Leo, can you talk more about the 2 directions of spiritual work?

[SonataAllegro]

@Leo Gura You talked in one video about the two "directions" you perceive in spiritual work, one being about shutting off the mind and the other being about expanding it toward higher understanding.

Do you have any more insight about this idea given your recent changes of approach to your spiritual work? I found it interesting you presented that idea and haven't mentioned it since, as far as I'm aware.

[SelfHelpGuy]

Same! I resonate with this since I'm more of a creative and expressive type.

Meditation is good sometimes but my entire being seriously doesn't resonate with it.

I prefer to keep my eyes open and actively look at life closely as it unfolds. 

[Consilience]

In my view, this is one of Leo’s colossal misunderstandings about the nature of meditation and the spiritual path.

A few thoughts that come to mind - 

1) Meditation is not about turning the mind off, though this can happen.

2) There are frequencies of mind, information, and intelligence we can “tap into” when resting in the space of silence and stillness as the mind naturally quiets, giving relative insights on par of psychedelics. 

3) The distinction between nothing and infinity is an ego game. 5-MeO God consciousness and meditation lead to the same place, but meditation involves seeing the divinity, and God-ness of the ordinary state. 

4) Meditation, particularly when training concentration, can lead to just as powerful, sometimes more powerful, altered states of consciousness as psychedelics. The more advance one gets with practice, the more this begins to take place.

5) Psychedelics cannot cultivate wisdom, meditation does. Though they can open a mind up to being more receptive to wisdom, which in itself is extremely powerful. The mistake is trying to get the psychedelic to do the work for you.
 

6) How can we be conscious of God right now, in all of our ordinary suffering, just as it is? Can we see the imaginative, illusory, dream-like nature of reality righ now? No? Keep practicing. 
 

7) This framework is steeped in duality. Reality is non-dual. 

[SonataAllegro]

On 12/7/2021 at 3:22 PM, Consilience said:

In my view, this is one of Leo’s colossal misunderstandings about the nature of meditation and the spiritual path.

A few thoughts that come to mind - 

1) Meditation is not about turning the mind off, though this can happen.

2) There are frequencies of mind, information, and intelligence we can “tap into” when resting in the space of silence and stillness as the mind naturally quiets, giving relative insights on par of psychedelics. 

3) The distinction between nothing and infinity is an ego game. 5-MeO God consciousness and meditation lead to the same place, but meditation involves seeing the divinity, and God-ness of the ordinary state. 

4) Meditation, particularly when training concentration, can lead to just as powerful, sometimes more powerful, altered states of consciousness as psychedelics. The more advance one gets with practice, the more this begins to take place.

5) Psychedelics cannot cultivate wisdom, meditation does. Though they can open a mind up to being more receptive to wisdom, which in itself is extremely powerful. The mistake is trying to get the psychedelic to do the work for you.
 

6) How can we be conscious of God right now, in all of our ordinary suffering, just as it is? Can we see the imaginative, illusory, dream-like nature of reality righ now? No? Keep practicing. 
 

7) This framework is steeped in duality. Reality is non-dual. 

@Leo Gura interested in your thoughts on this

[Leo Gura]

There is a feature of consciousness which I would call self-comprehension or self-understanding, and also a feature I would call interconnectedness. These are what I would call the upward direction as opposed to the downward direction of deconstructing sensory experience through formal technical meditation like Vipassana, or stilling the mind to the point of cessation.

So what's required for God-realization is a crazy degree of self-comprehension and interconnectedness.

The problem with traditional Buddhist practices is that they still the mind and produce cool higher states, but they don't give you that crazy degree of interconnected necessary for total self-comprehension. And so therefore reality, self, other, God, and Love are never really understood for what they are, even though there might be ego-loss. Ego-loss is not the same as a deep comprehension of things. This comprehension is not merely the human mind at work, it is God-Mind comprehending itself at an Absolute level.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Judy2 said:

@Leo Gura But isn't all knowing and understanding only "pretending"to grasp Being when in reality it is part of Being?

That's the mindfuck of it, since reality is Infinite Mind, Infinite Mind has an absolute and unlimited capacity to grasp itself since it is all-powerful and all-knowing.

God can grasp itself. Not merely in part, but in Total. This is Omniscience.

You can completely understand what you are and how you create reality. To the point where everything is understood and clear, with no existential questions remaining. You can comprehend self, other, death, life, love, truth, existence, and more.

God is capable of total self-understanding. This is the highest goal: to completely understand yourself. Everything else is derivative of understanding.

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Judy2 said:

@Leo Gura If you don't mind another question:

During my most recent trip, which was indeed very thought-heavy, i became aware of some structural features. It was as though i could see a bridge between judy's mind and God's mind and intelligence. It seemed somewhat purer and more like empty potential for Creation. Would you say that this bridge is what takes you to full God-realization?

I'm not clear what you mean by this "bridge" and it being pure and empty. I just don't frame things that way in my mind. And there is more than one valid way to frame things. Whatever works for you.

If you are encountering God's mind, that a good sign that you're moving in the right direction. But you must go deeper to the point where Judy's mind and God's mind become identitical, so there is zero difference between you and God. It sounds like you still hold God as other than you, as something above you.

