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this is how the first blog post is coming so far. not quite sure where to go next but it's close I'm open to feedback , just please be kind lol : How I Used Spirituality to Avoid Development, and an Unconventional Take on Spiritual Bypassing There’s a difference between believing something profound and experiencing something profound. And there’s an even bigger difference between experiencing something profound and becoming someone profound. I began engaging with spiritual ideas at a young age. It began in Catholic school, I would go to church and feel moved, sometimes to tears. I felt as if I was making contact with something beyond myself, maybe God, or maybe just an indescribable something which transcended my material life and was simultaneously full of love. When I was 15, a friend of mine who was older and cooler than me introduced me to his new religion, called Wicca. He told me about magick (as opposed to magic) as a ritualistic method of advancing ones life by harnessing universal forces. He also introduced me to the power of psychedelic drugs, and astral projection, which is the ability to consciously eject the perceiving self from the physical body. This was simply the coolest thing I ever heard of. I didn’t join his religion but I began reading, and watching videos. I tried, and failed, to astral project until I got sick of trying. I learned about nonduality, the idea that the self (the ego) is an illusion and that transcending it leads to liberation, the end of suffering. While I was learning, I was also developing a not-so-subtle feeling of superiority. I was in high school and later college, and I believed that the people around me, even my friends, were ever so slightly lesser than me, that I was wiser and more enlightened than them because I had the secret knowledge and they did not. Underneath this was, ironically, a profound sense of inferiority. I had high-achieving friends with tangible, physical plans for their lives. They wanted to be lawyers, doctors, engineers and knew the steps to accomplish their goals. And something else was developing. This was an all-consuming need to discover the ultimate answers to life, the universe and everything with rigorous research, logic and debate. This was actually the beginning of my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but that wasn’t separate from an authentic spiritual desire. Some days I would spend up to 8 or even 10 to 12 hours locked into an internal quest for certainty regarding my new spiritual knowledge. If I found someone on the internet who disagreed, often on YouTube, I would post take-downs in the comment section. When I got a notification that someone had responded to my comment, I felt terror. Had they proven me wrong and thus undermined my entire ikigai? Hours upon hours of philosophy, and a handful of weird experiences along the way led to, not enlightenment or truth, but anxiety and many, many sleepless nights. Something needed to change, not for some hypothetical goal called “enlightenment” but simply for a decent, non-neurotic relationship with life and my own mind. Before I go into the specifics of how I began to change, I want to address spiritual bypassing as a phenomenon. This is, as the title suggests, an unconventional take on spiritual bypassing. Most people who spiritually bypass don’t have Existential OCD, they aren’t spending 12 hours a day in YouTube metaphysics debates. But the core thread, of using spirituality to avoid real growth, is quite common. There are as many examples of spiritual bypassing as there are spiritual seekers, and almost every seeker does it or did it along their journey. Some other examples include the person in an unhappy relationship who uses positive psychology to gaslight themself into believing their relationship is actually helping them, or the psychedelic user who trips faster than integration can keep up, taking ever-higher doses in the hope of finally “arriving.” Surrender, Courage, Discipline, Compassion. For me, bypassing was about creating a sophisticated artifice of spiritual knowledge to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty, and with uncertainty, tangible action and development. For others it could be quite the opposite, using spiritual ideas or experiences to avoid the uncomfortable certainty life sometimes gives us. Either way there is an avoidance of reality going on, and being avoidant towards reality stalls personal development. This leads to the first virtue which has been changing my life: Surrender.

Non negotiables: 1 blog post a week 1 YouTube video a week reach out to two potential practice clients a week IMO spiral dynamics post yellow breaks down . Yellow is the peak of SD imo . Because what it calls turquoise is simply nonduality / awakening ☯️😊

