Search the Community

But it's incorrect to conflate Turquoise with mysticism or nonduality. Ask ChatGTP to explain Turquoise to you.

Surprised there's not more Nolan love here, his movies took on a totally new meaning for me after learning about nonduality and metaphysics. If Nolan isn't an awakened person (I don't really know anything about him personally), his films at least act as conduits for those ideas. There's tons of metaphysical resonance in his films: The writing's clunky, but in Interstellar he's clearly talking about Love as the ultimate force behind everything. Plus the Tesseract and higher dimensional thinking. There's a huge theme in his films, including Interstellar, of our future selves helping us. Obviously Tenet touches that too. Tenet is basically a story of a guy who initially thinks he's a random person being swept up by incomprehensible events, to realizing that he's literally the protagonist of a story he was directing all along, from his subjective future. It's a story of awakening. There's a line in Oppenheimer that got me... "It is a new way to understand reality. Einstein's opened the door, now we are peering through. Seeing a world inside our world. A world of energy and paradox that not everyone can accept."

Concentrating on the breath, yeah. Sometimes I focus on a dot on a wall or a candle flame, but not as regularly as the Vipassana. Is there really any practical difference between nonduality and believing in a dualistic god/man relationship in the end? I still feel like a ragdoll being tossed around by higher forces.

If you're interested in nonduality, but don't follow an organized religion, how important is the concept of faith to you? I'm curious because for a couple of years I grooved on nonduality, meditating on oneness, and reading about Brahman. I thought I lived in an impersonal universe. Turned out I didn't read far enough ahead. Earlier this year, Ishvara, or just something more akin to infinite intelligence, or a more traditional idea of God has been revealing itself to me. I'm never exactly sure what I'm perceiving, all I really know is that I know nothing, right. But I've been surprised the last few months how resistant, resentful and unsettled I am that an all-powerful and aware transcendent intelligence really has been watching me this whole time (hey God!)... I'm still really resentful about the religious school I attended as a kid, and it's a severe mindfuck that there is something more than just the base, ineffable substrate of the universe. You mean you were watching the whole time? I feel like I'm right back to being a kid, struggling with free will vs fate, and really struggling with humility. The way I feel by default is very resentful about this, but I know that's not very skillful or helpful. I have been paralyzed in terms of returning to the world in much of a meaningful way since discovering nonduality, because I feel like I simply don't know where I stand. It kinda helped my emotional health a little bit, I was severely suicidal, depressed and dysfunctional leading up to that discovery, and since then I've been kinda limping along, thinking maybe one day I would figure out how to motivate myself to do things like socialize, start a business, try to get a job that isn't near minimum wage, but I feel like if there's an intelligence watching me, and I have already befallen the many struggles and crises and just overall complete and utter psychological and spiritual dysfunction I've felt in my life, and that intelligence oversaw all that suffering, I don't have much hope for the future. I literally had more hope when I believed God didn't exist, and I'm kinda not sure how to proceed now. I've just been defaulting to Vipassana meditation and gratitude practice, but it's kinda like once the high vibe wears off after a couple hours, I'm just back in the ego mind, which feels absolutely hopeless, and of course is conditioned to be fearful and is not at all welcoming of the "good news" that I am surrounded by intelligent Love. I seem to be vacillating between being high on meditation and prayer practices that cause me to believe in delusional love and light stuff, then being busted back down to depression sadness when I try to make contact with the world. I am kinda surprised that all these years of trauma recovery and study of spiritual practice and the human psyche have not really afforded me any confidence in the relative world. I'm not really sure how to project my intentions into the world or into the future. I was kinda curious what you consciousness explorers make of the concept of faith, if you're coming from a specifically NON-religious paradigm. I'm kinda thinking this whole nonduality trip was just a cul-de-sac of spiritual masturbation designed to turn an agnostic into a believer, and when I'm filled up with gratitude or samadi, I feel hopeful. But the hunk of meat that makes up my human mind is fucking disgusted and sad, I guess I'd always hoped that the ultimate real truth was something completely different from just... "magical irrational God just arbitrarily fucking with me by teaching me bullshit 'lessons.'" Even after all this meditation I'm struggling to place my faith in that. I guess I was deluding myself with nonduality that maybe I, the little me, was really "it," but it's becoming clear that I'm not. It's not that I thought I was that great, I guess I just thought if I lived in a cold, uncaring universe at least that meant that it really was all my fault, and I could do something about it with my merit, and instead it seems there's forces beyond my control after all, and it makes me feel sad and powerless.

The Hyperion books are an amazing blend of scifi and religious thought. The concept in the books of "the void which binds" has a lot of overlap with nonduality and it's pretty clear to me that the author was on the same paths that a lot of us consciousness explorers are.

