Thanatos13

There isn’t an Absolute. Existence is empty of anything that we humans assign to it. It’s just another creation of humans. There also isn’t a higher or lower because there aren’t any stages.

Or just do whatever you want. Nothing matters.

Those are a lot of unsubstantiated statements. Literally everything you said is pretty much just a perspective or opinion. To be frank, everything is a distraction and nothing is a distraction. It depends on who you ask, but there is no right answer. There is no “must” in life. One does not HAVE to do anything. Achievement is subjective, great is too. If anyone believes in “full potential” then that’s probably a sign of being duped.

There are no stages. There is no blue, green, yellow, or turquoise. It’s just soemthing made up based on arbitrarily created categories.

Petty is a matter of perspective. Not to mention the claim that there is unconditional love when there is no such thing. At least not in reality.

Everything is unnecessary

Doesn’t really address my point that the system is entirely arbitrary and these levels and categories are in our heads. Even the notion of growth and progress is really just in our heads, just like spirituality.

Assuming that any of these stages even exist or that they weren’t simply made up.

There is a good deal of issues here, but you seem to be making the man out to be something he wasn’t. Genocide isn’t the answer since it usually throws the baby out with the bath water. Secondly, there isn’t anything blue about this master list. It’s just the opinion of a everyone on here. There isn’t anything factual about this list. Even spiral dynamics is dubious at best. It reads like someone arbitrarily decides what is higher and lower. It kind of reinforces my view that spirituality is all in your head. Also morality isn’t something you transcend. There isn’t some cosmic ladder we are climbing. That is once again just the opinion of someone else. Plus there is already a word for it, nihilism.

End does exist. Things end and therefor change into new things. It so seamless though that it appears to not exist. But things don’t need to end, they just do. Things just happen. There isn’t a need or reason for it.

I’m very skeptical of all of this in general. It just seems like another construct we made up. I don’t think he’s right that the world is perfect as is. Perfect only exists to us. Perfect is subjective. It just is. It isn’t perfect. There are other issues I find but that’s the big one. The other being moralizing because without a value system you don’t act. You can’t escape moralizing, but at least we don’t have to kill each other over it. People act based on what they judge to be the right thing to do, whatever that may be. Plus I can’t help but feel this smacks of condescendcion despite claims to the contrary.

Judging what I have read from other people, compassion and harmony isn’t the final step. They say it’s total nihilism. Needless to say the people I spoke to who were like that were not very pleasant. I have never seen or experienced someone with no regard for others or anything at all.

I have realized that those who speak of coming out from the dark night of the soul as soemthing transformed for the better were likely lying. I think they didn’t really grasp the lesson from it. That everything is meaningless and void. Accounts of positive transformations from it are just ego defense to not have to deal with the reality of our existence. No matter what we do or what we decide it is all meaningless and void. It’s paralyzing and soul sapping to realize that, so we make up metaphors of it being a cocoon to make it seem like some transformation rather than the reality of existence .

The body does, there is no who. Science has made that clear. Love and other feelings are chemicals that we give meanings to but have no meaning. That is also incorrect. Being is not without thinking since insight is a cognitive event. You aren’t beyond anything you merely believe yourself to be. Spirituality is merely taking people’s word for it without proof. “Direct experience” isn’t proof of anything, anyone who has read Descartes and Pyrrho can understand why. Spirituality doesn’t give truth, it just shows that humans project what they want onto their experience. You don’t directly experience truth, but it makes for a good story to tell ourselves. Truth isn’t an experience, at least not in the way you say it. Your words show you have much to learn (or unlearn). Sad thing is, I’m not projecting. But if that helps you feel secure in your beliefs then go ahead. I do. I want to show people the folly and hypocrisy of their pursuit and the very act of “improvement”. The fact that you are so focused on “good” (which doesn’t really exist) shows that people don’t want the truth but what feels good.

Sadly that is also incorrect. The truth is that ego is an arbitrary line we assign to things and cannot be fully sure if it’s gone. It’s not the light humans fear or that dark, but the void. To say that you are hanging on to joy shows you aren’t ready for nullity. It’s not thinking one knows, but knowing. Its a mistake to think that life is about being happy and productive, that’s the modern society’s view on things. To gaze out at all of it and fathom true nothingness is nothing short of crippling. It’s laughing in a sense at the absurdity of our existence and attempts to cope with the void. It’s not something you can prove but rather something you can sense and comprehend, it’s thinking but not with words or pictures but more of a sense. But isn’t that spirituality in a nutshell? No real evidence and just taking people at their word? A negative value to the void is an accurate stance to take when you strip any attempt at joy or happiness. It’s a weird phenomenon of sensing it’s not a desirable outcome, but knowing it’s the truth, and having all of it not matter one way or the other. Seeing that most of spirtuality is selling something they don’t have.