These are not mutually exclusive. They may preach it from a level where they can take a Mahasamadhi anytime they feel like it, but ultimate liberation is not a lived daily experience, by choice. Which then makes you wonder why would they hang around at this dirty limited place full of suffering; perhaps there's something more important than peace and bliss. 'Somewhere else' is a distinction. Primitive nonduality can easily be turned around on itself like that. Nirvana can be had here and now, as per Buddha. As if. Death is as much in your direct experience as Jupiter. What, it's certain because everyone who ever lived died, you see people in Iran die, your pets and your parents? Weak. In your current direct experience you exist, else you wouldn't be talking to me. Existence is the only foundation you get and the only one you need, death is more fantasy. But I'm not telling you what to pursue, since in your current incarnation you're so focused on liberation and ending suffering, transcending death is probably right for you. Then perhaps after a Nayuta more karmic cycles you'll move on to cooler things. Believe it or not, I never cared much about survival and death, and that's not only because of the very favorable material conditions. In fact someone with such a spoiled childhood should by all accounts have turned out completely dysfunctional and helpless after it was all stripped away. But I constantly go around putting myself in dangerous, challenging, and painful situations, as it naturally feels like a game. There's still stakes, death can get me from behind at any time, but that's what makes it fun. Don't assume all spiritual paths are equal, they're only equal by virtue of their ultimate trajectory. And there's way higher paths than mine, such as selfless service to reality (as in the real deal like Jesus, not the nonsense they teach at Vipassana retreats) and beyond. In a way that's true. All absolutes can be relativized and reduced (an inalienable function of Authority), which can either be done from a place of ignorance or through a process of attempting to verify them via deconstruction; done correctly any deconstruction only reinforces them, that's why they're absolutes. The most intense is not Truth or Love, it's Sanctity. Verbose as I am, I have no words for it, while I could talk about the others all day long. It's infinitely more visceral than death or any emotion. And yet, Sanctity is a quality of Truth all the same, as Love and the rest. They're not even qualities per se, they literally are it. The more facets you awaken to the more you realize that God is an infinite self-luminous fractal of absolute Truth; all the additional aspects are revealed to be gems in this Indra's Net.

The beauty of nonduality is that it's available to anyone who does the work, whether they raise their consciousness a lot or not. I hate it but most people won't be able to raise their baseline by more than a few percentage points, even if they're highly disciplined with practices. But I still think a few percentage points is amazing and worth pursuing. Psychedelics can give us a glimpse of what genetic lottery winners like Ramana Maharshi are able to experience on a daily basis. Most awakened people are not Ramana's, by the way, not even close. That's why they live relatively normal lives and get involved in scandals. Peter Ralston might be approaching but not at Ramana level, a random blogger I found named Amara* might be too, I can't think of very many others. ****** I haven't gone through any of her training btw, this isn't an ad. Also she seems to have taken down the blogs where she went in depth on her state of consciousness and siddhis. *https://amarastrand.com/about/

I was like 50% green (love and light , meaningless career, hippie bum, passive vibes) and 50% yellow (obsessive map making, deep intellectual understanding of nonduality, colored by existential ocd doing metaphysics all day every day). Both of those led me to... not accomplishing very much. Oh and there was also plenty of shadow orange which made it so I wasn't okay with that, i couldn't fully accept doing nothing with my life, so I was unhappy. Haven't smoked weed in 3 days. Clearly it makes my Green passivity and my Yellow philosophical obsession worse. It's produced some genuine insights but also a lot of crap.

Hue hue hue oH nOES! My bOdY cOunT is HiGh! WomEN r HyPeRgamOus!!! MEn LoVE UncoNdiTiOnAlly, WoMeN LoVE OppoRtUniSticAlly!!! I better stop now >.> The funny thing is, red pill is meant to help men out dating. And most dudes don't even realize its red pill thinking behind half the popular podcasters these days. I don't actually see red pill advice actually helping men at all in practice... Regarding Ralston. Man, I dunno. Not enough info to go off from him. I would love to hear him rap on about romantic love more. But there's very little of his stuff out there on it. For me - just as there is spirituality, nonduality, unity and oneness - to see through that requires subject/object dissolution. Dissolving the barriers between subject and object - either by viewing self and all distinction as object object. Or seeing self in everything; self-self dissolution. All as one. A romantic partnership is about dissolving the barriers between two. Just as marriage isn't a unity of two; it is dissolving all that is between. But in romantic paring, your bias, your issues, your troubles, your bullshit - show up. It is a more accurate mirror because I cannot see myself while behind my eyes. There is more opportunity for healing and growth in romance. I have always felt a glass ceiling present when going true alone monk-mode. Monk-mode can be done with the right partner. Just my feelings on the matter

Same with Christianity. I didn't learn God is Love from Leo, I learned it from being raised Catholic. As a child I loved to cry and get emotional in church. Getting interested in very strict nonduality where emptiness and pure consciousness are emphasized above all else coincided with a closing of my heart. If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick between psychedelics and yoga (or between yoga and vipassana meditation), I'd pick yoga with no hesitation at all.

