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This is a really spot on, precise and non-bullshit viewpoint on nonduality and mindfulness. Bottom line: people either tend to get stuck in neo-advaita, which results in endless mental masturbation and self-delusion or they get stuck in meditation/mindfulness practises and get nowhere for years or even decades. Here's the article: In the context of American spiritual practice nondual traditions and mindfulness traditions appear to be in sharp contrast. Nonduality is often associated with the “doing nothing” schools of meditation, and mindfulness meditation is often very effortful. Mindfulness meditation masters in the States commonly refuse to even discuss enlightenment, whereas nondual teachers never stop talking about how we’re already enlightened. At the extremes, these two traditions can become very critical of each other. Some nondualists think that mindfulness meditators are caught in the trap of working hard to get somewhere, and end up just building a meditator ego to replace their everyday ego. Some mindfulness practitioners think that nondualists are just playing a recursive word game (“Who is playing a word game?”) and narcissistically kidding themselves about how enlightened they are, while complacently denying their own foibles. It’s a shame that these two wisdom traditions—especially in their American expressions—are antagonistic to each other. Really they just represent the two ends of a spectrum of theories about the same idea—the idea of how to awaken to real freedom. It’s a shame, because in my opinion most nondualists (especially neo-advaitins) could use a little more of the mindfulness attitude, and most mindfulness practitioners could use a little more of nondual outlook. Working together they could, like peanut butter and chocolate, form something much more excellent than either on their own. Something we might call Nondual Mindfulness, or Practical Advaita. Does Advaita Preclude Practices? Nonduality or advaita (which includes most of Madhyamika Buddhist and Hindu Tantra philosophy, too) holds that we are already completely, perfectly enlightened. Many traditional schools of nondualism stress, however, that we need to do some practice to reveal this true nature to ourselves. We have blinders on, and cannot see our own enlightenment, and a practice (which there are many types of) will remove the blinders and allow our inherent liberation to naturally shine forth. It’s like the practice blows the clouds away and suddenly we can see the sun and sky, which were already and always there. But, due to accidents of history, American nonduality, or what is called “neo-advaita,” took the more radical viewpoint that no practices are necessary to uncover our deepest wisdom. In this viewpoint, practices are actually counter-productive because they are emphasizing the untrue concept that the ego needs to do something to get enlightened. That practice is needed to find awakening. In the neo-advaita view, the more you struggle to be free, the more you ignore your own complete freedom that is already there. The more you fight, the more you emphasize the (unreal) existence of the fighter, thus causing you to become more lost. And that’s why neo-advaita is so inimical to any meditation technique at all, including mindfulness. Mindfulness practice, to a neo-advaitin, is just a lot of effort to convince yourself that you’re not already free. A big waste of time that leaves you worse off—even more mired in delusion—than you were before. The trouble with this viewpoint is that it’s more of a philosophy than a practical application. You can think you’re free and let go of all ideas of non-freedom all you want, but at the end of the day, you may still not feel very free. For people suffering from real world problems like stress, anxiety, depression, drug addiction, relationship breakup, and a thousand other human catastrophes, being told “not to hold on to those stories and just feel your inherent freedom” can feel like an impossibly cynical mindfuck. It can make you feel inadequate or stupid, and doesn’t really help. Just like the New Age catch-22 of telling cancer victims that it’s their own fault, and that they just need to believe they are healed in order to effect a real cure (thanks a lot!), neo-advaitin sometimes people in situations of extreme suffering that it’s all their own fault — and not infrequently this oh-so-helpful message is imparted with an air of superiority and smugness. On a deeper note, if you do begin to do the (non-practice) that neo-advaita prescribes, namely to realize that your thoughts and feelings are not your thoughts and feelings, it can lead to dissociation. Constantly denying your own body and mind has a cost, and some on the nondual path find themselves stuck in the trap of meaninglessness for many years, not realizing that they have been mired in identification with this self who “doesn’t care.” The advaita view, while philosophically powerful, was not traditionally taught with no practices to go with it. For example in Soto Zen—which like most Buddhism philosophically agrees about the inherent awakening in each person, called the Buddha Nature—people are encouraged to do a practice called “just sitting” (shikantaza). Just sitting is just sitting, a practice that is not a practice. Traditionally a monk or nun would do such a non-practice, however, for tens of thousands of hours in their lifetime. For a non-practice, that is an awful lot of practice, and it has a predictably powerful awakening effect. Even the grand master of advaita, Ramana Maharshi, gave his students practices. While talking about how we are already enlightened, he taught people to meditate, chant mantras, do breathwork, and other effortful