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Because in the long run; being a shameless dick leads to segregation. Destruction. War, even. And correct me if I'm wrong; but all this 'work' is about becoming united and coexist in peace. Nonduality, Love 'n' shit.

Conversations with God vol 1-3 are great bridge books into the world of nonduality.

The Power of Now was a turning point for me, but nonduality is nowhere more clearly defined than in the Bhagavad Gita. Go figure, nonduality equates with equanimity: They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life. Competing with no one, they are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them. Those who have attained perfect renunciation are free from any sense of duality; they are unaffected by likes and dislikes, Arjuna, and are free from the bondage of self-will. The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same. The person who is established in one path will attain the rewards of both. People claim to have directly realized nonduality, but how many of us are equally content with success and failure, and consistently coherent with our knowledge and our actions? Nonduality is not just a realization, it is the purest state of being.

Good point. But how about turning that around? What if more love, kindness and general compassion could heal the gut issues - or anything else for that matter? I'm not trying to pick on Leo directly. I am nowhere near in that position. I have mad respect for him. But I do disagree with some of his ways. In my eyes; this thread is about how young, ignorant seekers who misunderstood a few teachings justify and perpetuate low consciousness behaviour in the name of Nonduality. In the name of God. And that pisses me off, hard. I ain't afraid to admit it. I care about how people think of and view all this. It matters to me that all of this goes in the right direction. The only true direction. Love, respect and compassion. I'm not yet in a position to influence or guide larger masses. But I sure as hell will stand for Truth to the best of my abilities. Even if it's in a form of bitching and moaning on the internet.

I didn´t understand. Is there some nonduality outside of a character? I mean, nonduality doesn´t exist without perceprtion. And perception doesn´t exist without a character.. Or not? I am not sure what is better - a happy end, as illusionary and temporary as the beginning or - the abolishment of the beginning itself, beutiful and overwhelming beginning I listened yesterday evening a song about 13 horses drowning in the ocean and I didn´t know what to think about it. Last night I dreamt, that I was in the big field. The horses were galloping in a circuit arount this field. When they saw me, they changed their route, they left the road around the field, and headed directly towards me through the field. Two brown horses, another two were approaching from behind, so I didn´t know where to escape and stood still. I saw them very close in front of me, two brown horses, the collision was inevitable, but then they were behind. Did they run through me? I don´t know wht to write. There is nobody there. About whom and for whom? I mean, when I was writing, I was always trying to reach out for the nerve, otherwise it´s boring The nerve is gone ?

@Hulia @Hulia I definitely am not the best example to follow... What comes out in art is a pure expression, whereas I live daily life with still a heavy atattchment to self character of @seeking_brilliance. I'm on a path of authenticity, that's all. For me, dropping charades extends beyond the charades of the character, but also all the nonduality speak. It's all charades to me. Honestly sometimes it gets really annoying and feels better to not think think about it, like you said ?

Its so simple its almost stupid, forget what nonduality, god, consciousness means, thats not what she is talking about. She basically saying, I don't know what anything is, but "something" is going on and what ever it is, is going on, like duh. Then if you get the stupid simplicity of that, and are not longer trying to figure out what exactly that may be, simply ask and maybe recognize, could what ever the mystery of whats going on, not be going during the infinitely different "states of consciousness".. and if no, then whats going on now..... the mystery of what is? Pretty stupidly simple and may seem unimportant, almost like saying salty tastes salty right,...... right.....AMAZING.

Nonduality & ego-mind is two.

Go on Naval Ravikants podcast. He is a yellow + systemsthinker and is into nonduality and meditation. He has been on Joe Rogan - check him out.

