WaveInTheOcean

"And you may not have as much choice about it as you think you do." I think it can be dangerous to go with that mindset. I mean. Yes, obviously ULTIMATELY, we don't have free will. From the highest, highest perspective, the body and mind of "yours" are operated by "God's hand". God plays dice and move the pieces (bodies/minds) around on the board (board game analogy). Ultimately, thus, you are God. You are the hand of God, you are the dice, you are the board itself ... in a way. However, believing "I don't have any choice" is also a belief, it's also a choice to believe that. So... My point is.. You have to live life as you're free. Truth is, you are also free from the highest perspective. From the highest perspective you are infinite and free. So again, my point is, yes, you don't have free will as the ego running around here on earth. But .. even though you dont, you should absolutely -- if you want to live truly -- live as you do have free will. From the highest point of view, you, yes you, do have choices in front of you, and you can pick whichever you want Sartre believed in free will. He was delusional in many ways. However, I like his quote: "Humans are condemned to be free" ... The feeling that we are free to do whatever we want -- because of our minds -- -- unlike animals who don't really have a mind -- is both a gift and a burden. Use the gift (the mind) wisely Don't become delusional.

Great stuff in this thread. Didn't see it at first, so I posted some ambient tunes in this thread, enjoy:

No value to what things? Everything can have a value if you give it a value. Single-minded pursuit? What the heck does that even mean? Which center? hey... Does a mind choose which thing to pursue/fixate its attention on ??? What if... everything ... litterally everything ... one experiences ... in it self ... is the so-called 'source' you're talking about? To me... Enlightenment includes the realization that whichever perspective one might have is limited. The paradox is... To have that realization is a perspective itself. To harness as much as what reality has to offer, one must absolutely consider that every possible perspective one can have, may contain some part of Truth. And exactly because 1 perspective can only contain 1 part of the Truth -- Truth is Infinite -- every perspective is limited. Becoming enlightened is the stopping of attachment to ideas/perspectives/concepts & instead becoming completely open, pure, empty, loving in heart. You must be open to every perspective. And open doesn't mean believing in it. Open just means "this sounds interesting, at least a bit, hmm let me think about it... I feel resistance to it because it conflicts why my current worldview (which I subconsciously see as part of "me"/my identity), hmm okay, at least I'm aware of this fact ... Okay, it sounds somewhat absurd to me,, but hey, what the fuck do I know... I won't start a debate whether it's true or not ... it might be true, it might be bullshit ... depends on perspective... I'm gonna be open and might do more research into the matter if I feel like it... If I don't feel like it, that's also okay..." As I write this, I become aware of the fact that it's absurd to label ANY experience/perspective/belief/idea as "not-interesting/nonsense/bullshit". It's absurd ... simply ... because ... you saw/heard/experienced said experience/perspective/belief/idea ... and why did you do that? Because it was created for you... By infinity... aka God ... Don't be too quick to judge. Who are you to judge God's doings? But then again if you judge it anyway, then the fact that you judged it, is also God's doing See everything of reality as love. See it as mystical. See it as something beyond your doings. Become fully present and open. Surrender to reality. As Azreal once said, you can even see the beauty of a baby crying in a crowded bus when you sit there and listen to it. Everything depends on perspective. And there are infinite perspectives. No perspective is more true than any other. Every perspective a person has is part of the Truth. Some of my friends are not interested in non-duality at all. I am. Thus, sometimes I have viewd my self as superior to some of my friends. Now I see... Theirs perspective on life is by no means any lesser or any falser than mine. From my non-dual perspective I might be tempted to label my perspective as more True than a random dude's perspective. It's not truer. It's maybe more wide you could say, and thus more open. If you drop attachment to all perspectives´, to all false identity projection,..., fully surrender ... then you can become one with infinite Truth, not just part. But consider this: Life is like a theater play. Everyone are actors of God playing the game of life -- on an seemingly large, yet apparant finite scene, yet truly infinite 'scene' -- so engulfed in the playing that most actors forget that they are actors of God, but instead in the heat of the moment fully believe that they are the fictional character they each are playing. Most actors complete the enitre theater play having the entire time forgot that they were just actors of God. But someone might suddenly remember...

