Actualized.org Video Summaries!

[AleksM]

 

 

// pasted from youtube comments

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MY OXFORD DICTIONARY
TRUTH: The state of being true. The state of being true, actual facts. A fact or belief that is accepted true.
TRUE: In accordance with fact or reality. Rightly so called. Real or actual. Accurate and exact. In keeping with standard or expectation. Loyal or faithful. Correctly positioned or aligned. 
FACT: The thing that is definitely known to be true. Information used as an evidence.
REALITY: The state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to how one might like them to be. A thing that is actually experienced or seen. The state or quality of having existence or substance.
SUBSTANCE: The real physical matter. Solid basis in fact or reality.
REAL: Actually existing or occurring; not imagined or supposed. Not artificial; genuine. Worthy of the description; proper. Significant; serious. 
OCCUR: Be found or present. Happen; take place.
ACTUAL: Existing in fact. Existing now.
EXIST: Be real, be present in a place or situation. Be alive; live.
EXISTENCE: The fact or state of existing. A way of living.
ALIVE: Living; not dead. Continuing in existence. Alert and active. Aware of and willing to respond to. 
LIVE: Remain alive. Be alive at a particular time. Spend one's life in a particular way. Survive in someone's mind.
LIFE: The existence of an individual human being, animal or plant. A particular type or aspect of people's existence. The period during which something continue to exist, function or be valid. Vitality or energy. The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the ability to grow, breath and reproduce.
STATE: The condition of someone or something at a particular time.
CONDITION: The state of something or someone. The circumstances affecting something.
TIME: Unlimited continued progress of existence. Events in the past, present and future, regarded as a whole.
PRESENT: Being or occurring in a particular place. Existing or occurring now. Period of time now occurring.

GOOGLE
Truth: noun - The quality or state of being true, that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality, a fact or belief that is accepted as true.
True: adjective - In accordance with fact or reality, real or actual, accurate or exact, honest, loyal or faithful, devoted, dedicated.

CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY
Truth: The quality of being true, the real facts about a situation, event, or person, used to show or emphasize that something is true. A fact or principle that is thought to be true by most people.

MERRIAM WEBSTER
Truth: The body of real things, events, and facts, actuality. A transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality. The property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality.  Fidelity to an original or to a standard. Sincerity in action, character, and utterance.

OXFORD LEARNERS DICTIONARIES
TRUTH: The true facts about something, rather than the things that have been invented or guessed. The quality or state of being based on fact. A fact that is believed by most people to be true.

As I can see, none of them actually tells you anything satisfactory. It's like asking someone what is truth? he pointed towards her and she did the same. Just more word game, circular definitions. Looks like these definitions feed off of each other just to keep surviving in the dictionaries. There is no mention of consciousness or YOU anywhere in these definitions, which is a travesty, and if someone did mention terms like consciousness, god, ego, me, non-duality, etc. it would be a travesty for the most academics and even most non-academics. No one except few, asks you to SHUT UP, be silent and look within and very few do the work till the end.

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Episode Notes 1:

"How come Truth is such a slippery beast?"

-Douglas Hofstadter

"If you find Truth you will become invincible."

-Epictetus

Warning: Advanced Episode! Tricky Topic!

It is a big deal to understand what Truth is (and not just hear about it)

People take it for granted (Materialist paradigm)

It is possible to become conscious of absolute truth. Leo (and many others) have done it.

Do your homework. Pursue the Truth.

Do not turn this into a Dogma.

Leo's Story:

 - Taking a piss while tripping on LSD

 - Wondering: What is the Truth?

 - The conceptual notion of the Truth melted away, leaving the actual Truth.

The Truth:

 - It is Being

 - The entirety of the present moment

 - It is the most radical (yet ordinary-seeming) thing 

Psychedelics help;)

Common misconceptions about the Truth:

 - Truth is a belief

 - It is a concept or an abstraction

 - It is a philosophy or ideology

 - It is knowledge

 - It is a theory, model, concept or abstraction

 - It is science, logic or mathematics

 - It is impossible to access

 - It is subjective

 - It is logical and must make sense

 - It can be communicated via text/speech

 - It is provable

 - It is not a big deal

 - It has no implications on ordinary life

Relative truth:

 - Conceptual truths of the mind

 

Examples:

 - The sky is blue

 - The Eifel Tower is located in Paris, France

 - A human hand has 5 fingers

 - 1+1=2

 - Squirrels like to eat acorn'

 - World War 2 happened

 - Objects are made out of atoms

Why are these Relative?

 - These are all contingent, pseudo-truths

 - They depend upon concepts, symbols, language, and thought

 - These are all held within our minds (and are not fundamental to Reality)

 - Blue sky:

  ○ One needs to understand the language. Other animals cannot understand it. Be careful: Don't assume consciousness of all beings is analogous to that of humans, or that humans have the highest level of consciousness possible

  ○ Which planet's sky? What time of the day are we looking at the sky? Which shade of blue? Does it appear blue to other life forms?

 - Human hand: 5 fingers

  ○ People with 6 fingers exist

 - 1+2=2

  ○ One needs to understand the symbols

  ○ One needs to understand the logic of arithmetic

 - These are based on a correspondence theory of truth.

  ○ All Western and Eastern philosophies are also based on this

  ○ It assumes Realism and tries to confirm theories/philosophies with the help of 'external objective' reality

 - There is a big difference between the actual sky being blue and the thought/concept that the sky is blue

 - Example: A donkey may be able to see a blue sky, but have no idea what 'blue' is.

 - Relative truths are second-order; they are something our minds do on top of Reality

 - They have a negative: Falsehood, thus creating a duality

  

Absolute Truth:

 - True under all circumstances

 - Actual rather than conceptual

 - Exercise: Hand exercise from 'What is Actuality?'

 - Exercise: Observe the room you are in. That's Absolute Truth: What is!