You have to literally realize you are God, and everything that entails.

[SonataAllegro]

@Leo Gura what I've discovered is that this direction you're speaking of has more to do with personal understandings of reality which, when in high states of consciousness, become intensely magnified and project me into ever higher realizations. But what thoughts work for me to examine this interconnectedness wouldn't work for others. This comes from the particular things I've studied, like music.

So God, as me, is grasping itself using what it's learned from "music" to draw a series of metaphors that project itself beyond concept, label, and form.  But YOU as God don't have the same knowledge base to draw upon and thus have a different set of experience to grasp yourself with. 

Would you say I'm grasping this concept accurately or not?

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, SonataAllegro said:

@Leo Gura what I've discovered is that this direction you're speaking of has more to do with personal understandings of reality which, when in high states of consciousness, become intensely magnified and project me into ever higher realizations. But what thoughts work for me to examine this interconnectedness wouldn't work for others. This comes from the particular things I've studied, like music.

Yes, that's exactly correct. Because communication can only happen using mental imagery and symbolism your mind is familiar with.

God has no problem speaking to you in Swahili, but you would not understand it. So God will speak to you in whatever language you understand best, like music. God could speak to you through a squawking bird. But this requires you really appreciate the squawking bird and recognize it as God.

For example, I can literally sit and listen to music and hear each note as a communication of God's Love. But that's because I am God and I am recognizing myself in the music. I am recognizing a self-communication. I am communicating with myself in whichever way I want. The communication does not need to be verbal or logical. A coffee table can be a communication. Literally, anything will work if you want it to work badly enough. Which is why a wide variety of prayers and religious symbolism works. The form of the symbol doesn't matter. It could be Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Satan, a two-headed goat, or a talking penis. Whatever you want.

People get hung up on the specifics of the symbols. This is the key mistake of all religions, even Buddhism.

Quote

So God, as me, is grasping itself using what it's learned from "music" to draw a series of metaphors that project itself beyond concept, label, and form.  

Exactly

Quote

But YOU as God don't have the same knowledge base to draw upon and thus have a different set of experience to grasp yourself with. 

Would you say I'm grasping this concept accurately or not?

Yup

It's like this: we can express any fundamental truth, such as, "Snow is white", using a thousand different languages. No one language is "the best" or "the truest". It's just a matter of understanding the fundamental thing that was trying to be communicated.

[SonataAllegro]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's just a matter of getting the message.

And yet, as soon as I get the message, and then discard the message, I either endlessly look for the next highest level of "meta" on which to get the message, or I realize the message was only ever complete presence in the Now, in which case I wonder why I needed the philosophical chain of inquiry to get there. Do you experience this?

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, SonataAllegro said:

And yet, as soon as I get the message, and then discard the message, I either endlessly look for the next highest level of "meta" on which to get the message, or I realize the message was only ever complete presence in the Now, in which case I wonder why I needed the philosophical chain of inquiry to get there. Do you experience this?

Well, there is an even deeper level of self-comprehension which is beyond verbal, logical, or even symbolic. There is direct consciousness of yourself as God. This level of comprehension is so radical it's hard to describe. It is the moment of awakening itself. It is God awakening to itself.

Verbal and logical comprehension is limited but still useful as it resolves certain divisions and confusions in your human mind. For example, you have questions like "What is death?", "Where did reality come from?", "Do other people exist?", "Why do I suffer?", etc. So it is good to get clear verbal and logical answers to those questions so they are completed and laid to rest. There is a process in which the highest non-verbal comprehension is then translated into some kind of verbal/logical comprehension which fits the human life better. Of course something is always lost in translation, but the translation can still be very useful. This translation process is part of growing spiritually as a human, because you cannot sustain the highest states of consciousness as a human. But you can bring back insights and wisdom and use those to guide your life. Which is the whole point of religious texts.

[SonataAllegro]

45 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Everything else is derivative of understanding.

Isn't this just because Leo's highest value is understanding? What if mine is love, or creativity? or hatred? Even if all values collapse in the end into unity, how we get there is completely personalized, no?

Either you transcend your particular personality first, and do the "shutting off the mind" approach, or last, and do the "interconnection" approach.

Your highest value = what you're unwilling to surrender till the end of yourself

Edited December 9, 2021 by SonataAllegro

[Pure Imagination]

@Leo Gura  I recall from your video a point you made that with the upward movement of consciousness, an active mind can be a good thing rather than bad. Can you go into more detail about that?

As someone with a very active mind, I am curious. Is it if God’s mind is more active, God’s mind can learn, understand, and comprehend more about itself? Is achieving cessation not helpful in realizing God?

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, SonataAllegro said:

Isn't this just because Leo's highest value is understanding? What if mine is love, or creativity? or hatred? Even if all values collapse in the end into unity, how we get there is completely personalized, no?

Understanding is the ultimate power. If you do not understand you cannot know what love or creativity is.

Reality is Mind. And the fundamental feature of Mind is the ability to understand itself. Intelligence is fundamental and it's what holds everything else together perfectly.