Thanks Leo. Just what I needed. Just as I thought my open-mindedness was already high enough you show me this, which is normally some stuff I would classify as utterly insane crap (people claiming to have contact with ET-beings.)... After reading some of it and thinking deeply about it + some of my past consciousness-altering experiences (meditation + LSD-trips) + questioning my actual open-mindedness ... i'm starting to get confused again... which I might have been missing a bit. Just as you think you've got reality all figured out ... well trust me, there's always more deeper layers to unravel

If we stopped all cow and pig-meat production today, we would 1. massively lower the total CO2-output to the athmosphere 2. massively lower the amounts of fresh drinking water spent on meat production 3. significantly reduce the amounts of rain forests getting wiped out because of livestock-production 4. have huge amounts of soy- and corn-food which we could use to feed the enitre human population many times. But of course this would also imply that my family cannot get their pork for christmas, and they would cry big time, especially my grand mother, for that, so ...

I speculate that the only way that the human race can sustain itself for more than a few hundred years is if the vast majority of humans realize that it doesn't matter the slightest if we blow up the Earth with an atomic bomb. Only by realizing it ultimately doesn't matter if we eradicate ourselves as a species, then maybe - by realizing that - we may avoid doing it and chill the fuck down and go away from this phony materialism-worldview we currently posses.

Captain Fantastic (pretty new film) is very good and inspiring.

Mate. I honstely couldn't care less if you keep eating meat or not. To be enlightened is to become as aware as possible of how your ego functions. If you are fully aware of your ego - that is, if you manage to get all the unconscious ego stuff/beliefs/mechacnics into awareness/consciousness, then you are free. because now "you" can react to that and re-arrange the mechanics so they align with your inner nature. I saw that it was arbitrary that I had eaten meat all my life. Arbitrary in the sense that it's what society/culture told me was "the right thing to do". I was programmed. Now I have contemplated my deep inner nature, and I see that my inner nature doesn't align with eating meat from animals mass produced in livestock-forms. I don't even crave eating it anymore. It's so natural now. Naturally I know nothing about your inner nature, and I know you're doing just fine, what else could you do? hehe.. cheers And btw, of course - the fact that I now don't want to eat meat anymore is also just another programming. But somehow I feel it's a more natural "self-"conscious form of programming than the one I had before (in regard to this eating meat/or not-dillemma ... I'm sure im still "unconsciously"-programmed by a lot of other stuff... and that excites me..I wanna go to more -not-knowing-states- and see what answer the universe gives me. cheeeeeeeers everyone. Eat whatever you fucking want as long as you don't eat me:)

@Bizarre With a non-judging filter I just meant not judging people negatively I guess. I never said anywhere that enlighentment has nothing to do with Truth. Obviously enlightenment = being one with Truth. When I sad you shouldn't pursue enlightenment, but instead Truth, i just meant exactly that ... i.e search for what is true, whatever that might turn out to be. All the Advaita Vedanta-stuff is probably really good to get an accurate understanding of reality. But just remember, any 'understanding', any concepts are only tools, analogies to what's going on. What's really going on, can't be explained in words/by logic. Whats ultimately True can't be said - there can only be said things about Truth - and here some things are relatively more true than other of course.

psychedelics = deconstruction + raw awareness combined = most effectiveee...... but i guess meditating and learning to accept the present moment before doing psychedelics is pretty advisable to avoid bad trips.

