Consilience

We are a product of conditioning. Our society is at a collective level of development where we are conditioned from birth to not be developed or actualized whatsoever. To blame the state of society on "genetics" would be an incredibly shallow statement. Moreover, to blame the spiritual development of the collective on "genetics" is an equally shallow statement. As long as you're operating from the point of view that spirituality is 95% genetics, you will always view spirituality through an astronomically self-limiting lens. I would invite you to consider the radical possibility that the overwhelming majority of human genetics are setup in a way to facilitate Awakening - even if not full-blown Buddha level awakening, but orders of magnitude above what our current collective consciousness is at. This is the biggest blindspot of Actualized.org. The fact that it's April 2021 and you still think that awakening through practice is not possible for the mainstream, that it's 95% genetic. This is such an easy excuse not to sit down and turn within, to face boredom, to face the suffering of our ordinary state of mind/consciousness, to slowly and steadily cultivate radical levels of mindfulness, to escape from doing the healing work required to grow up and actualize, which is a part of the awakening process. Psychedelics alone will not awaken the world, though they will play a critical role, they are not the singular white knight. If you take the mindset that spirituality is just a genetic lottery, humanity is truly fucked. Luckily, this is in no way the case and to think so demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of manual practices like meditation. Unfortunately your voice is the one that has influence over the masses, not mine, but I would ask and urge that you truly consider why you have such a stark bias, and reconsider this stance. A stance that's bias enough for your gut response to be something like "spirituality is 95% genetic."

Bullshit.

Speaking for myself, I've reached deeper states than some of my experiences on LSD or Shrooms through meditation. Be open to the possibility that we can radically, RADICALLY, transform the way we experience reality while being completely sober. To be fair, my deepest states have been on psychedelics, but on the other hand, the most profound states mmm... deep meditation on retreat is something radical and comparable to a trip and arguably more profound because of the lucidity, clarity, and stillness of a spacious flowing sobriety cracked wide open from meditation. That's just me though. You very much can experience the miracle and wonder of existence dead sober. In fact, this miracle is available right now, it IS right now. Regarding spiritual teachers, yeah I'm skeptical of the ones who dismiss psychedelics. I'm NOT skeptical that they've reached profound states/traits of consciousness because of my own anecdotal experiences with meditation. What I'm skeptical about is the understanding and wisdom they've cultivated. Regarding "how have they achieved these mystical states?" A metric fuckton of meditation, contemplation, silent reflection, yoga, etc. You'd be amazed how radically things will start to transform devoting even as little as 2 hours a day of meditation after a year, going on multiple retreats, etc. Now imagine living monastically and it's even more profound what is possible.

This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

I'm going based on his talks given on multiple meditation retreats I've done with him. Sorry I can't reference that, but if you go on YouTube you'll find Shinzen equating Emptiness with Love and God, though not as blatantly as Leo. Whether he believes that is the "Ultimate Truth" is another matter. This thread was about Nothing = Infinite Love, in which case Shinzen would agree. What he might disagree with is whether this is the final truth. My point was that not all serious meditation teachers are in contradiction with what Leo says.

Shinzen Young spent his youth tripping balls before going off to be a monk in multiple denominations of buddhism. He regularly uses the “G” word... and also equates emptiness with Love. Multiple videos of his on YouTube to confirm this. Thousands of hours of meditation under his belt and no contradiction with Leo's insights from psychedelics. Shinzen’s language is VERY biased towards buddhism, and he’s a legitimate buddhist scholar, still unafraid to call emptiness God and love.

