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@Water by the River It's interesting that you bring up Artem. I'll post below one of his main thesis on levels of enlightenment. Can you elaborate where your and his views are the same and where they differ? It's especially confusing that Artem claims that even consciousness/infinity are still levels of dreaming and not the final enlightenment, while you point to 'empty pure impersonal infinite consciousness' as the final abode in the process of enlightenment. From Artem's Quora post: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-levels-of-enlightenment/answer/Artem-Boytsov "There are no levels of enlightenment, but there are levels of dreaming, and every level has its own layer of bondage, which you progressively shed as you move towards the center: On the outer level of dreaming, you are a person in the body, looking outside of the body into the physical world and relating to other persons. You are a slave of society. On a deeper level of dreaming, you are a soul occupying the body and you relate to other souls on an energetic level. You are a slave of your emotional energy. On a deeper still level of dreaming, you are consciousness/God, a being of pure compassion and unconditional love, you are everything and everyone, the deepest form of love. You are a slave of love. On the deepest level of dreaming, you are Brahman, the totality of all existence, infinity beyond manifest, you are truly nothing, eternity, the deepest form of peace. You are a slave of death. When all dreaming ceases, you are just a hairless monkey walking on a ball of rock, eating, pooping, living and not imagining things that are not there. You are now free. Each level of the dream has its own amount of fun and beauty, and very few people go all the way, because each level is covered by its own layer of suffering. Embodiment of unconditional love is extremely fun and very rewarding. Being mentally dead while your body is alive is very peaceful, very restful, very blissful, that’s Buddhahood. When you’re dreaming on the outer layers, the inner layers are there, too, they’re just in your unconscious. As you go from the outer layers towards the center, the dreaming becomes more and more subtle, you become progressively more free. The last level, the Brahmanic level, is the most subtle. It’s almost no dreaming at all. Most people who are awake have awakened from one level of dreaming into a deeper level of dreaming. So their dreaming became a little bit more lucid. “It’s all a dream” as they say. Enlightenment is not awakening into your dream, it is awakening from your dream, entirely. It’s when all dreaming ceases and the mind doesn’t dream anymore."

Maybe it's all a cosmic joke. Maybe this "self" we're so proud of is just a brain fart, free will's a bedtime story, and we're all just meat puppets jerking to the tunes of our DNA. This mess isn't a plan or conspiracy, it's just the universe taking a massive, uncontrolled shit. Or we're like those first fish dragging their sorry asses onto land. New legs, can't walk without stumbling. Our brains too big for our skulls. We fall for every line of propaganda because we haven't figured out the cognitive wings evolution or God has given us. Perhaps one day, we'll shed the shadows from our egos, and trying to sell us war will be like trying to sell a bitcoin to the Amish. Or, maybe the universe is just one big eye, slowly opening. Life is its first blink, humans are its first blurry thoughts. Science is IT rubbing the sleep out, meditation is IT watching its own mind churn, and the internet? That's IT mapping its own nervous system on a neural net. All the chaos? Just the pain of cosmic puberty. The eye's just not awakened yet but we”ll get there.

