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The Art of Mastery covers it well, But really his trilogy is important and I've read it multiple times. Book of Not Knowing Pursuing Consciousness Genius of Being Then: Art of Mastery Or go straight to it. I also stay in touch with Ralston over email he is usually nice enough to respond. Please don't see me as awakened I am not I have experienced significant health benefits and survival benefits but not some deep awakening something which I wish to pursue. Thanks for sharing Leo's Video, I have watched it before but don't remember him mentioning vacuum. Will re-watch!

Ah, you know, enlightened enough As I have already told you. I flinch a bit from calling me Inliytened2 , but yeah, "I" know what I am talking about. Solipsm: Useless when talking with separate-self-well-and-alive beings, because they always tend to project their Identity on it and blow it up to nondual Unity-states with the Infinite Field of Being (often with the help of some, um, less-than-legal substances). The Godrealized-Ego. But yes, there is only one. One-ness. If Solipsism is not just a concept projected by an ego, but a truly realized Way of Being, truly realized that "the" same impersonal Awareness looks through each set of eyes... perfectly fine with me. And also Absolutely... True! As long as there is an "other", Infinite Being has not been realized, and Solipsism becomes just another conceptual booster for the separate-self to hijack & suffer. The magic word is impersonal. Not only personal, but truly empty and impersonal infinite Awareness/Being. And here a Koan for you: Who are YOU really? "I" know "you" know it. Idealism: Empty appearances hovering in "the" groundless Infinite of True Being. So idealism is obviously more truthful than materialistic views. Appearances = "Consciousness stuff", or Suchness. Has become totally obvious and always "verifiable" after a long time of practice cultivating awakened nondual states. Oneness? Ever found anything&any"one" that possibly could be outside eternal&infinite&groundless YOU? So yes, its talking to myself... But what else is there to do? All my thoughts. What I have written in the last post, to my knowledge, you can copy & paste from nowhere. That is why I do the Muppet-Show-Selling gig, because if someone else would have already written all of that in the way I like it, I could have saved myself the trouble and instead go do something else, along the lines of my lovely hobbies. On your command, my dear dream-brother : Hach... I truly love Aliens&fairies& Angels and demons! Fascinating stuff. Imagine what kind of adventures "we" will have, this life and the Infinity of lifes yet to come Ok, I have no doubts that some will still put me in the corner of the closed-down-minded Buddhist r******reductionists (sorry, have yet to adopt on the new very courteous customs at this lovely place here, got a bit of a hang-over), and I admit its my job to make that pidgeon-holing at least a bit more challening... Let me know how I am doing! It is just that I prefer to have the peace & stability of resting in Infinite True Being in my nice little comfy valley after having come down from the summit. And not to be disturbed by any grasping for the alien. Or for any other "wave-surfing-easing-the-pain-that-a-still-contracted-self-contraction" causes. That is why I chop-chop any such grasping in my mindstream as soon as it feels like coming from a lack, or from grasping/suffering/self-contraction. Because if the fascination comes from the self-contraction, it is just a new game to keep the self-contraction spinning-suffering-reliefing itself in experiences/understandings and so on. Exploration for enjoyment yes, for grasping no. The True Being of yours truly has infinite time to explore infinite realms. Luckily, that has become self-evident by just "reaching-into-it" and realizing its eternity, or always-here-nature again. I can hold eternity within the palm of my hand. You know what I mean. Can't disappear. So why be in a hurry and not relax the self-contraction and enjoy the show the shows itself here on this lovely planet? But each being has to burn its "exploring-the-Multiverse-grasping-Karma" on its own speed. I just sometimes tell little tales about which kind of choice on the path to the Infinite has been benefical for me. Up the mountain to the highest Summit if Infinity Absolute Reality, or up to the secondary-summits with the Aliens sitting on top of it. Of course, I don't expect too much immediate success doing it, but it still needs to be done. "At least we can say that we tried" by the River

Oh well. Where there is not stable realization of Infinite Being and nondual Awakened States sobre in everyday life, there is only suffering-in-cycles wave-surfing. Wave-surfing up and down Maslows pyramid. And one can also appreciate the lovely lady & lovely alien when resting in True Being or after having fallen into the Infinite Ocean. Just too much preference for wave-surfing understanding consciousness of woman/alien n+1 prevents dropping into the Ocean of Infinite truly Impersonal Being. Which btw. is an Awakening which one can't anticipate or imagine in any way before it really happens. If one could, it would have already happened... So lets hope it doesn't need a major or minor crocodile (like the one has that has bitten you out of the pretty much non-stop-psychedelic gig of last year) to wise you up on wether the summon bonum is dropping into the ocean or surfing ever higher waves. Spiritual Intuition can make one skip some of the crocodiles, one doesn't need to get also bitten by the crocodile sitting at the fork of the road with the sign "Summum Bonum: Wave surfing or falling into the Infinite Ocean?" Selling the eternal boring broken record of dropping in to the Infinite Ocean of Being instead of wave surfing by the River PS: Selling & broken record: Yeah, you are right: I guess I start to sound like this guy: So surf the largest wave ever dear Leo, and then after have done that I wish you that you have the Karma to finally drop into the Infinite Oean that You Truly are:

Nothingness or suchness is the essence of every appearance, appearing in Infinite Impersonal Being. Form(or appearance) is Nothingness, Nothingness is appearance/form. The same "stuff/non-stuff". Realizing this beyond a doubt is Enlightenment, expressing and stabilizing these awakened impersonal states in daily life is the path that follows after it. Infinite Being lives itself, the universe "universes", without any contraction into a centre of perception and its lenses and filter-illusions. Consciousness OF a woman, OF a man, OF a human, OF an alien... any consciousness OF or more radically, any consciousness OF anything, be it self-reflective or not, is like a show of states (appearance/form/temporary/not really existing but just appearing) rollling "before" the impersonal Awareness of True Being. Which is pure Impersonal Awareness, unaware of itself if nothing arises, but with potential for sentience. Infinite Being. And which is Nothingness if nothing arises/appears. The consciousness OF something (man/woman/alien) is wave surfing on the ocean of Infinite Being, stabilizing living from the impersonal nondual awakened states where this Infinite Reality if Infinite Being is obvious (and "living itself") is dropping into the Infinite Ocean and becoming it fully. And afterwards, one can still do wavesurfing, or consciousness-OF-x exploration. And rumour has it that wave surfing the Infinite Ocean can become quite tiring & stressfull & and a bit less than relaxed if done for too long by a separate-self-contraction. And at some point when one doesn't want continue surfing ever new waves (of which there exists an Infinity of, forever and ever to be explored by God "itself") the dropping & dissolving & and fully BEing the ocean can happen. But wave surfing is all fine and well as long as it is fun... Selling neoprene suits so that the dropping into the ocean feels comfy for all tired wave-surfers by the River

