Tim R

@Gianna You very well know the answer to that. Sitting quietly... there it is

Sounds like a bunch of unquestioned assumptions to me...

@RMQualtrough What's that supposed to be?

@Someone here My friend, you have deluded yourself. You don't know who you are and you think you're alone. If you actually knew who you are, you wouldn't be "terrified of being alone". Sometimes it's good news to be wrong. Snap out of it.

@Someone here Terrifying? To whom?

“There was a young man who said "God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that a tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad." Reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

@Alan Reji Imagine you as a human could love everything. What would that look like? Well, you would embrace and accept everything as it is, 100% here and now, without needing reality to be different in any way. Even if reality would be somehow different, you'd also accept and embrace it, totally. Existence is Love. Because existence never says "no", to anything. The moment something exists, reality has already accepted and embraced its existence by virtue of "allowing" its existence. Reality doesn't need itself to be any particular way, because it is everything there is. It can be whatever it wants to be, because there is no limit to reality (since there can't be anything "outside" reality to limit it/set a boundary). This is the infinite nature of reality. Reality is infinite love. It is it. Love is not something "on top of" reality/existence. Existence itself is Love. I personally haven't yet experienced "god", so I won't use that word. But I'm speaking from direct experience when it comes to seeing that existence is love, and so I'm equating Existence = God. The reason why hate, greed, war, evil, brutality, etc. exist is because they actually don't. This might sound very subversive thing to say, but you asked for it, so here we go; inspect "evil". What is it? What is its source? Let's for a moment set aside this whole Love thing and just look at evil. What do you mean when you say "evil"? And why do other people mean something else when they say evil? This gives you a clue. "Evil" or "bad" is all that, which in some way hinders, disrupts or threatens your own survival. Not only your survival as a physical organism, but also (and especially!) the survival of your identity, which includes your psyche, your ideas, your attachments, your beliefs, etc. So whatever threatens all that, you will deem evil or bad. So, evil springs from selfishness and attachment to identity. However, this limited identity that you've constructed is an illusion. If you would see through the illusion of your identity/self, you would become selfless. Literally. And this selflessness is what reality is. Because reality is not finite, it's infinite. No boundaries. No rejection. Only 100% pure, selfless acceptance of everything that is. It's Love. And everything is that.

Why would you have to mention Leo when talking about Spiral Dynamics?

Where do you want him to criticize Leo from? @Gesundheit2 From no particular position. I for example don't subscribe to any one teaching, school or dogma and neither does Leo (maybe his own lol), so that's really the only place you could come from. I'm not defending Leo here, but I don't think that he will dismiss the critique "no matter what". I've uttered my criticism over a couple of things he has said and I don't think he dismissed these things. When the critique is well-founded, he is rather open to it. I kinda agree with you on that one, but not necessarily in the case for Leo. He doesn't teach conclusive concepts. Obviously he needs concepts to communicate his teachings, but what he's pointing to is not concepts. (...and I don't think that's what this guys was saying anyway, he was going more in the direction of "Leo has misunderstood something and then build a house of misunderstanding on that basis").

I think the general point he's making - namely the fact that a foundation of ignorance will distort everything one builds on top of that - is important, reasonable and valid. @Dazgwny I don't think he's "full of shit", that's inconsiderate and leaves out the valuable things he said. However, everything he said in this video can basically be condensed into: "Leo has Miccā Diṭṭhi (wrong views)". That's it. He just says that Leo's views are wrong. He doesn't say what exactly he thinks is wrong with Leo's views. He seems to cling to the Buddhist teachings. The whole frame within which he interpreted and criticized Leo's view is that of Buddhism. So that's not a good thing. He needs to step outside Buddhism.

Detachment is not a kind of unfeeling or isolated distance to what is going on in the world or to reality, People wonder how it is possible to cultivate virtues like compassion and empathy while at the same time being detached. But the truth is that detachment is not some kind of dualistic form of detachment, in other words, you don't "distance" yourself from the world, as if you would isolate yourself. You don't say "I don't care". You don't say "no" to the world. Actually, detachment is saying "yes" to the world. Why? Because detachment goes hand in hand with intimacy. The duality between detachment and intimacy is an illusion and will eventually collapse, when you inquire long enough. Detachment (i.e. also intimacy) is somewhat like the relationship of a mirror to the reflection it contains. On the one hand, the mirror is completely detached and not influenced from and by its reflected content, on the other hand, the intimacy between the mirror and the contained reflection is total. In fact, it is so close and so intimate, that there isn't really any difference between the two. You are aware of the mirror in terms of it's reflection and vice versa, you see the reflection as the result of there being a mirror. You can never truly attach yourself to anything. In fact, attachment is a great illusion. It can seem that you're attached to people, things and ideas, but in reality, you're like the mirror. The mirror is not attached to its reflection. The point is therefore not to let go of attachments, but to realize that the attachment itself was an illusion the entire time? And I'll go so far and say that "Indifference" is actually a form of negative attachment. Because it's avoidance. And avoiding something is not being detached. So, if you were truly detached, you wouldn't have to avoid anything. Notice, how this is also the attitude of Love.

Very solid and healthy Green, definitely some Yellow as well.

@Swarnim Nice, good work. Try not to get (too much) hung up on bliss. Its a great thing and shows that you're doing the right work, but it can lead you to believe that "bliss" is the goal. And that ordinary everyday life is somehow "inferior" to this blissful state of consciousness. In Zen they warn about this and say: "The monk who has attained Satori goes to hell as straight as a flying arrow." So when you think you have "attained" the goal/enlightenment/bliss or whatever - therein lies the trap. Because it sets up a duality. So, you let the bliss come - and then you let it go.

