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Because people do not understand how Truths operate at each layer. So even this questions arise. Leo has no problem at all talking about suicide with someone that would grasp what he is saying. However, a great amount of people would misunderstand what he is saying and would get disfunctional about it's own life. For someone who is so devoted to Truth, misleading people into falsehood is the worse crime. It is not what he would say, it is what u would listen, what u would understand or not understand, what u would interprete, what u would create, what u would project, what u would manifest...

What's the best argument against suicide?

It isn't bad, but the family that suffers for years afterwards isn't exactly what Leo tries to do. If we are really serious and not trying to get shortcuts, there is zero reason to commit suicide unless we are in deep deep pain, the kind of pain that can't be treated (and even then, you can still attract a miracle).

Leo has said "Everything is a hallucination at all times." That means that death is also a hallucination. It's not like death ends anything. You just go on to another existence for infinity....which is also a hallucination. The idea that suicide is "bad" is also more fantasy and hallucination. Funny how no one here wants to let go of that one :-)

In light of recent events we are tightening the ship around here. I am looking for a few additional Mods who will specialize in looking for posts/users who are going through difficult emotional stuff and suicidal thoughts or dark nights of the soul, and helping to guide such people towards professional help. You are not going to be their therapist, but in this role you will be dealing with more emotional issues so I'm looking for people who are interested in that kind of work. This role requires high empathy for struggling people and lots of patience. Your primary job would be to monitor the forum for people who are seriously struggling, depressed, or suicidal, and helping to guide them towards some real-world treatment options because this forum is not sufficient for such hard cases. Such people need real-world support and your role would be to hold them over until they can get it. And also to report back to me any members who are in serious danger of suicide. Because as this forum continues we will inevitably run into such people here. It's not avoidable and we need this place to be safe from any crazy self-harm incidents. Also, look out for any people considering Mahasamadhi. We are not gonna be allowing that here. If this role sounds like it fits you, please PM me.

I remember Leo said in a video that if you're dead, there's no more self actualization or something lol. Nah but seriously, he said life is all about survival. But yeah, if we're gonna apply philosophy and absolute truths to one thing, we should be able to apply it to alll, and in that case, suicide has no meaning.

Because in the 'real world', Leo doesn't want any of his viewers to get the wrong idea and kill themselves. He doesn't want to promote suicide and he doesn't want to be judged by others as promoting suicide. There's a contradiction though, because when you say that 'life', 'fun', 'sensations', 'meaning' etc are all just a dream, the people who really take that onboard tend to come to the conclusion that there's no *real* point in continuing the dream. To me, it falls into the category of self-preservation, albeit a slightly absurd one kind of like when people on drug forums describe their trip experiences as happening to 'SWIM' (Someone Who Isn't Me) in a naive attempt to avoid legal ramifications, when really anyone with half a brain knows exactly what's going on regardless.

Suicide comes with no guarantees of peace, liberation or freedom. The mistake is thinking it does.

I noticed that I'm looking different to actualized org after suicide of SoonHei and the whole ordeal by Conner Murphy. These happenings revealed spiral dynamics deep stage orange of this forum. There is a lot of selfishness that I was afraid of. I dropped those feelings of guilt of caring about myself. Everybody pursues his own interests, so will I.

I have no contact with my mother after years and years of emotional and physical abuse. I'm done with her and her abusive family but my grandmother's death makes me confront old shit again. One part of me wants to be nice and do the right thing and another part of me wants to stay close to myself: I'm not going back while I cut them out of my life. Going to the funeral will feel like stabbing myself in the back. I don't want to betray myself. I don't want to be nice at the expense of pleasing my nephews and nieches. I really don't care about my mother and her family but I do care about my nephews and nieches so I'm in a split. If I don't go my nephews and nieches will be angry at me. Perhaps not even want to see me but I doubt that. If I go, I will have to betray myself. I was on the blink of suicide thanks to my mother so I don't care about her. Also I don't want to see my mother and to play a role when I don't care.