That is not the case in the higher states of for example Mahamudra stage 4 Nonmeditation, and neither in Dzogchen. The mind runs along quite nicely, but the thoughts are moving like leaves in the wind, as appearances in Infinite Being. The shutting off is emphasized in Theravada-approaches, leading to the Jhanas and cessation. Cessation is not the goal nor the highest state in all later developed Mahayana systems. The goal their is nondual Enlightenment sobre, while thoughts and the world arise in Infinite Being. And one can contemplate about Infinity all day long in these awakened states. Selling Water by the River

If you want to call realizing Infinite impersonal eternal True Being (and staying awakened nondual states sobre) reductionism of Consciousness... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism "Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena.[1] It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts.[2]" Luckily, Infinite/Absolute/Nondual Being doesn't have parts. Nondual. Only in duality/ignorance it appears so as being divded and having parts. Nondual doesn't have parts. So reductionism doesn't apply. Selling better don't play reductionism with Nondual Infinite Being by the River PS: Wise new video by the way. Meeting all children of your True Being where they are at. Stabilizing from yellow to turqoise to coral and so on. Nice. A solid base to stabilize the love that resides in Infinite Reality if it is not divided.

So I'm, I'm going to be more careful in the future about about distinguishing between those things and also just about accommodating a more diverse value set in my audience cuz if you have thousands and millions of people watching, uh, you have a, you have the whole rainbow, the whole gamut of different value sets that people have. And in the past I would teach from like my own value set, of course, and it's difficult to see outside one's own value set. But that's what higher consciousness does for you. That's also what suffering will help you to see. That's also what interacting with other people and getting feedback from them, or like you know in your relationships you'll realize that your girlfriend has a different value set than you do, your husband has a different value set than you do, your children, your parents. And so a lot of what relationship dynamics and problems revolve around is just these differences in value sets and also not appreciating a different value set than yours and trying to push and project yours onto them. And of course, you can do that with your audience as well. I was wrong for assuming that everyone should be interested in my values. So in the future, I'm going to be making my teachings more, we might say, universal, kind of trying to accommodate or it's not like I'm going to be adopting other people's values so much, but it's like I'm going to be, I'm going to be um, underscoring that like, "This piece of advice is for this kind of value set," sort of thing. And also encouraging you to like be true to your value set because a lot of you guys who watch me can get sort of seduced by the charisma of all this and some of these cool advanced ideas, some of the truth in these ideas. You can kind of get seduced into that and then you can sort of like start to think that, "Well now I should be following Leo's value set." Now of course, this is all going to be implicit, you don't tell yourself that explicitly, but implicitly you're just going to be trying to like follow my value set without even knowing what's happening. But then five years later you'll realize that this isn't working for me, and the reason it's not working for you is because you should have been following your value set, which is probably different from my value set. And even within spirituality, see, there's different even value sets within spirituality. What do you want out of spirituality? Don't assume that what I want out of spirituality is the same thing as what you want. Maybe what you want is to transcend suffering. Maybe what you want is loving relationships with humans in your life, um, maybe what you want is bliss. That's not why I do spirituality, even though some of those things are are still good, um, from my point of view, but that's not where I'm coming from when I do this work. So that's something I'll be emphasizing more in the future. I was wrong in teaching in a confrontational, judgmental, heavy-handed and arrogant way. That kind of style, that's the kind of style I adopted when I first started, and um, and the more I do it, the more I see the limitations of it. I realize more and more that it's inappropriate to and bully people into self-actualizing. I was wrong for teaching for egoic reasons. I was wrong for getting egoic pleasure out of lording insights over my audience, and that just doesn't serve my audience and it corrupts my work. See, I started to reflect more and more on my work during this time off and really asking myself, "What are my true motives for doing this work? Why am I even doing it? Why am I putting out all this content? What am I getting out of it?" I'm not doing it so much for the money, so what am I getting out of it? And then when I dug deep into that, I, I noticed certain egoic pleasures that I get, um, and then what I realized is that that had a, it felt like it was corrupting my work and that it really wasn't serving you. And then I sort of start to ask myself like, "Should I be doing this for my pleasure?" To a certain extent, yes, cuz like if I don't enjoy doing the work, then why, why do the work at all? But on the, the other hand, if, if, if I'm just like serving myself in this endeavor and it's not serving the audience, it's at the cost of the audience, it's not helping you to awaken, it's not helping you to get a deeper understanding of of existence, if that's not happening, then that's an error in the style, something needs to change, and that will be changing going forward. I was wrong about what I'm going to call here "weak people." By weak people, I mean people in life who are struggling, um, maybe people with mental disorders, incels, people stuck in a like a deep victim complex, uh, just in general people who are suffering a lot in life. It's easy when you're successful, relatively successful, if you're in good health, which I'm not, but if you're in good health, um, and uh, you know, if you have, if you have some status in the world, if, if you're somewhat famous, if, uh, if you have a good financial situation, um, if you have a good emotional state of mind where you don't have a mental disorder or something like that, it can be very easy kind of like to turn a blind eye or to be dismissive to these kinds of people who suffer from these kinds of problems and who don't have these kinds of things in their life, and to not appreciate how difficult it is for them to create that, right? Because everybody starts at a different place in life, uh, for some people creating financial success and abundance for themselves, it's going to be a lot more difficult for others just based on where they were born, what kind of family they had, whether they were abused or not, and like in this work, the spiritual work, the psychological work, you know, if you've been abused, that's a very different mountain you have to climb than someone like me who wasn't. And so thanks to the suffering that I went through, like I made a connection, I made a connection with those kinds of people because I could, I could see, you know, I can see what it's like to be in a sort of an unresourceful, deficient state where it's difficult to help yourself, you feel helpless. If you have a serious health problem, you feel helpless because you don't know how to fix it, you try stuff and it doesn't work, it's kind of out of your control. Well, likewise, you know, if you're, if you're born in some awful third world country, it kind of feels like it's out of your control. Now that doesn't mean it's out of your control, there's still stuff you can do, of course, but still, that's very different than being born in a nice neighborhood in California. So I have more compassion for these kinds of people. And in the past I would kind of speak down to that, and that was wrong of me to do. I was also wrong in speaking bluntly without tact and sensitivity to people's feelings and values, feelings and values. And uh, and basically the reason I did that is because I was so focused on this notion of Truth, and I was prioritizing that above everything else. And again, there's certain benefits that come with that, but then there's downsides. And so now I'm more sensitive to the downsides. I was wrong in using too much profanity and crass and sensitive examples. As I mature, I look back at that and kind of cringe. I was wrong in my tone interacting with people sometimes. The tone that I would use would be too obnoxious, too harsh, too judgmental, too kind of like finger-wagging, which is wrong. It's just not effective, you see. And it's a trap, you know, doing this whole YouTube shtick is a trap in the sense that there's a pressure to want to perform. It's like a performance when I'm up here. It almost feels like a performance. It's not just like a normal conversation, you know? I put a little bit of like acting into it, a little bit of like emotion, a little bit of like charisma in order to make it entertaining. But, um, but you know that gets in the way of truth, of course. And, um, and then it kind of like it incentivizes almost like a creating of a subtle drama. And, and again, I mean the whole internet is full of this kind of drama, but then I started to notice, like, I mean it's, it's not like my content has very obvious drama in it, um, relative to what you find on the internet or on YouTube. But still, like again, um, some of these things that I'm talking about are very subtle points, and many people would just kind of dismiss it, overlook it, or say, "Oh, it's not a very big deal." But, um, but again, like the more advanced I get, the more conscious I get, it's like the very subtle stuff that starts to bug me about my work. I was wrong in using violent communication. I'll have an episode about violent communication coming soon that's going to be powerful. It's like a shift when I learned about this concept of violent communication, and then I looked at how I communicate. It's like I saw a lot of things that I wasn't seeing before. That distinction of violent communication is very powerful. In a nutshell, what it means is a sort of inflammatory style of communication, but I'll elaborate more upon that in the future. So in the future, you'll see me using