Consilience

I was shocked how much more powerful 2 hours was compared to 1. Even 2 is probably not enough. The thing is though, after a certain threshold of meditative skill, the whole thing has an exponential growth curve with how it develops. Annual retreat minimum, 2+ hours of formal practice are most likely required to get what Im talking about in this post.

Thank you

I would say learning Shamatha meditation would be the go to approach. You’ll learn how to enjoy and appreciate the satisfaction being with this kind of meditation. Learning how to reliably access these states is a huge foundation for the spiritual path and generating/integrating mystical experiences. I always recommend the book The Mind Illuminated for this one. If you’ve just had a traumatizing trip, definitely spend some time meditating lightly again using a shamatha approach or whatever approach you feel called to do, being in nature can help reset your vibrational state, and if your anxious about all of this, realize the anxiety is something you’re actually creating and are free to let go of and replace with a new thought and feeling. This last bit is a little tricky as it implies agency, as though there is a self to replace thoughts and believe it or not that’s not what Im talking about. The other approach would be feeling into the anxiety so deeply it becomes a non-problem which is what happens when we apply a high level of mindfulness to the sensations. Hope this helps. ??

This! Yeah Actualized.org has such a high level of holism that many people miss if they’re attached to a single lineage or spiritual tradition. They become paradigm locked without even realizing it. In my own experience, omniscience is understood not through the human intellect but by consciousness itself, being conscious of itself. It’s like being aware of the totality of the potentiality of all possible forms of reality, all at once. It’s not something intellect in the tradition sense of the word can do, it’s like a metacognitive process that the human intellect actually gets in the way of.

This is a good question. My personal guess is that they haven’t explored psychedelics intensely enough, if at all. I mean we go HARD at psychedelics in this community, way beyond what is normal. And I believe it has immense benefit regarding metaphysical understanding. But Ive met people who have done vipassana/self inquiry for decades and have zero issues with God/Love. Ive also met individuals who have done a lot of psychedelics, “understand” that we are God and Love, but dont meditate. These people are incredibly unimpressive though and clearly lack a level of embodiment. Both seem like traps.

@Frenk @nistake @Cykaaaa @impulse9 @Matthew85 Thank you all for the support. Im happy it struck a chord ❤️??? I don’t use the Goenka technique no. Lately Ive been doing a lot of “do nothing,” just letting “reality meditate me” but Ill also use the See Hear Feel vipassana noting technique, self inquiry, shamatha/jhana work, or metta. Ill usually do 1.5 hours in the morning and then 30 minutes in the evening.

Thank you so much, that is quite the compliment. Im really happy it resonates. ❤️ And yes your message is spot on. Really appreciate the ‘rant’ ?

I do as well. I wish I knew how to enjoy weed more actually… the deeper I get into sober meditation, the less enjoyable all drugs have become. And especially the after effects once the high wears off.

But you're also still looking for deeper awakenings, higher God Realizations, the hamster wheel continues. I'm not even trying to be critical or cheeky here, but why don't you see the wisdom of seeking God-Realization as a quality of this present moment? This moment, AS IT IS, *IS* a perfect expression of God and God's Love. Do you disagree with this? This is where something like vipassana becomes deeply pragmatic for God-realization. Because the parts of the mind that are pretending like this moment, in all of its infinite delusions and unconsciousness, are not god is just egoic bullshit. Paradoxically, this unconsciousness is just as much IT as the deepest psychedelic awakening. And disagreeing with this "This moment, AS IT IS, *IS* a perfect expression of God and God's Love." is a recipe to never truly, fully, utterly be God-Realized.

❤️

Exactly. And that’s the beauty of this koan. It‘s deconstructing destiny while simultaneously affirming it… if there is no determinism/destiny, no free will, what is left? Utterly wordless ?

This topic reminds me of a zen koan - In the Hands of Destiny A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one-tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt. On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men: "After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If heads comes, we will win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand." Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily. "No one can change the hand of destiny," his attendant told him after the battle. "Indeed not," said Nobunaga, showing a coin which had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

The last place we’d think to look!

