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

[OctagonOctopus]

On 10/3/2021 at 6:38 PM, 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, too much of a focus on surrendering the mind and not enough focus on being with ones own curiosity. Must be a balence between the two. 

I feel to get the most out of a trip one must follow their curiosity, but curiosity must be grounded in actuality, direct expirence, otherwise people can get sucked into mental masterbation, & perpetuate nonsense. Thus why I feel meditation & other introspective foundational practices should be solidified before one does deep trips. So one understands how to channel towards presence, remain calm, relaxed.

[Moksha]

5 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

I personally agree to a good extent with both paradigms. I do side more with Westerner’s paradigm, but I think both paradigms are correct to a good point. My concern with Eastern thought is the stigma I have seen against thinking. Meditation can help gain more awareness and clarity in thinking, but if contemplation is neglected, then a world other world of understanding thought, mind, and reality is neglected. I think it’s important to know how to think in a way that helps live an examined life. So in a way, I think the best practice is when contemplation and meditation merge as one.

Conscious contemplation is powerful. For me, it is more about resonating with the presence invoked by the words, rather than conceptualizing the words themselves. For example, when I contemplate the Bhagavad Gita, there is simply Self-realization, beyond thought.

The stigma in Eastern spirituality against thinking is the recognition that we are not our thoughts, and of the danger of identifying with them. Meditation reveals this profoundly. You realize that you are the spacious awareness within which thoughts arise, but thoughts are merely phenomena that come and go.

Thinking is important. Not thinking is even more important. As I see it, the merging of the two is being present, and allowing presence to guide your planning in life. When planning arises out of presence, it is more creative, more inspired, and more likely to produce positive results.

[Pateedm]

@Consilience Always appreciate your perspectives man ?

[Consilience]

@Pateedm Thank you ❤️??

[InfinityBeats]

On 10/5/2021 at 6:17 PM, impulse9 said:

What good are psychedelics if they can't give you a happy and joyful existence?  From a high consciousness point of view, they just tend to complicate your life further by filing your your ego with more imagination noise. Whereas a master enjoys every single moment, however that moment might present itself.

You'll grow out of this phase Leo, just like you grew out of the phase where you thought psychedelics were useless.

I 100% agree with this and I think we'd all love to see Leo shrink his ego a bit and grow out of this phase . At the same time though, the way I sometimes see it is that it makes perfect sense that Leo behaves this way and sticks to these perspectives even though they may seem weird or counterproductive sometimes.

If my higher Self as God created Leo as a teacher/a path to follow back to awakening, it would make sense to use Leo to convey a bunch of useful and accurate ideas, but at the same time to throw in some questionable ideas or arrogant behaviour in order to force me to think for myself and reclaim my authority and not give it all away to some teacher. If something Leo says ever triggers me, at the end of the day it honestly helps expose when I'm caught up in my mind