Leo Gura

@Ilya If you're referring to Morning Glory Seeds, I wouldn't bother. Mushrooms or LSD will be far superior with less toxicity and negative side effects. I've learned not to half-ass psychedelics.

@LaucherJunge I hope you have prior psychedelic experience if you're even thinking of smoking that.

@Samuel It means he's so ignorant he doesn't even have a clue how ignorant he is. Beliefs don't mean jack. He's only happy because stuff is going his way -- for now. When his girlfriend leaves him, and his music doesn't pan out, and his health deteriorates, and his weed gets taken away by our Keebler Elf Attorney General, let's see how happy he'll be.

You're not gonna get far in life without study and theory. Human beings are learning animals.

Good, stay with that. You need to keep your focus trained on that for long periods of time. Just observing what's so. But notice, nothing in the field of experience is you! So start to wonder as you sit there: WHAT AM I? If you are not any experience? What are you then?

Is there such a thing as non-existence? Have you ever encountered it? Does the distinction between existence and non-existence exist? If everything is ONE, how can there be two: existence vs non-existence? Does a bubble really need to be burst, or is it just a concept in your mind? Remember, models like "bubble", etc. are not reality and are the only things which stand in the way of the Absolute.

It doesn't matter what you call it. In fact, it has no name. But what does matter are all the implicit consequences which come with your labels and models. When you hold reality as "physical" and external, you're constricting yourself very much without knowing how yet. You've never really seen the beauty of a rock in your entire life, because you live in a constant state of conceptual delusion. Truth is more beautiful than you can ever imagine.

In practice it's VERY VERY difficult. Psychedelics are by far the best way that I've found. They just immediately show you that all experience is hallucinatory, and they are really great at wiping away the frame we call "my life" and "this physical universe". Other than that, you're looking at 1000s of hours of contemplation, meditation, inquiry in focused retreat-like settings. Reality is not easy to deconstruct. Which is why it feels so real.

@el_duderino You can release emotional baggage till the cows come home, but in the end, if you want enlightenment, there's only one thing you gotta release, and that's your identity with that body/mind. Your physical identity must be directly questioned. WHAT ARE YOU? You can take a heart-centered approach, but you should be questioning, WHAT AM I existentially? What is my TRUE nature if I'm not this body/mind?

An idea, or teaching, or statement is not necessarily dogma. It only becomes dogma when it is held as such -- when it is held rigidly and refuses to be questioned or looked at from a different perspective, when one refuses to drop it. As long as you're open to admitting you're wrong, and you're willing to question your own ideas, and you're willing to explore new perspectives, and you're aware that the map is not the territory, you're not being dogmatic. Calling people dogmatic just for expressing an idea or having an opinion isn't nuanced enough. By that definition, everyone is always dogmatic, including the most enlightened masters. The only thing that's being asked of you is to be epistemically humble. Just don't be ideological about life. That's all this dogma-talk boils down to. People either understand that and embody this humility, or they don't understand that and they walk around insisting they're right. As long as you're able to drop all your ideas, you're good. It's a very simple principle. But very difficult to execute consistently because the mind loves certainty and arguing to prove that its right. The most direct way to do this is simply this: set a genuine intent to not be ideological in your life.

Yes, all enlightened people are loners.

@Lou7 Bring plenty of condoms so you don't catch an STD I'm generally in favor of any experiences that expand your horizons and open you to radical new perspectives.

Option #1: Contemplate the fear in-depth, write out exactly what you fear and why. Option #2: Just ignore them and push forward with your practices. Eventually they will peter out or rise to the surface, at which point you'll face them head-on by just feeling into them, and carry on your practices. All fear is illusion.

