Consilience

The importance is relative yes. Clarity of the piercing nature of this illusion can flow up and down in intensity much like the sun rises, peaks, sets, and disappears into darkness. So too can the self's total baselessness shine through more or less. Ego death on psychedelics and sobriety don't change the Truth, but clarity, experience, and insight differ between states. These practices are only important for the seeker yes. It's like tricking the trick into killing itself. But dying into truth and love so it's all good. Once the self is seen through, it starts falling away on its own. The "practice" of meditation starts to become spontaneous; meditation is life itself. Yet the energy of survival may still move Being into what we could call "formal meditation practice" which may inadvertently reinforce the intensity of this insight into the illusory nature of self. This is why in Zen they adopt the belief in practice as Enlightenment while simultaneously declaring Enlightenment to be when the distinction between Enlightenment and Non-Enlightenment fades away. At least, that's one way I've heard a true "Zen Master" describe Enlightenment.

Yes. And this recognition tends to unfold at deeper and deeper levels overtime. You start to see new ways attachment, craving, aversion, feelings of separation, (all of these are the constituents of identification with a "self") are operating, reasserting and constructing themselves. This is why practicing meditation, contemplation, silent reflection is so important. Keep noticing this illusion, this false identification, what constructs it, how it starts to manifest the mirage of "self." Keep peering into the emptiness of this self though. That's the only way to catch the ox, is through patient observation of the actuality of being, moment by moment, in THE moment.

In what context? In what way? I just completed a 10 day meditation retreat and walked away feeling that it was much more *transformative* than psychedelics. Psychedelics take me higher no doubt, but the states and insights don’t have a great time sticking around unless Im doing series meditation.

All of the chaos is a direct reflection of the state of our collective human psyche. Go within yourself, feel your own suffering and unrest with being, and you will find why there is so much chaos.

Namaste. Many blessings on your journey ??

Another point to spirituality would be to find true happiness and peace from within, independent of external condition.

"The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates. It's a systematic approach towards samatha practice, a practice which cultivates the ability for the mind to concentrate, which is the #1 issue new and long term meditators have. Samatha is essentially a state of mind that is unified, harmonized, stable, tranquil, and at peace with itself AND it is incredibly conducive towards the cultivation and integration of insights of all kinds. All forms of meditation if done rigorously enough will lead to some kind of samatha, but you can have more or less efficient paths. Until you can focus you attention like a laser bean, forget about awakening. One of the most powerful ego defense mechanisms is the scattering of attention and the conceptual mirage such scattering supports. This system counteracts this while also providing beautiful, supportive, and even healing states of mind.

+1

Trying to force the mind into concentration is a very ineffective strategy. @The Don If you want to learn how to concentrate, The Mind Illuminated is what you need. I meditate 2 hours per day atm. Yeah sometimes sessions feel like you're extremely euphoric and mildly tripping. Couldn't imagine what 62,000 accumulated hours of practice are like...

This.

I had a dream last night where two giant planetoid objects appeared in the sky, perfectly aligned. Woke up soon after realizing it was just a symbolic representation of Jupiter and Saturn. The energies are powerful today.

Another point is most people in the mainstream don’t meditate at the level where meditation starts to be truly profound. Meditation has to be done quite rigorously to produce mystical experiences. Most people have 0 clue about epistemology though and don’t understand the extent to which their minds manipulate their experience of reality.

