lmfao

@Viking is it possible you are struggling with vocabulary? I know that if I ever read a good book I'm often looking up definitions. I have mild dyslexia and one thing that happens to me when reading a sentence is that I'll read half of the sentence and be very confused, but then after finishing the sentence and paying attention to the position of commas the sentence will make sense. The pauses you take and the specific chunks of words you take in at a given moment in time when reading a sentence can distort meaning, and I've often found myself falling for this trap. It's impossible to avoid this trap completely as it is the case that sentences can have two very slightly different, yet equally valid, meanings depending on your interpretation. However, this difference should be small. Another thing that bear in mind is that complicated words don't make the message of a sentence that much more complex than the type of sentence used in day to day life. I've been reading a maths book "set theory and logic" recently (it has lots of verbal commentary) and I've found that sentences which have a simple meaning can be worded in unfamiliar ways such that they feel alien and unnatural to read at times. All this type of stuff gets better with practice. If dyslexics can find a way to read so can you.

@TheBeachBionic@TheBeachBionic@TheBeachBionic@TheBeachBionic as the other posts here have probably already got you to think about, consider the possibility that you are mostly wrong in thinking that you can't find guys to have sex with. Men are very thirsty. Unless you are extremely ugly, you can find people to have sex with. And as Emerald has mentioned, consider whether what you're looking for is non-committal sex or a relationship. It's easier to have casual sex than it is to have commital relationship. You said in a previous comment that men will have sex with anything, so why is it that you say that men wouldn't want to have sex with you? I'm going to consider the scenario where your assessment of guy's interest in you is right. Whether it is that you struggle to have non-committal sex or struggle to find a good relationship, there are things you can do to "fix" this. And you're feeling frustrated? Everyone has feelings of frustration and perhaps you have strong cravings for love, affection and you feel lonely? Feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are all what consciousness work (meditation, yoga, self inquiry, psychedelics and etc) and self improvement is all about. And the thing is, the more developed and complete you are as a person on your own the more attractive you become to other people. Makes sense evolutionary speaking and from whatever other level of analysis you are coming from. The people who least need relationships usually get the best relationships, is what I believe from my observations of people.

@graded24 mate, to do deeply question time would be to completely flip your experience of life. Logically speaking, we always think of time as the substrate through which anything happens. To copy and paste what I've wrote elsewhere when I made a thread "Is reality discontinuos?" : Looking at your experience, all we have is "now". But I wonder, what is "now"? Let's look at language and thought. Whenever one thinks of a word, e.g. "cat" and has it in their mind, I have the perception that I have this word totally grasped in my mind. However, it takes a time which is not equal to zero seconds for this word to pass through my mind. If everything is now, how does perception exist? Without time, how can sensations and perceptions exist and change? I'm just thinking, that it's all truly spontaneous. It comes from nothing. In my present moment experience causality doesn't exist. There is this experience and I don't know why it is. And if we say that time does exist, then things still change spontaneously. Because no matter how small a chunk of time you consider, it's a mystery why anything happens at all. Reminds me a of calculus a bit here. As for why I used the word discontinuous, imagine a graph with a line. A line has an infinite number of points in it by definition, and its continuous. But a point has no size, and there is no lee way to move around and have change. I used the word discontinuous because of its connotations in studying maths.

@CreamCat good video. On a side note, Teal Swan is certainly somewhat interesting to me. I've only seen a couple of videos by her. Her suicide one was pretty cool. I don't mind her as a "new ager" compared to people like Ralph Smart.

@Leo Gura It was a long time ago that Lance Everett was discussed because someone made a thread ("Leo has no clothes") here by stealing his Quora answer. I wasted my time writing a well thought out response on actualized.org and the guy didn't even respond to what I wrote at all. Also, I think Lance Everett used to go by the name "Connor Frankston" on Quora (not sure though). I asked a question on Quora https://www.quora.com/If-pi-is-irrational-how-do-circles-exist and I'm 99% sure that this answer I got https://www.quora.com/If-pi-is-irrational-how-do-circles-exist/answer/Lance-Everett-3 was written by a user who used to go by the name Connor Frankston. I like Connor because of his maths answers on Quora. Connor left a YouTube comment on your godels incompleteness theorem which used the word "syntax" repeatedly for some reason. You replied to the comment, but I cannot remember anything else.

@Leo Gura LYNCH THE COMMIE

@MM1988 The average person maybe doesn't suffer as much as the average person here (honestly though this difference might be quite small), but all people have their deep problems when you probe enough. When it comes to people in my school year for example, many people who looked very happy to me on the surface appeared to be in more suffering the more I learnt and observed about them. Have you watched Leo's body awareness video? Walk around in a busy public area and look at how tensed up peoples faces and expressions are. Everyone (yourself included) walks around in a constant state of worry, tension and anxiety. Everyone walks around and carries with themselves a so obviously phony persona and self righteousness. These are all indicative of not being satisfied in the present moment and being unhappy. It's all very clear to see imo I was attracted to Leo and this forum because I was addicted (and still am) addicted to technology and have depression. I became addicted to escape the reality that I feel disconnected to the people around me because I feel the average person to be dumb and foolish but it is perhaps the case that I am more foolish but in different ways. So I don't crave the blue pill because to crave the blue pill would be an insult to my sense of self and ego, and also because the blue pill is not truthful and is boring in many ways. I know that my temperament is such that the blue pill would make me overtly miserable.