I don’t post all that much, but I enjoy the intersection between psychedelics, enlightenment work, and finding emotional depth. It would be a shame if the forum lost that or it’s open character, so I hope you will keep those aspects intact. That said, clearer guidelines on suicide and being life-positive might be appropriate. The discussion of suicide is a significant part of spiritual growth, and shouldn’t be lightly disregarded. However, some basic points from a training on how to talk to suicidal people might be welcome.

Every time I look into the mirror I want to dowse myself in gasoline and light myself on fire. I was born with a benign vascular tumor above my upper lip and was bullied throughout all of school for it (I actually had it surgically removed at 15 but that didn't change a goddamn thing, I'm still ugly without it.). I've literally never had any sort of relationship and I don't think I ever will, which really fucks with my self esteem so I'm super uber arrogant to compensate. I want to delude myself into thinking I'm not ugly not because I want sex or a relationship, but because I think it will drive me to suicide if I don't. It is like a fucking curse that has haunted me since I was born, it isn't a belief, it is reality, it is so real I think it is hurting my business, I think people are ruder and less compassionate toward me because of it, I think its why I could never make friends. How can I just deny it and then deny my denial of it? I'm 23 btw

Woops, my bad, I guess I should have read all the replies closer myself.?‍♀️ (inserts foot in mouth) Well, that's very unfortunate ?, but you could still "try" to make a change that would potentially improve your situation over time, but you'd have to want it. Many, many years ago I had bulimia (I was in my mid-late twenties) and I couldn't stop on my own. Finally, a professional at their absolute wits end with me said try "Overeaters Annonymous" meetings. I said, yeah-yeah, ain't gonna work and I refused. He kept bringing it up and finally after I hit my lowest low of that disorder I finally went. I hated it and I thought it wouldn't work, but made a choice that I had nothing to lose (but an hour a week), so I would just keep going. Little by little the eating disorder got better and in 6 months it was completely gone. I stayed 3 more months doing weekly meetings before I stopped. So, we all have had our struggles. A decade ago, I had depression to the point of a suicide attempt, so I can say with a good amount of certainly that if you don't put in the work and effort to make change, however small it may be, then you'll potentially stay stuck, lonely and unhappy. Why not open your mind to finding a good therapist to help you? What do you have to lose?

Soonhei's suicide has led me to do some serious thinking about my relationship with Leo's teachings and this forum. @Leo Gura is correct that when someone dies in the backcountry, or an airplane goes down, we don't cancel camping or ban flying. When this happens search & rescue and the airline industry conduct a rigorous post-mortem in order to make changes that reduce risk. Because of this approach, commercial flight has today become safer than driving. Following is my own post-mortem analysis, do with it what you will, apologies for the length. I've divided it up into 3 spheres: 1. Leo's Teaching Leo's teachings have helped stupendously more people than they have harmed. Just looking at suicide, it seems clear that he has literally saved many people's lives. This is a great achievement alone, let alone all of the people who he has helped along the way in less dire situations. However, I would be dishonest if I didn't voice concern over some of his language. I believe some of it can easily be misunderstood and lead a person like Soonhei down the wrong path. This is not meant as an attack, I truly intend this as sharing a perspective, hopefully in the most (tough-) loving way possible. I hope this can help fortify Leo's teachings, and this community's response to them. Disclaimers and warnings are a great idea, and will help. However the issue will remain that people will ignore them, think they don't apply to them, or skip them altogether. There can be the assumption that warnings are a fake covering-your-ass thing, put in place to meet legal requirements, or youtube guidelines etc. I think many of us are conditioned to ignore warnings to some degree. In my opinion, the true caution has to go right down to the core of the language in the teaching. To give a concrete example, Leo has said on more than one occasion that he has "literally died". Now, this is clearly not true in the normal medical sense of what people mean when they literally die. I would hope that even a confused person would see this, but it sets a tone. In my opinion, this is too dangerous a phrase. There needs to be a very, very strong line in the sand between ego-death/transcendence and literal medical death. Again, I want to stay positive here, Leo is an extremely talented speaker, and it's impossible to deliver 100s of hours of lectures without an occasional error. I wouldn't last 1hr tbh. This is intended to hopefully shine some light. 2. This Forum I value the diversity of respectful viewpoints and discussion on this forum. I also support mild censorship to ban and closing of terrible and unproductive threads, and aggressive or useless discussion to keep this forum from becoming a generic free-for-all. There are more than enough platforms for talking shit. As a mod, I wish we could have noticed Soonhei's warning signs and intervened. What if. Fuck. I would probably support disabling PMs on this forum. I'm not completely sure about this, but I think it warrants discussion. Perhaps we should have all discussion above board here. I'm concerned that this community is displaying signs of cult-like behaviour. I think we could all do with checking in on the level of pedestalization of Leo and his teachings. Question respectfully, without attack. Check in if what you heard in his video is authentic for you. Check your biases, try not to worship. If someone has a thoughtful criticism of something you have gained from Leo's teaching (or any teaching), observe if this triggers you. I believe that a slight leaning towards an unquestioning and cult-like behaviour in this community contributed to Soonhei's fanatical final act. 3. Personal I've been overly cavalier in not providing cautions on this forum, especially WRT psychedelics. I also regret not voicing and trying to discuss my concerns earlier. I'll be more forthcoming and hopefully loving in my responses and perspectives. I think we all need to adopt the voice of no-self-harm (and no other-harm!) in all of our interactions on here.