 - What we call 'Experience' is the Absolute Truth

  ○ It isn't what we think it is

  ○ If something is happening to you, it must be True

  ○ Truth is that which IS! The ISness itself. The direct experience

 - What is Truth =  What is Reality = What is Actuality = What is Isness = What is Being

 - We don't have experience of anything that isn't ISing

 - Truth is the actual state of Reality at all points in space and time

 - It isn't our knowledge about Reality; knowledge is just a part of Reality that we are conscious of

 - Knowledge by itself will lead to a self-reference problem, it will not lead to the Truth

 - ISness is the most fundamental thing

 - Analogy: The Universe as a computer

  ○ An infinite number of bits

  ○ Absolute Truth = State of all bits in the system

  ○ The present moment is a part of that system

 - Reality is not made out of atoms, it is made out of the Truth

 - If we keep dividing objects, at some point, conceptually we hit rock bottom (Quarks, Strings, Membranes), which then leads to strange loops and self-referential problems

 - It is possible to understand the rock bottom nature of Reality, aka Truth. It requires an Awakening.

 - Everything is fundamentally made out of Truth

 - Truth isn't dependent on any other aspect of Reality

 -  Analogy: God's complete view of the Universe

 - The Truth includes all little parts of Reality, which are also the Truth

1+1=3

 - Is it the Truth?

 - Yes!

 - Not symbolically/mathematically

 - The ISness is important

 - It isn't true (logically), but right now, it is the Truth

 - Distinguish between knowledge and ISness

False things must also exist!

 - Because it is in our consciousness

 - Falsehood is a second-order, relativistic thing

 - There is no opposite to Absolute Truth

 - Non-existence is a concept. 

 - Falsehood and Non-existence are impossible in Actuality

But Leo, there's no Kangaroo here!

 - The concept of a Kangaroo just popped in your consciousness

 - You then projected that onto the narrative with Leo

What about Death?

 - Is it Actual, or is it conceptual?

 - Contemplate

But Leo, what is the Truth? Tell me

 - Language, logic, the human mind is limited and exists as a result of the ISness.

 - Truth is already here

 - It must be grasped. It is right in front of us.

 - Any words are just more ISing

 - Put your attention on ISness. Eventually, one can breakthrough

 - Analogy: Recognising one's image in the mirror. Takes a high level of consciousness

You can't get to the Truth, because it is already here. (Ta-Da!)

 - It’s the lack of consciousness on our part that keeps us from Truth, not lack of proof/evidence/logic

 - The brain/mind cannot think/hold the Truth

 - Truth isn't a thought. The thought is a part of the Truth

If the entire Universe was destroyed, the Truth would still exist!

 - Because then, the Truth would be that there is no Universe

 - It is a really slippery beast

What if there is no Truth?

 - It is contradictory. Truth is the ISness, which supersedes any fact about the Universe

 -  Analogy: The content of the hard drive does not affect the hard drive (as an object)

 - When there is no Universe, there will be Nothing, which is different from non-existence

 - Pure absolute Truth = ISness = Nothingness

Truth is prior to everything else

 - Time, space, energy, matter are all aspects of the Truth

 - Truth is not a linguistic or semantic notion

Objection: Subjective Experience

 - Materialist paradigm

  ○ It's just human perception

  ○ Objective Reality exists independent of the self and is True

 - The Ego has turned Truth into subjective experience

 - See 'What is Perception?' episode

 - Subjective experience is a delusion, created by the Ego (thanks to science and the culture) to convince that the self exists and that things are happening to it.

 - In short: You are not real

 - There are no biological entities, no subjectivity. There is only Absolute Truth. Truth is Objective.

 - This is the Real World. It is pretending to be you and pretending that it has feelings, relationships, a job, problems, etc.

 - The Universe/God is doing you

Awakening =  Entire perceptual field - The 'I'

 - Then there will be radical recontextualization of subjectivity and it will be recognized as the Truth

 - The reason why we’re stuck in subjectivity is because we imagine ourselves to be a subject

 - The Universe imagines that it is a human

 - Emotional reaction? Existential Terror?

  ○ It is a defense mechanism

  ○ You are on the right track

  ○ By default, we are interested in survival rather than the Truth

Truth is metaphysical and not epistemological

 - The duality between metaphysics and epistemology collapses with an Awakening since the perceiver is taken out of the picture

 

 

Episode Notes 2:

Features of the Absolute Truth:

 - It has no opposites

 - It cannot be proven by scientific experimentation

 - It cannot be symbolized

 - It cannot be quantified

 - It cannot be communicated or taught

 - It is infinite

 - It is one, singular, total

 - It is utterly illogical, paradoxical and it makes no sense to the mind

 - It must necessarily negate itself

 - Any quality ascribed to it is true, false, both and neither

 - It possesses all qualities, including the quality of having no quality

 - It is Nothing, it is Consciousness, awareness, pure ISness

 

It might take one several years to understand what is being communicated here. That's okay and the Truth is worth it.

Use this info as a roadmap.

Important aspects of the Truth:

 - It is the whole Universe

 - It is consciousness

 - It is God

 - It is Love

 - It is uncaused, amechanical and Self-created

 - It is eternal and nonlocalized

 - It is intelligent and sentient

 - It is (Absolutely) Good

 - It has no beginning or end

 - There is nothing beyond the Absolute Truth

 - It is Everything and Nothing at the same time

 - It is Form and Formlessness

 - It includes all dualities, distinctions, and differences

 - It is all-powerful. It creates everything

 - It is NOW. The present moment of the Now!

 - It is impossible to avoid

 - It is mysterious and mystical

 - It is true not knowing (Peter Ralston)

 - It is utter mind fuckery

 - It is enormous

 - It is life-transforming

 - It is beyond importance (which is relative)

 - It is beyond meaning (also relative)

 - It is Life and Death

 - It is the only thing that there is and the only thing that there could ever be

 - It cannot be turned into an ideology

 - It is radical

 - It is awesome and terrifying at the same time

 - It is Paradise and total perfection

 - It is Self-awareness

 - It is self-illuminating, self-evident and self-knowing

 - It is Omniscience

 - It is totally direct. It has zero processes, method or mechanism

 - It is the solution to all human problems

 - It is the aim of all philosophy and spirituality

 - It has many practical implications

 - It is You (I). It is not separate from the Self

 - It is multidimensional

 - It is the substance of the entire (fucking) Universe. That is its function.

FAQ:

Where did the Truth come from?

 - From Nowhere/Nothing

 - Truth is Nothing =  Everything = Infinity = Life

 - There is no difference between Possible and Impossible

 - That's God. God always was/IS.