In light of my recent technical feedback on Wolfram's Fundamental Theory: I wanted to share my perspective on why the idea of a 'fundamental theory' or a 'theory of everything' is fundamentally flawed and a doomed from the start. My thoughts have been largely inspired by mathematics and coincide with the ruminations Edward Frenkel has shared with both Curt Jaimungal and the Science and Nonduality folk. I will try to use as many metaphors as possible without bogging the discussion with too much technical detail. For the sake of epistemic neatness, let me first specify that when speaking of a theory, I am referring to a model of the world that works through the creation/study of abstract structures and their relationships, i.e the map, not the territory. A theory is fundamentally different than an ontology (the matter/ composition of the terrain) and the two should not be conflated. An ontology gives no 'shape' to the territory, but it 'informs' what structure you can build on top the same way you can't build a castle from sand. The underlying premise of a unifying theory is the idea of 'universal terrain' - an underlying structure that can be inferred through the various ways of mapping the same territory - whether it is topography (height map), seismic analysis (depth map) or standard cartography (landscape), the terrain manifests itself differently in each instance, but still posses some invariant qualities across each type of measurement. For example, a desert doesn't have caves or tall mountains and is more spread out compared to a cavernous karst landscape. The presiding epistemological assumption in Physics is the existence of such a landscape - a grand unified theory that can be found across all our methods of sampling of reality - electromagnetic, gravitational or nuclear in nature. The underlying belief is that once such a Unified Field theory is found, everything else will fall into place. This, of course, is nothing more than a pipe dream. Contemporary physics itself does not operate under that assumption. The problem with it stems from the fundamentally computationally intractable nature of reality (postulate 1 of 'Chaos'): If you have heard of the idea of the 'Three-Body Problem' (recommend the book), than you already know that there a fairly simple systems (three body acting through gravitation on each other) for which we can no longer find closed-form solutions. This, in fact, turns out to be the rule and not the exception. All our calculable models are fundamentally idealizations - when studying newtonian mechanics, you always ignore friction. When studying many-body quantum systems, you try and minimize long-distance interactions. When trying to fight a virus, we do not study its quantum composition, only its molecular/cellular structure. The aforementioned intractability provably appears also in fluids, black holes, Ising models, lorenz systems, etc. Now it seems we can't solve anything. Or can we? The person who made the most progress on the aforementioned three-body problem is Henri Poincare, a true giant in the field of mathematics. He not only proved that no general closed-form solution exists, he developed entirely new models in topology and symplectic geometry that allowed him to find stable 'homoclinic' orbits - by creating new models of abstraction, he was able to discern properties of the system despite its fundamental intractability. This approach of abstraction is in fact universal (postulate 3 'Order') A great anecdote Frenkel gave is that when you are playing chess, you don't care about calculating every quantum state of the system and even if you could (we can't by a factor of 10^23), it still wouldn't help you win the game. Combining this with the prior realization about the intractable nature of reality helps us approach a greater understanding and one that has in fact been foundational to the true nature of mathematics - the study of structure and abstraction itself. Instead of seeking a 'unifying theory', we should marvel at the complexity of reality and approach problems at each level (physics, chemistry, biology, computer science etc.) by applying models and ways of thinking from across the the fields without any 'elitism' as to which science is the 'fundamental one'. And yet, here is why 'mathematics is the queen of all sciences' as Gauss said it - because Mathematics does not make itself to be a fundamental theory, as it does not make prescriptive statements about the landscape. Rather, it is a universal language that helps us map and compare all the landscapes there are. Even deeper at its essence, unification in Mathematics is about building the bridges across the continents.