practices. If you read the detailed histories of his top students (you can do so in the books by David Godman, a series called The Power of the Presence) who were very highly respected, realized persons, he gave all but one of them such practices to do. And they practiced them with all their hearts, sometimes for decades. Ramana, in other words, understood the difference between the philosophy of advaita and its practice. (Ironically, it was someone who met Ramana only once, named H. W. L. Poonja, who gave rise to the American school of radical non-practicing advaita. This was the one student he didn’t give any practices to.) Except in rare cases, it is necessary for a person to do meditation practices to remove their ignorance of their own awakening. Afterwards, from their enlightened perspective, they may see how ridiculous it all was, but they never would have seen that without having done these “ridiculous” practices. Mindfulness has a lot to offer a nondual practitioner. For one thing, the practice of self-inquiry is a kind of mindfulness practice. Investigating the nature of the Self, asking yourself, “Who am I” and looking for the answer to that question can all be considered a kind of “mindfulness of the Self.” Most mindfulness practice as it is taught in America focuses on body sensations, but there is no reason that a practitioner cannot use the same kind of focus on the sense of self and deconstructing that sense of self into its components. In more advanced mindfulness practice, this is exactly the point. Does Mindfulness Practice Actually BLOCK Awakening? But advaita also has something very useful to contribute to mindfulness, because the advaita critique of mindfulness is legitimate and important. Again, it’s the idea that mindfulness strengthens the sense of being somebody (you, the meditator) doing something (practicing meditation) – a sense which, in the long run, is still an ego. Because mindfulness teachers very often talk about the practice as “becoming a witness of experience,” they are actually creating a safe haven for the ego, which can keep the person from realizing their fundamental awakening. You only have to spend time around some of the more long-term mindfulness communities to see the result of this misstep in action. There are a large number of practitioners who have been diligently doing their mindfulness meditation for decades, and who seem to be stuck in a particular place. They have gotten an edge or a handle on life. They’re pretty good at coping with difficulties, and they are much less caught up in the madness of their egos than the average person on the street. All of which is excellent. But beyond this, they are in a cul-de-sac. Nothing has changed in their practice for years or even decades. They seem somewhat flat or depressed. They may even refuse to acknowledge that real awakening exists, and consider enlightenment to be a dirty word. (Talk about missing the point.) The diagnosis is clear: they have fallen into the “Observer Trap.” The prognosis is good, if they can learn how to meditate on the sense of self involved in doing the meditation itself and then deconstruct that. By turning the meditator itself into the object of meditation, they can experience the dissolution of the meditator ego, and touch real awakening. It’s really that simple, but you will find few mindfulness teachers who are aware of this solution, or even of the problem itself. Although I don’t like to promote steps-and-stages models of awakening (they’re always too reductive), I believe that mindfulness could be described as a two-step process. First, you become the witness of experience. Second, you realize that you are not that witness. Virtually all of mindfulness in America only teaches you step one. Again, even step one is a big improvement over having no steps at all. However, if you are stuck in your practice, and you want to experience some of the deeper levels of awakening, then taking the second step is crucial. There are several ways to take this step. The standard nondual method is to simply sit with no agenda. Notice that this is not “not meditating,” it’s meditating with no technique. (The difference is crucial.) Another advaita technique that is applicable is self-inquiry practice, in which you look for the person who is meditating. The method that fits best with mindfulness practice is slightly more effortful, however. It involves patiently deconstructing the sense of the meditating self. Noticing the thoughts of the meditator (“This is going well today.” “Am I doing this right?” etc.) and the feelings of the meditator (happy that it’s going well, frustrated that it’s not, etc.). You can read a more in-depth description of the practice here. Get Clear: Nonduality and Mindfulness Thus the outlook of mindfulness can contribute something useful to advaita, and the outlook of advaita can contribute something useful to mindfulness. In the end, all of these distinctions only matter if they help you to make progress in your practice to reveal your true awakening. Nondualist—ask yourself if you’re just kidding yourself about how much freedom you actually feel each day. There are ways to go deeper without getting trapped in grasping, striving, and comparison, and those ways involve dedicated practice. Mindfulness-folks—ask yourself whether you’ve been stuck in basically the same place in your practice for a long time. There are ways to go deeper which involve deconstructing your practice itself. In both cases it will probably include a lot of discomfort at pushing yourself out of a comfortable resting place you’ve found to camp out in. The peace, joy, and freedom you will find will be worth all the effort. Source: https://deconstructingyourself.com/nonduality-and-mindfulness.html

