Leo Gura

@Gligorije You need to be much more careful about distinguishing an empirical observation from the conceptual schemes and interpretations you give to it. "Gravity" is NOT an empirical observation. It's a conceptual scheme which you're using to explain many, many various kinds of empirical observations. Before Newton invented gravity, it did not exist. But objects did still fall downward on this planet. But "gravity" is way more than the observation of objects falling down on this planet. Which is precisely why it took a genius like Newton to invent gravity. People had been observing falling objects for thousands of years but had no notion of gravity. A cat clearly sees objects falling down. But a cat does not know gravity. Gravity does not exist to a cat. Although the cat is still affected by "it".

By your logic, there isn't a me to get what you're saying, nor is there a you to complain about my not getting it You are mixing up relative and absolute levels. When I say something like, "You're missing out on psychedelics" I am speaking in common parlance. The plain fact is that people who have never done psychedelics have no idea what they're missing. Don't muddy the waters here with petty pedantry. For someone who's stuck thinking enlightenment is a waste of time, the proper guidance is: go do a psychedelic. Problem solved. Now they will be ready to start doing spiritual practices.

Sounds like you got some inner demons to work out. The point of tripping is not to trip once, but to trip and contemplate consistently. Whatever fears you've got need working through. Rather than playing around with a friend, next time, sit quietly and contemplate reality. Don't take the devil thing too seriously. The devil is not other than God.

@tsuki Relative vs Absolute Be careful about mixing up those two. When we speak of other people we are making relative distinctions for sake of convenience.

Buy a plane ticket.

Precisely because it's too direct. The problem with enlightenment is not that one can't do it, it's that one doesn't WANT to do it. To want enlightenment is to already be 50% of the way there.

@Serotoninluv Right, the key thing we're really saying is that reality is groundless. There are no fixed anchor points, except for the Groundless Ground itself.

@Serotoninluv Going even deeper, "different wavelengths of light" also do not exist. That is also a limited perception/interpretation.

@Gligorije You live pragmatically, just to survive and meet your basic needs. This is no way to live. This is like being a zombie or a slave. So of course that will lead to depression. It's a guaranteed recipe for misery. Imagine instead living as though you are inside a dream or a work of art. Full of wonder and passion at every turn.

@Widdle Puppy Nothing = Everything

That guy don't know jack about creativity. The whole key to creativity is that it produces entirely new things. Yes, it builds on itself, but true creativity is always new. Creativity created the entire fucking universe from scratch! Creativity is infinitely intelligent. P.S. And he's wrong about love too.

Time to upgrade to LSD If you're gonna be using substances, might as well use the best, purest, and clearest ones. The least addictive ones.

Happiness is being conscious of the magnificence of existence in every moment, your mind uncluttered with conceptual baggage and petty "human stuff". As a child, that was you natural state. Then as you aged, your mind was brainwashed and corrupted with the petty human concerns of your society and culture. To see the magic in every moment of existence independent of external conditions is what you really want. It's the only thing that will truly satisfy you. Which is where spiritual practices come into play. Spiritual practices help you to develop a metaphysical connection to reality, rather than the utilitarian, transactional mode from which you currently operate. As a kid, your mode of interaction with reality was non-transactional. Which gave you genuine joy.

It makes all the difference in the world. Take a psychedelic and see for yourself what you are missing out on.

@Joseph Maynor You have yet to discover God

It all depends. Of course the vast majority of people are not mature enough to handle enlightenment work. But you won't know until you try.

@PhilGR Good, keep at it. Contemplation is life-transforming. It takes some practice to do it well. Keep pushing for more depth. Get metaphysical on that bitch

You are God, just like everyone else.

@tsuki The trick is that the notion of "facts" is itself already theory-laden. To believe in "facts" is already to buy into the false idea that there is an external objective reality independent of the subject. What is a fact? That is a good thing to contemplate. The problem with facts is that they are always entangled with one's mode of perception or the questions one asks. This was the fundamental discovery of quantum mechanics: there are no actual facts. There are only responses to measurements. Change your measuring stick and the facts will also change. Facts are in a casual strange loop relationship with who you are and your perceptual system. Such that if we change your perceptual system, or your beliefs, we can change everything you consider a fact. The reason people disagree with and misunderstand each other so much is because they naively assume that everyone shares the same facts. This is false. A person at one level of development & consciousness will literally inhabit a different reality than a person at another level of development & consciousness. The mind is co-creating "the facts", but denies that it does so. This is a radical paradigm shift from the conventional materialist notion of reality. To put this very starkly, when you look at an object like a tree, there is in fact no tree there. You only see a tree because that's what your perceptual system pulls out of it. If you had a different perceptual system you would see something radically different in its place. The "actual" tree is in fact a cloud of infinite potential which crystallizes based on how your nervous system pings "it". You can get a taste for this by just walking around the tree and noticing that that tree "object" contains every possible angle from which you're viewing it. Such that what the tree really is, is all the infinite ways one can look at it (not just human, but all possible creatures).

Why mention the brain or chemicals? Whatever you do, you're using concepts to make sense of reality.

To the amateur, mastery and excellence look like randomness.

That is correct. The bias runs very deep. It is existential. But not so deep it cannot be undone. Our life's work is undoing this knot of self-bias.

Since it is infinite, there are no bad directions. All directions are equally great to it. I keep telling you guys that "bad" is a projection for your ego. Sit down and contemplate what "bad" really means when you say that word. It is an egoic word. Things only appear bad to you because you have a horse in the race. You are biased. But God has no biases because it has bet on every horse in the universe. But you bet on only one horse. If you bet on every horse in the universe, would you care which one wins? P.S. If it was not free to evolve in all the "bad" directions, it would not be truly free.

For you, a double dose of Green!

@herghly It doesn't matter. You don't focus on that. You focus all your attention on doing a nice slow quality breath. The timing will take care of itself. It takes however long it takes. Don't do yoga mindlessly. You must understand the intention and purpose of each technique. Learn WHY you are doing it, so then the technical details becomes far less relevant. The point of pranayama is to pull the prana up the spine. Everything else is secondary and must serve this end. Whatever that takes. Your top goal is to do the highest quality pull possible with each breath. Learn to think about yoga as though you are inventing it for the first time.