Leo Gura

The key issue with nations is the stage of development of their infrastructure. It does not matter what the ideology is so much as what values the infrastructure is embodying. If the courts, police, and politicians are corrupt, and the economy is pre-industrial or only based on one resource like crude oil, and there is no seperation of chruch and state, then no Green government is possible even if a Green ideology is spread to everyone. It works just like with individual development. Just because you read a lot of books or watch a lot of videos about personal development does not mean you will be highly developed. It's very easy to create a lofty image in your mind of how developed you are when in reality your diet is terrible, your emotions are all over the place, you have a crazy monkey mind, your finacial situation is a disaster, you live in a bad environment, your friends are criminals, etc. Such a person will not be able to function at a high level because the infrastructure is so poor.

Yes, the underlying motivation is the key moreso than any particular behavior. You can respectful at any stage of the Spiral. It's just that stage Blue values respect for tradition for its own sake and becomes rigid about it. For example, you must respect the Pope because he is a spokeman for the one true God, Lord Jesus Christ, and he is infallible. By not respecting him you will go to hell. Bow your head before the Pope or we may torture you for being a devil worshipper.

No, that concept is straight from Zen itself. Zen masters teach about Zen devils and Yako Zen, aka "wild fox Zen". Technically, a Zen devil is one who practices Zen without ever reading scriptures. And a wild fox is one who only reads about Zen without practicing. A Zen devil will say things like, "Who cares about the suffering of others? I am liberated and suffering is an illusion so nothing matters." Or stuff like, "Who cares about global warming? The world is an illusion anyways."

Ken has a very robust grasp of awakening and nonduality, and much more. His work is not just about awakening, it is about stages of development and various kinds of pathologies in this work. Awakening is independent of one's stage of development. Both are important. To awaken but still be stuck at a low level of development is very common and dangerous. If your teaching only emphasizes awakening and nothing else, it is a narrow and incomplete teaching which will produce a lot of problems if it's taught to lots of people. Stages of development are extremely important and yet they are virtually unknown to most teachers and traditional teachings. Which is why so many spiritual practioners come out half-baked. You cannot understand stages of development by sitting on a meditation cushion, even if you are the best meditator in the world. Introspection is not enough.

Because without a self, nothing is bad. When you realize you are immortal and infinite (the Absolute), you will be in literal heaven, where nothing bad exists. Heaven is an Absolute! Once your perspective of life becomes absolutely holistic, you will literally not be able to see bad any more. You will realize that "bad" is a fictitious concept. You will realize there was only absolute Good. It's a life-transforming realization. This is how you transcend suffering.

It's understandable that an ex-Soviet would have an allergy to Green and leftists because of his personal experiences with Soviet communism. The mistake though is to confuse stage Blue and even Red communism with stage Green American liberalism or democratic socialism. They are very different things and this is hard to distinguish unless you've studied Spiral Dynamics (which almost no one has). This is a common mistake conservatives make. They equate Bernie Sanders with Venezuela, which is absurdly bad analysis. Venezuela is closer to Republicans than to stage Green.

That's a big part of Blue actually. Respect and believe your elders because they have absolute truth.

Try to communicate to a mule what it feels like to go on a rollercoaster.

@FunBun Emotions are very tricky. What's required is mindfulness practice over them, and also getting to the bottom of why you feel the need to emote in those ways. See, those emotions are how the ego-self survives. So who you are results in those emotions getting acted out. Changing who you are will change those emotions and vice versa. Psychedelics are one of the most powerful tools for showing you a way past all that egotistical acting out. See, right now you don't even know what it means to be free of it. So it will be very tricky to stop acting out. You need to become deeply conscious that you are "doing" emotions as a means of ego survival. The emotions are there to keep the ego intact. The whole process is ruthlessly efficient and very tricky to stop because it is a matter of life and death from your POV. To change those emotions you will have to REALLY change. To become like a whole new person. How you define yourself is what then gets emoted. Take a look at how anger, fear, judgment, guilt, jealousy, etc. are serving to maintain your self-definition, your self-image, your persona. How would you have to change your self-image such that your habitual angers, fears, judgments, and guilt no longer needed to arise? What are all those emotions defending? This is a big can of worms which will take some serious work to sort out. But it's worth it.