Beauty does in fact require meaning. Saying that everything matters though is a false statement because nothing matters. That’s the point. Enlightenment doesn’t exist and even if it did there is no point to it. There is no point to anything that we do. Meaning is simply humans pretending at something. Unfortunately you are incorrect. That fact that you are suggesting deeper shows an ego defense against true nothingness. All the teachers I spoke to say they would not recommend it unless death is your other option. It’s not the emotional high that you mistake for it. You don’t seem to grasp true meaninglessness if you seek to assign a positive value to it. It’s a state that once you reach it you don’t want it, yet in your bones you know that doesn’t matter. It’s not something I would expect you or anyone here to understand. This whole forum and website is stuck in the dream and doesn’t want to rip away what feels good. Nothingness isn’t about feeling good or peace, it’s about seeing reality for what it is and such a state tends to be hostile to the human mind.

It’s seeing how laughable the concept of self improvement or just improvement in general. I have read a few who have seen it describe it as total nihilism. That those who see anything else are stuck in the ego. There is nothing beyond the void and to see anything in it is ego. Its not duality. It’s seeing that any sort of meaning we assign to the things we experience is nonexistent and based on nothing. The “direct experience” many claim is ultimately meaningless, but being human we can’t help but take it as a sign for soemthing. Its funny to hear people talk about beyond the void. It just shows fear of it.

You were never in charge and never have or will be for you don’t have free will.

That quote is false. And we are talking about nullity not darkness. To say it is Beautiful is to still be stuck by meaning, even making meaning shows one doesn’t grasp it

Sorry but that simply isn’t true. If you experience anything besides utter nullify then you are stuck in the ego defense of projecting some kind of meaning. That is not what happened, it’s a gripping sensation and utter nothingness. It’s not a desirable state yet I knew in my bones it is truth. Anything else is just a mental defense to find meaning. It’s like what Albert Camus said. If you aren’t living with meaninglessness then you aren’t awakened. If you still see beauty and meaning then you see nothing.

There really is no such thing as authenticity.

1. What is the point of doing this “self actualization”? 2. Why bother with “nonduality” if it kills love, compassion, and pretty much all the good values of humanity?

But again, we can just agree to disagree. Not to mention that this is way off topic.

There are a great many things wrong with his view on epistemology and open mindedness. I know because I’ve seen the videos. Somehow I doubt that. The problem with you and everyone else here is that you assume there is an IT. There isn’t. IT is simply what anyone wants it to be. I would go on to say that your retreats, meditation, and such are a waste of time. But that’s just me. People think the answer is in isolation but that seems like folly to me. You seem rather obsessed with elimination of self as the answer, yet times have shown that the self is a thing (just not what we originally thought). There isn’t a real way to tell if you actually got rid of the self, since accounts vary as to what that feels like and there isn’t a way to prove it beyond sensory data (which is the same criticism levied against a sense of self). I tried no self one time. All that happened was me being mostly like a rock, null to just about anything. But it didn’t tell me anything or show any grand truth. All it showed is that what is believed is what your mind makes. I know this based on previous experience, I believed many things and they became my reality until no longer. The same happened with no self. It did not have the effect that others said it would, and my “ego” didn’t fight it. I doubt you have read thousands of books because if you did you likely wouldn’t be so certain of anything, even no self. Leo’s library is just self help books which don’t amount to much. Even terms like “mind expanding” are nonsense. They say fools are certain and the wise are full of doubt. All my years of testing, reading, and searching just amount to little more than “I don’t know for sure”. That’s why I’ve decided to stick with science. It doesn’t claim to have a perfect answer, and knows how flawed human perception and reason can be. They give a best guess and that works for me. Personally I think people looking for “it” are wasting their time. They will only ever get a relative version of “it” or what they believe it to be. But humans have been wrong before many times and that’s why one can’t hold such things too tightly. You say IT can’t be found through intellect yet how do you know? What if someone did find it that way? You merely parrot what mystics say before.

But I suppose we will all just have to agree to disagree.