TheAvatarState

There's no point in trying to intellectualize any of this. If you intellectualize long enough, counter-intuitively it just points back to being. And believe me, I've done that, however I don't recommend it because you'll waste a lot of time in mind games and traps. Trying to grasp the hand with the hand is a futile pursuit. Trying to intellectualize your way through this is like insisting on taking the path through the enchanted forest in Lord of the Rings. The fog will envelop you, trick you. Make you lose your mind. And if you make it out of the forest alive, you'll be right back where you started, just armed with the knowledge of the direct path being the one and why it's the one. You'd understand the limits of the enchanted forest path and why it was a dead end. The direct path is in the opposite direction, so to speak.

@dvdas while it's true that psychedelics are not a magic bullet, it's possible to awaken through them. I have, along with many others. It's not just a peak experience. Over a couple of years and many trips, they have produced a lasting change in my consciousness, and I can bring that awareness of my true nature into my direct consciousness at any moment. Psychedelics are an incredible technology... It would be wise not to underestimate them.

We've already died, brother. We're just chilling in the dreamscape conscious that we are one dreamer. Enlightenment is lucidity. Two strangers passing in the street, by chance to separate glances meet. I am you and what I see is me.

It was a great reminder, thank you. Whatever you believe the ego to be, that is a bundle of concepts and images you created to give meaning and form to the formless. While I believe it can be useful in some contexts, ultimately it isn't real. And probably in most contexts, it's more of a hindrance than an aid. It's possible to create an enemy out of thin air. Yes indeed. Even "practical" states of Awakening can make life difficult in many ways, such as hypersensitivity, overanalyzing, difficulty in relating with normal people, etc. I'm sure that will get better with time. I'm not "being" it at all times, but I have the knowledge in the back of my mind. I often bring it to the foreground, where I'm aware of the beauty and infinity of the present experience, and this knowing stems from direct experience. It is not a belief or dogma. I guess I'm about as awake as is practical. This is the answer I was after, thank you. I still have an issue calling myself or others "enlightened," but now I recognize I fit the description. At least this particular and relative description. Going back to the original quote of the thread from Kryon, I actually resonate with that more. It describes a further realization of nonduality, one that is impossible to actualize without being awake. It's like the union of "enlightenment" and unconditional Love and acceptance for all of Creation. I believe that to be a much more potent description, and something I feel necessary to work towards.

Because it is metaphysically inaccurate. Please watch Leo's video "Why brains do not exist." Another key piece of wisdom: just because a model is self-contained and consistent does not make it true. Consider the dream world. It feels real while you're in it. Consider any logical system ever created. And yet Kurt Godel proved, through his Godels Incompleteness theorem, that you cannot prove a system to be true within the system itself. You need a higher order logic, and that higher logic needs another, all the way to infinity.

Thank you for the response. So does this one Satori event mark you forever, in your view? Or can you be awake one moment and asleep the next? Here's the thing, an experience like that changes you forever... you'll never forget. However, you may not be directly conscious of it throughout all your waking life. So does this mean the "enlightened" person becomes "un-enlightened" many more times throughout life?

No I'm not. I specifically pointed that out as a trap. Yes ???

"If you have any questions about this, you don't get it." Uh, no. If you don't have any questions, either you DON'T get it, or your "getting" is surface level. The nature of infinity is that there's always more to learn, is it not?

I understand that. But please describe "fully conscious." It's a misnomer. The Dial is infinite, and your consciousness of God deepens and broadens all the time. At what point do you say, "now you're fully conscious."? I'm baffled that something you recently described as a complex set of dials has now been reduced to a binary on/off. From my experience and others, it's clear that the dial analogy is much more accurate.

Thank you, I almost used the "content vs. structure" analogy @Leo Gura This is that deeper Truth spelled out in more plain terms. I think it's helpful to seriously consider the metaphysical pitfalls of using a term such as "enlightenment" in the way the West uses it. Enlightenment does not point to "haves" and "have nots," that should be a sure sign you are deluding yourself in some way.

