Listen here, jack...
One is a malignant sociopath who cares about nothing but his ego, the other is a decent vanilla guy who will make moderate improvements to America.
Don't poo-poo moderate improvements. A system the size of America cannot be transformed overnight. It inches forward like a fat beast on its belly.

It is so weird and insane when you are high on LSD and you watch yourself in the mirror, the kind of shapes and other people/animals you become is so weird, and actually you get insights into imagination, you are not the one in the mirror, it is just an appearance, you are the headless void.
Anyone else who looks into the mirror on psychedelics?
I think it shows that everything is imagination and your form is just something you imagined for so long thats why you look the same somehow.

"Field" is just a projection of our human minds. There is no concept here giving rise to subatomic particles.
We call it "field" for lack of a better word. And all words are projections.
This isn't happening. You're confusing maps for the territory.
You might as well ask me, "How come the concept of a 'cat' gives rise to something more concrete like a furry 4-legged animal?"

And that is a huge problem.
There is a lot more to this work than enlightenment alone. And there is no such thing as one singular enlightenment. There are many grades and qualities of it. Low grades are easy to attain. High grades are extremely rare.

I'm not attached to it either way.
That's right.
But there are costs.
I never trip to feel good. Ever. Every trip has valuable existential insight. I tend to prefer heavy trips. I don't see much point in micro-dosing.
Because it becomes a crutch and you need to rewire your brain thru manual effort to go far in this work.
Building concentration ability is crucial for this work. You cannot succeed in this work without it. And psychedelics will not build your concentration ability. You need to reach a point where you can enter samadhi through sober concentration.

@Meister_Eckhart How do you know anything?
The problem here is that you're taking knowledge for granted. You've never bothered to wonder how knowledge is possible at all and what makes it tick.
Spend a few years contemplating that.

There are more problems than that. Don't forget the body's health.
Stop framing this as a mutually exclusive thing. You must do both. And don't do psychedelics daily. I only did them daily for specific experiments. I would never make that a chronic habit. That would go against core principles of personal development.

@r0ckyreed You will need to change your state of consciousness.
Even if you experience all the other bubbles, they will still be inside your bubble and imagination.
Be careful not to confuse your currented limited state of consciousness for the limits of consciousness itself.
This is where smoking some DMT would be helpful.

I am suggesting that basically all awakened teachers are still in limited states of consciousness which maintain their mind's structure for the purposes of survival.
You don't fully appreciate what consciousness is unless you've been in state where you cannot even remember your name. All memory is obviously a limitation of consciousness.
I've been in states where I can access the memories of every being in the universe. Since memory is just imagination. You are not really remembering your name, you are imagining it.
To function in this material plane you must be limited.

Could there not be?
You'll have to spend decades breaking down that character. Awakening will not do that for you. Structure of the mind remain even after awakening, otherwise you'd be dead.
If you can still remember your name, obviously old structures of the mind remain.

It's worse than you think.
You're imagining others, period.

Imagination means it is a mental activity.
The physical world is the mental activity of an Infinite Mind.
For example, you can become conscious of how you are imagining your own hands or your parents or your childhood.
My entire body is imaginary. Made up of figments of consciousness.
You will readily admit that dreams are imaginary, right? Like, your body inside a dream is imaginary, right? Obviously. Well, now just go one step further and apply that to the physical world. It is just a bit more of a powerful form of imagination.

Psychedelics are a gateway which show you the work you need to be doing outside of psychedelics.
Put the down the LSD and get to working fixing all the shit that LSD brought to your attention.
Then, take another hit some months down the road.

Notice that you are giving meaninglessness a negative meaning, which is not true meaninglessness.
If you do nothing and don't try, that is just as meaningless. Except you will be miserable.

Blocking Mods is not possible for the same reason that you cannot have a mute button for police. Police have sirens and loudspeakers for a reason.
I keep a very close eye on Mods to make sure they don't abuse their power. If I see a Mod abusing their power, I will act on it swiftly. But I'm mostly very satisfied with the job our current Mod team is doing.
Just because you think something in "unhealthy" from your POV does necessarily mean that I or others will agree. You need to develop some thick skin in an online forum, where people are mostly doing their own thing and I cannot personally micro-manage everyone. People will have different opinions and be at different levels of development.
If someone feels there is abuse by Mods, by all means message me and I will look into it. But you better have a strong case.
#ModLivesMatter
P.S. And if you feel another member is being abusive, report it to me or the Mods. But again, you better make a strong case. We will not tolerate abusive behavior on this forum. But abuse has to be more than a personal offense.

@Breakingthewall Relying on a chemical to sustain your consciousness is a terrible long-term strategy. You must find ways to get the same effect naturally. Otherwise you will always be a slave to that chemical.