 - You exist forever

What if you are deluded, Leo?

 - The Truth must be directly grasped

 - Someone else discovering the Truth does us no service

 - Delusion is what keeps us from the truth

What if there's something beyond the Absolute Truth?

 - It is Infinity, boundless, Everything

 - There's no such thing as 'beyond the Truth'

How come science does not validate this?

 - It’s You! 

 - Science is a second-order phenomenon. The Truth comes before it.

 - It can only be accessed personally

What is the relationship between Absolute Truth and Relative Truth?

 - Science/Math is full of relative truths, which facilitates survival

 - Knowing Absolute Truth doesn't add any value to survival

 - There is a correspondence between the Absolute Truth and second-order Scientific truth

 - Relative truths are partial and  dualistic, Absolute Truth is the end of all dualities and complete

 - The relative is a part of the Absolute

How is Absolute Truth useful/practical?

 - For the Ego, it is pretty useless, even detrimental

 - However, usefulness itself is a part of the Truth

 - Usefulness requires Existence. Truth is so useful, that it is useless

 

Why should I pursue the Truth?

 - Stupid question

 - There are no shoulds in Reality

 - There's no reason to pursue the Truth

 - Benefits:

  ○ The beauty and the wonder

  ○ Eliminates suffering (which is falsehood)

 - Pursue it out of genuine interest

How can I discover it?

 - Meditate and develop laser sharp concentration abilities

 - Kriya Yoga

 - Psychedelics

 - Self-inquiry

 - Contemplate

 - Read books

How will I know that I have discovered the Absolute Truth?

 - The truth will be self-evident

 - It is You, so you will know that it is the Truth

 - It is a Massive Epiphany

 

How can a psychedelic reveal the Absolute Truth?

 - A psychedelic isn't just a chemical

 - The proof is in the pudding

How can the Truth be Love?

 - They are absolutely identical

 - Love = Consciousness = Truth

 - Awakening to the Truth and the true nature of Love are different

Can my Truth be different from your Truth?

 - No

 - It may be interpreted in different ways

What has been said in this video is the Truth?

 - Truth is paradoxical

 - Words are not the Absolute Truth, and they are, at the same time

Is it Egotistical to claim to know the Truth?

 - The Truth IS

 - Leo is trying to make his content interesting

 - The Truth transforms everything about life

Warnings:

 - Beware of anyone who claims to know the Truth and uses it to brand themselves and their teachings. Devil loves to co-opt the Truth

 - If you think that the Truth is a property of the mind or some human phenomenon, then you haven't grasped the Truth. Go deeper.

 - Truth is not merely formlessness or cessation. The entire relative domain (of forms) is the formless in disguise.

 - One Awakening does not guarantee that you understand Absolute Truth

 - You will not access Truth without a change in the state of consciousness. Psychedelics are a good catalyst. 

 - Anything you think is the Absolute Truth is probably just delusion (and ironically also the Truth ;))

 

"All the techniques of the therapist are in one way or another truth-revealing, or are ways if strengthening the patient so he can bear the truth"

 - Abraham Maslow

We all need self-therapy to increase our capacity to bear the Truth

When we get disconnected from the Truth, Egoic and neurotic problems arise

Your true mission in life is to transcend survival and discover the Truth

Everything else seems nonsense once Truth is grasped

The cost of the Truth is the Ego. That's real Transformation.

What Leo teaches isn't religious or scientific dogma.

It is meant to serve as a pointer and map for Self-work.

It is the finger pointing at the moon.

Actualized.org is a set of relative truths and mental scaffolding that is meant to guide us to the Truth.

[AleksM]

Understanding Survival - Part 1 - The Metaphysics Of Being Human

//posted from youtube comment from Vivek Chavan. 

It never occurs to a squirrel that it is an oak-murdering machine

-Leo
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Foundational for all personal development & spiritual change

The root of all human behavior change

Credit: Peter Ralston

"Man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and, this being so, he has no will, an very little control of himself, if any at all. What we have to study, therefore, is not psychology but mechanics"

-Peter Ouspensky

You are mechanical. It goes very deep

Mechanical =1/Conscious

Survival as a metaphysical thing: Modern science doesn't understand this very well

Metaphysical Questions:

 - What is survival?

 - Why do survival?

 - Why do anything at all?

 - Why doesn't an organism sit still its whole life? Why does it struggle?

 - Why defend anything at all? What is being defended?

 - Why be one way and not the other?

 - Why seek change at all?

 - Why manipulate? What are we manipulating towards?

 - Why even live?

 - Who chooses what should survive and what doesn't?

 - Is survival rational or irrational?

 - Is there anything which is not survival? What is the opposite of survival

The story of survival:

 - In the beginning: Formlessness

 - First distinction = first object (cloud)

 - Multiple objects, interact with each other

 - Cloud dies. It didn't care. The cloud isn't self-aware

 - Later: New form (had a desire to persist by manipulating. It lived longer). It eventually dies

It isn't rational for a form to want to persist.

In  order to manipulate, the form has to draw a fundamental distinction: Self vs. other

The form is never fully in control of its destiny since it cannot control other forms

All forms are temporary. Reality is constantly changing!

If the form changes too much, the form metaphysically dies.

Survival =  Static arrangement within a sea of change = maintaining order = Not changing

Disorder & Freedom =  Enemy!

Total freedom = Disintegration = Death = Biggest fear

What we freeze depends on what we classify as 'the self'

There are no objects in Reality. It is a distinction.

The Universe doesn't tell you who you are. You decide that.

Physical definition + Other definitions = self

Reality = Infinite field of consciousness

Lower self = Virtual partition of Reality

Growth = Extending/moving the boundary of self

What is being survived is not a physical object! It is a concept, a fantasy!

Survival = conceptual activity

 Science cannot identify anything. Identification is a subjective thing, a result of personal projection.

Survival is a highly irrational, subjective activity.

Organisms don't care about Truth, logic, rationality under circumstances that can lead to death.

Survival is exhausting. 

We are scared of death because we convince ourselves that survival is important.

Rationality can become an identity, which then needs to be protected.

Threat and danger are relative to what we define as 'self'

 - Example: Christian and the Bible

 - What is that for you? It is highly relative

  ○ E.g.: My baby is more important than other babies

 - People assume: What's good for me is good for everyone and vice versa.

