TheAvatarState

@Vitamine Water Deep wisdom for sure. Feminine wisdom, actually, if you think about it. It is the surrender to go with the flow of life. Waterbenders draw their power from the moon, the receiving and reflection energy of the sun. Waterbending is based on Tai Chi, an internal style that focuses on the control of energy. It is a very soft, gentle and flowing, but devastating when mastered. Although Bruce Lee learned a more external style in Wing Chun, he also took the wisdom from many different styles and incorporated it into his own. These two styles seem to be closely related. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but he seemed to understand the "external" and "internal" so well that he transcended and incorporated both into his own style. Perhaps he really was the Avatar of martial arts. http://taichisnob.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-am-not-bruce-lee.html

@Leo Gura Thanks for the reply. I've been seeing this topic pop up a lot lately, so I'll be doing some research of my own as well

@Leo Gura What I was asking is if you've personally researched them and accessed them? And do you recommend any particular books you might have read? I've purchased your booklist by the way.

@Wisebaxter Can't recommend it enough. Author is Zan Perrion.

@Wisebaxter Ah, I see where you're coming from now. It did sound pretty extreme at first, lol. If that works for you, great! However, women are beautiful to me, and in my opinion, it would be a shame to reduce them to lumps of flesh. After reading The Alabaster Girl (fantastic book!), it became apparent to me how beautiful and graceful women actually are. You'll start seeing women in a whole new, healthier light.

@Wisebaxter Thanks! Yeah, I'm so glad I did it. So many men are focused on avoiding all types of triggers, and associating the trigger with the act of masturbating. The fact is that the world is full of triggers way outside the confines of your computer screen. Watching porn occasionally without touching yourself can help disassociate the trigger from the act, and thus subtly rewire your brain. Like, if you can watch your favorite, most triggering and boner-inducing media WITHOUT feeling the need to jerk off, then what the fuck is going to stop you? NOTHING! It's liberating. It's facing the beast head-on and coming out victorious... I like how I related it to a threshold guardian of the Hero's journey. I don't necessarily share the same sentiment as the monk. That may be a valid and potent perspective if you're trying to be celibate, but that's not my goal in the end. I want to be more intimate, and try moving into solid green. I want to have more engaging and passionate sex. I love my body and this human experience, and to deny and label those parts of me and women as "grotesque" is quite a shame, in my opinion. That in itself is an ideology built up to avoid the human experience. Not saying there isn't power in that... but there's also great sacrifice. I don't like denying my body, I'm interested in self-love and acceptance of who I am.

@Vitamine Water It's funny that your signature is a quote by Bruce Lee. I've never watched any of his movies (yet), but a few weeks ago I was compelled to purchase a biography of his, as well as a special edition magazine about his life. I'll be reading those soon! HA! Have you seen Avatar the Last Airbender yet? If not, what are you doing with your life?! Much love and good vibes headed your way

That is totally backwards. That is not what I said, read it again. "Doesn't matter if you agree or disagree" is an invitation to drop all prior knowledge and explore what he said for yourself. You know, the drop all ideology part? Don't filter anything he says with your previous ideology, take it in. Be radically open minded. The point I was making was don't believe in it. This is how you should treat every teaching! This is very simple. What do you have other than direct experience? How else can you interact with the world? How else can you read a book? How else can you study scientific concepts? Is there anything else you can be certain of other than your human perception?

@Leonid This is a big change, and you're the man for taking it! Remember, when you feel the urge to relapse, stop, catch your breath, and reach out to someone if possible. You REALLY don't want this relapse, no matter how much your mind will trick you into thinking it's the best feeling in the world. It's not. It's shallow, and only lasts a few minutes, then you're weak and tired. Fuck that! Start visualizing yourself 360 days from now. Intently, clearly, in great detail. Do this everyday, and after a week or two, you'll start building that fire of vision and passion to fuel the rest of your journey. ?❤️

@Leo Gura how do you know? Have you experienced or accessed them? I'd be very interested in this topic.

@Vitamine Water congrats Dude! It's kind of surreal to wake up and see your wonderful post on the completion of your goal! Really makes the completion of mine seem more tangible. Cheers! Here's to the next 60 days my friend! ??