@Natasha Tori Maru informed consent vs uninformed. @Leo Gura I was actually impressed with Michael’s (Shilo - middle name) simplicity on the subject. You did really well, genuinely. Feedback: Purely going by what she said - Directly quoted - “You told us that you were going to explain three things. the ultimate structure of existence, the nature of love, and the nature of God.” Some interviews are more casual than others, however I would spend some time delineating all four subjects (inclusive of when she tripped you up on defining love, despite you, as best as I can infer, drawing a distinction between human love and universal love) at their connection point that makes moving between them seamless during an interview setting. I get that it was your first interview in a long while, but those subjects at their core, went only partially answered despite it being the stated conceptual drivers for the interview, as stated by Anastasia. I would ease back in future interviews on using terms like “truth psychopath”, it can sound edgy but on subjects like morality where people are either less informed and therefore a little dogmatic or people that have thought deeply on the subjects, it can be harder to reach people; which is kinda one of the points of the interview, to reach more people. I would also do the same for critiques of certain areas like academia as one example, the more refined your points on interviews like these the more of a win-win it becomes as they are both genuinely open minded warm people. Broad critiques are the strategic drawcard, but on the reel in to getting the actual catch, like getting an interview, it’s laid out mapped concretely. You’re handling very difficult subjects, and the people that want to listen, want to really listen, and like strapping a load of timber on a truck, the better you do it the safer your message is going to land safely home where people will be most receptive. You’re uniquely positioned as a conversant in the spiritual demography, capitalise on that devastatingly. Irrespectively, 1. You kept composure under sharp pushback. Anastasia and Michael have had some really ego fuelled guests. 2. Framed “relative vs absolute” to defuse literalism. 3. Flagged survival/incentives as bias generators (institutions, self, culture). 4. Validated boundaries (“leave abuse,” don’t tolerate harm) so nonduality isn’t pure passivity. That was an excellent distinction. 6. Prompted epistemic humility a number of times. Like distinguishing belief/speculation from direct insight. You really underscored distinction as a grounding concept being the foundation to your drive over your journey, this positions you as someone that could break the linings of many different kinds of demographics, making you a valuable guest in any interview the better you grt at this overtime. Good luck on the next interview, excellent overall, and we all loved the robe. Best wishes.

Well, from a nonduality perspective it IS just Maya. If your focus is Awakening then your should ignore it. What are you gonna do about it? You gonna stop pedophilia on this planet? There are a million children dying in Africa right now. What you gonna do about it? Chasing after pedophiles easily becomes a wild goose chase for the ego. You don't even know who the real pedophiles are except for a couple obvious ones who are already handled by police.

Yeah over on r/nonduality I see them practicing a lot of spiritual bypassing around the Epstein files. "This is just maya ignore it" type silliness. I'm also shocked by how many far right people are into this type of work, smh. Not that I'm against a far right person being interested in awakening, maybe if they take it seriously it'll cure them of being far right.

I listened to Osho fervently for years, I didn't find out he was a perv cultist until after I got tired of him, but here's the best tip I got from him, from his book of secrets - Do not move your eyes. If you keep them still, you can turn everything you see into one solid block. That's nonduality. It's amazing that nobody just lays it out this clearly if they already have it but here it is. I was walking in central park when I had my first "oh shit, awakening is real" experience. I was in a meditative-like trance from walking 5+ miles and when I stopped moving my eyes, I saw all of the reality in front of me as a horizontal flame of light, like an unsheathing of God's sword. The best way I can explain it is my field of view slightly increased, I was acutely aware of the edges/ blackness surrounding my visual field and the strange loop or NONLOCALITY of experience became obvious. The "turn it into a solid" comes from Fred Davis - sometimes it's difficult to distinguish noise from real truth with him but that was the most instantly awakening pointer I've ever heard, as well as the "keep your eyes still" tip. If you keep your eyes still constantly around other people you'll look like a weirdo, so make sure to just do it in your private/meditative time.

This reality and world we live in is intwined with and saturated in or made of consciousness and the object or world is an appearance of that consciousness = Non Duality There’s no such thing as nonduality because nonduality is not a thing. A thing appears in no thing. Only things are seen, not the seer. To see the seer, is to die to thingness. Not literal death as even death is an illusion, because unseen, doesn’t mean it’s not there/ here. It’s here. This is it.

Right, it's a nice mindfuck. Nothing is finite, but some infinities are more infinite than others, yet we still get Equality in the end. 'Cause there is no others, now we're back at rudimentary nonduality

Slurping up that nonduality juice from James all over the forum, I see. Rimjobs on all his posts

You can go the other way - you can dissolve it all into (erase object) subject-subject or (erase subject) object-object. Ultimately, you get to there is no centralized experience. There is no ego (no self, no privileged point of view), or there is all ego (nonduality 'all is mind / awareness'). Intimacy with no separation. The apparent structure of experience can be collapsed in both directions toward a nondual state. It is a collapse of all distinction that made the question meaningful. In the end - its both. All me. No me. This is getting to endgame where most discussions end because language dies trying to add any elaboration. Pushing further and further with words ends up confusing rather than clarifying.

Real death is the entrance to Nonduality.

