Jodistrict

This is why Zen keeps conversation to a minimum. The real truth is non verbal.

Shinzen would talk about pain as a means of spirituality. He use to teach AIDS patients how to use meditation to control pain. Years ago, he got interested in Native American spirituality, and decided to do a sun dance. That is where you dance for several days in the sun without food or water and then they put two knives in your breasts and hang you from a tree. He was telling us how interesting the sensations were and that it was deeply spiritual.

At which level does suffering cease?

Awaken the World in Canada did an intensive physical retreat several years ago where they microdosed with Iboga to aid the meditation and self inquiry. I saw a video where they claimed that a percentage of the people had an awakening. I don’t remember what the percentage was.

I agree. I am just saying that all information that use to be secret is now out there. There was a wisdom to keeping it secret. One can see how non duality has turned into a dogma with people flippantly saying they are god.

You needed to be a monk for 20 years to learn things like non duality. But now we can get the information on the Internet. I think that cat is already out of the bag.

Why should I listen to him? He promotes magical thinking which indicates to me that he is more concerned about marketing than liberation of his followers. Magical thinking and wild stories are entertainment for the masses.

My hunch is that reaching the most people possible would be the least concern of an enlightened person. Ramana Maharshi didn't have a marketing team.

This sounds like prosperity gospel from a megachurch pastor.

Sadhguru is a good businessman as demonstrated by the large organization he created and manages. He has fashioned a message that appeals to a simplistic audience coming from a materialistic culture. It’s important to keep in mind that his actual demonstrated competence is in business. The same thing happens in the medicine world. The guy who runs the Ayahuasca retreat has no shamanic abilities and may even be a sexual predator. But he is a good businessman, which is why he is the one running a retreat.

He is a professor who taught clinical psychology and when the going gets tough they blame it on demons, instead of facing himself and his defenses. He is a quack psychologist.

I am wondering how you get around the Federal Analogue Act which specifically targets "designer drugs". It treats chemical analogs as if they were the original controlled substance.

You don't know that.

They use dyads in holotropic breathwork. The breathwork sessions last 3 hours. One partner does the breathing while you take care of your partner. Then you switch. This works well for breathwork. But doing that with a powerful chemical sounds risky. I have been to over 20 bufo ceremonies and I saw some crazy things happen that require an experienced facilitator to keep the space safe. It might work for micro doses.

Meditation is a technique that quiets the mind and puts you in a non symbolic space where you can see the truth. Your non duality dogma is conceptual and will not liberate anyone.

Meditation is a technique for awakening that we know works. It has worked for thousands of years, worked for Buddha, etc. Ramana Maharshi meditated in a cave for 17 years. From a modern perspective, the problem is that it takes too long. Shinzen’s idea is to give meditation (which we know already works) a technical boost using technology to cut down the time it takes to awaken. It doesn’t replace meditation, it amplifies it. He has already experimented with this describing a TMS session as “like compressing a week-long retreat into 20 minutes”. Meditation is an empirical technique and not a dogma.

It does have something to do with the brain. Consciousness is modulated through our nervous system. This is what Yoga is about - purification of the nervous system to prepare it for higher consciousness. Shinzen is actively working with scientists to locate the brain centers involved in enlightenment. I tend to trust Shinzen on this subject because he was my first meditation teacher and I had personal contact with him and know he is for real. But that is just personal to me.

There are 5-meo retreats in California and other places in the US. I have never been to one but they use freedom of religion and establish some kind of church.

The best candidate should have been chosen through a fair primary process. That is how you find the best candidate. My favorite going forward is Governor Newsom. The issues should be focused on the economy and not divisive identity politics. It will take Newsom 4 years just to bring the government back to stability and undo some of the damage.

I have tended to find this to be true. I have taken Bufo many times over a 5 year period and it gives mind blowing experiences. But an experience no matter how intense is just an experience and the next day becomes a memory. There is no particular value to having a mystical experience. I heard in an interview with Shinzen Young that he has been working with scientists on TMS or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, as a possible technical boost to enlightenment. He says that psychedelics don’t have the industrial strength nor precision to target the relevant brain areas. If psychedelics worked, everyone would be enlightened by now. However, I am open minded, so potentially interested in learning more details on a seminar. If there was a way to use psychedelics as a technical boost that would make subsequent spiritual practice more productive, even that modest goal would be highly valuable.

It's irrelevant what I believe. Trump won because he convinced the swing voters that he was the better candidate. Ralph Nader lays out the argument in the video I provided.

It IS the fault of the democratic party for running a mediocre candidate and an issueless celebrity driven campaign. It's important to acknowledge this and replace the leadership.

Trump is losing the popular support he would need to take over. He promised prices would go down, but his tariffs are just increasing inflation. His support base, MAGA, is maxed out and unlikely to grow any larger. Then the drunken clown Pete Hegseth literally orders every general into a room and demeans them in front of the world and they respond with no applause. Are these guys going to participate in a coup? Ralph Nader believes that if Trump loses enough of the public support, he could be impeached, even by a Republican congress, since their choice would be to go down with him or get rid of him. Also Nader says there are over 100 impeachment charges against Trump, some of them criminal, in contrast to Nixon, who had only two charges against him.

This is an insightful interview with Ralph Nader discussing the problem of the democratic party and what to do.

No, he was more of a conservative or a moderate. The Republican National Convention selected Eisenhower over Douglas MacArthur. McArthur was more of a right-winger. If he had become president, he would have been feared by opponents, and not humored as a fool, like Trump.