Osaid

Lol, I have no idea what you're on about.

No. In regards to what Leo has said, the narcissism is inherent to those beliefs because of the hierarchy it creates over other "non-awakened beings". This forces him to punish the people that challenge this hierarchy he has created. Which is the cult-like aspect. I'm saying that his view on spirituality is synonymous with the narcissism. Which also creates a domino-effect into the cult-like qualities of the forum.

No, it doesn't.

I'm making a distinction between someone who is narcissistic and someone who is a narcissist. Former is high in narcissistic traits, whereas the latter is diagnosable (has enough of the traits).

I don't know about Narcissus. Familiar with the fable, but not deeply. I'm talking about narcissistic traits and NPD. Seems like a cool plant, though.

Well, I don't know if he is a diagnosable narcissist. I'm ambivalent on that since I don't know him well enough. I do think he objectively emits a lot of narcissistic traits on the forum as a direct result of his views on spirituality, with him being the most awake and all of that. It'd probably be useful if you check this post:

It's one thing to be the most awake being, it's another thing to behave narcissistically on a forum. They are not mutually inclusive. I don't need to pry into the validity of every one of Leo's claims to point out objectively narcissistic behavior which everyone can see. This is the difference between evaluating the structure of something over the content. For example, when a cult leader says they are "sent down by God", you don't need to go off and validate that statement in order to identify it as a cult. That misses the point. You can bite the bullet and say "maybe he is the most awake and so he should be able to behave narcissistically". That's fine. That's your hill to die on. That's what he would want you to believe. And you will continue to follow him until you consider a different possibility.

You are right to call it a prediction. That's all the future actually is. A present prediction. It's not possible to actually worry about experiencing a prediction. What most people believe is that the future is not a prediction, but an actual reality that they experience or will experience. That's what worrying is. A belief.

Emotion is the same as experience. The trickier aspect is that experience and emotion aren’t objects. So it can’t be identified or cognized since all identification and cognition is based on objects. But emotion can be felt directly. When you test the temperature of the water in the shower, you put your hand in to touch the water and it feels hot. But neither the hand or the water are responsible for the feeling of being hot. The feeling of being hot is the experience of both the hand and the water interacting at the same time. Without one or the other, there is no feeling of being hot. Emotion works the same way.

Yeah, total red herring. It's like, "yeah maybe Bentinho was doing all that freaky stuff, but maybe he's still the most awake??" It's entirely unrelated to the thread topic of cult behavior and narcissism. Anyways, it does seem that not a lot of people seem to care about this, hence the shifty behaviour and red herrings.

I don't know him well enough to say he's a narcissist. But he is quite objectively narcissistic, I think. I guess he'd say "that's important for being successful" or something.

Your only "job" in attracting a mate is embodying your own personal values. Essentially, being authentic without fear or insecurity. Anything less will be sniffed out by whoever you're trying to attract.

This guy gets it.

Yeah I would agree there. I would categorize that as "emotion" or "feeling" or just "direct perception" or "being aware". If there is something happening which does not depend on something else then I don't categorize it as a thought. Like how there is a feeling of moving your hand which is beyond the concepts about the hand. Previously there would have been an emotional "center" based on satisfying a separate self, but presently the experience of emotion is essentially just the "flavor" of whatever is happening in the present. I do also suspect that the idea of a chooser does come from the tendency to act out what we feel or prefer in a given situation. Like if you put your hand on a hot stove and immediately remove it. Is it choice? Not really, but it is like an intelligent action.

Yeah. The whole experience, not a part of it. Yeah, there isn't a self the thoughts are about, there's just the self that's currently aware of it. Previously it seemed that there were things to worry about in the future and stuff like that, but it's recognized that there's essentially just one thought presently occurring. Yeah, it's an idea or concept. You can't actually find a chooser in your experience, because it's the implication of something other than what is currently happening.

There's just the present self, which is the only self. It's not a self as an individual or identity, though. It's like "everything all at once". Right, exactly. The mind says "I came from the past and I did this and that" whereas the present experience quite clearly doesn't go anywhere or come from anywhere. So it's "new" because it's untouched by anything the mind says about it. The aspect which makes it seem old is the past, but the present is never the past. There's an experience of thinking about what you prefer to experience and then exercising that. In the sense that you can "choose" between coffee and tea on a menu without actually having either thing in front of you, and then you act according to the thought-based dilemma you present for yourself. But this is not really based on a separate reality or chooser, since it is merely the activity of thinking. The idea that there is someone who chooses can only appear after the choice is already made, never before that. So experientially there is no causal hierarchy ever actually occurring.