Funny, I just shared this beautiful Bentinho talk on another actualized forum: I've followed Bentinho the last 6 or 7 years, have done some of his events, his free trinfinity academy, online workshops, and having met and talked to him personally. He feels like a brother from another dimension to me. And similar to how I resonate with Leo's perspective and work I have also observed many similarities in how this generation of current spiritual teachers are being perceived, portrayed and judged by the masses on social media which are clearly not yet capable of understanding or opening up to this higher level of consciousness. For example Bentinho's inner circle of like minded individuals at some point, a few years ago, was infiltrated by a self proclaimed journalist type with a very negative intention to expose Bentinho as a dangerous cult leader. That individual wrote a very judging and opinionated article (on medium) in which a lot of his spiritual teachings were taken out of proper context and mixed with many accusations from a very low level fear based consciousness perspective, framing him to be some kind of suicide encouraging monster and dangerous cult leader. To the level that when the article was published the local community of the city of Boulder became so much influenced by the fear the article triggered that Bentinho and his inner circle and following had to actually move away from that area because they weren't welcome there anymore. In one of his videos Bentinho explained that he was even visited by the police because they were seriously investigating a suicide of one of his students and were trying to determine if he had perhaps encouraged people to commit suicide in his talks. I mention this story In light of the recent events with the suicide of one of Leo's forum members and the very large youtube following Leo currently has statistically. Because of my own spiritual growth and experience as a local spiritual coach / teacher in my city and country I am aware of how powerfully this level of higher consciousness can inspire awakening, accelerate inner growth and expand our understanding of reality. But I also notice how relative and even limiting some of the social media or platforms used in combination with this type of philosophical and spiritual information in teaching higher consciousness can be. Bentinho himself once said something like: "A true master is not the one with the greatest amount of followers, but rather the one who creates the most masters." Which points to the how the actual evolution of consciousness naturally unfolds, as a process that our daily lives already catalyse, because we are the creators of our reality, whether or not we are personally awake to that absolute realisation. Everything is a reflection of our inner state of being and when we are honestly ready and asking for expansion we will naturally create, attract or resonate with the information and all the different ways that would currently contribute to the realisation of our inner desire to grow spiritually. Although I very much appreciate and admire both Leo's and Bentinho's ambition, inspiration, dedication, eloquence and body of work, I also notice that some aspects of this form of teaching, with youtube video's and social media expressions, are not always very effective ultimately. In essence every tool, ritual, approach, philosophy, object, inspirational video etc simply functions as and can be embraced as a permission slip to allow yourself to match a specific preferred frequency of being, to resonate with and become the parallel reality version of yourself that you aspire. Listen to this explanation by Bashar about the concept of how 'permission slips' work in our consciousness: The main similarity and theme I notice in how the teachings of Leo and Bentinho are expressed and interpreted is the cognitive, mental and spiritual understanding and eloquence in explaining very abstract concepts about consciousness and the nature of reality from that higher perspective, just as how this enlightened wisdom has been communicated in many books throughout our close past history. (the Seth Material, the Ra Material, Bashar etc) But this level of clear communication does not automatically mean that the consumers or audience who listens to, reads or views these transmissions will be able to comprehend or integrate as knowing what is being transmitted. Just as how someone might have peak experiences of divinity or enlightenment using psychedelics as a permission slip, but also having to deal with the contrast of those expanded perspectives in relationship to daily life experience. One obvious benefit of our current technological capabilities is that these teachers are now able to easily create beautiful databases of thematic information, but as a side effect these forms may also encourage many to become even more lazy by only following and mentally consuming the information without having the support or dedication to actually explore, experiment with and integrate the wisdom that is being communicated in daily life embodiment. That is why I still wish to focus my attention mostly on interacting and meditating with people who are at least open to apply what is being offered as invitation and might benefit from the individual attention in their growth. What I mean by this is that it could be equally valid, effective and valuable to interact with for example only 2 people or students in a certain amount of time as with for example 2 million followers, from the point of view of contributing to the expansion of human consciousness. All that we as spiritual teachers are able to do is offer others the loving invitation, mental clarity and intuitive inspiration to expand one's own understanding by being a reflection, an open door to and a shining example of higher divine consciousness. Relevant to this theme I recommend this series by Bentinho on how to inspire change (session 1 - 2): https://www.youtube.com/c/BentinhoMassaro/search?query=how to inspire change And this 4 part series about the fall & rise of our civilization: https://www.youtube.com/c/BentinhoMassaro/search?query=fall rise civilization Another example of Bentinho's work is this exploration and visualisation of the topic of death: Overall I think that there is currently way more desire for individual and small group type tailored education and interaction than there is for more spiritual information being put out on this relative mental plane. And I would encourage everyone who feels inspired to contribute to our collective spiritual evolution to initiate their own local gatherings or meditation groups in order to support each other in this way. Having teachers like Leo, Bentinho, Bashar and many others providing us with comprehensive background information and next level teachings to draw upon, I feel we are invited to help each other in step by step applying and integrating much of this wisdom in our present reality experience. Individual or collective spiritual awakening, enlightenment and empowerment cannot be forced, but can be effectively invited, activated and catalysed with our loving attitude, time and energy. Leo and Bentinho beautifully play their parts , their specific roles in this endeavour, how do you wish to contribute in your own unique way?