250 Traps Of Life - The Psychology Of Traps https://youtu.be/v3TDLSwHugI?si=Xd7Pjk957VktEZJ5 "Wisdom is understanding that life is full of traps." Image 1 Concept of traps: Leo Gura introduces the concept of traps as a way to navigate life, emphasizing the importance of intelligence, wisdom, consciousness, intuition, and experience in avoiding them. Traps are not just mistakes but enticing situations that appear beneficial but end up costing greatly in the end. Psychological and intellectual traps: The real focus is on the psychological traps created by one’s mind and intellectual traps that deceive our sense of truth. Gura gives examples of traps like a mirage or a ton of feathers seeming lighter than a ton of gold, highlighting the trickery of the mind. Vulnerability to traps: Describing how children, animals, and the inexperienced are more susceptible to traps, Gura recounts a story of a girl who got trapped under sand at a beach and a method for trapping monkeys, illustrating how traps often exploit short-term thinking and lack of foresight. Image 2 Image 3 Fantasies and assumptions: He notes that traps can be wrapped up in fantasies that disconnect us from reality, often subverting assumptions we hold, which is a recurring theme in his work. Self-trapping and collective traps: A central message is how individuals trap themselves rather than being trapped by others, as well as the notion of collective traps within organizations, societies, and tribes. Types of traps in life domains: Leo Gura references various life domains that are ripe with traps, such as business, investing, relationships, education, science, philosophy, epistemology, spirituality, politics, health, martial arts, and more, each with its unique set of pitfalls. Meta trap of externalizing the enemy: One of the biggest meta traps is not realizing that often you are your own greatest enemy and the tendency to externalize the blame. Avoiding traps: Gura promises to provide a comprehensive list of over 250 traps he’s identified and principles for avoiding them in each life domain. Awareness as a trap-avoidance strategy: He suggests that the wisdom of recognizing common traps before entering new life domains can significantly reduce hardships. Book Idea Metaphor: He metaphorically speaks of bestselling book titles focused on “traps” in different domains, suggesting the universal relevance and practicality of this conceptual lens. Acknowledgment of personal growth: Mentioning his own work in compiling a list of traps, Gura makes it clear this is a personal passion which has evolved from his own life experiences and learning. He anticipates sharing deeper insights from this year-long research project in future discussions. Excessive media consumption: Overuse of television, video games, news, and particularly social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can drain countless hours that could be better spent building oneself and developing skills, which is especially detrimental to young people. Processed food consumption: The widespread trap of eating junk and processed foods leads to health issues and detracts from investing time in proper nutrition and self-care. Outsourcing critical personal functions: While delegating tasks can be beneficial, there are certain things, such as inner work and self-mastery, that should never be outsourced. For example, relying solely on therapists without personal growth efforts or entrusting your business's core marketing strategy to others can be limiting. Blind trust in authorities: It is a trap to trust doctors, scientists, experts, and gurus unquestioningly. People should research their medical conditions, understand prescriptions, and be aware of biases instead of expecting experts to have their best interests at heart. Misplaced trust in the guru model: There's potential danger in committing oneself blindly to a spiritual teacher, as it risks falling prey to corrupt gurus and cults, which may have severe negative consequences. Lack of diversification of information sources: Relying on a single source for news, politics, religion, or advice from a specific guru creates a trap of narrow-mindedness. It's crucial to seek out diverse perspectives to avoid misinformation and bias. Dangers of corrupt spiritual communities: Joining or starting a spiritual commune with an unrealistic view can progress into cult behaviour, leading to disaster due to immaturity, inexperience, and personal ego. Sexual relationship pitfalls: Engaging in sexual relationships with gurus, employees, or within professional dynamics can cause significant issues. Furthermore, navigating sexuality with carelessness or unreal expectations leads to emotional harm and other serious consequences. Falling for sexual and relationship traps: Pursuing sexual satisfaction through methods like pickup culture, chasing after uninterested partners, or not addressing one's sexual needs can lead to negative outcomes and hinder personal development. Social inexperience and ineptitude: The trap of lacking social skills due to overreliance on online interaction hinders real-life relationships and professional progress while treating others transactionally or with disrespect is damaging and unproductive. Authoritarian leadership style: Using control or manipulation in leadership within families, romantic relationships, business, or politics backfires, creating toxic environments and damaging trust. Subtle forms of torturing others: Engaging in subtle acts of cruelty, such as sending hurtful text messages to someone who has scorned you, can be a trap driven by bitterness or a sense of failure. This destructive behavior often stems from trauma and a bad mental state, providing a perverse joy but ultimately leading to nothing beneficial. Distraction with social games: Political games and social maneuvering at gatherings like house parties are traps that consume mental energy and time without long-term significance. Leo Gura contrasts the trivial nature of these dramas with a broader perspective that looks at human history and the universe, illustrating their inconsequence. Petty emotional drama: Becoming entangled in trivial human drama, especially those amplified by the media, is presented as a trap that drains attention and focus. Leo emphasizes the ephemeral nature and lack of import these situations have when viewed from a larger, temporal or spatial context. Parental traps in raising children: Pushing personal values onto children rather than guiding them toward self-actualization and independent thinking is identified as a major trap. Teaching children to understand different perspectives and epistemologies empowers them to make their own decisions and develop their spirituality or interests without the bias of parental imposition. Teaching effectively: Beginning teachers often fall into the trap of focusing on rote memorization rather than encouraging independent thought and insights. Facilitating a process that allows students to develop their own understanding is key to effective education and avoiding indoctrination with beliefs and ideologies. Political radicalization: Becoming politically radicalized, whether far-left, far-right, or anti-mainstream, confines one to tier one politics, which Leo describes as unconscious. He highlights that even if one's stance on an issue is correct, the process of radicalization is harmful, as it closes one off from broader, more conscious political discourse. Single-issue voting: This trap involves becoming politically active or voting based on a narrow focus on a single issue. Politicians may exploit this to gain votes, but Leo warns that holistic consideration of a leader's policies is necessary to make informed electoral decisions that serve the broader good beyond one specific area of interest. Integrity and authenticity: Cheating, lying, stealing, and tax evasion are traps that can bring short-term gain but long-term detriment. Building a life around one's physical appearance or selling one's body for money is fleeting and unsustainable. Instead, building a life on enduring qualities is crucial. Following passions and intuitions: Ignoring one's passions and intuitions can be a trap, but so is always trusting them without discernment. Leo recommends honing intuition over years of experience to distinguish between beneficial hunches and misleading instincts. Job fantasies: Fantasizing about a "dream job" without understanding the daily realities of such a career is a trap. Leo shares his personal experience as a YouTuber to debunk common misconceptions about such seemingly glamorous jobs. Criticism as a career: Engaging in constant criticism can poison one's mindset over time, leading to bitterness and closed-mindedness, which Leo refers to as the "Alex Jones effect." Narrow identity: Identifying solely with a particular religion, nationality, or race limits personal growth and life experiences. Leo urges for a broader identity that transcends these categories. Hatred based on group identification: Generalizing negative experiences with individuals to hatred for an entire gender, race, or group is a trap of overgeneralization and can lead to harmful ideologies such as anti-Semitism, as evidenced by public figures like Kanye West. Stereotyping based on limited experience: Mistakenly generalizing a few negative interactions with individuals from a group to the entire group, leading to harmful stereotypes. Dangers of partying and chemical dependence: Over-indulging in partying and substances like antidepressants, benzos, steroids, alcohol, or recreational drugs results in unhealthy escapism and addiction. Impacts of social media on self-image: Young men influenced by "alpha" fitness influencers may resort to steroids to emulate unrealistic body standards, highlighting social media's role in distorting self-perception. Driving under the influence: Driving while intoxicated or using substances like alcohol, weed, or cocaine poses serious safety risks and legal consequences. Misuse of psychedelics: Using psychedelics without proper research or in inappropriate settings can lead to negative experiences and misunderstandings of their effects on different individuals. The allure of financial credit and debt: Falling into debt through loans, credit cards, and student loans without considering the long-term financial burden and its implications for future freedom and opportunities. Traps in romantic relationships: Confusing infatuation with love, overlooking red flags, staying in toxic dynamics, and relying on a relationship for personal completion can lead to emotional suffering and lack of personal growth. Dangers of committing crimes: Engaging in criminal behavior can lead to a false sense of security until legal repercussions catch up and potentially ruin one's life. Violence as a self-destructive response: Using violence to handle situations can escalate to further violence, criminal charges, and lifelong regret. Idealizing spiritual gurus and enlightenment: Placing unrealistic expectations on spiritual teachers or seeing enlightenment as a panacea for all of life's challenges creates disappointment and neglects personal responsibility for growth. The balance between spirituality and active life: Prioritizing spirituality too early in life can lead to a lack of engagement with important life experiences like relationships, career, and socializing, affecting overall fulfillment. Live life fully when young: Leo advises using your youth for enjoyment, like partying and building a business, as health and energy decline with age. This strategy helps avoid regrets about missed experiences later in life. Limitations of singular teachings: Relying on one set of teachings is insufficient for understanding life. A diverse range of insights is necessary. Awakening is not binary: The idea that you're either awakened or not is a misconception. Consciousness and awakening are gradual and varied processes. Need for contemplation: Making yourself too busy is a trap. Adequate downtime is essential for integration and reflection on life experiences. Pitfalls of online arguing: Engaging in debates, especially on social platforms, doesn't contribute to deep understanding but can become a distracting trap. Financial autonomy and thrift: Depending on others for wealth is unrealistic, and extreme frugality can lead to missed opportunities and regrets, as exemplified by Gura's personal anecdote. Knowing vs. pretending: Admitting ignorance is beneficial. Pretending to know more than one actually does out of ego is a trap. Misjudging perspectives: Strawmanning and demonizing unfamiliar viewpoints can hinder understanding and communication. Excess defense in criticism: Overreacting to criticism can exacerbate issues rather than address the criticism constructively. Confusing success with virtue: Equating popularity or wealth with truth, happiness, or righteousness is misleading, particularly in the context of influencer culture. Skepticism of miracle cures: Desperation can lead to belief in untested New Age or miracle cures, which might be harmful. Personal responsibility vs. divine reliance: Expecting a deity to resolve personal problems is a trap; one should take responsibility for their own affairs. Consequences of unethical behavior: Actions such as lying, cheating, and exploitation carry psychological and moral costs even if one