I just wanted to say that the keyword is to accept. Feel that word. Accept. Acceptance. Accept whatever comes up. You can feel miserable for whatever reasons. You might have taken LSD and feel horrible scared/angry/sad because of what you experience. Fully accept that. It's perfectly okay to feel bad/horrible/sad/fear. Allow yourself to accept whatever comes up. Accept everything. In the end of the day, all we can do is to accept the present moment. Yes, sure in the loooooong term, we can change the direction of our lives. But in the short term, you have to accept the current reality you experience. Accept all of it. If you feel sad/fearful/depressed ... sure, you can try to resist it and internally fight it with the "I don't want to feel this way, why am I feeling this, I want this to go away"-mechanism. In the end this doesn't help at all, this is just a denial of pure reality. And denying what _is_ only leads to more suffering. Instead accept the state you are in. Accept the fear. Accept that you feel depressed. It's perfectly okay. You can't change the present moment. The present moment just is. Accept it, no matter if it's pure bliss or extreme hell - accept it fully. Only when you accept it fully -- surrender fully to it -- you can actually begin to live in the present moment without denying it - thus you become closer to true existence without filters, without beliefs of 'how it should be'. Reality shouldn't be in any way. It should be exactly as it is. Exactly as it is experienced. Take LSD and become fucking frightened of what you see. Become extremely anxious of what a fucking douchebag you are. Of what a fucking closed, selfish person you are. And don't resist it. Accept it. That's how it is. Only when you accept the current state of your 'being', only then, you can begin to live freely and change truthfully. If you don't accept, but deny and resist and fight, you will keep denying, resisting and fighting for eternity, and not getting any further. So stop! And surrender to reality. Accept. Accept. Accept - whatever comes up - accept it. Accept the state you are in - and you will begin to flow in a stream of love down a waterfall into pure being. What does accept mean? Well, only you know. I think it means to fully embrace the present moment with love. What is love? It can't be explained. It's a property of God/nothingness/the absolute/infinte infinity/pure unlimited consciousness/your deep-down True Existential Nature -- allow it to come forward. Even if you somehow feel it's not appropriate right now. That you think it's not appropriate right now, is just you playing a game with yourself. You may feel extremely lonely. You may feel extreme fear because you feel like you're losing what you hold must dear: your sense/construction of self. Look. It's perfectly okay to feel lonely. It's perfectly okay to feel extreme fear because you are dying. Accept the feelings of loneliness and fear. Embrace them when they come up. It's perfectly okay to accept all feelings, because all feelings are ultimately arbitrary and have no meaning, no value. The only 'meaningful' thing to actually value is the ability to accept the present moment. If you value that ability -- because trust me, you DO have the ability to fully accept your current state, you just trick yourself into believing that you somehow don't (and that you instead need X or Y in your life to feel fulfilled/happy - look, you truly don't, it sure seems like you need X, but trust me, you need nothing (literally)...all you "need" is acceptance of whatever is) -- then you will be completely free; like a bird flying over the ocean on a clear sky day.

Pure consciousness has no properties. Struggling <--> Accepting are both merely relative concepts like everything else we dicuss on this forum. However, relative concepts are still helpful of course. Otherwise I wouldn't have written this. So yes, of course you can practice appreciating the present moment / accepting the state you are in.

You're such a troll, lol. Well, was fun, good luck with liberating "yourself" from the ego of yours I'm sure the imaginary train will take you somewhere.

I just put in an "EDIT: And yes, I know this is all pretty off-topic, but I couldn't help it." This thread started about eating meat, sure. But right now, yes - should be obvious, can't understand why you're confused - I'm explaining enlightenment to you, as you clearly have a fairly big misunderstanding of it, as I've said a few times now (and explained why).

Not so much, I'm just having fun. "The first thing you and your BFAM-pal Turbolover should realize (the sooner the better) is that the 'you' seeking liberation from what you call 'ego' is the ego itself." It's quite obvious to me that you have not realized this. That you instead believe that there is a 'true you' that can be free from ego. This is a total misunderstanding of reality. Of course this depends on what you define as 'ego'. I define one ego equals that one person. The 'true you' (=pure Being) is always functioning through this person you are. Someone likes to define ego as all that makes them do/experience stuff in a special filtered way. What is the 'them' then? And if you remove ego, what is left to make you do/experience stuff? Yes, you can see ego as filters. But there will always be filters. Enlightenment just depends on what the filters are. Enlightenment may be very pure-empty-non-judging-non-claiming filters, but THAT is STILL a filter. And it is not easy to replace your programmed filters with pure, empty filters. But it's possible of course. Sometimes it happens spontaneously, but most of the times it takes 'hard work', exactly like Leo teaches. Hard work can refer to doing meditation daily, self-inquiry, seeing videos like Leo's, and even doing psychedelics. Yes, it pisses me off (but in a good fun way) to see that you, NTOgen, and your pal Turbolover in many ways disregard that fact that it most often takes work to become enlightened. Yes, enlightenment shouldn't be your goal - Truth should be. Yes, there's nothing fancy about enlightenment; it's just having pure, empty filters instead of your programmed-truth-distoring filters. But it takes -most of the time- work to get there. EDIT: And yes, I know this is all pretty off-topic, but I couldn't help it.