 - You can only exist as 'you' if you exclude all other possibilities.

There are zero-sum dynamics in Reality.

Life is impossible without death.

There is only one Reality.

Squirrel has murdered thousands of would-be acorn trees.

You are just like that squirrel

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Nitty gritty survival dynamics:

How does it help me? 

 - That is selfish

To change yourself, the self has to die.

You get in your own way.

You want the results of change without actually changing yourself

Massive results = Identity level change  = Facing your death

Go straight into the belly of the whale!

Instincts exist for survival purposes.

Our lives are completely controlled by survival. Examples:

 - Reading a book

 - Wiping your ass

 - Nutrition

 - Beauty

 - Getting annoyed by disturbances

 - Fiddling with your thermostat

 - Buying luxury items (rich people need to maintain their image and status)

 - Buying lingerie at Victoria's Secret

 - Masturbation/Sex

 - Caring about what people think of you

 - Driving an electric car

 - Being vegan

 - Donating to charity

 - Doodling during class

 - Getting tattoos 

 - Socializing

 - Taking care of your family

 - Following a religion

 - Saving money

 - Being depressed

 - Politics, religion, science, ethics, morality, etc.

 - Meditation (as a chore)

Important ones:

 - All judgements (ego defence)

 - All meaning (relative)

 - All thinking

 - Justifying, rationalizing

 - All beliefs

 - All logic, reasoning

 - All imagination

 - All theories

 - All speech

 - All emotions 

  ○ (Emotions are something that you do, and not something that you experience- Peter Ralston)

  ○ Manipulation of the self

 - All feelings of discomfort 

 

What exactly are we surviving?

 - More than just the body

 - The mind/psyche

 - Even recharging/relaxing facilitates survival

 - The Devil is in the details

 - Most of our survival strategies are executed unconsciously

 - Different for rich and poor people. It is highly relative. The mind tricks us into believing that something is really important and is a 'must have' item

 - We delude ourselves into false rationalizations for our survival

Survival = Dishonesty = Sneaky manipulation

But we have an identity as a 'good and honest' person

We end up convincing ourselves that we have to lie and manipulate and that it is good.

The self resists all the important and advanced teachings and misconstrues them.

Nothing is inherently good or bad. Our aim is to be conscious of our actions

You cannot see Reality as it is because of survival (Needy vs non-needy perception)

You are a robot! Become conscious of your survival drives

Survival is deeply intelligent. It isn't a dumb mechanical phenomenon

Survival knows no shame. It will do anything to achieve its goal

It's subtle, non-linear, sophisticated and complex

There's nothing fair about survival. It is raw selfishness

We have to survive in a social environment rather than just a physical one

Career niche = Perfect fit between you and your environment.

Many survival strategies were baked into our brains right since birth

Unconscious survival strategies often backfire

To be good at life, do survival in a more conscious manner

Mind/psyche is like a ghost that has taken over the body.

You are that ghost. You!! Right there! Behind the eyes!

This ghost must look out for physical and psychic dangers.

It must think as the good guy

Devilry must be misconstrued as goodness

The body of the ghost is made of beliefs and ideas

Identity is fused with models and beliefs and the ghost will maintain them even if they are dysfunctional

The ghost must keep itself motivated

Everything you think and feel has an ulterior motive. One has to bullshit themselves into taking action

To do: 

 - Monitor survival at a micro level. Minute to minute. 

 - Notice all the manipulation and trickery. Don't try to change it.

 - Notice the specific survival needs that are unique to you

 - You need to do things to be the way you are. Notice all those

 - Try not doing one of these things and see how the ghost reacts

 - Pay extra attention to your thoughts and emotions

 - Your ghost: Contemplate on these

  ○ What does it want?

  ○ What does it hate?

  ○ What is it trying to be?

  ○ What/who does it hate?

  ○ What is its worldview?

 - What in my life is not survival?

 

It will take us years and decades to improve at all this. Be patient

All emotional ups and downs are emotions in action

You must become more conscious of your survival. And not just good at survival.

Survival is suffering!

Nothing fulfills you. 

Survival isn't designed to make you happy, it is designed to keep you alive until death becomes absolutely unavoidable

Maybe there is a different (and better) way to live your life

There is a possibility of life outside survival!

 

Understanding Survival - Part 2 - Advanced Insights About Survival

Do the homework assignments, always!
Not just theory, philosophy, ideas.
It will change your life if you actualize it and observe yourself.

Squirrels: Oak-murdering machines.
But they also help in planting the oak trees.
Insights: 
 - Survival can be symbiotic
 - The squirrel does not know what it is doing (mechanical actions)
 - Ultimately, selfishness goes full circle and contributes to Absolute Goodness
 - Survival vs selflessness: Dualistic thinking; must be transcended

Humans obfuscate survival: Our strategy is highly evolved and sophisticated
Being good at survival and being conscious of survival are two different things
E.g.: Donald Trump

These days, it is very easy to take survival for granted. The brutality of survival is justified and hidden away from our awareness. Esp. Businesses.
E.g.: Bananas in a grocery store
Inversely: Living by yourself in a rainforest would put us in touch with the harshness of survival

Appreciate how intelligent survival is
Unbelievably intelligent. It’s a force of the Universe. Evolution