Speak for yourself. Plus, he lives in Sweden ? Over a decade ago I had a skilled therapist help me after a suicide attempt. She was fabulous. Therapist are like anything though there are good ones and not so good ones. If you come across one not working for you, try another. Giving up and not talking to a professional when you are seriously depressed/anxious shouldn't be an exceptable option.

@mp22 There is no contradiction at all. You simply haven't yet understood what "meaninglessness" actually is and how deep it really goes. If you think that meaninglessness is a problem and that therefore now you should end your life, you haven't understood. What happens, when truly everything becomes meaningless? Well, obviously the fact that everything is meaningless becomes meaningless too. And in that way, meaninglessness flips inside out - the moment you realize what 100% meaninglessness is, man.. That's liberation. That's a true gift. And you say "thank god this is just an illusion!" But you see, the illusion is real. If you think that "illusion" is a bad word, you also don't understand what is meant by saying "the universe is an illusion". Please be careful. Because it seems to me that you have adopted some of the things Leo or someone else said as a philosophy and then turned it into a prescription for what to do. But that's not how it works. Be very, very careful with rationalizing ideas like meaninglessness or suicide. It can develop into some seriously nasty problems.

About Recent Events in The Community I want to share some thoughts about Leo, Actualized.org, and the recent suicide of a member of this forum. About Leo, his Rhetoric, and Empathy The first time that I discovered actualized.org I was blown away by how much I resonated with Leo. It was the first time that I resonated that much with someone. I resonated with everything: the ideas, the way he articulates things, the arrogance, etc. I thought: "Finally a no BS guy. Finally someone who cares about the truth, who is willing to dive deep, and who says things how they are even if people don't like it". I especially liked the direct and blunt approach on some videos. It was for the videos from 2014 to 2017, the style has evolved since then. He was like my clone. When you discover someone that is basically your clone you become a bit obsessed with him, but also at the same time this person reveals flaws that are most of the time very difficult to acknowledge without having an outside look on yourself. I only met a few individuals like this in my life and Leo is one of them. With some introspection this year I became aware of another reason why I resonated so much with Leo: he talks like my dad used to talk to me (especially on the forum). I have been annoyed most of my life by how emotional people would get when I would be radically honest and say radical trues. People always looked so dumb to me that I avoided most of them to focus only on me which resulted in me not having any friends, being socially awkward, and not caring about what I would say. The reason why I didn't care at all about the words that I would use with people was that I've been talked down so much that I became emotionally numb to abusive language, especially during late middle school, high school. It caused me an inability to use language properly with people because I would just say what I got. It would cause frictions in social relationships and because of that, I would isolate (they were also other reasons, not only the language but just the fact that I never highly resonated with most people around stage blue/orange). However, I would still live in a society and at one point I would have to interact with a group. When it happened, I started to have so many emotional reactions against my blunt rhetoric (and not only that but just the tone of my voice. I noticed that people are actually more reactive to the tone than the language itself because the tone reflects how we feel and people want to be around people who feel good) that I started to understand that something was wrong. Yes, I lacked empathy many times in my life, I saw people as dumb, irresponsible, and incompetent exactly like Leo. I saw words like "Please" and "Thank you" as useless, I saw kindness as a weakness because I was overly logical and lacked love. I've put myself on a pedestal, but at the same time, I was sad because nobody would relate to me. If these painful relationships and strong emotional reactions against my language helped me in some way is to become more authentic and to bring back the empathy that I lost after being so much verbally abused. I became aware that most people aren't overly logical and cannot handle directness, but I also became aware that I lost a part of myself a long time ago. I remember being hypersensitive as a kid and crying more easily than other boys, I then lost this hypersensitivity because it was too overwhelming and choose to repress emotions, I'm now connecting back to this hypersensitivity and expressing emotions again. What helped me in bringing back empathy to my life was to remind myself of being talked down to and of being disrespected, and to feel the pain that I felt and at the same time to feel the pain that others feel. I think that empathy needs to be more cultivated on this forum. Many times we don't realize when we are in pain and we don't know that we cause our own pain. Many times we are stuck in strange loops of our bodies and our minds. If you highly resonate with Leo, I'm suggesting you to analyze the relationship that you have with him. This relationship might be a bit more traumatic than you think it is. About Actualized.org Spiral Development There has been a huge evolution of Actualized.org level of consciousness. It started with stage Orange and progressively moved to Green, Yellow, and now Turquoise. However, even if the material is very advanced I feel that there is a lot of stage orange on this forum especially in the dating subforum... and it makes perfect sense. Some of the most popular videos are videos from 6 - 7 years ago and some of these videos are videos about relationships like: "How To Make A Girl Squirt - Give Your Girl An Explosive Orgasm", "How To Make A Girl Fall In Love With You - What