Consilience

Thank you @Inliytened1 and @Adamq8 and for the feedback. In all honesty yes I get triggered so that’s certainly a mirror for attachments, attachments to meditation, non-duality, an attachment to a different view regarding psychedelics. But It also comes from a place of compassion, seeing how lost people can get endlessly chasing paychedelics and never getting to the root of reality, of the self. If you frame awakening, the “deepest” awakening, as only being possible in a particular state, you’re lost. End of story. And to see this with crystal clarity while watching an influential teacher walk thousands off a cliff is stirs a sense of suffering on behalf of others inside. Overall I also recognize it’s all games, mind, projection, ego. And selfishly, it’s a great opportunity for further inquiry and introspection. There is no Leo, teachings, Actualized, self, or other. Agreed. Doesn’t change my view though.

Everytime he gets on this forum or video speaking about Awakenings he’s coming from a place of ego. That’s the whole trap. His mind is paradigm locked in conceptualization and this never ending grasping towards deeper Awakenings. True but if you don’t see the arrogance, you’re stuck in hero worship. 1) It is crystal clear Leo is not coming from a place of selflessness. This should be overtly obvious and if it is not, there’s a shitload of work left to do. 2) Yeah, Leo BELIEVES in his teaching. He’s lost in mind, lost in grasping, lost in samsara and duality, essentially. ? The real work begins finding God right now, not in an altered state. Go and do the work.

vv Yeah not a waste at all. Enormously powerful image. It’s actually on my vision board it strikes me so deeply. Most likely yes. My guess is he was in an extreme samadhi state while burning, had been training intensive retreat level prior to the burning, and was deeply conscious in general. He knew what pain was. He knew he was not a body or mind.

Hai ?

For as many books as you've read on the topic and you still think meditation is about stilling the mind? How could you even begin to imagine what thousands upon thousands of hours of meditation does to the mind? Do you not see how deeply self-deceptive you're being here? What happened to direct experience is king? Edit: The quote feature quoted the user @Hello from Russia, but the original quote is from @Leo Gura

Well said.

That’s the thing, fear of pain is one of the crucial dualities preventing infinity from breaking through while being sober. If you look at higher jhanas (jhana of infinite consciousness for example), it requires absurdly high levels of equanimity.

Well technically Im not trying to fight anyone, but I hear ya ? Im unironically about to go meditate so take it away bro @Salvijus

Two fundamental forces separating ego from God: 1) Fear of pain 2) Fear of death Meditation unravels both. Psychedelics give glimpses into what it’s like to unravel. Astronomical difference long term.

It actually does say a lot about consciousness. The mind’s relationship with pain is one of the most fundamental mis-percpetions, or veils of ignorance about the true nature of reality. Penetrating that level of pain with clarity is only possible via consciousness, as it goes against one of the deepest layers of evolutionary conditioning of mind and body. Although given how out of touch you are with actually increasing one’s consciousness long term rather than short trips, makes sense you’re utterly clueless. Yeah, Shinzen doesn’t teach God consciousness. It’s even better. He teaches the tools needed to get to God consciousness sober. All of his retreats focus on PRACTICE, not spiritual-mental masturbation. Why? Because the masturbation is bullshit and get’s people nowhere. Want to actually wake up? Do the fucking work. That simple. Shinzen teaches people the tools to effectively do the work. Just because Shinzen doesn’t explicitly talk about God consciousness that doesn’t mean that's not where you’re going as a result of the work. The fact that you think psychedelics lead somewhere different than hardcore spiritual practice just proves this. Again, this place is turning into a joke for serious sages. Your lack of holism, wisdom, and arrogance is just astounding given the quality of your earlier content man. What the hell happened? Honestly…

This is almost getting comical. So much deception, so much arrogance, such a lack of direct experience. Ever watched the video where Shinzen talks about his 30 day SDS retreat? Every day, there was a 4 hour SDS sit. Four fucking hours a day of strong determination sitting and you think he’s full of shit? Lmao ok. I wonder how many days of 5-MeO it would take to be able to do 30 days of 4 hour SDS sits without emotionally breaking. I wonder how many 5-MeO trips it would take to do a single 4 hour SDS sit. This forum is turning into a joke for serious sages.

Are you sure? Not trying to be cute. What I tried communicating is extremely nuanced with extremely subtle ramifications.

