Oppositionless

Same with Christianity. I didn't learn God is Love from Leo, I learned it from being raised Catholic. As a child I loved to cry and get emotional in church. Getting interested in very strict nonduality where emptiness and pure consciousness are emphasized above all else coincided with a closing of my heart. If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick between psychedelics and yoga (or between yoga and vipassana meditation), I'd pick yoga with no hesitation at all.

No not quite. I still do some programming on my own, but I just am painfully aware that the junior developer positions have dried up. Also it just feels slightly dis-empowering to rely on AI, but it feels like it's impossible to keep up without it since everyone else is doing it, as at your job. But a lot of the fun of programming has gone way down for me, tbh.

I was diagnosed with adhd as an adult. Whether I really have it or not I'm not sure. Natural treatments for adhd include exercise and meditation (which you do), but I believe you can probably check both of those boxes in one with yoga or other body-based spiritual practices. That might be more effective for focus than training them separately. If caffeine leads to a crash you could try experimenting with nootropics. Leo has a nootropics video. L-theanine helps with focus and when you take it with caffeine it can chill out some of the downsides of caffeine. I agree with you on not liking stimulants. I hate the way they make me feel even if I'm a little more productive.

No he hasn't but when it happened to me I just instantly recognized that this seems like alien awakening, I mean I truly felt like I became a different being. But Leo could mean something different .

@Yimpa bazinga!

part of me wishes I used a more flattering picture but also, fuck it.

@Oeaohoo the part I didn't like was when he said he damaged himself so much that he would pay for it in the next life. And the implication we can offend God "breaking into the inner sanctum". Both of those points just seem like some dualistic nonsense to me. The point about fetishizing experiences over truth / insight is completely valid. I also don't see the distinction, ultimately, between maya and God. The insights I've had, and I'm not saying this must be the case, is that every experience , structure and modulation of consciousness has always existed and will always exist, and that if you removed even a single grain of sand the entire reality would instantly cease to exist. Distinguishing them might be part of the journey to liberation but it's not ultimately true. I personally got nondual insight from my own experience which I thought was eerily similar to Leo's alien consciousness. Essentially my consciousness was slowly but surely replaced by that of another being (this was my only ever "bad trip"). It was a horrifying dive into insanity and loss of control, but I came out the other side with a deep understanding of the illusion of self. This was before my true nondual experiences but I feel in a way it paved the ground for those. also, I want to apologize if I come across as a dick. That's not the intention.

On a lighter note, some of my intrusive thoughts are funny. I often catch myself saying these types of things out loud before registering them as a thought. * = fake name "Does Susan* want to date me?" "Does Susie* want to date me?" "Does God want to date me?" "I miss God" "I am God" "I hate God" "Big crocs 🐊" "Big bears 🐻" "Big sharks 🦈" "Big lions 🦁" "Fuck the police" "Cock and ball tortue" "Ball stretcher"

@Carl-Richard what's your definition of Maya? Even though I'm "pro psychedelic" , putting that in scare quotes bc it's not quite that, I like anti psychedelic perspectives. I just don't like the one shared in the above article bc I think it's fear-based. But if you watch this you'll hear a more grounded anti psychedelic stance : TLDW: psychedelics are like a helicopter that takes you to the top of the mountain, but the real benefit comes from walking. The view isn't any more important than the walk, and taking the helicopter could make you think you don't need the walk . Plus, adding my own metaphor, if you take the helicopter your risk of crashing (ie further delusion) goes up. -------- But I ultimately still know psychedelics benfited me personally more than they hurt me. But that's for me, that's why I'm only "pro psychedelic" not pro psychedelic.

The rise of AI led me first to despair bc I was going to school for CS (with a specialization) in web dev. But I think it ended up being a good thing because now I have to get creative. I'm gonna get a life coaching certification and build that business. My current job is building servers.

People fascinate me. I lose a lot of productivity time just bouncing ideas off people . I want to be a coach because I can indulge in that while still advancing myself. Part of it is the helping them, but there's also a science experiment aspect to it.

I get tension headaches sometimes while meditating . It's very frustrating.

This was a loving kindness retreat so all day we were doing metta meditation. The first meditation on the first day was guided, the rest were silent. AFAIK this is pretty un-typical, Zen practice is usually just sitting with no technique, or koan practice. I honestly think I got more out of it being focused on metta however. I had two profound awakenings (well, one, it happened all at once) to unconditional love and to intelligent design, on the second to last day. But I didn't realize God until 5 meo. I mean it's very standard stuff with 5 meo. I realized God, that I was God, that consciousness is equal to nothing and to love, that the separate self is an appearance within consciousness not the source of consciousness, and that it's impossible to die. I don't credit the molecule the realization, the molecule just raised my consciousness so I could realize what I've always known.

I wonder if it would help to lean into it. Consciously clench even harder, and then release.

@Davino this year I added two to my list . 5 meo dmt and 2-fdck. I pretty much never talk about 2-fdck but in some ways it was just as profound, more so in the emotional and healing domain than the nondual one. What do you think about tai chi / qigong? I find it's the best counterweight to kriya yoga. If I'm ever feeling wired after pranyama I can do 10 minutes of microcosmic orbit work and I'll feel much better. It doesn't take away the befits of pranyama either, just the negatives.