Why meditate when there are psychedelics?

[Husseinisdoingfine]

In his 'Advanced Explanation of God Realization', he did dismiss meditation and self-inquiry. I do wonder what's the point of meditation. After all, the classic path is walking from New York to LA, whereas psychedelics is taking a plane.

I like my classic spiritual and yogic paths, and I don't like having them reduced to what they were in that video. I am considering joining a temple/community. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Husseinisdoingfine

[Holymoly]

 

[Whatever]

Bc simply meditating you might be humbled. Its way more fun to have megalomanic fantasies and think that I am all mighty God and not see how im perverting something there due, you know, getting high all the time instead of slowly growing and gaining nuance.

[Guest Bazooka Jesus]

That's kind of like asking "why lift weights every day with my bare hands when I could use a forklift instead?"

[Carl-Richard]

Meditation is the gradual unwinding of cyclical cognitive and emotional patterns (attachments), which over time leads to a change in state. Psychedelics induce a radical state change similar to a meditative state, but it's not an organic state (i.e. it's dependent of non-essential external regulators), which is why it's often more transient in nature. That doesn't mean you can't gain any lasting effects from taking psychedelics, but psychedelics don't force you to engage in the same type of structured observation of arising and passing of thought/sensation as meditation.

[SQAAD]

Leo is bad at meditation and has gotten poor results from it. His mind is super active. Still though he encourages people to keep on meditating. 

What he is trying to say is that meditation is not super effective for God realisation which is true for most people. 

Personally i meditate and will forever do so. Also I am very good at it. My mind is not so active. 

Meditation builds you mindfulness skills  and is healthy for you. You can't trip 24/7. And even if you trip 10000 times what are you left with besides memories ? On the other hand meditation builds you skills for life. 

Psychedelics are a valuable tool.  Meditation is a life long spiritual practice. 

If your sole reason for meditating is enlightenment then I would advise you stop meditating. 

I just do it because I really enjoy it and it cleans away the garbage of my mind for a lil while. 

Meditation won't suit everyone on this planet. But it is wise to choose a life long spiritual practice. Psychedelics alone will only get you so far.. 

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by SQAAD

[pfletcha]

it's like, until i did psychedelics, i got absolutely NOWHERE with meditation, no matter how long or consistently it was done for... why not incorporate both into your overall routine? hellyea

[tuku747]

So you can meditate while on psychedelics. Though, Alan Watts echoes...


“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive — that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life — you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating!” —Alan Watts

Edited January 13, 2022 by tuku747

[The0Self]

Meditation is far more abiding and even more versatile. Not only that, but with some skill, diligent practice, and (arguably) talent, meditation can be utterly extraordinarily powerful — like 10x more than is generally even possible for pretty much anyone to expect. The first time one experiences Jhana, it will very likely be the most physical pleasure that person has ever experienced, probably by a factor of like 10. When one is skilled enough to be able to enter jhana at will, it totally changes the way one negotiates with life, as... not feeling physically good as one would like to feel... is basically a distant memory.

I hesitate to place so much importance on meditation, because it’s totally not the whole picture, but what I’ve described above is possible and available to pretty much everyone — if one is unaware of that, then in a sense they have no clue what they’re missing.

Edited January 13, 2022 by The0Self

[Frenk]

@The0Self how does it feel when you enter the first jhana? 

[Khan 0]

11 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

In his 'Advanced Explanation of God Realization', he did dismiss meditation and self-inquiry. I do wonder what's the point of meditation. After all, the classic path is walking from New York to LA, whereas psychedelics is taking a plane.

I like my classic spiritual and yogic paths, and I don't like having them reduced to what they were in that video. I am considering joining a temple/community. 

Because, psychedelics are still experiencing however you can not experience enlightenment. You must be dropped in order to that meditation is must (specially silence and darkness). 

[Gesundheit2]

Why practice spirituality to begin with?