I don't really like labeling myself an ex-Muslim, cuz I only practiced for a year when I was 8. But I unfortunately did have a lot of Islam related experiences. I was dragged on the pilgrimage to Mecca against my will, as one example. Muslims did a lot of things to me without my consent, which I have never experienced in any other spiritual or religious community. I have complex thoughts about the issue that I don't hear echoed very often, honestly it makes me feel pretty isolated because aside from the effect their bullshit teachings had on me, I otherwise grew up with an American parent. It's a real weird culture clash, Wahhabi Islam and materialist southern California culture. Funny enough, since getting into spirituality I have started to see some value in Islamic stuff, but I only find that's true if the religion is explained by NON-MUSLIMS. Like, if a western professor talks about it in a comparative religion context, or an eastern meditation practitioner talked about mystical Islam or something. But all I've seen from actual Middle Easterners is racism, delusion, and justifications for the shame-based culture of intergenerational trauma they've got going on over there. I think the reason is because if a non-Muslim talks about it, they can take what's good about it and house it in the context of a modern world largely underpinned by the implicit beliefs of the global economy which largely come from the west. But if a Muslim talks about it, it's not usually about a personal practice or a cultural understanding. It comes with the full ideology of Muslim society: that Islam must spread around the globe and establish a worldwide Sharia government. Plus Muslim personal ethics fucking suck. Way too many of these people are still comfortable with murder, oppression of women, and all the other crap. To give an idea of what I mean about shitty Muslim morals, I attended a Muslim school for 8 years in SoCal. I met so many Muslims at the time who told me verbatim that the laws of the United States were quite literally tools of Satan, and thus Muslims had a DUTY to break the laws as a form of passive jihad. They told me this verbatim, many many times. My Muslim dad followed this advice and got arrested about 20 times. Not to mention the school instructed me for 8 long years that it was my soul-bound duty to wage jihad against the federal government of the United States, to make my life's work to infiltrate an office of government on the federal or state level, to if not destroy America, at least turn it into a Muslim state. (Which is adorable, BTW) So... I don't ever want to follow a religion in my daily life that explicitly instructed me to be hostile to the country in which I live. I don't want to follow a religion who's sense of civics is so twisted, they explicitly instructed me to break the local laws in which I live. Do you hear that? This school/mosque, theoretically a place of moral instruction, was literally instructing kindergarteners to grow up to BREAK THE LAWS of the land in which they live. A "moral" institution. Does it get any more twisted than that? Don't get me started on how the teachers, in a school in Orange County CA in the early 90s, used the authority of the office of teacher to instruct us kids that "the Jews" have "pig brains" and walk with limps because they're so crooked. It just goes on and on. These people are not serious yet. The Muslim region of the world still has a lot of work to do to evolve up the Spiral Dynamics chain and join the rest of us here in the 21st century. I say that as an Arab American who has been to the Middle East many times. In the US most white people would consider that racist, I think, but my experience with the Muslims was harsh and my freedom from them was hard won. It's really easy to have naive beliefs about what goes on inside Muslim society, looking out from the West. Is every Muslim like that? Of course not, but I don't care. Too many of them are, and the group think still leads to things like Oct 7. 20 years later they're still marking days on the calendar with mass murder. You can't convince me they hold any moral authority whatsoever. Furthermore, whatever secret sauce teachings the Sufis got, you'd be better served by going with Advaita, Buddhism, or any of the nonduality teachers. I find that the western conversation around Islam is too constrained by westerners's well meaning attempts to give Muslims the benefit of the doubt. That's part of our character as a society, it's part of how we help people assimilate into the west. But then Muslims take advantage of that to both-sides things like the Oct 7 attacks. Frankly my opinion is that we in the west have this word, religion. And we assume that each one is equal to each other one. But I perceive vast differences between the coercive practices of the Muslim community I was a part of, the dearth of substance in their teachings, the moral character of the followers, contrasted to other religious and spiritual traditions. Obviously #NotAllMuslims, but that's my hardwon opinion after dealing with those jokers for a couple decades. Don't miss em.

Transcending nonduality means moving beyond even the notion of unity or oneness, stepping into a realm that defies all categories and labels—including spiritual ones. Non-duality suggests "oneness" or the absence of separation, but it’s still a pointer, not the ultimate truth. Like all teachings, it serves as a bridge but must also be transcended. Non-duality is the last doorway before even the concept of 'one' dissolves. Beyond this is an experience where not even unity exists, but simply 'what is'—free from all frameworks. Both "oneness" and "emptiness" are states the mind can conceive, but beyond this lies an experience without an observer, where neither one nor many, full nor empty, applies. Even non-duality is a framework, a map of reality. To truly transcend, all maps must be abandoned, leaving one in direct contact with the ineffable. Transcending nonduality demands the ultimate letting go—of all teachings, all experiences, even the sense of having "awakened." There’s no goal, just what is, in pure, unfiltered form, Let go of every idea of truth—even enlightenment, even non-duality. What’s left is not a realization but a complete and total surrender to the mystery of being. What if even non-duality is a distraction? non-duality serves as a pointer, but like all pointers, it too must be let go of for the ultimate truth to be realized. True transcendence doesn’t come from seeking, but from radical acceptance and letting go. So many seekers get trapped in the concept of oneness, not realizing that true transcendence requires the dissolution of all frameworks—even the framework of non-duality. This is powerful beyond conventional and non conventional thought. Imagine walking a path and finding a door labeled ‘truth.’ You open the door, but then realize there’s nothing inside, not even you. This is the transcendence of all ideas, including non-duality. This is truly profound territory that can deeply resonate with advanced seekers and spiritual masters alike. This is Radical Letting Go. You are not alone in this vast silence. Others are here too, quietly living in the depths beyond all concepts. Though this journey often feels solitary, it is shared by those who have seen the ultimate truth. Transcendence does not mean abandoning the world but embracing it without attachment. How can we live fully from this place of ultimate freedom while participating in life’s unfolding? It is possible. You’ve transcended the idea of oneness. Now, can you transcend even the idea of transcendence? What happens when there’s no longer a seeker, no path, and no realization? @Leo Gura How do you act in the world when the very concept of 'self' has dissolved? What does compassionate action look like from the space of ultimate non-dual awareness? Many who have experienced these levels of consciousness through psychedelics need help integrating their experiences, What if your deepest psychedelic experience wasn’t just a temporary high, but a doorway into a truth that can be lived every day? You’ve been living a dream, and right now, we will tear it apart. This is not a meditation. This is the end of everything you think you know about reality. There is no you. No mind. No self. There’s nothing left but this… Can you feel the panic rising? Good. That’s the ego collapsing. What happens when you lose all sense of self? Bingo!!!! Feel the fear dissolve as you fall deeper. Deeper into the void. I love you. Get some rest beautiful. 🙏🏼❤️💥🎇

