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This is a deep topic and my intentions are not to offend, but to gain understanding about the metaphysical nature of race/gender. I have been wondering about this for a while and was wanting to know your all’s thoughts. The way I understand race/gender is that they are social constructs or imagination. When I look at my hand or at a person, that is actuality. The ideas of separateness based on race/gender are imaginary. They have the same reality as Santa clause or the buddha. Which you could also argue that Santa clause is just as real as your hand? That being said, my understanding of nonduality is that everything is one. But race/gender are based on imaginary divisions created to separate and justify dehumanization and discrimination of certain groups of people. In reality, the separation of people based on gender/race and 3/5s rule was a horrible thing we did and let to many horrible genocides and slavery. That being said, there was a video where a woman talks about color blindness vs color consciousness. I personally think that there is a 3rd stage kind of like pre-rational, rational and post-rational called color/gender transcendence where we recognize that race is a “real” thing that we invented and continue to invent, but the idea is based on an illusion of separation that we try to transcend in this stage, which in reality we are one but living as if separate. Color blindness to me is like denying that race exists or to “not see race.”? The woman in the video critiqued color blindness by saying: “you can choose to not look at the sky, but the sky still exists.” She was comparing a race to the appearance of a sky. I argue that race/gender is much more than the appearance of color and sex organs. It consists of identity, culture, norms, projections, discrimination, bias, etc. Correct me if I am wrong, but comparing race to the sky seems to treat it like it is an objective fact, whereas in reality race is a social construct of our minds? But I guess you could also argue that the sky is also a social construct and doesn’t really exist because the boundaries between the sky, outer space, and earth are all arbitrary and relative. What are your all’s thoughts about the metaphysical nature of race/gender? Please let me know what you think based on your experiences with enlightenment work, mystical/no dual experiences, etc. Please watch the video: Even though the idea of race/gender was invented, we still need to be aware of the real life threats it has on society and on marginalized groups, such as racism, discrimination, white privilege, cisgender male privilege, heterosexism, white fragility, and whiteness in general, as well as gender discrimination and binary views of gender, etc. This is an example of how reality is imaginary, yet, we need to be aware of how our imagination creates separation and division and use our minds to unify together because we all bleed red and our hearts beat as one! I think the true danger comes from when we take separations to be “real” because then it creates a “superior” and “inferior” power dynamic. In addition, by taking our imaginations of separateness to be real, it also creates division and discrimination when we see others as separate from us. This is a real danger that we are seeing with Trumpism, white supremacy, religion, politics (democrat and republic rather than unifying our nation), etc. Thanks

@BipolarGrowth you studied nonduality huh??? Brain vs consciousness. Reality is just one seamless whole. Ultimately it doesn't matter if materialism is correct partially about the brain. But what is hidden in your question is substance-dualism. There is only one fucking substance out of which everything is made. Could it be otherwise?. What is substance-dualism?.??? Well That reality is split into two different substances. One is the appearances or phenomenon or consciousness or qualia (this stuff right here)..which is a second order emergence from the essence which is matter. That matter has no phenomenonolgical qualities. It's not conscious yet it gives arise to consciousness. Notice the absurdity? Consciousness is simply everything and anything. This is Consciousness. That is consciousness. You are consciousness. The brain is consciousness. Anything you think or possibly doubt in a million years that isn't consciousness IS fucking consciousness... Tada! And it can't be "defined" because there is nothing which is not consciousness to define consciousness in terms of it. That's why it's a mystery.

I’ve spent years studying nonduality and doing consciousness work. At this point I have to admit that I’m biased toward consciousness generating the brain as well as everything else, but how can we at all be certain that this is the case? Is this not just a belief? Any changes in consciousness seem to be heavily correlated with changes in brain activity. Why is this the case?

Consciousness will and cannot die. But if you drink poison you will experience a very painful death, whatever you believe. DON'T DO IT!! Also don't forget that not everyone here is nonduality focused. Be very careful what you say.... Or don't, whatever. May get banned though.