It sounds like you haven't actually had the insight into the fragility of materialism. Be very literal, what is in your experience right now? Sight, taste, touch, sound, smell, and various mental phenomena. Notice that the only thing you actually KNOW with 100% certainty is your direct, perceptive experience. Materialism holds that there is another type of substance outside of this perceptive experience, physical matter. But notice: you cannot verify whether matter is really there nor could you ever. This is because all you have in your subjective experience, all that you have is perception. That's it... Physical matter could only ever be a theory, but it is completely and utterly impossible to come into contact with, for if you were to experience physical matter, it could only be experienced as a perceptive experience and therefore never be directly experienced as physical matter. The problem with materialism is that it takes what we observe in our perceptive experience (all science and philosophizing is done through subjective experience, aka through perception because that's all we have) and tries to rationalize a 2nd substance, physical matter. However, we don't need physical matter to explain our subjective experience. Materialism is just a model to explain subjective experience, but it is not the only model, it's completely un-provable and therefore unfalsifiable, and starts to break down when you start looking into what the science behind quantum physics shows us, or if you actually contemplate the philosophical "implications of the hard problem of consciousness" seriously. I actually realized that materialism was bullshit before even getting into spirituality or meditation so it's not a spirituality thing, it's a have you investigated your direct experience and the gapping holes in materialism deeply enough? You can do this all completely intellectually without spirituality. Yet once you start to realize the significance of consciousness through rigorous meditation or psychedelics, it's easily seen how little this hypothetical "physical matter" substance adds. Not only is it not needed to explain reality, but it is actually seen to be just another belief, just a perceptive experience of mind to explain the dream we call life or "reality." Yet because of how deeply programmed and conditioned we are through our education and the collective consensus and way we speak language, scientific materialism is the equivalent deep religious indoctrination. You will find there is a literal fear response when trying to question or let go of these beliefs about reality. And make no mistake about it, materialism is not a logical conclusion based on scientific data, again look at quantum physics to look at the gapping problems from the science. Material is a belief, no different than a religious belief you and I and everyone was programmed with by our education. The question is, will you contemplate deeply enough to see through this mirage?

Which ones specifically? These are great quotes @Brivido

Admittedly, it's a long road. For deep transformation to occur via meditation, usually progress comes in watershed moments. We're going along, and it feels like nothing is happening. We sit, and sit, and sit... things continue to feel stale. Hell, we may even experience a backsliding where sitting feels worse. And then suddenly, often out of nowhere, there is an opening, an awakening wherein we step into deeper territory. Suddenly we have more equanimity for whatever is arising, there is a subtly to our experience previously unnoticed, there is an intrinsic beauty to experience we miss when the mind is too active both at the conscious and unconscious levels. Often times meditation progress is like an earth quake. An earth quake doesn't just suddenly and spontaneously happen, though the end result is quite sudden and spontaneous. An earth quake's origins are from very slow, small, cumulative shifts in tectonic plates. These shifts are extremely gradual yet lead to explosive and transformative results. The same mechanism is occurring with meditation, and particularly with facing these hinderances such as boredom, or loneliness as you referenced. I say all this to say, keep going. Trust whatever force inside of you is calling you to sit down and turn within, which is meditation. Trust that even when the surface level of mind and consciousness show little signs of transformation, there are deep rewirings and transformations occurring in the depths below the threshold of awareness. But on a slightly contradictory note, if your intuition is telling you to back off from practice because the boredom is too extreme, that's cool too. Nearly everything in life waxes and wanes over time. If you back off, you'll feel when you're ready to expand into more rigorous practice. I'd say more important than forcing yourself to sit through boredom is to have a daily practice in place. There is a significance in the cumulative aspect of meditation. Daily sits compound over time independent of the time spent sitting. But as I mentioned in the original reply, yes there is something to be gained by traveling into the boredom. Yet there is something to be gained by re-grouping and backing off. Part of the path is learning to listen, interpret, and trust what our gut is telling us. Hope this helps in some way.

This is a great explanation.

There is definitely a point. When you begin to suffer from boredom, this is a prime opportunity to inquire into the suffering self, the beliefs, emotional dispositions, and thought structures holding the web of illusion together. The only way to face boredom is by stepping into it. After you step into boredom though, once you truly deconstruct, dissolve, re-integrate, and re-unify the body/mind processes giving rise to boredom, all that's left is pure beauty and fulfillment in the simplicity of ordinary waking, sober state of consciousness. Practically, this means when boredom arises we have two options: 1) Inquiry, radical laser like focus into precisely 'what' is bored, whom boredom is occurring for, why boredom is occurring at all, what boredom even is, or 2) a deep radical surrender into the boredom, feeling the physical and emotional sensations of the boredom as deeply as possible. Eventually, the boredom completely dissolves into a fluid, spacious flow of perception arising and passing into and out of existence moment by moment; our attention and awareness become so sharp that we can detect the momentary arising and passing of perceptive experience. This flow opens us up into the truth of who and what we are. Boredom evaporates completely and gives way to a happiness, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment that needs nothing at all except the fact of our own existence in this moment. Boredom is one of the biggest hurdles on the path, but the rewards for traveling into it, not avoiding it, are priceless. Be wary of teachers who claim you don't have to face things like boredom, pain, or suffering on the spiritual path. For example, it is impossible to transcend suffering unless we become very intimate with the reality of what suffering really is.