This shit had me DYING. For those of you who haven't seen it, you've got to watch it.

I don't know why, but I started to understand Nonduality way before watching Leo's videos or any other videos about it, I didn't even know that term back then. But during my later teens to early 20s, I just started to see that you can't seem to put things into strict categories, but they are on a spectrum. Like in chemistry, Metal and nonmetal. I saw that there isn't a strict boundary, but instead the elements gradually go from metal to nonmetal from left to right. Or with mental illnesses, no one has either just Depression or not, or ADHD or not, or OCD or not, or Autism or not (not really a mental illness). I just started to see how everything bleeds into each other. Then at about 21 I started using drugs (not just psychedelics, so I'll keep it short), not for Nonduality, but just because I was curious. But I surprisingly got insights from them, stimulants often made me contemplate things, where at some point I came to the conclusion that wishing or imagining for something to be different makes no sense, because everything just is the was it is, and it can't be any other was. During my dissociative drug abuse I became completely aware that I have no free will as this ego, I'm (my ego self) is just a part of the whole universe, which happens in a continious flow. You can't blame anyone including yourself, it completely destroyed the boundary between what I'm responsible for and what others are responsible for. It went so far that I just became completely aware all language, distinctions, basically our whole systeme in which we operate is a complete illusion, it completely breaks down when you investigate it deep enough, I'm aware that the words I'm typing here are also just nonsense which can only work within dualities. But this just made me feel very helpless, since I knew our whole thought systemes and languages are complete illusions, but we still have to use them. I couldn't say anymore what is my fault and what are other peoples faults. Doing something "good" didn't make sense anymore because that's also an illusion. However, I had a lot of puzzle pieces already, and finding Leo's videos about Nonduality helped me piece many of them together, like that there is an Absolute. love + hate = Love, good + bad = Good, free will + determinism = Will. But some things I still don't understand, besides deconstructing my ego to persue enlightenment, what should I do with that? How should I do good when everything is ultimately Good? I don't wanna use nonduality as an excuse to do "evil" things, but no matter what I will do, even if I go on the streets and shoot up Heroin, it is ultimately Good, since it's gods Will for the purpose to maximize Love. So this still makes me confused, and I don't know what to do about that. Thank you for reading this, I'd love to hear your opinions or suggestions.

*giving a shit 248 years of operating just fine, and I finally got over my childhood trauma, like literally last summer, and then this ridiculous scenario started. So I guess it’s just not possible to chill, work a job, share some laughs, and have a good life? If it’s not decades of unexplainable emotional pain, the outside world just randomly stops functioning? Why is life like this? What was the point of all the nonduality and meditation and shit? I feel the will to live fading.

