Meditating 2 Hours Every Day - 1 Year Later (& Psychedelics vs. Meditation)

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Raze said:

Are you sure they aren't just rejecting the terminology? 

It's clear to me that people who object to that terminology simply have not awoken to Love or God. There is nothing else you could call it but Love and God.

It's so obvious that when you finally awaken to it you will be screaming from the top of your lungs: OH MY GAWD!!!! OF-FUCKING-COURSE GOD IS LOVE!!!!!

[Skin-encapsulatedego]

@Consilience your contributions are much appreciated around here.  I always get a lot from the perspectives you share.  Cheers buddy!

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Ive also met individuals who have done a lot of psychedelics, “understand” that we are God and Love, but dont meditate. These people are incredibly unimpressive though and clearly lack a level of embodiment. Both seem like traps.

I agree that psychedelics alone will not produce the embodiment we ultimately want. Some kind of daily mindfulness practice is still necessary and I personally do that.

I think a hybrid approach is best. Or, in other words, find whatever produces the best results for you. You can't argue with results.

[Consilience]

21 minutes ago, OctagonOctopus said:

@Leo Gura

A lot of them probably didn't have as an integral of a world view as you do. I feel what happens a lot of the time is people get stuck with following one school of thought on spirtuality, end up getting traped in the dogmas of that way of thinking. They never got the correct map to lead them to the territory they were trying to get to. This is not necessarily the fault of the practice of meditation, but the way they are looking at the practice. 

You have integrated teachings from many different sources, thus it was easier for you to open yourself up to the many facets of God, & integrate them together. I'm sure a lot of these meditators have awakened to certain facets, but haven't integrated many facets together. Also I feel a lot of meditators are more trying to go with the flow of Nature, & don't care as much about understanding God on an intellectual level. 

This! Yeah Actualized.org has such a high level of holism that many people miss if they’re attached to a single lineage or spiritual tradition. They become paradigm locked without even realizing it. 

 

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I agree with this.

Certainly meditation can be used to access facets of God.

But to me, actually, to fully grasp God, intellect is crucial, and it gets demonized too much in most meditative approaches. Thus ultimate understanding is missing even if very high states are reached. Reaching a high state is not the same as understanding. And for me the key for God-realization is understanding.

God completely understands itself. It is absolutely omniscient. This aspect is not really taught in meditative schools.

In my own experience, omniscience is understood not through the human intellect but by consciousness itself, being conscious of itself. It’s like being aware of the totality of the potentiality of all possible forms of reality, all at once. It’s not something intellect in the tradition sense of the word can do, it’s like a metacognitive process that the human intellect actually gets in the way of. 

[Hello from Russia]

I've been on these retreats. The vipassana guru just asks you "Are you focusing on your breath bro?" - to which you say yes, then he is just - "Okay, good!!" And that's basically it. But there is more to concentration as a skill

What if all these people are just doing the techniques wrong? And there is no one to correct you/no desire to experiment (which might be a huge bottleneck)

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Hello from Russia

[Matthew85]

2 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Ive also met individuals who have done a lot of psychedelics, “understand” that we are God and Love, but dont meditate. These people are incredibly unimpressive though and clearly lack a level of embodiment.

@Consilience I have observed this as well. Some of them seem to be missing the embodiment of the insights they have accessed. 

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Consilience said:

This! Yeah Actualized.org has such a high level of holism that many people miss if they’re attached to a single lineage or spiritual tradition. They become paradigm locked without even realizing it. 

 

In my own experience, omniscience is understood not through the human intellect but by consciousness itself, being conscious of itself. It’s like being aware of the totality of the potentiality of all possible forms of reality, all at once. It’s not something intellect in the tradition sense of the word can do, it’s like a metacognitive process that the human intellect actually gets in the way of. 

Of course I am talking about the Infinite Intellect of God in a superhuman state of consciousness, not the little human mind.

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Hello from Russia said:

What if all these people are just doing the techniques wrong? And there is no one to correct you/no desire to experiment (which might be a huge bottleneck)

I've been on these retreats. The vipassana guru just asks you "Are you focusing on your breath bro?" - to which you say yes, then he is just - "Okay, good!!" And that's basically it. But there is more to concentration as a skill

The problem is deeper than that because the teacher or guru himself isn't fully God-realized.

For example, I don't consider Shinzen Young God-realized yet he has done Vipassana for 40+ years. So obviously Vipassana is not enough. I interrogated Shinzen intensively and I was not satisfied with his answers.

That is the trap I am most concerned about avoiding. I don't want people investing 40 years into a practice and still not understand what God/Reality is.

[Consilience]

9 minutes ago, roopepa said:

@Consilience A bit off-topic, but what advice would you give someone who is having some trouble with fearful thoughts about awakening, mystical states, going insane, etc?

What would you say to someone who has had a traumatizing trip? Someone who has just began to discover the mystical nature in everyday life, and is a bit anxious about it?

I would say learning Shamatha meditation would be the go to approach. You’ll learn how to enjoy and appreciate the satisfaction being with this kind of meditation. Learning how to reliably access these states is a huge foundation for the spiritual path and generating/integrating mystical experiences. I always recommend the book The Mind Illuminated for this one. 
 

