EternalForest

Gifts are one of the 5 Love Languages. To you and I they may seem pointless, but to some people they mean a lot.

The reason I stopped believing in Christianity is when I realized that God had no interest in speaking to his people directly, but rather through an ancient book or prophets. If God wants to have a relationship with his people, why does he have to beat around the bush? He's God, there's no reason why he can't speak to his people directly. Furthermore, why are people destined to Hell by default? Why can't they go to Heaven by default, until they are shown wicked enough to go to Hell? Guilty until proven innocent, it seems. My same concerns with Christianity overlap to the idea of Enlightenment and "catching the ox". If the ox is so graceful and wonderful, why can't it come to us? Why the need to chase it? And why are we un-enlightened by default? Why aren't we born enlightened but then through our own desire or action can choose to become un-enlightened? And if this "ox" is sentient (which, according to what I've read is part of all of us), why can't "we" give "ourselves" enlightenment directly, if we're technically all already enlightened, or rather if we "are" enlightenment already?

@Serotoninluv I see the value of post-rational thought, and I believe I've had some glimpses at the Ox, but it's been scattered times and has never been consistent. I've had feelings, experiences and states which I consider extraordinary (extra-ordinary). But my attempts to rationalize them have always failed and I suppose this thread is my continued attempt to doubt the undoubtable, attempt to explain the unexplainable. After a calm and mindful lunch I had today I was just driving peacefully, totally soaked in the present moment and thought, this, this is the meaning of life. It just speaks to me at certain days and moments.

@Leo Gura It sounds nice but it also sounds like an argument from ignorance. (It's true just because it hasn't been proven to be false or I'm somehow blind to it.) You could replace "God" in that paragraph with anything and you would be equally right. It's an unfalsifiable claim! I'm going out on a limb here to understand this whole concept but it just requires too much suspension of disbelief to the point of me risking being deluded. If what I've observed is correct, this suspension of disbelief is required to "break through" and have "direct experience", but I'm afraid of using such vulnerable direct experience since it's so subjective. I could close my eyes and imagine I'm on the top of Mount Everest, but that doesn't mean I'm there, just like I could close my eyes and have a mystical experience, but at the end of the day it only means something to me. Ironically, direct experience is the most personally valuable yet also the least objectively demonstrable evidence. I mean, let's say everyone on the Earth became Enlightened and shared experiences and those experiences were found to be all consistent with each other. We still haven't found a cause. My question is: what's the cause of the sensation of Enlightenment?

@Anton Rogachevski Oh definitely, I'm positive what you're noticing and the emotions associated are instinctual. I, too, have hundreds of instinctual impulses a day I don't have control over. You can't make them stop, you can only learn how to respond to them.

@MiracleMan I've already accepted there is no real "I", and I could also accept that we are all the same consciousness. But...if we're the same consciousness...what else is there to find? And if it really does run away from us, hell, I AM the ox! So what is it running from? Nothing. So either the ox doesn't exist or it doesn't like to be questioned.

Seems you're using the model to judge others, I took a look at this list of enlightened people and they all look different: https://www.poehm.com/en/list-of-enlightened-people/

Would like to hear his perspective on this too

@Elisabeth I second this. That was a memorable meditation.

Leo, In one of the recent videos you made you mentioned you wanted to do a video on cults, which I'm looking forward to, fascinating topic for sure. There's a popular AskReddit thread going on right now about former cult members sharing their stories and one person mentioned the BITE model, which I thought you might find useful if and when you decide to shoot the cult video. http://old.freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php Here's the original thread as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/a0ailw/former_cult_members_of_reddit_at_what_moment_did/ Edit: Heaven's Gate Podcast I found in the thread as well, seems high quality: https://www.heavensgate.show/

Pretty cool remix! Discovered through a comment on Leo's latest video. (Credit to Mike Palmu)

I'm pretty confident I'm at stage green, working hard to transcend into yellow. I've watched all the Spiral Dynamics videos (blue, orange, green, yellow, turquoise, etc.) and have done a lot of supplementary reading and reflected back on how I've evolved through my life. I was definitely blue as a child, heavy orange as a teenager and throughout my early 20s (20 to 22) I've reached green, so I don't think this is a matter of mis-categorizing my level. As Leo said in his last video, society did a lot to help with this. But there's still something about stage blue and orange that resonates with me. It feels like a home I want to run back to. There's almost a certain "purity" or "safety" or feeling of "home" when I think of these stages. The emotions of accumulating money, business, success and achievement, religion and tradition still come up for me a lot and I feel like they're so much easier for me to latch onto than yellow, which seems far off. Listening to blue/orange speakers especially gets this "long lost resonance" going so to speak. Not saying there aren't good aspects to blue and orange I shouldn't take with me to yellow, there are. But why does it feel so easy to run back "home" to blue and orange?

Also the whole idea of the "true self" and the "false self" seems like another duality, under non-duality isn't the false self also the true self (or at least within it?)