Girls Really Want", "What Women Want In A Man - 5 Factors That Hook Women Like Crack", "How To Have Amazing Sex (For Women) - Drive Your Man Wild In Bed", "How To Be Attractive - The Ultimate Attraction Strategy", etc. My intuition is telling me here that even if these videos are old they are still getting a lot of views compared to recent videos because everyone is so obsessed with sex. I remember the video "How To Make A Girl Squirt - Give Your Girl An Explosive Orgasm" having 1M views a few years ago, but now has more than 2.2M views. It means that it received more than 200K views in a few years which is a lot of views compared to recent videos. My intuition is also telling me that as there is some stage Orange in these videos, a certain number of people who watch them want to learn more and therefore join this forum mostly in the hope of getting advice to get laid. I think that people who watch these videos are mostly inexperienced or people who want some advice but also include a subgroup of desperate virgins who are mostly men because Leo is a man and often has a very masculine approach which they relate to. This makes the dating subforum particularly low conscious. Also, Leo is a very sexual person and often makes references to sex and people sometimes take that literally, copy him because he has a lot of influence, and therefore contributes to low consciousness. The previous point now brings me to spirituality. I feel that there is a stage Orange approach to spirituality in this community and that Leo has a stage Orange mindset towards spirituality. I don't read the Meditation, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Spirituality subforum that much because I'm more concerned about basic stuff, but I sense some competition here. I remember people comparing how enlightened they are in the past. Competition can be healthy in some situations but doesn't apply to enlightenment because enlightenment is deeply personal. I see this issue with young people around my age. If you are around my age (or younger), here's my advice: there is no need to compete for enlightenment, having a basic foundation is more important. I think that the balance for young people should be around 70% basic stuff, 30% spiritual work. Spiritual work is important, but diving into it too early causes issues because it doesn't have a solid base, yet it can help with building the foundation if targeted properly on specific issues. There is no need to go deep for someone who doesn't even have a proper base in life, there's no need to do long meditation retreats, psychedelics, or similar things, yet a bit of spirituality is healthy (a bit of meditation, a bit of introspection, some shadow work, etc.) and brings balance to the process which is why I consider the 70/30 ratio as ideal. There is a lot of stage Orange here, stage Orange hiding behind other MEMEs, stage Orange competing to be seen as Green, or Yellow, or Turquoise. I'm not immune to that, I also did it to some degree to be honest, but it's important to be aware of it. About Actualized.org Clips Leo recently created a new channel called Actualized.org Clips which contains small segments of his long videos. My opinion on that is mixed. On one hand, I think that it's great to open Actualized.org more because it has the potential to help a lot of people, but on the other hand, the fact that the teachings are now so advanced makes them difficult to understand for beginners. I personally didn't know about spirituality when I discovered Actualized.org, however, the videos weren't as advanced as they are now, and because of that, I was able to follow through. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that I did create some beliefs in the past, so I still need to be careful here. About Newcomers I think that there should be a system in place to handle beginners, something like a warning at the beginning of the videos (for both Actualized.org and Actualized.org Clips channels) or a link that would point to a video (or a set of videos) specially designed for beginners so that they don't go down the wrong path. Also if moderators could welcome new members and ask them a few questions to understand where they are in life, it could guide them and help to maintain a healthy community. Finally, an effort needs to be made from Leo and moderators to make the advice more nuanced rather than saying things like: "You are god!", "Life doesn't matter", etc. because people can take things too literally. This is what I think happened with the recent suicide, the member got brainwashed from interacting with the community to the point where he thought that suicide doesn't matter because everything is imaginary and can be a proper way to enlightenment. About Responsibility The original response to the suicide really felt like a stage Orange company that declines all responsibilities. Like a tobacco company that claims to not be responsible for causing cancer to countless people. Sure, the material is completely different and is way more healthy than what does a tobacco company, but the way of handling responsibility is exactly the same. I think that Leo has some stage Orange shadows in him. When there is an exchange between two people responsibility is always shared, no one has 100% responsibility where at the same time the other person has 0% responsibility. How Leo communicates the material is important, how he communicates on the forum is important because he has a lot of influence and many people can take him literally. That's the problem with all religions, people get brainwashed, and that's what is happening here too. "God" isn't God, but just a pointer. Saying "You are God" isn't being God. I'm personally aware that I have the belief that I am God, I sure experienced some awakenings in the past, but for the moment the fact that I am God is only a belief because I didn't fully verify it. I'm just a believer of Leo here, it's important to be conscious of that. Even if it has been said many times that Actualized.org is not an ideology some people are getting brainwashed anyway and are confusing the map for the territory. To end up, I don't consider that the suicide is mostly Leo's fault, yet he does have some responsibility.