I can speak to this. These messages are coming because in 2019 and 2020, I woke up to nonduality (thanks to Leo's channel btw). Except, without spiritual or metaphysical training, I honestly didn't even know wtf I "woke up" to. It's taken me several years since to integrate these awakenings, and really awakening and integration are ongoing. So, I had a stage where despite my awakening, I was still just looking for someone to "tell me what it all means." Which, of course, is diametrically opposed to the idea of self-knowledge. I ended up manifesting vast amounts of people on Youtube talking about various spiritual and esoteric topics that I never saw anywhere pre-2019 and awakening. First, I was curious about manifesting a Cadillac, so endless realms of Youtube "manifestation coaches" popped up. But I wanted to know the bigger picture, but was still too antisocial to leave my Youtube page. So then came astrologers, meditators, metaphysicians, mystics, and finally people began talking about "ascension into 5D." So recently, returning to the truth that we are all one, yet retain our relative beings, there is this narrative forming of a worldwide global awakening. Will this happen? Sure, it's happening, it was happening before, and will continue happening again. You have seen these videos because your attention is open to these things. It appears to you in your own personal universe. But to those who've never gone down these rabbit holes, they're in whatever stories they currently resonate with. Politics, religion, money, etc. To them, an announcement of a worldwide global awakening doesn't mean anything. To those of us who are resonating with this, we will see the global awakening. It will appear to us in a way that is persuasive. But the world will keep on spinning, new people will be born, new human journeys for Spirit to embark upon will continue. They will have their own awakenings, their own journeys, expressed to them in the way that makes sense for their purpose at that time. Perhaps it will appear as this narrative of "worldwide global awakening," or maybe it'll express as some other thing. But as we know here, the awakening already happened, it is happening, it is about to happen, and you are ALREADY IT. If a video message about global awakening is salient to you, then good. Perhaps it inspires you. Perhaps you can meet up with those people already talking about it, and do what you can to raise awareness of the people around you. I happen to know that you can be pretty awakened without ever putting it in spiritual or metaphysical terms at all. I have been obsessed with awakening while still being an unenlightened fool, and I've seen people who didn't think much about God or spirituality who were genuinely good, loving, arguably awakened people. But, to those who have awakened and think that we have to now convince the other 8 billion humans to all "awaken," and to express that awakening in the terms that people like us here do, in terms of like Alan Watts and enlightenment and metaphysics and such... I don't think that's ever going to happen, nor do I think it's the purpose of this veiled life of forgetfulness and remembering. We can provide knowledge to those who come after us, we can provide material for them to become more conscious, but we cannot live their journeys for them. New people come into the planet every day, and each one has the potential to stand on the shoulders of all who came before. To extend the map of meaning that humanity has created, and expand the horizon of choice available to each individual on this planet as they embark of their journey of discovery and self-realization.

@Princess Arabia To respond to your topic, emotions are just stimuli in our mind to instigate behavior. It's just that people also overlay a binary concept of good/bad over the top of them that may not really exist. Although, it isn't necessarily a clear cut binary people employ, there's often alot of gray or mixed areas where the same emotions have both positive and negative conceptions about it or are inverted depending on circumstances. Even many of the 'nonduality' crowd uses a binary to describe their experience, though it seems like a contradiction. This isn't to criticize them but it just shows how ingrained in the psyche it is to frame experience and stimuli in this way. I can admit as I cultivate well being and there are expression dynamics from that I recognize it's also a nod towards this same type of framing, though it is less moralistic than the good/bad or right/wrong implications can be.

