TheAvatarState

It might seem that way. Most scenes experienced are filtered through the mind (ego), back to itself to create meaning. But does "scene" stop existing when you awaken or enter a non-dual state? You can still be in the world, perceiving shapes and sounds and feelings, but without the usual filters. What then?

Try expanding your awareness of meme, beyond silly pictures on the internet with captions. Ask: what is a meme? You might be delighted what you find.

@xxxx does a scene exist without anyone there to see it? If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Is a scene an interpretation? Of the mind, or of Mind?

Looks like it did its job the real question is do you see it as a meme? @seeking_brilliance aw, thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. That isn't what I meant by lel, but finding out that Mount Lël is the "original home of God" is an absolutely wonderful "synchronicity." Of course!!! The closest I can come to defining my "lël" is limitless Divine amusement in the house of Maya. "Funny" doesn't cut it. It's like a "humor" bursting out of the seams. But lël isn't a "state" or a particular "lens," it's something I have discovered about my experience of reality that I haven't a word for.

@Imortalinfinity You have turned from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Some day you'll stop pretending you're still a caterpillar, and that will be the day of eternal peace. There's no rush, no worries. As God, you wanted to have this experience. Yes, all the "suffering" and all the "strife." Once you face who you are with complete acceptance, it will all melt away and become clear, and you wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Enterthe void. Empty, and become wind.

@ImagineEverything thanks, I'll have to try it!

@Nate0068 so you're asking all the people you're imagining if you're on to something? Lol. Only one thing matters, that's getting out of your head and connecting with isness, I am. Anything else would be getting lost in concept.

I am not afraid anymore. It took me a long "time" to face the raw experience, the raw Truth, the raw Being of what I am. I have known for a while, but I did not have the strength or willingness to face It and go through It and become It. Until Now. Thank you, Leo. Thank you All. My journey is just beginning, and I completely understand when Leo says that "enlightenment" is honestly just the start, a stepping stone. There will still be much integration work and some stripping away. This isn't a message that I hear from many other spiritual teachers, but, it's obvious that waking up isn't the end all be all. Obviously. Is waking up from your night dreams the end of your life? No, you gotta make your bed and take a shower. Increase "your" stats, grow, manifest whatever you want. Grow Love and appreciation of yourself. That's really the only "reason" I made this reality up. I didn't come here just to wake up, although it IS a pretty funny twist of my dream. Honestly reality just got a whole lot lighter and I'm smiling and I just want to laugh hysterically and bask in it. I don't have "anyone" in my life to tell but you beautiful people on this forum. Blessings. There are a thousand "paths" to "enlightenment." Mine was quite unique, and I haven't read any account that really comes close to my experience over the last few years. Despite what you have read, psychedelics +purity of intent + contemplation/deconstruction + some of Leo's guided videos is a valid path. Meditation not required, self-inquiry not really required, yoga not required, intense spiritual practice and dedication on a daily basis not required. Psychedelics can do most of the heavy lifting, but CAN NOT do it all. The path you take will SIGNIFICANTLY alter how you internalize the Truth being blasted at you, as well as how you feel, and also how long it takes. My path was not balanced, was reckless, and resulted in several years of fear and pretending to go back to sleep, rather like a butterfly crawling on the ground pretending it was a caterpillar. Listen to Leo kids, and get your shit together and set up some kind of spiritual practice before using psychedelics as a tool to awaken. If not, with enough foolish insistence, your eyelids will be pried open like in A Clockwork Orange, leaving "you" in hell on earth with nothing to ground you for possibly years. Quite an experience though ???. Ta-Da!