@Leo Gura https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cultural-history-of-enlightenment_b_926001 So it seems that enlightenment was a translation of the Japanese word Satori, which is a transformative experience, not a title or a state of being. Notice how different your understanding of a "Satori" and "enlightenment" are. Western culture took it way too far. At the end of the article: "I myself have had forty years to ponder Shunryu Suzuki’s comment, “Satori is not the part of Zen that needs to be stressed.” As I see it, it is a little like standing on a hilltop with a good friend at dawn, watching the sun rise and saying, “Look, the sun is rising.” It’s not really necessary to say so. It is obvious; that is why you are there. It’s best to just stick with it, watch closely and see what happens." I'm not saying everyone is woke. I'm saying everyone is God, and everyone has varrying levels of consciousness of this truth. Some are completely blind, and a few understand parts of the Truth to various degrees and at various times. I'm trying to point to the fact that phrases like "seeking enlightenment" or "you are now enlightened" are misleading at best. The difference you see between woke and un-woke is an artificial distinction you imagined, and contradicts much of your latest work. So I have a question for you. Enlightenment has obviously morphed its meaning over the years. So is enlightenment the Satori itself, a nondual mystical state of Union? Or is enlightenment the embodiment of the Satori? If it's the embodiment, then actions are not tangential. If it's the Satori, then that level of conscious is not permanent and thus wouldn't fit your description. If you think of enlightenment as a "permanent" state of consciousness, then I'll ask again, where do you draw the line? You're placing a marker on the central Dial of consciousness, and saying "anything past *this* point is enlightenment, everything below it is un-woke." This is delusion. There are many degrees in one's understanding of his true nature. For example, there's form is emptiness, distinct from emptiness is form. There is a deeper truth being pointed to when Kryon says, "An enlightened Human Being is one who respects and sees the enlightenment of all."

Even you have hair, Leo. The rabbit hole of consciousness is infinitely deep. As long as you have form, you will not be "fully enlightened." This ideal state is synonymous with the Godhead. So allow me to ask again: at what point do you draw the line? Your consciousness of the Infinite cannot be a simple binary on/off. If that were the case, then you would know all facets of Awakening in one go. Instead, the experience is like pulling back layers of an Infinite Onion, of which you haven't even scratched the surface. Are you conscious of your Unity with the universe when sleeping? When taking a shit? There's hair all over the place, Leo. Consider that "enlightenment" was a term created by people who weren't enlightened, to put someone else on a pedestal, or by a master to separate himself and give value. The term "enlightenment" as you mean it, is a fantasy. A trap. It's the very hair you speak of. It creates a class of "have's" and "have nots." Even the most enlightened limited human to have ever walked the earth, only peeled back a handful of layers of the Infinite Onion. So "enlightenment" as a term to describe a level of consciousness is *relative.* Today's enlightenment will be common place in a thousand years, for example. But you and I know the rabbit hole goes deeper still. "But enlightenment is absolute!" Is it really? That's like saying stage Blue or Orange of SD is absolute.

Actually it's extremely humorous from a higher perspective. What you think you're doing is defining the action "offending others even in a joke" as "not good," as if it were an absolute moral code. But because "good" is completely relative to one's individual experience and culture, what you're really doing is defining your relative version of "good" as a specific action, further cementing yourself in your own delusion. Your inability to see other ways of interpreting morality stems from your rigidness, rather, the rigidness of your culture. Those aren't "your" beliefs; they were fed to you by Indian culture. If you read this thread with an open mind, you'd realize that other cultures have a different moral code. It's relative! Why are you so offended? Did we personally hurt you? No not at all, you've IDENTIFIED as your culture, so you feel like you have to speak for all Indians. You are unable to see the general trends of "humor" and openmindnedess resulting from stages of development in society, and to remove that from cultural bias. You are the case in point of this thread. Absolutely no one here is racist towards Indians, nor making stereotypes. That was your projection due to a strong stage Blue cultural identification. Of course, if what I'm saying is true, that means you won't be able to see the bigger context or your own cultural biases, so the only proper response to my words would be to get offended. I'M NOT ATTACKING OR JUDGING YOU OR YOUR CULTURE THIS IS NOT A JOKE. I heard Indians need it very literal (joke). Having a more "literal" culture rather than a "humorous" one is not "bad" in my eyes, that would be your projection onto me using your own moral system. Broad observations on cultural development (this thread) is not judgment or racism. Get the picture?