If you’ve just had a traumatizing trip, definitely spend some time meditating lightly again using a shamatha approach or whatever approach you feel called to do, being in nature can help reset your vibrational state, and if your anxious about all of this, realize the anxiety is something you’re actually creating and are free to let go of and replace with a new thought and feeling. This last bit is a little tricky as it implies agency, as though there is a self to replace thoughts and believe it or not that’s not what Im talking about. The other approach would be feeling into the anxiety so deeply it becomes a non-problem which is what happens when we apply a high level of mindfulness to the sensations. 
 

Hope this helps. ??

[Juliano Zn]

@Leo Gura Why do you recommend Kriya Yoga over other meditation practices?

[Consilience]

16 minutes ago, Skin-encapsulatedego said:

@Consilience your contributions are much appreciated around here.  I always get a lot from the perspectives you share.  Cheers buddy!

Thank you 

[Breakingthewall]

The meditation vs psychedelic debate doesn't make much sense here, when the op says that he has done psychedelics many times, in doses of breakthrough, with the intention of dissolving his ego, etc. If it hadn't been for the psychedelics, his meditation probably would have stayed on the surface. 

Btw great post

 

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Juliano Zn said:

@Leo Gura Why do you recommend Kriya Yoga over other meditation practices?

Because it is more physiological and I think physiological rewiring of the nervous system is more powerful in shifting one's baseline level of consciousness.

It is also more foolproof than meditation. For meditation to be effective it must be done with extreme rigor and precision which is very difficult for most people to execute on. It's difficult to be that rigorous even for me.

And also, for meditation to be effective is really needs to be done in intense, long retreat settings. An hour every day will get the average person nowhere. You really need to meditate for weeks at a time to get somewhere interesting.

[Hello from Russia]

28 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But to me, actually, to fully grasp God, intellect is crucial, and it gets demonized too much in most meditative approaches. Thus ultimate understanding is missing even if very high states are reached. Reaching a high state is not the same as understanding. And for me the key for God-realization is understanding.

God completely understands itself. It is absolutely omniscient. This aspect is not really taught in meditative schools.

Yeah, totally, they expect you to somehow just meditate your way into the God randomly, without any understanding.

I feel like the problem is not just about intellect, they have in general way too unholistic approach to everything. The only care about meditation and awakening, but give basically zero f*cks about things like creativity, having a great Life Purpose, intelligence, communicating with other people, politics, relationships, trauma healing and many other things. 

Though, maybe these schools are tailored just towards people who want just to awaken in this lifetime and that's it, nothing else. 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Hello from Russia

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, Breakingthewall said:

The meditation vs psychedelic debate doesn't make much sense here, when the op says that he has done psychedelics many times, in doses of breakthrough, with the intention of dissolving his ego, etc. If it hadn't been for the psychedelics, his meditation probably would have stayed on the surface. 

?

On 28.9.2021 at 10:58 PM, Carl-Richard said:

There is no reason to dichotomize the path of sober meditation and the path of psychedelics when it comes to stabilizing in non-dual baseline awareness. At the end of the day, no matter how many hours you meditate or how many psychedelics you take, you will never enter non-dual baseline unless you let go of all your attachments.

 

[Endangered-EGO]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The problem is deeper than that because the teacher or guru himself isn't fully God-realized.

For example, I don't consider Shinzen Young God-realized yet he has done Vipassana for 40+ years. So obviously Vipassana is not enough. I interrogated Shinzen intensively and I was not satisfied with his answers.

That is the trap I am most concerned about avoiding. I don't want people investing 40 years into a practice and still not understand what God/Reality is.

@Leo Gura Would he be God realised if he took a 30 day 5MeoDMT retreat?

 

What happens to people who have no sense of self (for a long time) and take 5-MeO-DMT?

[Consilience]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

An hour every day will get the average person nowhere.

I was shocked how much more powerful 2 hours was compared to 1. Even 2 is probably not enough. The thing is though, after a certain threshold of meditative skill, the whole thing has an exponential growth curve with how it develops. 
 

Annual retreat minimum, 2+ hours of formal practice are most likely required to get what Im talking about in this post. 

[Consilience]

7 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

The meditation vs psychedelic debate doesn't make much sense here, when the op says that he has done psychedelics many times, in doses of breakthrough, with the intention of dissolving his ego, etc. If it hadn't been for the psychedelics, his meditation probably would have stayed on the surface. 

Btw great post

It does though because many people on this forum treat meditation as though it’s child’s play and ultimately goes nowhere because of how much more powerful psychedelics supposedly are. 1) meditative states can be just as powerful 2) Im talking about transcending the entire fucking game altogether. That’s the path.

[impulse9]

Y'all are forgetting the possibility of sudden enlightenment, a satori.

You're all acting as if there's some algorithm to awakening, which I find rubs me in all the wrong ways, lol.

“Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.”- Ramesh Balsekar

[Carl-Richard]

2 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

Y'all are forgetting the possibility of sudden enlightenment, a satori.

You're all acting as if there's some algorithm to awakening, which I find rubs me in all the wrong ways, lol.

There is no algorithm, but effort and sudden enlightenment are also not contradictory.