Everyone that is emotional about a strong, dogmatic, belief feels this way. For example religious people have felt like this through history, if we look at modern day isis suicide bombers, they truly believe they are doing Gods work and saving people. This is an extreme example but the point is any belief system is going to believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong and when you take that stance it naturally follows that you would want to prevent those you love from going to hell or doing the wrong thing. This would be the obvious trajectory of such a belief which goes to show the dogma involved, in that theyre so sure they are willing to pull others into it. I dont agree with everything about science and it can also be dogmatic, but at the very least they will rarely say we are 100% sure about something, theyll just say this is what the evidence shows, in theory they will also take on new evidence and have an overall scientific consensus about what can be said to be 'scientific fact'. This is not the case with religion or other dogmatic beliefs, hence the emotional responses. This is true on both sides, you can get bad science and you can get people emotional being written off. But again the emotions come from having a belief. If you said 'i think Leo is 30' you wouldnt really care if someone else said hes 35, you may want to know which is true and then you would do further research, but either way you wouldnt be emotional about it because it doesnt have much bearing on you and youre not attached to the outcome of it. However if for whatever reason you felt certain he was 30 and it was important to you, those that then said hes 35 would be seen as enemies or at the very least wrong, you would definitely get emotional about it as you would feel attacked or not understood, you may even start questioning how we measure age or something like that. As i said many people are not necessarily attached emotionally to taking a vaccine, whereas people who are against it are. Pro-trump and anti trump was different in that the argument was emotional on both sides, the vaccine issue is more anti-vaxx bumping up against the scientific establishment rather than people on the other side. The paper you posted was quite interesting in that it said that science is falling behind in terms of the communication to the public, anti-vaxxers are getting better at visually showing their points. It also talks about how people are now taking science is seen by anti-maskers in this case, as an individual thing that they do and have autonomy over and is no longer seen by them as something with a scientific consensus and using the current scientific method. Which is an interesting way to look at it, so essentially its not even a case of anti-vax or not its more a thing of do you trust the scientific method and those that have studied these things for years or do you trust in your own ability to go through all these scientific journals and come to a conclusion off your own back. One thing i have noticed is that those that dont trust the scientific method always start off with an anti-science leaning, they also tend to have dogmatic beliefs whether it be vaccines or whatever. Personally i have no problem with the challenging of science, you should always question it, but you also have to appreciate where its good points are and how it can be useful.