Can you hold the paradox that exactly where you are right now shares the same existential quality as whatever ultimate awakening you achieve in this lifetime via psychedelics of some other spiritual practice? Can you seek deeper and deeper awakenings without the need for deeper and deeper awakenings? Can you seek deeper and deeper Awakenings with deeper and deeper understandings while understanding that these are no more deep, valuable, or special than exactly where you are? It is truly a paradox, one that I don't see anyone addressing directly or appropriately, including Leo and nevermind the majority of spiritual teahcers. That this moment IS IT, but this doesn’t dismiss the path of increasing consciousness. The thing is, you’re right - it’s an infinite rabbit hole of possible depth. There is no end. So how do you go forward? You keep going home until your dying breath, all the while knowing you’re ultimately going nowhere at all. Hold this paradox, apply this paradox in practice, and an understanding beyond the capabilities of mind to understand or properly articulate will arise.

In my view, this is one of Leo’s colossal misunderstandings about the nature of meditation and the spiritual path. A few thoughts that come to mind - 1) Meditation is not about turning the mind off, though this can happen. 2) There are frequencies of mind, information, and intelligence we can “tap into” when resting in the space of silence and stillness as the mind naturally quiets, giving relative insights on par of psychedelics. 3) The distinction between nothing and infinity is an ego game. 5-MeO God consciousness and meditation lead to the same place, but meditation involves seeing the divinity, and God-ness of the ordinary state. 4) Meditation, particularly when training concentration, can lead to just as powerful, sometimes more powerful, altered states of consciousness as psychedelics. The more advance one gets with practice, the more this begins to take place. 5) Psychedelics cannot cultivate wisdom, meditation does. Though they can open a mind up to being more receptive to wisdom, which in itself is extremely powerful. The mistake is trying to get the psychedelic to do the work for you. 6) How can we be conscious of God right now, in all of our ordinary suffering, just as it is? Can we see the imaginative, illusory, dream-like nature of reality righ now? No? Keep practicing. 7) This framework is steeped in duality. Reality is non-dual.

Hello actualized.org fam, For those of you who are entrepreneurs with experience starting businesses, or have worked with logo designers on passion projects, YouTube channels, instagram accounts, websites, etc... is there any advice for picking a good logo designer? I have a pretty clear vision of what I want out of a logo, but finding an artist to actually actualize that goal is so foreign. I've realized I have no idea what I'm doing and don't want to waste 100s of dollars because I don't understand the nuances of working well with an artist and perhaps most importantly, finding the right artist. So far, I've scoured on r/DesignJobs subreddit and while there are a lot of artists out there, it feels a little unprofessional trying to randomly find a good artist on reddit. Perhaps this is a story I'm telling myself, but I can't shake the hesitancy of using reddit. I did find an artist's work that I loved and fit exactly the style I was looking for, but she was charing a flat rate of $3300 for logos, which is way beyond my budget. I'm willing to spend some money if it means getting it done well, but nowhere near that amount is reasonable with where I'm at right now financially. - How to find an artist that's a good fit? - What if you begin working with someone and they're just not producing material that feels aligned? - Where would one find high quality graphic designers with affordable prices/good websites for this? - Any general feedback/advice? Thank you.

It definitely happens and will more than likely occur again even after this phase of anxiety is released. This is the process of purification, the mind slowly training itself to be at peace in the midst of pain or pleasure without craving and aversion. Long story short, sounds like you’re right on track! As far as strategies to help soften these kinds of phases of practice, 1) A shamatha focus rather than vipassana or open awareness. Focusing on feelings of bliss, happiness, contentment, and equanimity while following a meditation object like the breath sensations at the nostrils or whole body. 2) You can try a short breathwork session before a sit. Ive found doing anywhere from 2-5 mins of wim hof style breathing followed by holding my breath as long as possible afterwords to be extremely grounding and energetically clearing before meditation. 3) Throw in walking meditation. These can be very rejuvenating when formal seated practice becomes too intense. 4) Intentionally scale back practice. If 10 mins is all you feel called for, no reason to “should all over yourself” into thinking you need more. 1 minute of formal practice is better than none. Id keep the daily consistency, no matter how small. 5) Try meditating with meditative music or sound bowls. Can be very healing and help dissipate and transform the anxiety energy. 6) Listening to guided meditations. The only guided meditations Ill listen to are from a YouTube channel called Samaneri Jayasara, which is about as enlightening as guided meditations can be. 7) Endure, push through, bring equanimity and truth even to these sensations. At the end of the day, all moments are moments of truth and freedom. So even if we find relief through transformation, the process of purifying the mind means we will eventually be able to sit in sensations of anxiety with no issues.

Meditation. 1-2 hours a day. During these periods of silence, stillness and space, difficult emotions will arise out of the lack of stimulation. Great emotions will arise too. We sit with them, hold space for them, and not react to them. This is emotional mastery. Learning how to be with our emotions. We can then begin the process of learning how to create new ones. I could not even begin to articulate how powerful of a practice it is to be able to sit in positive and negative emotions with real equanimity.

