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Direct experience is a way of being, learning and becoming. It is a key to both personal growth and personal transcendence. Yet experience can also become a thought story that the mind and body becomes attached to. The ego loves to take ownership of an experience and personalize it. “Wow, I just had an amazing no dual experience. I am making great progress. I am at a higher level than that person now. This is what my mystical experience means. . . What my friend needs is a nondual experience like mine to help wake him up. My experience was more mystical than his experience.” . . . And on and on and on. . . I would say attachments / identification to personal experience is deeper than attachment / identification to impersonal theories. Yet they are inter-related.

I have tried all the typical advice (barefoot, nature, physical exercise, eating heavy foods, even crystals etc) but nothing seems to work. This has been a problem for me for far too long, it is a bottleneck in my personal development, if i meditate or contemplate or use psychedelics (for spiritual development), or even read, plan, use the computer/smartphone, clean up my diet (trying to be a fruitarian), i simply get TOO ungrounded, almost like losing touch with reality. The feeling is like seeing life by looking through binoculars, reality seems impersonal, detached, like it isn't even happening to me. At first it was super scary, i thought i was losing my mind (i have lots of mental disorders history in my family), now i got kind of used to it but i feel too disconnected with the world, it is hard to relate with anyone, it is hard to commit to anything, super hard to focus, be disciplined, decide what to do with my life, it feels extremely overwhelming. I live constantly spaced out, "airy", distracted. I have to say that i have a comfortable life, live by myself, unemployed (my family pays for everything), no schedule or obligations, no challenges that i don't impose to myself. I feel that this aggravates the problem, i am in the Limbo phase, trying to develop a vision of my life purpose and follow it. This is my whole focus right now, following my life purpose and make a career out of it, super bold life changes, i am considering to sell everything and travel by my own, put myself in challenging situations in order to ground myself, force myself to keep engaged in life. In the Life Purpose Course Leo talks about how a life purpose can ground oneself to reality and i believe him, i get the concepts but it is all too overwhelming, i am having lots of trouble in planning and being strategic with it, i am too in my head all the time. ps: I have noticed that some of my family members diagnosticated with mental disorders are, in fact, extremely ungrounded, too much in their heads, losing touch with "reality".

Some people treat feelings as a barometer of the group's well being. These people treat them as means to connect with others and understand them by 'becoming' them (empathizing), or 'influencing' them (harmonizing). On the other hand, some people are driven by feelings and become individualistic. Paradoxically, this individualism can be a bonding factor, but this bond is expressed through giving space. When you love yourself and your interests diverge with another person's, then this divergence is not laced with hate but with compassion. You understand that the other person loves himself too and only does this because he has to. We don't choose what we feel towards others, so in this sense, we're all victims of this disagreement. This conflict becomes impersonal in the sense that it is not about me, but about each of us trying to cope with harshness of the world to the best of our abilities. If we're fortunate enough, our abilities let us solve problems through cooperation, or compromise and violence becomes the last resort. If I truly love myself and am able to connect with others, the interest of the group becomes a factor in my well being, so it's only natural that I care about them as well. Loving yourself is just as valid in spirituality as loving others.

I’m not talking about more analysis and and constructing more complex understanding. I agree that inner work is unique to an individual, yet empathic understanding can reduce the restriction of the uniqueness to the individual. If I wanted to learn to play the guitar and arrived to the first lesson and noticed a dog training session going on, it probably won’t be very helpful. They tell me “you need to do Inner Work with your relationship with your pet dog to form a deep connection with your dog”. That is all fine and dandy, yet I don’t even have a dog and I’m looking to learn to play the guitar. I would realize that I went to the wrong room, politely end the conversation and then continue to look for the guitar lesson room. If I go to the next room over and find the guitar master he might tell me “You need to do some Inner Work with your relationship to the guitar and limiting beliefs that you can’t play the guitar”. Now that Inner Work would be helpful. My comments were not directed at you. They were general, impersonal comments. What you raise about belief systems and anti-belief systems is interesting to me. It’s a form of a duality that is great for exploration. I will likely ponder that as the day goes on ?

@CreamCat I don't know what exactly self-actualization contains without making up a definition. I listened to the .... original audiobook from Maslow sometime ago and the pyramid is explained everywhere. The point is with... spiral dynamics at stage yellow it is a different kind of political anger, it is more of intense indignation about the political situation(which is more impersonal it's not an anger which involves ones idea of one self for instance imo), values etc. It's not a psychological rant to reduce stress by cursing. The whole point about devilry is that that a devil in zen is everything that stands in your practice so theoretically, everything is a devil. My homework assignments, my schedule, my family, my cat, social media, internet, ted talks etc. Yet, it is also practice in a sense that if ones want ultimately to become the ... ultimate atman, brahman or god then it has to be in daily life and every second to some degree, otherwise it's fragmented. No way, that is going to happen. That is why I disliked church I grew up agnostic/Catholic. Then I read in a book that going to a church or religious event let's say increase serotonin and oxytocin, so bla bla you feel more bonded to others. Singing in a group and doing group activities. No, it's not self-actualization in the sense of becoming a greater version of one's self. Personal growth, fulfillment, success, happiness, health, wealth, inner freedom, luxury w/e. The point I want to make is, that I would not understand what you would regard as proper knowledge for self-actualization. Yet, I am highly curious. Because I've been listening to mostly advanced teachings and have to get the fundamentals in place, in order to grow more. What I've been doing or started doing only this year more. For instance financial situation, yet there are just things I can't do poop about, so I want to work on other parts.

Yes, but Green is still not thinking about it systemically. Green is mostly doing it from her heart. That's all great, but it is not the kind of full-bore systemic thinking I described. Green is still looking at the situation from a personal agenda level, it just so happens that saving the Earth is now part of her personal agenda. Yellow and above is more impersonal. And yet still very personal! Tier 2 is more detached.

There is an underlying dynamic here your mind-body doesn't seem open to observing. On a personal level, I think the storyline your mind is immersed in has a point and value. Yet your awareness won't expand if it stays contracted within that storyline. This is an impersonal observation. If it is helpful, great. If not, ditch it.

