be the case in the people I talk to. Very rarely does someone have a very strong biological fixation on either of these categories. Genuine psychopaths (which are rare) are an example of people fixated on the "warrior" category. Throwing away whatever models you have of spiral dynamics, people born of all traits can increase their level of consciousness, cease suffering and become enlightened. Enlightened people don't have to operate on a shared set of values and ethics as other enlightened people. -------------------—--------------------- I myself have charecterisitcs of both the categories "warrior" and "herbivore" and so I find it hard to think there is a large dichotomy between these two things. I'm the type of person who doesn't care too much about having money, power , fame, or control over other people but I wouldn't feel guilty whatsoever about pursuing those things if the circumstances were right. I'm actually quite passionate about helping the needy and disadvantaged yet there are many situations where I don't care if the pursuit of what I want "hurts" other people. I have mild autism and am supposed to be unempathetic to people yet I can also be extremely sensitive and aware of the emotional environment around. Another thing to realise is that a "warrior" has some people they love and are kind to and a "herbivore" will have some people they absolutely loathe and are hostile towards. Everyone exhibits behaviour which might be considered self-contradictory from very crude levels of analysis of their behaviour.

@Sahil Pandit Thank you my brother

@Leo Gura Yeah taking a full pill was hella potent. It's just not stable to take large doses frequently. Next time imma just do a tame 1/2 pill. I found the exacerbated monkey mind in conjunction with focus to be interesting. But amazingly enough, even after 18 hours of taking the pill and staying awake with armodafinil in my system I had lots of focus and concentration in my university lecture despite my sleepiness. And psychedelics sound fun.

@Anna What are the panic attacks like in intensity and duration? I've had panic attacks in conjunction with suicidal ideation in the past. Whenever I have had a panic attack I just keep hyperventilating non-stop for 20-30 mins. What you should do about it really depends on where you intuitively feel the panic attacks to be coming from. My advice to you is to just examine where/why the panic attacks are arising and then decide from there. My panic attacks were coming from a deep pit of neurosis which almost made me dead serious about committing suicide. Obviously that doesn't sound like the case for you but just check that you are really convinced that your panic attacks are coming from a place of purification rather than a place of deep despair. Because people can experience deep shit when their neurosis resurfaces and is being cleared up from mindfulness. Just make sure you've investigated your psychiatric health. For your panic attacks, are there any triggers? Any particular topics or ideas which send your mind into a crazy spiral? Are there any triggers for the uncontrollable surge of emotions you feel? Do the panic attacks arise completely randomly? In reference to my first paragraph the duration, intensity and causes of your panic attacks completely define the context and significance of your panic attacks and hence they completely define what you should do about them.

Depends on how you define enlightenment. There are different degrees to such a thing. Most people when they meditate should be experiencing enlightenment to a very small degree I think. I think that raising your consciousness will invariably eliminate suffering. The main key is to let your deep meditative states and enlightenment experiences permeate your 24/7 experience. It's what I'm trying to do. Addressing any addictions you have is key to emotional mastery and its where I need to do a shit ton of work because addiction is the number 1 obstacle to emotional mastery and mindfullness. All of reality is just raw experience/consciousness. The entirety of reality in the present moment has no cause. Now is forever, and you are always in the present moment. At any point during your existence as a conscious being, you exist in a situation which has no cause. The existence of a cause requires a past but the past doesn't exist in your present moment existence. There are all these thoughts, sounds, sights, bodily pressures in your consciousness which are in this uncaused, completely spontaneous present moment. Reality is in a situation which you literally did nothing to achieve. This is true for all waking moments of your life, and the higher the degree to which your awareness "can see this truth" the higher the degree to which life feels effortless. I believe that this truth I am pointing is formulated within the concept of "Wu Wei", as I understand that particular concept.

@Leo Gura What are the usual circumstances under which paranormal powers are unlocked? Do they unlock for people who are enlightened? Is that it?

@Wisebaxter Bear in mind that the contents of your consciousness right now have more than enough ground in them for you to reach infintiely high levels of consciousness and so if it is the case that if you're looking for a mystical experience just bear in mind that it is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Once you have a mystical experience you'll think "How did I never notice this earlier?".