@TheSource Yes. God is nonduality, and God dreams duality. Ultimately, it is all one. Lord of the gods, you are the abode of the universe. Changeless, you are what is and what is not, and beyond the duality of existence and nonexistence. You are the first among the gods, the timeless spirit, the resting place of all beings. You are the knower and the thing which is known. You are the final home; with your infinite form you pervade the cosmos.

Ken Wilber has a very comprehensive approach. I will try a lighter approach and call it Integral Light. I don't know yet what to include. At least the nondual perspective and the evolutionary perspective will be included. My initial idea is that it's possible to practice methods for moving into the transpersonal stage. Just like learning a new language or how to play the piano. It's a bit trickier since nonduality as I see it means that there isn't anybody doing something as a separate individual. There is however doing happening from an individual perspective, so that's something that also can be included in Integral Light.

What nonduality teachers capture that is missing in my idea of reality as "everything possible happening" is that they explain the illusion of the separate self, such as: So on a second thought my explanation isn't clearer, just different. I need to somehow include the illusion of the separate self in order for it to be similar to nonduality. What I think Parsons is missing though is the evolutionary aspect of reality. But I admit that Parsons' explanation may be more correct from a nondual perspective. I think I will check out some of Ken Wilber's videos. He has an integral both/and approach.

Well thanks, I honestly hate to admit it, but I took 1mg of xanax over an hour ago and that's why I even feel like reading the replies. I don't know why, maybe I was worried that people would judge me. I don't even wanna get messed up and black out on benzos, I just like this calm and content feeling which really lifts my mood, I just feel okay, and that's why I find them so addictive. I've even used Methamphetamine here and there over a year ago and it was rather easy to stop. The euphoria was great, but that's not something I really want, I just wanna feel okay and do the things I always wanted to do, it would be great if I could do that sober as well. One of the most frustrating things is that I often even cancle video calls with girls I met on Bumble, it just really stresses me. I used Psychedelics a lot, LSD, ETH-LAD, 4-HO-MiPT, 4-HO-DET, 4-HO-MET and 5-MeO-DMT. I got a lot of insights about oneness and nonduality, but it didn't really help me with the addiction or motivation problem. I can easily get any of these drugs, but I still live with me parents, and I don't wanna bring any illegal substances in their house anymore, so I'll have to wait until I move out. My parents are great tho, and they aren't against psychedelics, my mom even is supportive of them. And I kinda gave up on therapists after I went to probably more then 5 or 6 different ones, I think just Leo's videos helped me more then all therapy combined Anyway, I didn't know you can journal here, thanks for your help. I've honestly considered using something like Kitchen Safe for Clonazepam, to keep me from taking it too often. I don't wanna get high from it, I just wanna get started with uni, and right now I really struggle with this. But I would obviously also do other things so that I wouldn't need it anymore in the future. I'll give it a try, thanks for all the suggestions. I'm still worried that it won't work tho. During me over 2 month stay in the clinic I also had nothing to do, I only used my phone sparinly and besides that there was nothing to do besides the occassional therapy sessions. And instead of being productive, all I ended up doing was just lying in my bed all day doing nothing except for just thinking. I have a very creative phantasy, and that alone can already be an escape. I even often lie awake for hours at night, not because I'm worrying, but because I'm just really entertained by my thoughts and ideas and it's so hard to shut it off. I sometimes just take Diphenhydramine just so that my mind would shut up.

To a certain extent. I don't mind sharing insights regarding emotional intelligence/ awareness or things relating to my meditation habits and manifestation processes. But I am mindful about my audience if that makes sense and that influences how I present it. As for my thoughts on God and nonduality, I keep that private because I know if I talk about it, at best people are going to be really confused and at worst they would think I joined a cult or am on drugs.

