Leo Gura

The substance of reality is undefined, and undefinable. That's literally what it is. What you call it doesn't matter. Calling it "physical" is just a label. Calling it "nonphysical" is also just a label. The real thing is neither. It really has no name. The label you're using is itself identical to the thing you're trying to use it to define. So this whole language game is a never-ending tail-chase. The only reason labels like "physical" or "nonphysical" have meaning is relative to themselves. The meaning is constructed within a network of ideas in the mind. This entire network of ideas is dualistic and finite, so it's no good for our purposes here. You must go beneath language.

Psychedelics, yoga, meditation, self-inquiry, dark room retreats, etc. Don't matter how. It all leads to the same basic place. Yes, of course. Don't expect a tyrant to agree to being deposed. Your paradigm's job is to maintain power over you at all costs. You see how it's circular logic? You don't actually know whether materialism is true. That is the issue at question. So you have to investigate whether it's actually true before you can just assume that you have a brain. Try not having a brain. Then see which feels more true. What you have to be interested in, is genuinely exploring alternative paradigms. Notice, the only difference between an Islamic fundamentalist and you is that he calls god "Allah", and you call it "brain".

Of course all human discourse is dualistic. Language nor the mind cannot be trusted when it comes to understanding the fundamental nature of nature. The solution is very simple, yet infuriating and deeply unpalatable: stop talking & stop thinking.

@egoless Doesn't matter. Even if I were Buddha himself, it wouldn't help you one bit. You're not going to access the Absolute through anyone but yourself. Sit down and do the work. The more silly philosophical questions you ask, the slower it will be. This whole discussion is just a distraction from doing the work. Which is precisely why it's being had. Nothing wrong with that per se, but enlightened it will not make you.

@MiracleMan Sometimes pain is just pain and requires a medical treatment. Not everything is a sign from God. Don't underestimate how many possible medical/alternative/physical solutions there could be. Make sure you thoroughly research and explore all the options. Most Western doctors are fools, so def don't just trust them.

@AleksM Thanks for posting lots of evidence.

That is the whole problem, don't you see? All teachings are false.

@egoless What I believe will not help you.

Like I said, that's a fair concern for your current POV. But what you're failing to appreciate is that absolute means ABSOLUTE. TOTAL. There is nothing beyond it because it is includes EVERYTHING. So your concern is addressed by the revelation. Which is precisely why it's such a huge revelation. It's not like you just discover a new planet. It's a much bigger thing. It's more like you discover every single atom in every imaginable universe. So there's no more point in asking the question, "But what if there's some other cool planet out there somewhere?"

@Safari Celeste I don't want Actualized.org to be too political, but I will be discussing broader social topics in the future. You'll see how personal development and consciousness work and philosophy intersects with community, humanity, evolution, and public policy. Being a good citizen is really just an outgrowth of consciousness. Which is why we have so many problems in politics and society. People are not conscious enough to be good citizens. Relationship and community based on ego and dishonesty doesn't work well.

You can still have plenty of cavities with fluoride toothpaste. Cavities are caused from eating all the refined grain and sugar.

I am posting because ya'll start sending me PMs, emails, leaving comments, and gossiping. Of course we mostly only talk about things close to us. You don't talk about shootings in Africa unless you live there. Safer? Where would that be? There's no escaping a nutcase with an assault rife in the US.

I use an audiobook app which allows me to create digital bookmarks so that I can jump back and forth to the juicy parts I want to save. It's not perfect, but it's much better than nothing.

Yeah, it's interesting. I've definitely heard a lot about it from inside spiritual circles. But the rigorous science on it is still iffy.

@egoless You won't understand until you find yourself there. From the unenlightened perspective, enlightenment may not be possible. Hence a leap of faith is required. Who knows, maybe one day you'll discover it is absolutely impossible and this was all just a hoax.

Actually, it's stranger than that. "The brain" and "an impulse in the brain" are concepts! Not impulses! Concepts do not occur inside a brain. That's backwards. Rather brains are concepts occurring in consciousness. Reality is not a hardware system, it's more like a software system. The software is NOT running on hardware! Stop thinking about reality physically. There's nothing physical about physics. A self-consistent hallucination has the quality of appearing solid and material. Materiality is an illusion created by the consistency of ordinary consciousness. It has lulled you into a false sense of materiality because you haven't yet experienced the consistency break down.

Source? I have yet to see any conclusive evidence of this.

Humans are complex creatures. Being human ain't easy.

Consider yourself lucky.

Except are you really able to enjoy what life has to offer? No So here we are. The difference is in the one case you're happy, in the other case you're a drunk, crazed monkey with a Jalapeno stuck up its ass.

You got something better to do?

This is why studying history is so important. You gotta keep things in historical context. Go read about how the Mongol hordes butchered up to 1 million people in a single city, then you'll see Vegas and even Hiroshima in another light. The viciousness of humanity used to be a lot worse. The progress isn't fast enough for our liking, but it's still rather fast. In 2000 years we've come a long way. In classic antiquity, if a Greco-Roman city was sacked, all the men were killed and all the children and women were sold into slavery. It was standard operating procedure and everyone in the city knew the stakes. 30-40% of the entire population in Italy were slaves in the 1st century BC. In ancient Rome, punishment for a woman's adultery was that the husband gets to kill his wife with his own hands. Saudi Arabia just this week gave women the right to drive. Slow, but progress.

@MM1988 What if "you", "the brain", and "reality" are just ideas floating in emptiness? You think you are in reality, but reality is actually in you. The problem is, you're trying to couch enlightenment into a naive realist paradigm which you've absorbed from your culture without ever realizing it. What enlightenment means is that your naive realist paradigm gets destroyed. Which literally means, at the moment of enlightenment, physical external reality ceases to exist! Imagine that! See my videos: A Rant Against Naive Realism Understanding How Paradigms Work Understanding Absolute Infinity - Part 1 Not only will enlightenment remain after brain damage, enlightenment remains after you die, and it existed before you were born. It's the only thing which is Absolutely True, which means it's ever-present. It cannot be created or destroyed, because it's the absence of all dualities. It sits before the distinction of existence vs non-existence, or self vs reality.

@Wind I got my first sober enlightenment experience through Vipasanna. The whole point of Vipasanna is enlightenment. It's like you're asking, "Can a hammer be used to hit a nail?" The major limitation is that you spend 20 years practicing mindfulness but you never apply it to the root of matter: What are you? What is awareness? What is reality? What is existence itself? The key to enlightenment is that you must apply mindfulness to your IDENTITY as a physical being (or whatever the fuck you believe you are). If you're not questioning your physicality, you're not hitting the nail on the head, you're just sitting around waiting for a hammer to accidentally fall out of the sky and hit that nail square. You might be waiting for a while there.