For me I've noticed they both deepen, but actually disrupt meditation and mind in the days following a session, possibly weeks. It's something I've only recently noticed because it's at an INCREDIBLY subtle frequency of mind. Only in the past 3 months or so with a pretty big jump in meditation ability have I been able to experience these disruptions of mind. So far it's been nothing crazy. It's basically just a very subtle level of dis-ease, micro-fluctuations of attentional scattering, kind of like the mind becomes subtle less unified and harmonized, more agitated at frequencies typically below the threshold of conscious awareness. Yet on the other hand, psychedelics provide really great direction for where to take practice. So the insights you gain from psychedelics start to take root, grow, and blossom within a mind that meditates rigorously. It's a weird trade off and one I'm still learning about for myself. I've noticed most people on this forum, at least as far as I can tell, don't have a rigorous meditation practice so this topic is hardly discussed at all. Maybe I'm just not finding these threads? Currently I've been meditation 2 hours a day on average (some less, some more) and it was only until I bumped my practice from 1 to 2 hours did I start to have the sensitivity towards mind to see the disruptive effects of psychedelics following a session. Just want to emphasize, these effects are VERY subtle and difficult to discern from the normal fluctuations of mind from daily living and the fluctuations specifically from substances. More easily discernable substance-mind interactions are from substances like alcohol or cannabis. In otherwords, these drugs have a grosser level of dis-ease associated with their use. Yet because psychedelic provide such spiritually significant experiences and just the nature of how they affect the mind in general compared to other drugs, noticing these disruptions takes a very sensitive awareness and attention. Moreover, I would say that for most people psychedelics actually provide more unification and harmonization of the mind than a disruption. My guess is that they create this disruptive effect only for people who have a serious meditation practice. Most people who take psychedelics usually have minds who are bombarded with cultural/societal bullshit without a meditation practice to counter balance, or they don't meditate enough to train this sensitivity to mind. It's a very interesting topic and probably very individual.

F*ck you Edit: I mean.. me

What a shame. I read something much more squirrely and twisted. For the record, these "epistemological" mistakes would not be based in language, they would be based in experiential conceptualization and interpretation of direct experience as one's direct experience. You dig? Epistemology and potential pitfalls definitely extend beyond the linguistic mind.

To interpret (create, construct, fabricate, conceptualize, etc.) what I'm speaking of as "figuring stuff out forever" would be to misunderstand why I'm making such a big deal about this. By all means, resting in this Now is indeed peaceful, but it is impermanent, and it is not Awakening. Indeed Truth = Now, and indeed every mental deception, conceptualization, fabrication you and I are making are Truth, directly, this does not reveal their true nature. I would argue that until you've become conscious of the mechanisms of your mind, you will continue to suffer, continue to deceive yourself and others, and continue to live below your potential as a human in the context of self actualization. Until you've fully seen who and what you are, what you are doing in every moment, in the moment, moment by moment, you will continue to be asleep all while under the guise that you've figured this out, that you've awakened. This as so many Neo Advaitins love to throw around, does not guarantee that you're free. What creates This? What is the nature of This? How does self and This arise? Where does This go in deep sleep, or during a cessation in deep meditation? Why do you continue to behave the way you do when you're awake? Why are you so averse to words such as Love and Divinity? I write all of this not necessarily for OP, but anyone on the forum. However, @Someone here as long as you've found your inner peace and are content with life, I'm happy for you. It's just that I would be SHOCKED if in, let's say, 5 years you look back on this time and say to yourself "yep I was fully awakened, still am" and hadn't cultivated any insights that relieved suffering, or facilitated some deeper level of happiness and understanding into the nature of self and reality.

touché~

Dude... You have a long way to go. Good luck to ya.

Indeed haha. Somehow both are occurring simultaneously. This is Absolute, yet we may increasingly see how much left there was to go... Total mindfuck honestly.

Right this present moment is it. But do you have insight into the depths, degrees, and ways in which you are fabricating, creating, and perceiving this moment? Do you see the extent to which your mind is manipulating, clouding, orienting, constructing, fabricating this present moment? Do you recognize the tremendous depth to your conceptualization of this present moment? Because until you've had direct insight into the fabrication of this present moment, how your ego mind is completely dependent in the co-creation of THIS, I would not consider what you've found is Absolute Truth. If you truly saw into the degree your mind is manipulating your view of THIS, you would understand why the words love, divinity, sacred, etc., get thrown around when talking about Truth.

Im with @Moksha. Reality is sacred, divine, magic. If you *think* these words are not not compatible with direct truth, I would say you’ve mistakenly over-conceptualized. What you write here is a facet though, for sure.

What is the sense of me made out of? Like what specific perceptions take on this sense of self?

Tbh I don’t either ?

100 samadhi snacks and you got yourself a deal.

Despite how civil, articulate, and mature (not to mention sound) Leo’s response was, I bet this dude will make a response video bashing and criticizing Leo’s decision not to engage.