Trip date: 3/29/19 Substance: 105 mg LSD (1 tab) Time of ingestion: 10:20 AM Location: Golden Gate Park, Lindley Meadow Duration: roughly 6 hours on an empty stomach I’m going to start by saying this... This was both the best day of my life and also being one of the most difficult. Fortunately, that was expected as a possibility... sort of. I want to note that I don’t advocate the setting and circumstances I was in to anyone else. This setting for this trip was what it was due to my current living situation and life circumstances. I went into this trip pretty nervous. However, after a call from a great friend (that I made on this forum), I felt a lot more relaxed. By the time I took the tab I let go of my expectations and intent for some super deep metaphysical trip. I actually went in wanting to have a very pleasant “ego-trip” and just go around Golden Gate Park and have a great time... Surprisingy, the opposite happened. I took an Uber down to Golden Gate Park near Polo Field, took the tab and then began walking around. Being that this was my first psychedelic trip and I personally have a notoriously low tolerance for pretty much everything (I’ve had a pretty solid Kundalini awakening and 3rd eye opening off 1 hit of a THC vape pen - don’t ask me how. I don’t know) I was definitely in that mindset of ‘waiting for something to happen’. It was a beautiful day, sun was finally out after weeks of rain and I found a log to sit by. I placed my bag down At about the 30 min mark I started noticing my natural curiosity was starting to come more online. I remember looking at the trees across from me in the distance and just looking at them. I noticed I became more curious each passing moment to the point of laughter. ‘Why this laughter?’ I wondered. Well, because I was become more authentic. My filter that keeps my natural curiosity down and depressed was starting to melt away. I then remember saying (and this became a phrase I continued to utter through the duration of the trip), “It’s just an amplification of what’s already so.” As soon as I said that, everything started to take off from there. This was the start of a massive buildup (for me relative to my ordinary consciousness and all other “glimpses”). As this trip progressed in the early stages I became so authentic and free from my normal character that I’m used to living in I felt like I imagine a lot of gay people do when they finally own their sexuality and live it. It was pure freedom. I honesty can say I’ve never had a more honest and authentic experience of what was truly so for me in my entire life. I realized that what honesty is is simply reporting what already so and authenticity is expressing what’s truly so. In order to truly own authenticity though, you have to know what it is that’s being repressed and also have overcome the massive filter I constantly have on... and that’s no simple matter. It took a whole tab of LSD to melt that filter to get out of jail. It was a feeling of “finally! You’re finally being real! You’re finally telling the truth! There you are!” I realized that one of the biggest obstacles towards true authenticity is fear. Simply fear. Fear of being disloyal to the facade because that facade was necessary and also has a lot of memories you are attached to... however... they’re not true and in order to be free you have to shed that armor and be vulnerable. It’s fear of being judged by others. I was looking at other people like a total spastic goofball but didn’t have an ounce of fear because what I was experiencing was what was true and that I could now love myself. I realized that you can only love when you truly accept and live what’s true. As my experience became more deeply authentic, I noticed found I was finding myself more and more in bi-lateral symmetry, something Martin Ball is known for truly emphasizing as a rule of thumb when taking entheogens (psychedelics) and embodying the nondual energy. I found that I literally couldn’t “violate” this symmetry so long as I wanted to stay authentic as I noticed that when I entered a-symmetries I wouldn’t enter into a dualistic point of view of subject-object relationship. When I broke bi-lateral symmetry, duality no longer was a concept, it became an inauthentic experience. I noticed the difference in the quality and state of mind between staying in bi-lateral symmetry as opposed to going into a-symmetry so I continued to sit down and stay in bi-lateral symmetry. The longer I stayed in bi-lateral symmetry the more I noticed a process of breaking down this “inauthentic energy” I was finding in my (subtle) body... checkout Martin Ball’s video on YouTube “Fractal Energetic Yoga” to know what I’m talking about and to see a little bit of what I was doing (whoever came up with that title needs to go into marketing). At the peak of purging my authenticity I started noticing something rather odd... the feminine in me came up. This promiscuous feminine aspect of my self cane up and boy did it come out. It wasn’t like some repressed gay side cams out but I feel flourishing of feminine side came out. It was such a release. I had both no idea that was there in yet at the same time it felt like something I was waiting to burst out all along. It was just some feminine aspect of my self it had a whole feminine sexuality to it too. At one point I just blurted out “God is soooooo sexy!” Lol After a plentiful amount of time processing and shedding my inauthentic character, I suddenly reached this weird and then staggering realization while laying on the ground... “it’s Infinite... it’s Infinite... I’M Infinite!” Tears came out. Tears of Love. Tears of Truth. Tears of fear. Tears. This realization was impersonal, personal, and transpersonal all that same time. It was a conflict because all 3 of those felt equally true at different moments. I started to truly realize what the word “yoga” or “union” really meant. It was hilarious. My mind was not dissolved at all though which, looking book 3+ weeks now, is kinda blizzare... at least to me. Rather, my conceptual mind was starting to became a visual interpreter for every realization even though these realizations were totally beyond the domain of mind. I started realizing the nature of perspective. I started to realize I was the cause of all the evil in the world, all the beauty in the world, the infinite creative potential of God. I realize the vital role of creation. I started to see that duality is the design and that it’s a necessary feature such that the results we have in this relative world are all necessary towards the next creation. I started to realize just the “out of control” function of cosmic creation moment-moment to the point I was both laughing with bliss and also felt my mind was going to explode because of the magnitude.I realize my Top (7) Values: Truth/Wisdom Love Consciousness Creativity Learning/Knowledge/Understanding Authenticity Beauty As these insights started to slow down I became much quieter to the point where I was totally still. I was started to reach the beginning of the come down and I was taking in what I had just realized. It dawned on me the responsibility that comes with the realizations I just had. Responsibility with a capital “R”. Not as a moral responsibility laid down my ego or some “other” but rather what it means and entails to truly live at the highest alititude of consciousness and what the required in terms of living in Truth, making life choices based off of the Truth, etc. I realized deep down I can’t just reject the world of form if I’m going to eventually live from the highest place of Truth and highest state of Consciousness. To deny the world is to deny myself because I literally am the world and everybody else. To deny Love of others is to deny Love of myself and to do so would be a lie and would be creating a shadow and would mean living in falsehood. I realized why sages do what they do and why they feel they “have to.” It’s not becaue they have some egotistical moral obligation. It’s out of Love of Truth and ironically, out of self-acceptance. Their identity is so cosmic that helping society and the world is no different than helping themselves. Feeding a starving boy in a sense feels the same as feeding themselves if they were starving. To not do so would be hurting themselves. I sat there stunned honestly nervous and asking funnily “Can I do this?” And then I remember a quote from Ralston when @Leo Gura asked him about the possibility of enlightenment, “who else could do it?” At that point I got up and started walking only to then realize that my phone was dead. I still was nowhere near sober but I was starting to really come down. This brought slight anxiety but nothing big. I decided it was best to find a coffee shop with an outlet where I could charge my phone. As I walked though, the more I felt other people. I felt all the staring from other people. I felt the hostile energy of cars racing and honking. I could feel the hate of so many other people. I started becoming ever increasingly self-conscious of how weird I probably seemed. As the LSD came down, the more I noticed how much I taint and ruin everything. I was aware of the more I felt worse, the more I projected onto other people. I felt like I was going crazy and going schizophrenic. I felt shame every time someone looked at me. I knew what was going on and that I was projecting and I was realizing that this is what a shadow is as it was happening. Though I knew what was happening I struggled keeping it together. I eventually found my way into a coffee shop which by that point I felt like I was truly losing my mind and to cap it off, the shop was full and no outlets were to be found. The emotional energy of everybody was so overwhelming I just kept projecting it out (internally - didn’t say anything). More frustration amounted. I just wanted to go home and call someone but couldn’t. I was trying to comfort myself but it was so hard. I realized just how much I ruin everything for myself. The hard part was that my mind was just getting more and more amplified the more the LSD wore off to a shocking degree. The distortion of thought was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I began walking for the next 4ish miles to the next coffee shop I thought of. It was rough. I was trying so hard to console myself without shitting on myself. The sad part was, this was what I was already doing inside of me. I just was never aware of it. I would have my hands on my knees I was feeling so overwhelmed exhausted by mind. I decided to keep trudging and stop feeling sorry for myself. I realized that this was par for the course and that yes, this wasn’t ideal. This is what I do but goddamnit I’m going to be fine. I can keep going. I even laughed a little bit about how distorted this same trip I got a taste of God as a bad trip. The more I kept going, the more I calmed down. I sat down, bought a sandwich, charged my phone, gave another friend on here a call and started feeling better. I learned a lot this trip. This was a truly full spectrum trip in every sense for me. I’m very happy I did a lot of listening and homework before ever doing psychedelics because having that frame alone for what was happening when it went South really was a big help in ways I can’t even put into words. Having in back of my mind that this was all perfectly normal really was the safety banklet I used to allow me to console myself that this was okay and I would be totally fine. I remember Leo said in the 10 Ox-Herding Pictures video when you first get a glimpse of the ox there’s thought of “we’re going to need a bigger boat...” And man is that fucking true. I realize a big part of that “bigger boat” for me is self-esteem and self-acceptance and development of my ego. My ego is fragile that I could see that the main reason my trip went south is because my ego is frail and fragile, as ironic as that might sound for so many people. Leo once used a lightbulb analogy that I think suits this experience well where it’s like you’re a puny little bulb being plugged into this ginormous high voltage wall socket and the moment you’re put in you burst. How true. I hate, deny, and am so ashamed of myself so much that my puny ego can’t actually tolerate and handle that amount of Love and Truth that I as God am. This has been a long post so I’ll wrap it up here. Thank you to @Robby for the pre-trip call, thank you @Sahil Pandit for being available to talk to as I came down, and thank you Leo. Thank you for everything. You’ve helped me find what I truly want out of life and show me a path of who I can truly be, avenues of potential I didn’t think were humanly possible, and showing me a path to find who I’ve always been. You can’t put a price on that. I don’t know you but I hope one day I get the opportunity in my life purpose to give you credit. And thanks to those of you on this forum who are genuine and have shared kind words of support in my past posts. To seekers: God is real... Trust me... I used to be a huge Marilyn Manson and Sam Harris fanatic LOL. As far as right now I am back in my ordinary ego. I’m about to embark in less than a month on a 4 month hardcore sales gig where I can earn up to $60k this summer which I’m currently preparing for. I’m currently doing self-esteem sentence completion work but still don’t feel any real difference despite having finished this first week of daily sentence completions. Self-esteem is hands down my biggest obstacle right now. My confidence, integrity, self-accepetance, work ethic is still extremely low. Still screw ups and mix ups in my day still set me off on huge emotional rampages internally where I tear myself apart and lose all hope. I’m trying hard to cultivate hope. I hope after this 4 month gig I will have enough money to not only move out for this first time (which is terrifying enough for me as it is) but can then go to some workshops and seminars to really work on building my self-esteem, get clearer on my life purpose, and also go to a full workshop with Ralston in the Fall. Despite all the inner turmoil, the faith is still there. I’m still here and I’m still standing. Thank God ❤️

What is Duality – Part 1 Leo's smile and laugh are beautiful! I don't think he cut for the whole 2.40 minutes of that lecture . . . Not my work. Copied and pasted from a Youtube User's efforts by the name of Ask Questions --- All human cognition is dualistic, which has enormous implications for all intellectual work, including science, philosophy, and culture. This two-part mini-series presents a detailed list of over 250 of the most common dualities and how they ultimately break down. “Every stick has 2 ends” 3 major groups Common dualities , scientific dualities , existential dualities. 250 common dualities All thinking is dualistic any intellectual activity is creating duality, we create dualities unconsciously Your own mind is creating these dualitistic opposing relative notions. What is the distinction between mind and world but a duality. We build our lives and societies and cultures on certain unquestionable duality which is very threatening to the ego. All science is dualistic, reality is dualistic. Your own mind defines and created these dualities and are not absolute where all dualities collapse. You're using your mind to create boundaries. Reality arises from denial of duality which itself is a category Dualities Up vs down Left vs right East vs west Soft vs big Forward vs backward Clockwise vs counterclockwise Long vs short Hot vs cold Weak vs strong Slow vs fast Smooth vs roof Odd vs even (is 0 even or odd , is 3.14...even or odd) Easy vs hard Empty vs full High vs low Decrease vs increase Heads vs tails Shallow vs deep Narrow vs broad Good vs evil White vs black True vs false Love vs hate Positive vs negative Should vs shouldn’t Right vs wrong Moral vs immoral Worst vs best *how much time spent debating Sad vs happy* you can’t have happiness without sadness Old vs new Young vs old success vs failure* how do you know something failed ? Reality vs fantasy Life vs death Good vs bad Science vs religion Man vs women Human vs machine Progress vs regress Pain vs suffering Thoughts vs feelings Foreground vs background Useful vs useless* if you didn't need to survive nothing would be useful you wouldn’t even need uselessness when things become useful other things become useless Essential vs not essential Inefficient vs efficient Boring vs exiting Here vs there Near vs far Rich vs poor Normal vs weird Xx vs Xy* means nothing what is a chromosome? Why should we give importance to certain chromosomes? Wow. White vs black (race) Flawed vs perfect (absolute perfect) Straight vs curve Dark vs light Dirty vs clean Wild vs tamed Simple vs complex Wet vs dry Common vs rare\ Pro vs cons Up sides vs down sides Fair vs unfair (absolute fair how much do you complain about unfair? One being through all permutations * Winning vs losing Gain vs loss Fake vs genuine* Fiction vs nonfiction fearful/Cowardness vs bravery Slave vs master Superficial vs profound Abstract vs concrete General vs specific Growth vs decay * how much do you chase never ending growth whatever goes up must come down Agitated vs calm Arrogance vs humility* humble people were once very arrogant usually when you were young, you becoming humbled by your arrogance from self reflecting and get sick of your own arrogance War vs peace Violence vs peace * it's only possible to have peace through war and violence (long term design is absolute and absolute peace striving for greater unity Personal vs impersonal* both Innocent vs guilty Past vs future* Happened vs will happen Confused vs clear Capitalism vs socialism vs communism Conservative vs liberal Legal vs illegal Criminal vs non criminal Criminal vs police Terrorist vs not terrorist* who can say who is and who isn't a terrorist Hero vs villain Journey vs destination Ruler vs ruled Ugly vs beautiful Masturbation vs sex Art vs non art Discord vs harmony Student vs teacher Child vs adult Healthy vs unhealthy Product development vs marketing Biology vs chemistry Civilized vs uncivilized Spirituality vs politics Church vs state Important vs unimportant Mother vs father Democracy vs tyranny Sober vs intoxicated Beginning vs end Needs vs wants Pain vs pleasure Individualism vs collectivism Primary vs secondary Thought vs feeling Theism vs atheism Consistent vs inconsistent Extreme vs moderate attraction vs repulsion Contraction vs expansion Dominant vs submissive Popular vs unpopular Mainstream vs niche Gross vs subtle Incremental change vs revolutionary change Status quo vs change Stable vs unstable Temporary vs eternal * Addition vs subtraction Addiction vs non attached (added my own) Work vs play Content vs context Closed vs open Local vs global Minimum vs maximum Lender vs borrower Buyer vs seller Entrance vs exit Like vs dislike Ignorance vs wisdom Emotional vs rational Functional vs dysfunctional Employee vs employer Sexual vs nonsexual Leader vs follower Victim vs abuser a lot of times the victim is an abuser somewhere else Predator prey Us vs them People vs corporations Private vs public Competition vs cooperation Safety vs danger Drugs vs psychedelics Mediocre vs excellent Implicit vs explicit Culture vs cults Ordinary vs extraordinary Serious vs playful Cat vs dog Scientific dualities Mind vs brain Energy vs matter You can distinguish these things but just realize you are the one creating these distinguishes Existential duality Existential duality are dualities most people don't want to question Fundamental law of epistemology All dualities are fundamentally untenable and temporary all dualities are relative and must eventually collapse. Corollary; dualities only holds when they are not deeply explored the deeper you explore any duality to its ultimate route what you will discover is that the further away you get from the edges of this duality you will see it collapse and the edges will bleed and circle back around in a unity and the entire time the duality was defined in terms of one another. Authenticity is absolute start self reflecting be weird ,stop looking in the mirror, and stop laughing at people. move yourself into integration