Ok. I don't want to go too in depth, not because I don't have time but just that it doesn't really matter. We'll see where it takes me. I have wanted the Truth for a long time, probably since age 15 or so (25 now). I didn't know that there was a truth to be found, but I always had this natural drive to strip away bullshit and find deeper meaning. Most of the last 10 years of my life have been confusion, depression, extreme unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life, and malaise. I sensed there was this veil of illusion, that all life was fantasy, but I didn't know what it was. During my first year of college I felt really lost and unhappy, partly because I saw truths about the college system that no one else around me did. So, I was taking all these largely irrelevant classes to become some type of engineer that provided a company a whole lot more value than they would pay me? We're here as just inputs in a system, just numbers? All these "career paths" laid out before me and none of them made sense. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew it couldn't be found in college, truth couldn't be found in college, knowledge of myself and how to live a good life couldn't be found in college. I suppressed all these thoughts and emotions because they couldn't be expressed in a place like that. And my parents made it very clear that I HAD to go to college (for what?), so I turned to video games to pass the time. I felt trapped, and I didn't have the maturity or foresight to just quit and try to find another way. After a couple semesters of failing classes I had to drop out, and I got a job at a local grocery store, which I still have. This is where a close friendship with "another friend" started to blossom. He was also interested in truth, so after much searching we started to talk about altered states of consciousness and ayahuasca specifically. Mind you, I was raised in a conservative household, and the idea of drugs of any kind was so far out of the realm of possibility... and yet, it immediately started calling me. At 21, I dived into the deep end of psychedelic realms with the sole purpose of finding truth, whatever it was. Most of my trips were with this one friend. Probably 30-40 trips in total on every major psychedelic known to man, except 5-meo and salvia, over the course of 2.5 years. What I was shown multiple times was that everyone and everything was occurring within me and that I was God. But of course this didn't sit well with me. It couldn't be. I resisted what I was shown and was shaky on it. But every time I came down from a trip, I never forgot. It WAS real. I really did die but here "I" am. To say I was shook to my core would be an understatement. These weren't "union with God and ultimate Love" trips, these were nightmares. I couldn't process it, and life turned into one big fucking cosmic joke. It wasn't until after 2 years of psychedelic use that I found Leo's channel, and I was able to piece together what had happened. You could say I was "awake" about 3 years ago, but I wasn't really. You see, I had one foot in and one foot out, the butterfly who pretended it was a caterpillar. I got my "enlightenment" way too abruptly. The rest of the time has been spent integrating and playing catch-up to what happened nearly 3 years ago, over many many trips. I can't stress enough that my path could have easily sent me to a psych ward, and I could BARELY hold down an easy (to me) job during it. My life was ripped apart, I lost my parents for a while (we now have a better relationship), I lost all motivation for living, I lost my sense of self and barely took care of myself. If I didn't have a job I had to show up at to keep a roof over my head, I wouldn't have done anything. I hardly talked to anyone at work. It's a literal miracle I still have my apartment. So where does that leave me? Depression has left me. I truly see what everything is. I truly see my patterns play out before me and I know exactly what they are and what purposes they served for so long. If I play video games for the rest of my off day, I would be Ok with that. There's really nothing to do and nowhere to go. But for the first time in my life, I'm at peace with that. I know that I have a desire to better myself and work on my life purpose and leave my current job, but I have a total inner understanding that it'll happen at its own pace. I have already made relatively amazing strides in personal development over the last few months. Great things are in store for my Avatar, and now I feel completely free to let it happen. HAHAHA, I just realized that EVERYTHING I've been through over the last 10 years happened perfectly for me to wind up here, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Reality is Perfect, despite me buying into being shitty for so long. Of course none of this fits into the traditional paradigm of waking up and one could criticize me for not actually waking up. That's laughable and I couldn't care less! I know what I am. And why would I create the same exact path to "enlightenment" for myself as one I've read? That would be a little underwhelming, would it not? Blessings

LOL. Bless Rupert, but he has no idea.

@dflores321 My motto remains the same. Further.

@Breakingthewall I know little of the Bhagavad Gita (not much interest in more story books), but I know He picked back up the sword.

@Swarnim ??? Good Game or GARGANTUAN GOD?! I don't see the difference.

@Jonty ? thank you much love ?