isn't caught legally. Dangers of arrogance and false humility: Arrogance can blind one to learning opportunities, and false humility can undermine genuine understanding. Testing New Age claims: Critical examination of New Age or paranormal claims is necessary to separate reality from wishful thinking. Reality of love: Understanding that love is not always pleasant but a complex and serious endeavor is important. Discerning wisdom sharing: Sharing wisdom without discernment or pushing one's beliefs on others who may not be receptive is a trap. Awareness of apocalyptic thinking: Being cautious of apocalyptic predictions, which often do not come to fruition, can prevent unnecessary stress and poor decisions. Focused endeavors: Starting too many projects dilutes focus and effectiveness. Concentration on a few pursuits is advantageous. Practicality in spirituality: Acknowledging that life isn't just an intangible dream and taking practical actions like steady employment is essential. Commitment in meditation practice: Serious and technique-driven meditation practice is crucial for real benefit, unlike casual practices. Work for promise of profits: Engaging in work based solely on future profit-sharing promises can be risky and often leads to dissatisfaction. Contractual agreements: Always obtain a concrete contract to ensure payment for your work; avoid relying on empty promises of future compensation. Overpromising: Making promises you can't fulfill, as exemplified by Elon Musk, can damage credibility. It's better to avoid making promises to limit potential pitfalls and maintain integrity. Authenticity vs. Fakeness: Being fake to gain advantages, whether in relationships or other endeavors, is not worth the potential harm to one's integrity or reputation. Due diligence: The trap of not verifying sources or information out of laziness can lead to poor decisions and regrettable outcomes. Materialism: Believing that acquiring luxury items and adhering to popular brands will bring happiness is a trap—ownership often comes with hidden costs and maintenance burdens. Following trends: Mistaking popularity for quality can be misleading, whether with books, spiritual teachers, or business advice. Health and finances: Neglecting routine health exams and putting all your financial resources in one place can be risky and detrimental. Dealing with friends and family: Engaging in business or loaning money to close ones can strain or ruin relationships, particularly if the business faces challenges. Legal concerns: Act responsibly when interacting with law enforcement; resisting arrest or fleeing can lead to severe legal consequences. Exotic pets: Owning unconventional pets can be burdensome and is often underestimated in terms of the care and maintenance they require. Audience capture: Content creators must be wary of becoming too focused on clicks, likes, and views, as it may lead to a loss of authenticity and personal misery. Charisma deception: Charismatic individuals, whether politicians or romantic interests, can be alluring, but their charm could be a facade disguising ulterior motives. Misplaced value in credentials: Overvaluing titles and studying for grades rather than understanding can backfire in the long term, potentially leading to superficial knowledge. Communication pitfalls: Engaging in violent communication and making assumptions can result in miscommunication and conflict. Work-life imbalance: Working excessively, particularly without enjoyment, is a trap that can compromise one's well-being. High-risk investments: Chasing high ROI opportunities, attempting to time the market, or falling for investment fads can lead to significant financial losses. Personal disclosure: Oversharing on social media may lead to regret, as once information is public, it's irreversible and can affect privacy. Seeking fame and love online: Using social media as a means of achieving fame or love is often an illusion and can be a trap that sacrifices genuine connections and personal contentment. Traps in personal relationships and business: Seeking love from celebrities and idolizing them can lead to unhealthy parasocial relationships. Believing in unrealistic guarantees, such as 100% uptime from web hosting services, is a sign to steer clear of certain business dealings. The self-improvement treadmill: Engaging in self-actualization non-stop can become just another rat race, failing to bring true fulfillment. Profit maximization downfall: Brands that focus excessively on sequel releases for profit can diminish quality and cut corners, leading to subpar offerings. Legal and law enforcement entrapments: Legal contracts can hide nefarious clauses and NDAs, while law enforcement practices like entrapment can mislead individuals into self-incrimination. Collective societal traps: Societal reactions like the backlash to terrorism can create further issues rather than solving them. Tragedy of the commons scenarios, such as public spaces deteriorating due to lack of individual responsibility, demonstrate collective shortfalls. Selfish voting and lobbying: Voting and lobbying with only personal gain in mind lead to a corrupt and dysfunctional government, diverting focus from collective well-being. Overreliance on technology: Believing technology can solve deep-rooted human and social issues is misplaced; technology cannot fix problems such as immaturity or lack of spiritual connection. Imposing development stages: Attempting to force democracy or other higher-stage developments onto societies that aren't ready can backfire. Societal traps: Issues like political polarization, the danger of constant growth narratives, metrics fixation in education, and nostalgia can hinder societal progress. Psychological and epistemological traps: Rosy retrospection, confirmation bias, denial, grounding happiness in others, postmodernism, avoiding truth, and misinterpreting gender subjectivity can obstruct personal understanding and growth. Limiting beliefs and judgment: Beliefs in personal limitations can become self-fulfilling prophecies, while dismissing experience reports as hallucinations limits understanding of diverse realities. Judging, repressing problems and passive-aggressive behavior degrade interpersonal relationships. Judgment as a trap: Leo Gura identifies judgement of reality and others as a significant trap that stems from our egos and is difficult to overcome. Morality's pitfalls: The field of morality is described as a trap, with future content planned to explore this. Feelings of moral righteousness, moral crusading, and demonizing or virtue signaling are highlighted as specific moral traps. Self-perception delusion: Realizing one is not inherently good but has done evil acts is discussed as an epiphany Gura experienced, challenging the common self-perception of being a 'good person'. Messiah complex: The notion that one must save the world, underpinned by a belief that only they can prevent an apocalypse, is addressed as a delusion and a psychological trap. Philosophical and ideological traps: Gura points out the limitations of engaging in armchair philosophy, taking centrist views on controversies, and assuming personal perspectives as universal truths. Ideology, particularly stubbornness and close-mindedness, is also mentioned as a trap that prevents genuine insight. Empathy and understanding limitations: Both excessive empathy, particularly in progressive contexts, and assuming others share one's own experiences and capabilities, are described as traps that can lead to misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations. Avoiding traps with strategies: Gura advises expecting traps in new domains, avoiding desperation, long-term thinking, clarity of values, distinguishing real value from fake allure, and seeking advice from experienced individuals. Contemplation and periodic review of traps, as well as employing the premortem technique to anticipate and prevent failures, serve as means to steer clear of traps. Learning from traps: Emphasizing that falling into traps is acceptable provided one learns from them, Gura differentiates between catastrophic traps, which must be avoided, and less significant ones that can offer learning opportunities. Seeking expert advice on avoiding traps is also recommended for gaining valuable foresight. Pitfalls of worshiping gurus: Blindly following gurus can lead to falling into traps such as adopting ideologies without critical thinking, thus succumbing to groupthink. Value of experience: Immense experience is vital for avoiding traps; severe inexperience is considered the root of many traps because we start life completely ignorant and only learn through mistakes. Failing constructively: It's important to fail often and quickly, but failure should not be catastrophic or crippling, as some failures can have irreversible consequences, like losing a limb. Categorizing risks: When assessing potential traps, especially new ones, distinguish between those that are catastrophic and those that are less critical, so as to prioritize caution correctly. Literature and truth: Reading extensively, including biographies, history, business books, and other genres, provides a foundation to understand human mistakes and avoid similar traps. Facing truth and seeking diverse perspectives: Actively seeking the truth and getting diverse viewpoints on various matters, like spirituality, business, and relationships, can prevent one from falling into traps. Context awareness and cognitive development: Developing context awareness and reaching the 'construct aware' stage of cognitive development assists in recognizing abstract and existential traps. Sustainability principle: Engagement in sustainable practices, whether in business or relationships, leads to satisfaction and avoids the trap of unsustainable, short-term solutions. Strategic positioning: Avoid desperation by maintaining strategic life positioning to prevent being lured into compromising situations that can lead to traps. Understanding of personal vulnerabilities: Realizing that traps often reflect our own desires and fears, a personalized approach to recognizing traps one might be susceptible to is crucial. Awareness of mental traps ('meta traps'): Recognizing 'meta traps' such as thinking you're immune to certain traps or denying you're in one can be key to avoiding a cycle of mistakes. Psychological growth from traps: Traps should be seen as opportunities for learning; exercises for reflection can help reframe experiences as beneficial despite their seeming negativity. Balance and pitfalls: Success in any domain requires finding the right balance between two extremes. Examples include not being too cheap or wasteful, balancing hard work with relaxation to avoid workaholism or procrastination, and finding a middle ground between blind faith in religion and dismissing all spirituality. Admissions of fallibility: Leo Gura acknowledges that he is not immune to falling into traps, stating that his knowledge of traps comes from personal experiences and contemplation. He reserves the right to make mistakes and fall into traps in the future as a natural part of life. Awareness of traps as value: He emphasizes the practicality of awareness over ideology, stating that his content's primary function is to identify various traps, which he has done for the past 10 years, though it has only recently been made explicit. AI as a contemplation aid: Gura has started using AI (Claude 3) to enhance his talks by challenging his thinking. He fed his extensive outline to the AI, asking it to scrutinize and improve his work by playing Devil's Advocate and highlighting potential flaws. Image 4 Flaws identified by AI: Risk of oversimplification: Not all situations can be categorized as traps. Excessive cynicism: Overmistrust and paranoia can create unhealthy skepticism. Blame and shame: It's important to be compassionate toward others who fall into traps. Rigidity and dogmatism: Using the "traps lens" inflexibly leads to a narrow viewpoint. Context-dependent traps: A trap in one situation may be an opportunity in another. Gifts in traps: AI suggested acknowledging the positive outcomes of navigating traps. Reframing traps: Viewing falling into traps as a learning experience rather than a failure. Systemic factors: The need to consider wider societal factors beyond individual agency. Flexibility in thinking: The reminder to hold frameworks lightly and embrace alternative views. Potential AI reliance: Gura foresees possible traps with AI use, like becoming reliant on AI for content creation or overvaluing its efficiency over contemplative effort. The irony of sources: Gura cautions that even the highest sources of information, including Actualized.org and any revered authority, can become traps if relied upon without critical thinking. Personal growth and future plans: Implicit in the conclusion is Gura's hint at personal struggles and growth he experienced during a year-long break from content creation. He plans to share deeper insights and new material gained from this period in the future, integrating subtle changes in his approach to content. The ultimate trap: Gura leaves with the parting idea that the self is the ultimate trap, suggesting that ego and self-identification are overarching pitfalls in the journey towards enlightenment and personal development. Colloportus

