AtheisticNonduality

This is probably not a problem with your competence or intelligence or technical skillset but just with your emotions. Your emotions are not lining up with reality, so you'll have feelings of worthlessness no matter how worthy you actually are, which could skew your results and make you unhappy and go into a withdrawing state where you become unmotivated and "laying in bed most of the day feeling sorry" for yourself. So I would suggest a psychological rather than a pragmatic approach.

@RMQualtrough I would argue permanence (the screen) and impermanence (the screen as words) are equally real.

The monk's monkness and the murderer's rape/killing of children are identical in the way they are both absolute existence, and yet they are different things. That's why this is a language issue. For a reductio ad absurdum, think of mathematical truths like one does not equal two or three does not equal four. Ultimately, absolutely, they do equal each other, and yet they don't. The reason the ultimate absolute level is appearing so profound is because you were operating under the relative for so long that you "forgot" about the absolute, and now the undeniable divinity and fundamentality of the absolute is making you sway your language to that side; but both definitions are just definitions.

@RMQualtrough This is a language issue primarily, yet it also bleeds into you depersonalizing the world (and you as a word are taking away the person-ness of the world, which is a set of words). The screen as only itself without any words does not care if it exists in an enlightened state or not; that's something the words rearrange themselves into. A variety of reinterpretations can then happen, like what you're doing right now by denying hierarchies/dualities like good vs. bad, saints vs. sinners, etc.

@thisintegrated Again with the techno-Muskian hogwash . . . ?

@RMQualtrough I'd say the words are what we're talking about when we speak of enlightenment. Reality is the same whether it's in non-enlightenment or enlightenment, so obviously Reality is not the only standard for awakening. Awakening is when the words, or those aspects of existence which have actual formed substance, attain awareness / recognition. Reality does not require self-recognition unless it is enlightened, and we understand a process of unenlightened ignorance up to enlightened wakefulness, otherwise there's no reason to discuss any of this.

If I gestapo-style tortured Jed McKenna, cutting his fingers off, beating him up, etc., he would experience suffering, regardless of egolessness. If I tweaked his brain in the right ways, I could make him bipolar or schizophrenic, and he would experience suffering, regardless of egolessness. If I killed his whole family, he would . . . etc. I have also mentioned before that schizophrenics and the depersonalized experience no-self, and yet they're insane and suffer; so the connection is tenuous at best: it's a myth propagated by simplicity-addicted fools. We've, if we're thinking correctly, defined enlightenment as these states. But you have an "alternative" definition that comes with only two things: death of the ego (which is nebulously defined) and a vague positive state characterized by a reduction of suffering. And we have already proven that this is not necessarily the case with bipolarity or schizophrenia or physical torture or even just ordinary mental torture, since the ego is not required at all for any of these: see above ^.

Lol, you have been convicted of not having awakened. Maybe you have experienced some reduction in suffering, but that is not It.

What's troubling to me is that you reduce all of these positive states to a negative removal of ego. As an analogy, it's like saying pleasure is just the removal of pain. You've made the claim that once the ego is gone, the enlightenment begins, and the amount of ego gone-ness has an exact correlation with enlightenment levels. But what phenomenologically could you say about enlightenment and these experiences? How would you define terms like God, nirvana, savikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhis, Nothingness, Everythingness, Nondual Union, Soul, Luminousness? How do you experience them? What is your emotional state? If you can't cough up excellent descriptions of these states and what they're actually like, it makes me think you've just been pretending to destroy some imaginary thing called the ego, when really nothing or at least less than what you believe has been happening.

He does not equate them both (motivation and cognition), but Maslow is placed there amongst the other models. Motivation is one line that goes through the same levels of complexity / vertical development, just like how the different types of cognition are different lines, so Kohlberg (the ethical line) will correlate in terms of the levels gone through with the lines of various multiple intelligences and personality and such but will remain its own consideration. I mean you could have someone at Piagetian formal-operational that has Kohlberg's preconventional morals.

How can a single person (yes, that's right, you are a person) be so delusional and self-flattering when their entire viewpoint is supposedly based on principles of nondelusional selflessness? That's a bit self-contradictory, since you have the worldview Wilber had in the seventies . . . before the model was improved, that is. Same levels, different lines. But generally you could make it so they will fall together. The physiological needs are Beige, the safety needs are Red, the love/belongingness needs are Amber, self-esteem needs are Orange, Green is like an intermediary, self-actualization is Teal/Turquoise, self-transcendence is "Tier 3". I'm uncomfortable, though, with putting love/belongingness with Amber, since practically it is improved properly only in Green and upwards; and yet the holon of that kind still emerges at conventional rather than postconventional (yes, the Kohlberg model adds up too).