I did not write any of this this is all Leo, actually, before I became a member of this forum, I sat back and studied the crap out of it for like 8 months until I joined. Not knowing is knowing Emptiness is formed, form is emptiness" You are both emptiness and form. awareness is just pure nothingness it's a pure void or vacuum God is an Absolute Mind. A Mind which has no other and I, therefore, all-knowing and all-powerful. When you realize that reality is just your own Mind and nothing else, you will become God. That which has no other is absolutely sovereign and self-created. To realize you are God is to realize that you created yourself. If you become infinite consciousness. You will exist as a pure abstraction, as a singularity of undifferentiated Oneness. This is your true nature. If you become fully conscious the entire universe will disappear forever. You will exist as a pure abstraction, as a singularity of undifferentiated Oneness. This is your true nature. There is nothing but infinite states of consciousness. That's all that reality is. There is no such thing as unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is an illusion. The consciousness of pure unlimited imagination is so powerful it can even imagine that it is not imagining reality and that becomes what you consider reality physical reality is a dream it's purely imaginary. The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. True liberation is actually freedom from the illusion of others. You are creating all sense of other. When you realize this all sense of other completely collapses and all sense of you disappears until all that's left is the truth consciousness is love and consciousness is the only thing that can become conscious of itself. So if you don't realize that you're God and that you're love and that you are infinite nobody else can. Because you are the only thing there is, your it you have to awaken to itself. God has to awaken to itself. Stop thinking of God as someone up there who's better than you or higher than you it's you but you are stuck in your own self you have to get over yourself to actualize yourself as God. And for you to realize that you are the only thing that exists. There is only you and everyone including yourself is a construction of your own mind. The only thing creating the illusion that there is more than one is your imagination and that's why God is an infinite field of consciousness He's not truth-seeking, he's clout-chasing. These are all great insights, but ultimately to awaken you must realize that the self is an illusion. TRUTH is actually very simple to speak: YOU ARE GOD, and reality is your Infinite Dream All were doing is trying to construct hypotheses you know that fit the data that fit what we know so far always with the caveat that we don't know much and the picture is incomplete and so on. Death is an elusion of consciousness Death is a conceptual construction of your own imagination Your critique wasn't wrong but you can literally critique anything from the relative for all of infinity. Reality is absolutely infinitely relative. You can lead a human to knowledge but you can't make him think. To understand the nature of Love and its myriad self-manifestations is to grasp the nature of Being Itself, for the two are in fact one." No difference between subject and object, self and world. The world is the self. the core of ego: your biological back story or your biographical, finite sense of self is a conceptual construction of your own imagination You must realize that you are God because only then will you take full responsibility for your life and only then will you really understand how profound life is and what existence is. What non-duality tells us is that every duality including the duality between god and the devil is ultimately going to collapse into a unity that tells you. Another very important principle is identity is relative and fluid so literally, there is no identity within reality other than oneness so any limited identities that you create like you as a body you as a biological organism you as somebody that was born to certain parents all of these identities you have an all relative there all constructions of your mind there not absolutely true fluid and they can change and in fact, they have been changing all of your life. are united in an infinite soup of undifferentiation consciousness break through all this bullshit and see how the mind constructs all these categories and distinctions. To see how all the things you were taught as a child all the way up through university have just been categories that were constructed by the human