Any statement can be interpreted as an assumption. But could there be a real recognition underlying the communication that validates such view? Say someone "gets it" and then claims something like "Consciousness is all", if that were consistent with their breakthrough. First, you don't have to believe in it. You can try listening to it and the "experience" may get across to you, that is, you grasp your nature (this would be like a transmission in zen). The key is the consciousness itself, not anything else that comes after it such as the expression. It must be validated through personal "experience." Hence the role of self-inquiry. One challenge is that we may not understand what "direct" means. Do you hold it as possible--becoming conscious of the thing itself without intermediary, absolutely, prior to experience, mind and perception, beyond a doubt? The terms kensho and satori can give the mind something new to ponder. If you don't think it as possible, then this awakening business is a mere fantasy to you. And relatively, why close oneself off? We may be able to understand directly the nature of things beyond assumption. We just shouldn't conflate our failure to do so with concluding that it is impossible. This is where the principle of openness comes in. Why is Gautama known as the awakened one? Leaving legend aside, he exemplifies the possibility of "complete enlightenment", whatever that is. Can we understand everything there is, as the Buddha presumably did? I'd say yes. If a human could do it, then it means that it is possible. There, an incoherent mess.

Correlation doesn't mean causation. But strange conincidence, hm? That the awakened nondual states don't happen anymore when taking psychedelics, because they are already the case?