He has had a massive backlash. His green shadow is enormous and he is deeply ingrained in stage blue and red. The way he talks about women or "effeminate" men is just next level ignorance. He talks about things which he doesn't understand in the least (I'm not condemning him for that).

@blankisomeone You need a reason to believe that the game is real.

I'm now sitting at home, typing these words. Around 40 minutes ago, I and a friend (female) were harassed by some dude (It's 1am right now and we were having a couple of beers). He wanted a few of things of us, but I didn't give them to him. I didn't know whether he was on drugs or anything (it certainly seemed that way) or whether he'd draw had a knife after I denied him what he wanted. He followed us for a while and verbally harassed my friend. I stepped in between. And I was scared. But behind the fear - there was allowing. Allowing in and of itself. This... embodied way of saying "yes, I say yes to whatever experience fills my consciousness". Instead of reacting, I responded. Calmly, but afraid. I didn't have a grim attitude about my fear. I didn't feel like I had to summon all my strength and face this terrible thing. This allowing I felt was not something "I did". It was simply there, without me having to do anything. Consciousness is not afraid. You are not afraid, even when you are afraid. You can be scared shitless, and yet - you are allowing. Allowing fear. Allwing the most awful things. You are "allowingness" itself.

It would be wrong to reduce the cause of suffering to "desire" - because then I ask: "what is desire?". And a looong rat tail would follow. And this rat tail turn out to be a circle. Suffering doesn't have any one cause, it's not a linear, but a circular chain of causation. All elements of which arise simultaneously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda This idea of the 12 fold chain of dependent origination is a key idea in Buddhism. Buddhism is a dialectic method, i.e. it's like a dialog between a teacher and a student. "I suffer and I want to stop suffering." "Desire is the cause of suffering." "ok, so I must stop desiring. Sh*t, I now desire to stop desiring." "Don't desire any more than you can." "well, I'm still desiring and I don't know how to stop. I can't stop desiring, I can't not stop desiring, whatever I do, I'm desiring. I'm trapped and I can't do anything about it. F*ck!" What the student needs to see is that the solution to this problem lies in the simple discovery that the self he thought himself to be - is not real. And then he escaped suffering. Why? Because suffering only exists and is only a problem, as long as there is an "I" that can suffer. Suffering is a result of "I". It's a result of resistance, aka survival. But when there's no one left to survive or to resist, suffering seizes to be.

Didn't think I'd ever live to see this day...wow?? Yup. You could say that being and non-being constitute existence. Or that existence itself is neither being nor non-being, but the underlying unity of them. Existence is truly non-dual.

@Someone here Then what exactly is your question? How to connect point 2 and 3?

@Someone here What makes you think that? What if existence is actually absolute and has no opposite? You can't go outside existence. Even the most "nothing" state you could imagine (for example the way things were before you were born), even that is existence. Existence must be all encompassing. You can't leave existence, because wherever you would go - you're still inside existence.

Hello my dear friends a few weeks ago, I had my deepest insight into the nature of consciousness / reality yet. I haven't shared it on the forum explicitly, only sort of build into some replies I gave here and there to questions, which now no longer bother me. Anyway, when I had this insight, two things became rather clear to me: 1) obviously, the content of the insight itself (which I won't go into in this post) 2) (and this is actually the more important one for me) what my path will look like from here on It's somewhat counterintuitive - you'd think that after a great and deep insight, you would be more motivated than ever to keep digging even deeper, to inquire further and understand more. But this is not what happened. What happened is that this insight showed me that it's time to "come back" to earth. Not because I don't want to live a spiritual life anymore or because I feel that I'm "done" - but because I now understand thoroughly, that there is no difference at all between the "spiritual" and the "mundane". I thought I had understood, but I hadn't. The mundane, the ordinary, the everyday survival-oriented life is the great thing. It is consciousness and love. The collapsing of the distinction between the spiritual and the ordinary has humbled me a great deal (more than I thought it would) - no longer am I somewhere else; somewhere different from all the fools in the world. No longer do I feel that I understand something greater than "ordinary folk" and no longer do I feel that there is something special about me. I feel like a complete and utter fool who had a lovely dream - and I can't tell you how much I love it I wanted to share this with you because it's a very important step on my journey and I'm really looking forward to what comes next and to how my life will unfold from here on. And lastly I would like to say thank you to all of you who have shared their wisdom, insight and knowledge about so many different topics. This forum can be an absolute goldmine (when it's not mental masturbation season again). You as a forum have been an important part of my journey for the last year or so, and for that I am quite thankful

Careful, many questions of this kind are so problematic not because the answer is complicated or difficult to understand, but because the question is asked in the wrong way. The solution to a meaningless riddle is not to be found in or as any answer, but in the dissolution of the question(-ing) itself. This is the real meaning behind "not-knowing". It isn't that you simply "don't know the answer", but that you have seen through the meaninglessness of the question. Which is a far more profound form of understanding things. Because then you're mind is truly at peace. The question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is one such a riddle. It is asked in the wrong way, because it assumes, that "nothing" and "something" are different from each other and fundamentally irreconcilable. But when you see that they are indeed identical, the question itself looses meaning - which makes it disappear. This is the method of "Koans" in Zen. The teacher will ask a meaningless question, and the only way of finding the solution to this riddle lies in the dis-solution of the entire riddle altogether. Anybody here could "give you the answer" to this question about something vs nothing. But it won't satisfy you, until you see through it yourself.

@Batman No I don't think I should

You never left nonduality. "Experience" only appears as duality so long as you insist on there being "experience". You don't need to enter general anesthetic or deep sleep or whatever. Here it is.