mind by the human race and that many of these distinctions are purely conceptual there not absolute in any sense and they will ultimately all collapse as you keep observing deeper and deeper keep meditating keep contemplating keep having mystical experiences all of this will ultimately collapse into one unity one ultimate absolute truth. This leads to the net core principle which is that absolute truth exists but it can not be thought to believe imagined communicated spoken written proven or agued. The absolute truth is unlimited it's absolute that's what makes it so interesting and special and important. Another core principle is that reality is not a physical object of any kind reality is a giant mind. Human knowledge is relative truth, not an absolute truth The problem with your logic is that all the impermanent stuff (form) is also equally conscious, and is also Absolute. You have denied the absoluteness and truth of form, creating a duality between form and formless. Truth-seeking is the spiritual quest the quest of seeking the truth this is the ultimate hero's journey the holy grail is the truth-finding the truth. Self-deception you have to really appreciate the power of self-deception. So we talk about God being all-powerful that God it turns out is and in a sense that is being all-powerful, well God is so powerful that God it turns out is capable of deceiving itself that it is not God. Now that takes real power to be able to do that but also at the same time God also has enough power to overcome that deception, but of course, that's going to take some work which is why awaking is possible so God has power in both directions God has the power to fully deceive itself and God has the power to awaken itself through all that infinite deception and that's the game we are playing here in life so it's a sort of tug of war this battle between truth and delusion. There cannot be anything outside your own MIND. Because your MIND IS INFINITE. If anything existed outside your own MIND then GOD would not be omnipotent nor omniscient. As soon as you imagine any sense of "other" you lose your omnipotence and omniscience. This is the very mechanism by which GOD becomes not-GOD. It is absolutely true that all humans are a dream. You don't like to accept that because you will feel lonely and very depressed. Therefore you refuse to surrender the imagining of other people and you blame and project onto me as misunderstanding spirituality when of course the one who doesn't understand spirituality is you. You are a perfect case study of how Buddhism and nonduality lead to self-deception and false spirituality. You have been trying too hard to be a good little Buddhist boy, but none of that will ever be enough to AWAKEN. You must destroy all of Buddhism and nonduality if you actually want to AWAKEN. Pretty obvious stuff. The brain cannot hallucinate. The brain is a hallucination More like GOD learns to trust its own sovereignty. Always be kind, always!!!! never be cruel or cowardly. Jehovah increases" is a phrase that refers to the idea that God wants to give people more of his gifts, such as wisdom, strength, and love. It is also the meaning of the names Jessup and Josefine names Jessup and Josefine. Explanation Jessup A boy's name that is a phonetic spelling of the Middle English pronunciation of Joseph. Joseph comes from the Biblical Hebrew name Yehôsêph. Josefine A girl's name that is a respelling of Josephine. It is related to the biblical name Joseph. Jehovah An approximation of the holiest name of God in Hebrew. It was so sacred that it was never written or spoke Jessup is a boy’s name from the Biblical Hebrew Joseph, meaning “Jehovah increases.” Joseph ultimately derives from Yehôsêph, which has contemporary variations like Yossi and Yosef. what is going???? on, God playing games with God? Jehovah (usually rendered “Lord” in the King James Version) appears often in the Scriptures. Jehovah means “the Eternal One, the Unchangeable One, the One Who was, and is, and is to come.” When Moses met God in the burning bush, he asked His name. “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (Exodus 3:14). God spoke as Jehovah, the self-existent God. infinite universal mind When I was growing up, one could say I was an introvert, but you know what I became an extrovert and respected all my friends for who they were I Love you all. Now, I am more like an introvert, And you know what, so what if you are different or weird you are part of my friendship. Jessup is a surname and boy's name that means "Jehovah increases". It comes from the Biblical Hebrew name Joseph, which is derived from Yehôsêph