https://dmtquest.org/endohuasca-magic/ Stable access to awakened nondual states? And certain bodily correlates of that, like above? The main effects of psychedelics like Nonduality, Infinite Being, mere groundless appearance, eternal Infinite Being and other minor things (like end of grasping/resistance and so on) in the palm of ones hand, always available? But how the f*** could that even matter?

Awakening is a radical and often sudden change in how you experience the world on a moment-to-moment level. The type of awakening which is probably most referenced is awakening to Oneness or non-duality, which coincides with the loss of self-referential thinking and experience of self in space and time, reflected in the deactivation of the Default Mode Network (DMN). Spiritual transformation is when the awakening creates a lasting but incomplete change where some parts of yourself will never be the same. Your first awakening tends to coincide with a spiritual transformation. For non-duality spiritual transformations, this coincides with a lasting relative deactivation of the DMN. Enlightenment is when the awakened state becomes your new baseline, i.e. what you operate from most of the time (~90% of the time). After many awakenings in different ways and contexts, the tower topples over and flips. And for non-duality enlightenment, this coincides with a lasting and more significant deactivation of the DMN. Your enlightened state might refine over time in subtle ways, maybe filling in the remaining 10% and for non-duality enlightenment maybe eliminating self-referential thinking altogether, or through more embodied manifestations (in the case of non-duality: purifying egoic responses/behavioral patterns, contractions, "defilements"). I used awakening to non-duality to illustrate each term, but you can substitute it with any type of awakening; awakening to God, Love, even intellectual awakenings; but of course, the terms are less commonly used in this way. An example of an intellectually focused (or moral) spiritual transformation I had was the transition from a hedonistic to a eudaimonic value system.