less violent communication. And violent is not just in the word choices that there can be violence or inflammatory word choice, for example, using excessive profanity might be one example. Um, but then it's also about the tone, right? So it's a combination. It's the tone, it's the word choice, and it's also the intent, it's the intent and the motivation behind every sentence that is being said and every paragraph that those sentences add up to. And it's also the subtle judgments that are laden within that. So this is a very, very subtle topic. I was wrong in viewing people as fools and idiots. What happened over time is that as I was figuring out more of these deep aspects of reality, um, I started to develop a contempt for human intelligence because, frankly, there's a lot of stupid stuff that humans do in the social domain, in the political domain, in the business domain, on in the social media domain, even in the spiritual domain, maybe even especially in the spiritual domain, right? There's a lot of stupid stuff. But, but then if you start to tell yourself that over and over again in your own mind, you kind of start to program your own mind to look at mankind with this kind of contempt. And, um, and of course, that's because you start to look at people, you start to look down at people because they're not awakened, they're not construct aware, they don't know all of these sophisticated self-deception mechanisms that you now know. Um, but then this becomes its own kind of trap, you see? And so what I've been doing is I've been, um, I've been looking more at just very successful, talented, genius people in society across media that have their own kind of specialized, narrow intelligence. Like, they're really good. They have a sort of a genius at what they do, even though it has nothing to do with – they have no idea of what spirituality is, what awakening is, what construct awareness is. Like, they're not that sophisticated, but they're just interested in a different set of things, and they have a specialized intelligence in that set of things, you know? Like, you can look at someone like, for example, a Steven Wolfram, like a really brilliant scientist. He doesn't understand some of these spiritual topics we talk about, but you can recognize the genius, the intelligence, in that narrow specialized thing that he's doing. And then what's important is to recognize that kind of genius all across the board within society, you know? People have perspectives; everyone has a perspective. All these perspectives are basically limited; many of them are contained fantasies and nonsense and garbage, a bunch of noise. But there's signal in that noise. And so really, the more mature, the most mature way to go about this is to kind of recognize and appreciate this kind of narrow intelligence in everything people are doing. And, um, and valuing the uniqueness of these different perspectives and how they can contribute, right? How they can attribute to you, how you can make use of the signal in that noise? So you can take somebody that you disagree with, somebody that normally you would look down upon because they're not "woke" or whatever, and you can find that signal and look through the noise. That's tricky because usually what our mind does, our mind tends to focus on the noise, especially if there's more noise than signal in some perspective. We tend to focus on the noise. We demonize and judge based on the noise, ignoring the signal. But then, if you adopt that kind of attitude, you know, you can find something wrong about almost anybody, even any spiritual teacher, you know? You could take a spiritual teacher, you can find, say, Guru and criticize him about some little thing he did wrong, and then you can get hung up on that. And you can do that for every spiritual teacher, and you can do that for every scientist and every philosopher and every social media influencer. But at the end of the day, after you're doing all that, what do you get? You get a sort of cynicism and contempt and a sort of disgust with humanity as a whole, which is which is not very effective. It then becomes difficult to learn from these people, and fundamentally, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't sit right with you because what you want is you want to be out there experiencing and exploring all these different perspectives, and you want to be rather joyful about it rather than being moralistic and contracted in this kind of negative, judgmental mode. And so I was definitely falling into that trap, and of course, this is kind of the trap of arrogance, which, uh, I'm certainly very, very guilty of. I was wrong in speaking about and assuming levels of consciousness of other people and spiritual teachers. You know, part of the thing that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, like, one of the things I regret the most about my work is that I can see, um, like little exaggerations that I just sneak in in certain areas. It's like 90% of what I say is powerful stuff, but then, but then my ego sneaks in certain little exaggerations or jumps to certain little conclusions, make little assumptions, you know, going just a little bit overboard, a little bit beyond what would need to be said if I was being strictly careful, strictly truthful. And so as I'm trying to align my own mind more with truth, that kind of stuff is not acceptable to me anymore. And so I'm working through a process of trying to just make everything that I say as crisp and sharp and accurate, right? It's like it's a sort of a dedication to the accuracy of your speech. And so in that respect, you know, a lot of times people will ask me, "Well, Leo, what do you think about this spiritual teacher and that spiritual teacher? How enlightened is this person, and then how enlightened is that person?" And then, like, strictly speaking, I can't be inside the minds of any of these people, right? I can strictly speaking only speak about my consciousness. So I have to make a leap. I have to kind of jump to a sort of conclusion, make certain assumptions and certain sort of interpretations and predictions, right? It's not, it's not some sort of absolute knowledge of somebody else's level of consciousness or development. I have to go out a bit on a limb to talk about that stuff. So there's, there's multiple choices I have there. I can just be quiet, which is always the wise choice. The wisest choice is always just to, you know, if you're not sure, just be quiet. Um, but then, you know, there's a trap to want to speak about stuff that you're not quite sure about. And, um, and but see, it's not that simple, though, because most spiritual teachings don't actually consider the perspective of other spiritual teachers or people. What they do is they just present you a single perspective on spirituality from a certain teacher. Part of what actually Leo does is that we consider lots of different spiritual teachers. We name them, we consider their perspectives, read their books, and we compare all this kind of stuff. And we try to figure out, you know, like we use one spiritual teacher's teachings and perspective against another in the sense that we try to use one to compensate for the gaps in the other. And so you're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't in this situation. Because if you're learning from any kind of spiritual teacher, first of all, you have to decide which one to learn from, and there's different qualities of them. So how are you going to judge as a student? You have to judge somehow, and somehow have some kind of sorting process for who you're going to listen to because you can't listen to all of them equally. And then also, when you start comparing them, you're going to notice that there's important differences in the detail of what they teach, and often times contradictions. And they can teach exactly the opposite things - one guy will say meditation won't make you enlightened, another guy says he got enlightened through meditation. So what's true? And strictly speaking, you don't know who's right because you can't get inside their heads, but you still have to make certain evaluations here. So um, it's tricky, but I'm going to be more careful about just not leaping to judgments and conclusions about the levels of consciousness of others, even though, you know, again, it's like, man, I wish I could just not talk about it at all. But on the other hand, it has to be talked about because my own awakenings and understandings of consciousness and doing this work have led me to very important realizations about gaps in certain teachings and teachers. And I feel like that's important to discuss, even though when I discuss those things, it doesn't mean that I'm 100% certain that I know that teacher's level of consciousness. So keep that in mind. I was also wrong in giving out too many answers without helping to facilitate people in discovering their own answers. This is a huge sticking point for me, uh, going forward that like I have a tendency to want to give out all the answers. I've had this realization recently that, um, it's really limiting the power of these teachings because you're getting ideas in your mind, abstract ideas of things that should actually be experienced by you. So, really, I'm thinking about how to help facilitate people more into discovering their own answers rather than just giving you all the answers. That's more powerful. The trick is that it's difficult to do that through this medium of just a video or an audio that really requires a kind of Socratic method, going back and forth, which just can't be done through this medium. But I'm thinking about how to, like, structure the content more so that maybe I'm giving you more exercises, maybe asking you more questions. It's difficult because I don't like the idea of just making a video where I just ask you a question and give you an exercise, and then it's on you to go and do it. It's like, um, but, um, that's still something I'm working out. I'm going to be working out over the next year or two how to make subtle changes there to make that better. About my work, I was wrong in underestimating the intelligence and potential of my audience. I spent a lot of time thinking about my audience and getting inside their heads, their perspective, and it's difficult to do that because, of course, when you have an audience of a million, it's like you have every perspective out there, every value system, every level of intelligence. Frankly, some of my audience members are stupid, and some of them are brilliant, and everything in between. So, who do I tailor my content towards?

