Leo Gura

@Shin The stateless state.

@Enlightenment You are playing with fire and could kill yourself. 5-MeO is no joke. If you are on SSRI's you have no business taking 5-MeO back to back or even at all.

@Deadline Generally no. And people don't even confuse love with the Absolute. Just the opposite. People vehemently resist the notion that love could be an Absolute. People are just driven by emotions like robots because they never bother to contemplate or be mindful of their emotions.

@Truth Addict Yes, now you get it. It's sort of like trying grab one part of a blanketing using another part of the same blanket because all you have to grasp with is blanket itself. The blanket is oneness. Oneness is trying to grasp itself but can't ever succeed in total. How can a blanket grasp itself totally? It can only grasp itself partially. To grasp itself totally is must simply be itself (without any grasping). And that is enlightenment. The moment you realize that it's impossible to grasp yourself, you've grasped yourself The Nongrasping Grasp. The Gateless Gate. The Groundless Ground. The Selfless Self. The self-licking ice cream cone.

@Deadline Love is a very especial and unique thing. Don't confuse it with other emotions. Love as an Absolute is not really an emotion. If you want to understand emotions, just observe them in your life as they arise. You don't need any awakening to do it.

Actually, all symbols are just territory. There are maps proper. A map is what you get when you confuse part of the territory for another part of the territory. To make this real clear: if you draw a map of Florida in the sand on a beach in Florida, your map is literally Florida. There isn't a map + Florida. There is only Florida, which includes within it a smaller version of itself drawn in the sand. So what it means for Florida to be Florida is that is has drawings of itself within itself. Notice the fractal nature of how this works. Now expand this out to reality itself. A thought/image/symbol of reality is itself a part of reality. Such that all you have in the end is reality. All you have is the territory. So in fact: the map is the territory! Strange loops are not a bug here, they are a feature. They arise due to the self-reference problem: when you have only one thing in existence, how can it point to itself? There cannot be a duality between map/territory. Symbols cannot stand outside reality because they are within reality and because there is nothing outside reality. Inside and outside are of course one.

I think you underestimate its impact. Technology is always affecting culture, even in the rural South. Do they not have internet? Are they not affected by globalization? Are they not affected by Muslim migrants? Will they not be affected by driverless cars in 10 years? Are they not affected by closing factories and jobs moving to China? Are they not affected by Amazon 2-day shipping? Are they not affected by smart phones? Are they not affected by gay rights? Are they not affected by Youtube? You can't hide technology. Once it's mainstream it's everywhere around the world within a few years. To be clear, the effects of technology are not always positive. It's always a mixed bag. Stuff is changing very quickly now so there will be a lot of problems for people who are not quick adapters (which is most people). The faster one's environment changes the more mentally flexible and openminded one has to be to adapt to it. This is very big problem for stage Blue. All the political shifts we're seeing lately are directly connected to technological advancement. The 60's revolution itself was made possible by the technological developments of modern chemistry and psychedelics. Now try to imagine what might happen if 5-MeO-DMT went mainstream.

I know that state well. There are no misgivings about being in it. It's is a state of total God-realization. You cannot want anything more. Permanent dis-identification just equals permanent identification with God.

@kieranperez Technological innovation seems to be accelerating though.

Evolution seems to be accelerating. The whole universe is accelerating. New technology makes a big difference. But it's hard to say for sure. There are many factors. In the 60's the US was extremely Blue. Green was very radical in the 60's. There was a huge backlash to it. And it really only emerged in California and the most advanced cities. You have to understand that what shapes culture via the media is not representative of the average people. Many people in rural America are still very Blue. They are the Fox News audience. Probably 70%+ of the world is at stage Blue or below. Hollywood media is not representative of that, giving a skewed picture of progress. Most people in the world are still racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and nationalist. Basically 70% of the world population is at the level of development of Nazis. Think about that.

This is pure genius Come back and watch it after you awaken.

I exist.

@EternalForest It did. You just aren't appreciating how backwards it was before the 60's revolution. The entire self-help movement stems from there. But you can't go from Blue straight to Green. You must pass through Orange, and so here we are. It's not easy to shift 300 million people. We're getting there... slowly...

And a map is a territory within a territory

To me awakening means a permanent disidentification with form. An ever-present state of nondual awareness. That's not something I have yet.