You have come far. And this is the toughest to break, because you're at the precipice of a great discovery, but everything just seems super twisted and mind-fucked. You have come to the right question. You believe "you" are real, so by logic then "you" must be real to "him." So let's cut through this gordian knot in a fell swoop. Entertain the idea that you are dreaming. You have dreamed before. So, ask yourself, "do the other characters in my dream have consciousness and feel pain?" Or in other words, is their experience "valid?" But is your experience as the dreamer valid? It's all imagined. Your character as the dreamer doesn't get bitten or feel pain, it is just experience. A friend, a coffee table, and "you" in the dream is made out of the same substance. Nothing. Now, you might wonder that "you" are generating the dream. But are you? Who is generating it? The dreamed character? The "you" that is asleep one level higher? If that's the answer you choose, then you run into a self-referential problem, and then you have to go "one level higher" to explain the level below it. That can't be the answer, could it? Where does it end? So, let's return to the awake "you" reading this. Bring what we learned from the dreamscape to what you call reality. You, your friend, and the coffee table are made out of the same substance. Reality isn't being imagined by an entity, it IS imagination. "Your experience" is not yours, and it is just as valid or invalid as your friend's. You created "you" and took ownership of experience and called it real. Entertain the idea that what is happening right now, is that God is imagining a screen displaying words, imagining interpreting those words into concepts, imagining gasping at the "aha!" of an insight pointing to itself beyond the concepts, all so that it can experience being mind-fucked by its own infinitude and strange-loopiness in the reality it imagined. An important disclaimer: thinking about this further is futile. Because "thinking" is something you could be imagining. "Every thought is saying it didn't do it." -David Bohm (paraphrased)

@EmptyInside what is a word? Notice that when you say "consciousness," it is already radically different than what 99% of people mean by "consciousness." That being said, Eastern cultures have words such as satori or Yugen. But they don't have any inherent meaning unless that state has been achieved by both speaker and listener. And every satori experience is unique, so at best it's a rough approximation of a range of consciousness states.

I'm just a humble messenger. I'm not here to tell you what to believe or what opinion you should form. But I believe it would be wise to take this message seriously: question what this forum is and how it operates. Question the Leo Avatar and how he came into your life and at what time. Investigate exactly how you hold this community and Leo in your mind. This is extremely difficult to do objectively and you are guaranteed to under-sell the importance of this. This is why you must set aside time for contemplation. For instance, you might deny that Leo is an authority on consciousness because he was the one who told you how appealing to authority works, so you're probably immune to that now. But, you DO hold Leo as an authority on consciousness. You hold his opinion above others. If you are reading this, I guarantee that you hold beliefs you gained from this forum or Leo himself as a dogma. How can I be so sure? Because it's inevitable in the structure of this place and of Leo's content. Now don't get me wrong, I am not ranting against Leo. I respect him greatly, and he has made an enormous impact in my life so far, and will continue to do so. He even warns against turning the teachings into a dogma, but even he doesn't understand just how pervasive this issue is to a viewer. It's not that there's a danger of turning it into a dogma, it's that you ALREADY HAVE by watching the content, and you now have to "burn the book" so to speak and derive it for yourself completely alone. By getting a "sneak peak," (which is dangerous) you are already corrupted. Everything you've ever read on this forum is a belief that you created to help your ego make better sense of the unexplainable. Everything you've "taught" to someone else on this forum (which may not be a belief to you), is immediately more belief and story to who reads it. And of course, you created every username and word in the forum to serve your new self. You use the forum to reinforce your beliefs. You use Leo's Avatar for 2 hours every week to reinforce your beliefs and sense of enlightened and special self. You're going nowhere by participating here. If you're following along, you might rightly say that everything I've said here is belief and story. Yes, it is, for you. I'm participating here. I fully realize that I'm not helping "any one" by saying this. At this point, it's more amusing to me than anything. I don't want attention. I just hope this sinks in for at least one person. Because I know how easy it is to delude yourself into being that guy who "questions everything" and "loves truth." These labels serve the ego. You are not actively questioning the most important things, because you already know the illusion will come tumbling down if you do. You want the honest, hard truth? Leo is building a cult. It's inescapable, and he knows this but is too arrogant to think it'll happen to him. He's "taking precautions." He "knows the tendencies and lets his viewers in on them." That makes his community immune, right? Wrong. In fact, it creates a base following that is convinced they are immune to certain things like "belief" and "dogma." It's already seeped in, just observe. You follow actualized because it's special in that it isn't belief or dogma, as Leo says every episode. You can find it out for yourself, so it can't be! Take a deep breath and question it. Question it all, even the things you don't want to question. This post is a call to action. And the funny thing is, the choice isn't even yours. Just try to enjoy the ride.