Hopefully I look better in dream than I do in pixels You're telling me some of your life, but not all. One thing you have to remember is to not talk too much about your own life or direct experience and to stick to just repeating what you heard from the last video you watched. It is called impersonal development after all

There are a lot of different usages of the term enlightenment and I generally try to avoid that term because people have so many preconceived ideas about it. Regarding spiral dynamics, this would be within Turquoise. As more beings evolve into Turquoise, more distinctions within Turquoise will be drawn. There will be various levels within Turquoise. This could also be considered different levels of awakening. At the trans-personal level, there is impersonal awareness of the personality structure. I'd say generally a person reaches this stage within themself. Then, there is realization that this applies to other beings as well. I'd say this is currently a very high level of consciousness. In the future, it may be an average level of consciousness. The next one higher is even rarer. Imagine there is trans-personal awareness in a mind-body. That awareness may be detached from the personality impulses that arise in the mind. Through that mind-body there may be lots of ideas about what enlightenment is. There is no person to be attached to it or take ownership of it. This can arise at times on the forum. Yet it is still at the human level of consciousness. There is still human attachment and human identification. All those profound ideas are contextualized at the human level. There is a subconscious assumption at the level of the human mind. For any description of enlightenment, go explain it to a frog or a rock and see how it goes. Can a frog or rock be enlightened? That is a question that challenges the human level of consciousness. . . This also illustrates how low of a level the intellect, thoughts and language is. There is no way a human could explain any form of enlightenment to a frog or rock. Yet what about higher modes of being? Let's expand our idea of empathy, intuition and energetic modes. Is there a way that an essence of enlightenment could be expressed between human and frog via some type of empathetic or intuitive channel? Hmmm, here I'm no so sure. Now we are entering trans-human levels. At the trans-personal level the idea "that person is enlightened" no longer applies (since we are one level higher than the person) At the trans-human level the idea "that human mind-body is enlightened" no longer applies (since we are one level higher than the human). I'm not saying implying one level is "right" or "better" than another. It is just different levels. For example, we could look at the level of an individual basketball player, the level of the basketball team, the level of the basketball conference, the level of the national NCAA basketball organization etc. No level is "right" or "better". The problem arises when there is lack of awareness of levels and people start believing things like "that player is basketball". No, that player is within the sport of basketball. The sport of basketball includes that player, yet it also includes basketball teams and conferences. Similarly, I would say enlightenment includes the trans-personal level, yet also the trans-human level as well as higher levels. At this point, there is awareness and beingness at the trans-human level beginning to flow through my mind-body. I don't have any solid direct experience with any higher levels, maybe a glimpse - yet my baseline level is only high enough to integrate entry-level trans-human awareness and I have only scratched the surface at this level.

In Talks on Beelzebub's Tales, Bennett distinguishes four types of suffering - Unnecessary Suffering, Unavoidable Suffering, Voluntary Suffering and Intentional Suffering. The first is Unnecessary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we incur because of our unreasonable attitudes and expectations towards others, from our ill-will, hatred and rejection of others, from doubt, possessiveness, arrogance and self pity. In other words, suffering arising from our self-importance. The second is Unavoidable Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that comes to us by accident or from events beyond our control, such as interpersonal conflicts, war, disaster, disease or death. Third, we have Voluntary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish a personal aim, such as an athlete who disciplines himself to win a race, or a student who labours to get good grades. And finally we have Intentional Suffering. According to Bennett, this would be the kind of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish an impersonal or altruistic goal, one that is directed more towards service to others or to the Work, and not for any personal gain. Bennett assumes that this is what Gurdjieff meant by Intentional Suffering.

Being a Human Being and Still Being the Absolute The development of consciousness has to do with living in this life from the perspective of the Absolute. The Personal Essence, the Pearl Beyond Price, has to do with being a human being and still being the Absolute. If you’re just the Absolute, you are not a human being. But you live in this world, you have a physical body and a mind, you have work and relationships. You need the Personal Essence in order to be able to live personally as a human being and still be the Absolute. So the development of the personal aspect has to do with integrating all of these things that are important for our life into the various levels of consciousness, and then into the Absolute. This is an actual process that has to do with the metabolism of the Absolute into the Personal Essence. Although it is rarely mentioned in spiritual literature, the integration of the person into the Absolute is vital because we live in the world and not in a monastery or cave. Integrating the person into the Absolute is more difficult than experiencing the Absolute. Integration requires that you deal with and metabolize your unconscious and your personal history. You have to really let all of the unconscious come out, to face all of your specific issues and areas of conflict and ignorance. Many traditions don’t care about integration but strive only to reach the Absolute. They don’t care about the personal life. The point for them is to know the Absolute and leave. In other traditions, and in our work, the point is to know the Absolute and live in the world as an expression of it. So how can you live a human life from the perspective of absence? That is the realm of development, change, and transformation within consciousness. Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 145 Development of Essence from Being Impersonal to Being Personal Unlike other aspects of Essence, this personal aspect (the pearl) goes through a process of development, growth, and expansion. Here the concepts of development and growth can be seen in their true and literal meaning. This true personality of the being is born, fed and nourished. It grows, expands, and develops in a very specific sense. It is really the development of Essence from being impersonal to being personal. Others might call it God becoming a human person, an individual. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 163 Experiencing the Pearl Beyond Price The pearl beyond price, the incomparable pearl, the personal aspect of Essence is central for many important reasons. It is actually the true essential personality. It is the person. It is experienced as oneself. When the individual finally perceives it, the contented expression often is "but this is me!" The sense is of oneself as a precious being. There is then a fullness, a completeness, and a contentment. It is as if the individual feels full and complete, realized. Nothing is lacking. No more search, no desire or wanting anything else. The person feels "now I have myself. I am a complete individual. I am full. I am fullness. I am complete. I want nothing else." Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 161 It is Possible to Experience Egoless Beingness Thus it is possible to experience egoless beingness, to be, as a substantial presence that is not a mental construct, and still live a human, personal life, in which love, work, knowledge, creativity and accomplishment make sense, a human sense. This true existence, this presence, this being beyond time that makes sense of human and personal life, is the Personal Essence. It is the reality of which ego is only a reflection. It is the truly integrated and developed human being. This is the beautiful presence that the traditional literature of work schools calls the “pearl beyond price.” The experience of universal impersonality of ultimate reality occurs when the separate individuality is transcended, when the separate individuality is seen not to be our true self. But this is the result of transcending the personality in its totality. Something different happens when we investigate the personality’s manifestations in more detail, exploring the hidden essential truth within it. The ego is a reflection of this true element of Being, the Personal Essence, and exploring the characteristics of the reflection can lead us to the reality being reflected. By isolating and understanding the elements of the false, we can begin to approach the elements of the real. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 32 Knowledge of the Incomparable Pearl is Rare The knowledge of the Incomparable Pearl and the process of its development is rare even in the most complete spiritual teachings, and the traditions that know it do not speak much about it. This is why the overwhelming impression one gets from most spiritual teachings is that the goal of spiritual work is the realization of impersonal Being or the realization of the Soul’s relationship to it (as in the Christian tradition.) The literature regarding the Pearl is sparse, and when it can be found, it is usually couched in metaphorical and symbolic language. Sometimes the language is more direct and descriptive, but it appears metaphorical to most people, because they lack the direct experience. The story, “The Hymn of the Soul,” in Chapter Eight, is an example. There are very few direct references to the Personal Essence in the literature, and these are found mainly in old books not in circulation. In this chapter we will describe some of those references; although they are rare, they tend to confirm and support our own understanding of the importance of the development of the Pearl. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 115 Relating Without Object Relations The Pearl beyond price can relate in a personal way without the need to activate past object relations. So its capacity is not only innate but also natural and spontaneous. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 172 Station of the Pearl The station of the pearl beyond price is so significant because it is not a matter of a state of consciousness or a state of being; it is rather the condition of the actualization of one's realization in one's life. Being becomes personal being, a complete human being living fully the life of objective truth. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 166 The Essential Structure that the Soul Develops as She Metabolizes and Transcends her Ego Structure The pearl can also be seen as the essential structure that the soul develops as she metabolizes and transcends her ego structure. Ego structure gives the ego-self the sense of being an autonomous and unique individual. But this structure is constructed through fixed mental impressions in the soul; hence it both dissociates her from her essential ground and limits her development because of its rigidity and fixation. The essential pearl provides the soul with a sense of individuality and personhood that does not depend on fixed impressions, but on spontaneously arising forms of essential presence that structure her experience of herself and give her the capacity to function as a person. The soul matures and transforms into a person of essence. However, the qualities and actions of this person are quite fluid and flexible and are objective responses resonant to the needs and inputs of the environment. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 223 The Pearl is an Ontological Presence The pearl is the real, complete, balanced, and rounded personality that psychologists believe they are talking about when they are discussing the ego. We must remember that the ego is a structure, or structured process, whereas the pearl is Essence, which means the pearl is an ontological Presence. We call it the Personal Essence because among all the essential aspects it alone is personal. It is experienced as having a personal flavor to it, in contradistinction to impersonal. All aspects of Essence, even love and kindness, are impersonal. But the pearl is personal. And this is its miraculous quality, totally unexpected and unfathomable. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 162 The Pearl is the Actualized Individuation of Your Soul When you are who you are, when you are just precisely yourself, you are your “point.” Just that. This has nothing to do with any qualities, functions, capacities, and skills you may have. It has nothing to do with your status in the world, and nothing to do with living this life in a body or not in a body. It is your nature. The Pearl Beyond Price is the connection between this genuine center and all the capacities, skills, and understanding that are a part of your growth as a human being. It allows your capacities, functions and accomplishments to develop in a genuine way as an outgrowth of your spontaneous unfoldment. It is the result of living in the moment, living in a way that is true to who you are. This is your genuine personal life, your own development, your own growth. The pearl is the actualized individuation of your Soul. So the personal essence is connected with your unique function, your unique work in this life. To actualize your particular unique work in this life means to be your personal essence. It is the essence of all that you have developed and integrated in your soul as you live a real life. Everyone is born with the true self, with the point. Although we feel that the point is unique in each of us, the quality of the point is universal. Then how do people become so different in their personal lives? This is due to the particular development of their personal essence. Diamond Heart Book Three, pg. 66 note: Almaas refers to the soul with the feminine pronoun 'she'.

