The Danger of Communicating Enlightenment

[StrangerWatch]

When I first discovered enlightenment as a concept, I was bombarded by gurus and philosophers (such as @Leo Gura) using these big words and terrifying metaphors about infinity, God, void, illusion and stuff like that. This caused me great anxiety because of my existing relationship to these words.

When I had my own enlightenment experience, I suddenly realized that it was all a big joke. I smiled and thought to myself: "Everything is just so silly and banal". And this realization filled me with an incredible feeling of freedom and peace. How could I not have seen it before?

The thing is, it wasn’t an understanding of a conceptual nature. It was more like a new sense. Conceptualizing at that point seemed fruitless. I was listening to a science podcast in the background when I suddenly awoke to this paradigm shift, and the words coming from respectable scientists in the podcast speculating about the nature of the cosmos seemed so misguided. "Why are you doing this?" I thought. "Don’t you see it’s all so simple?" And yet, the only way to communicate enlightenment experience is through this fruitless method.

You can be like me and call it simple, funny, nothing, and you may cause people to be depressed. "Is that all?" Or you can be like the gurus I listened to, and then people may react with terror. "I can’t handle this! I’m God?! I’m infinite?! What the fuck?!?!" No metaphor, coming from someone who’s experienced enlightenment, is any less or more valid. They’re all invalid by the mere fact that language was created through a dualistic approach to life. We are communicating enlightenment with tools that were made by unenlightened individuals. Not realizing this will cause many seekers of truth great pain.

If you want to achieve enlightenment, you must NOT rely on conceptualizing. You should instead focus on meditation, and safely experiment with drugs if you dare. The only ways to enlightenment entail direct experience. Don’t listen to enlightened people trying to conceptualize the experience. You may listen for fun, but don’t use their descriptions as a way of "understanding" it. You might just go insane or panic, as indeed I almost did. Only you can become enlightened, by yourself and through yourself.

[Joseph Maynor]

Would you ever have had those awakening experiences if you never heard about Enlightenment though?  Let the theory inspire you to do your own work; it’s a trap to cling to the theory like ideology.  How can the guru help others without using words?  The real danger is not communicating Enlightenment at all.  Raising awareness must take people where they sit and inspire them to do the work.  The guru must realize that low-consciousness people are swimming in theory.  So she’s gotta meet them where they’re at and try to help them raise awareness about a block or trap they’re ensnared in.  Otherwise the guru’s help will go in one ear and out the other.  And that’s useless help.  You gotta aim where the person’s real sticking-point is to be an effective guru.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

@StrangerWatch Yes, of course that's the case.

But also consider the possibility that you may not have become aware of the full depth of what the word "God" or "Absolute Infinity" really points to.

If you haven't experienced the existential terror, that leads me to suspect you haven't yet penetrated as deeply as is possible.

There are many degrees of depth to awakening experiences.

Of course everyone will react to the experiences differently too.

A good way to double-check your depth of realization is to do 30mg+ of 5-MeO. Just to make sure you haven't missed the full-monty

[StrangerWatch]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@StrangerWatch Yes, of course that's the case.

But also consider the possibility that you may not have become aware of the full depth of what the word "God" or "Absolute Infinity" really points to.

If you haven't experienced the existential terror, that leads me to suspect you haven't yet penetrated as deeply as is possible.

There are many degrees of depth to awakening experiences.

Of course everyone will react to the experiences differently too.

A good way to double-check your depth of realization is to do 30mg+ of 5-MeO. Just to make sure you haven't missed the full-monty

Haha, I’m fairly certain I’ve not reached the end of this journey. After all, I’ve only had one short enlightenment experience. But it came as quite a surprise to me that it was way more peaceful than people like you, for example, had described.

Now, I have experienced prolonged existential terror, but naturally I can’t be certain it’s the type you refer to. Anyway, I came to realize that since nothing can exist outside reality, reality must include absolutely everything in order to even exist. My belief in this fact caused me to fall to my knees in despair, not only at the thought of my body and everything around it being an infinite regress, but also at the thought of the infinite suffering that must be occuring at all times if this is the case — not to mention the paranoia that I exist in a multiverse essentially without rules. Are these beliefs unfounded? Probably — hopefully. But it’s the picture you’re painting in your videos for people who haven’t experienced enlightenment. And it’s also the reason I stay away from powerful psychadelics such as 5-MeO for the time being.

That said, these beliefs did not even factor into how I interpreted my enlightenment experience once I had it. My enlightenment experience told me nothing concrete about the content of reality; it simply told me that reality is essentially nothing at all (which again, makes little sense unless one experiences it). Reality could be infinite or it could be finite in some way we can’t understand. Either way my enlightenment experience would make sense.

Edited November 29, 2017 by StrangerWatch