Leo Gura

No! Truth = Absolute Absolute Truth is singular and the same for everyone. And here's the mindfuck: there is nothing but Absolute Truth. There is no such thing as falsehood or untruth. Just different degrees of confusion about the Absolute. The Absolute is so total that is includes within it all "falsehoods" because it is them. If anything I said in this thread confuses you or leaves you skeptical, you need to study nondual literature (see my book list for ideas). You're lacking a basic conceptual understanding of nonduality.

God/Absolute is a tautology. There is no alternative to the Absolute. How your mind interprets the Absolute can vary, but the Absolute itself, Truth itself, Oneness, is the same for everyone. Hence it's called Absolute. Absolute means it doesn't change under any circumstances.

Then you must work harder until you realize you are God. There is only one God, only one Absolute.

There is nothing beyond your consciousness since you are Infinite Consciousness. You are not being judged. The point of this conversation is to help you realize you are God. Not something less. I am an Infinite Miracle, and so are you. No, it keeps the ego in place. Don't become like Bobby, trapped in the duality of self/other.

You are not ever going to achieve it. You are unreal. You will die. Awakening will remain in the spot where you used to be. After that you ARE Love. You are already dead and there is nothing left to do but play. You are no longer in control. God is doing God. The material world continues to appear but it is like you were never born. Human life is over at this point, even though human things still happen and a human body continues to survive in the human world. But all of it is not human to you any more. You are in the eternal mind of God. Forever here in every moment. Infinity. The one and only Creator. Alone by yourself forever. Perfection, heaven, paradise. The one thing which cannot ever be spoken to anyone.

I recognize that bhakti is one path out of many for some people. I recognize the relativity of all paths to awakening. The question is, do you? Personally it's a path I don't resonate with. Or, you could say I am doing bhakti yoga, but my deity is reality itself, not any one classic avatar. My devotion is to Truth and Consciousness in their pure, abstract, formless form. But if you want to pray to elephant-man, knock yourself out. My only question for you at the end of all that will be: are you conscious that your elephant-man is imaginary and that you are God? If not, your path hasn't taken you all the way. The problem is this: if you spend years praying to elephant-man, when I tell you that your elephant-man is imaginary, you are very likely to get upset and angry and defensive because if it was imaginary, why did you spend all those years praying to it? And that's exactly my point. Rather than dicking around with elephant-man, why not cut straight to the chase: You are God imagining all of reality. There is no higher truth than this. Devote yourself to realizing that. And that will be the highest bhakti.

@moon777light Good. That was a nice newbie intro. Your mind is still very chaotic and random, which is why you had all those wacky visions. As you do more, you must learn to focus your mind and contemplate the nature of reality rather than just going on joyride visions. Visions are fun, scary, and interesting, but what really matters is getting down to understanding what consciousness is, and what YOU are. So far you got a tiny taste of what consciousness can do: it is infinite imagination -- which is why you're able to have all those wacky visions. But you don't yet comprehend what consciousness in itself is and why it is here, or all of its many facets. You also probably don't understand how conscious in the trip connects with consciousness in "material reality". You have to build an intellectual bridge between your trips and "real life" until you realize that your "real life" is just another trip. Keep your future doses low. You have much more to learn at these lower doses. Mushrooms can be extremely challenging at the 4g range and above. At 4g+ your old life and reality will start to completely disappear and you will enter the phantasms of your mind. Since your mind is chaotic and impure and lacks nondual understanding, you will encounter all sorts of horrors of your own imagination and you will start to go insane. 2 grams is a good solid dose to do lots of work with without totally freaking yourself out. Try contemplating questions next time like: What is consciousness? What is reality? What is God? What is time? What is "other"? What is self? What am I? What is awakening? What is love? What is evil? What is the brain? What is death? What is nonduality? What is awakening? What is Oneness? What is intelligence? What is Will? Etc. The next time you trip, realize that whatever your mind imagines gets materialized. If you start to think of elephants you will see elephants on the carpet. Wonder why does this happen? It happens because you are God imagining the world and the psychedelic removes the shackles on Infinite Mind. Finally, turn your gaze directly inwards and ask, "What am I?!" Be prepared for epic strange loops, paradox, and mindfuckery.

Closing is a very specific skill set. If you want to just date randomly and see what happens, go ahead. But you'll lose lots of girls. If you're okay with that, fine. But most guys would get very frustrated and want to construct an optimized skill set to deal with the repeated challenges. @Elisabeth I understand your disgust, but you also have to see the relativity of the situation. Dating for men and for women is very different. This advice doesn't make sense from a woman's perspective but it does from the man's. You have to appreciate how much rejection the man has to deal with. It's not like the man can only approach one girl and make it happen. He has to approach hundreds. That process by its very nature is mechanical and objectifying, not just of the woman but also for the man. Imagine approaching 100 people and getting rejected 95 times. What do you do? Imagine that out of 100 approaches you get 5 people to like you and agree to come home with you because it's the world's perfect match. A match made in heaven. But then 4 in 5 times the person's friends will come and drag them away and you will never speak to them again. What do you do when facing such odds? See, from the woman's POV none of this is noticed as a problem because you play the selector role and you don't have to do 100s of approaches. From your POV, one right approach is all it takes because you are on the receiving end of the approach. So from your selfish POV you think a guy should invest tons of energy into one approach. But from the guy's POV it's exactly the opposite. He can't invest any energy into any one approach because most of them fail. Notice the relativity in self-agenda here. If you say, "But what about true love?" Yeah, that's your female self-agenda. "True love" is defined differently for a female vs a male given their reproductive asymmetries. Neither side is right. It's relative. It's survival. It's selfishness. My advice was for men, not for women. Of course women are not going to like it because if dating advice is any good it, by definition, encroaches on the other gender's self-agenda. The man's agenda is to invest less energy into the woman, the woman's agenda is to have the man invest all his energy into her alone. At least initially until a serious relationship is formed. Then things can equalize somewhat.