@FredFred

@Seiden Sure, but how do I know that just wasn't some good feeling, and then I went back on with life. I could tell you about a lot of "good feelings" I've had before, all unique and different from the one I described. How do I know those feelings wouldn't verify some other worldview? Edit: For example, when I was a Christian I would open up the Bible to a certain page and it would apply to the situation I was having at that moment, or when I asked God for answers if I opened up the Bible at random it would seem like that answered my questions. But then I realized, why can't God speak to me directly? If my "true self" had my best interests in mind, why wouldn't "it" tell me the truth, or allow me to experience it? How do I know through my seeking that I'm not just looking for the information I want to find (confirmation bias)?

@Seiden I did once have an experience like that, although at the time I didn't realize what it was. I was sitting in my basement looking around at all the stuff down there and just thought to my self, this is all just...stuff. There's no form to it. That probably won't make sense. I wasn't thinking this with my mind, it was based on pure experience. Then I felt like I was just "stuff", the same "stuff" that was around me. And I not longer saw the "stuff" as objects. Hard to explain.

@winterknight Hey thanks again for answering my question on your enlightenment megathread. And I'll be sure to do that and update you if I get anywhere. I actually was inspired to make this post after researching the Neti Neti method, cause I'm just learning about that, so maybe it'll help me out.

@lmfao Yep, and language is finite, there's finite words and finite combinations of those words. Not to mention finite letters and sounds to create new words.

@Seiden But just by knowing that logically doesn't change the fact that I'm living in a duel world. Because the fact remains that yes even though I may conceptualize my perceptions, that doesn't make my perceptions a conception. Let's assume everything I look at, decorations, mirrors, lights, stairs, food, floors, laptop, everything is just something I've conceptualized, then what am I really looking at?

If you really love music why not just listen to it in the car and spend the rest of the day being productive doing other things

After watching the Commonplace Book episode, I was really inspired to put one of these together for myself. And after going through my computer for a bit I realized that I may not even need to use OneNote for it, I could use My Documents! Let me explain: I don't know about you guys, but over the years I've saved literally thousands of .doc and .txt documents on my computer of interesting things I read, amazing websites I've downloaded/indexed as resources for myself, lists I've made, schedules I've made, journals and personal introspection from throughout the years, pdfs, creative ideas, to do lists, book notes, video notes and more. So in a way, I've been keeping my own "commonplace book" in My Documents since 2013. I just haven't organized it yet. I'm organizing it as we speak and the idea of it all being in one place properly labeled is an idea that really excites me. I may even post some screenshots/videos of how I have the folders organized and indexed with a bunch of tiers, subfolders, etc. Edit: Also, I've got tons of stuff from my saved reddit posts, gmail and google docs to go through, on top of the stuff in my laptop. I don't feel the same friction when going to take notes like Leo described in the video. Maybe on paper, but not in notepad or Word. For me its as simple as opening notepad, getting my thoughts out, click X, save as, type name, enter, done.

@111111 I'll check out those links. I have great friends too, my two best friends and I usually hang out once a week and we always do different stuff and have fun, we've been best friends for almost 10 years! Whenever I hang out with one of them we literally talk the entire time nonstop. It's gotten to the point where we have to stop each other or we'll never get to the point haha! The best thing I can compare it to is a freeway. The point of the conversation is like the destination you're trying to get to, but as we talk we can get caught up in the exits on the way. Each exit could take 20 to 45 minutes to get out of before we circle back around to the point. Sometimes we talk about starting a podcast, we really should honestly. I have 3-4 friends I can talk to like this. Edit: My record conversation time is 8 hours, that beat the record set a few years before, which was 7 hours. But the average convo time is 2 to 3 hours.

@111111 I'd keep them, just so you can see how much you've grown. I mean, there's things about your past that you may want to do away with, but I've found there are also things about your past that you may want to start doing again. While yes, it's good to do away with old bad habits, you also don't want to do away with old good habits in the process. A good example is riding your bike, something you probably did as a kid but don't do anymore but its still a lot of fun and great exercise. Also, talking on the phone. You probably talked to your friends on the phone a lot when you were younger but not so much anymore, but you'll find that talking on the phone can actually give you a lot more depth in conversation than texting can sometimes. Maybe you used to cook a lot at home but nowadays someone else cooks for you or you always go out to eat or eat too much takeout, why not start cooking again like you used to? Creatively speaking, why not make music in a different style than you normally do today? Over time we tend to get set in our habits and looking back can open our eyes to some of the good things we used to do that we can start doing again.

@111111 Oh, that's the worst! I've had drives die and that's like years worth of personal family videos and photos just gone, like an entire void in your history. I lost almost all our early videos that way, or the file just vanished somewhere else. Luckily the one hard drive I have that has all my early music is still safe. I really should buy another hard drive for all my music project files, since if my desktop crashes those are all gone. That stuff is really important to me since music is my life purpose (as well as filmmaking). And of course I'll get a drive to backup my Commonplace Book. Going through these files, it's actually an amazing phenomenon, making all these little documents, saving them away for later, and never coming back to them. Now that I'm coming back to them its almost like my brain is overwhelmed with information, its all coming back at once in kind of an intense way. Most of it I remember making but some of it I don't, or at least I thought I'd never re open them. Many are just named asd;jkfhasd'flasf or something like that. I know once its all organized it'll be a true goldmine.

What is the true meaning of dreams, and why do I experience such higher consciousness during lucidity?