Osaid

I mean, you are all imagining that you lived whatever years of your life right now. You're not experiencing 10, 20, 30 years right now. That's impossible. You're just experiencing this moment. So the trip makes sense metaphysically.

Yes. Just to reiterate, my point is not something as naive as "thoughts are untrue" or "nothingness is the truest state." I'm saying there is a clarity of perception you can achieve (truth/enlightenment/self-realization), which prevents you from being metaphysically "tricked" by thoughts or any other experience ever again in terms of perception. It's not a specific state. It's a realization of what reality is and how it fundamentally works, that goes into all other states and exists in all other states, because it is absolutely true. I think the point that might be confusing you is the idea that experience cannot be thought of, which I still agree with. These posts might expand on that point more clearly:

I know. My position is not that thoughts are unreal. Of course they are real. It is SOMETHING that's happening. Theres just absolutely no reason to worry about them. It's like I'm trying to point out to you that the snake on the television screen is not real, and you're like, "But, you know, technically it's real", and then your heart starts racing in reaction to the screen. I am saying that you are enacting physical symptoms in reaction to thought, which make the thought "feel realer" than it actually is, and this causes you to misinterpret those thoughts and create a belief/perception (whether conscious or unconscious) that says "this thought exists as something that isn't thought" or "this thought is me" or "this thought is a threat to me." You are delegating experience to thought, which is the only way to actually be scared of thoughts in the first place. And, experience is NEVER thought, experience is always the whole thing, and it is infinite. You cannot subtract or abstract a part of experience and say "this is experience", because no, it's just a PART of experience. You cannot escape or delegate experience with any word, thought, or communication no matter how descriptive it may be.

If there is no conceptualizing or abstraction, then yeah it is just experience happening by itself. And this is equal to understanding/knowing which is not conceptual. The experience sees itself, so to speak. But there is never a thing or subject or object that can "know" experience. In this case, that will always just be conception.

No, it's just a way of conceptualizing perception. A medium for describing things. "I know" > How do you know something that is infinite in quality? You can't know taste, touch, physicality, color, etc.

What's happening when you identify with thought is: >> pure sense perception (thought) >> the real you decides to act as if the thought is true (heart racing, avoidant behaviour, self-deprecation (more thoughts), etc) Unknowingly, you are extrapolating thought into something that is not thought (physical symptoms mentioned before), which experientially makes it SEEM like thought is connected to experience, but it absolutely isn't. The "connection" with thought is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get spooked by a real event (physical symptoms), you create a belief about the experience that spooked you, and then this belief recreates REAL physical symptoms which cause you to misinterpret the thought as real. If you recognize this unnecessary connection, the "realness", which is simply just physical symptoms, will stop. There is also this underlying sense that you can predict or interpret experience, which is not the case. Prediction/interpretation is not experience, it's just a thought, which will never touch experience, so same deal as before. Experience is never something you can guess or hypothesize or misinterpret or interpret at all. Experience is just a fact, always. It's always there in front of you. It doesn't need any interpretation to exist. You don't need to interpret the color red, any interpretation is just wrong and won't represent red. Same goes for existence. Same goes for you. When you try to interpret and think about existence, or yourself, you are immediately throwing yourself into something that is explicitly NOT any of those things, and so you are immediately deluded when you try to replace existence with any of these things. There is a part of you that might logically understand this, but you don't "embody" it. There is a certain existential element to existence which supports this logic, and if you recognize that, it will permanently recontextualize your experience, and then you don't have to use logic to perceive it anymore, and then that is embodying. Not imagining fear just becomes as simple as perceiving the color red, no thinking needed. All animals aside from humans do this naturally. It's not something complex. It's not something you have to take 1000 psychedelics to do. It's a simple psychological shift/recontextualization that you can trigger and it just happens immediately, and then you don't have to worry about it again.

Lol yeah seriously

I perfectly understand what hell is now. Believing this statement is hell. This statement right here is literally what hell is. It's not some guy torturing you with pitchforks, it's literally just something that you think about and believe. Someone who believes Santa is gonna come down their chimney is gonna behave as if it is true, same goes for any statements like this that your mind adopts, so you will act as if it is true even if it isn't.

Yep. Any thought or description is equally as real as any other. That's why you can't "bring back" or remember truth. It's an incorrect way of accessing it. "Remembering" is just a tool for accessing the relative.