Day 11: Energy: 4 Awareness: 5 Sexual thoughts/urges: 4 Self-esteem: 5 Social confidence: 4 Wow. I can start to feel my energy subtly changing. The way I look at women is different. Even women I consider a 7/10 physically are starting to look more beautiful. But it's not like a little boy fantasy or craving. It's like a lower, deeper, and fully mascline frequency that I'm becoming more aware of. Like I want to sit and appreciate the fuck out of women. Not at a shallow level. They have so many new perspectives and emotions to share, and I haven't been getting any of it. I understand the need to integrate the masculine and the feminine. I've been trying this over the last couple of weeks, so this isn't just something that popped out of the blue. I watched Leo's video on understanding the opposite sex, and man, I admittedly don't know anything about women. But because of my radically open mind and stage yellow outlook, I was easily able to follow Leo's guided visualization exercise of picturing myself as a women getting fucked in the bedroom: surrendering. That actually really opened me up, and I saw the beauty in that. I saw the beauty of the Taijitsu reflected in masculinity and feminity. It is the S shape, the curve, the asymmetry, that really make it what it is. It was really a new experience to feel that surrender is a valid mode through life, and it really reminded me of what I've been learning about spirituality. I feel like women should naturally better at spirituality than men because they are so open to surrender and intuition. The more ingrained left-brain of a man gets in the way too much. Ekhart Tollé talks about this in The Power of Now, and I think he's correct here.

Notice that agreement is a very shallow term only based on your own past experience; it is not grounded in anything but your own ego. Agreement, disagreement, who gives a shit? Aren't you after truth? I've never believed a single fucking word Leo has ever said. I've immediately challenged it and contemplated it, or experienced it where I could. At the end of every video, especially his recent ones, he says to be careful not to turn actualized.org into an ideology, because it can happen. I'm aware of that, and you should be too. You can say this about any great figure who has ever lived... It is not your place to judge other people for that, and certainly not acceptable to discount Leo based on that fact. People are going to do what they're going to do, and egoic people can lead themselves to self-deception. That is not Leo's doing.

Did you know that it's a 3-part series, and that parts 2-3 go into the details and examples? Truth is found by bringing up examples in your own direct experience, and you didn't watch the part where he did that. I can see the viewpoint of if you only watched part 1, it would seem that way. Really? Tell me something: What do you have other than direct experience? I'd be happy to discuss this with you, because I know you'll have objections and misconceptions about it. Breaking through the mind and all your programming is not an easy task, I get that. It is not his place to discuss the benefits of science. That is everywhere you look, widely known. He has a deeper appreciation than most scientists for what science can and can't do. In no place does he say science itself is bad (the culture and dogma around it, yes). He loves and studies science. He has stated that his favorite book is "Godel, Escher, and Bach," one of the most challenging and beautiful books ever written about this stuff. It is quite apparent from reading that article that Lance is writing from egoic backlash and confusion. There's a hint of contempt and judgment in everything he writes. Not only that, none of what he said actually holds water. He is the preacher giving the sermon, committing the same mistakes that he accuses Leo of making (which Leo actually does not make). Notice how Lance appeals to your fears and rallies you up. "Leo Gura literally uses hypnosis techniques as a means to brainwash vulnerable people. Do not go to Leo Gura, or any unlicensed source, for psychological help." Huh? "It is no wonder Leo Gura advocates psychotropic drug use, it makes his victims far easier to hypnotize." Lance throws out this crazy hypothesis (to get you riled up, to hypnotize you), coming from ignorance on what psychedelics are and why Leo advocates for them. "Upon watching his content on spirituality, and reading through the commentary, I was GREATLY unnerved by the lack of skepticism displayed by the arrogant anti-rationalist nihilists who have decided that they are “enlightened,” that they are deities and identified with whatever kind of notion they have attached to the label “Absolute Infinity,” and that they are above any sort of level-headed interpersonal conversation with people who have contrary viewpoints." Complete ignorance on the matter, and conceptualizing stories to pander to his ego. None of what he said is based on anything, it's delusion. Leo is the biggest skeptic I know; a true skeptic. Skepticism taken to the extreme. Lance is not skeptical of his own beliefs, or the basis of math and science. Such a self-deception. "Scientific theories do not contain semantics. THERE ARE NO METAPHYSICAL OR EPISTEMOLOGICAL RAMIFICATIONS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS." Yes, exactly, because it's not the scientist's place to explore them (it should). Just because science is not aware of them does not mean they don't exist. Science views each discovery from the lens of materialism, and is not aware of its own paradigm. "FURTHERMORE STILL, he is claiming that there are metaphysical implications of Gödel's theorems. Ask any reputable mathematician knowledgeable on the subject, and they will assure you that this is not the case in the slightest. Really? You're going to trust Leo about mathematics, over the mathematicians? Leo doesn't even know what mathematics is." Why would you trust mathematicians to be aware of the larger picture of their discoveries? Are they not fundamentally pursuing a small field of study? This point makes no sense.