I think you are giving too much weight to the intellect. I see being as one integrated system, including the intellect. Yet if I had to separate the modes of being, I would give roughly equal weight to each mode - empathetic, emotional, intuitive, intellectual etc. However, I think most personality constructs identify most strongly with the intellectual mode, followed by the emotional mode. I would say thoughts and feelings are integrated. When the intellect and emotional modes are at odds, mind-conflict tensions and neurosis can arise. It seems like your intellect wants to be in charge and wants to run the show. Nothing wrong with that, yet it doesn't need to be that way. There have been studies showing how the intellect can influence the body. For example, thinking of positive experiences in stressful environments can reduce stress hormone levels. Yet there are limits. if a body is being burned alive in a fire, thinking it isn't real won't do much imo. As I've said many times, I think beingness is an integration of many modes of being - including the thinking intellect. So I would say most beings are in ignorance of the dream realization due to dynamics within the intellectual (thinking), emotional (feeling), empathetic modes etc. Becoming aware of the delusions of the intellect is the first level. In consciousness work, nearly every human body first has awakenings within the intellectual system because this is the system most identified with. Many will stop here. Once the intellect is transcended, the next level of exploration is generally within the emotional modes of being, which in part includes experiences. Imo, this is much more advanced. Most mind-bodies will want to stay immersed exploring the intellectual mode, which is of no surprise since they identify most strongly with the intellectual mode. I'd estimate only about 2% of conscious seekers that have mostly transcended the intellectual mode have also transcended the emotion/heart mode. A good example would be Ken Wilber. As a minor point of clarity: rather than saying I am at a high level - I think it would be more accurate to say that the self construct in my mind body has dissolved to a great degree. I'd estimate about 70% or so. The personality still re-appears and there are delusions - especially when interacting with other personalities. Self dissolution can be both beneficial and problematic when trying to relate to other beings without immersion in the self. As you said, sometimes I see someone immersed in a common personality dynamic and I have to think back and remember what that was like. So at the personal level, I think you are right. There are times when there is a disconnect - I am viewing things at a trans-personal level, while they are at a personal level. For example, I often express observations that are completely impersonal that people take personally. For example, I may express an observation of an insecurity dynamic occurring in someone. This would be no different than expressing an observation that an ant is crawling on their arm. Yet often humans will take the insecurity observation personally and get all defensive. I have to think back when I used to do that. These days, that only happens in my mind-body about once a month. I don't believe every physical or mental illness or disorder is due to past traumas. Yet I do think past traumas are one variable that contributes to many mental/physical disorders. This gets into some complex integration of the timeline, the Now, the individual mind-body and the collective mind-body. I don't think one can separate each of those components. Can something arise independent of one of those features? Perhaps, yet that gets into some deep metaphyscial realms that go beyond the intellect. Here, I think we need to be careful with a phrase like "no apparent reason". Quite often something arises. To the human, it may seem like "no apparent reason", yet that might just mean we are not aware of underlying mechanics that give rise to that appearance. Again, I'm saying trauma is one variable in an integrated system. There can be many variables. For some conditions certain variables are huge risk factors, for other conditions each variable is a minor risk factor. For example, a mutant allele for the Huntington gene will lead to a neurological disease. That is the only variable. If a mind-body has this mutant allele, there is a 100% chance they will have the disease. There has never been an exception. In contrast, we know of about 40 variables that contribute Schizophrenia. Each variable only slightly increases the chance of schizophrenia by about 1-10%. Some mental conditions involve few variables, others are complex. Disorders like OCD, ADD, anxiety disorder, PTSD are complex and have many variables. I agree here. There are physical conditions in which awareness doesn't help - at least not at our current understanding. For example, someone who has suffered a spinal cord injury and becomes paralyzed. Medical stem cell treatment can restore some function. Yet, awareness and meditation has no effect in curing paralysis - maybe in the 100-200 years it will. Other conditions, like neuroses and chronic headaches can be often be cured through awareness, meditation and self healing visualizations. Yet it's not either / or. Consider something like PTSD - I think this is a case where a combination of medical and awareness treatment is beneficial. Awareness of underlying psychological dynamics can release. Yet as I mentioned, PTSD is also a brain injury. The genetic architecture in the brain is restructured. At this point, it doesn't look like awareness can reverse the physical alterations. I think it has potential to do so, yet this is some VERY high level awareness in which awareness is entering the brain and physically altering the chemical properties of specific target DNA sequences. This is a higher level than Deepak Chopra. I've caught glimpses of this potential, yet I'd say we are at least 100 years away from this level of awareness therapy.

The below comments are general impersonal comments about the idea presented above. The below comments are not directed at the OP. The misunderstanding is due to an idea of enlightenment on the personal level. In this idea, there is an association between enlightenment and the personality. The question above challenges that association and allows the opportunity to transcend a level, if the self can let go of it's attachment to its idea of enlightenment. The trap here is to try and answer the question on the same personal level it was asked. Yet to answer the question, we must venture to higher levels. . . Enlightenment is not at the level of the person. It even goes beyond trans-personal and trans-human. At the trans-personal level the question "If Osho was Enlightned why did he end up addicted to drugs?" is the same as asking "If Alan Watts was enlightened, why did Osho end up addicted to drugs?". What I did here was to break the association of enlightenment as being on the personal level. At the trans-personal level, the two questions are equal. However, the psychological self will have a very difficult time surrendering to this because the self wants to keep the idea of enlightenment at the personal level - because at this level it is something the self believes it can attain. For those of you with direct experience at the trans-personal level, let's venture up another level. . . Some human minds have become aware of the trans-personal, yet are still attached to humanism. That is, enlightenment is not attained by the illusory self, yet it is attained by the human mind-body. This is deceptively sneaky. At the trans-human level the question ""If Osho was Enlightned why did he end up addicted to drugs?" is the same as asking ""If Osho was Enlightened why did the 1989 San Andreas earthquake occur?". What I did here was to break the association of enlightenment as being on the human level. At the trans-human level, the two questions are equal. However, the human mind-body will have a very difficult time surrendering to this because the human mind-body wants to keep the idea of enlightenment at the human level (the psychological self also sneaks in to contribute to this dynamic). One more. . . let's break the idea that enlightenment is something that occurs within the timeline. . . Here, the question "If Osho was Enlightned why did he end up addicted to drugs?" is the same as the question"If Osho was Enlightened, why did my cell phone battery just die?". What I did here was break the association of enlightenment with the person, human and the timeline.

I know the question is very open ended. I'm not asking how you would change the specifics of your country's legal code. I'm asking how to improve people's sense of justice. How to improve forgiveness. How to reduce the tendency to hold grudges. How to change society from a rigid organization aimed at tyrannical efficiency, to an adaptable one that is based on improving people's lives and alleviating their actual grievances, rather than exacting impersonal revenge. Here's an example. One could reduce the number of superfluous laws by mandating a review for every law after every 5 years. If laws are not passed after this period, they would be automatically rejected. Another example, and this is hardly an novel idea. You can alter prisons in such a way, that when a person is released after having server their term, their overall livelihood would be improved. For example by teaching them practical skills, and turning their prison terms into paid but mandatory jobs.

