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@Patang Well, we can't really have a conversation if we are going to call concepts out for what they are

What I did is at first carried on like nothing happened while being completely insane on the inside judging by my previous standards. Then, when I calmed down and changed my standards, I continued like nothing happened, smiling to myself silently. It took some practice, but you wouldn't believe what you can hide amongst unobservant people ;). Your life won't crumble simply because you've changed. If it was all dream from the start - all of it was just a story that played itself while you were being deluded. Have some trust in yourself.

Have you ever noticed that when flailing your hand around, you don't think about moving your muscles? Any conscious act that somebody may call free will is based in unconsciousness.

I like to see it this way: The paradox was always there, you just weren't aware of it. The paradox is the ego dissolving itself. The paradox is the smoke and mirrors that constitute it. It likes to disguise itself as something stable and dependable, but it's not. Logic tells you that if you assume false, you can prove anything. You can prove that you did in fact change reality, or you can disprove it. If you assume paradox, you will get a paradox. If you assume "seeking truth, but accepting none", you will, at the end, see the paradox. As for the road that lies ahead? You just carry on, like nothing happened and smile silently.

@Neo Truth is never wrong. Until it is and becomes False.

@Buba What I'm going to say may sound harsh, but please don't take it too personally. I have never been diagnosed with depression and I probably don't know your hell. Your life was misery before you started meditation. What it does is simply revealing to you the extent of what is happening. What you're doing is simply sitting and observing it. Observing it is only possible because you stop chasing all the beautifully real things around you for a few minutes each day. Look at it this way: when surgeon opens up his patient, it's ugly. If the surgeon was not prepared for what he's about to see, he may throw up. He'll feel better, but the patient will not. He may even die. With what you're trying to do, you are the surgeon and the patient. Keep at it and it will get better, even if you get sick and throw up, and it will get worse. You weren't trained for this. Learn from your mistakes and keep going. After some practice, you will learn to appreciate the beauty of the ugly. Just like any good surgeon.

One of my golden nuggets I keep reminding myself of: Truth is whatever stops you from seeking.

@Alby See, what you did with your question is a very sly thing. I don't mean that you did it on purpose, but that's what everybody does. This is something to be aware of. You are trying to lay the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. You are trying to make it something it is not. What is sense? What is to think? What is to explain? What is to feel? What is Enlightenment? What is the physical realm? What is to mix up? What is Ego? What is attachment? What is an answer? By asking a question, you use words you don't question. By answering a question I blow so much smoke, that you forget that what you see is unfamiliar and you stop looking. Sorry for riddling you. I sound like a madman, even to myself sometimes. That's why I don't talk too much about this stuff.

I can relate to your problems. For some reason, I seem to be very susceptible to cannabis. The amount I need to get sky-high is minuscule compared to people I sometimes smoke with. I have never tried to meditate while high though. I'm too scared and humbled of the results marijuana can produce on its own (and meditation as well). I can answer one of your questions from my experience: Dissolution of ego is dissolution of reasons. Ego pushes and pulls. If you truly have no reasons for anything, you have no reason to die. You float. You carry on, like nothing happened, even if on the inside - everything is different.

@SOUL Sorry, if that's what I come off as. I didn't intend to upset anybody. The issue I was pointing out was not meant as Leo's, but mine. I was asking for help. It is very difficult to write something that invites discussion without taking a position and inviting an argument. It seems, that I failed to do so, but hey, I'm still learning this human thing. For me, the original issue is resolved, thanks to everybody for helping me.