@Shan Shut off your logical mind for a second, close your eyes, and ask your HEART: What am I trying to ultimately accomplish with my life's work? Bypass any fears or monkey-mind. At least for a minute. Don't overthink that part. You gotta let your heart steer the ship, not your programmer's logical brain. You might also be holding some dogmatic assumptions: Do you really need a significant understanding of the brain? Do you really need 10 years of study/research? Do you really need a PhD in neuroscience? Maybe you do, I dunno. But my point is, if you're like most people, you may be putting the cart before the horse. First determine what exactly you want to accomplish, THEN research the most direct ways to get there. Getting a PhD might be something your culture has just programmed you with. After all, where else would you get an idea like that? Who's programming whom here? If this is your LP: "Understand the Subconscious and and help people overcome deep implanted traumas" Then cut the shit and listen to what it's telling you! Go straight for the goal. I know many ways of helping people overcome deep subconscious traumas which don't require any of the things you assume. If you wanted to, you could learn to do that in a couple years and you'd have 1,000% better results than PhD's at Harvard. It's a little odd that your LP is about understanding and healing, whereas your domain of mastery is business. Nothing wrong with business, but again, don't put the cart before the horse. It sounds like your domain of mastery should be: understanding the mind and healing. What do you honestly enjoy studying more: business or the mind/healing? P.S. Good work-ethic on doing the course!

I personally find LSD micro-dosing too stimulating for doing work. Maybe brainstorming, but even that is iffy. It'll depend on your baseline level of awareness and whether you like working while buzzing. Provigil works amazing for creativity. Although LSD is probably more healthy. I notice Provigil speeds up heart-rate, which isn't good in my book.

@Mulky Life is pointless. So enjoy the shit out of it while you can. That's the key.

In the reality you create. REALITY. IS. ABSOLUTELY. RELATIVE.

@Lord God I agree!

Lol You guys come up with some funny-ass questions.

@Ilya Most meditators are softcore. They don't meditate for radical existential insights. They meditate at the psychological level, for relaxation, stress reduction, good mood, etc. Meditation is not as direct as self-inquiry. Enlightenment through meditation usually requires long retreat-like settings. Meditating for 1 hour a day is nothing. You'd need to do 10-20 hours a day. Day after day after day.

@Toby There is of course truth to that. Practicing a bit of love here and there is good. The question is more about: what's gonna be your primary vehicle to enlightenment? I think self-inquiry is the less-dangerous vehicle because once you grasp enlightenment, your capacity for love will skyrocket. It will flow naturally. You won't have the ego in the way as much. Whereas if you try to get enlightenment through practicing devotion, that's very iffy. It may never happen. You may just end up a fanatic who's able to love only those things which fit your paradigm of devotion. Of course that's not a guarantee. I'm sure plenty of people have become legit enlightened through Bhakti. It's more a question of percentages and risk profile. Bhakti Yoga is good for people who are very heart-centered. Self-inquiry is good for people who are more head-centered. Gandhi is an interesting case-study. He devoted his whole life to spiritual practice, but I don't think he ever actually experienced the Absolute. (I might be wrong about that, but that's what my research suggests). Mother Teresa is another interesting case-study. She devoted her whole life to spiritual practice, but her private diaries reveal that she was a deeply unhappy and neurotic person. Which suggests her grasp of the Absolute was not grounded in direct experience, but merely beliefs. And I doubt anyone here will be as hardcore a Bhakti practitioner as Gandhi or Mother Teresa. They were super-stars in this technique.

I think it has a lot of potential.

With that attitude, of course relationships can't fit into the picture. You'll have to change your entire paradigm of what relationships are for.

@I Am That The counter-argument would be: Why not just use LSD or mushrooms, which are just as effective and have very little harm potential? Mushrooms and LSD are so effective and benign that it's almost too good to be true. I'm continually amazing at how awesome our tools for consciousness work really are. It's easy to imagine a universe in which they wouldn't exist. Then people would be really screwed, resorting to shooting up horse tranquilizers and sniffing Crazy Glue I like your avatar. The perfect metaphor for infinity.

@Joseph Maynor It sounds good in theory. But in practice dogma will seize hold of you and create ugly problems. Enlightenment first. Then love. Love without enlightenment cannot work. You cannot trick yourself into loving unconditionally so long as the ego identity is still active. People who try to love without deep self-inquiry first, will find their love corrupted. The danger of Bhakti Yoga is that you may never directly experience the Absolute, but merely convince yourself through imagery and belief that you have.