"If you cannot find peace and happiness unless you drug yourself with handful of nootropics, something seems quite not right." Who said this? You did. There is an implicit assumption that attaining peace and happiness is only "right" if it requires no substances. You can use multiple sophisms to deny it, but it won't fly here. "This is actually your mind that is creating your own requirements to allow yourself to be at peace, but you are the one who doesn't get it." Oh really? I was saying that there is no requirement that is set in stone. It all depends on one's situation. This was further clarified in my next post. But, you now backpedaled saying that I made a Nootropic requirement when in reality I never made such a requirement. I just said that deficiencies need to be corrected and that a holistic approach is necessary for reaching the truth. "There isn't anything wrong with improving your health, yet if you cannot accept living without these, then what is 'not quite right' is the fact that you become dependent on it, and as with everything you depend on, it can be taken away any moment, including your health, and then you enter suffering." Where did I say I can't accept living without them? I can accept it but reaching the highest states of consciousness becomes super unlikely. What you are saying sounds like it's deep, but it isn't. Think of Nootropics as consciousness-raising tools. Now go to a bunch of spiritual seekers in India, China, Japan, USA, Russia, whatever. Then, tell them, "You know what guys? If you need meditation, self-inquiry, contemplation, yoga, fasting, vision quests, proper diet, nootropics, or psychedelics, or any of these esoteric methods to be at peace and realize God, then something about that seems quite not right since you can't depend on them because happiness is already here" What would people say? They would just laugh... You can argue that no one can withdraw meditation or yoga or fasting like they withdraw health or nootropics. I can easily counter it with: You can have people withdraw meditation from you if you are in a prison where there are people constantly screaming and you cannot sit in quiet or peace. Let's say you are a sage who can meditate even when people are being tortured in a prison cell across the hall, then we can say that there will be guards that prevent you from meditating by hitting you with a stick once you sit to meditate. You can have Yoga withdrawn from you easily. All you need is one big injury to your spine or your leg, and it's over. You can have fasting withdrawn from you. All you need is to have serious deficiencies and health problems where fasting daily for even 15 hours can lead to you dying in a week tops. As such, you can't fast. Again, another person here not seeing the paradoxical nature of this whole journey. The paradox being that happiness is already here and you shouldn't depend on things to see it, BUT in fact, you actually should depend on meditation, yoga, diet, supplements, exercise, psychedelics, etc to get there. However, your toolbox of strategies for awakening will vary depending on who you are. Some will use Yoga, Meditation, Psychedelics, and Fasting. They never needed nootropics, a perfect diet, or anything like that. Others will use Yoga, Nootropics, Fasting, and Contemplation. They never needed meditation in the traditional sense or a perfect diet. And so on and so forth. But, someone like you will come and make this rule that, "you guys shouldn't depend on x or y because Peace and Happiness are already here since x and y can be withdrawn and as such, needing x or y seems quite not right." That's nonsense. This is a pure assumption, but I bet you probably wouldn't have flinched to say that we are "dependent" on meditation or Yoga for enlightenment because, in your Egoic paradigm, they are less "icky" since they don't involve substance use. This whole "it is already here" is again a bastardization of the teachings of nonduality. Yes, it is "here," but you do need tools to get there and one of them is Nootropics. Yes, health can be lost, and when that happens, if one isn't already awakened, suffering will ensue. But before that happens, one MUST UTILIZE health to get to this awakened state such that when it is withdrawn by some accident, they are okay. "And if you will, keep your passive-aggressive tone and your fairytales towards me for someone else." Ummm, no. If you will say patronizing things like "drug oneself" and then moralize us with what is "quite not right," then WE WILL CALL YOU OUT with or without a passive-aggressive tone. If you don't like being called out, then Forums aren't for you.