Thank you! Just ordered it, looks great

Minecraft is more than just a game. Much more. It is an interactive allegory for the dream we call life. And it is so beautiful... While Minecraft is an endless game of infinite possibility (just like life), there is an "end" baked the game. Starting the game with absolutely nothing, over time you gather resources to craft increasingly powerful items. After many hours of play, if you know what you're doing, you can gather the resources to create a portal to "The End," a separate dimension from the "overworld" where you started. Upon traveling to The End for the first time, you spawn on a platform where you must fight a giant dragon. Notice that this is a reference to The Hero's Journey, where the dragon is a metaphor for the final boss. After you slay the dragon, you drop down into another portal back to the overworld to continue your infinite journey... but not until The End Poem plays back to you. And boy, this caught me by surprise. It's a deep and moving metaphysical poem about two unknown beings (presumed to be of a higher dimension, or gods) conversing. As the player, you realize that these two beings have been with you all the time, but only now are you aware of their presence and thoughts. Let's think about this for a moment. At the end of Minecraft, the most popular PC game of all time, is a metaphysical poem about dreams, love, nonduality, and the infinitude of the universe. All lining up with the work of actualized.org and eastern spirituality. Excuse me, but WHAT THE FUCK?!?! Only those on the path are open to considering and understanding the deep truths found within... Truly fascinating. Since "beating" the game yesterday, I've browsed the web for other people's reactions, and it shouldn't be a surprise to you that 95% of gamers hated the ending or totally misunderstood it. And even those that "got it" didn't REALLY get it. Doesn't the universe speak to us in the most amazing ways? Even if you've never played Minecraft, Please please please watch the ending. Trust me, it will speak to you and uplift you. P.S. I looked up who wrote the poem, and it wasn't Notch, the famous developer who created the game. He hired Julian Gough to write the ending, based off Julian's short story "iHole," which is a brilliant satire worth reading. I just ordered his latest book called "Connect," which appears to be a riveting work well ahead of its time. Once you read the End Poem, you'll know that Julian isn't your run-of-the-mill fiction writer. He can't be.

@soul searcher I would seek professional help. You don't have to do this alone. Look up a psychoanalytic institute near you. Psychedelics could help you to gain new insight into this issue, but be extremely careful and do it with a trip sitter.

@Red-White-Light Let's use the apt analogy in the quote. "Giving up on psychedelics" is akin to the biologist giving up on the microscope and his electronic scale accurate to 1/10,000 of a gram. How do you think his career will go after that decision? Psychedelics are technology for unlocking consciousness. Like, it's quite absurd that you're using this quote to justify giving up your tools. Do you think "hang up the phone" means a lifetime of abstinence? No, it means what it says, you go back to your daily life and integrate, write your field notes and such... But then you come back if you want to continue your "career." And of course you don't have to. Not everyone is meant to keep going deeper and deeper. But these are the tools the modern-day scientist (shaman) uses to explore consciousness. Taking a Zen path of meditation and yoga only is like insisting on writing a book using dark-ages technology. Before the printing press. It's excruciating work to get to the same result. Did you want to write all your college essays with an ink and quill? Did you want to spend years of your life mastering the art of caligraphy when you could have used a fucking laptop with Grammarly? Be my guest; it's your choice. Please don't misunderstand me. If you want to be a good student, you have to be able to write by hand and take good notes, which means that a laptop isn't a cure-all or a cover-up for anything. It is a NECESSARY TOOL. An extension of yourself. If you want to be a good scientist, you have to have a broad knowledge of all topics at hand. A microscope doesn't make the scientist. A scientist must know how to use the microscope and how to relate what he's seeing to the natural world around him. It is a NECESSARY TOOL. An extension of yourself.