Isn't that what the Google AI result is parsing from? Quite a few sources seem to cite the need for authoritarian tactics and hierarchies. After doing a deeper dive, it seems it's a point of contention for scholars and not all of them agree with that, but some do. IMO that's the only useful or practical definition, though. That being said, it seems like the definition is not as objective as the video made it out to be. I don't think the cult video is doing him any favors, though. I'm the only one who even seems to be bringing up the more specific criteria. What seems to happen is that Leo will make a video on epistemology and everyone will think that means he's immune to bad epistemology. This goes for anything he covers. He makes a video on cults, so that means he can't be susceptible to making one. This kind of logic. There is this prevalent idea that he has conquered or perfected all the topics he has covered, probably because of the "I'm the most conscious of all time" rhetoric or the "I'm the number one on epistemology" rhetoric he spews all the time. Which is pretty ironic, but yeah. There is this kind of sidestepping going on that derails from Leo's behaviours and instead tries to point at how generous and considerate he is for keeping this thread open and stuff like that lol.

Yeah. If it's not a cult, then it's pretty close to one. And of course, things can evolve.

The idea that you are moving your body is actually the same as the idea that something else is moving your body. The terror isn't of the body, it's the notion of something else. Letting go of the self would just be letting go of the notion entirely. The vacuum of doership doesn't need to be filled, just like Santa's position at his factory doesn't have to be filled when you realize he isn't there. The whole belief in the factory goes with it, just like doership.

I remember. I think it was more like: "But God, everyone is gonna call me a narcissist for saying this stuff!" God: "Yes, that's right. God is the ultimate narcissist because it loves itself unconditionally." Found it: I guess even "God" agrees with us, GG.

Leo's cult psychology video is actually good. It's just that he has started to show a lot of the cult dynamics mentioned in the video. It's a result of the narcissism. The cult structure spawns from the narcissism of the leader. Leo mistakes his narcissism as a form of spirituality, so from his POV he's just being honest and blunt about his spiritual experience where he realized he's the most conscious person to ever exist. Obviously a belief like that would spawn cult dynamics. I imagine it would blindside him if he analyzed the behavior from a cult standpoint and realized it was very similar to a cult leader, since from his point of view it was just him doing "honest spirituality and epistemology". That being said, it seems rare that people take this kind of stuff seriously unless they've been in a cult themselves or gone out of their way to study it. The idea of a cult seems outlandish to normal people because it seems like something from cartoons or movies. For them they can just go "well Leo loves epistemology and made a video on cults so it's impossible" and then they call it a day.

Yes, that is the whole point. "More truth" is still interpretation. It's not about ignoring the structure, it's about seeing the entirety of it. In order to see the entirety you cannot distinguish anything.

Totally. Psychedelics can become a red herring because of all the crazy experiences that can happen. Humans imagine all sorts of crazy things from a sober state, imagine what they would imagine from a psychedelic experience, lol. That's interesting. Yeah some teachers like to talk about steps and phases, which is fine I guess. It's a different way of communicating it. From my POV, enlightenment doesn't come and go. Ideas about yourself do, since they are based on you moving through time. Therefore, if you stabilize yourself in the timeless, then it becomes obvious that you don't come and go either, and therein you "merge with it". But it's not like anything about you changes. You simply had temporal ideas about yourself which were seen to be fleeting, and then you realize you were what was always present. Yeah, I would say it's alive in the sense that everything is recognized to be completely new or undefined. There is a sense of freedom in that. So instead of "ugh I've experienced this so many times", it's more like "wow I'm experiencing this". Everything is spontaneous, in truth. Choice makes it seem like there is another reality to choose from, but this is the only reality which is ever experienced. Choice is a conceptualization of what is happening, often for communication. Ultimately, it literally doesn't matter whether you think you chose something or not. It doesn't change anything at all. The present moment is that free.

The actual quote is quite poignant. "The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again" - JK