... and no imagined rodent has been hurt Enlightenment doesn't mean that one is always right when it comes to relative truth like the things you mention. It just meaning knowing what you truly are, and what Reality is. Answers to both is the same. And on top, having that accessible all the time means nothing else than being to switch off/cut-off any ignorant I-thought and I-feeling of being only this little body mind, which makes the states (1)-(4) available all the time. And this can be done (without lying to oneself) if the Awakened State is accessible anytime (1) Infinite boundlessness of the Visual Field (and any other perception/dimension) (2) its groundlessness, or mere-appearance (imagined) character "hovering" in Infinity (3) the eternal nature of this Infinite Reality/Consciousness is always known (4) there is no (zero!) separate-self I-thought/feeling still hypnotizing. Impersonal. Empty. Silent. Vast. Yet, giving rise to all appearances and thoughts. And if one chooses to, one can cut off these thoughts/feelings off in real-time. The magic word is real-time, Or high-speed cut-off of any thought/feeling arising that ignorantly believes in being only this body-mind. Speed & strength of awareness, before any thoughts starts hypnotizing oneself and are believed&elaborated. And that takes normally many years. But its worth it. The high-speed cutting of of (4) isn't always necessary, but that ability is what opens up the Awakened states described in (1-3). And if thoughts then rise again, simple mindfulness lets let flow in Infinite Being without believing them, if (1)-(3) are powerful enough. And: Being able to generate (1)-(3) with (4) induces so much bliss that the annoying separate-self arisings don't "grip", even if they are not cut off in realtime but just watched in mindfulness. Ego-wanting/avoiding only grips when one is not in a positive enough state already. One has a human, but one isn't one. True Being is Infinite Reality. That doesn't mean one does stupid things for to ones relative vehicle, like James hand-into-the-fire. Beings who know their True Nature are not brain dead. And that is having Absolute Truth always available. Or Enlightenment. It is not an idea, and there is zero doubt about it that this is final. Can't get more infinite than infinite, and there is and only can only be THAT. And any Alien, ET or way-out-spectacular-appearance-of-consciousness appears only in THAT. Nice to understand&see, but not really urgent in any way. There were enlightened Zen Masters who thought Japans Imperial Wars were great. So one can be totally wrong on relative stuff. But the Absolute stuff must be handled. Selling smiling little annoying Buddhist-rodents by the River

Don't you guys think you may be considering this in too simplistic and binary a way? I mean no offense, but it's similar to posts on Reddit where someone asks if an ego death on shrooms will last forever to the degree where you live the rest of your life without an ego, and then you'd just sit there ineffectively, not knowing if you're the person or the chair. I believe (from research and direct experience) authentic spiritual transformation would ultimately enhance human life, not morph it into something impractical and ridiculous. I think it's worth considering the subtleties here, and recognizing answers won't be so obvious or even fit within your current logical framework. I've found this video of Adyashanti and Loch Kelly helpful in providing a description of the awakened everyday state (not just peak experiences on a meditation mat). This would be closer to what it actually means to live in an egoless state.