If it is neuronal death, it's dead and irreversible. For example with spinal cord injuries or exposure to highly neurotoxic chemicals like methamphetamine. Neuronal damage can take many forms. The healing potential depends on the type of damage. For example, a neuron can suffer loss of neurites - these are neuronal extensions that communicate with other neurons. As well, there can be loss of neural plasticity - this is the ability of neural networks to rewire to allow learning and new perspectives. Neurotrophic factors stimulate the formation of new neurites and increase neuronal plasticity, yet we haven't developed effective ones that can cross the blood-brain barrier. Recently psychedelics have been shown to act a neurotrophic factors in cell culture and in mice. They are part of a new class of molecules referred to as psychoplastogens. . . As well, meditation has been shown to increase grey matter. For example, in a region of the brain associated with empathy. Even people that had never meditated in there life showed increased grey matter after eight weeks of a meditation program. This grey matter increase represents formation of neurite extensions and is reflective of enhanced abilities. For example, the new meditators showing increased grey matter would be correlated with an increased ability of empathy. Regarding the creation of new neuronal cells. . . Differentiated neuronal cells have exited the cell cycle and no longer divide. There are a very small number of adult neural stem cells that have the capacity to re-enter the cell cycle and create new neurons. Yet, we currently do not understand this mechanism. There has not been a lot of research regarding the effect of releasing emotional blockages on neural health. I think this is a wonderful area of research to explore. I believe this is an unexplored region for two reasons: First, releasing emotional blockages is still within the areas of psychological therapy, meditation, yoga, reiki etc. Neuroscience is still contracted within a reductionist and materialist paradigm. They are expanding, yet it is slow. Second, I believe science has become more and more influenced by corporations and capitalism. Most research funding is dominated by utility. What scientific gadget can we create and profit off of? What profitable new drugs can we develop? Even nonprofit academic research institutions are restrained by this. Studies involving the neuroscience of meditation, emotional blockage release, reiki etc. just aren't profitable and aren't funded. Hopefully as the collective consciousness increases, so will this type of funding. In particular from highly conscious wealthy donors. This would depend on our definition of "trauma" and "real". I am using the term trauma in a holistic perspective that includes both the immaterial energetic systems and material systems. To see if we are using the term "real" in the same context. . . Imagine a person is being chased by an aggressive dog. The person's mind is hyper alert. There body is breathing heavily and filled with hormones creating stress. Would you consider that heavy breathing and that hormonal stress response the body is experiencing as being "real". I do. And if we agree that it is real, then I see no way that one can conclude that traumatic experiences have real effects that can persist for years. I think we may be using different usages of the term trauma. If you could explain how you are using the term trauma it would help me. I am using the term to include both the immaterial, such as energetic systems (chakras, energetic blocks, meridians, intuition etc) as well as material biological systems (neurotransmitters, hormones etc). Together, they would yield mind-body sensations referred to as anxiety, panic, stress and terror. I think an integration of both immaterial and material is necessary for a holistic view of trauma and removing one would yield an incomplete perspective at the human mind-body level. I don't see "enlightenment" as a thing and I don't see a "you" in enlightenment. I don't see a path to "enlightenment" because there is no place for a path to lead to. The One Everything/Nothing does not have any separation. I see psychedelics as a powerful tool to expand one's consciousness. Imagine going from the conscious level of a mouse to that of a human. Psychedelics can greatly expand human consciousness beyond the ordinary state. Psychedelics can also produce whacky nonsense and I don't think they are effective for a mind-body until that mind-body has reached a certain conscious level. In particular, I think the mind-body needs to develop a grounded "observer + object" stage. If not, the psychedelic trip is often recontextualized in a way that is counter-productive to consciousness expansion. I would consider both sober experiences and psychedelic experiences to be enlightenment, since there is no escape from enlightenment. I think trying to manipulate with pills is a contracted view that is counter-productive. It is trying to isolate one component of an integrated system and manipulate that component. This is a highly limited view that does not consider the holistic view, including the energetic systems I mentioned above. If I was to develop research and treatment plans, I would only place about 5% of my resources in pill development and usage - and this would only be temporary to help allow more holistic healing. 95% of my focus would be outside of pills and medication. There are much richer and more productive areas to explore. Neuroscience is associated with pills and medications, yet it is beyond that. The strength of neuroscience is observation of the physical realm and how the nonphysical impacts the physical. For example, FMRIs and EEG brain scans can help us develop treatment plans for a person. A person could consider both their subjective experience of meditation, yoga, reiki etc. with brain scans revealing physical activity. I think a major deterrent in progress is separation. I see so many divided camps. There are the neuroscientists, reiki masters, yogis, exercise enthusiasts, psychologists etc that are all in their own camps defending their own views. It is all inter-related. It is holistic. Imagine a Reiki master of energetic systems that is also a neuroscience master. She does Reiki and uses real time feedback of intuition, empathy, energetic sensations and EEG feedback. Or a healer that integrates psychotherapy, Reiki, yoga, mediation and brain scans. Whatever tool is appropriate, or a combination of tools. I think it's a deterrent to categorize things as this and that and insist that my tool is better than yours. It's like a carpenter that will only use a hammer and is anti-screwdriver. Its absurd. There is awareness that my mind-body is being chased by an aggressive dog. There is awareness that the mind-body is running. There is awareness that the mind-body is experiencing stress and panic. Awareness does not remove the sensations of what is occurring in the mind-body. The mind-body is still running and experiencing stress and terror. Quite often, higher level awareness can help relax the mind-body and help dissolve anxiety, yet not necessarily. At a trans-personal level, there is an unconditional peace and stillness in that higher-order awareness. Yet that is independent of the mind-body sensations. The mind-body could be experiencing relaxation, joy or terror and that higher-order stillness is present. Yet, that is not what I am referring to as trauma. I am using the term trauma in both a metaphysical and mind-body context. There is a still presence even if the body is undergoing trauma. One could make a distinction here and say from a trans-personal level that the suffering of trauma is not real, yet the mind-body pain of trauma is real. Again, we are using relative terms. Sure, if we remove distinctions then joy and trauma is transcended. And so is love, anger, frustration - whatever. To me, that is a different conversation above the human level. An interesting one yet different. It seems here we are talking at the human level of consciousness of experience. I would say acute trauma is an integrated experience of thought, feelings and energetics. I don't think one can reduce it to thought. I knew an 8 yr. old boy that was forced to watch his mother being brutally stabbed to death by his father. At the human level, that experience had widespread effects on that child - including memories and thoughts. Yet, not limited to that. His whole limbic system and HPA system was altered. His energetic systems of intuition and empathy were altered. I could feel it just being around him. Even if he wasn't thinking about memories of the event. You could remove the thoughts and memories and there would still be after effects. I don't see it in these dualistic terms. I don't think one can separate a within and a without. They are an integrated whole. I think higher-order awareness is very helpful for the mind-body, yet the stillness of higher-order awareness does not necessarily relieve the mind-body of the experience. If a mind-body was being beaten, would trans-personal awareness remove the pain of the mind-body? This is at the human level. At a trans-human level there is a still presence that transcends the mind-body experience yet does not eliminate the mind-body experience. This awareness can be help alleviate symptoms of the mind-body, yet not necessarily. One mentality I see over and over is that there is some thing called "enlightenment" that will remove one's ills. Panic, depression etc. The One Everything/Nothing includes everything. The idea that there is a thing called enlightenment that will relieve one's experience of pain is highly dualistic and at the level of the personality. The trans-human level includes the human mind-body and beyond. It doesn't care about the wants and needs of the self. That energetic motivation is at the level of the self. At the trans-human level of consciousness it doesn't matter if the mind-body is experiencing joy, pain, love, terror or whatever. It is an unconditional freedom. When you say you overcame OCD, that is at the human level. When you say "OCD" I am assuming you are referring to mental and physical symptoms commonly called "OCD". The physiological symptoms of OCD dissolved. Yet that has nothing to do with the trans-human level of consciousness. With that said, I think it is very important to have a healthy mind-body at the human level - that includes the dissolution of sensations such as OCD, depression, panic etc. The trans-personal level of awareness can help immensely with alleviating the symptoms of various neurosis. Yet I would not agree to the statement that neuroses are not real at the human level. This level is highly subjective. Right now, my mind-body is experiencing neck and shoulder pain. There is a higher-order awareness of this pain that is detached from the pain and does not identify with the pain. Yet, the pain is still present. From your perspective, are you saying the pain in my shoulder's and neck is not real? I think awareness can help relieve blockages and many neuroses, yet there are also structural problems. Awareness of leg paralysis won’t do much to restore leg functionality. Thank you. My mind is highly in tune with psychological dynamics and likes to deconstruct psychological dynamics. I try to do it in an impersonal way. Yet, it can often come across as overly-assertive and personal. It is not my intention, yet often the impact. It is something I am working on to be a more effective communicator. I appreciate your openness. Your English is excellent as a second language. These types of conversations can be highly abstract and nuanced. They are at an a very advanced language level. I speak Spanish at an upper intermediate level and there is no way I could come close to having this type of conversation in Spanish. Your ideas regarding trauma has led me to contemplate this and gain some greater clarity. For that, I thank you.

Yes, I understand there is a personality dynamic that believes it is simply speaking from personal direct experience. Yet there is an extrapolation of personal direct experience into broader truths that apply to others. This is a conflation of the relative with the universal. Once this was revealed in the thread, there was a shift in tone and an expansion of consciousness. The comments offered here are impersonal. They are not directed at you personally. They are observations of what appears to me as a common contracted mind dynamic that when deconstructed can lead to consciousness expansion. No it wasn't at all. The below statements are broad statements of application that extend beyond one's personal direct experience onto others. These statements are not limited to a personal experience. They are universal statements. They literally describe what trauma means for other people. Observe how a personal direct experience is extrapolated to apply to others. I am revealing that that is a very limited and contracted view. The exact opposite of your relative direct experience may occur in someone else's direct experience. Or hundreds of different forms than that of your own. Lack of awareness and acceptance of this relativity will restrain a mind within one limited perspective. In terms of spiral dynamics this is an absolute key in evolving from the Orange level to the Yellow level. Trauma is highly complex in relative terms and there is no objective statements of trauma that can be universally applied. As described above, severe trauma effects the individual and collective in various ways. For one person, trauma may end after the event and recovery may simply be letting go of memories. For another, trauma may have widespread effects. Memory may be just one piece of the puzzle. Multiple physical and nonphysical systems may be effected and the traumatic effects may persist for years. The person may be re-traumatized repeatedly. Traumatic effects can even be passed on to children. . . I am intentionally using terms like "may be" and "can be" to reinforce that this is not always the case. What may be good advice for one person may be horrible advice for another person. In the big picture, both research and direct experience matter. Their integration forms a more holistic perspective.

I'd be cautious with this idea. I think it has different meaning on two different levels, depending on the interpretation of "you". On the human level, the "you" implies a personal chooser, which can add pressure into the personality construct. That is, if I am creating all my fears and anxieties, then I have to make better choices and stop creating these fears and anxieties. This may provide a temporarily sense of personal empowerment and may be useful for personal development. Or, it could intensify fear and anxiety. I also think it would tend to restrain consciousness within the personality. As well, it can veer off into victim blaming. "It's all in your head. You are creating all your fear and anxiety". This can be counter-productive - for example someone who has been abused. I know that is not the intention of the statement, yet I can see how it might have a negative impact with those suffering at more immature stages of development. On the physical level. . . Mind-bodies that undergo childhood neglect and abuse have epigenetic alterations in the brain that change gene expression. For example, there is a gene that inhibits production of the stress hormone cortisol. Children that have undergone neglect and/or abuse often turn this gene off. As a consequence, stress cortisol levels are high. This is helpful in the moment as it can help the child deal with the situation. Yet this effect is seen for years, even decades - so that the person has chronically high cortisol levels (promoting anxiety) throughout their life. So from this perspective, I don't think it would be fair to say "You create your anxieties in the conceptual domain". These individuals have chronically high stress hormone levels throughout the day - regardless of whether they are conceptualizing or not. At a physical level one would need to epigenetically reformat their chromosomal and genetic structure. Science has not figured out how to do that yet and metaphyscially I think a mind-body would need to be at a very high conscious level to have that type of ability. This starts to get into Deepak Chopra heal thyself areas. On a post-personal level, I think it has a very different meaning. At this level, there is awareness of the personality,. There is detachment and disidentification with the personality and personal deconstruction has begun. Statements such as these are now impersonal. This gets into areas of healing oneself, e.g. Deepak Chopra realms. This is an area I've been exploring within my mind-body and I think there is enormous potential in this area of higher-order healing.

This is all within the personal level. What is being pointed to is at a post-personal level. The “you” and “me” has no relevance in this domain. There are appearances of thoughts and ideas, yet nothing to take ownership of anything as “mine” or “yours”. It is impersonal.