@NTOgen Look, I know you are seeking enlightenment. I know you are seeking liberation 'from ego'. The first thing you and your BFAM-pal Turbolover should realize (the sooner the better) is that the 'you' seeking liberation from what you call 'ego' is the ego itself. So you are just an ego wanting to be free from itself. This is naturally impossible, and it's not what enlightenment is. We don't even need the word 'ego'. The word 'person' is 100% the same as what 'ego' is. Also applies to mind (ego = mind = person). As long as the brain of yours is alive you will - whether you like it or not - continue to be an ego/person. This doesn't matter if you're un- or enlightened. An enlightened person is still an example of empty/pure consciousness seeing it self as a finite mind. This finite mind (= the enlightened person) has just achived a quantum leap of true self-realization ... Not merely just intellectual/logic-wise, but feeling-wise as well. It's somewhat easy for persons with a little open-mindedness and average intelligence to logically grasp that he's not the body nor the mind. But to actually FEEL it on an everyday-basis (not just through short no-self/awakening-experiences) is what is HARD to achieve because of some very deep-rooted web-of-beliefs/programming (that you're not even conscious of) keep creating a sense of self that tells you that you really a REAL individual 'thing') An enlightened mind (=person) has discovered its ultimate existential nature = nothingness/awareness/infinite consciousness. And this realization now sticks. Enlightenment is a never-ending path, because in ordinary life infinite consciousness will always "be" in form of a finite mind/a finite consciousness. But the enlightened mind has just began on the journey of expanding from: finite mind ----------> infinite mind. You can never actually reach 'infinite mind' constantly; only through glimpses of meditation/self-inquiry/psychedelics (5 MeO being the best). Thus an enlightened mind is simply a mind that has an unlimited perspective of what it defines as itself. An unenlightened/asleep mind in contrast has a narrow view of what it defines as itself (it thinks it's a self). An enlightened mind is thus much more free and unbound. An enlightened mind experiences Truth in everyday life. An enlightened person not only understands Truth logically, but he experiences Truth daily. Enlightenment is not an ego-less state. It's just a self-realization/Truth state (of the ego itself). (in many ways, enlightenment is the opposite: it's an ego-empowered state instead of a Being-empowered state... Because Being-empowered state = pure Being is fully tricking itself into believing it's an ego, while ego-empowered state = ego somewhat fully realizing its true nature is pure Being ... I'll expand upon this below) Life is dualistic. On and off. Reality seems dualistic: on: Being seeing itself as ego. off: Ego seeing itself as Being. In both states ego remains. It's just what perspective ego has. The on-state is what EVERY single human being (including all enlightened humans) are always functioning through when they interact in daily life. The off-state is only possible to achieve momentarily through: NDE, no-self experiences from meditation, psychedelics, and so on. And even here there are degrees of how much you actually are in the off state. Because even though life is dualistic (on and off), there still is a continumm between the on and of states with an infinite number of degrees in variation between the two states. Cause "it" is infinite. Actual physical death is not even a off-state - because here there is no brain to simulate an ego to see itself as Being. Actual physical death is just one 'on-state' instantly switching to another 'on-state' (pure Being seeing itself as another ego). So in a way, yes sure, "Being"/nothingness/consciousness is all there is. But on the opposite part of the spectrum, we have the "ego is all there is" (which relates to biocentrism talks about) which is just as true. Both are equally true. If there are no egos then there can't be a no-ego (pure Being) either! The existence of ego's are what makes it possible for the Universe/Being to experience itself. So it's not just that life is dualistic. In fact REALITY is dualistic. Yes for there be to dualism, there must exist non-dualism is also. So reality is both dualistic and non-dualistic at the same time. I know this is all circular logic, but existence is a circle. So it's not just that life is dualistic. Reality is dualistic. ----------- If we return to the on/off-analogy: on: Being seeing itself as ego. off: Ego seeing itself as Being. As I said earlier, "The on-state is what EVERY single human being (including all enlightened humans) are always functioning through when they interact in daily life." However, relatively speaking, I would say that enlightened persons are where the ego relatively speaking has taken somehwhat full control (has become full aware of itself, including all the subconsciousness) and thus can see that relatively speaking its true nature is Being. So an enlightened person is still ultimately in the on-state, of course, but one could say that he is relatively speaking in the off-state. An enlightened mind is a mind/ego that relatively sees itself as pure Being. It's funny how we (eg. Leo) often talk about how we should completetly break-down the ego to become enlightened. But each time you break it down, something new must be built in its place. You could call this more true beliefs. A person who is totally engulfed in the dream state (on state) - that is a case of Being totally seeing itself as an ego without any nuances - yes this person has a very strong (unconsious) ego that enforces this dream state. On the opposite side we have the enlightened person - a person who sees through the dream state, sees it for what it is - this is in a sense a case of ego seeing itself as Being (relatively). This means it's a case of an ego that has become fully self-aware, and thus by having become fully self-ware, this ego is now able to be more in control; more free/unbound. Free will still doesn't exist of course. Ultimately this person is still in the on-state of course. So in a sense, an enlightened person has a very powerful and 'self-conscious' ego that instead of enforcing the dream state upon itself makes it possible for itself to see through it.