Insights:
 - The more central an object is to our survival, the more upset we become when it is threatened
  ○ High: children/parents/pets 
  ○ Medium: car/house/bank account
  ○ Low: towel/shoe
 - We'll conjure up flowery stories about why our agenda is noble and selfless
 - Brutal honesty is necessary
 - Just because a survival strategy fails, does not mean that it's not a survival strategy
  ○ E.g.: 
   § Buying spoiled lettuce from a grocery store
   § Robbing a bank
  ○ There are many degrees of intelligence to survival strategies
  ○ Short term survival strategy (extreme neediness + unconscious behavior) vs long term survival strategy
 - Survival isn't about physical survival, it's about the survival of the 'self' concept and worldview
 - For Humans: Survival goes way beyond food, clothing, and shelter
  ○ E.g.: Smoking
  ○ Teenagers: Trying to fit in and appear 'cool'
 - Psychological comfort is a big part of survival strategy
  ○ Even depression can be a survival strategy
  ○ E.g.: a 9-5 job you hate. 
   § Subconscious mind (soul?) sends a message
   § But the ego is scared
   § Depression was a signal, which was muted by the self
   § Victim identity
   § Most depressions don't end in suicides
  ○ Suicide bombers: Strong religious convictions. The bomber has an idea of an afterlife (and 72 virgins). Extremely foolish?
   § Joke's on you! He does become Allah after death, but his strategy is extremely counterproductive
 - We pick up a lot of these strategies when we're young, from society
  ○ Unconsciously
  ○ Very counterproductive
  ○ Programmed into us
 - There is no such thing as 'the one best' survival strategy
  ○ It depends on the unique needs of the ego-self
  ○ A strategy that works for you may not work for another
  ○ It is commensurate with one's environment (culture, era, geopolitics)
 - It is common for people/cultures/countries to impose their survival strategies onto others
  ○ Consciousness and big-picture thinking is needed
  ○ Respect other people's needs and unique traits
  ○ We are all at different stages of development (use Spiral Dynamics)
 - Cultural diversity exists for a reason. Ta-da!
  ○ E.g.: Cuisines (commensurate with resources available)
 - Survival has co-opted all social institutions (Governments, Military, charities, media, etc.)
  ○ Humans are social creatures
  ○ This is prevalent even among ants (and many other life-forms)
  ○ Collective Ego
  ○ All institutions are filled with Politics: It is central to its survival
  ○ Even chimps have politics in their groups

Ideas and beliefs become central to survival.
Defending them is vital for the ego
Worldview is very difficult to change. It is like the operating system that we run on
The OS is foundational
E.g.: Your idea of what a family is; what gender is

Metaphysics is central to our understanding of life:
 - Scientific materialism
 - Religion
 - Note: Claiming you have no metaphysics means that you have adopted the default metaphysics of the culture you grew up in

Our identity isn't real
 - We manufactured it (albeit unconsciously)
 - Then we deny we ever did that
 - We seek a worldview to ground ourselves in Reality
 - People are threatened by the Truth
 - Truth needs no defending, falsehood does
 - Dualistic belief in God allows people to shirk responsibility and judge others
 - Gender is a social construct, so is science, laws, and most things in society
 - Survival strategy:
  ○ Denial
  ○ Judgment
  ○ Criticism
  ○ Self-deception

Survival is its own end. Personally, there's no higher purpose to it

You are totally oblivious to your own survival strategy
 - Because it doesn't serve the strategy
 - It will be painful to discover and admit how neurotic and selfish we are
 - We all want to paint ourselves in a good light and appear 'holier than thou'

Consciousness makes blind selfishness untenable.
Consciousness comes with great responsibility. Deceiving others and ourselves becomes difficult.
High consciousness teachings can go against survival
Distraction: The Ego's favorite self-deception mechanism

What you call 'evil' is just somebody else's survival strategy
 - Applies to all things, including rape, murder, corruption, terrorism, etc.
 - Evil is that which hinders your survival strategy
 - It's perspectival and relativistic
 - Denial that evil is relative is just another survival strategy

Go meta
Stop judging other people's survival strategies

Mindfuck: Your judgment of others is a part of your own survival strategy
Morality: Self-deception
Getting upset is a good indicator that your worldview is threatened

[AleksM]

 

The Many Facets Of Awakening - List of Top 30 Enlightenment Insights

//posted from youtube comments

List 
4:44 Mystical Experience 

- Not enlightenment
- Its a state of consciousness
-feeling that all is One

 6:16 No Self
- No such thing as body
- Deep Insight
- Distinct from Mystical 
- Can be combined 

8:10 I AM 
- Deepest Truth, The Self 
- A deep feeling of I AM 
- Universe 

11:40 OMnipresent
- You are everything everywhere 
- Not located anywhere

13:13 Realizing what consciousness is
- Real Consciousness 
- Experience required 
- It's everything 
- No external reality 

14:35 Realizing what is awakening
- it's not WOKE AF
-  Life is a Dream
- Shatters reality 
- Satori 

17:00 Oneness or non-duality
-Everything is truly One 
- You don't understand what Oneness really mean 
-  Literally All One 

19:00 Everything is Relative 
- Taco and human is the same 

19:35- Realizing what is Truth,  Truth with capital T  
 - Truth and consciousness is One 
- You know what Truth really means 
- You have to awaken first 

20:40 Realizing what is the Absolute
- To be Absolute 
- 99.999 of people have no reference for it 
- True under all events 
- You have to awaken first

21:40 Absolute Infinity 
- Not a number 
- Actual Infinity 
- Everything is absolute infinity 
- No end to it 

23:57 Absolute Nothingness 
- Nothing ever happened 
- Identical to infinity
- You can experience both or separate

24:25 - Knowing why is there something rather than nothing

25:55 Knowing what is God
- What God is pointing to 
- 99.999 No idea what it means 
-  Godhead

27:15 Realizing You are God
- God is You 
- Very important 
- You are the creator    
- May take multiple awakening to achieve this 

29:52 Self= Other Other= Self 
-It's just your imagination 
- You as God are all alone
- Come face to face that there's no one but You 
- Very shocking 
- You might feel your insane 
- Everything you do is with yourself 

32:54 Realizing what is Love
- Emotional Insight 
- Consciousness is Love 
- Love is the fabric of the Universe 
- All Evil is Love 
- You spend most of your life hating people fighting evil 
- A bitter pill for ego
- Truth and Love are identical 

35:50 Realizing everything is imaginary - Everything is Mind
- Infinite Mind 
-  It's your Mind 
- It's all imaginary 

38:40 Self-Design
- You are creating yourself 
- Every hair is as though I planted it myself with Infinite Mind 
- You designed the Universe 

40:50 Realizing what your birth really is
- You were here forever 
- You never were born 
- You imagined you were born 

42:45 Eternity / No-Time / Absolute Now
- No past or future 
- Everything is in the Now
- Eternal is outside of time 
- Even your body is eternal 

44:23 Realization of what is Death and Immortality
- There is no past or future 
- Death is imaginary, a story, and ego created. 
- You're immortal 

46:25 Paradise / Heaven / Perfection
- Heaven is right here 
-  Heaven and Hell are not physical locations 
- When you realize your immortal you'll be in heaven 