[Hello from Russia]

@Frenk The first Jhana is shit, 5-7+ is where cool stuff starts to appear

[Cathal]

I think at some point you say the futility in jumping up on a trampoline and coming down over and over to get a glimpse of what is beyond the walls of a seperate self, while meditation is like building a ladder from the ground up, far less enjoyable of course but when you glimpse of the sweetness of beyond the wall there's really fuck all else to do 

[roopepa]

Meditation is about no path, no goals, no realizations.

[halfknots]

It's for nice.

[The0Self]

8 hours ago, Frenk said:

@The0Self how does it feel when you enter the first jhana? 

Shockingly intense exhilaration and pleasure -- in my case I would describe it as obscenely pleasant. The breath happened automatically and it felt like the forceful breath of God. I got to 2nd in that same sit, and it was even better. My heart rate was elevated the entire rest of the day because I was so excited, just thinking "holy fuck... meditation is that powerful?!" @Hello from Russia is right in a sense though -- you get tired of it because it's like a never ending orgasm (but in my experience, way more intense) and can actually get agonizingly pleasant (usually in late 2nd jhana that's when that happens), and then you transition to the higher jhanas which are incredibly serene. Jhanas aren't required for awakening though. Anything over jhana 2 is a type of state that is generally simply not possible in other contexts besides really, really good psychedelic trips. Jhana 5+ feels a bit like psychedelia because the mystical union begins to creep in right about there.

I don't think it's very common, but in my case the jhanas were like golden handcuffs. In retrospect, I didn't begin the actual process of awakening (unbeknownst to me at the time) until I stopped caring about the jhanas and ended up doing contemplation at all times, followed by either either self inquiry, surrender, or spiritual autolysis (Jed McKenna's technique) at literally all times -- even while conversing with people, which I tended to avoid at the time. If you're unsure whether the process of awakening has started, it hasn't started -- it's like you're living in a dream world and find it absolutely intolerable, so the only thing to do is plow through. In the end there was no process and no dream.

Edited January 13, 2022 by The0Self

[WonderSeeker]

@Husseinisdoingfine Look here, you've gotta do what's right for you. After watching Leo for a couple years, I've come to realize that not everything he says/does is suitable for me. If you like meditation and other classical techniques and they bear fruit, then keep on keeping on! Don't let Leo stop you, lol. Listen to your intuition. 

For me, I meditated daily for 14 months straight and then stopped because the insights and emotions labor got too heavy. So I switched to binaural beats for about a year. Now I'm considering jumping back into sitting as it seriously helped my mindfulness skills while I was doing it. To me, you cannot build serious mindfulness/concentration skills using psychedelics. Psychedelics will take you further, but they won't automatically grant you skills that other techniques can. 

Just my take. Still a noobie for the most part. 

[Flyboy]

Well, because the answer you are looking for is simple: JUST THIS.  But those simple words are ridiculously deceptive, in that they are so much radically deeper than you think that you will likely stop looking long before you have understood that.  Meditation keeps you right now, for long enough to wake up to what I'm talking about.  Psychedelics simply don't.  The mystical experiences and mind-blowing "realizations" are just that--experiences for the mind.  They are not enlightenment, and Leo does not understand this.  But then, everything is enlightenment when you truly see, so that ground will fall away eventually too.  But it probably won't fall away without meditation.

[The0Self]

2 hours ago, Flyboy said:

Well, because the answer you are looking for is simple: JUST THIS.  But those simple words are ridiculously deceptive, in that they are so much radically deeper than you think that you will likely stop looking long before you have understood that.  Meditation keeps you right now, for long enough to wake up to what I'm talking about.  Psychedelics simply don't.  The mystical experiences and mind-blowing "realizations" are just that--experiences for the mind.  They are not enlightenment, and Leo does not understand this.  But then, everything is enlightenment when you truly see, so that ground will fall away eventually too.  But it probably won't fall away without meditation.

Yep. Psychedelia ain't abiding.