Batman

You write well, fellow traveler. Safe travels.

Yes, calisthenics is awesome and very challenging. I like to balance it with yoga, because sometimes I am getting the chills that calisthenics revolves a lot around ego, due to the impressiveness and uniqueness of the exercises at hand (mostly HSPU, Muscle Up, Front & Back Lever, Planche, Flag, Pistols etc.). It easily extracts reactions from others watching you do this exercises. Calisthenics may be a huge ego trap, as you can see from the people obsessing over it as the end all be all of human movement. Also, calisthenics feels (for me) very one-dimensional if you are working on it for a long time. Gotta mix things up.

Hey, I would propose for you to ask yourself if your fascination is from the result of new consciousness or from adopting an highly articulated beliefs based on someone else experience. Of course you should not take anything from a book as belief, but merely a pointer for your consciousness. Regarding your communication with Ralston via the book - it surely isn't about adopting new beliefs, it is only to "empty your cup" which is filled with mental activities (assumptions, dispositions, beliefs, memories, emotions, etc). Letting go means genuine not knowing, because knowing is a form of limitation you impose on "direct experience" or Consciousness. Emptying your cup might be hard to comprehend because most of us believe we are the thoughts that arise in consciousness. This is false because thinking is an activity we are doing, even if it seems that thoughts occur "on their own". This goes unnoticed because we are unaware of the origin or nature of the mind, and that there are aspects of it that is not even in our cognition. Some mind activities are just operating in "the background", without us even noticing. This maybe what you mean by "deeply held beliefs", but I'm not sure if that's what you pointed to. This is also why psychedelics such as Psilocybin and LSD are so powerful in uncovering aspects of mind that are not cognized by our awareness. If you have taken Psilocybin and LSD, you probably noticed a certain, general feeling, of relief, but you can seem to know how or why. This is because some molecules operate exactly on the activity of mind which we refer to as deeply held beliefs or assumptions you have regarding your self and reality. These assumptions are, again, operating "behind the scenes". They are very nuanced and the mind is assimilating and fusing them into your experience without even you noticing. This assumptions largely revolve your sense of being - your self worth, your sense of separation from others, your basic drive to survive and so on. Getting beyond these assumptions (or bringing "subconscious mind" into consciousness) is no easy task due to their inherent invisible quality, and to the fact that most of us have this feelings "running" in our background for most of our life, and it seems as if it is an intrinsic part of your experience. It isn't. This is totally our own doing, even though it occurs outside your awareness and consciousness. It is great to start emptying your cup by dropping beliefs which are easy to recognize as a story your take for granted, even though you never experienced it for yourself. This why the example you brought up regarding the shape of the earth is so classic. Most of us never had an experience of an oval-shaped earth, but we take it for granted because it is the dominating belief in the matter in most of societies. This does not mean that the story we all have regarding the shape of earth is not an accurate way to represent it's characteristics, only that we blindly adopt beliefs as facts. This is also why emptying your cup from one belief is not meant to serve the adoption of a new belief (such as that the earth is flat). It only serves you to be open for the truth, or what is. You can still absorb knowledge in different domains of thought. But I have a feeling soon you will recognize that knowledge is a very limited form of consciousness, and because there is so much more beyond, it will be hard to be "satisfied" just by indulging in it.

Try concentrating on breathing deeply and let go.. join the Infinite breath.

Who cares? any answer you'll get to this question will only be speculation. Furthermore, not only no answer will deepen your consciousness, it will actually add another belief or story. Your falling prey to just another mind trap, trying to conceptualize Enlightenment from an obscure angle.

There are different degrees of ego dissolution. I would propose that ego death is the dissolution of both the self-mind and perceptive faculties. This could be "achieved" using Psilocybin and other molecules, yes. It is possible to resist the dissolution of the ego using the self-mind and the perceptive faculties, by trying to "hold onto" your known reality (hence "anchoring" you in ego consciousness). This is why letting go is very powerful in "psychedelic" states. An initiated psychonaut learns with time to cultivate the letting go "skill". But it is also powerful, and probably even more important, in default states. Letting go of your mind activity (beliefs, concepts, memory etc.) will grant you with greater openness and possibility towards deeper consciousness (which is limited by your mind and perceptions). Enjoy the ride.

This is because you are trying to grasp what God is using your mind and intellect. Stop personifying God, it is not what you think it is. Intelligence is only a distinction in the human domain, referring to certain capacity of a being to cope with obstacles. God is also infinite intelligence because "he" is not limited to any form whatsoever. So basically you can carve any degree of intelligence from it. You are also confusing your self-mind with God. Self-mind is a only a form of God, so of course that a self-mind that absorb any teaching will only form a new matrix of beliefs and concepts. Self-mind cannot and will not "realize" God, because it is only a limitation "within" God. I would also suggest replacing the word God with Consciousness or Nothing or Emptiness, I have a 'feel' that you have some form of negative connotation towards that word and this is never a good disposition for inquiry.

Good luck with that approach.

Freebase, do you must.

It didn't.

Truth is not a quality. Really contemplate What is Truth. It is also not something to be grasped by mind. Truth is prior to mind. See beyond the mind. Truth is not something to be transcended. It does not lie in the relative domain, it is an Absolute. Truth is the nature of all.

