Tim R

Great movie. I'm watching it right now and Dogen's master just said "just as enlightenment is infinite, practice is also infinite. Enlightenment and practice are inextricably linked." Thought I'd share that with you

Yoo this is crazy, who knew that chimps were so intelligent?

Existence is Love

Who claimed that it will? The cardboard sign of some 19 y/o hippie who demonstrates in front of a butchery? And btw, the video is about eating less meat, not going vegan. My point that the video is misleading is still valid, because instead of recognizing excessive meat consumption as a non-marginal contributor to the crisis, the video pretends that it's not a problem by setting up straw man arguments which it then knocks down by misinterpreting the science and thereby tries to make you feel good about it by subsequently scapegoating other industries as even worse. Which is true, but only because something else is more horrible than what you do, it doesn't mean that you can keep doing your only less horrible thing. Simply not true. In some cases it might be the result of an overly emotional reaction, but definitely not always. There are many reasons for why one could decide to go vegan.

@Kross You probably have an image of yourself of which you subconsciously know that it's not how you actually are (wise, spiritually evolved, integrous, etc). To start working on yourself would reveal your level of development to you, which you of course don't want to see and admit. So instead you do nothing, in oder to maintain your image of yourself. So what you do is get to work, face yourself and then accept yourself the way you are. Maybe lacking in integrity, maybe foolish, maybe undisciplined, whatever. And once again, Love is the answer. Loving yourself, even though it may be tough Love, will get you to where you need to be. It's okay to be foolish. We all are, I promise Can you say to yourself: "look man, I know you've had your fair share of struggle in life and I understand you. I feel you. I know that you didn't know any better at the time. I accept your lack of integrity and your foolishness, because I know that this is all you could do, and I don't expect more of you than who you are." And then you get to work, because you know that that is the love you need. Like when you have a house which quite literally lacks integrity, and it's falling apart everywhere, the walls are crumbling, the windows are broken and it's obvious that what this house is in need of is: Love! Somebody who cares. Somebody who accepts the house as lacking, as dysfunctional and broken. And who doesn't go banging the house with a sledgehammer shouting "oh you sh*thole of a house! why are you like that?!" Somebody who recognizes the parts of the house where some repair is due, who then doesn't avert his gaze from the seeming ugliness of its dysfunctions, but who then starts fixing what he can fix. And if he doesn't know how to fix a certain part of the house, he gets help from somebody else. But he isn't ashamed for not knowing what to do, because he can say to himself exactly the same thing as to the house: "it's okay to be foolish. It's okay not to know. I accept that, too." You can fix it, don't worry. It's your ego-mind that spreads doubt. Do what you can do, don't try to do everything at once, and remember to love yourself, in whatever ways necessary.

The video is pretty misleading. Especially the part with the methane, he set up a straw man (and a pretty bad one at that).. Yes, carbon is not the problem, methane is the problem, so even if the amount of carbon stays the same, the molecular compound in which it's bound doesn't. Whether it's bound as CO2 or CH4 is extremely important. Basically this whole video was like: "yeah, meat it pretty f*cking bad, but hey! look at this! look at that! these things are even worse!! so don't worry guys, let's keep eating meat because it's not the worst thing we can do"

HOLY SH*T

This video is so misleading, when the dude talks about the problem of methane he starts addressing the carbon cycle (carbon isn't even a problem!!), but the methane is a problem as a greenhouse gas. The science on that is clear. It's much more reactive in the atmosphere than CO2. He simply put up a straw man just to knock it down with false interpretations. Yes, the amount of carbon within the cycle stays the same, but the amount of carbon bound as methane (CH4) increases with mass cow farming. It's no accident that the melting of permafrost is such a danger, because arctic methane emission will release a lot of methane which will speed up the process exponentially.