@Immortal peace You're sort of conflating two issues there, existential issues with mundane survival issues. If you care about survival there's no escaping that you will have to handle those survival issues. For example if you're starving and you have no money or food, no amount of meditation will fix that issue. But what meditation can do is allow you to die in peace. How? Well, you'd need to become very good at meditation or you'd need to awaken to realize that death is an illusion. The body will die from lack of food, but you as God will not. If you want the body to be alive there's no escaping finding food. Which is why spirituality is not an escape from everyday obligations. That's a bad way to look at it. You want to get masterful at handling survival issues. Which in your case means: design a way to make a decent living. Don't try to offload this issue on meditation or enlightenment. Learning how to earn a decent living is a whole skillset. It's tempting to think that you can avoid developing such skillets through "finding peace" via spirituality. That's a bad approach. As your practice spirituality though, even though you'll still have tricky survival issues to deal with, you will deal with them more calmly and effectively. They won't stress you out as much as they would otherwise because in the end you know that whatever happens will be okay. And you will have more emotional self-control. A simple way to calm yourself is to breath slowly and deeply for a few minutes or hours. Sedona Method is also really good for clearing out emotions.

There cannot be emotional mastery without enlightenment. Emotional mastery is even harder than enlightenment. But if you just want to do some basic self-help stuff and work on emotional issues, yes, you can do that. You ain't gonna be anywhere near understanding the true nature of emotions. But it can be helpful.

You must understand that all such texts are highly context-sensitive. So you don't just robotically send such a text randomly to a girl. For example, I once sent that exact scorpion text to a girl because the day before at the bar she told me that she had scorpion pests in her neighborhood (she lived in Vegas). So it was a great text for her. If you think that text is sexual that's you reading that into it.

Dating is a game. Don't act too above it. This is otherwise known as flirtation. It does not harm a girl to send her some flirty texts. What she doesn't want is needy creept texts.

Like I keep saying over and over again, enlightenment is not a binary thing, nor is it the only important factor. Spiral development stages are equally important and they are independent of enlightenment. You can have an enlightened Buddha who's also a racist and misogynist because he's at Spiral stage Blue. Enlightenment is not going to unwire all of your beliefs, habits, or worldviews. If you thought the Earth was flat before enlightenment, you will probably still think the Earth is flat after enlightenment.

Yeah, I think that's possible to some extent. 5-MeO-DMT is already that technology in powdered form. It still won't be that easy in practice because to deeply awaken your entire mind has restructure itself. It's not as simple as cutting a few wires. Your entire web of beliefs needs to be reconfigured too. Otherwise it will be a half-assed enlightenment leading to Zen devirly and pathology. And awakening alone is not enough, there is also the need for Spiral development which cannot happen simply through some surgery or even a chemical. There are all sorts of rare and interesting abnormal brain case studies. For example some people can hallucinate monkeys or see the world as a cell-shaded cartoon. Some people convinced that other people are robots. The brain/mind is a very tricky thing. Enlightenment is far from the only interesting mystical thing that the brain can do.

@Paul92 I have given you too many answers already.

God is also infinitely divisible. All the divisions taken together are a unity.

@ardacigin I don't think that such medieval methods are healthy or lead to the highest understanding. Sure, those monks are badasses, but I doubt how much of reality they really understand or how Spirally developed and well-rounded they are. I would bet most of them are underdeveloped on the Spiral, which would be a great shame. The thing is, running marathons has little to do with insight, development, or understanding. Don't automatically assume that doing brutal rigorous mechanical training methods will get you to the highest levels of understanding. I highly doubt it would. I am much more in favor of a thoughtful contemplative approach which incorporates study of psychology, sociology, semiotics, science, etc. I think some of the hardcore Eastern schools are not thoughtful and scientific enough. They can be too grounded in tradition for tradition's sake without evolving with technology and the times.

No, I think it's definitely possible, just very, very rare and difficult. Yogis and sages have definitely accessed the highest levels of awakening without any chemical assistance. I suspect though that they were exceptionally gifted, whether due to genetics, karma, past-lives, upbringing, the right brain chemistry, luck or a combination of all the above. I don't know exactly why some people are exceptionally spiritually gifted. That is still a deep mystery waiting for an answer. 5-MeO just makes it so much easier and more accessible to ordinary people. I recommend a hybrid approach.