@BipolarGrowth I said I was not going to respond because it was in the context of this turning into foul bickering back and forth (which goes against the guidelines). But since your response was polite, I will address this. These teachings of nonduality are very sophisticated and can easily be co-opted by the Ego for bad reasons. The nuance is almost infinite. These people are literally suffering. They struggle with: Suicidal thoughts Constantly terrible mood Anxiety Pain Lack of purpose And their self-esteem keeps dropping down with every passing day as they struggle to understand things in their studies, all of which can be easily understood by them with nootropics. My view of their situation is that this suffering is a "problem." However, what do you suggest I do? Should I see them suffer and not view it as a "problem" that requires a "solution" as the other end of this duality? And then when doing so, should I cling to lofty non-dual thinking and just say "oh this is beautiful" and not even care to help them since "it isn't a problem" so why help? Here you might say, "No no, you will help but not view it as a problem." If I am helping, then I am intervening. If I am intervening, it's because I see that something is not "ideal." If it is not "ideal," then it is a problem. So I want you to see that the teachings of non-duality were bastardized here. Me "viewing the situation in the dualistic way I was describing" is critical for me to help them or even CARE to help them. If this was not the case, then the sages would never lend a hand in need for anyone suffering since, "it is all beautiful." Yes it is beautiful and perfect in the grand scheme of things, but that does not mean we must look at the small slivers in reality as beautiful at all times. This is the inherently paradoxical nature of these teachings. Jesus/Shankara/Gautama had to use a "dualistic lens," as you describe it, to help people even though they were fully conscious of the non-dual, perfect, Sat-Chit-Ananda nature of the entire thing. This is why I made the assetion that the words "nasty" and "destructive" triggered this whole thing. Your ego interepreted it as being a problematic word choice. Then it said, "the words are problematic, thus the whole view of this as "a problem" is problematic, thus let's jump to the conclusion that this guy is making up problems as badly as them." So when Jesus went to heal people and he was feeling deep empathy and sees how bad it is, imagine someone, who did a few LSD trips, comes and says, "Yo Jesus, your view of them as suffering is bad and dualistic. This ain't a problem. We all gucci....but you still should help them...." Helping means you saw there was an issue, a lack of "ideal" scenario, and thus a problem. Please, to anyone reading this, reflect on the stuff that Leo is saying and read more and more. Without contemplation, this stuff is not only useless, it is pernicious.

This idea of 'enlightenment' reminds me of a dream character. During a dream, I might be a person named 'Paul'. If I awake from the dream, Paul goes *poof* and ceases to exist. Paul cannot have this type of awakening. Within the dream, he can go to meditation retreats, yoga, psychedelics, nonduality teachers, etc. Yet as long as he is Paul, he is still immersed within that dream. Yet I would say that there is also another type of 'awakening'. Transcendent awareness can arise that "I" am dreaming. Yet, here "I" don't wake up and think "Omigosh, I overslept! I'm late for work!". Rather, the dream continues with transcendent awareness of the dream. This would be lucid dreaming. This type of 'enlightenment' is also possible during 'waking' life. Essentially, lucid dreaming while awake. Here, the dream continues with the dream character, yet there is still a form of 'death' since there is awareness that what was perceived as real is also imaginary.

Yes God is everything, so crazy, wacky, psychedelic-y visuals are not excluded and in no way interfere or contradict becoming God. God is that. God is there with visuals or without. God is never not present. Every visual is it, but it is not limited to any visual. Don't poo-poo the visuals. The visuals can be a very profound and effective mode of communication and comprehension. Although never strictly necessary. It's icing on the nondual cake. Do not make the mistake of thinking that nonduality or awakening requires no visuals. A TV is a TV regardless of what it displays, or even whether it displays anything at all. But you are making the simple mistake of thinking that you cannot be conscious of the TV while it is displaying a movie. Of course you can. In fact, that's the point: to be conscious that the movie is the TV while it is playing. Otherwise you're lost in the illusion. So rather than rejecting visuals, embrace them and see right through them without getting hypnotized by them.

Godspeed, my friend! Just be careful with it. I had a few rough days of trying to integrate this trip. It was hard to see others as something more than an empty projection of myself through other forms. The nonduality of Being is beyond all conceptualization... your ego may struggle to pick up the pieces. As Leo suggested, go in with full surrender and peace. I did not, and the ego was not pleased

I think we are running in circles here, but solipsism says "only I know I exist." Therefore, it casts doubt on others as being conscious. A true solipsist sees others as being nothing more than puppets of their own mind. Nonduality says that all beings are equally shared in the experience of Being and consciousness. There is an easy way to know if solipsism is the right word. Go up to any enlightened teacher and tell them you are a solipsist. They will either laugh you out the door or kick you in the chest to show how "real" other beings' minds are

is a popular story circulated around spiritual circles. Concepts are made from being just as much as your hand is. The idea that one is more true than the other is a beautiful sign that your ego thinks it has figured out nonduality by accepting a new duality as its new and most noble distinction.