@JoeVolcano This makes me want to read Jed McKenna out of morbid curiosity. The type of reduction of self and expanded realness you're talking about is like a generalized version of Ken Wilber's early model as The Spectrum of Consciousness from the seventies. It was dropped, because of the reasons I've pointed out already, though it is applicable in certain ways.

That's your (false) interpretation of the model. It's actually about an expansion of self, including more worldviews, complexities, and capabilities under it. It has only to do with transcending and including lower selves into a higher self each transcendence. It's unrelated in the lower stages to mysticism. The fact there are people in the Yellow mega-thread that don't subscribe to mysticism and there have been Red and Blue ones that have accessed it proves that self-actualization and self-transcendence are severed. Don't try to distort the model with your own projections. The crux here, is that there is a structure to the human mind, regardless of whether or not formless infinite awakened realms and truths have been accessed. The structure will remain: having an ideal structure is self-actualization, having an unideal one is its inverse. The formless realms will be accessed: accessing them is enlightenment, not accessing them is its inverse. There is no reason to bring up "ego" or "ego dissolution" semantic foolishness here because that's unrelated to the definitions of self-actualization (ideal structure) and self-transcendence (something formless outside the structure). Obviously both the structure and trans-structure become related, at the highest stages. If you want to prove that self-actualization (ideal structure) paradoxically requires no-self, you're going to have to define "ego" and "war against the ego" and "ego death" in terms that specifically make sense in accord with ideal structure (which is something related to the mind and senses of identity, not transcendence of the mind) and transcendental realms.

Humans evolved from animals, so we already have a foundation of instincts that start out very animalistically; though we take these instincts and humanize them with condition and our higher human developments. If that's not what you mean, then there are weirdos that have surgically altered themselves to resemble animals. As for humans and animals genetically merging, the advancement to where we'll able to do that won't be enough to get that to happen right away. And when we are at that level, the possibilities will be endless enough to where the idea of going downward and back into the land of mere creatures will be unappealing to many (though I concede this doesn't necessarily have to be what you're talking about)---I would think / hope. Not all of this has to make sense immediately, but it should help.

@JoeVolcanoAny development from child human to adult human is what I mean by self-actualization. Realizing that you are not a human at the highest levels is what I mean by self-transcendence. Self-actualization is development of the self (child to human, increasing in complexity through maturation); self-transcendence is going beyond the self, is outside the self. This might be an extreme ego or an extreme example, but take the fact that ego dissolution is not synonymous with awakening. A schizophrenic (schizo = split, phrenic = mental) has an ego that is destroyed through multiplication: they have multiple egos talking to each other and multiple realities with conflicting rules and all sorts of hallucinatory or cognitive paradoxes. This is disintegration, not integration. There needs to be a principle of unity in the organism, so that is the function evolutionarily for the ego. If we use self-transcendence to see beyond the ego, there still needs to be the self-actualization structure so that the self is at its high and developed point, not a void of the psyche or a collapse of the psyche. This is why the "spiritual warfare" against one's own self appears as complete nonsense to me. I would also argue self-transcendence is possible at the lowest levels of self-actualization, so self-transcendence is not "above" self-actualization as a developmental stage but rather is a condition of reality or a basic truth that awakening gives you access to. It is a truth, however, that becomes enmeshed in the higher stages, like I said. I meant the Wilber equivalent of SD (Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, "Indigo", etc.), though I'm uncomfortable with and find it ridiculous to color-code the highest stages, because that makes it seem like "child humanity" or something. The existence of multiple theories integrated is why it's metatheoretical and not just theoretical. So that they're not describing the same line, but they are describing the same levels; and they have the same basic patterns. That's why they're comparable and integrable.

He said Ken Wilber was Yellow. All of these disagreements are mendable by recognizing a distinction between self-actualization and self-transcendence. You could choose to focus on one or the other, yet they are not just distinct in phraseology but have distinct meanings. But still further agreement could be found between them, and between us, if we know that while self-actualization and self-transcendence are distinctly existing as separated realms (possible dualities like form vs. formlessness, self vs. selflessness), they do have a mergence at some level of self-actualization. Once one reaches the highest potential heights of self-actualization, self-transcendences becomes impossible to avoid, and I agree with @JoeVolcano 100% on that.