"physical presence of someone who's seriously skilled and awakened" I am surprised noone has not done a retreat, expo,etc for this group. I feel like this forum has some of those people.

ok, here my Olaf-version-take: "The delusion is that there are humans who are unenlightened. " There appear Olafs who have appearances of thinking/believing they are separate Olafs, so one could say there are unenlightened Olafs. But since there is only the Infinite Ocean freezing to an imagined Olaf, watching its own substance while doing so in a nondual way, actually there is no (unenlightened) Olaf. It just appears to be so. Actually, there are just some perspectives of Infinite Being ("humans" or Olafs) that have I-thougt/I-feeling-arisings (which makes them believe to be a human/Olaf) in their perspective/mindstream, while forgetting in real-time ("in-space") all other perspectives appearing in their Infinite Being. While being also these perspectives at the same time. Indras Infinite Net of Olaf-perspectives. And then one could have Olafs observing or contemplating all of that. But since there are no actual Olafs, but only the Infinite Ocean, there is in reality no Olaf observing unenlightened Olafs. Only the Infinite Ocean having fooling-itself-thought-feelings-arisings appearing in its Infinite Being. So its basically appearing Olafs talking to themselves, while there is only one Infinite Being, splicing itself up in infinite perspectives. The Infinite Ocean modulating itself as "freezing Olaf-appearances" and wondering what it really is. And what those other Olafs are. And for an Olaf to verify that for itself beyond any doubt, an Olaf normally need considerable time in nondual impersonal awakened states. Selling Olaf-ISM by the River

i am no longer addicted to habits, i am awakened to heaven mindless habits make a person dead see the world through innocence and then all around is heaven you're not heavy you're my brother as the Hollies reminded us children are at the ignorance stage not innocence although this is better than most

Imagine... We are on a forum called Actualized. We agree that there is something like Infinite Being. Absolute Reality. Which can be realized in Awakened Nondual States. Which (as a lucky coincidence) are also supposed the reduce suffering dramatically. At least according to the testament of thousands of people over the millenia. And more or less the only way to generate stable nondual awakened states in daily life is meditation. Or cutting off the internal bla-bla that most of the time talks me/mine. And this me/mine is by definition a part, a broken fractal of Infinite Being. Contemplation will never cause the awakened nondual states that are necessary for the realization of Infinite Being. At least for all non-prodigies. Contemplation is a necessary and good starting point. And it comes in every tradition I am aware of before serious meditation starts. It is ok if one doesn't have the discipline or Karma to seriously engage in this path. Or engage it later. But belittling meditation and/or those who actually seriously engage in it... oh well. Brings great Karma for sure. Something to think about? How did this kind of contemplation work so far in creating serious nondual awakened states? And no, small you is not everything. That is just new cloths for the conceptual identity of a separate-self. Why is it that every single meditation tradition does something like neti-neti to get rid of false identity (and any identity at all btw., since Infinite Being has no Identity)? Well, I guess you are young. Life automatically brings along some crocodiles that bite sufficiently enough to challenge any assumption that contemplation alone is enough. The smart way is to start meditating before the crocodiles show up. Because... ... there are crocodiles in the River, that will always bite every single being, sooner or later.

I do my best to always check myself to make sure I'm not like this. It takes genuine humility to not lose yourself. Realize how tiny and insignificant you are and how LITTLE you really know. Being awakened isn't any better than being asleep. Being asleep is natural. Awakening is painful..the truth is painful and can be alienating and I see lots of people who are aslee.. living happier lives than me and fitting in society better than me..so being awakened doesn't mean shit in terms of living a superior life. It feels like there is a thin blurry line that separates being '"truly awakened"' and being delusional and pretentious. I don't know it myself... I don't know if being "awakened"' is just a self-help and self-empowering kind of word that leads to the trapping of oneself into a lost forest. Something certainly feels real..but it is being shrouded by a kind of cunning falseness. Not sure if anyone will understand what I mean..but looking forward to your thoughts.

My Wife is Jamaican, born there and was there for the first 20+yrs of here life, but she came here to Canada for a better life in her words, but we vacationed in Montego Bay a Year or so ago, fist time there for me, it was very nice and beautiful, I met her family out in the country, they accepted me and it was great fun and a learning experience for me.. My Wife is all about Jamaica, listens to Jamaican podcasts and videos, but wants to live here because she says it offers her more opportunities, but there are struggles here too even though we are in a so called Wealthy Country, we just have a higher standard or quality of living, more established survival systems, but everyone here wants to go to Jamaica, lol, its so nice there, and its like a paradise really, we went to Duns River and Blue Hole, and I saw the country from both sides of Montego Bay area, its just the social systems are not in place. I luv Bob Marley, watched lots of docu's on him when I met my Wife, and recently saw the "One Love" movie, he was highly Awakened, but its crazy how he changed things in the world and in his own country in many ways.. All the world has huge problems, just different problems depending on the region, everyday I hear about the problems in Toronto on the radio, its nuts the politics of it all and its not really a hard fix if we decide to work together and see each other as we see ourselves, this would fix many problems in the world...but I'm looking forward to going back to Jamaica again one day:)

Yes that's it:) For sure Leo is intelligent, and is highly Awakened and a very good communicator, this has nothing to do with Identification problems:) anyways have fun:)