This is good. Communication by definition is not infinite, it's an abstraction of the infinite. I want to ask you: Is the sensation of taste infinite? Can you point to where "taste" ends? What about "sound"? What about "touch"? Now, what would happen if you just experienced all of these without converting them to a thought or communication afterwards? Where would you be left? Can you convert your experience of taste, touch and sight into a thought or communication about the sensations? Is it possible? Was it ever possible?

Lol maybe. I guess that's the fate of western capitalistic enlightened folk. No caves, just books. Or maybe I could write a book while in a cave. Two in one.

There is no normie enlightened state or multiple enlightened states or different degrees of enlightenment. It's all just pointing to one thing that either does happen or doesn't happen, like a binary, which a bunch of previous sages and mystics have been trying to point people to for centuries. It's the same thing the Buddha, Ralston, Krishnamurti, etc. all point to. When you achieve it, you lose your sense of time forever. You can never feel boredom again. The end. The ego mind looks at this and says: "What? It's just a binary off and on thing?? It's just some psychological recontextualization? That's so stupid! That's not enlightenment! Everyone told me enlightenment is infinite love and infinite bliss, and I heard reports where this guy literally became God and imagined everything with his mind!" And then the ego is stuck to those stories forever. Another reason why this confuses the ego is that it can't comprehend that all these "side effects" are actually just related to one recontextualization/insight. Anyways, namaste, friends. I'll just retreat to my mountain cave forever now and grow a long beard or something, I guess. I kind of get why they do that now.

No, social anxiety legitimately stops existing forever. You can't perceive it anymore. Pain is different, though. There is pain, because pain is an experience, not thought. Didn't deny this. Disappearing ego is just realizing that your experience doesn't exist in thoughts. Ego is a thought or perception that says "I exist in thoughts." You don't need ego or identities to love and be emotional. Love and emotions exist on their own. There is just a feeling of happiness, and you think "I want to share this feeling with everyone." It's not about "you" anymore, it's just about everyone or all of existence. Ego constricts love because it isn't love, it muddles the experience of love and gets in the middle of it. The ego is a misperception which causes you to think that limiting your love is the best thing to do. In the same way that you don't need ego to love the flavour of ice cream, the love of ice cream is just your experience of the flavour of ice cream, not anything else. The experience of taste is not ego, and it has nothing to do with anything other than itself, it is just experience. That's it. The color red has nothing to do with anything other than the color of red. Same goes for love and all the rest. Love, taste, touch, excitement, etc. are not ego, they have nothing to do with ego, they are all experiences, and experience is infinite. All the psychology which normally constricts these experiences comes to an end, and then what you actually are just flourishes naturally, and then that is enlightenment. Non-dual zombies sounds like what you get with psychedelics, with all these weekly solipsism threads, lol.

