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.

@Leo Gura yeah but you also don't strike me as an influencer type . I'm referring to people who care more about clout than value.

What we need is not more influencers, I agree with you on that, but more people helping others one on one. People want to make a bunch of YouTube videos , they end up being shallow and highly generalized much of the time , because they want fame, when they could help more by learning to do one on one work. That's my two cents.

@Davino I've definitely been guilty of being a know it all. Especially pre awakening, when I was just obsessively thinking about metaphysics all day rather than doing practices. I would try more different chemicals if I wasn't so paranoid about buying stuff online.

I somewhat bypassed spiral dynamics stage orange, I think because my parents spoiled me excessively growing up . As a teenager I wanted to become a monk the second I graduated high school. I wanted to become enlightened. At 26 I feel I'm finally starting to reintegrate. Actually it involved first experiencing a glimpse of turquoise through hardcore psychedelics, which gave me the clarity to approach a career and success in a way integrated with my higher values. The biggest thing in the next 8 months is saving money becuse I'll be funneling most of my spending money into the life coach training. In other words, I'll need to cut my addiction expenses down. In that sense I'll actually be integrating blue alongside orange. It's very very exciting.

This is where I'm going to catalogue my spiritual practice disciplines.

Ironically the shaman is probably more dangerous, because he only gets to see you once, he's not gonna titrate you responsibly. Also he very likely is using inferior methods (ie toad venom) and serving it to you in a crack pipe, instead of synthetic in a vape cartridge.

@Alexop I've noticed myself censoring myself spiritually around my Green friends. I express maybe 20% of the insights I've had into reality and keep the rest to myself. A lot of my closest friends seemed worried when I told them about 5 meo. One of them told me I should really only do that with a shaman .

@Alexop Yeah I think I get some of what you mean. I've been involved in different types of green communities over the years. The rave scene, the meditation scene, the yoga scene, the kava bar scene (this is pretty big in Florida where I'm from). I've met people I could disagree with and people I couldn't , it just depends. @Leo Gura Do you think though that they could benefit from incorporating some of the lessons of green while still trying to master orange? I see this in the new age / manifestation community. People using green to get to orange (which of course is backward of how the model predicts but that's what it looks like to me). Dr K seems to do this, he'll teach someone some yoga technique that'll help them make a million dollars.

@Alexop @Leo Gura Yeah it's just the zeitgeist of the moment . No stopping it. I don't know what the solution is. But probably a good starting would be trying to find a community rather than an echo chamber. I've been rewatching the SD series , basically the solution is Green Of course that assumes willingness .