Strong Determination Sitting You sit with the intention of not moving for an allotted amount of time. The only other rule is do not hurt the body. This rule is a higher priority than your intention to not move.

I've never once had any of these types of symptoms, nor have I ever met or heard of meditators getting these types of symptoms from meditation. This type of thing is for extremely frail and immobile individuals. Like dude look at these risk factors: "Your risk of developing bedsores is higher if you have difficulty moving and can't change position easily while seated or in bed. Risk factors include: Immobility. This might be due to poor health, spinal cord injury and other causes. Incontinence. Skin becomes more vulnerable with extended exposure to urine and stool. Lack of sensory perception. Spinal cord injuries, neurological disorders and other conditions can result in a loss of sensation. An inability to feel pain or discomfort can result in not being aware of warning signs and the need to change position. Poor nutrition and hydration. People need enough fluids, calories, protein, vitamins and minerals in their daily diets to maintain healthy skin and prevent the breakdown of tissues. Medical conditions affecting blood flow. Health problems that can affect blood flow, such as diabetes and vascular disease, can increase the risk of tissue damage such as bedsores." None of this is linked to high level meditators lol. This would be like me claiming high protein diets are dangerous and then referencing research on diabetics on dialysis as evidence. Two very different populations. The fact is, if you're healthy, and active, sitting down without moving for a couple of hours is fine for the body assuming you're also moving, exercising, practicing yoga, etc. And again, this is something the body can adapt to - physical pliancy is a real phenomena for meditators. Shinzen Young, for example, has done loads of SDS sitting; he's fine. Moreover, SDS is a classic zen practice and there are many zen practitioners who have spend years doing this type of training without these types of symptoms. The people who hurt themselves are those who aren't listening to their bodies and push beyond their limitations.

Ive actually found tea to make me feel more nausea... but tea seems to work well for most. Fasting for 12 hours before the trip has made a huge difference. I stopped feeling nauseous and it helped eliminate the mushroom headache hangover.

Awareness is still not it though. It is a sneaky refuge of the ego. Keep going ?

Only if you're not working up to it. The body slowly develops physical pliancy with meditation posture over time. As the body's physical pliancy grows, pushing SDS times are very safe. If you're intelligent, strategic about SDS working with the body rather than brute forcing your way through it is powerful. The number 1 rule with SDS is don't hurt the body.

Yes you can. SDS is a great way to cultivate this level of understanding.

Mindfulness is the secret sauce of sober god consciousness. It has such a bad rap because of how mainstream it's become But legitimately...

Yes everything you need to learn about developing concentration is in the book "The Mind Illuminated" Extremely powerful system.

The surface level sense of I is constructed out of: 1) Physical body sensations 2) Emotional body sensations 3) Self referential mental images 4) Mental Talk 5) Physical sounds (we identify with the speaking voice coming from the head) These 5 perceptions loop and tangle themselves up into a knot, forming the sense of “I.” This feedback loop is also flowing as a strange loop and therefore, reinforces itself. When we start to notice the strands of this knot in meditation or through self inquiry, the knot slowly starts to untangle until it’s too lose to and it falls away. As Leo mentioned, this ego thing is deep. The process of identification (which is a conceptual/emotional [“Emotional body sensation” listed above] in nature) is operating in at a multitude of ever deepening levels. It takes an INCREDIBLY sharpened, concentrated, mindful state of mind to start to untangle this ego identification knot at the subtlest levels which is why rigorous meditation is required even after someone has experientially seen through the illusion of self. Of course the obvious question still remains, if this knot isnt you, what are you?

Agree with the general consensus of yes. Having a rock solid daily meditation practice allows the changes to take root and produce lasting change. Using psychedelics without serious meditation is a huge waste of potential.

??

Im not 100% certain, but insulin requirements have slowly been rising since I got diagnosed I believe because the remaining beta cells have been dying off. Requirements have been stable for around 5 months which makes me feel that the rest of the cells have gone the way of the dodo. The hourly testing is a really good idea. Kind of a pain but also hypoglycemia can be deadly so thank you for the recommendation.

@Leo Gura @Arcangelo Thank you both. It’ll also probably just take a lot of trial and error... Ill have to go slowly and be very careful with how Im doing it. Unfortunately there isn’t much on the internet around this topic, however Ive read a reddit post of a diabetic doing a 7 day water fast so it seems possible. As far as insulin adjustment guidelines, guides, resources, information, and whatnot, there’s nothing. We are definitely in the stone age of health.

Agreed!