What is God? Part 2... FAQ -Are you saying that I Am part of God or that I Am God? You are God and part of God, it depends what you define “You” as in that sentence. If you think of yourself as a biological creature that was born, the ego mind, that you, is part of God, the deeper you, the one you will discover through practice, that thing is fully God. When you are fully awake, you realize that you are the whole of God. That’s radical statement that exoteric, orthodox, religious teachings do not tell you, but it is the case. When you first realize God, you might experience that you are a part of God but not yet realize that you are the whole of God, that requires doing more work. -If I Am God, why Am I not experiencing it or feeling it? God is a trickster in his very nature, because trickery or illusions is the substance of reality. Reality is possible when you imagine that it’s possible and you believe in it in a sense, you have to trick yourself to experience reality in the solid physical way the way you do. In fact you are experiencing God right now. When you are born as a human being, you mistake God for this physical reality that you are in right now because of the sense of self, the ego that helps you to survive. You are in God all the time but you are not realizing because it is not important for your survival. The substance out of which everything is made is completely irrelevant to you in your everyday life, which is why you ignore it. There is nothing but God, you are not just conscious enough to realize this. -Why is God hiding from us? Why is God so tricky? For you to be born, you need to be born as a lie, as a deception. God is a shapeshifter, it is formless, pure potentiality and can materialize in all forms, it’s an infinite chameleon. The nature the Godhead is pure formlessness, pure potentiality. God is a shapeshifter, it’s difficult to spot because you confuse the form for a physical object. There is actually no difference between illusion and reality, this is how God creates, this is the very mechanism of the creation of anything. Appearance is reality, illusions is all you can have. What we call our physical world is constant never-ending process of forms emerging out of formlessness, like every word Leo is saying. The nature of creation must be tricky. -Why is God invisible? Isn’t that convenient? When you go to rock bottom to what is true, you have to accept what you find. It is actually highly inconvenient that God is invisible, because it makes it challenging but still possible to find it. You believe you are an observer inside the body… What is that observer? Isn’t it some invisible being…? Which of course is God… -Is God falsifiable? Is the Truth falsifiable? God is prior to science and the notion of falsifiability. Theories are falsifiable but God is not a theory, it is pure Truth. God is verifiable, not falsifiable. You can verify what Leo is saying. Falsehood doesn’t exit, only delusions exists. -Can you give me proof of God’s existence? No, it’s a personal journey that you go on, you have to cut through the illusions of social conditioning. It’s called Truth seeking, the spiritual quest, the “Hero’s Journey”. Don’t expect anybody to deliver it to you. God has the power to fully deceive itself and also the power to awaken. -Don’t you exploit the gaps of science? Science works to demystify reality, it succeeds to some extend, but it will never fully succeed because reality is infinite. In fact the more it tries, the more deluded it becomes. Take an apple cut in in half, you get more surfaces, cut in half, you get more surfaces and so on. There are always surfaces, but no substance to anything within reality. The substance of reality is nothing, the gap, the emptiness between the surfaces that unifies all the surfaces into a Oneness. -What do you mean with God is nothing? A nothing that exists and you can become conscious of it. An atheist and materialist have fully bite in to the illusion of physical reality, but also they also don’t recognize that reality is subjective and relative. There is no objectivity. Reality is however you hold it. There are no human beings, human being is the Universe being sentient of itself, God consciousness that you’ve confused for human beings, your parents, your friends are just figments of your imagination. Leo explains he had the traumatic insight that his parents never existed. Reality is alive, sentient and a-mechanical. The sentience, the aliveness that you feel, that is not yours, that’s the universe being alive and you are just a piece of that. That’s a big reframing of how you see reality. Reality is one spontaneous occurrence, therefor you can’t explain it through any mechanical process, it’s instant and direct. Atheists are also missing the importance of love, not recognizing that Being is Love. The physical substance of existence is made of love. Atheists don’t recognize oneness, they think of the world as being fragmented. But you are not really interfacing with the universe through perceptions, you are the universe. Atheists don’t recognize space/time, matter/energy, cause & effect, birth & death as illusions. You might say yes you know that time is relative and so on, but you are not conscious of that… they are all concepts. Atheists don’t recognize higher states of consciousness, and believe that everything can be understood from their currant state of consciousness. If you’d change that state of consciousness just a little bit, all your doubts, fears and concern would change! Science is completely contingent on your courant state of consciousness. Atheists don’t recognize that consciousness is not a by-product of the brain. Atheist don’t recognize science as limited. To understand God you got to use other methods. Can you prove that science can resolve every question? Atheists don’t recognize the existence of paranormal phenomena, at higher states of consciousness you can access various paranormal phenomena. The atheist doesn’t recognize that he as God has created himself. The atheist doesn’t recognize that all dualities and all knowledge he uses to understand the world is manmade or conceptual. The atheist doesn’t recognize that he is God. The atheist doesn’t see that reality has no limits. Outside the physical universe is infinity where anything is possible. -Can God be an hallucination or an illusion? You can trick yourself that you are conscious of God, but when you are conscious of God, that is unmistakable, you become conscious of God through no intermediary, not through language, symbols, perceptions, not even through experience. It’s direct. -Can God be a brain state?If you can experience God by taking 5MEO-DMT, doesn’t it prove that God is just a chemical? No, everything is consciousness, the 5MEO-DMT that you take is consciousness, consciousness interacting with consciousness. When you take 5MEO-DMT, you forget you ever had a brain and the existence of the universe, you realize that it is not brain state, not a chemical, not a neurotransmitter, it is God. God is absolute Truth, there is nothing like it and you whole reality collapses when you realize that. -How can you trust that psychedelics reveals anything true at all? This can’t be explained to you unless you take psychedelics in a sufficient dose that you have a breakthrough experience. You will say “oh that’s impossible!”, you got to stop trusting your mind of what is and what’s not possible. You cannot know what is outside the matrix when you are inside the matrix. -How can you be sure that you’ve been outside the matrix? To exit the matrix is to realize that there is matrix inside of another matrix inside of another matrix to infinity. To realize God is to realize that there is nothing but matrix within matrix. What you’re living right now is just hallucination and psychedelics show you that there is no other possibilities than hallucinations, a meta-truth. -Could there be something beyond God? Could God be part of a computer simulation? You are treating God a s a phenomenon, like seeing some alien. You can replace the word God with “everything” or “totality”, those terms are expendables and goes beyond itself forever, it’s the process of “beyonding” forever by definition. If you imagine something more is possible, you haven’t understand the notion of totality. A computer simulation is a very finite thing. They occur within God but God doesn’t occur within a computer simulation. -How do you know that the infinity you are talking about wasn’t generated by something else? God can only interact with itself. God has to limit itself for not being conscious of everything all the time. How do you play a chess game alone? It’s like playing chess alone with the right hemisphere of the brain running the whites, and the left hemisphere running the blacks. God tricks himself with false separations and generate the possibility of surprise. -Can God create a rock that he himself cannot lift? The Godhead is infinite potential, it can limit itself in forms, forms have limitations. -Can God destroy himself? Destruction is a concept that make sense within the roam of forms, but you cannot destroy the vacuum of empty space. It can destroy himself as incarnated versions like you, or as a star, it’s the fate of all forms, formlessness itself is the only permanent thing. -How do you know that your experiences of God are not confirmation bias of some stuff that you’ve read? When you have these absolute Samadhi experiences, all your conceptual knowledge flies out the window, you are in truth of it and this is self-validating. You can read about all human beings being unreal, when you have the experience of it, you won’t want to accept it, it is the opposite of confirmation bias. Leo never wanted God to be true, he studied ancient texts -How can you be so that you are right? Shouldn’t we be more humble with our truth claims? False humility is no virtue… Leo is just being honest. Absolute Truth is the nature of absolute Truth, wether you are conscious of it or you are not. If you are not conscious of it, you can’t understand how absolute truth can be possible. It’s a certainty, it’s not like scientific knowledge, you need to experience it to find out. To make the claim that we don’t know what God is a big agnostic mistake, because you are actually saying: we can’t know. -Is it possible to have a false experience of God? If so, how can you be certain that you haven’t misunderstood God? Yes it is possible, to have a false experience, but when you have awaken, you know what awakening is, but even so, you can trick and delude yourself, self deception is still occurring after your firsts enlightenment experience, this is why Leo is always crosschecking with other mystics and texts, continuously studying himself, and even so, he never claimed to be infallible, he is still open for recontextualisation of any kind. But the actual experience of God is not a self-deception. Certain lower degrees experience can be self-deceptive. -If God is all loving, how come there is so much evil in the world? Why is there so much suffering? There is no such thing as evil, it is a projection of your ego mind. From your point of view, you are a limited biological creature and you need to survive. What you call evil is what is threatening to your survival as a limited formed being within this larger universe, you are vulnerable to having your form radically changed… death. You believe suffering exists, because it is a mechanism within you that helps you to avoid dangerous situations. Without suffering, you wouldn’t be alive. When God incarnated itself, it makes itself limited, it obligated itself to play the game of survival which necessitates pain and suffering. From God’s perspective the world is perfect. It’s like looking at a horror movie from the audience point of view or from the point of view of a character of the movie itself. The goal is to not feel too much sucked in the movie. You can’t believe that this actually applies to your life, and it is the most important thing that there is, death is the worst thing there is, suffering feels so bad, you confuse all the suffering and the pain for reality because you are egotistical and selfish, you had to be to experience the universe at all. You are God caught in a bind. As human beings we are addicted to excitement, violence, horror, sex, food, suffering and pain. Secretly you don’t want to give up your suffering to be happy, if you did, you’d be awake a long time ago. -If God is all loving and good, how come he doesn’t care if we are murders, rapists and so forth? It’s because it is so all loving that it doesn’t judge. You as an ego, because you care about survival and have something to lose from it, you judge murder, rape, criminality and war as bad and wrong. You created an identity of being moral, good and upright, viewing yourself as a defender against all the bad guys. But you are full of hatred, you hate murder, rape and war… God loves it all, which is why they exist. This love is too radical for you, you are not ready to embody this love because you have way too much to lose, you have life, your children, your money, your business,…, to defend. You are not ready to be all loving. For you to be all loving, you’d have to be dead, you’d have to be the Godhead, not this incarnation as a human being… or you’d have to be conscious. -If God is all loving, why is it not evenly hateful? Evil doesn’t really exit, it exits only from the ego mind’s point of view. In a sense, God is evil and hateful, but it is doing it through humanity. God loves evil and hate so much that it doesn’t mind living through it as a human being. God wants to know what it’s like to be murdered, getting raped, being a slave or in concentration camp and so on. Hate and evil is visible only from a limited point of view. Do you think God created everything except murder and rape? He created everything included all the stuff you consider evil. It’s only evil from your point of view. -Is there a devil? If so, did God create evil? The devil refers to the mechanism of survival, the ego, separation, illusion and falsehood, not a red man with horns. You are the devil, the thing that is going to die is the devil. God created that, not only created it, but God is the devil. We are talking about oneness, totality. You cannot separate ego or the devil from God. Stage blue people in spiral dynamics looses it right here saying that the devil and God are polar opposite… If the devil exist, then it is part of creation, who created everything? God. The devil is God in disguise. God will incarnated himself into devilish forms, create selfishness and through that, God experience what it’s like to be a devil. -Why is mainstream religion so confusing, diluted and inaccurate? Why don’t they explain it in a straight forward manner? Religion is very tricky and you have appreciate where it comes from. It’s problematic to evaluate old religions from a modern perspective. There was no notion of science back then. They didn’t share modern values. How do spread the idea of God with very tribal people that are not scientifically minded, who don’t know how to read, ethnocentric and racist and so on, you will use a lot metaphors and analogies. This stuff was passed down often times as stories, not even written down. The people who wrote it down and passed it down hundreds of years after Jesus’s death , were not even enlightened. Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed were maybe enlightened but they didn’t have video recorder or even write any books themselves. Back then, what is good and bad what advanced stuff, you didn’t even had countries. The ego corrupts all these teachings. Countries and states, rulers and kings used religions to enroll the masses, justify their own rule, make war and so on… The problem with God is that it is such a personal subjective realization that you can’t spread it through mass means. Some fanatics will only believe the teachings, not doing the teachings by himself, wait until you are dead and then create a cult, an ideology. -Why do all the religions disagree so much? How do you know you study the text properly? They all agree with each other, if you look and study the text properly. You need direct experience, mystical experiences. When you have those, it becomes easy to sort the wheat from the chaff and to see the commonalities. The attitude to try to integrate religions is only a 50 to 100 years old notion. When you don’t see religions holistically, than a lot of surface disagreements will seem as though they run all the way down to the bone, but they don’t. -Isn’t religion responsible for most of the war and evil throughout history? Yes, but technology, capitalism too. People are very tribal, selfish wether they know religion or not -Why use the word God and not “reality” for example? Everyone believe they know what reality is. Whatever word you use, there will be a lot of confusion around it, people will find ways to delude themselves about it. The ignorant mind can’t help to be ignorant. -Why do different religions have different visions of God? Reality is one giant mind that uses different kinds of symbols. Even scientific understanding that you might think is literal, is actually symbolic and metaphoric. Your mind needs to make sense of the formless in a formed way. So the christian will have his vision with a vision of Christ and vice versa with a moslem, a Hindu, and also as an equation for a scientist. Your understanding of God is going to be filtered through your culture. -Aren’t you stealing ideas from eastern religions? No, but the eastern teachings are less corrupt than the western teachings. No culture has a monopoly on God or the Truth. -Buddhism and hinduism are different. Buddhism doesn’t have a God! Buddhism has a God: The Ox, Buddha mind, Mu, nirvana, no-self, the Dharmakaya. The mistake many buddhist and Hindus makes is that they think there is a difference between the “buddhist no-self” and the “Hindu Self”, but they are degrees of awakening. For having consciousness of God you need to go beyond, not just being a self but to realize what is the ultimate self ,what is the nature of reality itself. You need to realize God as the formless but also as the form and unify the two together and that there are no distinctions. Buddhist have a God, but they don’t speak about it in the traditional sense. Buddhist don’t believe in a God per say, but they got practices that get them to the consciousness of your true nature, which is God or Mu, nirvana… -How can God be an experience? A more proper word than experience would be Being or direct consciousness. When you come into contact with the Godhead, nothingness you have to integrate it with the experience that you are having here, see that the pure Void is identical to the sensory feedback you have “down here”. You can recontextualize the experience you are having here to the point that it’s not an experience anymore, that will be absolute Truth. -Why do you cross-reference your sources if God is a direct experience? Because you can trick yourself and become a Zen-devil, which is pursuing Zen practices without reading the scriptures. -Why don’t you kill yourself and become God? There is a reason why God incarnated this life, you are here to experience this life. If you kill yourself, you are going to end up right back here, there is nowhere to go, God is constantly reincarnating himself, you will just have another form. While you are in this incarnation, do the most out of it, do the work to become enlightened. You don’t want to wait until your last breath to realize God and do spiritual practices unless you want to realize on that day what you have missed and be miserable with yourself and others. The point is to live a conscious life. -How can ego exist in the presence of God? God is all powerful and is able to present a situation where it forget itself, it has to awaken to itself. The God’s head incarnated itself into forms it can see the full ramification of what it is. God is becoming conscious of himself, not only as humans but also as animals and bacterias. -What is the point of talking about God? To realize that it’s a possibility, it transforms your life, opens the possibility to live with a true genuine joy, health and well being. To point you to technics to achieve that and point out the trickeries and traps. To inspire you to live it, not only to listen to the possibility. -Will science ever be able to understand God? The way science is defined today, no. It will have to open itself more to mysticism and non-symbolic methods of investigation like first person experience, scientists will have to take psychedelics. The bridge between mysticism and science as we do it today is already starting to happen today by a few pioneers. The line between science and mysticism is a line that the human mind is drawing, it’s not a hard line that exists in the world. -Can’t we give more time to science to answer all questions and realize that we don’t need mysticism at the end? No, it has to include mysticism. Modern science has serious limits, it only works through language, concepts and through the mind and there are aspects of reality which are true and are beyond the mind, that needs to be access through methods that are not equations or rulers and particles colliders and photographs. -Is it possible that science and spirituality work together in the future? Yes, to help to integrate the two together is Leo’s greatest contribution to mankind, laying the epistemic foundation to the reform of science. -If God is alone does it feel lonely or is God sufficient in itself? The Godhead doesn’t have any quality but when incarnated as form, God feels lonely! When you will be awake, you won’t feel lonely even if you are alone. -Why are some people very curious about God and others are not? People are born with different brain types and genetics and also went to different schools. Some people are more interested than others in metaphysical questions. Some people are born more spiritually gifted. Many spiritual advanced people might have been killed throughout the ages in favor of the kings, dictators and tyrants who wanted to rule the world. -By what mechanism does God create things? There is no mechanism, what you see is exactly the mechanism. The entire universe is spontaneously, a-mechanicaly existing, it’s just being. The mechanism only appears to you when are looking through it using the human mind, making sense of little pieces of it, breaking it apart and making it seems like there is a mechanism of cause and effect. The problem is, you are not conscious of it, it is literally one solid miracle. Scientists are pushing the experience down to the point where they can’t explain it anymore (with quarks or even equations being at the source of our experience) and say maybe we will know in a 1000 years what is beyond those. But it is so direct you can’t point to it, you can’t know or explain it, but you can become conscious of it, the pure manifestation of nothingness -Where did God come from? God always existed and will exist forever. The formless Godhead is eternal, but forms needs to be created, so you created your own body and mind. It’s a paradox, it’s both eternal and you created yourself. -Why did God create itself? Because it want to experience itself, it’s a never ending process of self creation and being. -Can God be an alien or artificial intelligence? No, God includes both. -Could God have evolved? No, but at the same time it is constantly evolving. -How do you reconcile God with darwinian evolution? Design and evolution are actually the same thing. When a human being designed buildings this is evolution too. All this happens in a larger context in the mind of God, all that is happening with intelligence and sentience, it didn’t happen through randomness and chaos. -If I created myself as God, why did I create this shitty life? You do have the option to change your life at anytime, feel free to exercise the option of spiritual development to grow yourself and awaken. Imaging what it was like in the roman days where 40% the roman population were slaves. God is in love with any situation you can imagine to be, it doesn’t judge, it lives through any possible scenario that a human can live through, you as God will live through all that, so depression, death, cheating, lying… That’s why the Buddha said that life is suffering, the only solution to that is to awaken. Awakening allows you to deal gracefully with any kind of shitty life. It’s so easy to loose your happiness in life because it is so conditional. -Is it possible to become conscious at all times, not only as peak experiences with 5MEO-DMT or only in some meditative state ? Yes, it is called Sahaja Samadhi, the ultimate state of Samadhi. -How come people realize God and than fall back into duality? The absolute Truth is such a huge thing that you are rarely going to get with one go, you will have to deconstruct your old way of building reality. he illusion is so powerful, it is almost hypnotic in how it sucks you back in, it requires a lot of work to overcome the temptation of going back to your previous state. -Why does it have to be so hard to realize God? Because of the survival drive, it is significant and responsible for everything in your life, it dominates your entire life. God is the undoing of the survival drive. God is the opposite of life, it is death from the ego’s point of view. Ego is also in your genes, forms of life without it must have been erased a long time ago. Changing the mind is a slow process, and it depends on how serious and committed you are. -Can you realize God while having a family? Yes, but don’t try to do it all at once. -How come God can be realize through visualization, shouldn’t it be an obstacle? One of the key to realizing God is concentration. Because the universe is a giant mind, what you imagine tends to become your reality, you can sort of materialize a vision of your deity and merge your sense of self into it and that can be how you realize God. Be careful with your deity like Christ, Buddha, Shiva, Krishna or anything else, as the biggest awakening is not going to have any form to it. -Am I too young as a teen to pursue God? No, if you like metaphysical questions, go for it. But you have take care of solving your survival too. -Can God be experienced at any stage of the spiral in spiral dynamics? Yes, how you experience it will be affected on where you are on the spiral. If you are at stage blue, you will have a very limited, ethnocentric, moralistic version of God. At stage orange you will have a very scientific version of God. The higher you are on the spiral level of development, the easier it will be for you to have mystical experiences and to interpret them properly. So it’s important you evolve to stage yellow or even turquoise. -Why does God needs to self-realize? It doesn’t. God’s whole point is just to be and exist. -Is God personal or impersonal? Both, we can think of the universe as filled with impersonal objects and atoms, but at the same time, as you as a human are part of it, you are the universe, so the universe has human qualities. You are the human quality of the universe. You have to integrate the personal and the impersonal together. It’s a very personal experience when you become really conscious of who you are as God and at the same, there is a sense of no-self. -Does God take an active role in manipulating our lives? The Godhead itself, no. But as everything is moving in and outside your body it is also manipulating our lives all the time. -Does God have an agenda, where is creation going? No, there is no point besides just being, but at the same, that evolutionary process from our human perspective that is unfolding, it seems like it evolves to greater complexity, greater self-awareness. God is getting more and more complex and might one day reach infinity. -Which is more true pantheism or panantheism? Pantheism says that everything, all of reality is God. Panantheism says all of reality is inside of God. Both are true, you might experience them separately but also simultaneously and overlapping each other. -How did mankind first learned about God? Back then, there wasn’t so much distraction so they could have been seating around a lot, meditating, but also through the use of psychedelics like mushrooms around the entire world. Herbalism and shamanism dates back from tens of thousands of years at least. And some people are naturally born spiritually gifted. -Why did God decide to take on my particular human form? God is taking all possible form simultaneously, one of which is particular human form. -Why did God create humans and animals? God is going to take on anything that it can. In comparison with a rock, humans and animals can experience what it’s like to be some sentient entity. Humans are a step above animals in their ability to interface with the universe. -How can the realization of God be used as a human perspective? The ego loves to ask this question, you can become famous and get a lot of sex, but you can also elevate the consciousness of mankind. You can teach, master your emotions, improve how you do science, become hyper-creative, become a better athlete, a better parent, improve your relationship and sex life. Consciousness improves everything do, even business, it can transform your business or your relationship. Awakening might end one relationship and form new ones that will be much healthier and conscious. -Does realizing God gives you special powers and abilities? Yes it can. Magical healing, clairvoyance, telepathic abilities, abilities to see auras and so on, but there is no guaranty. -Are miracles possibles? Everything is a miracle, this very moment right now is a miracle. But, yes paranormal stuff can happen, synchronicity can happen, we can’t know how much from the past is true, if Jesus walked on water for example, but healing can definitely happen. -Is everything in the Bible false? No, but there are racist, ethnocentric, closed minded and factually incorrect stuff. There is also good stuff like when Moses talks with God and he ask God: “Ok, I will go back to my people and tell them that I saw God but what shall I call you?” God answers: you can tell them that “I Am”, my name is “I Am”. Or when Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is found within, that’s a good pointer, nirvana is found within. But there is a lot of misleading stuff in the Bible, so Leo doesn’t recommend it as a high quality spiritual text. There are much better modern books to teach you the practices and make you realize what the Bible is pointing to. -What is our duty towards God, shall we worship and pray to God? In the greater sense you have no duty, you just have to be. In another sense, your duty is to awaken, raising awareness of the entire cosmos, to participate in this evolutionary game that God is playing. The problem when you pray to or worship God, people are doing it under the presumption of a duality between God and themselves. So the thing you are praying to is exactly yourself. Worshiping and praying is a sort of masturbation. There is nothing to worship but yourself. -What does God want from us? Nothing, be whatever you want to be. But try to be as conscious as you can, try to appreciate your own magnificence as God, otherwise you are going to miss the beauty of life. It’s like going to theater to watch a great movie and not looking at the screen. You can just turn around and look at a beautiful movie. But if you want to sit backward, it’s fine too. -Will following my religion lead me to God, shall I abandoned my religion? Leo is allergic to ideologies, dogmas and fundamentalism, he recommends that you abandon your religion because it’s going to get in the way. It’s brainwashing, you can never lose the only truth that there is, which is God. You don’t need a religion. You don’t need a belief systems. -My religion, already says all you are talking about, aren’t you just rehashing the same stuff? Leo talks from a higher level, the books from the main religions are very ethnocentric, there are not truly holistic, religions try to be exclusive, it is also dogmatic, it is not empirically based and not integrated with modern science. You need to go beyond. We have modern psychological insights, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, anthropology, sociology, economics, linguistics, post-modernism, modern philosophy… there is so much stuff beyond what you learn in the Bible, the Koran, classical Buddhism or Vedanta. You have to adapt your spiritual practice to fit the modern world to deal with new technological complexities and realities. Holy books don’t talk about spiral dynamics, shadow work or psycho-pathologies that weren’t known back then. -What are the most important requirements for realizing God? 1)Lazer focus concentration abilities for hours on end 2)Radical open-mindedness 3)Genuinely metaphysically curiousity. -How can I know that I can trust you? You shouldn’t, you have to validate and verify everything that Leo says, discover what is true for yourself. But don’t mistrust Leo in a cynical sort way too, you have to have open-mindedness to consider this all as a possibility. You can’t be as much untrustful that you can’t run the experiment for a few years. These questions and answers can go on forever, these are just stories, you are not going to figure out God through question and answer because it’s a great way to avoid to do the actual work. Actually, at some point these answers becomes an obstacle. You have to discover those answers by yourself, it’s like discovering the answers at the back of the book of your maths problem, rather than solving them yourself. The only way to understand God is to awaken to God, to become God, to look and feel yourself as God, from that will come all the answers. Remember that you can’t awaken before you awaken. Try to be comfortable not knowing for awhile while doing the practices, trust that one day you will figure it out. One awakening is not enough to understand everything Leo says here, it took him over a dozen awakening experiences to come that far. actualized.org will help you find God with the latest potent and cutting edge stuff.

