Oppositionless

Indeed. But it's precipitated by experience. Not an experience but a lifetime of experience. Surrender, courage, discipline, compassion. Any spiritual path or technique is ultimately a footnote to Truth or Life. What are you embodying while undertaking these practices?

I agree but that might give the wrong impression. It's always a free choice, God's will is never forced upon someone. You can cultivate the type of attitude with practice that channeling God's will is a joy. Well I would say the surfer is impressive for his mastery, the climber is impressive for his bravery, especially if he tries again given the fall (assuming the analogy doesn't break down bc he dies). In another thread I said I see meditation as good because it takes discipline, psychecelics are good because they take courage.

@Oeaohoo A .1% increase in baseline consciousness could be the difference between depression on the brink of suicide and genuine peace, a sense of purpose, and a heart full of gratitude. I'm less than 1% higher in my baseline from when I was at my lowest. But I live in a different reality. If you're more interested in the truth angle than the liberation angle, then there's plenty of that too.

Self-Realization happens in an instant, but it usually doesn't stick. In Yoga it's called Nirvikalpa, vs the abiding state of Sahaja. Nirvikalpa is, in the context of serious practice, common. Sahaja is quite rare. And then beyond Sahaja there are levels of baseline consciousness which are indescribable but can be glimpsed through psychedelics- this is sometimes called Turiyatita or the God-state. If I were to give an argument against psychedelics, it would be that they might make people ambivalent about raising their baseline state (although for me it was quite the opposite). Which is a tragedy, raising the baseline is far more important than glimpses.

@Oeaohoo just do the best you can with the tools you have available. If you raise your baseline by 5% over the course of many years everything will fall into place and your life will be beauty incarnate. When I use the word genetic I'm not just referring to physical genetics. I'm essentially referring to Rupert Sheldrake's idea of morphic fields, which encompasses the physical, astral, causal, ancestral, past life etc all rolled into one. The True Self is available to anyone who does the work, you just might not reach uninterrupted ecstasy in this life, and that's okay, part of the spiritual path is letting go of outcomes. Which is hard.

The beauty of nonduality is that it's available to anyone who does the work, whether they raise their consciousness a lot or not. I hate it but most people won't be able to raise their baseline by more than a few percentage points, even if they're highly disciplined with practices. But I still think a few percentage points is amazing and worth pursuing. Psychedelics can give us a glimpse of what genetic lottery winners like Ramana Maharshi are able to experience on a daily basis. Most awakened people are not Ramana's, by the way, not even close. That's why they live relatively normal lives and get involved in scandals. Peter Ralston might be approaching but not at Ramana level, a random blogger I found named Amara* might be too, I can't think of very many others. ****** I haven't gone through any of her training btw, this isn't an ad. Also she seems to have taken down the blogs where she went in depth on her state of consciousness and siddhis. *https://amarastrand.com/about/

Capitalists don't care about the future

I was like 50% green (love and light , meaningless career, hippie bum, passive vibes) and 50% yellow (obsessive map making, deep intellectual understanding of nonduality, colored by existential ocd doing metaphysics all day every day). Both of those led me to... not accomplishing very much. Oh and there was also plenty of shadow orange which made it so I wasn't okay with that, i couldn't fully accept doing nothing with my life, so I was unhappy. Haven't smoked weed in 3 days. Clearly it makes my Green passivity and my Yellow philosophical obsession worse. It's produced some genuine insights but also a lot of crap.

@Ramasta9 yeah I mean really the diagnosis is just about symptoms. I have instrusive thoughts and I have rituals for dealing with said instrusive thoughts. The root cause of that could be, as you suggested, an artistic mind or spiritual sensitivity. We live very unnatural lives, if you're sensitive it'll lead to all sorts of disorders. Meds were helpful when I didn't have the discipline to meditate every day. Now that I have that discipline, meds seem redundant and I'm tapering off of them.

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.