Leo Gura

Sorry, but republicans are reptiles.

@Vladimir That's very simple. Without intense physical pain you would have accidentally killed yourself long ago. People who cannot feel pain usually die very young. But that is very different from being so conscious that you can transcend pain. Suffering is one of the best tools for spiritual growth. If you never suffered you would a lazy fat slug living in your mother's basement like Jabba the Hut. Suffering is what makes life feel so REAL. Otherwise it would just be a cartoon.

Europe is too far for now. Traveling to all these places would be a grueling full-time job.

@Andreas I think it's necessary unless the human brain changes.

The only way to get rid of growing through Tier 1 would be to genetically re-engineer the human brain so that it is automatically born with pre-programmed developmental structures. But at this point you would hesitate to call such people human. This kind of stuff will definitely happen in the future. But not in our lifetime. With genetic engineering all the rules of the game will get rewritten in shocking and unimaginable ways. Humans as we know them will cease to exist like old model-T Fords.

There are no "basic facts". That assumes an objective external reality, which is a concept, not a fact. All forms and facts are relative. At the very least logical positivism is relative to you being human. A mule knows nothing of logical positivism and it is not true for him. Logical positivism was disproven long ago. Logical positivism is self-contradictory because it itself is not an emprical fact but a metaphysical belief. You can create models, but all of them will end in paradox and contradiction. None of them will explain reality as a whole because it is impossible for a model to do so. The linear mind cannot unfurl all of reality in a linear way. Because the linear mind is finite but reality is infinite. Reality is not collection of causes and effects, as science likes to assume. You are confused because the mind is trying to do the impossible: linearly rationalize reality. The ultimate solution is to realize that this is impossible, and to instead transcend the mind through spiritual practices like Kriya yoga.

Actually even "physical pain" is conceptual. It is possible to learn to stop doing it.

Have all the thoughts you want. But take good care of your physical body. The ego mind will play all sorts of tricks when it gets cornered. Suicidal thoughts are just one trick up its sleeve. There is a long tradition of Dark Night of the Soul for mystics. A classic stage. I think the key to overcoming it is just to make a commitment to carry on with the work, suffer mindfully, and commit to not harming your physical body. No thoughts are to be taken seriously. That's also another trick. Do not buy into your own stories. All of that is ultimately delusion. And also always remember that reality is infinitely Good, Beautiful, Perfect, and Complete. Suffering is there because of the ego. You can learn to let go of suffering.

Of course, that's what makes you a devil.

Like I said above, there is a proper time for it. No one is telling you to strategize everything all the time. At first your satori will be weak, so yes you will get sucked back into ego. That's why post-satori practice is required. Satori will profoundly change your life strategies.

@theking00 You? Why never! You're a sweet little angel

Great!

@NoSelfSelf First of all many great mystics in the 21st century are highly strategic and plan out their lives and work. There is a time and place for both. When you are sitting on the cushion trying to attain satori, that's the wrong time to be strategic. That's a time to enter no-mind. Then there will be a time in your day or week to be strategic.

@Eric Tarpall In practice actions and policies are not equal. They have various repercussions. Criminalizing eating meat will simply not be a viable policy. Policy only works if it's viable in the long-run and actually creates a tangible improvement of some kind for the majority of people. Policies which lead to less efficiency will get weeded out by natural selection. You are free to have all sorts of beliefs and opinions about what will work best, but ultimately your ideas must be tested in the real world to see if they will actually fly. Someone who believes the white race is superior -- that's not gonna fly in the real world. Not in the 21st century.

@Mu_ It's extremely helpful for understanding and solving complex social issues. Don't look at it so selfishly. As if you are the only thing happening in the world.

Those of you struggling with self-inquiry: it's almost impossible to do self-inquiry with a crazy monkey mind. You must first calm the mind down. For many people this could takes several years of meditation, as it did for me. Unless your mind is still and capable of extended periods of focus, self-inquiry will likely not work for you. Kriya yoga is very effective at mechanically silencing the monkey mind. Then you can do powerful inquiry.

99.9% That 0.01% is what allows you -- with years of diligent effort -- to wake up.

@ivankiss Absolutely one cannot fuck up. Relatively one can. Since most people will judge us relatively, it's best not to give psychedelics a bad name. Otherwise it hurts the cause of making psychedelics more widely accepted. By using psychedelics sloppily, you ruin a good thing for other folks.

No, I was lamenting the lack of maturity in the user. My talks on psychedelics are actually reserved. The issue is that no amount of disclaimers can stop ignorance from unfolding. Igorance is very creative and intelligent. If there's a way to fuck something up, ignorance will find it. It just never ceases to amaze me.

@amirali gharib parsa From the POV of you it will feel like death. The trick is to realize that your POV isn't important. After the self is gone there is no problem. The problem of death only feels real until death happens. After the self dies nothing bad can happen to you, because there is no you. You realize you were just an idea. Santa Claus cannot die because he is a fiction to begin with. But if Santa Claus believed he was real, the discovery that he is a fiction would feel like actual death to him. But all that ever dies is the fiction.

@Cameron Where have you been? This is all old news. Here's what Alex Jones is like behind the dog and pony show, as told by his ex-wife:

Take a psychedelic and you will see. It's being. Total presence for its own sake. The practical things are: all legit spiritual practices. Spirituality is the art of transcending self-survival.

@Principium Nexus Rather than doing this sort of mapping you would learn a lot more about "good" and "evil" if you sat down and actually tried to directly experience what the words "good" and "evil" refer to in your direct experience. What are you really talking about when you say those words? Anything real? Anything actual? Or illusions in the mind? Try to point to one ACTUAL good thing. Try to point to one ACTUAL evil thing. Mapping stuff seems cool, but it is conceptual, not ACTUAL, and will likely lead you into self-deception. EVERY concept must be grounded in ACTUALITY if you wish to get closer to truth. It's way too easy for the mind to make shit up. So watch out.

Has this horse been beaten to death yet?

When done in a rigid Blue ecosystem like a monastery, mediation can keep you Blue. In practice Zen monks evolve to Turquoise on the spiritual/metaphysical line but remain underdeveloped on the other lines because meditation alone will not develop all lines.