I never said otherwise; plus please quote where I said nonduality (or even mentioned the word here) was not illusory. You can definitely quote me saying in many instances that life just is, though.

Exactly. This is precisely what I am saying. "You are god" is just as relatively true/untrue as "you are a person". "You and me are one" is just as relatively true/untrue as "you and me are seperate". "There is no time and space" is just as relatively true/untrue as "there is time and space". "Nonduality is more true, more real, more fundamental, more divine than duality" is just as relatively true/untrue as "duality is more true, more real, more fundamental, more divine than nonduality". And none of these statements are absolutely true. In other words: The belief that duality is illusory and nonduality is not illusory is the illusion. The Absolute is neither dual nor nondual. It just IS.

Well, this sounds interesting...

Don't you always insist that there is noone here who can (not) make it out alive, or do/think/say/be anything at all? Does the question you posted above indicate that you don't actually buy into your own dogma around no self and nonduality?

Is flow state a quasi 'mystical experience'? Whenever I get into flow (usually in high stake situations in sports, adventure sports etc) I will think right after the experience 'holy shit how did I manage to do that?' Then I wonder-where did the 'I' go during that moment? My sense of self dissapeared for the duration and it it felt like time stopped...its quite difficult to subjectively explain the feeling because its so foreign. Hence, I was wondering if this is a glimpse into no-mind. How does flow state relate to nonduality?

https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/comments/1ia19sy/a_yogi_is_found_by_the_indian_army_in_the/ for some reason couldnt post in the video section. feel free to relocate if necessary

@James123 You figure out how deep consciousness goes beyond basic nonduality yet?

Who knows that darkness that remains? Im talking about the ultimate invisible light of knowing, not light photons. Not talking about light vs dark. You are basically talking out of yo ass, pardon my french 😀 Ever heard of nonduality? You are talking about ying yang as if its 2 separate things, light vs darkness and saying darkness is stronger than light. Ying Yang is a marriage between darkness and light, its absolute love, and this makes it the light of awareness. The one that knows that darkness you speak of, is the light of awareness, you need the light of awareness to know ANYTHING, including that darkness that you appearantly perceive as ultimate.

There's an inherent paradox within unity in which oneness becomes twoness. Nonduality becomes dual after becoming nondual from a different perspective...

Ultimately everything must be accepted, love, peace, beauty, wonder, fear, damage, death, torture, the stars, sunsets, Nazis, bliss, torment. From the highest possible beauty to the most depraved possible evil. Light, darkness. Purity, evil. Nothing can be rejected. Even separation is included in nonduality. If there is only one thing that has and will ever exist, it is not possible for that thing to not be anything

Well, that's a big mistake. Truth requires understanding. That's not the issue. The issue is lack of consciousness and understanding. Everything that comes and goes is Truth, but there is way more to Awakening and God than that. Don't assume that your guy comprehends God. He's parroting a lot of boilerplate nonduality, which he learned from following some other guy like himself without question, which you will now repeat. And on the chain of human spiritual ignorance goes. God is way more profound and advanced than all that. But I appreciate you sharing this document. It has its place.

I absolutely loved the videos where Leo tackled scientific concepts and mixed them with structural-stage yellow ideas. Quantum Mechanics Debunks Materialism Relativism Leo has mentioned the idea of creating a video on Chaos Theory. Here are some questions that can be explored: What is Chaos? How do mathematicians/scientists/philosophers define it? What is Chaos Theory? Why is it that life feels so chaotic and unpredictable? Why is it that no matter how much we study something, it's never "enough"? E.g. how an economist can spend decades studying economics models, yet make bad predictions again and again on how the inflation/unemployment/GDP will be in the future. Why does the word "chaos" have a bad connotation? Why didn't "God" create a simple universe with few variables? How come no single philosophy or ideology can fully encapsulate the complexity of life? (not even Nonduality) Why is the universe so chaotic? Even outside this tiny planet, even far in the distance into space, there are quasars, black holes, all sorts of strange, complex objects What are the metaphysical implications of Chaos Theory? What epistemological errors do we make when we distinguish "chaos" from "non chaos"? What are useful perspectives we can adopt from it, to grow in life?

So after studying nonduality for a little while, I think I understand god. God is experiencing itself through multiple forms including me right I know that is the cliche but here is what gets me. On the conceptual level, I have cerebral palsy. So did god imagine a limit so I can have a unique view point. I get confused when Leo says I'm imagining my own limits when I have physical limitations. Just wanted to gain some clarity on that thank you.