What did I tell you last week? No ideologies or dogma of any kind. This belief is not grounded in anything other than your egoic desire to want it to be true. Become aware of that. If you'd like to explain this statement further, then I'm all ears. But I have a hunch that you can't actually explain what you just said with any credibility or resourcefulness.

What happiness are they measuring? Short-term dopamine levels. You are correct that that isn't sustainable, and you'll stop seeing things that made you happy as making you happy after a while. Money works this way. If you got a thousand dollars today, you'd be extremely happy and thankful. You get the same amount tomorrow, you'd also be happy and thankful. But after weeks of that, due to law of diminishing returns, that some sum of money will no longer give you the same positive response. You may even start resenting the money, because it just brought up a bunch of other problems, and you'll start wanting more money to fuel your new lifestyle. It will never be enough. I'll let you in on a little secret. Rich people who live a rich lifestyle always want more, and because they're always longing, they're fucking miserable. On the outside, they're on top of the world. On the inside, every single one of them is dying. They'll never tell you that (perhaps some of them have told their therapist), but that is what's really going on. I want you to start to understand that this cyclical lifestyle isn't happiness. This is denial. Start thinking of happiness more like contentment and acceptance. Is it possible to be surging with dopamine and crying at the beauty of everything for the rest of your life? No. But it's possible to have a more mellow, content, underlying state of happiness for the rest of your life. I'm not going to keep any secrets from you, so here is the true definition of happiness: Happiness is the degree to which you can accept and be conscious of the present moment. That's it. Contemplate that, and bring that into your direct experience to see if that's true. This mind state is not sustainable to you now, but it could be with much practice. It is possible.

@Roman Edouard You said that it's not possible to be happy all the time. Why do you believe that?