SWOOSH! The sound of Ralston going over your head. Empty your cup first if you really want to learn.

Yes. When the nonduality and consciousness of God gets really intense it will literally make you feel sick to your stomach. Although I've never actually had to follow through with it. But if there was food in my stomach I would have probably vomited. Sometimes you feel like vomitting simply by realizing how full of bullshit your entire understanding of reality is. I have never run into problems tripping solo. That's with around 30-40 trips. But I am very careful when I trip. Solo tripping is ideal if you are responsible and careful. Bad trips will happen, but you just tough them out, letting them beat you up a bit, reminding yourself that this is how growing is done. Ideally you become your own shaman/guru without needing a Mommy.

Yup To the ego it feels like a loss of meaning, purpose, and identity. It can feel depressing (for a time), like you are losing a dear friend. All of this is an illusion, but it will not feel like an illusion when it happens to you. The ego is going through its final death throes.

Seems like you're creating unnecessary stories about this issue. Keep it simple instead: stay as alert and conscious during meditation as possible. If you find yourself falling asleep a lot, then do your practice after a nap. That's all. Calling sleep an "egoic activity" sets up an adversarial relationship with sleep, which is needless.

@MM1988 Notice how egoic your perspective is. Just the fact that you are evaluating the fairness of life based on how much sex you do or do not get, is absurd. As if the universe cares about how much sexual pleasure you receive. No one cares about that but you. It's got zero importance at all in the big picture. Also notice how you assume that if you don't have sex, then some other guy will have sex instead of you. This is a horribly warped and biased way of looking at things. Most of the time when sex doesn't happen is has nothing at all to do with another guy stealing that sex. Sex fails to happen for many reasons, many of them valid. A lot of times sex fails to happen because it was not supposed to happen, because the chemistry was missing, because you two were not a good match for each other, or simply because the logistics and timing was bad. Nobody owes you sex. And nobody is competing with you for sex. Drop these toxic mindsets. Relate to the whole woman. Right now you are relating to the sex. The valid way of looking at things is: "Sexual pleasure has zero importance. If it happens, great. If not, oh well, I got important shit to do."

Not necessarily. Shadow work is also important and it also depends how deep your emotional wounds are. If you had heavy trauma that will probably take a lot of dedicated work regardless of your meditation or mindfulness practice.

Trump is a mix of Red, Orange, and Blue, with a big Green shadow. Remember, people are complex and almost no one is only at one color.

I had a bad allergic reaction this week to the medicine (penicillin) for my sinus infection, which made me feel even worse and covered me in red rashy burning spots from head to toe. So video will be late, depending on when this clears up. Don't worry for me, I'll be fine. I just can't shoot videos in this state. It should pass soon.

Erase those vertical lines between the absolute and reality/world. Otherwise your picture is still dualistic.

@JohnnyBravo Ralston is way too advanced for most mortals to comprehend. Don't feel bad. Just realize this work is extremely deep. It will take you 10-30 years of full time work to understand everything someone like Ralston has to offer. He does not lay things out for newbies like I do. Yes, his approach is direct, brutal, and a bit cold. You're gonna have to really work at it to understand it.

@kieranperez Different people need different teachings. This stuff is too complex for there to be one best way.

Brutally direct teachings can be good, but they are also too advanced for most people to get results from it, and they oversimplify things too much, to the point of ignoring important complications, sticking points, pathologies, stages of development, and stuff like emotional mastery, shadow work, integration, etc. Brutally direct teachings often ignore the human side of this work. The pasison and the love. They can be too autistic and masculine. Some enlightened masters are basically autistic so their style will reflect that. This may not resonate well with you. Personally I prefer a more passionate, warm approach. Love has the power to transform a person like nothing else.

@Druid420 Are you conscious of Nothingness? That is key.

Ken is way beyond Yellow. If all you look at is that one model then it can look Yellow. But the man is not the model. And anyway his models go way beyond Yellow.

Too many double negatives make for confusion. It's simpler: Existence is.