1 hour ago, Water by the River said: Like any other being, it seems to me you strive for what brings you satisfaction. Now you equate pleasure with bliss or non-suffering. Which I didn't do: The Sat & Chit in Sat-Chit-Ananda, or the bliss & love that a sobre Awakened Nondual State brings is also not pleasure, and I assume you are well aware of that. So lets look up Wikipedia (I know..) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure "Pleasure is part of various other mental states such as ecstasy, euphoria and flow. Happiness and well-being are closely related to pleasure but not identical with it." "Pleasure refers to experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment OF something". For example of Infinite-Consciousness-chasing-exploration. The bliss or love of Awakened Nondual States doesn't NEED the enjoyment OF something. Then we would have to consider the nondual essence Nothingness behind all appearance as OF something. Which luckily it isn't, because it is not OF something (but Infinite Being, Nothingness and nondual appearance and not something specific IN/OF it) Selling the basic difference between pleasure and between causeless Sat-Chit-Ananda by the River

The issue that after you experience heroinepsychedelic levels of blissconsciousness, nothing less will satify you. Ken Wilber once wrote something along the lines of certain states of bliss can only be accessed in higher subtle realms or states of Awakening, and Heroine/Opiades can give a foretaste. Of course that is addictive. It is a kind of unearned divine bliss, not accessible sobre because the structure to do that is not in place. Of course that wreaks the whole growth path and its dynamic. And that is why heroine is truly evil stuff. It is true that nothing less will satisfy oneself than the awakened states True Being brings along. And that it is normally a long and hard road achieving that sobre. But what is the alternative? Addiction? Meditation done in the right way/technique, over long time in daily practice (even if its carried into daily life and not on the cushion) early over a decade can produce fascinating results. I can testify that, and I consider even short amounts of meditation as adding up if done with the right technique. Key is getting it working in daily life, then the necessary time of thousands of hours can be added up. The strength of consciousness to transcend former identifications is strenghtened always, even by small amounts. Which can add up over years, decades, or lifetimes.

No my friend. Consider there are Infinitly Consciousness enlightened Awakened States and Realizations (where that is totally obvious and how that holds for Infinite Being/Reality) that maybe you haven't had yet. Hey, I start talking like you Selling demon-eddies-in-the-River-are-not-permanently-without-suffering-but-rather-the-opposite by the River

No, not human logic. Basic laws of duality when Infinite Being splits itself apart and plays hide & seek and return to the source. How do I know that? Well, there are Awakened states where that is blatantly obvious what separate-self arisings that hide/cloud True Being are (separation= a spectrum of evil, from very mild to very very dark), and how they they literally contract the original Infinite Blissfull Being just with their arising into duality and separation. And contraction IS suffering, it is directly realized and felt that way, a cluster of sensations and contractions assembling a localization and center, most often in the head. And if one is able to cut them off fast enough, the Infinite Field returns to its original state: infinite and groundless and nondual without a center again. And full of love and bliss. True Being is boundless infinite Nonduality and (your much absolutized) Infinite L-O-V-E. Sat-Chit-Ananda. and anywhere were that Awakening and love (when the clouds of ignorance is removed) is not and where it is clouded by separation, there is just necessarily suffering (in cycles and various degrees) and the self-contraction. It is totally obvious and infinite/absolute that it is a no-brainer. And that realization my friend, that is absolute. There is no realm where that is not the case, because you know, Infinite True Being. Nothing outside of It.Either nondual and infinite and mere appearance and love, or duality and out-thereness, and fear. Somebody ought to make a youtube-viedeo about it. “Reality unfolds like a fractal divisions within divisions reunions within reunions. Consciousness polarizes and depolarizes it expands and it contracts back it diverges that it reckon verges and it keeps doing this forever eternally and that is the dance of consciousness or Infinite Mind” Aha. And now lets think that to the very end. And again, I am not talking about animals, nor rocks or bacteria. But higher level beings and their evolutionary lines, starting on a certain level of complexity. A molecule can not be evil, but the game of Karma/souls and return to the source starts at beings/perspectives with some level of self-awareness. But thanks for commenting, I understand you and your behaviour a bit better now. I assume you think that something like a (relative, just appearing, but appearing nontheless) soul "storing" in a higher dimension all this self-contraction or openess/love, and other lessons and the impact it had (on others, and oneself), from life to life, doesn't really exist, even in a relative way. Or is subordinate to hey, its all imagined anyway. Which is true, but forgets the power that suffering and/or love still holds for a separate being to either be awakened in sobre states or not. Including you my friend. I have a bit the feeling that you believe yourself to be a bit above the game of cause and consequences, or in other words Karma. You still are not telling why you stopped doing psychedelics and what happened, and write more about crocodiles. If you don't just want to escape via psychedelics (spiritual bypassing) and want to find genuine happiness and sobre Awakening in daily life, I wouldn't consider myself (or my relative being) to be in any way above this game of cause and effect. How about this view? "Although my view is higher than the sky, My respect for the cause and effect of actions is as fine as grains of flour." Padmasambhava If newbies take over this way of thinking (like lets go into a haunted house and try some DMT to meet something really evil, or blow up your relative life & values and just do spiritual/psychedelic bypassing, and I don't know what other less-than-smart-irresponsible stuff)... all these a bit less than funny posts in your forum where people somehow go for spiritual bypassing, although you write in places that is a no no?) and follow their idol, and then wreak their lifes... Ever considered its actually YOU in just another form suffering that? Literally You? Not metaphorically, not only true in some way out psychedelic states, but literally, all the time, just Absolutely True. Is that intuition and resulting love and compassion still so far away from your sobre life? You think that Infinite Intelligence will not give you some "less-than-positive-credit-points" on your Karma-Bill for just letting that happen? Where are your clarifying comments when a 20 year old again writes some irresponsible stuff that anybody with some more life-experience will see will f*** u* their lives? And what does Infinite Intelligence have in stock to finally correct such tendencies? Crocodiles. But is that really necessary? Although the law of cause and effect and the crocodiles are just imagined, their imagined bite creates very painful imagined sensations. As we are all probably quite aware of. Ok, that was the sermon for the sunday at the imagined church of Selling basic cause & effect by the River