His spiritual asceticism was basically the pendulum swinging into the other direction...until he realized the middle way

Very nice. Sounds like you really got the point

Lol you think those are weird? You ain't seen nothing yet. Look at the creatures you find in the deep sea, miles and miles below the surface, where there is no sunlight and the water pressure so high it would easily crush a high school bus into the size of your desk... try to survive in such a place and see how you're shape ends up looking? Or look at electron microscopic images of insects. It doesn't get much weirder than that, really... https://www.google.com/search?q=electron+microscope+images+insects

Yes The image in the mirror is the pure mirror "plus" its content. "Pure awareness" and "content of awareness" are the same, appearing to be different. But they are always and only the mirror. This awareness needs a reflection to "see itself". Which is why "ego", as a state of self-reflection is actually crucial for becoming aware of the fact that you are the mirror.

There's two types of motivation for me; what I call positive motivation, which is motivation for doing something because I want to do it, and then there's negative motivation, which is motivation for doing something because you don'T want to do something else. I struggle a lot with procrastination, it has gotten a little bit better but still, it's extremely difficult for me. And when I procrastinate, the motivation for my action is negative motivation. So in procrastinating, I do what I do not because I want to do it, but because I want to avoid doing something else. So this constant source of negative motivation is psychologically very taxing on me. It robs me of joy and the desire to do anything in life, including developing a life purpose. My question is: how do I reduce negative motivation? What's the source of procrastination? I've contemplated the second question many times but haven't found any meaningful answer. I guess it's a very individual problem. Maybe you guys can help me with some input.

Real and unreal are like two ends of the same stick. Reality is the stick. There is just the stick, which is a real illusion / an illusory reality. And furthermore, there is no stick, just....

What does Stage Coral even look like?

I agree.. I'd expect the scissor sound in an intro of a barber yt channel but not Actualized.org The thumbnails look really cool!

@m0hsen Don't worry, you're not. Leo just gave you a perfect example. You will never get to look like Ronnie Coleman by using your will/discipline or any bodybuilding technique if you're a 100lbs woman, it simply won't happen. Neither will you grow yourself to be 15 ft tall. Neither will you Increase your IQ to 350. Neither will you grow a 6th finger on your left hand. Neither will you fly by flapping with your arms as quick as you can. And neither will you compel your pineal gland to produce NN or 5MeO in the 10-40 milligram range. It's a physiological impossibility.. And if I am to believe Leo, you as God set yourself that limit. This has nothing to do with being open-minded. This has nothing to do with being a dogmatic materialist or dogmatic scientist. But for god sake, keep a certain level of mental hygiene in here (sorry, I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything)... threadlock probably comes in any minute now?

@m0hsen I will look into it, the book is on my book list anyway. This whole schtick around Siddhis and reaching superhuman abilities of any kind strikes me as overly mystified, exaggerated and mostly untrue. People just love this stuff, because people love magic. And in order to love it even more, they will pretend that it's true. Which is perfectly understandable. There's a great deal of excessive guru-worshiping and (subsequent) delusion going on in many yogic traditions, I have personal experience with this sort of thing, I've seen it. So I'm not at all impressed by things like It's because people want magic to be true, people want their gurus to be like Gods, so when Yogananda looked someone in the eyes and their heart started pounding like mad and they felt a tingling all over their body, they will think it's his magic powers and alas, they will start spreading their deluded fantasies about him. It's the exact same priciple like with fundamentalist Christians who delude themselves about having encountered the Holy Spirit when they had a fever for 3 days in a row. Again, I'm 100% sure that people can reach incredibly far out and high states of consciousness by all kinds of techniques, like Tummo or some secret Kriyas which are only known and taught by some 110 years old yogi who has spent the last 85 years doing Yoga in a cave in northern India.

@m0hsen The studies about which these articles write simply show that a) DMT occurs in rat brains b) the DMT levels in the brain increase after cardiac arrest in rats There are studies which show that the effects of DMT are similar to a near death experience, but there's no evidence that DMT actually has anything to do with it. Correlation ≠ Causation As BipolarGrowth said there are many, many other factors besides DMT or 5-MeO. Many of which are not even neurochemical in their nature, but psychological on an individual level. Not to mention context factors. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01424/full Here you go. This is as comprehensive as you could wish for. Be careful what claims you make, especially when you enter such complex scientific domains like neurophysiology/-psychology. "Explanations" like "discipline" or "an advanced yogi is not a human anymore" just don't cut it, so be careful not to delude yourself with these pseudo-scientific approaches when what you're talking about is mostly a problem of science. I bet Bashar doesn't know much about these things either. You can't recreate such experiences with your sheer will. Leo's right, it would be easier to grow your schlong than to manipulate you brain chemistry into a full blown psychedelic experience. We're human. Maybe we'll reincarnate as some actual alien who can do this. But until that happens, we're limited in certain domains. Of course, if you'd provide actual evidence, I'd be more than glad to change my mind.