"I don't weigh anything, only ego's weigh stuff" lol

Kola nut is just caffeine, lol. I gues high does of caffeine/coffee can feel like low/moderate doses of coke (for some). nice report anyways.

Did I state that anywhere? What do selfish and unselfish even mean lol? It's relative concepts. I mean, ultimately every person can only make selfish actions. Relatively, as how most people define selfishness, I guess you could say vegetarians "care" more about other living animals than meat-eaters do. Do that make them less selfish? You be the judge.

GTITurbolover - lol - what an ignorant close-minded arrogant fuckhead you are. Ego is a concept. There exist no egos ultimately All that really exist is the non-duality of being. Nervous systems has the ability to seperate the non-dual pure 'Being' into duality. Duality is simply the seperation of pure 'Being' into: 1. the individual ego that thinks it exist (the internal world) ||||| 2. everything that that 'ego' doesn't define as himself (the external world)' This is the duality of life - living as an ego. The greater the seperation of pure non-dual Being into duality, the greater the created ego has a capacity to suffer. What does the seperation depend on? For all we know the seperation depends on the complexity of the nervous system. For all we can observe, it's the nervous system that creates the seperation of the non-duality into duality. The more complex nervous system, the more capacity there is for suffer. Now, imagine you self very hungry standing in a very beautiful garden. The sky is blue. The sun is shining. You are hungry. Surrounded by you in the garden is everything you could imagine putting in your mouth: - potato crops and crops with other food - trees with nuts - living cows, pigs, chickens who are standing peacefully around you - a pool with fish living in peace - trees with apples, fruits and so on. - bushes with berries There is an outdoor kitchen in the garden with everything you need to cook. Knives and so on. There even is a pistol so you quickly kill the animals to cook them if you want to. If you shoot them in the head they will die so quickly that they won't feel any pain at all. What do you do? Do you kill the pig lying next to you, taking a bath in the sun, so you can get some nice meat and cook it on the pan? Or do you simply go for the potatoes in the earth, the nuts hanging from the trees, the berries from the bushes, the fruits from the trees? I think most people would go for the vegetarian food. Yet, when we're in the supermarket, it's so fucking easy to buy the treated meat in the refrigerated counter. It's at least easy if you give zero fucks about how the meat got here in the supermarket. I guess most eat-meaters give zero fucks. And that's fine. Some people happen to give a fuck, somehow.