Personally I feel terrible when I eat heavy carbs. That's like the worst possible meal for me, even if it is all organic, whole, and vegan. A big load of carbs hitting my gut kills my consciousness for about 2 hours. If eat some smoked salmon or a burger on lettuce, my consciousness and energy is smooth and consistent. It's so noticeable I stay away from carbs like that. Green veggies and fruits don't create this problem for me, but they also have so little calories that I have to be eating them every 2 hours to stay energized and not hungry -- which is highly inconvenient and impractical.

@Baotrader The ego-mind really, really, really hates to admit "I don't know" when it doesn't know. The mind wants to make shit up in order to feel certain and secure, even if the thing is totally false. People who predict exact dates for when the world will end get even more convinced the world will end after their dates pass and nothing happens. The ego-mind loves to double-down on its ignorance. If the world didn't end in 2012, surely it will end in 2013. Surely in 2014. Okay, now it definitely has to end in 2015. Okay, no later than 2016 for sure this time.

Hard to make a living on eBay. Those days have sailed. Look for greener pastures.

@Gneh Onebar Luckily the materialist paradigm is horseshit. Still, of course, that doesn't mean anything goes. Some stuff you simply may not be able to heal under your limited human powers. But you'd also be amazed at how much stuff can be healed. So it's worth a try. Even if you can't heal a thing, you might still be able to reduce the symptoms and suffering. You can find coping strategies too. If you have a serious health disorder, doing lots of research and experimentation is crucial.

This is just basic logic: If awakening always required a guru or teacher, nobody would be awake, since there would never be that first person to wake up (for lack of a teacher). Clearly at least 1 person woke up without a guru/teacher. And if one can do it, more than one can do it. And of course, in practice, many people have woken up independently without teachers all over the world at different times in history. With that said, you may benefit greatly from good a guru/teacher. Awakening independently requires hardcore motivation and commitment which very few people have.

@Romer02 You are getting ahead of your skiis. Focus first on the ordinary stuff before you start grappling with the tricky spiritual metaphysical stuff. As far as your real-world experience goes, you believe you are a human who has emotions and thoughts, and you believe that humans are responsible for their actions. This is what's true for you. Yes or no? So be honest about where you're at. It doesn't matter what some guru says, what matters is what's true in your experience. Some guru could tell you that you are God, but that is not your experience so don't approach life using the guru's story. Approach life as it is for you. If some day you realize you are not a human, then things will change for you. But that's not something you should worry about now. Also, spirituality tells you that you are EVERYTHING, so of course you ARE your thoughts and emotions too. You're just not only those things. Spirituality requires taking responsibility for how you create your whole reality. So there's no contradiction. But start with the easy stuff like the sentence completions.

Yeah, surrender to death with a smile.

A collapse of what system? Democracy? Capitalism? Earth? I don't see these collapsing. There will be downturns for sure, but overall I think we aren't doing too bad. 100 more years of development will correct many of the current imbalances. The tide on environmental responsibility is turning. Capitalism has already clearly hit its limit and more people are open to the next stage of economics which will be a capitalist/socialist hybrid. Democracy is a bit under threat by nationalism right now, but that will not stick. Democracy should only get more democratic in the long term. The biggest wrench in the werks would be a nuclear detonation I think. The rest we can manage.

It's an interesting typology model. Has a ring of truth to it. Just be careful not to limit yourself by it.

Sure, could prove useful.

@Heaven I don't know. Sounds likely. It's not normal to be having headaches. There must be a deeper issue you're not addressing. Headaches are not some genetic disorder.

The question is more complicated than simply "What is optimal?" There is also the question of what is practical. Perhaps it is optimal for health to grow your own fields of celery and spend 2 hours juicing it every morning. But that's not practical for most people. There are trade-offs between optimal, practical, affordable, and pleasurable/enjoyable. And all of those are factors people care about. Humans are certainly not like a horse who is being fed meat or a lion who is being fed bananas. We are much more flexible. Flexibility is one of our stop strengths.

Oh, you mean Reagan the racist? History will be very unkind to Trump. Future generations will read about Trump in disbelief, wondering how 40% of the country could be so stupid as to buy anything he says. Those who supported Trump will be seen as neanderthals -- the way we think about Southern slaverowners today. Pretty soon after Trump's gone no one who supported him will admit they ever did. They will deny the whole thing because it will be too embarrassing to ever mention you supported him. Similar to how people today deny supporting the Iraq war. Similar to how no one today will admit that they or even their parents supported segregation. It's just too ugly to admit. Only those "others" could support something like segregation or slavery.

Of course. Within the next 30 years psychedelics will be legalized for medical use for PTSD, depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, cancer, end of life care, marriage counseling, psychotherapy, other mental illnesses, and more. Clinical trials are already underway for MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, and more. All they need is some time and more funding.

Medicine and much more.

I have not researched that disorder. In general I'm suspicious of "genetic" as a justification for anything. Sure, a few very serious things might be genetic, but for the most part you should assume you got good genetics and look for other problems -- ways your genetics are being improperly expressed or used. Many problems that people tell themselves are "genetic" really are not, and are changeable with research and effort. You won't know until you try.

Yup, that's the beauty of psychedelics. But there will also be challenging trips ahead, so tread carefully.