@GreenDragon You are on a Nonduality forum. That's like going to a NFL forum and be like "Damn guys, it's weird you guys talk about sports so much".

But... What if this nonduality stuff is delusion too....... So.. I'm not fully buying this nonduality stuff either Question their questioning, yes ? Actually I will say that to the person who believes in conspiracy theories.

@Intraplanetary the thingy thing with the solipsism thing is it seems to be the ultimate conclusion of nonduality and idealism. To reject solipsism means that you must accept an external material world. Objectively existing independent of you. Not some fluffy consciousness imagining stuff. From Wikipedia : " Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. Epistemological solipsism : Epistemological solipsism is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known. The existence of an external world is regarded as an unresolvable question rather than actually false.Further, one cannot also be certain as to what extent the external world exists independently of one's mind. For instance, it may be that a God-like being controls the sensations received by one's brain, making it appear as if there is an external world when most of it (excluding the God-like being and oneself) is false. However, the point remains that epistemological solipsists consider this an "unresolvable" question. ". As you can see it's undebunkable within its own terms. One cannot validate or invalidate the existence of that which supposedly exists outside one's own subjective experience. For example you can't prove that the past really happened.. All you have is a present moment. You can't prove that you are not a brain in vat.. Which an updated version of Rene Descartes's evil demon doubt. Common to many science fiction stories.. it outlines a scenario in which a mad scientist.. machine.. or other entity might remove a person's brain from the body.. suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid.. and connect its neurons by wires to a computer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives.According to such stories.. the computer would then be simulating reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences.. such as those of a person with an embodied brain.. without these being related to objects or events in the real world. This is also similar to simulation theory. It's actually not possible to prove with 100 %certainty that we are not inside a video game right now that some teenagers are playing in a different universe. Crazy stuff. Just avoid thinking along those lines.

@Yamak9889 I like the presentation. I'm in my last year as a biology student and I'll graduate in (probably) biochemistry this year. I also plan to somehow connect my degree with psychedelics, mysticism and nonduality. I'm also not quite sure yet if I'll add a master's degree or PhD, but it's probably useful especially because then you have it easier and people respect you more in the scientific community. Where do you study?

@StateOfMind Great question I feel for you and understand your frustration. I also understand you are actuality just asking one big multipart question but please know it beckons a big multipart answer. For starters, and this is the kind of dare I say crap pat answer I normally try to avoid, but your specific wording and context calls for it; You do just exist as God, but you simply don't realize It. Next, you do not have to do anything to realize You are God except awaken to Reality. In fact, when You do realize this it will seem to whatever is left of your ego that it was always amazingly obvious and you may muse, "why didn't I realize this sooner?!" The big "Why" question can be somewhat satisfactorily and accurately answered by what a couple here have said already; God is playing in form, yet this is far more profound than playfulness purely for fun, although awsome fun it is. This next insight many who think they know or think they cannot know may disagree with, but it is what I have awakened to on "Why" after nearly three decades of intense spiritual exploration. As well established here and in many a sage and wisdom tradition, God is the One, alone. Please understand I write this as a staunch Monist from all points of Being, transcendent experience, theory, and practice. The "Why" is that God, out of pure Self-Love, is engaged in developing It's most perfect Creation: God Itself. This is done outside space-time in a singularity that is everything we experience as space-time. All existence as we know it as human creatures is what is contained within the event that I model as a kind of Divine Cosmic mitosis. Our seeming universe, selves, and Everything is an evolutionary building process within an infinitely complex system that is God becoming God. We and all of perceived existence are: God in training, God growing, God replicating, God teaching God and learning to Be Itself. What implications, if any, does this have on Nonduality, Oneness, etc? I sincerely feel that as God we are in somewhat unexplored depths of Consciousness and are very much looking forward to finding out perhaps again and again now then and when. In the eternal-infinite realm of the formless, forever and now are the same, so happenings as singularities with instant beginning-endings are basically impossible to well describe in a conventional rational way. In human terms, it's likely going to be a Very long time before some seeming material thing (humans will be long extinct) can know, if any material thing can ever know (the completion of the process in space-time is likely the end of the game of this preceived material Universe for All Existence). So anyhow, this is why the fuck it is this way, and it's amazingly, awesomely, joyfully fun when it is no longer frustrating.