The impersonal Self (no-self) cannot experience an absence of Self. It is self aware (self knowing), self existing, with no need for anything other than itself to know itself. Absolute Nothingness is simply the absence of the objects of perception such as the external world ,universe, body, mind, thoughts, feelings,sensations,etc., Self only ever experiences Self, with or without objects. Including the imagined "conscious" personal self or "ego". Pure Consciousness is prior to the thought based/imagined (i.e, non-existent self) which claims itself to be conscious. What is aware of the nothingness,in which That itself,cannot be described as neither something nor nothing?

Being doesn't really benefit too much from the Ego-Mind trying to understand it. That's why it's called being. One must be, which really isn't an understanding. You ride a bike, but that's not really an understanding. You just ride the damn thing. There's no conceptualization needed in the first instance. Same thing with hunger, you just eat. You're not sitting there conceptualizing your hunger in the moment. This is really hard for the intellectual mind to grasp. Same thing with peeing. You're not sitting there pondering the nature of peeing when you have to go pee, you just go pee. To me it's kinda sad to see all these books about being because being is very simple and non-intellectual. People get confused into all this Metaphysics by reading these books, and then they cling to that which sets up a block for being. Being is so simple that you have to find more sh*t to say about it to write any kind of book about it -- that's why all the Metaphysics has to be brought in to fill up those pages. This just ends up filling the Ego-Mind with concepts about being, which moves you further and further away from being. Being is like noticing a pretty woman, you don't need to say anything to appreciate her look. Rather than turning Enlightenment into Philosophy (or Metaphysics), I think a much better idea for a book is to write an autobiography of your own experience on the Path. That's where you'll get your fat book without all the misleading conceptualization of being. That's an Enlightenment book worth reading. All the abstract stuff, all the conceptualization, is trying to turn being into some detached thing that can be theorized about in the abstract, which is not only impersonal, but misleading. It's hiding out in a concept of being, which is just the Ego-Mind using Enlightenment to stay the same. No, Enlightenment should be changing who you are both externally and internally, with manifestations that are apparent to others too. Enlightenment is not some conceptual odyssey for the Philosophical Mind. In fact, Enlightenment should be bringing you back down to earth from that Philosophical Mind, see. If that's not happening, then you need to look at that.

Notes You are god and you are part of god, ultimate you is god, saying your god is part of god Why don’t I feel part of god? Reality is only possible when you imagine it to be true (not important to you right now) Substance of which everything is made is not needed for you in day to day life God is tricky and hiding because he is formless (takes every form) pure potential, confuse form with the illusion World of form and formlessness are the same thing God is an invincible being - rock bottom of reality, god is not falsifiable because he is pure truth Everything is absolute truth but you didn’t acknowledge it yet Cut through all illusion (truth seeking) No one can tell or show you the truth unless you go out and proof it for yourself Exploiting loopholes in theory by explaining god for everything, always surfaces no substance so god is the nothingness in between Atheist / materialist - reality is whatever you hold it for Sentient is not yours, it’s the universe, you imagine your friends and family into existence You are the universe there is no separateness between you and the universe you belief in time and space but it’s not real Brain is happening in consciousness not the other way around paranormal phenomena are real atheist doesn’t realise he made himself Reality has no limits God can’t be an illusion because he is absolute truth present and conscious (dmt is god) god can be an hallucination and brain state to exit the matrix is to realise that there is always another matrix containing this matrix you experience Why isn’t god part of another god (replace the world god with everything / total) How do you know infinity is not created by something else, because infinity includes all Totality of oneness There can’t be 2 gods because he’s everything god can’t lift the rock he created itself, god has to limit himself to something that can lift the rock God can destroy himself as he destroys different forms of himself backwards rationalising god is real, absolute truth misunderstand god, yes you can so be sure to understand absolute truth Saying you don’t know is a great way to speak the truth But you don’t know that you don’t know Evil doesn’t exist, it is what threatens your survival, suffering is there for you to survive Movie is bad for the actors, not for the viewers You are god, caught up in your own mind You hate murder, rape etc.. but god loves everything so also the ‘bad’ things Why isn’t god not infinite evil, because everything is labeled good God wants to know what its like to be murdered, raped etc.. God and the devil are the same thing (devil is a disguise of god) Why is god hard to explain (tribal language for earlier humans, not very enlightened people that filtered it through there own mind) Story gets misinformed Why differences in religion - actual there are a lot of overlapping similarities just different ways of telling the stories religion responsible for most evil and war, but so is science and humans in general Why use the word god? - there is a lot of confusion around it Minor realisation of enlightenment, therefor there remains a lot of confusion No religion or teaching has a monopoly on the truth Realise god is the form and formless Bring your experience with god, back to earth and here and explain it so it makes sense for you high quality sources to check yourself (cross reference) why not kill yourself and become god yourself, god reincarnated himself to be here right now enlightenment now! because you want to fulfil a long and rich life realising god ego exist in the presence of god, forgot itself and have to realise itself / awake again god doesn’t know itself until it life through itself science will never be able to understand god, can’t get there with symbols so science has to reinvent itself and become more mysticism if god is alone does it feel alone, god doesn’t feel anything, you create other people so you don’t feel alone mechanism of god is direct, what you see it the mechanism, cause and exist only exist if you think it’s there god always existed, it created itself (formless god was always there, but it created the form full god) God is always evolving create your own life and make it amazing sahadi samadhi - full awakening, doesn’t happen with a few insights realise god by doing nothing for 30 days (including thinking and visualising) never to young to ask questions about god most stage blue people are to much caught up in there stage blue thinking to even grasp questions about god god’s whole point is just to be and experience life god is personal and impersonal god has no agenda for the universe other then the being of the universe, but god is becoming more and more complex, aiming towards singularity / easier to experience god god is experience all at the same time how can a realisation of god be used to elevate consciousness, control emotions, raise family, teach others does realising god give you paranormal powers, yes it can but doesn’t have to be are miracles possible, yes, everything is a miracle but it depends what you call a miracle is everything in the bible false? no there are good stories and clues in there but not all ]you have no duty towards god, cause you are god, there is no duality between you and god, so you can’t worship him only yourself whatever you do god is fine with it will following my religion lead me to god. let your religion go and chase the truth higher level - stage turquoise, take into account all viewpoint and integrate all worldview realise what god is (real curiosity) validate everything what leo says and verify for yourself god is a really confusing topic even after all these question only way to understand god is to awaken to god

One approach would be, before you say (or type) anything, first pause until you can see the opposite perspective as equally true. The relative (ego) is conditional perspectives, absolute is unconditional (all & no perspectives). This is a way of peeling conditions (thoughts & perspectives) off to realize unconditional (what is - prior to thoughts & perspectives). Another way to say this is the point is amplifying / realizing the impersonal unconditional awareness (you / truth) which knows the experience of all personal conditional perspectives (duality / ego). Another way is to let every thought / perspective go, and agree with no perspectives. Only detachment, always impartial. This flirts with suppression, careful with the distinction. If desire for achievement is strong, this might not be the ideal practice. Another way is expression, in any form. Expressing your perspective all the way through, until there is no desire to express anymore. Journaling daily is great for this, and it’s an accumulative practice / result. It’s key to make note of when the perspective has been expressed all the way through, and no longer remains. The nugget in this, is realizing nothing changed for having expressed the conditional perspective - that thinking and emotions arose in the expressing, but afterwards returned to ‘baseline’ (awareness is constant & unchanging). Seeing that you are still you, now (didn’t actually go anywhere, nor change what you are). It was just a perspective, just an expression. You were always prior to it, through the entire observation, and part of what was observed is the appearance that you were attached to the perspective. Another approach is inner self study. Observing the inner proccess / experience / causation of: what is seen (object), what is seeing it (object), & what knows of the seeing & thinking (awareness). Anything observed with ample scrutiny literally disappears (nothing was there the whole time is revealed). With ample oberservation it is revealed there is no proccess, and that it was a deep rooted assumption all along that there was, leaving only the truth (I am / being / now). One more way is “understanding understanding”, knowing understanding as “of the true identity”. This is a little more complicated, and sounds silly initially. Pick something which you don’t understand how it works. For example, a combustible engine. Read / watch videos about how it works. But be mindful that the aim is not about the engine, but attempting to witness the actual understanding itself. I didn’t understand how it works, now I understand how it works - where did the understanding itself take place. Isolate & locate the understanding as specifically as possible, point to the understanding, describe properties of it. One more...not very popular but... Take the most basic, fundamental, scientific pragmatic approach, to looking into the distinctions between the known, and the knower. For example, a cup sitting on the counter is known. You are the knower / what knows there is a cup sitting on the counter. Start googling / researching what the cup is, and what you are. Examples of googles might be what is a cup made out of, what are molecules made out of, what are atoms made out of, what are quarks made out of, and so on. Then do the same for the knower; what is a human body made out of, what are cells made out of, etc, etc. The similarities & distinctions realized can be profound in terms of self realization, but also, this is a practice. Thinking about doing this is the same as doing nothing, actually doing it can yield the realization. These are suggestions of which the aim is the outcome of knowing being through scrutiny, by exhausting the distinctions.