@gggkkk I can recommend you a few books. There are no practical books about psychedelics, as the most practical thing is just to take them, haha, but a few of them might catch your attention. Here are the books I have read, alphabetical order, favourites in bold: Aldous Huxley - Island (Literary classic, it's very interesting to read Brave New World first, written before Huxley discovered psychedelics, and then the Island, which is a reply to that story changing the vision of the future from dystopia to some kind of low-key, realistic utopia.) Ayelet Waldman - A Really Good Day (Book about microdosing, written by a normie who had nothing to do with psychedelics, interesting.) Brian C. Muraresku - The Immortality Key (Newest anthropology book about ancient drug use, also touches on subjects of pagan death cults and pagan-christianity continuity theory. Written by a researcher who has never done psychedelics, on purpose, so his work doesn't get demonized or labeled as ravings of a lunatic. Interesting as fuck.) Carl L. Hart - Drug Use for Grown-Ups (Responsible drug use, decriminalization advocacy, full of captivating personal stories. Dr Carl Hart is someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. Great guy.) Christopher M. Bache - LSD and the Mind of the Universe (Story of a hardcore philosopher who dosed extremely strong LSD doses twice a year for decades to do his research.) James Fadiman - Psychedelic Explorer's Guide (Oldie, not that goldie anymore, haha. The content of this book is normal knowledge on the internet nowadays.) Jim DeKorne - Psychedelic Shamanism (Dangers of choosing that path. Some interesting points made.) Mark Fisher - K-Punk Politics (Has a chapter at the end from his never finished book about "Acid Communism", because of the suicide he commited. ) Martin Ball - Being Human (READ THIS SHIT, the finest biography of the finest 5-MeO-DMT researcher) Martin Ball - Being Infinite Martin Ball - Entheogenic Liberation Martin Ball - God's Handbook Michael Pollan - How to Change Your Mind (Various interviews, stories and a personal adventure of discovering something new. Typical Pollan's book, but about psychedelics. Great.) Rupert Sheldrake - Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work (Has chapter on psychedelics if I remeber correctly, but overall it's a worthwhile book. Rupert is similar to Leo in my opinion.)