@lightpanther Thank you for taking the time to read through my entire trip report I greatly appreciate it! Also thank you for asking such an in depth question. I want to also apologize for such a late response. I agree with you that whenever the subject of “powers” is brought up in relation to nonduality the intricacies of exactly how to do it are brushed under the rug. And I am going to be very honest with you in my response. I have not been able to manifest a water bottle next to me in the months since I smoked DMT and therefore I am not able to give you a step by step reliable guide on exactly how to make such events happen in physical reality. However I am searching for the same answers as you are and am still doing the necessary work to increase my understanding in this area. With that being said I will address your query to the best of my ability. These phenomena are very real. Astral projection, extrasensory perception, remote viewing, spontaneous manifestation, dematerialization and rematerialization, phasing through objects, all of these things are very possible without breaking the laws of physics as we know them to be. The question is not whether or not they can be done. There are people on this planet right now who can do these things. I myself have astral projected a few times before. If you haven’t yet, read Autobiography of a Yogi, it is a prime example of some of these things occurring. It is a question of what is relevant for a soul to experience in this spatiotemporal journey. In your post you seem to be very passionate and somewhat frustrated by the fact that these abilities are not cultivating in your experience. This leads me to say this life is not about what you want. Life has never been and will never be about what the ego structure wants to experience. It is about what the soul needs to experience in this spatiotemporal realm for it highest growth development and fulfillment. Additionally all souls make agreements before incarnating. Think of it as setting up appointments before you incarnate in a specific life. If you have made an agreement then it will happen in your life experience and there is really nothing that will happen that will stop it from happening. And if you have not made an agreement then it won’t happen in your life experience. I say all of this to say that there are many degrees to yourself that are creating this experience of life and you as an individuated soul, several orders of magnitude smaller than the Godhead wanted to live as a limited flesh and blood human. This is an extremely important thing and should never ever be taken lightly in how profound of an experience you are having right now. You seem to very much want to be your True Natural Self. There is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing at all that is preventing you from being your highest self and expressing that fully except for the untrue belief systems that you have within yourself that say otherwise. I also would like to make something a bit more clear. As in individuation of consciousness you are a series of components nested within each other in a holonic structure. There is the Oversoul of the specific frequency that represents the energy of your individuation which can incarnate into an infinite spectrum of forms each a different variation of your individuation. Within that Oversoul’s infinite incarnational experience there is the individuated Soul that is associated with a particular set of lives which are exploring similar overarching themes and lessons, subset to that is the Higher Self which is a projection of the Soul that is like a tether which allows the soul to absorb and communicate with the experience of the physical self that is having this spatiotemporal experience. I give all of that context to say this; your Higher Self and Soul hear you loud and clear. The nonphysical components of you are infinitely more intelligent than the human primate brain will ever be. These higher components of yourself know exactly where you need to go in your life and exactly when you need to get there. As humans we like to insist on taking what we perceive as taking the short and straight path in life that we think is going to get us to our destination quickly when in fact that is the slowest and most painful path. However our Soul and Higher Self insist that we take the winding and seemingly convoluted path because from the perspective of infinite intelligence that is the path that is the fastest and offers the least resistance and is that path that will truly lead you to fulfillment. I feel it is important to reiterate that there is absolutely nothing at all that is preventing you from being your highest self and expressing that fully except for the untrue belief systems that you have within yourself that are in direct contradiction to your natural frequency. Pain and poverty are very real realities that billions of people experience. There are people who experience incomprehensible levels of suffering. However we very often to use the external world as the primary reason for why we cannot be who we truly are. Every single experience that a being has is a reflection of their inner state of being. All things are reflections. Without exception. I have experienced starvation twice in my life and have been hospitalized several times growing up as well as needing to take medications just to have proper respiratory function. I say none of this for pity. Despite the very real health and financial challenges I have had in my 24 years of life I am exactly where I need to be in my life at this exact time. I cannot stress this enough. Every single experience that you have ever had, or will ever have is a stepping stone on your journey in life. If we invalidate any experience that we have had no matter how nightmarish or heavenly then we are invalidating an aspect of ourselves and casting it into the shadow of our being which will only lead to future suffering. We are incarnated as bipedal primates because we chose to agree to these limitations just before incarnating in this realm. And we made this choice from a perspective of infinite intelligence. We made these choices of limitation because they would facilitate our path to the highest level of development for our soul if we chose to actively participate in our development in life. You as an ego structure may be done with the limits of physics and biology but your soul knows those limitation are still extremely relevant and extremely important for you to be experiencing. If they were no longer relevant at this time then you would be able to experience some of these metaphysical abilities already. Trust the timing of your life, what needs to happen on your journey will happen exactly when it needs to. I would like to finish with this. Life is a dream. When we have a dream we usually go through it unaware that it is a dream and we cannot exert very much of our power in the dream. However when we awaken to our true level of awareness then we can exercise our true power in the dream. That is true of physical reality as well. This place is a dream. Everything is consciousness within a dream that your soul is having. And your soul is a dream within the infinite mind of God. And when you awaken on the deepest level to the illusion of this dream like physical realm then things that seemingly bend the laws of physics and biology will be commonplace, obvious and mundane in your experience. However having that amount of power requires a profound level of maturity and mastery and being that the universe is infinitely intelligent it will not give one who isn’t ready the means of nuclear fusion technology because that would result in a cataclysmic disaster. However a matured master would be able to handle such power in the same way that a skilled engineer can design and maintain stable reactors. This life and physical realm (in fact all realms) are all a dream within our consciousness and we will experience exactly what we need to experience at exactly when we need to experience it for our Souls highest growth development and fulfillment if we choose to go with the flow of our being and trust that what we need physically, mentally and spiritually will be experienced when we need it. I hope this response helps.