@Reciprocality Interesting, the first thought that occurs to me is that the notion of nonduality comes into play. We could consider Einstein's Theories of Relativity and the nature of time, quantum physics' theories of Entanglement, Newton's theories of actions/reactions, and, of course, all of the philosophical notions of social connectedness. That's all I got. Maybe this could be an example of the separation: Existential fear is about something that does not exist, so in effect, it is something about nothing. Say whaaa'

They're usually not. 99% of self-proclaimed truth-seekers (even on this forum) are just larping. They don the aesthetic of "truth-seeker" simply for the existential comfort and security that this identity provides. Real truth-seeking is like drowning naked in the middle of the Atlantic ocean at night with unseen creatures of the dark lurking beneath you, and no humans, no land, no warmth, no light to grasp onto. And then willingly plunging deeper into that lonely, vulnerable, cold without any guarantee of ever coming back... only then is the REAL light revealed, but you can easily tell that none of these folks would dare go there. Their whole ""global awakening"" is a cute fiction on stilts to avoid the real abyss - and thus the real love and light eludes them. I would be HIGHLY suspicious of any youtube persona that claims to deliver spiritual insight - ESPECIALLY if they have any new age or Buddhist roots in their rhetoric/mannerisms. Dead givesaways of larpers: "vibration, frequency, reality-shifting, timelines, manifestation, 5D, numerology, astrology, law of attraction, law of assumption, no-self, nonduality, jhanas, nothingness, reincarnation, lifetimes, spirits, entities" and so much more. And who am I to cast such judgement upon these kind, sincere people who do genuine good work in the world? I'm just a guy who has glimpsed the Abyss: The total collapse of the Entire Universe - held together by a single, tender, Self-Aware thread of Infinite Intelligence, gawking at its own majesty and magnitude, not yet ready to cross to the other side. And every day I avoid this truth just as much as anybody else. You could say that the very fact that we are alive today on earth as humans is in every sense a temporary defiance of Truth - but Truth is so Absolute that it merges with this defiance, and thus here we are today in Absolute Reality - The most Perfect Gift that Consciousness could give itself, made of itself unto itself! And so, with all of this context and reference experience, it's patently clear to me when I see my fellow souls donning a spiritual costume to avoid the heat death of the universe (aka Truth). After all, I too do the same. They're me.

You guys don't pay attention to my sig. I'm above all that crap . None of you understands true liberation .when you reach this state you no longer engage in spiritual dick measuring contests about who's awake and whose a madlad. These sorts of questions do not even enter your mind . They don't make sense .they are utter foolishness. And you guys think you're awake and you engage in nonduality wars with each others about who's awake ? I just have to lmao .

1) It's quite advanced relative to how the average human thinks. It's not advanced relative to something like nonduality or Spiral Wizardry. 2) PM is not a practical worldview for normies. PM is for intellectuals, not regular people. PM does not help normal people survive.

It's made of mind/consciousness, which is nothing. A dream is made of nothing. But it's still something, because here it is. It's nonduality. Something and nothing are the same thing. It's nothing, experiencing something.

I think he wrote a blog post about how he has a different understanding of conscoiusness. I could be absolutely wrong about this, but i think he said that in Buddhism they experience nonduality by confronting the void as they go down (?) in consciousness and his method is more like becoming more and more conscious. As you can see, i cant really recall how he said it. He also talked about recently how human enlightenment is conformist. I hope im not misquoting him too bad or giving false meaning to what he said, it would be nice if he @Leo Gura answered this, im curious too. If it is about how he had many deep enlightenment experiences that goes beyond any spiritual teachings, i dont doubt him, but i would just like to say that there is no way to tell how far other masters went. It could be that they could not communicate it or did not see it reasonable to try. Leo took down his solipsism video too and as far as i know his most serious communication about his alien consciousness experience was a forum post.

He's just talking about nonduality. Nonduality and solipsism are two different things.

