Consilience

Ive had trouble getting over his cigar schtick ? But sounds like I should give him a fair shot.

Shoutout to Rob Burbea’s Jhana retreat on Dharmaseed! Those lectures changed the entire trajectory of my meditation practice.

Very nice ? The next step is stabilizing this view in meditation as well as everyday life.

?

I don‘t think you understood my question. How long can you sit in meditation without moving? It‘s more than 5 seconds. Im asking because Im curious at what point would the pain become overwhelming and you move? Being an arahant, you’d theoretically have the capacity to sit for many hours at a time without any issues, despite enormous amounts of pain.

Your feelings are literally arising out of and passing back into emptiness, moment by moment. Emptiness = God. It seems you have a lot of conceptual ideas of what God is, but this wont do. I would recommend a hardcore meditation practice and deeply studying many mystical/contemplative traditions and what they have to say about the ultimate nature of reality.

Why not? Wouldn’t learning how to be completely, perfectly, and intrinsically fulfilled from your own being, from nothing other than the fact of your own existence, be the ultimate root solution to loneliness?

You’re missing the point of @taotemu’s post. You ARE feeling it. You ARE seeing it, RIGHT NOW. This moment, this breath, this experience, IS God. As you continue to meditate, contemplate, take psychedelics, and any other practice aimed at “raising consciousness” always understand the truth that wherever you are, however reality is appearing in this moment, the literal actuality of your direct experience in whatever low consciousness way it’s expressing itself, is God, is The Self, is Brahman, is Emptiness. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do to find what you’re seeking. Now seek from that space and you will find God.

Id ask how long can you sit in an SDS?

Learn how to bask in your own being. 30 day challenge? Meditate 1 hour every day for 30 days.

Right now is as good as 5meo when you know what you are.

The real tease is the tease we play on ourselves, always looking for the next substance, the next trip, the next breakthrough, the next awakening. All of it peanuts when we realize that the mundane, natural, sober state is just as far out as the deepest psychedelic experience. Most won't have the discipline or vision to ever directly experience this... Oh well! There's always another lifetime.

I think the conversation naturally lends itself to soft jhanas as well though. When talking about full absorption, naturally the degrees of absorption is going to come up. Anyways, in my experience the Jhana of Infinite Consciousness is not the same as God Consciousness. Contrary to some spiritual circles, our true nature is not awareness. A full blown jhana of infinite consciousness is a “merging” with the awareness of perception and make no mistake, it is actually infinite. It is a beautiful state and one worth exploring, but it is not God, directly. God consciousness is moving into an even subtler frequency of perception, so subtle that it’s not even perception anymore yet is inextricably linked with all of our perception and therefore, inextricably interconnected with all of reality. A glimpse of this starts to occur in the 7th Jhana. Long story short, 6th jhana is not God consciousness.

I think out of all the uses of psychedelics, deep healing has probably been the most potent of effects. Yes seeing deeply into the nature of reality is great while tripping, but the views and understanding tend to leave after the trip and get cognized as an intellectual understanding. The energetic and emotional releases, however, actually stay cleared and Im left feeling lighter. So while the insights don‘t necessarily stick around after the trip ends, the healing that took place does. I really do view them more as medicine at this point.

That’s good to hear, but in terms of the perception of things moving, this is actually a completely “normal” phenomena that can happen with advanced meditators. When one applies a high level of mindfulness to the outer visual space, the solidified objectified perception of the world can break apart into a more fluid, spacious perception like what one experiences on psychedelics. The perception of a solidified world is actually a distorted view of what’s going on; a distortion the mind creates to provide a sense of groundedness and safety. Yet when one pays attention, deeply, no such grounding or solidity is to be found. Again, this is all something we can verify via sober mindfulness meditation. Id recommend breath work, mindful breathing, and hatha yoga to your friend. These practices all very much emphasize embodiment which can not only help integrate the experiences, but help her reorient and ground herself into “normal” reality. Sounds like it was a pretty challenging experience overall.

Ever tried an all night yaza sit? Tis WILD. Yes for sure. Part of the practice is learning how to hold space for reality, not a subset of reality, ALL of reality. The nature of reality is non-dual, meaning it, by definition is entirely self accepting. When you learn how to hold space for all of reality, your mind is essentially increasing its resonance with the fundamental nature of existence. Most people completely miss the profundity of this when talking about how boring or ineffective meditation is. They are unconsciously locking themselves into duality. But hey nothing wrong with practicing while you feel good too. ?

This is even more fun than a woman asking a man out.

Nope. This is just straight up false.

@K VIL2 @FlyingLotus This is one of my favorite stories. It was definitely in one of Leo’s videos but I too don't remember which one. However, it’s also in Peter Ralston’s “Book of Not Knowing,” which is where I learned about it first. - In ancient China a terrible and ferocious warlord was ransacking the country side. Coming upon a Zen monastery his army began killing and pillaging. When the warlord entered the inner courtyard he found the abbot of the monastery sitting in a chair. The abbot said firmly, “Get out of my monastery.” The powerful warlord walked up to the abbot, sword in hand and said, “You don’t understand. I could kill you without blinking an eye.” The abbot replied, “No, you don’t understand. I could die without blinking an eye.” After this, the warlord became a devotee of the abbot. ... Fucking savage ??

Isn’t Dirty Dan from Spongebob?

Shinzen Young teaches that after a certain threshold in one’s practice, there tends to be an exponential take off. It seems like you’ve hit this threshold.

What the fuck ?

How long are you practicing and how many minutes are you practicing per day? I assume by practice it’s some form of meditation.

The biggest thing that’s changed in my experience is that there is a seeking without seeking taking place. A recognition that where I am is perfect, is the absolute, yet an understanding that how this perfection shapes the rest of my life is an ever unfolding, ever deepening journey. Going meta on what already is has infinite degrees, yet all degrees are known to be held in perfect equilibrium. The paradox of the path. Seeking without seeking. ?‍♂️

First, super interesting report. Thank you for sharing. I would say yes. Meditation ultimately starts "changing" the way sensations appear across different phenomenological "dimensions." This would be due to a mind that's cultivated powerful levels of mindfulness (concentration + sensory clarity + equanimity) which is a trainable, achievable skill revealing an underlying equilibrium across all perceptions and states of consciousness. A follow up question would be, if this never ended would that be an issue?