lmfao

What are your thoughts on the question I have asked? Do your experiences with enlightenment and non-dual states have anything to say? Any intellectual arguments? Even if a strange loop is not a completely correct model, are there any properties /characteristics of the strange loop model which you think are appropriate for this situation? In my mind came the idea that one way you can choose to describe a high consciousness person is to say that the person has no resistance to "the will of the divine". This is a fancy way of saying that they don't give resistance to their thoughts and feelings and they are aware of their existential nature at all points in time. Such a person might feel everything to be effortless and automatic. Am I wrong in thinking of the Buddha as someone who acts "automatically"? When I say "automatically" in the context of a high consciousness person, I mean a person who acts with a clear mind without hesitating or fumbling. An extremely low consciousness person, which we can model as a chimpanzee, will act on pure animilastic instinct. I don't believe that chasing lower and lower consciousness states will lead to a 180 degree flip into Buddha. I do think that's its possible that chasing higher and higher consciousness states will result in the this person exhibiting highly refined versions of automatic behaviour, and the behaviour will have some similarities but also important differences from lower consciousness automatic behaviour.

I've been having this thought for a while now. If you are ever meditating or are otherwise doing any sort of consciousness work, try to feel deep into the present moment. Whilst I will probably not do an ideal job of articulating "truths" that I feel I've experienced, I will try anyway. 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. I feel the need to type this out after finishing my SDS session.

@Preetom my thoughts exactly!! Good shit bro.

@Preetom ninja emoji indeed my friend. I liked your "in appearence" and "in experience" examples. When thinking further about the foundations of reality, things become incommunicable and language no longer feels like a suitable medium for assessing "truth".

@moon777light Challenge accepted biatch *A few moments later*

I may disagree with your first sentence (although this disagreement may be minor and could perhaps just be the result of my interpretation of what you are implying by using the word "religion" being different from what your intended meaning is) but I like those quotes.

@Bluebird Psychedelics? @Serotoninluv Such is life

@Bluebird The pessimistic side of me just wants to say "a better brain chemistry". I can still feel good and have a higher awareness through meditation, it's just that I feel like there's a distinct flavour of consciousness I'm missing out on. But I don't know what it would take to explore those old feelings. I was a more compassionate person when I was younger, but due to isolation and loneliness I've become colder.

@outlandish If Leo came to London I'll probably get excited like a teenage girl. Simply being in the presence of such a messianic figure will get me on my knees LOL

@Leo Gura If you were to come to England there is a good chance I'd come.

@Hello from Russia I use the degree to which my thoughts scream in neurotic desperation as an indicator of what is most emotionally difficult. Emotional resistance can also arise at a subconscious level which is hard to detect. For example, taking a cold shower is more emotionally difficult because of my body has the subconscious reaction of fleeing and my thoughts get a bit crazy when doing it. Exiting actualised.org straight after typing this message will be more emotionally difficult than staying on actualised.org because I'm procrastinating some homework.

Does Leo take all of the nootropics mentioned in his video simultaneously? Like at any one time, how many nootropics is it appropriate to be on? Are there any long term benefits to modafanil/armodafanil? Or are these two drugs only good for the period of time that you are on them?

@Rilles whatever the person chooses to do, they'll do it wholeheartedly and with presence of mind. They'll probably do the best that they can do, regardless of how good their best is.

I can't help but feel that since thoughts are just another part of the happening (like the things you hear and see in the external world), using thoughts and communicating about states of higher consciousness feels pointless and is a waste of time. If I've finished meditating I'll feel as though any of the words I say are vacuous and contain no more truth in them then birds chirping or random colours. It just seems to me that talking about enlightenment and similar things will not help you fundamentally understand things deeper. I can't help but feel that the right approach to consciousness work is to just close your mouth and pay attention to reality as it is. Beyond instructions and advice for meditation and other practices, do you think that there is a place for discussing enlightenment (I'm not referring to self actualisation concepts)? Do you think discussions about enlightenment and deep non-duality are helpful and useful? In what situations do you think they are? I think that provided we aren't referring to someone experiencing deep emotional problems and barriers, discussions on enlightenment may be interesting but for the most part it wont get anywhere. I feel it worth mentioning that any verbal exchanges we make regarding enlightenment (and any other topic for that matter, like this question) are by very definition "ego-driven" and involve a communication between egos.