I'M GOD I'M GOD I'M FUCKING GOD. I've never felt this good in my entire life I can't contain this ecstasy. It's so surreal at the same time. I just wanna shout this experience to the world.

@Leo Gura Yeah that's very true actually, science as it is practiced isn't a wholehearted search for truth. It makes money. Information/logic which would destroy the current paradigm would be twisted and resisted. That's so true in general lol about science, it is rare that you derive a "truth" for yourself. Loads of beliefs I have which I just take for granted from other people. People who are philosophically inquisitive about metaphysics, even if they aren't into consciousness work, can start to "see through" science. People who aren't into consciousness work will probably lose track of what reality really is, the present moment. Even though I would say that I was this type of person before doing consciousness work, I remember watching your video on true vs false skepticism. At multiple times in the video I would reflexively think "what the hell is this guy saying", I would then pause think about the thing like 3-4 times and realise that I couldn't fault you and you were "right". I feel like logically speaking there is no proof that logic will tell you the truth about anything. And you're completely right about mainstream sources being an orange propaganda machine. It's something I forget, the propaganda is too hypnotising and I'm still in orange probs. On top of whatever metaphysics are associated with science, the orange view of the world gives you a unsuccessful method for being happy as well lol. I need to become woke like squidward

@Finland3286 I don't think you're gonna get "proof" of the paranormal from mushrooms. I have no clue whether paranormal phenomena are real and I haven't taken psychedelics. The only thing I see mushrooms doing is make you more open minded about your experience in general and make you question whether a materialistic/rationalist view of the world is something you must hold on to. I'm guessing an experience with mushrooms can really make you come into contact with the "hard problem of consciousness" and so you question how your perception exists/works. And as far as psychich phenomena go I'm skeptical that they exist like you (I think its possible they exist though, but it really depends on how you want to define this term). Leo seems to be criticising materlistists for failing to pick up on it but if the psychic powers have an effect on the "external world" (things which are in view from the perspective of multiple conciousnessess, e.g. A chair in a room) which is observable, then the researchers should be able to observe it. If the existence of this stuff was hazy and probabilistic but still had an effect observable to both the doer and other people then I don't see why psychic phenomena would be denied in mainstream science. In what way could psychic phenomena have an impact on an "external world" not able to be verified by scientists? Are the scientists bad at their job (and are not recognizing the statistics Leo is citing)? Or are we to say that "psychic phenomena" have no impact on an external world? In which case the materlistic paradigm fails? And if the phenomena don't involve the exchange information/energy in the external world, then what is the definition for such a phenomena?

@abrakamowse I started a daily habit in January/February 2018, but I wasn't strict with it until March. I used to do 35 mins but I now do 70-80 mins a day. @Outer and yeah you're completely right. Abiding non-dual awareness is a very different ballpark from temporary nirvana. For it to become abiding it would probably take so much dedication to mindfulness in everything you do 24/7. It makes sense that people go off into social isolation to find out the truth about themselves.

@PsiloPutty no the cold shower was a minor additional detail, it was through meditation I feeling that. I feel slightly "sad" that all my psychological problems and habits haven't vanished into thin air.

@Swede God tier profile picture

@TripleNipple nah just meditation. I took a long cold shower before meditating.

@Leo Gura What is your general life situation and living situation? Are you living with anyone? What activities and hobbies do you do? How many hours a day do you spend working, and what things are constituted as working for you? Outside of actualized.org, what activities do you do(e.g. Sports, exercise, meeting with friends/family, playing chess, reading for fun, television and etc). I'm just generally curious about what the life of Leo looks like.

@Shin top tier profile picture.

@Serotoninluv woah cool. I would have studied something biology related at university if I didn't like maths. I think I still have the mentality of a hardcore rationalist in many ways. Like even when I was a super strong rationalist type of guy in mentality, I was still open to philosophy and metaphysics (but not spirituality). A hardcore physicist would believe all is one and that free will doesn't exist because of the belief that there are laws of physics which even should they happen to change they change in ways predetermined by the laws of physics.