Me neither, yet. Oof. Hahaha, I have a feeling I'll enjoy it. It came today!!! The Truth is all around you... just waiting for you to take the call... Leo has posed this question before: "What would a stage Turquoise video game look like?" It really got me thinking about the potential of VR to raise consciousness. I've witnessed Android Jones make visionary artwork in real-time using VR... I think the potential is there in the near future to create an experience completely unprecedented. Something that bends your perception in such a way, that it makes you question what you really are. A psychedelic-like experience induced in VR, in conjunction with audio, that can reach a much wider audience much faster than psychedelics can right now. I just wonder who would research and develop such an application... Imagine VR booths around the globe that get people to think deeper about reality. I think it would be immensely popular if done right, because people are drawn to novel experiences. The main barriers to raising consciousness are governmentally banned substances, and that will take decades to have a noticeable impact worldwide. But VR booths like these could have a mass market in 5-10 years. No barriers, AND it would make a shit ton of money. Can you envision what I'm talking about?

@arlin Because there is a force inside you that wants to live. To create. To love. That's not an accident. Honor that spirit inside you! "Get busy living, or get busy dying." -Andy Dufresne (from Shawshank Redemption). Watch that movie carefully, and you will find the answer implicitly (in between the lines). Spiritual answer that you don't want to hear, yet is nevertheless true: You are infinite and immortal, so what the fuck else is there to do? "Time is an illusion and so is death." -Hu (from Avatar the Last Airbender). Watch this wonderful show, and you will find the answer implicitly. The problem with this answer is that it leaves everything in a gray area, open to interpretation. Your ego doesn't like that... It wants to attach to meaning. What if all meanings are projected, imaginary? What if you simply are what you are? What if there's only an eternal now, and "being" is all there is? What if all "to-do's" are imaginary? What if the universe didn't care whether you were Hitler or Ghandi? Just something to consider. Notice that both answers are the exact same, just coming from different contexts. Basically: you are what you are, and you should honor that. Start BEING.

So we all have this machine in us called the ego, and it runs so many processes in our every-day lives. I understand that the ego is necessary for survival. However, it is also the source of all our ills. And one process in particular perplexes me still: why is it so prone to self-destruction? If it evolved to work for us and keep us alive, then why is it so dysfunctional? Here's what I mean. Socially, if you become deeply lonely or depressed, the ego will push away others, despite friendship and human bonding being the solution to healing. This is a self-destructive pattern that is difficult to break. All addictions, whether it's porn, sex, drugs, food, etc. Your ego is tuned to self-destruct in this way unless you make serious effort to overcome the addiction. Your ego will destroy your self-worth, motivation, and confidence to the point of no longer caring about your own health. War/genocide. Hating yourself. I could go on and on. It seems like unless great care is taken, self-destruction is the inevitable outcome of your natural egoic processes. The ego = fear. And knowing that fear is the greatest enemy to personal development, the opposite of love, I have to ask the question: *what the fuck is going on here?* Were we programmed to fail? We are supposed to have free will, yet we all have this extremely archaic and dysfunctional system inside of us that is seemingly tuned for fear, deminishing self-worth, and promoting self-destruction. What gives?

Try one year. You'd have a very different outlook. You'd go through hell to realize that daily cannabis use doesn't actually serve you. I understand there's no good and bad in the absolute sense. But in this relative domain, the context I'm using is human suffering. The ego isn't evil... What I was trying to communicate and reflect on was that it becomes dysfunctional, with respect to your health, if given certain inputs. And it perpetuates those patterns because that part of the ego can't differentiate between good and bad.

I agree, please allow me to restate. I wasn't saying that the ego was "evil." The context I had was that Ignorance is the default mode for most of society, and because of this, the ways in which the ego tries to cope with trauma are allowed to fester and become self-destructive. Suicides and drug overdoses are at an all-time high in the USA, to the point that life expectancy has declined for 3 years in a row. So this "natural pull towards self destruction" that I mentioned is only applicable in a low-consciousness society. No one is taught these things. I think part of the reason why this problem is getting worse is #1: people's economic situations have been steadily declining, and #2: the "appropriate" escapes and distractions are much more addictive and dire than they ever have been in human history. A low-consciousness society has found ways to "game" the ego, which itself is not "evil." That's what I was trying to reflect on, and gain a deeper understanding of. I appreciate you point about the trauma that newborns experience. Collectively, we are blind to it. I remember a riveting account of someone who went to Stan Grof's holotropic breathwork workshop. During that experience, he was transported to the moment of his birth, and was able to trace his current trauma (at age 40!) back to that moment. Only then could he begin the healing process. We can carry seemingly innocent incidents (to others at the time) throughout our entire life, and be totally unconscious of it. Pretty wild...