Thank you, all of this reminds me of a quote I once saw: There is no conflict between duality and nonduality.

Yes, I've heard similar sentiments from others. Sadly I moved a while back and no longer have the same connections for most of these substances. LSD induced a full-on, beautiful state of nonduality, but I have noticed that most dissos/psychs combined with cannabis produce strong psychotic mini-episodes that are prone to self-feedback loops and the creation of distorted narratives. Cannabis alone tends to make me rather anxious compared to harder drugs. Thanks for your input, friend! EDIT: Regarding DXM, I did have much more pleasurable experiences early on without cannabis. I especially loved the vivid closed-eye visuals it produced. But overall, it's definitely less of a "clean high" than most things.

That. Is. It. Crazy deep, unthinkably basic, literally One singularity. Here is the greatest teacher of nonduality on earth today... “ I “ is a thought. “ the mind “ is a thought. This is the appearance. It’s this. (Perception) The illusion is that there is a separate self, from believing thoughts like “I”, “me”, “my”, “mine”, etc. Love is what’s appearing as “the thoughts”. Love appears as the thought “ I “ and believes it. How funny is this? (Talking about the bassist, in case that wasn’t obvious) Hell of a user name btw. ?

Not sure if anyone else has covered this, but you can have an Awakening/Nonduality/Infinity/Godhead experience with zero knowledge of what any of that is. My first enlightenment/Awakening experience was a full decade before I learned what any of this was all about. I had no idea what happened. And it was exactly what was later explained to me what an Awakening is. So there is no way I deluded myself, or self-hypnotized myself into some kind of a self-fulfilling experience.

This was a great idea! It's sometimes hard to get others interested in Leos videos, even if they are interested in such topics, and I attribute this to the length. Can turn some low attention span peoples off. I personally love the length and depth of the topics, longer the better. Hopefully the clips channel is a great success and appeals to a wider audience, which leads to Nonduality concepts being shared more across the globe, which helps us all with the raise of consciousness.