48:00 Bliss / Ecstasy
- Not just extreme pleasure 
- It's infinitely good 
- Cosmic orgasm 

49:33 Infinite intelligence
- It's not high IQ  Its Being 
-Everything is intelligence 
- Its all the Mind of God 

53:32 Goodness 
- Everything is Absolute Good 

54:35 Realizing what is Will (Infinite Will of God)
- Everything is though the Will of God
- Manifests everything Now 
- Not mechanical 
- The human will is a tiny sliver of Gods Will  

56:47 Unlimited Power 
- Create whatever no Laws 
- Human is God in a limited form 

58:13 Omniscience
-  Incredible experience 

59:20 Divinity / Magic / Mystery
-  The human experience is divinity 
- You walk down the street an everything glows at you 
- A deep and profound mystery 
- You don't know anything 

1:01:00 Realizing what is Being
- Substance of reality 

1:02:15 Realizing Universe is an Infinite Fractal
- You can zoom in and out 

1:02:44 Realizing what is Perception
- Infinite resolution 

1:03:18 Realizing what is Life
- Universe is Alive
-  Any form is alive 

1:04:32 Realizing the point of Existence. 
-  Love 

Bonus:
1:05:30 Communicating with God 
1:06:07 Healing 
1:06:46 Collective Consciousness
1:07:15 Universe Collapse 
1:07:46 Paranormal 
1:08:22 Alien Entities

[AleksM]

We still need summaries for these videos (from the last 2 years)

self-bias- why all worldviews are so skewed, understanding relativism,  the power of asking questions, what is reality,what is god part 2, what is the point of life?,  cult psychology, how to do self-inquiry, understanding duality, the counter intuitive nature of life,  what is perception? , understanding ego backlash, radical implications of oneness, sameness vs difference, how to escape wage slaver, collective ego, metaphysical implications of godel's incompleteness theorem, quantum mechanics, building your existential vocabulary,  comprehension has many degrees, why brains do not exist, the theme of things going full circle, reality is a strange loop, Jacques derrida - deconstruction, motivational speech for building a passionate life

[tenta]

Relativism part 1

[Nic]

I thought I had posted that one a long time ago... sorry

 

Why Brains do not Exit

 

“Existence is anecdotal”

 

If you are a materialist, you think that all of reality is happening inside of the brain. This belief is happening without you being aware of it. It’s a framework of beliefs, a mind virus. There is an alternative way to look at the world as this paradigm is absurd, it doesn’t make sense, contradicts itself and limits you in very important ways.

Naive realism=materialism=physicalism= default position of scientifically, rationally minded people.

It sounds crazy, but whatever you have experienced, has never taken place in the brain.

 

Q: Aren’t enlightenment and psychedelic trips first person experiences? If that is true, does it mean that they are not objective, not scientific? The brain is capable of hallucinations and we have asylum full of people who hallucinates stuff, they live in their private universes, doesn’t that show us that we cannot trust first person experience? All your non-dual experience are anecdotal, those experiences and your meditations happened inside your brain.

A: With this question, you are taking for granted that there is such a thing as a brain and that there is physical reality.

Q: Do you deny that we can see a brain when we open a skull?

A: When open a skull we will see some pink squishy substance inside that we call a brain. But what are you seeing there? You having an experience of some pink squishy substance, but is that the metaphysical brain that you believe in? That is the important issue. The problem is that when we speak of a brain, neurons and atoms, we like to speak about them like it’s a first person phenomena, but they are first persons appearances and more than that, they are actually concepts. Concepts that boils down to sensations that you are having.

We cut open a skull, the skull itself is an appearance, where are first person appearance occurring? We run into a circular problem. 

 

Q: Where does the appearance happen but in my brain?

A: Even if we cut you open and you see your brain in a mirror, you would see your own squishy substance, but again, where is that occurring? The materialists assumes that our first persons experiences are occurring in this organ, all our experience are coming from it, generated by it and occurring in it, but what is this “it”? Where is it occurring? Notice that the only thing you have about reality is this first person experience, there is nothing else, literally, that is a brute fact of your life.

Science takes this domain of first person experiences and creates a conceptual distinction within this domain. It takes this first person experience and creates a section within that which we are going to call  “third person objective”. A scientist means with that, that we take a group of people, a group of like minded beings and ask them: “do you see that tree over there?” The group says “yes”. The scientist will classify that as a third person objective fact. What is forgotten in that process is that it is experience within first person experience, it can never be other than that. So that tree, the group, yourself, the world, the physical universe is all happening within that first person experience. Any notion of a third person objective domain has to be couched within the first person subjective. We take the third person objective for having more reality than the first person subjective, but this is completely wrong, because the third person objective is conceptual in nature and has less reality than subjective experiences. Everything objective is actually subjective, there is no such thing as objectivity. It’s a self-defeating metaphysics. You can create the illusion of objectivity by gathering a consensus. There is always certain kinds of things that people will consent to. That gathering of consensus is a conceptual enterprise and is occurring within subjective experience.

There is zero evidence for an external world… The scientist believe in a universe within which the brain is happening. What we have got is bunch of first person experiences and appearances, and they need to be explained by something and find an answer in the external world, which has never been proven to exist, as the only thing that we have, are first person experiences.

Scientists take mystical experiences as being anecdotal evidence and not objective. But what they are failing to grasp is that everything is anecdotal evidence, existence itself is anecdotal, the only reason you feel and believe that you exist is by anecdote. If you didn’t exist there would be no possibility to talk about existence. The physical universe is anecdotal as well. So called rationaly-minded people take a lot things for granted about reality but ignore the fact that they are anecdotal. Out of a concept they fashioned an external reality where they are brains, atoms and molecules, and then conveniently told themselves that none of that is a concept, that is actually reality. While they are engage in that process, they are not being conscious that all of that is happening within first person experiences.

Without first person experience, none of what the materialists hold as real, existence, life, science, rationality, the universe, skepticism, would have any justification or grounding or evidence. The existence of the big bang hinges on you existing, you don’t depend on the big bang, the big bang depends on you.