Ardhanarishvara, duality and nonduality, yin and yang:

If JP ever truly comprehended nonduality there is a good likelihood he might kill himself. So for his sake perhaps it's best he never discovers it.

Sure they are confident and I am confident about what we say. It all then boils down to who is actually seeing and experiencing the truth and who isn't. Nonduality can be parroted just as much as Christianity.

Well there is no other way to point to it better lol. I always end up contradicting myself. I'll say "There is no such thing as enlightenment, the appreciation of this fact is itself enlightenment." For example I say there is no "you" and then I say that the "no you" is "you". For example to you I would reply with "That something beyond my words is not really a something." It's impossible to put nonduality into words.

Because he was indoctrined with a religious worldview. The mind cannot just surrender the operating system it was programmed with any more than your computer can. This would require a painful and long jailbreaking of one's mind, which virtually no one is prepared to pursue. The dude's who life hinges on duality. For JP nonduality would cause him a mental breakdown of epic proportions.

I could never understand why someone as intelligent as him doesn't understand that e.g. "evil" or "good" aren't actually real and just arbitrary attributions. You know how he's always out to "make things better". "You're wretched and horrible and useless and resentful, get your act together, bucko!" This sort of attitude. How come he never heard of nonduality? (or at least never talks about it?) He even took some Psilocybin for god sake, he knows about psychedelics, he knows about DMT and the entities, he knows that mystical experiences are real (although I think he's afraid of the implications they bear). He's so well-read and knows so much, his knowledge and his philosophical position are almost contradictory. He knows that there's something very fishy about materialism. He even knows that consciousness is fundamental to reality! So... Why is he not looking deeper into these topics? He's definitely smart enough to be a full-blown stage Yellow thinker, and yet he preaches that we are miserable worms who need to redeem themselves. Classic original sin guilt trip, why does he buy into this stuff? Or am I not seeing something?