Sure, that is fine, do what feels right. Though one super potent way to deepen nonduality is through integrating Duality/Multiplicity into it as absolutes. Guaranteed mindfuck. O boy, that's a recipe for disaster. Your molly + SSRIs rodeo should've taught you better. Maybe it didn't cause there were no consequences. Always do research, the info is out there.

I think perhaps a good place to bring back this discussion is tangible steps instead of this whole scary transhumanism and humans fusing with AI, let's just think about what exponential technology means. If we can hope to have our technological progress go exponential over the next few decades instead of linear, massive milestones for humanity like cancer become not pipedreams but inevitabilities. Eventually major breakthroughs like this will happen and after cancer will come heart disease and neural degeneration and yes I do think eventually some form of uploading your consciousness to the cloud. If we accept that consciousness is immortal and infinite due to nonduality then I don't see why it wouldn't make sense for humanity to be able to bring it further than the short 80 years that end up biological collapse that all of us have been forced to take part in our human experience since the dawn of time.

Share your favorite YouTube Channels. It doesn't have to be based on nonduality/meditation, but any channel that you really enjoy and you feel resonates deeply. I've been loving listening to these History YouTube Channels while at work. The series on Napoleon is awesome.

It's interesting that you brought up nonduality, as if we were contrasting one philosophical system with another. Still, is the absolute a state? You speak of insanity, this and that, abstract, dimension, process. It's tempting to think of infinity as an ever-expanding room that gets filled with items, like outer space. Mentally grasping that an absolute is absolute is relatively easy. Even then, as a notion, it is itself relative. It is everything and all-encompassing. In our minds, it could be formulated as "everything is absolute. There is nothing that is not absolute - including nothing." But claiming that a cauliflower is absolute muddies up the waters, in my view. We don't even perceive the thing itself. It's likely that people end up believing that the concept of a cauliflower is somehow not relative, even though that notion might not have precise boundaries and is rather abstract and non-objective. And "profound" is relative - a property that appears only in relation to what is not profound. As for form and no-form: aren't they relative, too? What makes something relative is that it is particular and defined, including formlessness. How it shows up in our experience is as a discrete thing. It is not every thing that exists - it is "that" thing. Our experience of everything is relative. At some point, we might claim things like: everything is relative, nothing is relative, everything is absolute, nothing is absolute - plus both and neither, and/or both or neither. How would that help us begin to mentally unpack this topic? (Not that it could be done through those means, to be clear). I'd stick with "everything is relative" as the common ground of our shared experience. I'm absolutely astonished and relatively excited.

I don't know, Rick. Like with the multiple infinities, or the "beyond absolute" bit. It's all relative. Are you sure you're not talking about a state? Absolute Dis-may-a Awakening. Also, what makes you think I'm talking about nonduality, or coming from that stance?

@UnbornTao It's not silly at all. It is part of the mindfuckery of Infinity. Yes, there is such a thing as Absolute Blue. This is beyond typical nonduality. Infinity does very werid shit at higher levels.

If what you're trying to do is assess the realness or depth of the consciousness he had, it's okay to doubt it. Who can really say? There's no way to verify it. Essentially, he just seems "convincing," in ways that can't really be faked - like we might try to do. It's said he refused treatment for his cancer and faced his death without fear. But then again, we really can't tell from here, can we? Where would we even place our attention - body language, nationality, following, expression? At best, we might be able to sense a certain mysterious quality in his transcribed talks. Not sure. Maybe we could try to focus on where he's coming from. I'm not holding my breath, since most of us, as a whole, are pretty poor listeners without even realizing it. Still, his stories might give some insight into his awakening, though in the end they're more like side effects. Either way, this doesn't mean you have to believe him. Like I said, that's beside the point. Perhaps the best we can do in this conversation is let his words inspire us, opening a few contemplative doors along the way. And even better, it's useful to notice that none of us truly understands what he was trying to convey - unless you do, which is extremely unlikely. Not to be disparaging, just realistic. If you think he was talking about nonduality, advaita, or any of that, you're wrong. It's like the difference between Gautama on the one hand, and a Buddhist on the other. Night and day. Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. Because he actually knew what he was talking about.

I do not. Obviously Rumi, but that's more like poetry. Hafiz is also poetry. Look for Sufi sources. Actually, I do have one Sufi nonduality book in my book list. Look for it.

Agree for the most part. I'd also make a distinction between an experience and a philosophy. Communication is about the former. Notice that no philosophy or additional conceptual structure is required for experiential insight; in fact, they can get in the way. Our deep need for, or reliance on, belief suggests that we (the entire world) may not truly know what we're talking about. In this existential context, one might attempt to mask that fundamental ignorance by adopting certain systems or practices such as nonduality, idealism, scientific hearsay, atheism, religion, ritual, psychedelics, materialism, solipsism, Scientology, Buddhism, "no-self," or any of the rest.