Don't lose sight of the point.
The point of skepticism is not an end in itself but a means to arrive at truth. What we really care about is truth. Do you have a pure, genuine desire for truth? If you do, then you will be loyal to that end, not to skepticism. Skepticism is only valuable in so far as it is helping you in your mission to reach truth. If skepticism stops serving that function, then you must discard it.
For example, how do you know that your use of skepticism isn't a self-deception? Why do you assume skepticism will lead you to truth? How can you be sure you're apply skepticism properly?
Ground yourself in a pure, genuine desire for truth, and the rest will fix itself.

Needy is when you're desperately asking another for something.
Like if I came on this forum and started begging you for donations because I didn't have my finances together. People who don't get their shit together end up in a state of desperation for money, sex, a sale, love, or whatever.
One of your self-help goals should be to create a state of such abundance that you don't have a desperate need for anything from anyone.
Fill your cup until it runeth over and never gets depleted again. This is how you attract people to you. Nobody wants to be friends with a leech. (Mostly because everyone wants to be the leech themselves.) The secret to life is to surrender all your leeching impulses. Make a commitment to stop being a leech in every area of your life. This is the magic of living selflessly. God is infinite selflessness, infinite giving, infinite abundance.

The point is to compare apples to apples.
It would be interesting what would have been said about Eckhart Tolle if you had 500 hours of video of him from ages 28 to 35 and you had 22,000 forum posts and some 50,000 YT comments from him.
The thing you gotta take into account is that you guys have a lot more data on me than any other spiritual teacher in existence. So it's much easier to find stuff you don't like.
If you had 50,000 YT comments from Jesus, I wonder what you would find objectionable. If you knew all of Jesus' opinions on dating, sex, diet, environment, politics, race, etc. do you honestly think you would like them all?

There's two kinds of certainty:
Certainty from ignorance, and certainty from direct experience.

1) George Floyd was resisting arrest very much. Excessive force was used. Trial should occur to sort out the details. And I still support BLM. Yes, the Floyd case was a self-fulfilling prophecy of his fear. But that doesn't justify the excessive use of force. My take on Floyd is nuanced. I did not "victim shame" him.
2) Dating advice has a very specific pragmatic context. It is not spiritual advice and is meeting the guy where he's at and telling him what he needs to hear to correct himself.
3) I tend to make posts on this forum rather casually and sometimes flippantly, because I make thousands of posts. These are not carefully constructed rhetorical masterpieces with hours of research. I'm spitballin here. Sometimes the posts are sloppy or rough.
4) Sometimes my tone is obnoxious and arrogant. I will work on that in the future. You'll definitely see that improve as I grow.

Watching Borat is insufferably cringe. How does Sasha not break character? He has a god-like ability to stomach cringe.

Also, consider this:
I deliberately try not to act saintly because that is what makes students worship the teacher and leads to all sorts of unrealistic expectations. You see, if you discover that Ekhart Tolle watched some porn, this would outrage and disgust you because in his public persona he presents this image of a saintly figure. You probably can't even imagine Ekhart Tolle having sex. This entire stereotype is damaging and absurd. Ekhart Tolle's audience would be better served if he said FUCK! once in a while.
The trap is that as a spiritual student to go looking for ever-more saintlier teachers to validate your naive ideas about this work. And once you find this saintliest teacher, he feels so beyond you, so super-human, that you can't help but worship him and believe his every word. And later you discover that he eats meat, has sex, looks at porn, drinks wine, makes mistakes, supports centrist capitalist politicians, avoids paying taxes, hunts animals, kills a fly, gets a divorce, has sex with a hooker in Thailand, gets angry, or whatever else, and your whole fantasy about gurus collapses.
This work is not about acting saintly. It would be best if you dropped this expectation of saintliness. Saintliness is precisely what creates cult followings.
P.S. Your revered guru Alan Watts drank himself to death and you can't handle Leo enjoying some porn? I could easily not mention my enjoyment of porn to you, and then you would think I am 50% more saintly. I could further boost my saintliness by 100% by never saying FUCK any more. Ekhart Tolle drinks wine. I don't even drink. So HA!
Don't forget that your expectations for my behavior are largely your own fantasy, and I have no obligation play into your fantasy of how conscious people should behave. My only obligation is to not exploit you, not abuse you, and not mislead you into delusion. But if I want to watch some porn, then I will and you'll just have to go cry in the corner I guess.

Basically not. The visuals are actually a lesser mode of consciousness. When consciousness becomes maximally infinite, it is pure abstraction. Any form would limit it. If you are seeing some DMT machine elf, that is still a limited form. You'd be better off dropping that form and going for pure abstraction.
It's a bit like art.
Realist art requires a less advanced mind to appreciate and understand.
Abstract art requires an advanced mind to appreciate and understand.
The deepest levels of understanding are pure abstractions.

It depends on how you define "personality".
If you define shyness and insecurity and inexperience as part of your personality, then yes, you can change that.
But there will always be an deeper, more fundamental personality which you cannot change. But that personality is not inherently shy.
Don't worry about these philosophical issues. Simply go get massive experience socializing and that will fix many of your problems until your question melts away.
I used to be extremely shy and socially insecure, to the point of not being able to have a conversation with a taxi driver or hair stylist or grocery store clerk.