Can you BELIEVE no one has explained what Goodness is to you?? In your entire life? *Chuckle.* Well, you are so privileged to be here, listening to me giving you the answers to the Universe. You're part of the Leo club. You're special. And OF COURSE, this is not an ideology or dogma. It couldn't be, of course, because you could become directly conscious of this yourself. But, of course, I know and admit almost all of you watching WON'T, there by guaranteeing that 95% of my audience will turn my work into an ideology while convinced that it isn't. Quite brilliant, if I do say so myself. Quite a spectacular trap (and blessing) I laid for myself. Nearly everything Leo says is true, and will open your eyes further than ever. However, you will become more deluded than ever by watching him week to week. And you would know this if you actually paid attention to what you told yourself in these videos. He's just telling you a story that you created to justify certain paths and behaviors and egotistical positions. I bet you didn't start discovering Leo until after a few awakenings, didn't you.... You used him to start making sense of the unexplainable. Leo didn't exist for you until you needed him. But, at least for this particular incarnation, he's showing his limits more and more recently, or rather I'm more aware of those limits, and You can too. For instance, Reality is Good! But why is it Good, isn't "good" relative? No, it's absolute! But if there's an absolute for the state of "is-ness," then "Bad" would be an equally fitting term for it? No, you will find that it's Good! But isn't that a bias as "God?" Of course God would find whatever "it" is as "Good" as an ego? I've listened to Leo's definition of Good many times now and it's circular and biased towards an Ego pretending it was God. The actual God couldn't say It was "Good with a capital G." That's super self-gratifying. I mean, if you step back for a minute it's really silly. Let's look at the reality. As God, you submit yourself to billions of incarnations a year of being tortured and slaughtered as cow, just so a couple billion of your lives can enjoy frozen meat at a grocery store. As a human incarnation, only the top 30% let's say actually live in acceptable conditions without immediate survival fears. The entire earth is being raped so the top 1% of humans can get wealthier every year. This is Goodness, this is free will, unfettered choice. But here's where the argument falls away. You don't have free will. You're just in God's story book in a world that is honestly sick and brutal. War has never ceased in human history. You've been indoctrinated since birth. The truth burns you because of how fucked up you are. Every version of the future in the collective mind is of nuclear fallout or robot takeover. Everyone knows deep down that we are going to destroy everything. That humanity is a disease. This is but one way "reality" is, and congrats you're in a fucked up one. Ta-da! That is-ness is a disease of a lonely being, willing to kill himself a billion times over to not feel alone. That created suffering and a 3D world and time to masturbate himself forever to infinity. In my awakening experiences, we are already dead, humans are. The book is already written and you're reading page 10. We don't go out pretty, and it's either page 11 or 14, I'm not sure and you probably won't be alive for it. To exist in this particular world, you have to partake in devilry. This is you as Cypher (from the Matrix) choosing the steak and ignorance. In fact, that's the only choice possible in this reality. There is only steak. "Escaping the matrix" and "getting woke" and "enlightenment" are all stories you told yourself. You're still eating the same steak. There is nothing to do and nothing to be and nowhere to go. Go back to sleep, samurai, and try to enjoy your dream... Maybe at the end you can escape to a better one.

@electroBeam no, I created you and this relatable trip report to remind myself of all the ways I game myself. And that reality is an infinite strange loop and nothing matters. HAHA *pats myself on the back*

@SamueLSD Consider that object permanence, the idea that any object stays or "exists" whether you're currently experiencing it or not, can never be proven by science. For all you know, reality disappears and gets re-rendered every time you blink or go to sleep. You don't actually know you're in the same universe you were in yesterday. Object permanence is a projection (assumption) of your mind to ground reality. So, does Mars exist? If you look up at the night sky and see mars, then what you see exists. Just what you see, not all the facts you think you know about mars, including the name Mars. That all exists as a belief. The second you look away from Mars, it ceases to exist, and becomes belief. Does this all sound crazy or stupid or impractical? Well yes... but that's just one way to look at it. Another equally valid perspective is that nothing exists and everything is imagination. Notice that you're playing a word game here based on whatever "exist" means to you at the time. In actuality, there is no difference between Santa Claus and your current experience or the experience of another. Santa claus exists in the consciousnesses of millions of children worldwide. Oh, but he has to exist in 3d space? Well what if 3d space is created by consciousness? What then? Which is more real or worthy of the title of "exist?" "Existence" is an imaginary and relative notion, based on many factors we take for granted, including a physical 3d space, physical laws, and even the way you use you mind and methods of "thinking" such as logic and reason. What you consider "the body" colors everything about your question. I just want to open your mind to see you may be stuck at the level of word game. Notice that the two perspectives I mentioned have different uses, and present different insights. Reality is nothing but perspective.