Suffering in cycles is the force that pulls all beings and souls back to the source. Even the demon. The more separation/duality/split off from the Source is experienced, the more suffering happens, and the more evil arises as coping mechanism. If love is not available, evil acts as coping mechanism. And only huge suffering forces the demon back on its path, away from separation and evil towards the other path, returning to the source/love. Ever heard of hell-realms/dimensions, full of evil? Thousands of NDE and OBE reports exists of these, throughout all ages&cultures. Anything split off from True Infinite Being as apparently separate being (illusion) suffers in cycles. That is totally obvious in certain Awakened states. Where there is not THAT, there is only suffering in cycles. Anything but impersonal nondual Enlightenment with the self-contraction of the separate-self gone suffers. Not all the time, but in cycles. Only in these realizations/awakened states of Infinite Impersonal Consciousness is the love of True Being flowing fully and unrestricted, and that finally lets the separate-self-contraction drown in oblivion. Interesting that you are not aware of that, not even conceptually. Evil is separation and splitting off from the source, and compensating and coping for that in extreme cases with evil behaviour, and love is the opposite force, which pulls all beings back. Reality "breaks" evil with suffering. And huge evil = huge suffering necessary. What do you think hell realms NDE/OBEs are? That is spirits way of nobody gets left behind... PS: I am not talking about animals here, but more complex beings. Like humans/demons and so on... Selling basic spiritual compass/intuition by the River

I also believe using both is best and most efficient. At the final stages of meditation, one can dissolve these last and very subtle lenses. When taking for example the Mahamudra-system, which I consider as the most sophisticated system on the planet (together with Dzogchen), the Yoga of One Taste (advanced practice, 3rd stage in Mahamudra system) makes the visual field boundless, infinite and mere appearance/lucid. Basically the effect that many psychedelics have. And no, that is not yet Enlightenment. https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=yoga of one taste&author=Water by the River The final lenses of deception/illusion are not yet dissolved at stage 3. But here we are already on very trippy terrain, visual field nondual, boundless and infinite and mere appearance. And now comes the kicker: stage 4, Nonmeditation Yoga automizes the techniques done at stage 3 in such a way that even the meditator can be dissolved. There is no longer a separate-anything doing anything, the meditation does itself. Awakening, or Awakened Awareness (nondual, boundless, infinite, groundless, and impersonal, or not only personal), does the meditation. As long as someone does the meditation, the illusion with the dream-character is still well and alive, even if its nondual and what not. A nondual dream. https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Nonmeditation Yoga&author=Water by the River What happens at stage 4 Nonmeditation Yoga can no longer be fully described. But it can be understood what happens or happened once it happens. And it takes a loooong time at stage 4 Nonmeditation Yoga, at least for most, until crossing over to Enlightenment happens. No other. No you. Just Infinite Consciousness/Reality, an Infinite Ocean of Awareness, its essence forever unchanged. Eternal. Always having been the case. The former separate-self just an illusion. And until one gets the hundreds or thousands of hours (if one is not a prodigy) in these states to make it to the big bang, if one tries to do that with psychedelics, one has ones brain fried long before. And a God-complex on top if one doesn't start on the humble side from the beginning (which few do), since the ego projects itself already busily on the nondual infinite field, see stage 3. And if one has bad luck, ET comes along and gives a seductive smile... But that is another topic. And the limitations/problems of meditation practice: Getting to Nonduality, stage 3. Takes a looong time, and many things can be implemented incorrectly. Then, meditation practice NEVER leads to Nonduality,boundlessness-infnite and mere appearance. That happens to 98%+ of meditators, because the meditation techniques used are so inefficient that multiple thousand of hours of hardcore head-against-the-wall meditation would be needed... Few are made for that. Mahamudra on the other side can be used efficiently in daily life if done correctly. Without Mahamudra Pointing out the Great Way style I would have gotten nowhere, and even with that I read the book 15 times over 10 years to get it. To get a nondual state take enough shrooms et voila. To experience Infinity take some 5-MeO et voila. It prooves that its real. Most meditators without psychedelics give up before that. One knows if one does something correct with meditation if these psychedelic-induced awakenings happen from meditation. Hope I have answered all your questions. Selling Water by the River