There is no identifying anymore. It's just seen as a useless input, and thus you never engage with it again. There are still thoughts. But they have nothing to do with "you" or "experience", it's just a subset of experience. This idea of "identifying" is always NOT experience, it is just an idea or thought. You can literally make this aspect of reality which you call "identity" vanish forever, and reality will still operate perfectly fine, and YOU will operate perfectly fine, because you are not an idea or identity. There are of course unpleasant aspects to experience, but they have nothing to do with you anymore, and they are neither negative or positive, as those are judgments created from thought. No. Only when you're enlightened do all your states have "enlightenment." Otherwise, it just exists as an idea for you. This is a really tricky point, because I know that there is this popular saying of "all states are enlightenment", and this is kind of true, because enlightenment is literally what you are, but if you have not recontextualized your experience and realized what you are, there is no enlightenment for you experientially. Everyone can become enlightened, because enlightenment is what you are and it is always true, however, there is a period where you are unenlightened, and this is very real. It is kind of paradoxical, it is like an optical illusion where you can switch from one image to the other. Although two people might be viewing the same image (truth), one can experience it in one way (enlightenment) and the other can experience it in a different way (unenlightenment). Enlightenment is just a recontextualization of what everyone is experiencing. So, everything stays the exact same, but it is viewed differently, this is what the quote "all states are enlightenment" means. It is always in your experience for you to view, if you just take the time to observe it carefully. Otherwise, you are not enlightened, unless some drug forces you to be enlightened temporarily, but then that would not be all states, just drug-induced states. Enlightenment is a specific psychological recontextualization which permanently changes your experience forever and prevents you from misinterpreting thoughts, or your experience, ever again. It has nothing to do with logic or reason. It's not some philosophy or some theoretical way of looking at things that I have to think about and integrate. It was an immediate and permanent recontextualization. It's just dropping all thoughts about yourself, and realizing "Oh ok I didn't need any of those, they were redundant." Then your brain never engages with unnecessary thoughts again, because it just sees it as a useless input. It's like having two tabs of experience open, and then closing the extra tab because it's wasting space and causing you to lag. Not quite. He becomes enlightened or simulates enlightenment when altering his brain chemistry. But, when it wears off, it's back to non-enlightenment. "Real" enlightenment is a very specific insight which prevents you from being susceptible to delusions induced by thought forms forever, no matter what state you are experiencing. You can't perceive past or future if you're on some psychedelic which removes your ability to perceive the past or future, for example. And then this would force you to be enlightened temporarily. But, it is possible to just permanently recontextualize all your experiences in this way, without needing a drug to induce it first. The psychedelic removes the parts of existence which "trigger" you into non-enlightenment. That's why it often has to put you through ego death first before it shows you anything. There is a singular recontextualization (enlightenment), which just prevents any thought forms from tricking you ever again, without the need for altering your experience itself through drugs. It just applies to all experience forever. This is enlightenment. The psychedelic is removing certain functions of "yourself" and preventing you from perceiving it by changing your brain chemistry, and then this might allow you to see some temporary state of enlightenment while on that drug. When it wears off, all your "normal" perceptions come back, but because you aren't enlightened (you haven't had this specific insight/recontextualization), you start misinterpreting these perceptions again. I elaborate more on this point in this post: Experience has no feature where it can "trap" itself. This is thought form and ego. What does "trapped" look like? Can you point to it? No. I am defining it as the state of everything, which can be realized through a psychological recontextualization of your current experience. Furthermore, the cat does not have the capacity to turn itself unenlightened. Humans do. A cat has no idea of "enlightenment" in its head. Unenlightenment is a human phenomenon caused by the capacity to think excessively.

My pleasure

Just ask yourself: What is more intelligent? Love or hate? If you answered love, now ask: Am I willing to abandon all my logic and reasons about hating myself, just to love myself for no reason? If not, then how is it that you logically concluded that love is more intelligent, but now your logic and thoughts about yourself are saying the opposite? Where is the discrepancy? Perhaps self-hate is illogical? Maybe love can't be found in reason or logic? Maybe love is a higher intelligence than logic and reason? What happens if all your reasons about why you should hate yourself just vanished? Where does the hate go? What is left over? Now, have YOU ever existed inside of logic and reason? Are you made of reasons and judgments ABOUT yourself? Or perhaps there is a more fundamental existence to you, which has no problem accepting you and loving you as you are?

You can only imagine or think that something is hidden. Even the idea of "hiding" things is a human convention. The universe has no feature where it can hide things from you. Either you're aware of it or you're not. There is nothing to guess or hypothesize in experience. There is just thinking about experience. Your experience can't hide anything from you. But this also doesn't mean you know experience. Experience can't be known, it can only be experienced. The medium of "knowing" is insufficient for reaching or making contact with experience. Ask yourself: How can experience hide something from you? How would you even go about doing that? What would that even look like? You can't not be yourself. You can't hide from yourself, because you are you. This doesn't mean that there is an "end" or "conclusion" to experience, this is impossible because experience is infinite. But experience is always explicit by definition. It's always accessible to you, because you are it. I'm really feeling the limits of language typing all of this out, lol.

Ok, forget enlightenment then. You can keep your definition of enlightenment if you want. The definition does not matter, what I am pointing to does. I am talking about a psychological switch which will completely remove your negative emotions and perception of time forever, which is what I am literally experiencing right now. And I am claiming that this is enlightenment, not anything else. This same exact phenomenon is what the Buddha, Ralston, Krishnamurti, Eckhart Tolle, etc. are all referring to, and what has been referred to across time for centuries.

Those moments are probably completely valid, and they are likely a glimpse into what you can have 24/7, which would be enlightenment. You can induce it through meditation or certain peaceful moments. But I'm guessing what is happening is that certain thought patterns are triggering you and forcing you out of that state. If you meditate, your thoughts might become peaceful, but then how are you gonna react to those thoughts when you're not meditating? When you're enlightened, you're just permanently stuck in meditation. There is no oscillation between a meditative experience and a non-meditative experience anymore. It's just meditation forever. There is just a single insight/recontextualization about the nature of thoughts that will permanently prevent you from being attached to them ever again. That is enlightenment. You might have glimpses of enlightenment, as you describe, but enlightenment is just being there 24/7, without having to invoke some spiritual technique first.