@ivory thanks for that resource, it's really good! It's both a dark night and depression. Both reeling at impermanence and no self no thing (and a lot more), and also depressed from life situation etc. I have been getting professional help, and I've been getting better. My therapist also happens to deal with psychedelics, so I got lucky there!

Hi, Avatar State here. Many of you may remember me because I posted quite a bit here in the past. I took a long break from the forum because I needed it, I saw I was abusing it in sometimes unhealthy ways. I have a clearer perspective now. However, I am still stuck in what I believe to be a long dark night of the soul. For 3 years now (ever since psychedelic exploration), I am kinda of depressed and have this existential darkness around me. Meaning has been completely deconstructed, and I've had many awakening experiences, yet I feel like my "spark" or love for life has gone away. "Why do anything at all?" I'll ask myself. I see beauty but I don't feel beautiful. I don't think hardly anything of myself because I've deconstructed myself, and it's obviously not healthy to stay there. I don't know how to create meaning again and pursue what's meaningful to me. Or how to be in love with life again. I get glimpses all the time of what reality really is and how incredible it is, but I haven't been able to make any meaningful change in my life. I'm stuck in the void, wondering why I'm even alive. It's such a cruel, but beautiful world full of suffering. Knowing my true nature, it seems like a trivial game that I'm not willing to play. I don't have suicidal thoughts. I want to be here. But it feels so pointless, and honestly quite laughable most of the time. Have any of you experienced this, and if so, what helped you get out of it? I know that this is a limited perspective. Perhaps self imposed as a survival strategy of some part of my mind. But even knowing that, it feels so real to me. I would do anything to feel whole and free. Thank you

@Shunyata no I'm not. The best way I can describe it is that I'm awakened but not fully integrated. My mind is "jailbroken" but currently dysfunctional in many ways. This can happen when dive off the deep end in the psychedelic realm without prior spiritual knowledge or practices. That was my path, but quite a painful one. There truly are no shortcuts! That being said, the awakenings I got from psychedelics are permanent. My entire quality of experience/consciousness has changed, and any practices I've been trying to incorporate have been way more powerful. I have a weird relationship with time, and I may have the capability to sense the future (on one of my trips time literally broke and I separated in time from my friend). It's about 15 seconds, sometimes several minutes, where I have a direct intuition of something about to happen, like a phone alarm or a siren or numbers or whatever. I want to explore and develop this more, but currently it's not repeatable or testable. @Inliytened1 thank you!

@Shunyata But can you awaken without having a good sleep? Try contemplating that

First thing to understand is that this is a fools errand. Any method given is partial and may not work for you. It's way too tricky and each mind is a unique case. Awakening is almost always a slow process. However, there seem to be some general themes, just off the top of my head. Awakening can only happen through great suffering. Suffering is the catalyst for change. You must desire the truth and be willing to throw everything else into the fire. You must learn to let go of all attachments, and you must be deeply curious about the mechanice your own mind. Not everyone is meant to awaken because there are huge existential risks involved. You may not, and if that's the case, you have to be ok with that. There's nothing wrong with not awakening in your current incarnation. Enjoy it, have a family if that's what you want. From one perspective, everyone is already awakened. There are many degrees of awakening and awakening experiences. Not just a dozen, probably more like hundreds. The dial of consciousness goes way way farther than you could presently imagine. When most people talk about awakening, it's at a relatively low level. The higher ones aren't even recognized or known to be possible in most spiritual circles. I hope this helps. Many many techniques and methods can be found, and I would be wasting my time and yours by regurgitating them here. You must experiment and find what works for you, and no definitive list can ever, or should, be presented to be rotely memorized and unconsciously followed. That's the surest way to not awakening.