The belief that there are hard objective facts, that’s a metaphysical claim, you can’t avoid metaphysics. Those hard fact are implicit, you picked them up from your culture, and our culture is utterly ruled by materialism, worst then religious indoctrination. Religious people know about other religions and some might see that themselves might be a bit indoctrinated. But nobody tells you the materialistic paradigm is a paradigm, that you can be indoctrinated into it, you are not given any other alternative. If you dare to talk about any other possibility, you will get mocked and criticize even called crazy as though you were denying reality.

Reality is a hallucination, literally! There is nothing beyond hallucinations. A hallucination is “an appearance or a perception without substance.” This is exactly what we have, a first person experience but nothing else, no brains, no physical matter, physical laws or mathematical equations behind the scene.

A hallucination is not a dream or nightmare that you imagine. Why is it not possible to just jump through a wall? Why can’t I just fly and break the laws of physics or manifesting stuff just by thinking about them? This is a silly notion of what a hallucination is. Hallucination has nothing to do with that, you can have crazy hallucinations where you fly through walls, or a hallucination where the wall is solid and can’t fly through it. Hallucinations can have infinite properties. Why would you assume that a hallucination has no rules or logic? Dreams all have certain types of rules, why are you afraid of monsters in your dream?

When you are inside of your paradigm, it cripples your ability to imagine alternative interpretations of reality and it limits what you think is possible within that reality. You cannot see outside to consider other paradigms. People treat their paradigm as security blankets.

 

Where are these hallucinations occurring? Not in the brain as it is itself a hallucination, it is no taking place anywhere. What the brain and what physical reality are, is a extraneous fictitious metaphysical entity identical to Santa Klaus, or the way that many people hold God to the way that science in the past has held certain substances that was needed to explain physical reality, like “luminiferous aether, phlogiston, caloric , miasma”. The all were legitimate substances that intelligent scientist took for legit a couple of hundred years ago, because they needed to explain the appearances they were seeing out in the world.

-luminiferous aether was the substance needed to explain how light travels through empty space.

-phlogiston was substance to explain combustion

-caloric was substance responsible for the transport and flow of heat

-miasma was substance responsible for the contagious of people, the transferring of germs

The brain and an external physical reality are identical to luminiferous aether, phlogiston, caloric and miasma ,but modern culture hasn’t dropped these fictitious metaphysical entities.

 

So consider the possibility that reality is an hallucination which is not taking place in a brain but rather their is no physical substratum for reality whatsoever because none is needed. in the same way that light can travel through empty space without aether because none is needed and diseases can propagate without miasma. 

By dropping the materialist paradigm it becomes possible that appearance must take place in a physical substratum. That is something that you assumed was true about reality and we can drop that assumption because it is not necessary.

You can’t drop the materialist paradigm just through sheer willpower, you are a fundamentalist, a fundamentalist like a religious person, instead of God or Allah being the grounding substance, you have a physical reality with a brain and neurons in which all experiences are taking place. As a materialist you think religious people are silly believing in superstitions, but what about your superstitions, your God is no different than theirs, your God is the brain. There is no proof of a brain or physical reality, you take it on blind faith and yet you believe it is so real because you are underestimating how tricky the mind is. Even if you don’t want to, your mind is incapable of not holding an ideological position. You hold so many deep ideological positions without knowing it that its frightening to realize that that it’s the case, especially for atheists and scientifically minded people who prides themselves to be open-minded, non-ideological and non-superstitious. This is what happens when you don’t think through your metaphysics carefully, you end up being superstitious, just the content of your superstitious is different.

The  two reasons why you are a materialist are:

first person experience is very consistence most of the time and you have never experience for yourself the breakdown of first person experience, which is for example what a psychedelic, deep meditation, self inquiry, contemplation, certain types of breathing exercise can show you. Because it is consistent, there is the illusion of solidity to them, because the feel so orderly and physically determined like you can’t break the laws of physics you believe that is what the external world must be like.

You were born in a materialist culture, anyone that you have ever interacted without knowing that they are. This indoctrination happens exactly the same way that fundamentalists are indoctrinated. It’s hardwired so deep that you can’t imagine an alternative anymore, you don’t even want an alternative.

 

How can it work straight without any substrate to ground it all? 

This is not a valid objection, the real question is: How can anything work at all? Think about it, How would a substrate cause any appearances? How do you have a substrate? What grounds the substrate? What you got to understand here is that is that it is not a problem for reality, it is a problem for your understanding of reality, that is a big difference. Reality itself is not limited to your materialist intuitions. Reality is weird and absurd, science is weird and absurd especially when you get into quantum mechanics or the big stuff like cosmology, the big bang, multiverses, and so on. Our intuitions are more designed to work with everyday life. Weirdness and absurdity are subjective notions, they are not a measure of Truth, they won’t deliver truth to you, they are the measure of how well aligned you are with your culture, of relative consensus upon other human being that you live amongst at this particular area of time.

 

Where does the materialist say existence came from? The big bang, but where does it come from? Something else, but where does it come from? Even if we find why the big bang happened, we still haven’t explained the nature of appearances. So you have infinite amount of hallucinations all grounded in nothing, not even in time and space.

What about brain damage? When it is damaged, it changes the appearances so it appears that brains causes all appearances and that they happen inside the brains. 

What this experience doesn’t demonstrate that appearance are happening in the brain. What it does demonstrate is that the brain being an appearance can be affected by another appearance like a hammer, so an appearance affecting another appearance which then affect other appearances. When all you have is just appearances, all reality is just an infinite collection of appearances, then it is a self interacting system. Appearance affect other appearance doesn’t prove that they are happening inside of a brain or an external world. Reality is interacting with itself as it contains already everything, it has nothing else to interact with. Your brain affects perceptions, your brain is relevant and important, keep it safe. But it means that the brains which is one appearance affect other appearances. There is no contradiction there

What if I get drunk or a psychotropic drug? 

You take an appearance, the drug, interacts with the neurons in the brain, another appearance, and it changes what you are seeing, also an appearance, but it doesn’t prove that it is happening in the brain.

Why did the brain evolve?

It evolve for generating the very rich kind of appearances that you are experiencing if you are 

a human being. Human consciousness is very rich comparing it to the consciousness of an ant or of a tree. It evolved to let you experience everything you are experiencing. But the evolution of a brain doesn’t prove that there is a brain. Yes neurons are doing stuff, but they are an appearance themselves, they are not inside of a brain.