So this experience happened 5 days ago, yet I'm still blown away by the simplicity and power of it. I've been debating whether I should write a full post on it, but I figured that my account could help others on this forum. And are we not on this journey together? I didn't want to wait too long, or I might lose some of the finer details. This story is just as much for me as it is for you. I really hope you'll be able to understand (or at least intuit) the gravity of what's being said here. If you haven't had an enlightenment experience yet, please forget everything you think you know about it. This is it; it probably doesn't get more simple or direct than what I'm about to share here. First off, I'd like you to watch this wonderful video from Rupert Spira. I watched it a few hours before my enlightenment experience, and little did I know, it proved to be crucial for me to have that awakening. In the video, Rupert uses the analogy that we are characters in a movie-- a movie I'd like to title The Search for Enlightenment. Even though we're not aware of it, we play characters in this adventure movie of life, and we're always told by other characters that the thing we're searching for is just over that hill, or just in the next town over. We're constantly seeking for this thing, thinking it's a destination or an event, and that once we experience it, then everything else will be fine. Well, Rupert eloquently explains that the characters in the movie have been duped! That's you! That was me! Enlightenment is not an achievement. It is not a place. It is not an event. So then... what do we as the characters in the movie do? Is there any hope? Well, yes! But that requires you to make a paradigm shift to understand what enlightenment really is. Drop all of your assumptions, fears, and doubts. Your job--as the character in the movie--is to play and enjoy your part in the movie, but to also become aware of the screen that you're being played on. Enlightenment is being aware of the screen. This is a huge meta-perspective shift! Imagine how difficult it would be to convince a character in a movie (assuming they're real people and not actors), that they're not real! That to truly enjoy their life and role in society, that they have to become aware of the screen. Of course they'd say, "What screen?! This is all real, can't you see??" Then they'd laugh you away, and if you were insistent, they'd call you a lunatic! We're talking about The Truman Show levels of recontextualization. After watching the video, I thought, "Huh, maybe it really is that simple. In fact, it makes perfect sense that it would be that simple. Of course enlightenment can't be found in the movie! Duh!" I've been researching enlightenment and watching Leo's videos for a few months now, so conceptually this made sense, and it seemed to fit in with what I already knew. So I thought about it a couple times throughout the day, but nothing came of it. It didn't really click since I was trying to conceptualize this whole movie scenario in my head. However, watching that video planted the seed for my awakening experience during my meditation session later that night. It's late at night, around 9pm. I have this ritual where I do my concentration and meditation practice right at the end of the day. I doubt that's the most effective, but regardless, it seems to always work out that way and I like it. I also like to do these in my living room in complete darkness. So after my 3 minutes of concentration with a metronome, I get up on the couch, back straight, eyes closed, to do my 15-ish minute meditation. Nothing out of the ordinary so far. However, after about 3-4 minutes (that quick??) into my meditation, I find myself in an interesting headspace... I somehow got as close to no-mind as I've ever achieved, probably 90% of my thoughts just vanished, and I found myself peacefully drifting in a sea of awareness. I could pick up on a stray thought every 3 seconds maybe, but I was completely detached, and as such I simply watched it float on by. It was quite surreal. Just that experience alone would have been awesome enough, but it was what happened next that rocked my world... As I'm drifting in the sea, the best metaphor I can use is that the sea slowly turned into a serene lake, with not even my few remaining thoughts able to make a splash or ripple. Then I had an intuition that I should open my eyes... I ALMOST NEVER open my eyes during meditation! But here's what's interesting about the rest of this experience: I didn't really "think" any of this stuff. Usually I talk to myself in my head using English, but not a word was thought. I just felt that I needed to open my eyes, so I did. Now picture the scene. I'm meditating on my couch, legs crossed, in almost complete darkness. Only some faint moonlight from an adjacent room filtering in. I didn't plan any of this out, but guess what my eyes were met with when I opened them? You guessed it, the faint outline of my 50in TV monitor a few feet in front of me! Holy. Shit. Within the span of a couple seconds, I recognized the tv, my eyes shot wide open, adrenaline rushed through me, and tons of intuitions (not thoughts) came into me about the Rupert Spira video I had just watched a few hours ago. There was no reasoning, no thinking, nothing. Just understanding. I made this cosmic recontextualization of my life as playing out on a multi-dimensional and multi-sensory screen, just like the 2d, exclusively visible one in front of me! I slowly looked around the room, and was conscious that it was all screen. I not only recognized my role in the movie, but my True self as being this constant, present awareness of all this sensory dream stuff being interfaced through the screen. My physical body even turned into a screen. And it was all one. I became one with the room. I basked in this completely alien and indescribable sensation, just looking around and realizing that everything I had ever known was nothing but screen. After about 1 minute, my first tangible thought arose. I grin so genuinely and widely that my face feels like it's stretching, and I say to myself, "This is it. It doesn't get any better than this." You might think this would be scary, but for me in that position, I was READY for truth. I had this intuition that it was staring itself in my face my whole life. But I got it; it finally clicked in a sober state, and now I get to carry that with me forever. Since then, not too much has changed. I'm overall a little happier, a little lighter, able to keep things in check. I'm still taking the steps that I already put in place for improving my life. Everything is funny to me, but that was the case for months before then. You have to understand that I've had some INTENSE awakenings on psychedelics over the past two years. I'd imagine that for a normal person with no such experience, an out-of-the-blue sober enlightenment like I just recounted would completely change their life, and it would really throw them off their rocker. But for me, it was like a final puzzle piece snapping into place. I was like, "Oh! This is it!" Unlike many people on this forum, I'm not going to masquerade as some enlightened being. I am not enlightened, and I don't believe there's a line to be drawn in the sand to make such a claim. It is not a title. It is simply the awareness of one's own true nature. After enlightenment, it is clear that my capacity to love is still low, but I know my potential to be infinite. I am ABLE to love everything, but my capacity to show and act that out is still underdeveloped. Likewise, I am ABLE to be happy in every situation, but my capacity to be that conscious presence is still underdeveloped. It's like enlightenment was the last piece in clearing any roadblocks ahead, but the fact of the matter is that I still haven't driven that far. Enlightenment is not a teleportation device. But I'm very thankful that I earned this understanding early on in my journey, so that I'm free to charge ahead.