These are all constructs of a human mind. That these questions and constructs are arising is even more evidence that psychedelics are needed to transcend these questions and constructs. I think they are awesome questions within a domain and I don't see one domain as being better than another. To me, it would be like speaking various languages. If I get two grounded in one language, I won't realize I'm missing aspects of other languages. Someone who is a polyglot is very fluid with various languages and wouldn't see any one language as the "true" language as which to perceive. In this context, I don't give any more relevance to psychedelic-induced states and non-psychedelic states. Upon deeper inspection, those distinctions break down and the two are intimately integrated. Yet one thing I see people do over and over again is subconsciously assume their framework is the proper grounding upon which to evaluate other "things". That would be like someone telling me about a language spoken in Tasmania that I've never heard of. I could assume that English is the proper language and speculate about the Tasmanian dialect as a "thing" out there. Even asking "what do we think we are exploring when we travel to Tasmania to learn their culture and language" assumes my grounding *here* relative to some other thing being explored *over there*. That would be very odd to a Tasmanian since the "real" grounding is Tasmanian culture/language upon which to evaluate English. Yet for an English person to realize this, they would need to go to Tasmania. NOT to explore it as an English person, yet to dissolve all and become Tasmanian. Only then can they transcend both Tasmanian and English. Here, why would you give narrative control to your non-psychedelic mind as grounding? Why not flip the script? Why isn't a psychedelic mindset the grounding by which we communicate? Why not trip on psychedelics so much that the question "what are we exploring on psychedelics?" no longer makes sense? An entirely new set of appearances would manifest that make no sense to you now. Yet those would become normative. The constructs you are creating would no longer exist. I'm not saying one is "better" or "more real" than another. I would much rather be multi-lingual. Having a mindset of grounding can be a major barrier to becoming multi-lingual. It is helpful at first, yet then becomes a hindrance. When I lived in Central America learning Spanish, I realized grounding myself in English and translating into English was a major barrier to becoming fluent in Spanish. I had to fully surrender English and immerse myself into Spanish with no English grounding or safety net. Only then was I able to perceive the world through a Spanish lens, rather than evaluating Spanish through an English lens. With that said, you are much more spiritually gifted than I am. I spent 20+ years with meditation / Buddhism / nonduality and was only having surface level insights. The insights you share go waaay deeper than anything I was able to realize and many of the things you share I needed psychedelics to reveal. I was poorly-suited for spiritual practices, yet was very well-suited for psychedelics. I learned more in my first psychedelic trip than 20+ years of meditation / Buddhism / nonduality practice. And I'm telling you. . . I could have spent another 20+ years with spiritual practice and still would have been at a surface level. . . Because I've never met anyone that has reached the depths of psychedelics without psychedelics. In fact, I've rarely met anyone that has reached the depth of psychedelics that has used psychedelics. It's a combination of genetics and prior conditioning. You are much more spiritually-gifted than I was. I needed psychedelics to realize 90% of the insights your share. And I spent over 20 years practicing spirituality. Fortunately, I got lucky and I'm "psychedelically-gifted".

@modmyth My dad is more of the rationalist type while my mom is rather religious. Even though my mom is religious and is Hindu, she has a I guess more traditional/ surface level view of Hinduism (I say surface level because her worship doesn't include things regarding nonduality and traditions of that sort). My dad is kind of open to things like karma, past lives and things of that nature mainly because of where he grew up. But even then, if I start talking about oneness and things of that nature, I'm pretty sure I'd be labeled as one of the crazy hippy types. I consider myself fairly open to new agey concepts. Even when I take things with a grain of salt, there is still this sense of intrigue when it comes to mystical topics and experiences. I personally don't have experiences with anything paranormal but I guess the closest thing I dealt with is sleep paralysis but I'm pretty sure there is a scientific explanation for that (as in my mind is half awake and is playing tricks on me in a partially dreamlike state) and it's not just demons. There is this book that I read recently called Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Mayer and it talks about people's intuition, clairvoyance, ESP, and other paranormal phenomenon can be explained if you view everything as being connected and based in consciousness rather than materialism. It also talks about some of the epistemic issues with science and rationality and how deviations shouldn't be just thrown out as a statistical anomaly or error rather it needs to be looked at further. I find the whole hippie revolution really interesting especially when it comes to how people in India and Bangladesh saw it at the time. My dad was a teenager in the mid 70s and so he remembers the narrative behind all of this. People over there saw hippies as crazy rich white people doing crazy white people things. The general perception was that they were rich, gave up their wealth, and now sit around doing drugs and avoid showers. But when it comes to the Beetles specifically, a lot of older Bangladeshi people have a really positive view of them because the Beetles raised a lot of money for humanitarian efforts during the 1971 Liberation War when Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) fought for their independence from Pakistan. The money was used to help refugees from the war as well as raise awareness for the atrocities that were happening in that region. Because there wasn't much of a South Asian population in the U.S. during the 70s, there wasn't much of a collective backlash or outrage because the people who would be outraged simply weren't present. But if something like the hippie revolution happened today, I'm sure it would be surrounded by a bunch of people talking about cultural appropriation. I wonder what it would've been like being a brown person back then but I don't know anyone near me who was in the U.S. during that time. The people I know who immigrated to the U.S. mainly came in the 90s and early 2000s.