@Roman Edouard the number one problem I found with school is that it takes a one size fit all approach. People who are too smart or too dumb get disadvantaged. The too smart die of boredom and find it hard to fit in, the too dumb are constantly receiving feedback (through exams, homework and grading) that they are not smart and so the too dumb people will interpret this as meaning that they are inferior. When you are taught anything at school you are told that it is true and you are not told why/how something is asserted to be true. Schools do not reward curiosity, in fact its the opposite. People would think that I'm showing off when I ask a "complicated" question to a teacher out of curiosity, and often the teachers wouldn't even know the answer to my question and would only give me information as far as I had already thought through the thing on my own. In order to get marks in an exam I would have to dumb down what I was saying and instead have to repeat verbatim what big brother wants to hear. I wanted to learn things because I found them interesting and didnt care about grades, other people learnt for the sole purpose of getting an "A". A fixed mindset is imbedded into the atmosphere of my high school, I found. As you can tell, I'm pretty bitter about school.

@Serotoninluv what are you a professor in?

@Gligorije Probably. Only you can "work out" the implications of this and work out the "answer".

I feel like I've been completely stabbed in the back by people I considered to be friends for a few years now. They were fake. When it comes to negative feelings, is there nothing to do but be mindful of them? Is there anything else?

Amen. It is extremely hard to be relativistic the moment shit gets personal for you, but it is possible to be so. If I've done a meditation session I'd like to think that for at least a few hours afterwards I'm relativistic for even personal things. But other than that, I find it very easy to fall into trap of getting pissed off with people and being quite angry at times.

Looking at your experience, all we have is "now". But I wonder, what is "now"? Let's look at language and thought. Whenever one thinks of a word, e.g. "cat" and has it in their mind, I have the perception that I have this word totally grasped in my mind. However, it takes a time which is not equal to zero seconds for this word to pass through my mind. If everything is now, how does perception exist? Without time, how can sensations and perceptions exist and change? I'm just thinking, that it's all truly spontaneous. It comes from nothing. In my present moment experience causality doesn't exist. There is this experience and I don't know why it is. And if we say that time does exist, then things still change spontaneously. Because no matter how small a chunk of time you consider, it's a mystery why anything happens at all. Reminds me a of calculus a bit here. As for why I used the word discontinuous, imagine a graph with a line. A line has an infinite number of points in it by definition, and its continuous. But a point has no size, and there is no lee way to move around and have change. I used the word discontinuous because of its connotations in studying maths.

@Finland3286 imma address your original post that started the topic before I look at your reply to what I wrote, since my answer wasn't addressing what you were talking about specifically. In science, you make empirical observations of the world and make conclusions about how you think it likely functions. The problem with science is that science is based upon presuppositions and axioms about reality which you cannot prove. E.g. You might assume the past is real, you might assume you aren't living in a matrix, you assume logic is valid for determining truth. Logic can be used to defeat the validity of logic. Logically speaking, all sentences can only be determined to be true or false through holding unverifiable axioms about reality. Think about a specific belief you have, and look at the logic which has led to that belief. The real question is, from where is it that we can derive a golden standard of logic? Through what axioms are you arriving at conclusions you have about reality? You ask how you can go about understanding non-duality. Non-duality is to be experienced, and so you must do consciousness work. It isn't a conceptual thing, as you've already heard said to you. And I don't believe non-dual experiences can be likened to lucid dreams in the way that you say. A perfect lucid dream is a reality where your ego in perfect control. But to experience non-duality is to see that the ego is an illusion and that you are all of reality. You let go of the need to control reality, different from a lucid dream. Hm, you talk about whether enlightenment is about realising you are a constant. I've been thinking about something similar recently. I wonder that if all we have is now and time does not exist then how does flux, change and perception exist at all? I started a thread. I've always thought you can frame the non-dual realizations in one of two ways. Either you are everything or you are nothing, both statements point to the same experience. So you could be pointing to the "right" thing in saying that you are not your sights and feelings. I've always phrased it by saying something along the lines of "the actions and thoughts are as much me as every other facet of my consciousness (E. G. The sounds of the birds or my neighbours outside, the sights I see, the actions of other people)".

@Finland3286 to explain and conceptualise non-duality is, for the most part, to sell snakes oil in the sense that reality isn't a concept. This is why discussing non-duality is such a pain. The problem of communicating is two fold. First of all, there is always a problem in putting your experience into words which you yourself can recognise. And second of all because non-dual experience are so unlike anything else, even after you have put something into words the same sentence will have a different meaning in different people's minds. What I mean is probably 99% different from what you think I mean. I'm using the word "meaning" to represent the sum of images, words, connotations, intuitions we have about something. These two points aside, the main point is that non-duality can't be conceptualised and so I'm created a paradox by typing this. To quote Alan Watts : “There is a Zen poem that talks about ‘IT,’ meaning the mystical experience, satori, the realization that you are, as Jesus was, the eternal energy of the universe. The poem says, ‘You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak, it is silent. When you are silent, it speaks.’ " And so when it comes to non-duality, focus on the consciousness work and read theory which encourages your awareness to be open minded about your entire experience. To not understand reality is sort of the point.