Where did the Buddha say this? I think your quote is mistaken or at least misunderstood. Here someone gave a breakdown on the validity of that quote: https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/what-you-think-you-become/ All mental formations are described to be not self. This includes thoughts or any type of mental phenomena you can conceive of. A crucial element to understand about the Buddha’s teachings is that you do have the ability to control your mind to varying degrees, based upon the amount of practice you have devoted to developing this capacity. You control your mind in Buddhist practice by guarding your sense doors, that meaning you become aware of whenever you are grasping after transient elements of experience as if they will provide some type of lasting fulfillment and stop that grasping once it is recognized. I’ve been studying The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikāya) lately, and over and over again it is stressed that you should turn your mind from the unwholesome to what is wholesome. What is considered wholesome in the Buddha’s teaching is whatever leads one away from the hindrances and instead leads a person closer to the destruction of the hindrances or otherwise called the taints which is synonymous to awakening. The hindrances are sloth and torpor (essentially being lazy, unmotivated, and lacking energy when it concerns reaching full enlightenment and liberation), restlessness and worry (anxiety/stress essentially), desire for sense objects, ill-will or hatred, and doubt (mainly referring to doubt in the Buddhist methods as effectively leading to the ending of suffering which is related to ignorance). You should rightfully be concerned that you are having intrusive thoughts that not only produce suffering now but also condition your mind to further suffering in the future. Consider your mind like a computer’s CPU. Unwholesome thoughts are like viruses or malware on a computer. The higher percentage of the CPU which is taken up by this sort of malicious activity in a given moment, the less ability the computer has to run your desired programs properly. The desired programs in this case would be your mind recognizing the Absolute, being full of contentment, confidence, loving-kindness to all beings, stillness, happiness, etc. Basically this means non-resistance to what is. The experience which you really want is an awakened mind free from the woes of petty ego worries and problems which are all self-generated of course by seeing reality incorrectly. Intrusive thoughts obviously bring you to more ego bullshit and issues. Watch for those thoughts, and incline your mind to something healthy or productive instead. As you do this, over time you will find that your CPU has less and less viruses and malware up until the point it is running at maximum capacity without issue. Here’s a video from a Buddhist teacher, Dhammarato, who does a great job of focusing on the essential practices of early Buddhism: He has tons of videos on this topic, and his teachings line up quite closely with what you find in the Suttas. I’ve spoken to him a number of times, and it is clear that he knows what he is talking about and has the ability to clear up a lot of misconceptions people pick up from quasi-Buddhist sources.

If there is only Your True Infinite Being, what is there not to love? There is no other. The only "thing" not loving is the self-contraction called ego or separate-self-Gestalt. That self-contraction hindering the flow of love can be switched off a lot by 10g dried shrooms, quite sufficiently to give a foretaste (I know, but wait and see...) to what happens when the flood-gates of the self-contraction become disassembled structurally, or thrown into the mixer. Then, the River can flow unconstricted by the self-contraction called ego, or separate-self. Which kills any remaining separate-self-contraction even further. https://beezone.com/1main_shelf/self_contraction_04_05_06.html separate self= self-contraction= ego (large parts of it) = separation= fear = not nondual = not awakened = not love psychedelic = temporary off-switch of that self-contraction. Ok, Water by the River admits that this is not really a new discovery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccidānanda Some guys had that insight already 2 millenia ago already, so it appears Water by the River is dishing out old wine in new bottles. But it seems, eternal unchanging Being implies handing out old wine in new bottles every generation... Selling River = love by the River

Please excuse my sloppy answer. It is just when one assumes that no Ego-elements/separate-self-elements are remaining in the psychedelic state... That is a bit, um, Contrast it with this here: Adi Da was quite problematic in other ways , but here you can get a feeling of what no filters/lenses/clouds looks like. And that is a nondual/infinite/mere appearance/awakened state up the hilt, making the true state of "things" absoltely obvious, the realization of Absolute Reality/True Being/Infinite Consciousness a no-brainer. Concerning the last subtle ego/separate-self-clouds/lenses/filters: One just doesn't see them, since there is way to little time in the psychedelic states to transcend these filters/lenses, and normally way to little training in transcending these filters/lenses/clouds done before. One looks THROUGH THEM, and doesn't even notice they are there. And then interprets the infinite nondual experience through them. And what is missing for Enlightenment is the impersonal part: No filters/lenses/clouds left. If you would understand/see these (very subtle) filters in these states, you could sustain the enlightened/awakened/boundless/nondual state AFTER the psychedelic has lost its effect. The infinite and "godly" states of consciousness are nothing but a big trap that parade "in front" of your Real Eternal Being. And btw., "classic" full Enlightenment is infinite, nondual and boundless, and mere appearance/imagined. And impersonal. And the "godly", ET or "whatever" states in that case parade "in" it, "in front" of it. And its YOU by the way. Just the True You. Not the god-state+reamaining filters/lenses. When filters/lenses/clouds/ego are switched off, isn't it logical that Awakening/boundless/nondual/mere apperance states just continues (or is no longer covered by duality), making the eternal always here "suchness" of True being available all the time. Just throw the frog in the mixer and see what remains. What remains is eternal. The rest is just illusion, parading in front of your eternal Being. Ranging from rat to crocodile to human to God to ET. And ET is better for sexy marketing and probably more fun than throwing the frog in the mixer, I assume. It is just if you throw the frog in the mixer, the imagined crocodiles tend to stay away, because, um, they intuit they would follow the frog into the mixer. Selling Water by the River

No its the beautiful work of God. The goal of God for this illusion is to keep you in the illusion. God is good at what he does. The reason is so it can completely lose itself. It is the sole purpose of the dream - or any dream. This is a feature and not a bug. If everyone awakened so easily there couldn't be reality.

I think animals are awakened. What's their IQ?

@Razard86 because of our childhood and environment conditioning? Or also other reasons you think? Or umbrella term 'survival'. So awakened species doesn't wanna survive?

Such a species hasn't and will not exist. Perhaps an awakened species which feeds on sunlight or stones could exist. On planet Earth, survival has always been dirty and cruel. But that can change for the better when AI and robotics become advanced enough.

In the Book Conversations with God book 4 there was outlined 16 differences between awakened beings and non awakened humans. This can give a look at how awakened beings view morality. The 16 differences 1. An awakened species sees the Unity of All Life and lives into it. Humans in an unawakened state often deny it or ignore it. 2. An awakened species tells the truth, always. Humans in an unawakened state too often lie, to themselves as well as others. 3. An awakened species says one thing and will do what they say. Humans in an unawakened state often say one thing and do another. 4. An awakened species, having seen and acknowledged what is so, will always do what works. Humans in an unawakened state often do the opposite. 5. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concepts that humans refer to as “justice” and “punishment.” 6. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concept that humans refer to as “insufficiency”. 7. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concept that humans refer to as “ownership.” 8. An awakened species shares everything with everyone all the time. Humans in an unawakened state often do not, only sharing with others in limited circumstances. 9. An awakened species creates a balance between technology and cosmology; between machines and nature. Humans in an unawakened state often do not. 10. An awakened species would never under any circumstances terminate the current physical expression of another sentient being unless asked directly by that other being to do so. Humans in an unawakened state often kill other humans without that other human requesting them to. 11. An awakened species would never do anything that could potentially damage or harm the physical environment that supports the members of the species when they are physicalized. Humans in an unawakened state often do so. 12. An awakened species never poisons itself. Humans in an unawakened state often do so. 13. An awakened species never competes. Humans in an unawakened state are often in competition with each other. 14. An awakened species is clear that it needs nothing. Humans in an unawakened state often create a need-based experience. 15. An awakened species experiences and expresses unconditional love for everyone. Humans in an unawakened state often cannot imagine even a Deity who does this, much less do they do it themselves. 16. An awakened species has harnessed the power of metaphysics. Humans in an unawakened state often largely ignore it.