But why do you want to avoid rejection? Is it really that painful? No, your ego blows it out of proportion through fear, and that fear keeps you locked into loneliness. Your fear keeps you locked into inaction. And loneliness itself becomes an addiction, to the point of not really enjoying other people's company even if you do try. It takes a while to break out, that's why this system is so wicked. Fear was a proper motivator for physical threats we experienced in the past, but it is terrible in social situations. Why do you think public speaking is the biggest fear there is? It has to be something common to the human experience.

Thank you for your response. It cleared up some things for me, and yet brought up more questions. The patterns it learned were induced by the ego itself. Inability to deal with emotional trauma turns into trying to escape the pain, which results in a physical or mental act (self-destruction) which it perpetuates by momentum. The emotional trauma was caused by natural impulses (fear namely). You must be able to relate in your direct experience: in the wake of certain "trying circumstances" as you might call them, there is a natural pull towards escapes that are self-destructive. I guess it ties in with the concept of Resistance. Your view of "the ego" as I meant, would make sense IF there wasn't this natural force. The patterns you perpetuate TEND to be negatively oriented, and if you look through your life and the lives of others, you can verify it. The system of psychological momentum may be neutral, but as a human you have a tendency towards fear, escape, judging, etc... So this momentum system works against you many more times than not in a modern lifestyle. @Nahm We are having a relative discussion. If what you said was true (in my direct experience), then I would stop the patterns the second I stop believing in the one thought. However, my patterns continue regardless of what I believe or what state I'm in. I still have cravings. I still sometimes get bombarded with negative thoughts. I want you to understand that through my direct experience, I have verified that there's a system of psychological momentum and pattern-forming "inside me" (I have to use English, please give me a break). I understand I'm "in a dream," rather, that I don't exist and there's nothing but dream. Believe me, I get it. Even when I was writing my post, I knew that it was a story I came up with. But I have to communicate to you through a dualistic medium called the English language, and I was trying to communicate something we all directly experience. Notice that the way you approached my question was a pattern. "You're just in a dream buddy, one thought led to another and here you are, you constructed your entire existence." Have you noticed that you always talk to people like that? Perhaps you haven't noticed that it's not helpful or applicable to the discussion at hand. Your point is True with a capital T, and yet misunderstands the relative existence of trying to live a dualistic life. Reality is way more complicated than that. ASTUTE!!! THANK YOU for reminding me of this. I love Rupert! This is what I was trying to communicate. There's this natural tendency towards death, and the egoic system perpetuates patterns. Put 2 and 2 together, and you understand why the majority of our loops turn negatively with respect to our mental and physical health. Yes yes yes. All Love. Thank you all, I received the info I needed.

@Joshi3 @Pacific Sage thank you for the response. I understand and agree with what you said, but that wasn't quite what I was getting at. There are natural mechanisms in place, due to the very nature of having an ego. A rat, if given a supply of opiates in a cage, will drink itself to death. That wasn't programming through experience. The ego will ignore self-preservation in exchange for short-term pleasure. The ego is a deeply flawed system. To go back to your point, Johnny upon realizing the flaw in his programming, namely lack of self-worth, will still continue to push away others despite the knowledge of this act fueling his depression. Do you think smokers and heroin addicts don't KNOW it's not bad for them? Of course they do! But the ego will perpetuate the self-destruction unless through radical change and sheer force of will. Perhaps it's because the ego evolved for physical flight or fight threats, and in modern society this is mostly no longer an issue. The average person now days can float through life without ever fearing for their physical safety. There are no tigers here! This egoic system is completely dysfunctional for modern day life, is my point. I know we wouldn't be here in the first place without it, but... It just sucks knowing I am my own worst enemy. And everyone has to suffer for it. What is needed is EGO education from a young age. The worst dysfunctions of this natural system in all of us can be worked around if understood and integrated. The nature of addiction. The pitfalls and traps, and their root causes. Everything I've only recently come to understand, would have saved me from years of suffering and self-destructive loops. And EVEN WITH this knowledge of how it works, I'm still fucking struggling because of how deeply imbedded the neural pathways are.