@m0hsen Can you give me links to these studies? Or maybe names? I would love to read them very much.

@m0hsen I guarantee you that your pineal gland will never ever produce such high doses of DMT. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "limiting beliefs" or "not enough practice". There are limits to our bodily existence. Only because you really, really want to bench press 1000 lbs doesn't mean that you ever will. Also, DMT does not occur only in your brain, it's found in various tissues all over your body. So don't focus too much on the pineal gland. We know very little about the effects of DMT because we've never studied it properly, even researchers like Strassman didn't want to go too woo-woo, so he stuck to measuring rather boring parameters like heart rate or pupil dilation Now please understand me, I'm not denying that some hardcore yogi might've been able to produce exceptionally high amounts of N-N- and/or 5-MeO-DMT (and probably even some other much less known compounds), whether it be through yoga, meditation, breath work or some secret practices, but what I am saying is that it was not in the range of breakthrough dosages. Do you microdose DMT? Or how do you know that? in physiology, there's something called "equilibrium". Which in this context means that your brain will adapt the ration of receptor densitiy to substance concentration in the synaptic cleft. Which means that even if you somehow get your brain to produce more DMT in the long term, since this is a very long process, your brain will slowly adapt to those slightly higher, new states to return to equilibrium - aka it becomes your baseline. Of course, your baseline then is different from your baseline now, so in that sense you will get closer to some other permanent state of consciousness, but here's the problem: as I said, DMT breakthrough dosages are in the mg range (within 3 tokes, which is like what? 1 minute?), whereas natural production of the pineal gland (I'm now talking about melatonin, which is a precursor, not DMT, because the occurence of DMT was studied in rats, not humans) ranges in µg (per day!). So we're talking about a factor of 1000x. You'd have to change your brain chemistry by a factor of 1000 in terms of a very specific relation between almost a dozen 5-HT-receptors, a couple of other receptors and their ligands (N-N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, etc.). I'm not saying that it is impossible, as a matter of fact, I don't know. I'll have to do more research on that. But anecdotal stories told about (not even by) some yogi who has supposedly reached and the promise of Bashar is not really enough. Besides, what's even the point of trying to recreate a breakthrough experience without admitting the substance exogenously? Because the psychedelic realm is (imo) not even the point of spirituality..

Wow this is such a good example for stage blue. Just the way the bishop begins to talk about "God" and "objective values" and how he doesn't like subjectivity?

@m0hsen Bro, it's a gland. Not a freakin DMT lab. Do you actually know how ungodly massive of a dose the pineal gland would have to produce in order to create a breakthrough experience? Forget it... 25miligrams+ from a gland that produces its main chemicals (e.g. melatonin) in the lower microgram range? not gonna happen?? not to mention your MAO which would simply break down any present DMT. Which is why you have to smoke a lot of it within a few tokes, that way your brain is overwhelmed and needs some time to break it all down

What would you do? Would you keep working on your life purpose? Would you live a hedonistic life? Would you meditate more? Would you leave society and become a hermit? Would you become a monk/nun? Would you travel the world? Would you love other people more? Or would you simply go on living? This is actually something to really think about. Because your life will end, only you don't know when. Today might be your last day on earth, literally. Are you conscious of that? Do you act/live like you know it? Or are you in denial about this fact?... most people are, including me. Looking forward to your answers. Maybe this thread can spark some inspiration and motivation

@Fishmonk What you do is called fearmongering. There are individual cases where the various vaccines have led to rather serious health issues but most people are fine. We don't really have any other option here. Either you cooperate and take the vaccine or you don't (which is also fine if you have good reasons), but if you decide to do the latter, at least do it without spreading overly generalized, incidental, flashy news which scare people into not getting the shot.