There is a lot to say, but I will just do a very brief description how it unfolded for me specifically. It is actually a very simple "shift", and I truly believe anyone can do it if they just give enough time and focus to their experience. It is a psychological shift that any human can do. Kind of like looking at an optical illusion, and switching from one perspective to the other. And then realizing that the previous perspective was useless and delusional, and then just staying in the new perspective forever. I was in a cafe listening to an audio of someone else's contemplation. There was one line of inquiry that occured that was like "Your entire direct experience is just a FACT", and I suspect that this is what triggered it. Experientially, for me, it was like my experience, or mind, became much more "lighter" or clearer or lucid. Kind of like some slight brain fog lifted that I never noticed before. Just for example, when I go in public, it just feels like my experience is so smooth and free, whereas before I was constantly being attacked by other people's perceptions and thoughts (which were actually just my own). Right before that, I did have this realization, which was like "ohhh ok, so that's why it seems like my thoughts are connected to this experience." I didn't notice it at the time, it just felt like normal contemplation, but I think when I understood this insight is probably when it actually happened. I will say, my sleep and energy levels have improved dramatically as well. I don't have to think all the time anymore. Thinking all the time seriously disrupts your sleep and energy levels. You cannot sleep properly if you cannot stop thinking. It's like putting your computer on "sleep" instead of shutting it down completely. Basically, what I actually realized was this: Time, future, past, regrets, obligations, responsibilities, etc. <<<< These are all just thoughts. They have NOTHING to do with your experience, at all. So what's happening when you identify with thought is: >> pure sense perception (thought) >> the real you decides to act as if the thought is true (anxiety, heart racing, avoidant behaviour, self-deprecation (more thoughts), etc) Unknowingly, you are extrapolating thought into something that is not thought (physical symptoms mentioned before), which experientially makes it SEEM like thought is connected to experience, but it absolutely isn't. What will happen in the future? How do I look? Does she like me? Am I stupid? What happens after death? When will I die? Will I ever find true love? THESE QUESTIONS ARE ALL FACTS. THEY EXIST AS FACTS which point towards something that does not exist. By the definition of its existence, a thought describes that which does not exist (because it's just a thought), but it ALWAYS FACTUALLY EXISTS AS THOUGHT. There is nothing further you can interpret into your experience, because thought is just thought, not anything else which can exist in experience. You always have direct access to everything thats happening to you, because you are you. There's nothing to interpret. All interpretation is just thought, because in order to interpret, you have to take what you are 100% experiencing, and create something you aren't experiencing, which is impossible! I feel like a lot of this stress/anxiety related to thoughts comes from this idea that there is some event behind the scenes that you have to predict in your mind and prepare for, but no, your entire experience is just factually laid out in front of you to see. THERES NOTHING TO INTERPRET IN REALITY, EVER. Your thought about pain is never pain itself, your thought about being sleep deprived tomorrow is never sleep deprivation itself. YOU exists as YOU. Not YOU combined with thoughts, just YOU. The entirety of experience is just you, always. Experience doesn't have to identify with anything to exist. Anytime you perceive "identification", it is ALWAYS a thought. There is no such thing as identity or identification. A flower does not need to identify with anything. The sky does not need to identify with anything. You do not have to identify with anything. You exist. YOU are your entire experience. Thoughts are always just a subset of that experience, by definition. Therefore, thoughts cannot accurately point to or describe you or your experience, ever. The medium of "thoughts" and "identity" are WRONG. Full stop. You cannot ever reach or perceive yourself through identity or thought. You cannot think a flower, you can only perceive it. You cannot think the color red, you can only perceive it. You cannot think yourself, you can only perceive it. Eventually, you will see that 90% of your thoughts are completely redundant, because they are describing something that doesn't exist, and so they will just fall away forever. I could go on forever with these different contemplations and insights, but I don't know which one might actually do it for you, but I think that is something I really need to work on and polish before I start sharing it with people. Anything could really trigger it, it just depends on what makes sense to you. My responses in this thread point to the same thing:

I am not gonna say whether it is wrong or right, but he is not enlightened. He is extracting insights about enlightenment, and certain specific metaphysics, from psychedelic experiences. That doesn't mean his teachings aren't valid or useful. He does a really good job of doing this while cutting out a lot of the bullshit, and he articulates the experiences very well, which is all part of his talent. I love Leo and all his work is massively useful. If he became enlightened, and THEN continued his work, that would lead to something absolutely amazing for him and the universe, probably. It's very interesting, because the insights that I IMMEDIATELY obtained from enlightenment are the exact same insights that Leo talks about after hundreds of trips. Like, reality is love for example, yeah, it kind of is, I can exactly see where this sentiment comes from, but I don't have to be on a psychedelic to be conscious of this. It's literally in my direct experience right now. And I just immediately became conscious of it when I got enlightened. My experience itself has been recontextualized in such a way that it has no option but to love itself.