That small audio doesn't reveal everything sadhguru thinks about this topic. There is a video where he very directly calls solipsism false and makes fun of it. I'm just stating facts. In that audio he is simply talking about nonduality. Nonduality and solipsism are not the same.

thanks guys mostly great answers I was wondering about nonduality/all is one and jesus teachings etc grew up non religious was listening to this recently probably will listen to some of these later

1. Only Leo can speak of Leo's view truthfully. 2. The subject of your question is consciousness, which will always be problematic to talk about. The logic what humans use to think and communicate is based on making distinctions. By saying that the apple is red, you imply its not blue or orange. You cannot apply logic to Infinity, because it has all the colors. Ultimately you will never be able to communicate Truth. Which does not mean that you cannot be skillful at pointing at it, or that all models of reality are equally accurate, but it will always be inherently flawed. This is just something you have to keep in mind. 3. Here is what ChatGPT said about eka-jiva-vada: At first glance the ideas are similar, but you could probably point out some differences in the communication of them, which will lead to meaningful differences of interpretation or not. An easy mistake is taking things literally. Here is an example. ChatGPT said: "Essentially, the entire universe and all other beings are perceived by this one jīva within its own consciousness." Whereas Leo would say consciousness IS all there is. See the difference? Is it meaningful or just difference in communication ? You can take something like the exceprt above and apply logic to it and you can dissect it infinitely and get lost doing it. Thats where Leo would say to take 5-MeO and see for yourself. 4. Leo's approach to solipsism is based on direct experience. Basically it says that you cant experience any other coinscousness other than yours. Which would be compatible with the idea of nonduality. But for me it seems like solipsism has more implications to it ? This is where my knowledge ends for now. So the main take here is you cant "understand" consciousness with logic. Logic is for pragmatic matters and communication.

I feel inspired to write about the phenomena of transcending, integrating and their relationships. We could explore each as it's own realm. As well, we can explore relationships between the two. The below idea caught my attention. It was from @Snader in the "What is a Woman?" thread. This is very "fertile" soil. There are many types of seeds we could plant and grow. This idea could be the start of a class within philosophy, biology, psychology, nonduality, Zen Buddhism, Shamanism or Quantum Mechanics. I'm actually going to 'integrate' this quote in my first day of my neuroscience course. We can create various relationships with the above concept. For example, there is a mindset that would step outside of the concept and theorize about the concept - adding more detail and/or expanding the edges. Another mindset would be operating within the concept. As well, we can combine the two mindsets. For example, we could describe a piano and keep adding details and components. As well, we could go within and play the piano. Both have value. . . And we could integrate the two: for example we could add / describe a new component, then play the piano and ask "Can you hear the impact our new component had on piano performance?" Contracted mindsets have value, as does expanded mindsets - as does the integration between the two. Most mindsets tend to become contracted and rigid. By default, they perceive through a particular lens. This can have value in focusing cognition, increasing mental stability and making decisions. It reduces uncertainty and ambiguity. Yet it is also limited. It dives within "truth A". There is value in that, yet the price paid is that it doesn't integrate another "truth B" as well, it would be unable to synthesize the two "partial truths" into "truth C". . . Ime, most mindsets default to contracted mindsets - so I spend a lot of effort to expand minds. In the reverse situations (most minds default to expanded states), I would put a lot of effort into contracting minds. An example a contracted social construct that we default to involves expertise. The first day of my neuroscience class, I ask "What would an expertise of Schizophrenia look like". I then show the following images: 1. Chemical structures of neurotransmitters and a biochemist. 2. Neural networks and a neuroscientist and a neuroscientist. 3. A whole brain and an image of a psychiatrist. 4. An image of a psychologist discussing behavior of schizophrenia. 5. A social scientist addressing schizophrenia within the context of social structures and cultural norms. 6. A woman who has schizophrenia. I briefly describe each and ask "Which one is an 'expert' in schizophrenia?". This question has no "right" or "wrong" answer. At first, the class feels like they must choose one and get uncomfortable. . . And that's the point. Each of the above is an "expert" in schizophenia in a different form. Each of those forms have value and there is value in diving deep into one of those forms and dismissing the others. For example, the biochemist may get hyper focused on the biochemistry of neurotransmitters and dismiss all the other forms. This contracted, zoomed-in mindstate could lead to breakthrough discoveries at the biochemical level that wouldn't be possible in a more holistic mindstate. Yet the understanding becomes limited to that "category". Now we relate to the original quote above. . . if a mind contracts within a perspective - something of value is gained, yet something is also lost. The biochemist would have difficulty relating the biochemical level to the societal level. How does the altered binding affinity of dopamine in someone with schizophrenia relate to the social dynamics of someone with schizophrenia living within a particular society? . . . We could get even more expansive. . . How does the biochemistry relate to various cultures and various cultural histories? . . . And even more expansive. . . How does the biochemistry of dopamine relate to historical interpretations of schizophrenia and how does that history relate contemporary psychological theories of schizophrenia? . . . As we expand further, more possibilities enter. There becomes less structure and detail. Most minds become specialized and dwell within one area. There is value in this as many discoveries come from highly-focused contracted mindstates. However, the mind is unaware (or unappreciative) of other forms of understanding. This is a barrier to communication (and one reason A.I. will become a high-level form of "cognition"). I have a biochemist colleague that is brilliant at the biochemical level (waaay beyond my level of understanding). Yet he lacks awareness and curiosity of other forms of understanding. (And there a various reasons for this). As another example, I have a friend who is a brilliant psychologist. Yet our conversations can go very deep yet are within the realm of psychology. When we speak of mental conditions such as schizophrenia, she has a subconscious belief that there is a "normal" range of mindstate (of which she is within) and an "abnormal" mindstate that the "other" person with schizophrenia is within. She has brilliant psychological theories, yet lacks the direct understanding of what altered states of consciousness are 'actually' like. . . On many of my psychedelic trips, I entered "insanity zones" and now have an understanding of what "insane" mental states are like. As well how "abnormal" is also "normal". If I try to relate this to her, she keeps perceiving that through a psychological lens and contextualizes that within a psychological framework. As well, an orientation of the mind limits fluidity and perspective (which has both upsides and downsides). For example, my psychologist is strongly oriented toward helping people overcome difficult mind conditions, such as PTSD, anxiety disorders and panic attacks. This has a lot of practical value; most people with uncomfortable states want to heal and "get better". Yet her mindstate also limits the "realms" she has access to. . . For example, last week I was with her and a friend who started about his recurrent anxiety. I was in a minspace of exploring the "essence" of anxiety. Like we could explore the "essence" of love or sacredness. There is no dynamic of "good" or "bad". There is no dynamic of "we need to heal and get past the anxiety". That mindset introduces a subconscious vibe that there is "something wrong" with your anxiety that we need to address and move beyond the anxiety so you can be a healthier person. . . That orientation has enormous value at the personal level, yet is also very limited. . . For example, I began speaking about the "essence" of anxiety, integrating my own experience. . . Speaking about the energetics of being on the edge of "spiraling down" and what that is 'actually' like. As well, different forms of anxiety and how those forms interact with other feelings and social interactions. . . My psychologist friend had some overlap with this exploration, yet kept pulling toward psychological theories and healing. For example, she kept reoriented insights about the nature of anxiety to how we can use those insights for healing and moving forward. Again, there is a lot of value to that at the personal level, it's just a different "realm" that she is contracted within. Feel free to add any feelings, thoughts, insights or questions you may have about these ideas.