You've previously said that thisintegrated would make a better authority on this subject than you. thisintegrated has said that I am Turquoise, so clearly there is something stuck between you and him, which could be his higher development which you've intimated about. Or, if he's still wrong, this actually proves the difference between awakening (his higher development) and structure, especially cognition, (his wrongness about my SD standing)---thereby proving me right, my cheery friend.

@JoeVolcano The structural (personal) development and mysticism (transpersonal) development have to remain distinct, to explain Red and Blue genuine spiritualities, real nondual experiences filtered through lower cognitions, or those with high cognitions and lowly developed mysticism experiences / spiritualities. We could say the two have to become merged at some point, but it isn't Turquoise. You could have somebody that is Turquoise in some areas and still with shadows in others, like Green or Blue or Red or Orange and such. And even that is not the same as awakening. And I would not say awakening is the only real line of development. You could have an awakened maliciousness.

@JoeVolcano I said before: Usually the ego is only meant to be one or a few of these, so there are certainly possible issues outside the ego. If there's a problem in the physical environment (like a storm killing people), that is not a problem with the ego. If there's a problem with the body (like a contagious disease), that is not a problem with the ego. If there's a problem with the body's emotions (like rage issues swelling up and contorting muscles), that could be a problem with the ego if the ego is identified with it; or it could not be since the ego is disidentified with it and lets it be an autonomous shadow. If there's a problem with the mind's emotions (like depression, anxiety, the whole list of stereotyped "contemporary" disorders), that could be a problem with the ego if the ego is identified with them and has them as a sign of it fighting against something that it is not; or it could not be, if the ego is disidentified from them and is letting them be free as an emotional rather than an egoic phenomenon, if the instincts and the intellect have been separated perhaps. If there's a problem with our subconscious, I don't really think you could argue that's a problem with the ego since the subconscious is, by definition, not conscious to our personal identities, but some denials of the ego could cause the subconscious to respond compensatorily accordingly. If there's a problem with the intellect (like retardation as stupidity or obsession as insanity), perhaps that is a problem of the ego, or a problem of not enough identity rather than too much. The supraconscious definitely is not holding problems of the ego, though I say it may, in fact, have issues with itself if its structure is flawed in some way.

@JoeVolcano Our only disagreement is you have an obsession with the ego, and I don't. Cheers

It's almost as if you didn't understand what I wrote. You prefer rambling on about "the ego" as if that is supposed to help develop yourself. I'm only being acrid because this idea is absurd, the idea that all problems are traceable back to the ego, when evidently they are not. Conflating Turquoise with mysticism is Leo's fault 100% for not explaining it correctly. Turquoise is a cognitive stage. That's what the model means. It is not inextricably attached to mysticism. At all. The superior model is Wilber's anyway, which includes stages which are in inextricable connection to various states of awakening, this being where awakening and cognitive development must intersect.

Differentiation > simplification for this. I don't subscribe to the notion of waging a war against the ego or trying to burn it to the ground and free yourself from it. That seems intuitively like a waste of time to me, though I could see if somebody had a really narcissistically intense sense of self how it'd be worthwhile. The way I'm thinking about it is that there are different levels or segments: 1. there's the physical environment "out there" that is separate from our body 2. there's our body 3. there's our body's emotions 4. there's our mind's emotions 5. there's our path into a deeper part of the mind 6. there's our subconscious 7. there's our intellect 8. there's that which is above the intellect, "the supraconscious". Not all issues that might happen with these eight levels have to stem from an egoic issue. Usually the ego means our body up to and including our intellect. Anything above or below that is either post- or pre-ego. But from another point of view, the ego could identify only with one level, so only the intellect or only the mind's emotions or only the body; dissociating from and allowing problems to ensue with the other levels. The Jungian view here is for a greater Self to arise out of a blossoming individuation to make all the parts work properly without damaging any of them, unconscious and conscious unified into functioning.

Strangely enough, our entire lives (all of what we know of existence) have revolved around humans (us). We seem to be the most conscious beings in our area, and those entities more clearly superconscient seem to exist inside us, as subconscious archetypes or supraconscious dream-realities of the highest complexities. All of this is accessible to us for a reason, because our reality is, in fact, centered around us and not not-us.

I think removing all that removes all our disagreements. But in more generous phrasing . . . I'd say I'm more inclined to differentiate various developments. The way the ego is described seems to throw too many phenomena together, when really they are separate. Obviously I'm not speaking in an Absolute sense.

@JuliusCaesar It's very easy to presume the Ra material was written by someone (a human person) working with the same archetypal ray configurations as you, so that's why it resonates: it has a connection in the human mind, not in the mind of some imaginary deities.