Enlightenment is a singular thing. Not multiple different things. If you are experiencing multiple things, those are either "hints" towards enlightenment, or just simply not it. Enlightenment is a singular recontextualization where you can't see "yourself" ever again, and all the worries associated with that self go away, because you just become exactly what is being experienced. There's no need to identify with anything. Existence does not need to identify with anything to exist. You exist.

Yep. This is exactly what I realized after I achieved enlightenment a few days ago. Memory cannot replicate direct experience. Therefore, if you're "bringing back" insights, they will eventually become twisted and corrupted, which is why you get all these crazy solipsism threads on this forum. I just see reaching traditional enlightenment as non-negotiable now. It's not JUST the ending of suffering, it's realizing exactly what you are 24/7, without the need for psychedelics or chemicals to induce it for you first. Not to mention, these psychedelics have their own flavours and methods for conveying their "truths", which the ego likes to twist up as well. For example, salvia might turn you into a table, which conveys a certain amount of truth and metaphysics, but of course YOU aren't actually a table. But, the unenlightened ego gets really stuck to certain details of these experiences that don't matter at all, and then it creates a bunch of stories about it. Psychedelics are good for opening your mind and removing the materialistic veil. It's good for making you think "oh shit, maybe I don't know what reality is, maybe I don't know what I am" and then pushing you to look into spirituality. What happens a lot with psychedelics though is that the unenlightened ego will concoct a bunch of stories that it "brings back" from these experiences through memory, and then that is where things go to shit, to put it bluntly. The unenlightened ego has NOT become enlightened, and once the chemicals wear off, the psychedelic is not helping you be enlightened anymore, so the unenlightened baseline ego HAS to recontextualize the experience into a corrupted and unenlightened version of it, because the psychedelic has worn off, and it does this through the medium of memory. The ego exists in memory, so that is where it plays its cards and pulls you back in. You need to achieve traditional enlightenment before further pursuing spirituality or psychedelics. It is a must. Or else it will lead to a lot of confusion down the line. You can't just say "I'm never gonna achieve traditional enlightenment, I'll just discover truth through psychedelics", because this is a contradiction, since lack of enlightenment means you are not aware of truth. I am not going to deny that psychedelics are a good tool for reaching enlightenment, HOWEVER, they can be a double edged sword, as it VERY susceptible to being co-opted by the ego. And, of course, once you are in baseline, you become your ego again, so this becomes a massive problem, because you cannot stop being your ego, otherwise that would be enlightenment. Enlightenment is just the stopping of identity (as it is seen to not exist), to put it one way at least. If you do not reach enlightenment, you will CONSTANTLY be identifying with thoughts and stories (unless this is removed again through psychedelics), which is delusion. This is not something to skip or brush off, and it is not just some trivial human desire to stop suffering. It is a singular psychological phenomenon that permanently allows you to see things as they actually are.

Does decaf not help with tapering off? If you just drink decaf forever, isn't that a solution of some sort? Since there's no caffeine? Or does it just feel useless since there is no kick?

Yeah I'm pretty much the same. Not that I like guys. I like females for the most part. But sometimes you want them to dominate a bit more, I guess. Not sure how to describe it. I've never desired 100% masculinity, or else I would be gay I think. But I've desired some variations of that percentage. It's possible to create such ratios where it feels like "you're getting fucked by a girl" if that makes any sense. It's not entirely masculine, but it's pretty masculine lmao. That's kind of where the appeal of "feminine men" comes from I guess. It's just another mix of those "ratios" between femininity and masculinity. Then there's also just the idea of having something out there pleasuring you that is enticing by itself, which kind of leads into what you said about imagination or whatever. I've always felt this way. Like, if something is objectively physically stimulating me, the only way to stop that would be to imagine something to stop me from enjoying it.