@Snader Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. I appreciate the introspection and curiosity. No. Making decisions is hard for me since I'm constantly looking at pros / cons, partial truths, different possibilities, different perspectives etc. . . I'm a terrible manager. . . I think my colleagues can sense this and don't put me in positions where I'm a decision-making leader. . . I contribute in other ways. I'm actually quite satisfied with my career. I have a lot of autonomy and lots of space to create. . . A few thoughts on range and constraints: -- Being in a science department, there are standard courses like Cell Biology, that have a history of content. As well, teachers have an obligation to teach students knowledge and skills that will be on graduate exams, graduate / medical schools and practical things in those careers. For core courses, there is generally a body of accepted content - I have flexibility in how I teach that as well as sprinkling in things such as life skills, memory etc. . . I have a lot more space in my upper-level courses to go bigger-picture and integrate. Yet my forms of integration is beyond integrating different disciplines within academia. I love all that stuff, yet I also want to bring in more that isn't standard academia. For example, I've brought in meditation exercises into my classes. This raised some eyebrows in my department, yet I explained to them the importance of self awareness, social awareness and meta-cognition in the bigger-picture of learning. . . I also have an exercise using Zener cards to integrate concepts like: direct experience, intuition, energetics, unique abilites as well as science components, such as statistical analysis of the data we gather. I got some pushback at first, yet I framed it with buzzwords like "hands-on", "experiential learning", "engagement" to teach statistical tests. Then my collogues thought it was brilliant (since I didn't believe in the "whoo, whoo" stuff. . . I'd also like to add things like shamanic breathing and chanting - yet having had the guts to yet (as well, most students are receptive). . . Lastly, I feel the need to hold back on explorations of consciousness. I feel comfortable speaking about things like lucid dreaming and flow states of consciousness, yet I still need to speak about psychedelics from a relatively shallow level. I've done over 150 trips and my level of understanding of psychedelics and various conscious states is equal to, or higher, than my level of science understanding. I'm one of the few people with a high level of expertise in both psychedelic/conscious states as well as science. One of few people that could integrate direct experience, psychological dynamics, mysticism, creativity, nonduality, neuroscience, genetics, evolution, social science, energetics, critical thinking, empathy and on and on. I can do this to some extent, yet I have to hold back. -- I'm constrained with where students are at. . . In an environment like a spiritual retreat, nonduality lecture or concert - people go because they are interested, want to learn and want to participate. Yet in a classroom environment, most students don't fully want to be there. Many students have low attendance, show up late and are disengaged. The majority of Gen Z has an extremely short attention span and part of my job is being an entertainer to keep them engaged. And it's draining to constantly compete with their cell phones for attention. . . And it just takes a one "bad" student to create all sorts of problems, which can be an emotional drain. I spent months creating a First Year Seminar titled "SuperNormal" abilities. Unfortunately, one student was a sold narcissist that soured the energetics in the class and caused all sorts of problems. That one student ruined many aspects of the course. . . Lastly, many students do not have the capacity or interest in much of what I do. For example, not able / interested in things like introspection and mind expansion. Some students don't think abstractly and I have to constrain myself, such as my use of metaphors. -- With that said, there are a small percentage of students that really connect with me and I have a big impact on them. A few students have unique skills of metacognition, systems thinking etc and felt like they never fit it. I'm the first one that can see this and "speak their language". Stuff they thought was a disorder, yet I get excited and say "That's a thing!!! I've known people in Zen Centers that spent years trying to attain that". . . They take every one of my classes, come to my office to chat about things that are "out there" that they can't speak to anyone else about. . . A couple years ago, I started a group called "Transcend and Integrate". It's a select group by invitation only for students with certain abilities. We meet in a secluded location and have a free flow conversation about things not discussed or revealed with "normal" people. . . For about 1% of my students, I have a deep life-changing impact on them - such as discovering core aspects of their nature / ability. . . This is so rewarding to me, that it balances out a lot of headaches. -- When I started teaching, I wasn't aware of my "thing". If you know yours, I would be mindful of how that fits with the environment. For example, one of my core components is integration. I work at a liberal college that prides it's identity on "multidisciplinary". Yet it's at a very surface level. For example, "inter-disciplinary" to my colleagues and administrators are taking set of required courses in various disciplines. Yet psychology is in one building and just talks in a psychology box, Religious studies is another building and speaks within a religion box, Biology in another building, etc. . . That is a surface level of integration. It would be like having a guitar player in one building, a piano player in another building, a drummer in another building and calling it an integrated jazz band. . . Deeper integration is having all the instruments playing together to yield emergent properties. . . Zooming Out and being contracted in an area has value, yet so does Zooming Out and synthesizing. I'm the only one that is really good at this in my department, which is good and bad. On the good side, I'm "that guy" my colleagues come to for questions and help. I've helped them create new course materials and to look at things from different perspectives. I like contributing in that way. For sure. Here, I think Myers Briggs is useful. I'm on the extreme end of "introverted". As well, the "S" or "I" is also a big factor. "Sensing" is toward concrete thinking and what's actually present here and now. Things like construction work. . . "Intuitive" is toward internal abstraction and imagination of things that aren't physically present. Most people are "S". . . I'm on the extreme end of "I", which can make communication difficult. And also agree with being alone. . . During the covid isolation lockdowns, my extroverted friend struggled hardcore. Yet I loved it. I didn't have as many social obligations and I had more time to explore consciousness on my own without people thinking I was "anti-social".