In the Conversations with God Book 4 there is a section that talks about the 16 characteristics of Highly Evolved Beings. Here is a link that talks about it. Scroll down to the bottom to see them. https://www.countdown2contact.org/awakened-species/

Right, it's really about strategic positioning because anyone will fall into a trap and be easily lured when they are very, very, very desperate. Like if you're broke and you have no money, yeah, you're going to be lured into all sorts of shady business deals. And if you're in this position where you haven't been socializing, you've been playing video games your whole life, living in your mother's basement, yeah, now you're in such a desperate position for sex that you're going to be tempted and lured in by all sorts of shady sexual schemes and offers. So, it is about positioning yourself strategically such that you're not in these kind of compromised positions. Then, of course, you can't avoid all of them, but you do the best you can. See, as you get trapped, you get more desperate, and as you get desperate, your options get worse, trapping you in even more. And it's sort of this negative vicious cycle. This can be sort of a cycle of addiction, like maybe you were abused as a child and you got traumatized, so that's already made you kind of desperate, emotionally vulnerable and so forth. And that makes you, of course, now, because you don't have a healthy emotional state, now that makes you susceptible now to intoxicants and drugs, and you start with a bit of alcohol, then you move on to weed, then you move on to cocaine, then you move on to heroin, you see? And this gradually makes you more and more and more desperate over time. And then, you know, when you're at the bottom of that spiral, you're so desperate that it seems like you have no way out. And in that case, what you need to do is you need to ask for help. You need to look for help from other people who are, you know, who can, who are in a good place in life such that they have abundant resources that they could help you because you're at the point where you've tapped yourself out. So, be careful about those kind of compromising situations that you can put yourself in. Traps are a mirror of our desires and fears. We fall into traps because they tap into something we crave or wish to avoid. Here's a quote that I'll read to you from an AI that I got from an AI. The Claw 3 AI says, "Traps are a mirror that reflect back to us our own psychological and emotional landscape." I thought that was a especially eloquent beautiful way of summarizing this whole thing. Here are some exercises that you can do that will help you to get a better handle on traps and to avoid traps. The first exercise is write down a list of 10 traps you've fallen into in your life in the past and then ask yourself what led you to fall into each trap. What did you learn from each trap? And importantly, in what way were these traps ultimately a gift? Don't forget that traps are not just purely negative things unless they're catastrophic, but even some of the catastrophic traps honestly can also ultimately be converted into gifts, and your ability to do that, your mental resourcefulness to do that is a very powerful skill. And maybe that deserves an episode all on its own, how to reframe this kind of negative stuff. In fact, I need to do an episode on reframing. That's powerful. And here's another exercise for you. Write down a list of five traps that other people who you know have fallen into. Friends, family members, romantic partners. And then ask yourself what led them to fall into these traps and how will you avoid falling into those traps? And then, here's an extra powerful question which is, what traps am I specifically susceptible to? What traps does my unique personality and life situation expose me to? Because you see, we're all quite different. We have different consciousnesses, different levels of development, different genetics, different personality types, different strengths and weaknesses. And that of course influences what kind of things we will be lured in by and susceptible to. So, you have to not just know about traps in general but specifically what kind of traps you're vulnerable to. Some people are much more vulnerable to alcoholism than others, genetically. You have to know that about yourself. If that's true for you, maybe some people can just go out and drink every night, and they're not vulnerable. But you're vulnerable, so you can't do that. However, you may have other advantages that those people don't have. Here are some meta-traps, very high level traps: Thinking that you're immune to a particular trap. For example, telling yourself, "Well, I would never join a cult; I could never join a cult because I'm too intelligent." Of course, that makes you more vulnerable to joining a cult if you believe that. Thinking that you've escaped a trap. Sometimes there's a trap within a trap within a trap. You might think, "Well, I've already escaped this trap, Leo, so it's not a big deal." But you don't realize that there's a deeper, more advanced version of that trap that you still haven't escaped. Watch out for that one. Especially true when you're getting into advanced spiritual stuff. You might think you've awakened to the max. But then, what you'll realize is that there's something beyond that. It's easy to overlook because you might think, "Well, I've escaped the ego; I've already awoken. So, what more could there be?" This kind of trap, in general, thinking that you're immune to self-deception, will be a trap. Criticizing, judging, and ridiculing others too much for falling into traps is a trap. Because the more you judge and criticize others, the harder it becomes for you to admit when you fall into traps yourself. Denying that you've fallen into a trap when you have is a big trap. If you can't even admit you've fallen into it, like if you can't even admit that you're doing some of the things listed above that are problematic, half the challenge is just admitting that you're doing some of these things honestly. Because you're going to be in denial about it, which is a trap. These traps can snowball and work together against you. Sometimes, you're not just dealing with one trap; you're dealing with multiple traps. For example, you're in denial that you're an addict, maybe using psychedelics but have turned it into an addiction now, and you're doing spiritual bypassing with psychedelics. If you ridicule others for falling into traps and you think they're stupid for doing that, automatically, that means you're going to think you're stupid for falling into traps. And you don't want to think you're stupid, so you're not going to want to admit that you fall into some of these traps. Sometimes, you can look like a real fool falling into one of these traps, like joining a cult. You might think you were just joining some sort of mild, good-mannered spiritual community, but it turned out to be a cult, and you were really fooled by that. But you don't want to admit that because you've been ridiculing others who joined cults. Another meta-trap is worrying about avoiding all the traps and getting paranoid about it, which will make you very risk-averse, get you stuck in your head, make you very indecisive, and then maybe you won't even take action because you are too afraid to fail and make a mistake, and you think that everything is a catastrophic trap, which isn't true. Getting paranoid about traps is itself a trap.