This. AND also penetrating your attention deeply into the sensations of the negative feelings such that their fundamental nature is seen as well as penetrating attention into the sensations of “self.” Who and what is precisely feeling these sensations? So basically… 1. Notice how you’re literally creating these emotions and therefore recognize you can create new ones. Conscious creation 2. Deconstruct the emotional sensations into their fundamental moment by moment experience until their impermanence is so obvious, there’s nothing left but phenomenological flow. Vipassana 3. Penetrate attention into who and what is experiencing these sensations. Notice how the space out of which the emotions arise is the same space witnessing the emotions and this same space is where the activities of self-survival arise out of as well. Self inquiry

Time can expand, contract, disappear, reconfigure, etc., even without psychedelics. My guess is his enlightenment was without psychedelics.

There is no you.

Space and time spontaneously emerge out of emptiness moment by moment, constructed by infinite creativity and intelligence, and are both completely relative to the witnessing of them. We can train attention to pay attention so deeply into the present moment that we can watch these phenomena emerge.

Some great replies above. In my experience, asking “what am I?” Feels more existential, and therefore more direct and to the heart of the matter if directly experiencing absolute truth is the goal. “Who am I?” has lead more to a sense of discovering the meta context of self-survival activity… almost like feeling the blue prints of the soul. Very profound but not the ultimate.

Ive done a combination of techniques outlined in the book “The Mind Illuminated,” Rob Burbea’s Jhana retreat, Shinzen Young’s See Hear Feel vipassana technique, self inquiry/contemplation based on the work of Peter Ralston, Zen “do nothing”/shikantaza meditation, and loving kindness metta practices. Ive done 3 meditation retreats and a couple of Cheng Hsin workshops. Ive also aggressively used psychedelics/weed in the past. All have contributed to where Im at right now. Biggest “boost” to practice was learning how to go deep with concentration practices like the jhanas. Once I was able to go deep with jhanas, my first vipassana retreat radically deconstructed all sense of reality, time, and space. Ever since then meditation has regularly induced drug like effects, only increasing. Lately Ive been doing the “do nothing” technique primarily. Just sitting and letting reality do whatever it wants with as little interference as possible. Body sensations, sights, sounds tend to dissolve into spacious fluidity, become boundless. When eyes are closed Emptiness becomes particularly apparent.

This. Ultimately, it’s fine. But relatively, there is a bit of sadness. The one caveat is that those who are truly committed to the truth will find a way out of the delusion. Those who are playing games would have very likely gotten distracted and trapped through other means anyways, with or without Actualized.org. And honestly, there is still a lot of value with Actualized.org, there are a hell of a lot worse places to get stuck. And psychedelics are enormously powerful, healing tools when used appropriately.

Meditation is very effective. 1 hour per day isn’t going to provide dramatic results though.

Im happy for you. Keep going dude. Leo’s direct teaching is that is is about state chasing. He’s said this many times, so Im not suggesting anything radical. Yes meditation changes my state. Ive started to enter into states via meditation more powerful than small-medium doses of LSD or mushrooms. But meditation has also facilitated a growing detachment with these states, a clarity around the nature of all experiences and the underlying Being, the underlying “God-ness” of any and all states. Sitting in quiet boredom is starting to feel just as satisfying and divine as having my body dissolve into boundless space. The fact that Leo and many of the forum are so hung up about increasing one‘s state without holding in equal space the necessity of am equilibrium beyond states, a non-dualiry, is a huge blindspot. Those who are serious about the work will recognize it.

I've heard of MDMA described as an empathogen rather than an entheogen. The distinction seemed appropriate.

Very disappointing that Leo is doubling down on this rhetoric. The short story is, psychedelics are not a complete path. There comes a point where all of the state chasing has to come to an end. There comes a point where the duality between a 5meo god consciousness state and the normal mundane experience collapses. It’s actually pretty fucking simple but an ego who is fixated on states, methods, highs, “muh god-realization,” etc., won’t hear this. In 10 years, when you’ve slacked off on serious spiritual practice (thousands of hours of silent meditation, contemplation, etc.,) and you still can’t reach these states without drugs, when you still cant recognize the absolute divinity of this very moment, the series meditators will be blissing out on God in any and all states. It is what it is.

What’s your daily meditation practice like? How much retreat experience do you have?