The highest Love is born of pure understanding.

You cannot love without understanding a thing properly. You also cannot create without understanding how creation happens.

Try to create a car without understanding how a car works.

Try to love slavery without understanding why it must exist.

7 hours ago, Pure Imagination said:

@Leo Gura  I recall from your video a point you made that with the upward movement of consciousness, an active mind can be a good thing rather than bad. Can you go into more detail about that?

As someone with a very active mind, I am curious. Is it if God’s mind is more active, God’s mind can learn, understand, and comprehend more about itself? Is achieving cessation not helpful in realizing God?

Action of the mind can help in understanding and having insight.

Perhaps the most important function of mind is a profound and relentless questioning.

The problem with silencing the mind is that it stops the questioning necessary to reach the deepest insights. This leads to a sort of spirituality where you are just like a dumb animal, sitting there peacefully but also sorta clueless as to the larger picture.

A cat may have no ego and no thoughts, but it is not God-realized. It has no sense of the larger picture. Becoming like a cat is not what I'm after with this work. That is a waste of the human form's potential. If God wanted to be a cat, it would have made you a cat. It wanted something more than that.

[Nahm]

Cessation, or, no mind, isn’t a concept, can not be conceptualized, and is liberation, and is the stark opposite of anything suppressive, separative, limiting, or restrictive. 

[Jakuchu]

@Leo Gura But in the end what really inspires people is not how much you understand, it's how you are 

[Inliytened1]

On 12/9/2021 at 7:08 AM, Leo Gura said:

 

The problem with silencing the mind is that it stops the questioning necessary to reach the deepest insights. This leads to a sort of spirituality where you are just like a dumb animal, sitting there peacefully but also sorta clueless as to the larger picture.

 

What i have found is that quieting down the egoic, finite mind, which cannot grasp infinity because it IS infinity, via meditation, can produce a shift in consciousness to becoming infinite, or becoming Infinite Mind or the Godhead.  Which is Infinite Comprehension or Omniscience.    It's precisely like the analogy you have made with the castle and the bricks (the bricks being 1st order).  2nd order cannot grasp 1st order because it is a part of first order..but 1st order can grasp 1st order.    The finite mind is 2nd order.   Or  you could say that Mario is 2nd order and the pixels he's made out of are 1st order.  Mario cannot grasp the pixels because he comes from pixels.  The castle cannot grasp the bricks because it is made of bricks, it just needs to be the bricks.  Or in other words, it needs to realize that it IS the bricks.  Or  The self reference problem - Oneness cannot point back at itself,  because anything it uses to point back at itself, is itself, so it can't.  It just IS itself, or has to realize directly that it IS itself.   This realizing directly or shift in consciousness can be triggered by quieting the mind.  I have done it, others have done it.   Granted, i meditated for like two weeks.  And I've also just had spontaneous awakenings, and awakenings from self inquiry which is keeping the mind active in a sense..and If people have been meditating for years and not getting anywhere, that's where i would recommend psychedelics.  @Consiliencemay disagree here and he may be right..consciousness can elevate over time where that breakthrough or mystical shift  can happen- it just may not make sense to go 20 years when psychedelics can take you right there in weeks.  But i would stress they need to be grounded first...we've seen all too often how an ungrounded invididual consumes psychedelics after listening to your videos and becomes unstable after being shown such profound Truths they were not ready for.

[Pure Imagination]

22 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Action of the mind can help in understanding and having insight.

Perhaps the most important function of mind is a profound and relentless questioning.

The problem with silencing the mind is that it stops the questioning necessary to reach the deepest insights. This leads to a sort of spirituality where you are just like a dumb animal, sitting there peacefully but also sorta clueless as to the larger picture.

Would you say that a God realized, active mind would have more elevated thought patterns of questioning and insight, rather than something egoic? For instance, I could have an active mind in one moment that focuses on my social anxiety and that could create a web of negative, ultimately untrue thought patterns.

But perhaps a God realized mind would look at that and see those same negative patterns for what they are? A way to awaken rather than believing self destructive thoughts. I guess I’m just wondering where the line is between an egoic active mind, and a God realized active mind.

21 hours ago, Nahm said:

Cessation, or, no mind, isn’t a concept, can not be conceptualized, and is liberation, and is the stark opposite of anything suppressive, separative, limiting, or restrictive. 

Wouldn’t any content of the mind count as being suppressive, separate, limiting, or restrictive? Even the most elevated, awakened, true thoughts generated from a God realized mind?

[Leo Gura]

Cessation is just a figment within God's Mind.

Cessation is not God-realization and it is part of the dream. "Liberation" is also just a figment within God's Mind. None of this is God-realization.

Stop listening to fools like Frank Yang. He has no idea what God is. Nor does any Buddhist. No Buddhist teacher is God-realized.

Nobody on this forum is fully God-realized.

This will all be obvious to you when you finally realize you are God.

There exists a level of consciousness so radical that no nondual teacher you know has reached it. All of these teachers are part of the dream you have spun to keep yourself asleep.

[Rilles]

"Leo when he hasnt said how he is the only truly God realized person for 5 minutes."