This is starting to sound like magic… That is because reality is magic. The fact of existence itself is a-mechanical, uncaused and mystical. Everything you are experiencing right now is happening right here, there is no mechanism behind the scene that is generating all this, this is the mechanism.

How can reality possibly do that? Or better said, what would prevent it from doing that? Reality being unlimited, can take the most direct route, the shortest possible route to do whatever it wants to do, which means direct manifestation or…. magic. It is not limited by the laws of physics, they don’t apply to metaphysical issues. Conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, certain limits within gravitation with electromagnetism and so on, they don’t apply to the fact of existence itself. so we are not contradicting the basic laws of physics, but science doesn’t tackle the metaphysical question of being itself. And this is a hallucination and it happens through magic.

-Magical thinking has helped explain all sorts of mysterious natural phenomena, comets, volcanos, plagues and so on, science figured that stuff out and now we have mechanical naturalistic explanations to account for all that. Doesn’t that prove that magical thinking is unnecessary? Why don’t we give science more time to picture how all of existence came into being? 

It’s not going to work. You can explain mechanically a lot of things but you can’t explain the being or the fact that there is a thing in the first place. That question is never addressed because it is taken for granted. Science is about taking one appearance to explain another appearance by breaking it down to subcomponents appearances. By doing so, you don’t explain the fact of appearances themselves. When you do science, you still do metaphysical assumptions, you are not doing science metaphysics free, you take things for granted which is in this case materialism.

It has already been discovered actually within quantum physics and cosmology, materialism breaks down at this peripheries of science. There must be one mystical source. We don’t know what is beyond what is beyond the big bang, so you give science one mystical source, and they can explain everything else. Science misses the point that being itself, right here right now is the mechanism itself. The mechanism of appearances is completely open to you, nothing is hidden behind the seen, it is direct manifestation. You are the mechanism, therefor you can’t explain the mechanism by sighting other appearances, because every other appearances you sight misses the fact of the direct manifestation of appearances in the first place. There is no external reality, no brain, no atoms, none of this necessary, reality is unlimited and doesn’t need that, it goes straight for what it wants. Since there is only one thing in reality, it is its own source. 

The materialist never bother to as the question, is reality mystical or non mystical? The materialist assumes that there cannot be anything mystical. By demystifying nature, you lose touch with being. The only thing you know about reality is the gross material level, you don’t acknowledge a more subtle level.

To know if the paranormal is true, you have to undertake an honest, radically open investigation.

-Isn’t that the gateway to superstitions, we have seen what superstitions have done in the past?

That’s a fear based objection. You are not concerned about the truth, you concerned of believing something false. But it is only about to open yourself up, it’s not about believing everything, you are free to move from one paradigm to another. The people that kill other over silly beliefs, those are the closed-minded people, locked into paradigms, certain that they have the truth. You have a lot more in common with the dogmatic zealots that you like to admit. The biggest lie that materialists, rationalist, scientist and atheist tell themselves is that they are above all superstitious people and by doing that they ignore their own superstitions.

This discussion is turning the tables on you, you are the same that the people that you have despised. Materialism is your religion, it is a virus of your mind. To free yourself from it is a liberation. You will have some incredibly profound direct experiences of crazy things that materialist culture thinks are impossible because of their paradigm lock.

 

So question materialism to death through self-inquiry and contemplation, think through the logic of your own metaphysics until you can see how it is self-defeating, how it doesn’t make sense. That is one of the most powerful work you can do, it takes time. Go discover that materialism is wrong. If you take a psychedelic, don’t think of it as a thing that is happening to your brain, discover that for yourself.

[Nic]

@AleksM

Thanks buddy, let me rewrite your list in a more visible way and complete it:

-How to discover what is true - a deep inquiry 

-Dangers of spiritual work

-Self-bias - Why all world-views are so skewed

-Conscious Politics part 3, 4

-Understanding relativism

-The power of asking questions 

-What is reality                                        DONE

-What is Truth

-What is God part 2                                 DONE

-What is the point of life

-Cult psychology part 1, 2

-How to do self-inquiry 

-Understanding duality Part 1, 2, 3

-The counter intuitive nature of life 

-What is perception                                   DONE

-Understanding ego backlash

-Radical implications of oneness

-Sameness vs difference

-How to escape wage slavery 

-Collective ego

-Metaphysical implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem

-Quantum mechanics, building your existential vocabulary 

-Comprehension has many degrees 

-Why brains do not exist                           DONE

-The theme of things going full circle

-Reality is a strange loop  

-Jacques Derrida - deconstruction

-Motivational speech for building a passionate life

Edited November 4, 2019 by Nic

[Rahul yadav]

ask powerful questions

Ask Powerful Questions.docx

Edited November 11, 2019 by Rahul yadav

[Rahul yadav]

understanding relativity part 1

 

RelativismRelativity.docx

Edited November 12, 2019 by Rahul yadav

[Rahul yadav]

All part conscious politics with all extra resources shared by  uptill now 

All Part Conscious Politics.docx

Edited November 11, 2019 by Rahul yadav

[Rahul yadav]

Self Bias 

Self-Bias.docx

[Nic]

@Rahul yadav

Good work man, thank you for sharing!

[Alex bAlex]

@Rahul yadav Thank you very much! 

[Sahil Pandit]

@Nic Looking for the Wage Slavery Notes. Could you help? 

[Nic]

@Sahil Pandit

Sorry buddy, this one is sadly missing!

I just noticed that "How authority works" is also missing!

 

[Actualized Disciple]

How to be a strategic motherfucker - 7 pillars 

This is my one of my favorite videos of his. Here is a link to my expanded notes on this video:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1du70isGpL0lCEj8F61CY68_n05PuP3G8IG74nQPAIC0/edit?usp=sharing

[StarStruck]

Amazing thread

[DreamScape]

Agreed. Some real gold here.

[peqkno]

Explicit vs Implicit Understanding

Explicit-vs-Implicit-Understanding.docx

[peqkno]

Here's Cult Psychology Part 1 and Part 2

For the most part these are hand-written notes with doodles (.pdf cause .docx is too big in size for an upload)

 

CultPsychology1-nometa.pdf