It seeme like you've achieved a new level of awakening..a radical level of God realization that no human has ever achieved..and that none of those nonduality Buddhist rats have even dared to consider..you're sexy and you know it.

My absolute favorites would be: https://m.youtube.com/@samvaknin/videos And https://m.youtube.com/@EmersonNonDuality/videos And here is a list of others: https://www.youtube.com/user/conscioustv/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/NewThinkingAllowed/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/RebelWisdom/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/scienceandnonduality/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/AubreyMarcusPod/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/SimulationSeries/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/timferriss/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/metaRising/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/SpiritualawakeningNetplus/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/AaronAbke/videos https://m.youtube.com/@AaronDoughty44/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/MindvalleyTalks/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmicSkeptic/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/higherbalance/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkingAllowedTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/VishuddhaDas/videos https://m.youtube.com/@DrBrianKeating/videos https://m.youtube.com/@DrJamesCooke/videos https://m.youtube.com/@NextLevelSoul/videos https://m.youtube.com/@seancarroll/videos https://m.youtube.com/@SimplyAlwaysAwake/videos https://m.youtube.com/@yourmatetom/videos German channels with >50.000 viewers which talk about psychedelics+nonduality+mysticism who almost definitely would love to have a conversation/an interview with you (in english of course): https://m.youtube.com/@ManuelHaase https://www.youtube.com/c/FlowFinder/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/highermind/video

I didn't understand your argument but I will respond anyways. Without contrast it is impossible to know anything. Left exists only in comparison to what is not left. Nonduality exists only in comparison to duality. Realization of oneness is impossible without twoness. But oneness and twoness are one in the end. And also two.