Then I guess the only thing that remains is to wish you fun exploring the mechanisms of manifestation while diving even deeper into the illusion, while being an illusion. Bon voyage! Watch out for the crocodiles Consider that maybe you can not judge that, because, um, ehem, well, you know ... ... .... The aspect that you don't have access to nondual awakened states sobre tells about the still remaining filters/lenses, of, um, Leo. Do you really need more crocodiles to get "Enlightenment is a low ..." bitten out of your separate-self mindstream? The trap you are falling into is precisely described in Wilbers Religion of the Future, getting lost in the fascination of the higher subtle realms and how manifestation works. There is nothing new with it. Just read Chris Bache "LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven", or Stan Grof "The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness". There are endless accounts, both contemporary and historical. Thank you for the second part, you are also doing quite well in this field since lately, Chapeau! .And the first part is a compliment that I can not avoid giving back since you are also very firm in your perspective.

To give a preview on these facets of True Being. To know these states are real. Awakened (impersonal, not personal, no empty witness or duality of any kind left), Nondual (boundless and infinite field/vastness, Unity, Oneness) and Groundless (mere appearance, really just mere appearance or hologram-like character of the world hovering in Infinite limitless Nothingness, that behind your body), no external world if it is not imagined. Eternal and timeless and absolutely fundamental, since its boundless and can't go anywhere else, it is more fundamental than time in mathematical language. And how one imagines past &future&"background-fairy-tale-of-the-separate-body-mind" real time right now. Just more appearances/modulations appearing in the Infinite vastness/Infinite Being. Infinite and spaceless (since space is literally imagined in it, and with that any 3-,4-, or n-dimensional space, be it euclidian, non-euclidian, or whatever of the infinity of possibilities) Blissfull and salvation, since the separate-self-contraction suffering/bad-feelings and thoughts can get cut off/transcended in real-time by just looking into their nature. They appear & literally "move" within True Infinite Being, as its "modulations". Without psychedelics, one needs a looong time of this here: That cutting-off of the separate-self-arisings real time is what unlocks the states mentioned above, and their resulting insights/realizations. Basically cutting-off real time separate-self arisings done proficiently enough= creates awakened states (above) and same effects as psychedelics. And with psychedelics, one still needs to do this until the very end. Else the whole elephant won't show itself. But at least one knows then that there is an elephant. Psychedelic Pro: Prooves that nondual states are not mere fantasy, and gives nice awakened states on which to cross-check if ones meditation-path is moving one there. And of course explore the Multiverse with its myriad of Realms and Beings, from Angels and Demons to ET&Aliens. And understand the mechanisms of manifestation/appearance (Chris Bache, Stan Grof, Rick Strassmann) for example). Psychedelic Contra: Doesn't deliver transcending ones personality/ego fully. This here: "That cutting-off of the separate-self-arisings real time is what unlocks the states mentioned above, and their resulting insights/realizations. Basically cutting-off real time separate-self arisings done proficiently enough= creates awakened states (above) and same effects as psychedelics." So we get God-realized Egos. Not stable realization. A mighty trap. Somebody ought to make a video including that trap also. Committing blasphemy against the holy Liturgy of the church of god-realize-your-ego and then getting drowned in the River by an Infinity of Gods.