@Equanimitize the problem I had was that the questions didn't allow you to rank preferences for all 4 items in the question, it only allowed you to do it for 2 items. There's always a discrepancy between what we think is the ideal/correct way to be living and how we actually live. The world view that my entire psyche (subconscious + conscious) most identifies with is probably "modern", followed by postmodern or integrative. The test doesn't tell you your scores for the other two world views.

@emind It takes self confidence and low neuroticism to be yourself and not be a sheep. People around you may make it easier for you to fall into a lower consciousness states, but you only fall into that state "because you let them". I've found myself in a similar situation to you ( not in what my friends are interested in but in "being dragged down"), and this situation reminds me of the stories you hear about the devil in religion. He may have tempted you, but its your fault for biting. What Leo said is good.

@Elysian For me to say whether something is meaningful, meaningless or pointless I am by definition comparing that something to some, ultimately subjective, standard imo. @Outer @Jack River @Leo Gura I pretty much agree with you here.

@now is forever who knows man ??

Yeah I know what you mean. Some of the racism isn't subtle on that site. They will use crime statistics, employment statistics, IQ statistics as justification for prejudice and assertion of racial superiority. I used to watch a lot of anti-SJW content, if you go down that rabbit hole you'll inevitably end up being exposed to more and more right wing ideological view points. I view anti-sjw's as people who take a valid observation about (other groups)/(the world) but then proceed to go too far and form a reactionary extreme. But that how I view any political movement. They start off with reasonable concern they have about the world but they always go too far in the opposite direction to that which they want to oppose.

Are you referring to /pol/ or something else? and fam that video was hilarious.

@now is forever Tell me how cute you find this political discussion board lmao http://boards.4chan.org/pol/catalog . Its one of the most cancerous places to be. I found it fun to shitpost there around the time of the 2016 American election, although it surprised me when I found out a sizeable portion of the people there were unironic and serious in their posts. From a SD perspective its stage blue and stage orange fused together on steroids. I found visiting there to be interesting.

@Baotrader To meditate with the purpose of getting somewhere or achieving something is to be against the spirit of meditation, in a sense. My view of meditation is that meditation is just being accepting of the present moment, however the present moment is. Tomorrow never comes because your experience is always now. To me, the goal of meditation is "truth". You are paying close attention to reality as it is. Heres another thing which may be worth thinking about. An "enlightened" person can still have an ego they act upon and present to the world, its just that they don't take their ego with any real seriousness. I like Leo's analogy of video games for enlightenment. For an enlightened person they haven't really "destroyed" their ego its just that they regard their ego as another happening of reality and don't take what happens to it too seriously, the same way I don't take seriously the events that happen to my charecter in a video game. The ego is seen through but it can still be present. What I have said is just another perspective. The only way for you to find out what the goal of meditation is is to try and meditate yourself. Here's a pretty neet video on what suffering is. I'm linking it since you're asking about pain (and probably suffering) in relation to meditation and also in relation to life in general. https://youtu.be/9u9nuSf9g1g

@now is forever can I feel what I said? Intermittently during the day to small degrees. @Shin DON'T TOUCH MY DOG YOU SON OF A BITCH

@now is forever What I said was not intended to trivialise the existence of suffering, it was intended to put across my view that thoughts are just extremely powerful. There is a lot of depth to them. They are often beyond our conscious control and arise simultaneously with bodily sensations. For example, if you put someone through intense pain and discomfort negative thoughts will arise and can make your head feel like it will explode (at least that's my experience). They aren't just something which can be brushed off easily and controlled, which is why personal development stuff. Thoughts are a fiction in the sense that they do not represent the real world. To quote Alan watts, we confuse our symbols for the world with the world as it is (for example is the phrase "the sound of a gong" literally the sound of a gong or is the phrase just a a concept?). Suffering is a part of this fiction. But I do not use the word fiction to trivialise suffering, I use it to state that thoughts can lead to a "false" ( fictitous, ie not "true" ) perception reality. I'm not saying suffering is trivial, I'm saying that suffering a massive facet of reality and that suffering is nested in thoughts since thoughts are a massive facet of reality. @Shin I feel exposed lmao.

@now is forever @now is forever I resonate deeply with the quote "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". I think it's a fundamental truth which is obfuscated to unbelievable degrees because of how "tricky" the mind is.