I followed Nargis back when she was a non dual speaker/coach. She then went onto preaching Pranic Living. Now she changed her name to maryam magdaleina and believes she is Christ Conscious and has all sorts of weird views on how women & men should behave. She also believes bentinho massaro is her twin flame/lover and is interacting with her through energy. She is super defensive and attacks others and is super judgemental now. It's crazy interesting to see her develop from nondual clarity into this. Anyways, I wanted to get your thoughts and comments on this. Related Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/comments/17j6sg1/comment/k70ftxk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

yes, thanks for your reply i will look into it. i feel awaking is very exaggerated, but I am a beginner in spirituality and meditation. i listen, and understand more about nonduality and stuff through Advaita vedant, upnishad-type stuff. i initially got into spirituality after being a nihilist for a long time just to see a new perspective on life.

An issue I've been grappling with for a long time is the bliss vs truth dilemma in spirituality. A lot of people who practice spirituality do it to achieve a happier state, whether they frame it as escaping suffering, having peace of mind, or experiencing divine bliss. But spirituality should be truth-seeking, and when truth is your goal it doesn't matter if you feel blissful, sad, energetic, or slightly despondent. You are searching for what is actually the case, asking what is reality really. When spiritual teachers like Sadhguru say, "Would you rather be blissful or sad? Blissful, yes... isn't it?" and then people inevitably say yes, I can't help but see this as a spiritual deception. To an actual truth seeker, it isn't enough to just pick blissfulness over negativity. Blissfulness, based on our typical drive for experiencing positive emotions, seems better, but does it actually lead to truth? Maybe, maybe not. You can't make that assumption! And I see spiritual people doing this all the time. Then there's an even deeper issue, which is what truth seeking really is. It only takes a little consciousness to see that everything we do is motivated by desire for one thing or another that always circles back to the self, sometimes directly and sometimes more indirectly. If you haven't grasped this notion, contemplate it, and you will see that it's true, similar to how everything in the universe can always be traced back to oneness- nonduality 101. So even searching for truth is just a desire that's ultimately arbitrary and only for the purpose of your own fulfilment. The problem with just going for bliss is that in choosing that path and not knowing whether it leads to truth or not, you're essentially giving into the relativity of your experience and just going with what feels right thinking that everything is relative. And if you are going for bliss, you don't have a guarantee that it will lead to truth- it may be the opposite. So then the spiritual seeker (which is my situation right now) is in a dilemma of wanting to pursue truth but not knowing whether it exists or is just based on desire. Hopefully it was clear what I'm trying to get at. This is an existential quagmire about truth, bliss. and relativity. I'd appreciate any insights people have, especially @Leo Gura as a truth-seeker.

I reject this whole nonduality frame. Serious Consciousness is beyond all that. If you wanna keep swimming around in circles at this plane of consciousness, go ahead. I will not argue with you further.

Because he obviously has a very deep and exceptional level of consciousness. But as I have said, there are many degrees and even different kinds of awakening. I gave him a privileged position back before I had my own intense awakenings in which I realized the limitations in his teachings. It took me 200+ awakenings to deconstruct all the elaborate illusions of nonduality, Buddhism, and self-inquiry. That was when I was saying crazy sounding-shit and people were calling me out as arrogant and delusional. After which point I stopped pushing my views on matters since it becomes counter-productive. Well, I am still saying that there is even deeper consciousness than that. It took me something like 200+ awakenings to break free of all human spirituality and gain total soverienty over my own mind. Until that is achieved the mind will be bogged down by very sneaky human spiritual constructs.

It's is kinda shocking that he didn't understand this sooner. If he listened to me and took some "frog juice" he would have realized it, and stuff even beyond that which is still missing from his teachings. As I said, self-inquiry and contemplation will not be enough to fully awaken. That's the real lesson here. I have underscored this trap that nonduality people commonly make, where they identify Truth/Absolute as formlessness while marginalizing form. And Ralston is still missing that Truth = Love.