Coming Out as a "Spiritual" Person Recently I realized that one of the blockages I have in the way of showing up as my most authentic self is the shame I have surrounding my interest in self improvement and spirituality. I came up with a bunch of reasons as to why that is so in order to reflect and get off my chest. Fear of being irrational: As someone who has been into new agey topics and self improvement for the last few years, I have come across my fair share of craziness and I have encountered a lot of questionable things in the self help industry. And I'm afraid of being associated with that if I come out and say that I'm into spirituality or self development. I don't want people to automatically assume that I'm some type of irrational crazy crystal person. Nothing wrong with collecting crystals but I'm just talking about how mainstream society views people like that. I don't want to be associated with the Tony Robbins or Tai Lopez types. I feel that new age spirituality and self development has a lot to offer but that stuff gets clouded by a lot of pseudoscience and I'm afraid to be associated with the pseudoscientific side of things. Being a caricature of brown people: I have noticed that white people have a very limited view of what South Asia is like. Without getting too into that whole can of worms, I want to mainly underscore how white people see South Asia as this birth place of spirituality and how it's like their self actualization play ground. Think about the eat pray love types who go into the slums of India and are like wOW looK aT HOw HapPY tHEy arE eVEn ThouGH tHeY haVE SO littLE. They take their "spiritual awakening" and then they go back to their cushy lives. And there is a part of me that is scared of being lumped into the stereotype of the spiritual mystical brown person. I'd say the history of white people appropriating eastern culture during the hippie revolution in the 70s has a part in this. Fear of looking crazy: This is similar to the fear of being irrational but I'd put this on it's own separate category. I'm scared of looking crazy when I talk about my insights or my experiences especially if they have to do with the law of attraction or how connected everything is. I feel like people won't get it and then I'll look like some type of space cadet with a tin foil hat. Then there are just somethings that I'm into that I know aren't mainstream like spiral dynamics. I would love to talk about it but I'm afraid people won't get it or won't care to understand it because I'm not that good at explaining and because I don't think anyone would watch Leo's series on spiral dynamics (lets be real that's like 16 hours of content). It's just that the stuff that I'm into, it takes some work to figure out what it's about before really being able to discuss it. The same goes for things related to consciousness and the concept of nonduality. Fear of people thinking I'm in a cult: I really like actualized.org and I want to share with more people but I'm afraid that if I do that people would think I'm pushing a cult onto them especially with the stigma of psychedelics and the whole iM GOd rhetoric. Not saying it's true or false but if someone finds this and they don't know anything about consciousness, eastern spirituality, or nonduality, the whole thing is going to look awfully cult like. I mean, guy on drugs claiming he's god and has a whole following, sounds like a whole trope. Sometimes I feel like I have to put disclaimers up whenever I talk about these types of things. Like no I don't think you can cure cancer with essential oils, and no I don't think that everyone can pull themselves up from their bootstraps. And no, I'm not a dogmatic religious person. I feel like the reason why I was able to benefit so much from new age spirituality as well as basic self development was the way I differentiated the quality of my sources. It's not like I'm out here on a breatharian diet purchasing a bunch of get rich quick scheme courses who thinks COVID is some type of hoax. I also think I did a good job in picking out valuable pieces of advice from the harmful stuff that's out there. Of course, I have my blind spots but I try to be critical of those too. But my main thing is that I'm not going in here blind without thinking for myself.