Yes, GOOD! You're really getting it. The broad sense of Spiral Dynamics, that is to rate at one main category, is best applied to groups of people like nations or governments or corporations, since the collective ego seems to settle at one particular stage and runs all the decision making. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg for relating spiral dynamics to your personal life. You realize that every category (the 6 you mentioned just being a starting point) evolves along the same lines of development outlined in SD! It's quite profound. You can make a much more impactful and helpful map of your psyche by honestly rating yourself in many different categories. For instance, your relationships and sex can be at orange, but your intellect could be much more advanced at yellow. Also notice that by raising your level in one category will make you much more aware and ready to advance in others. All of these categories are intimately connected. I'm very happy you found Spiral Dynamics; this could be a turning point of your life if you start working on what you've learned. Spiral dynamics itself is a pure yellow model of looking at the world and yourself, and it's already giving you new perspectives on life.

@Genghis Khan You don't know @ivory so stop trying to tell him what stage he's at. It's very common for higher consciousness people, especially men, to be part orange and part yellow. I see it all the time. You can't FULLY be yellow until you've moved through and integrated green. But it's possible to "skip" over green and have a yellow mindset (thinking in systems, cerebral, integrative), while still clinging to lower stages. Ivory knows this (because he's part yellow), and is therefore very interested in integrating green. He sees the benefit of having stronger relationships and giving more love to the world. It's essential to becoming a holistic human being. Ivory, if you're really interested in moving into green, take some psychedelics. It's probably the best thing you can do for your personal development right now.

@Leonid This shit is hard, man. If you truly feel you're ready, where you feel it in every ounce of you're being, not just conceptually, but physically, then it would be wise to start a nofap journal on here and check in every day. It has helped me immensely so far! We can definitely support eachother, but you need to get on board my man! The train is leaving the station, the time is now! Watching porn is not deadly. There's softcore porn basically everywhere you look, in movies, social media, adds, EVERYWHERE! Like I said above, I'm basically at a point where I can't physically do the act because my mental fortitude and vision is so strong, but watching porn occasionally can really take the edge off of my mind and cravings. I'm actually glad I watched it! It was also a big milestone that despite watching it, I couldn't bring myself to jerk off. That's when you truly know you're going to succeed, it was the threshold guardian in my 90-day hero's journey. Remember, it's the draining of your lifeforce and debasing yourself that kills you. Keep things in perspective.

LMFAO, it's laughable how some people think that money gives you happiness. That's a belief you hold, and not grounded in anything whatsoever. This belief comes from a fundamental ignorance of what happiness is. I would question this belief to death and get to the root of what makes you happy. If you do any digging at all, you're going to quickly find how baseless your claim was.

@Charlotte exactly! I meant that even though you're upright, head over heart, you can be in a state that's a replication of sleep. It will not feel like sleep. The tell-tale sign of a conscious state like this is the memories going completely out the window.

@Charlotte what might have happened is that you replicated a theta brain wave state, which is the same as when you sleep. This is fairly well known effect of some meditation techniques. When you're in this state, even though you're completely conscious, memories don't "stick" just like if you were in a dream. I've personally experienced this before, and it can be quite relaxing ?❤️

@Ampresus embrace confusion, paradox, and not knowing.