@Thetruthseeker I have to say I have definitely experienced something similar with the people around me. It seems to be a lot easier to talk to someone coming from a 'holistic health' perspective where they believe the vaccine in unnatural or toxic, or that it is going to prevent spiritual experiences, then it is talking to someone who has subscribed to the more full-blown anti-vax conspiracy theories. Try not to give up on your friends if you think they're open enough to understanding the necessity and importance of the covid-vaccine. Trust me, I know it's very tiring to hear ridiculous covid-spiracies all the time. My parents are convinced that I'm committing suicide by getting vaccinated so as you can imagine there's a lot of tension. One thing that really helps when you're dealing with people like that is just knowing that they are really suffering, filled with fear and stress, misunderstanding and false information. Be a little playful when you talk about the vaccine, take some of the edge off it can really cause people to open up when they know that it's a calm and low-tension environment to discuss their fears. As oppose to say, getting angry at them and pointing out all the places that there's something wrong with their reasoning etc. it can really help I find.

@BipolarGrowth I appreciate your thoughts on Mahasamadhi’s relationship to this forum. It makes sense now that it’s really just not something anyone clicking on a forum would really need to talk about lol. Just adds to the confusion. Also I feel rather stupid. As someone who has not had a massive ego death, seeing a response like “you’d have to die” is a little unsettling. But it’s often mental/ego death discussed here and that’s likely all Leo was saying. Scary framing though, especially if you do not realize he does not mean to commit suicide. Nonetheless, it’s not wrong to say. Just a fine line and a lot of potential confusion assuming people do not realize their ideas have to die, not them physically.

@Death_ This was about the perspective of Mahasamadhi, physical death and suicide on this forum - not Mahasamadhi. I do not care about Mahasamadhi.

No one here that I’ve ever seen has advocated for suicide. Leo has talked about death in a much less frightening and even pleasant way. This is common in plenty of other popular spiritual teachings. This helps people to lose fear and anxiety of death that eats away at their ability to live, but they can think of death as some shortcut too. This is not what Leo or anyone here is promoting. We ultimately understand death in a less confrontational way than materialists which allows us to speak more freely of it and with a less negative air, but I still don’t think even the most extreme person who visits here with any frequency would really want someone to intentionally end their life in the case of suicide. Mahasamadhi is not the exact same, but it isn’t really healthy to focus on that here. No one here is at that level of development to be able to make a conscious choice to spiritually leave the body. Leo explicitly said anyone who is that developed has no place on the forum essentially — at least it’s certain this applies to anyone wanting to teach it or promote it.

Listen, I am the last to criticize Leo. I have saw his face in the clouds before, as a Jesus like diety. But I will tell you that the way he teaches lacks compassion, embodiment of understanding that not everyone has perfect mental health and life conditions like he was gifted with. Yeah Leo worked hard for his life, but so have I and I feel like Leo is way too arrogant to be in the position of power he is in. We all are starting to see Leos shadow and insecurities manifest in his students. The denial of Jesus, thinking you're more woke than anyone on here is just bullshit Leo. Its just funny how I thought this man was the most enlightened being on the planet like the new Jesus and I feel like I am a better teacher than he is at this point. he just knows how to master market and manipulate people. I don't play by those games, sorry bro. you are not more conscious than me. I have spent 300 days in mental hospitals, that is nothing to your claim of being so radically conscious that you would have been put on meds in your blog, so laughable that you used that statement to prove a point when I and many others go through these hospitals on a regular basis due to your ill teaching methods and lack of personal humbleness and passion for helping mentally ill people. You just dismiss mental illness like its beneath you bro. Getting heated but seriously. I almost died from these teachings, secret service showing up to the hospital, jail, permanent psych ward state hospital, suicide, etc. Leo is not perfect y'all. just a reminder. he still jerks off for fucks sake lol