God Realization from what I have seen is just understanding more than the usual psychedelic Awakening (where one just projects an ego in nondual unity on the visual field or Nothingness or whatever). Like, how one imagines the past real time right now (which one does, and it doesn't exist anywhere else). And how one imagines everything else just to fool oneself (like parents, job, being a person,...). The problem with God Realization is: There remains a subtle "realizer" of all of that. Very subtle, very hard to transcend, since this is just a totally empty "Individuality". That is the last hindrance to Enlightenment, which then is therefor also stable if that element is seen through. Wilber calls it Empty Witness (see for example Religion of the Future). But not fully transparent and fully boundless nondual without individuality. And that is why God Realization is not stable sobre. These remaining separate-self elements kill the Awakened nondual states after the trip. In Enlightenment, all of that is totally obvious, and since these components are in place, or rather there illusion-counter-components (like self-existing personality, space, time, outer world, duality/out-thereness) are seen through in real time. Below, the outcome first, and then which kind of illusion-part of the separte-self structure it shuts off. Awakened (impersonal, not personal, no empty witness or duality of any kind left), Nondual (boundless and infinite field/vastness, Unity, Oneness) and Groundless (mere appearance, really just mere appearance or hologram-like character of the world hovering in Infinite limitless Nothingness, that behind your body), no external world if it is not imagined. Eternal and timeless and absolutely fundamental, since its boundless and can't go anywhere else, it is more fundamental than time in mathematical language. And how one imagines past &future&"background-fairy-tale-of-the-separate-body-mind" real time right now. Just more appearances/modulations appearing in the Infinite vastness/Infinite Being. Infinite and spaceless (since space is literally imagined in it, and with that any 3-,4-, or n-dimensional space, be it euclidian, non-euclidian, or whatever of the infinity of possibilities) Blissfull and salvation, since the separate-self-contraction suffering/bad-feelings and thoughts can get cut off/transcended in real-time by just looking into their nature. They appear & literally "move" within True Infinite Being, as its "modulations". That cutting-off of the separate-self-arisings real time is what unlocks the states mentioned above, and their resulting insights/realizations. Basically cutting-off real time separate-self arisings done proficiently enough= creates awakened states (above) and same effects as psychedelics. And all of these states and/or insights above one can happpen one at a time, or two, or three combined... Any combination possible, and that creates the myriad of half-baked and different Awakening & (smaller) Enlightenment-descriptions ("Kenshos in Zen"). Ever heard some people have new Awakenings all the time? That is that. For truly awakening to what one truly is, beyond any doubt, one needs all of them. When that Waking Up happens, it is definitive. Because it kills the former illusion of being a separate-anything. That can never be believed again. It is dead. It always ever was an illusion. Even the God-realized ego/separate-self. All a dream. There was never anything else than the Infinite Ocean of Being, formerly with ignorance and illusion arising within it, and now back to the real state of "things", the ignorance no longer arising. Basically, one gets all facets of the Infinite Absolute True Being all at once, and once this happens Infinite Being is totally obvious. It is You. All of it. And can't get more Infinite than Infinite and more eternal than eternal, that is why it is final. The rest is just more appearance IN You (or consciousness OF x, man, woman, Alien, Alien n+1,...). Interesting for sure, but not so urgent. Got Eternity and Infinity to explore, remember? And even if getting distracted by the Lila-show for a moment, "it" is "just there", by just reaching out and killing the illusion-aspect that got re-established by just looking into its nature and just finding the Infinite Ocean of Awareness-Being. Your True Self. So in summary, God-Realization as used here, is a step in the right direction, but it is still not true Enlightenment. Of course, what is sold as Enlightenment is in 80%-90%+ cases not Enlightenment as waking up out of the dream, but just some nondual "Awakening". A dual dream has become a nondual dreaming. Dreaming nonetheless. What Leo calls (correctly) nondual BS. Zen differentiates between Enlightenments (Kenshos), and fully waking up (calling that Great Enlightenment). Only in the latter one there is waking up from the dream. With the former one, a nondual, or god-realized, or whatever ego/separate-self continues dreaming its nondual dream... Lovely place to be at, but still a dream So God Realization is between the naive nondual-Enlightenments with a dreamer still well and alive dreaming nondual-unity-dream, and true waking-up Enlightenment is beyond God Realization, since even the "subtle" one having the God-Realization is seen through as more dreaming. And one can wake up only once, then any separate-anything illusion is ruined for good. That illusions never recovers its fully. And then, one can go still playing with the Aliens for ever new insights, if one is so inclined... So it is tricky, because Leo basically has a Pre-Trans-Confusion in Wilbers lingo. Sorry Leo, but needs to be said. God-Realization is "higher" than a standard nondual-awakening (Nondual Unity Awakening of ego still believing its background story like parents, world, others). These are the Nonduality or Enlightenment-Fundamentalists he criticizes. but it is lower than True Enlightenment, since the final individuality/separate-self/God-realized-ego is not seen through. And once the psychedelic state delivering most of the items listed above wears off, this remaining not seen-through-in-real-time individuality/separte-self/ego kills the awakened state. and since it is all very subtle and impossible to fully understand without having had these awakened states, it is also IMPOSSIBLE to understand True Enlightenment from the perspective of God-Realization before it truly happens (else, one would be already fully enlightened when having seen through the last subtle elements of separation/individuality), Water by the River recommends the age-old recipe of Matthew 7:15-20 "You Will Know Them by Their Fruits". And the proof for that is: Psychedelic Godrealization doesn't last. When the psychedlic wears off, the filters/lenses/contraction of the remaining separate self/ego kick back in, and bye bye awakened nondual states (the ones listed above). And even during "God-Realization", the remaining individual projects itself mightily on all these insights. And then we get Infinity of Gods and stuff not for the faint-of-hearted as compensation. While there is only one Being/Reality, we now have an Infinity of "god-realized" egos. Basically, God-Realization never gets rid of the Individuality/Separation fully, there is always a subtle "someone" having all these realizations. Selling "going all the way" by the River PS: Roger Thisdells version of that. vs. Even the God-realized ones need to fully jump into the mixer Void PS PS: https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?q="God Realization"&author=Water by the River&sortby=relevancy

Compassion. Less construct-awareness and generally lower level of for example growth on the Spiral Dynamics spectrum equals more suffering. Beings less aware/consciousness generally suffer more. Way more. Because they are more hypotized by their constructs/world-views, and reject many more situations appearing in their mindstream than for example someone on 2nd-tier SD. That is why stable Awakening needs compassion towards them (because if one doesn't have it, one will suffer/get angry/whatever oneself, and bye bye nondual awakened states). That is btw not new-agey-talk, but a "hard" fact/reality. Nothing easier to kill ones nice off-the-pillow-awakened nondual state than getting annoyed. Took me a loooong time to get it. Wisdom (or Awakening) and compassion (openness,love,bliss) form a pair in Mahayana-Buddhism. Because they got this around 2 milleania ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva And even from a metaphysical perspective it makes sense: If True You is all of already (which it is), if one walks around disliking certain aspects of oneself ("others") because they "lack" development, one cuts nondualty in two, shutting off awakened nondual states.-Literally. It is not a sin of the acorn to be not yet an oak. And one more perspective: Consider the stupidity less-than-wise/smart-behaviour of the whole world as divine entertainment. True You is playing a trick on itself. Better be the one laughing in a compassionate way and not the one being annoyed. But that has also to be balanced with compassion in order to not become cynical or negative. Certain local VIPs that yours truly is very fond of seem to be truly getting this now. Chapeau! Selling Water while swimming in the River & humming along:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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