I'm watching Leo's videos for some time and there is a trend of how he speaks about the mind's workings I have an issue with. Basically, what videos are saying is that there is this thing called mind, and there is you and the mind tries to make you do things it wants. The mind's way of manipulating you is through deception, which is what Leo calls lying. I'm having two problems. Firstly, there is the distinction between me and my mind, which is in my experience false in two ways. The assessment that something was the mind's doing is never taken towards present moment's actions - you always think so when you refer to the past and make excuses for your own mistakes. The past is just a concept. The notion that it is my mind. The direct experience works by contrasting things to what it deems normal. What is normal isn't noticed and it is therefore unconscious. You also don't get to choose what you contrast out of the normal, therefore, I think that it is a very strange play of words to call the mind mine if I don't get to take any action in its operation. Secondly, I don't like calling the supposed mind's way of doing things "lying". I get that it is only a word, and my reaction to it depends on my taste. Even if my taste is "fabricated" by the mind, it is not a lie. It is the truth. There is no other truth to be had, even if I know that my truth is accidental just like everybody else's. Even if I abandon it, some other truth (lie) will take its place. I feel that calling it bullshit, or a lie, is a profanation of this marvelous performance that is happening before us. I wonder what are Leo's thoughts on this and whether he actually believes these two things (the Me vs the mind and truth=lie). What I see as a consequence of these two is a worldview that pits the I against itself. Isn't it the very reason we all do self-actualization? We seek, but we cannot accept an answer.

@SOUL Still, I will not argue definitions. There is no adopting contradictory perspectives. The contradiction means, that they cannot fit together. The only way out of the paradox is by showing that the two perspectives are indeed one, and the dividing line is the paradox: At that point, it became clear to me, that there is no point in dissecting it any further to "adopt", "learn", "identify", or whatever other label anyone might give it. What I don't "understand" in what you're saying is how a perspective may be unbiased. Any perspective is showing something and concealing something else. When you read my post, you saw it as a post, not a bunch of pixels. You couldn't have comprehended it if you marveled at the complexity of the monitor. The equanimity is the ability to see it as both, when a paradox inevitably arises, and not arguing that it is in fact knowledge, or a bunch of pixels. It is neither and both. @YaNanNallari Are you answering the original problem?

@SOUL I will not argue definitions, as I see no point in it. I may very well use the word adopt in your sense - to make something my own. In this sense I mean that I not merely accept something as possible, or conceptualize it, but to live it. To change myself in a way that me, and what I see as opposite are seen from a certain perspective as one. Not to discard any. It is not a simple act of being aware that brings me to equanimity. It's the adopting. Once you break yourself enough times, you don't care to grow back into something rigid. Only if I take him seriously ;). But to be serious, I think that this is pretty much the point of intellectual openness - to see, that any knowledge is inherently self-contradictory. This contradiction you're showing me is the truth staring right into my face - I don't need to internalize it. I already know it. @Nahm Then, perhaps I'm not the person this video is addressed to (even though I learned something from it). I was simply curious that there is something I'm missing that could use explanation. Perhaps, @Leo Gura did not intend to bring this paradox I'm seeing out.

Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time". While reading it and trying to make sense of it, I was unknowingly doing the Neti-Neti method for months. When it hits me, I was out for two weeks.

I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts, as English is not my native language and because I have recently lost the ability to speak with confidence about what's true and what is not. What I definitely want to say is that I'm grateful that you took my words seriously. @deci belle Your post made me realize that the two problems(?) I was mentioning are linked, which I will use to explain my original statement more clearly. The distinction between "the mind" and "me" is made to contrast two modes of being. One of the modes of being, called the mind, is one that contrasts things against each other. It operates in a self-reifying way, by calling things truth, or lie. Good, or bad. True, or false. It contrasts and picks sides. What gets me is the fact that calling "Me" real and "the mind" false is contrasting and picking sides. There is no "Me" without "the mind", as the first is achieved only by the virtue of emptying the other. It is no more real, better, worse than the other. What the mind does is not a lie any more than the truth. The fact that you have seen the "Reality" by becoming "Me" does not mean that it is any more true than what you see as "The mind". Saying that it is in any way better more real is contrasting and picking sides, which is what "the mind" does. When you are "The mind", there is no "Me". The world is, what it is, always. And it has always been. "Me" has no words - it cannot speak, or think. Language itself is what thoughts are made of, and language is slicing reality into chunks and referring them to every other chunk it knows. @SOUL Actually, I do. In the light of what I said to @deci belle, what "the mind" does not accept, is exactly what needs to be accepted in order to arrive at the "Me". "Me" is the tautology in the logical space. Things I feel strongly about are precisely the ones I need to adopt (learn).