Beautiful

I started writing this morning quite spontaneously, and this story appeared. I felt some on this forum may resonate and find these pointers helpful. A careful reminder that this is indeed one way of framing reality, and should by no means be taken to indicate I believe any of this as though it’s absolute. Therefore, while conversation, clarification, and challenging can be helpful, argumentation or any of these from positions of right and wrong are useless. Of course, this too is a story ;P - One of the keys to manifesting our highest desires is to recognize the ultimate nature of reality, on any level. We don’t need to be completely awakened to recognize the non-dual nature of reality, but any degree of such recognition will inevitably open the mind to enormously powerful possibilities. This mind and its contents, activities, and orientations, from the subtlest to most macrocosmic, are inextricably entangled with our entire field of experience. Therefore, how we think literally creates. The synchronicities of circumstance and opportunity cannot be separated from the mind in which is observing them. There is no separation between mind and what is normally referred to as “physical reality.” Upon deeply mindful investigation into reality’s infinite casual-chains and interdependency, i.e. it’s true nature, we can see that our mind’s and the unfolding of life are a self referencing loop of experience. Just as the unfolding of life shapes, penetrates, and conditions the mind, so too does the mind shape, penetrate, and condition life. The key is to recognize the beliefs which limit this mind’s penetration such as “the mind is in the head” or “the mind is just a brain.” These two beliefs are merely contents within experience that shape, penetrate, and condition life, even when such beliefs are operating below the threshold of awareness within the subconscious mind. When one sees clearly the nature of beliefs, we can see these two examples as just lenses that artificially filter the way in which life is experienced. When we change our beliefs, or better yet, move toward an alignment with reality’s ultimate true nature, such beliefs and their conditioning qualities fall away. As we practice an honest, objective observation of our direct experience, we can see how much fabrication and relativity of the world coexist. In every moment, we are shaping and transforming our realities based on this mind. A mind that is clear on its desires and free from unhelpful beliefs, or clear on how to reprogram itself out of unhelpful beliefs, is a mind capable of transforming, transmuting, and alchemizng how the unfolding of life unfolds. The key insight is to realize this flowing of life is always subject to our mind, all of it. When the actuality of this flowing is recognized at deeper and deeper levels, it starts consciously moving rather than its typical unconscious moving. The other point to recognize is the multiplicity and relativity of identity, or of “who we are.” Who we are is not merely a human being with a human mind. There is a deeper, more primordial level to identification and fabrication of self identity that extends beyond a single lifetime. This is what we can use the word “soul” to represent. The desires, intentions, intelligence, and mind of this soul are also conditions which are attractive forces on the unfolding of life and reality. When life hands us seemingly impossible or bitter challenges, or even mundane circumstances we feel in no way aligned with, it is paramount to recognize even these forces and attractions are our doing perhaps on subliminal levels of unconscious conditioning and trauma, or the soul’s higher intentionality, as well as the non-dual entanglement of both and the ineffable, a-causal, boundlessly free, intelligence behind every moment.

I posted this in the wrong sub forum… If a mod would kindly move to the appropriate location ??

One thing that helps with the being in core vibration at all times is recognizing the shift from “forcing” to “flowing” can be instantaneous to a mind that sees reality deeply. We can literally shift up and down the emotional scale at will. The more trained, unified and clear the mind is (cultivated most effectively through meditation and mindfulness), the more quickly this shift can occur. Another crucial point about this kind of mind akido is that the “shift” that occurs does not always create the downstream “in flow” or “in vibration” feelings immediately. There can at times be a lag in the time it takes for the new momentum to build, the immediate shift in vibration we’re looking for is not in the manifest feelings (although again these too can be subject to immediate transformation), but an immediate shift in the context holding emotions, which is actually more powerful, as this context is actually the space creating reality and at the deepest levels, all of reality. The emotions and being “in state” are just downstream by products. After all, sometimes being moody and depressed is exactly where we need to be to be at our best and in state, when we hold this topic holistically and maturely.

Have you been in the presence of a real master? Doesn’t seem like it. But similarly, I don't think a real master is concerned with mahasamadhi. They’ve already understood the actuality of death. What need is there for the physical body to die when nothing was alive to begin with? This is good input. All is well @Sam Johnson ??❤️

I posted about her channel awhile ago as well. This entire channel is a Dharma goldmine of extremely powerful transmissions from all kinds of different traditions, lineages, perspectives. It's so awesome you found her channel I stumbled into sometime this past summer looking for videos on the ox herding pictures haha. From a spiral dynamics point of view, it's about as tier 2 of a spirituality channel as there is on YouTube. Extremely high quality. Hopefully more people on this forum can find her stuff! No doubt many would benefit.

@Average Investor @Yarco Appreciate the feedback ??

The irony of posts like these is real. Wisdom. It’s as simple as this.