Hello , I am a 16 year old explorer of conciousness/psychonaut and I wanted to basically just share my experience of discovering infinite Conciousness and absolute Truth at a very young age. My entire life I have been a deeply existential thinker, I have consistently questioned my reality ever since early childhood, My first memorys of ever questioning my existence was around 1st grade and on a minor level even earlier than that, I remember staring at a wall and my intent was to try and see the atoms in the wall of my room and as I was staring at it I was really focusing on looking through my eyes and being highly mindful of every detail in my visual field, All of my sense perceptions all felt empty and hollow after doing this often when I was bored, I would pay attention to my perceptions to the point where it would feel like I was a groundless bubble of conciousness that was simultaneously nowhere and everywhere at the same time yet completely void of physicality, I started to question whether my entire life was an elaborate scheme that everybody was playing in order to deceive me and trick me that they are real sort of like the Truman show, Fast forward a couple years and this self questioning and unintentional mindfulness turns into a full on existential crisis, I am in elementary school and I am having an existential crisis because nothing feels real and I can see that my entire life is a lie and I in fact do not exist, This lead to me basically losing all interest in school and being diagnosed with bipolar II and severe depression, When I finally got to middle school I stumbled upon astral projection on youtube and it sounded so cool to me that I had to try it, I had no clue that any of this would lead me to an awakening but while attempting to astral project I was also learning how to meditate at the same time, My meditations were as neurotic as you would imagine a "severely ADHD" kid would be, My meditations were very sloppy and I didn't really draw the connection between the existential experiences I was having and the meditation, But after a while I started to learn more and more about these types of mystical experiences, Also I was also a self proclaimed nihilist at this point because my depressive episodes were so existentially terrifying that I was mentally scarred at a young age and that type of trauma at a young age really damaged me, Those depressive episodes were so hopeless and soul wrenching that I wanted to kill myself in elementary school but I also didn't believe in death so I knew that there really was no escape and if I tried to kill myself It wouldn't work and I wouldn't actually die, It felt like I was already in hell for eternity. My parents and friends obviously didn't understand what I was going through at the time so I was pretty much alone with this brutal suffering that no one around me could understand, Fast forward to around 9th grade and I am having an stark awakening into nothingness and relativity, At this point I am really getting close to really feeling what nonduality truly is, I wasn't quite there yet but at around this time I discovered great teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Alan Watts and of course Leo, This was a very important part of my journey because this lead me to deeper and deeper states of understanding, I was really starting to have direct insights into the nature of reality and conciousness. In 10th grade I discovered LSD, This was an incredible experience that brought me in touch with the infinite love that also comes with emptiness, After a while of experimenting with LSD, Mushrooms and cannabis edibles I have the oh so incredible god awakening , I have been having some of the most indescribable and reality shattering experiences over the past year and I really have no words for them that could ever describe to , I still struggle with my sense of self and survival needs but I now recognize myself as life and conciousness itself, I see that it couldn't be any other way and that the universe is happening all at once, Right now as I type this I know that I have created everything and that this bubble of experience or incarnation I find myself in is the only one in existence, I know that my experience right now has all the love I could possibly dream of and infinitely more, I can also recognize that literally anything is possible and every possible moment that could ever happen is already in my experience of this moment, I realize now that every possible structure and moment in the universe is working every being to recognize itself as me. There is so much more I could tell you about experiences but words will never do justice to absolute truth, I am sure you all can understand the trouble trying to explain these sort of things without crazy ass strange loops and self reference problems occurring, That being said I love you all and I hope you recognize that as you read this post your life is already complete and by reading this post you are connected here for eternity with my essence and truth.

@levani Excellent advice from @Sagar Takker . I’d add so called fear is no more than thought attachment, you might say the mind ‘tricking’ itself into suppressing, avoiding...Self...no thing...”it’s”own source so to speak?. Bringing sense of humor to this can help cut the tension / thought discord of repeating attachments (beliefs). Many trips “to” no thing until there’s no one to ‘go to’ no thing anymore...and never the direct experience of another entity. However, apparently, some testify to what Leo said, that entities like demons etc are actual. Again, never encountered this, but just some suggestions that come to mind if you do...run the ‘filter’ of: thought, perception, feeling. ‘Break the experience down’ to what is actually, experience. If that still doesn’t cut it, demand that the “demon” tell you it’s name. Don’t accept any name. Repeatedly demand it say it’s true name, ‘who’ ‘it’ really is. ? Godspeed. Letting go of thoughts is ultimately (because nonduality is only surfaces, only appearances) the key.

@zeroISinfinity I think you're projecting some stuff on me. I wrote that in a "funny, cause it's true" tone. Since you're being serious though, I grew up in the patriarchy of a Baptist Christian church and it's somewhat funny to see the same exact thought patterns and the use of the archetype "God" carry over into enlightenment and nonduality here on the forum and elsewhere. It would be dishonest and avoidant of me to pretend that it's not a potential problem. I can identify an imbalance or problem and want a resolution without having to suffer for it. That's just like me telling you to suddenly stop getting turned on by hot women because you won't awaken that way or something.

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

If the fluid ego is what we have at the transpersonal stage and that it includes the realization of nonduality (transcending the separate individual), then how can it be called an ego, as in a separate individual? I call it fluid ego since the individual self will be transcended and included, in an integral way. Then how to explain that there still is a separate individual from a nondual perspective? My explanation is that the human soul is an eternal and changeless point within reality. So the human soul is a separate individual perspective! It's just that at the transpersonal stage the individual perspective will expand into a collective consciousness.