You should not base your conclusion (or even conjectures) on hearsay and belief. Smoke (or vape) DMT and see if it makes any sense to be in that state all the time. No proper human begin is really devoid of ego in his regular state. It will be impossible for the self to survive, provided that ego is self. It is hard-wired to our biological nature. But all of this are really just words and stories. Try some DMT and 'see' with your own 'eyes'.

Many of us are familiar with LSD, Psilocybin, N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT etc., as powerful tools for consciousness work. What about MDMA? I don't recall Leo ever addressing this specific compound. In my experiences with MDMA, it seems to reveal the ego as a a Love-refractor. Ego (or in other words the matrix of mind) will filter the ability to Love, because Loving everything will be detrimental to the self. Hence, the ego-mind will reduce the capability to Love certain aspects of experiences, on the basis of how much the specific circumstance adds or reduce it's survival. However, when the nervous system is flooded with Serotonin and other neuro-transmitters that MDMA triggers, it overwhelms the ego-mind ability to screen out love. However, I experienced MDMA journey very few times, so I find it difficult to extract conclusive insight on the matter. This is my take on this substance, so far. Would love to hear you view on the matter, based on your personal experiences with MDMA.

Sometime on our human evolution, we developed an amazing capability to conceptualize. Meaning, the ability to have a mental representation of something we perceived. Over time, we learned to distinct different faculties of conceptualization within our experience: memory (a representation of past experience); belief (a thought about certain behavior in existence that is not grounded in personal experience); imagination and creativity (the ability to fabricate non actual reality); language (the ability to represent personal experience with symbols); meaning attribution (the ability to place value or charge for every aspect of experience); internal chatter (the ability to speak with your "self") and so on. We also see that there is a certain overlap between the various distinctions in the domain of Mind experiences. Mind activity is an extremely useful tool for survival. Try to discern all the mind activity you have going right now, in this moment, regarding your current existence, past experiences, who and what you are, what is life and reality, where do you live, how do you relate to certain people in your life and so on. It will be almost impossible to discern all the mental activity your mind is project onto you perceptions, for the benefit of your survival. It is really remarkable, and it is the sole reason for our ability as human species to dominate other animals. Mind is a very complex web of all the memories, concepts and belief a human being "assembles" throughout life for the purpose of survival. In its essence, it is a matrix of concepts imposed on your perceptive faculties, allowing your to ignore, emphasize, distinct, interpret, assign different values, etc., all in relation to the self. Mind serves to maintain the form of the self. As you probably noticed by now, mind also has the capability to self-reference. You are using your mind in order to distinct mind activities from other activities. This means that the distinction mind, created by mind, is a concept as well, and not what mind really is. But using mind for discerning different activities of mind is very useful for transformation and awakening. But again, one must remember that representing mind using mind is self referential and the same as viewing the map as the territory. Hence, every distinction within your field of awareness is the working of mind. That is, even your self. Mind is the organizing principle of distinctions in awareness, and it is the creator of your self. Self is only a distinction your mind creates within your perceptive faculties. Now you must become directly conscious that your experience of being separated from others in purely conceptual, and dominated by the mind. This is why psychedelics are so powerful in insights and awakening. Psychedelics disrupt the normal activity of the mind, allowing you to experience a different mind-matrix for some time. This provides you with more reference points to what mind really is. Mind is a very complex structure of mental activity, and it is probably impossible to map the areas in the brain that give rise to all this mental activity. Moreover, because mind is what used in order to understand and represent experience, it cannot and will never grasp or understand itself fully. The 'intelligence' that enabled the formation of mind in the first place will always triumph the limited intelligence of the mind. This is also why psychedelics are so powerful in realizing what mind is. Shutting of elements of the mind enables to grasp the mind from an experience which isn't dominated by the mind. That is, a different perspective on the mind, or vantage point. Do you get it? And different psychedelics have different effects on the mind, so you can play with the psychedelic experience to unearth different landscapes of mind. It is like position on a mountain in order to view your house from a certain point, and then going to another, different, viewpoint (like a tower) to view it from different place.

1) Completely realizing the distinction between direct experience and mental activities. I was mindblown by awakening to the conceptual overlay and the domination of concepts on our daily experience. 2) That there is no such a thing called 'Life'. Only a type of form that fights dissolution of the form. 3) That conceptual context (or "meta-mind" activity) is the dictator of our field of experiences. Change the context that your mind was programmed to submerge your experience in, and see how everything changes. This will open your entire field of experience to new possibilities. In other words, context is the fabric of your mind-matrix distinctions. Changing the context or dropping it will either dissolve some of the mind-matrix, or open a doorway to new distinctions in experience.

Slacklining

This is question is awesome. Try to see what is behind "survival", by asking what it really is, and what gave rise to it. One may suggest that survival is the activity produced to prevent the dissolution of a "living" form. But ultimately, the most fundamental substance of all form - whether animate or inanimate - is the same. If this is the case, than your process of human form dissolution is no difference than the erosion of a rock. The only distinction therefore is that a life-form may change its behavior in order to fight the dissolution, and that it may have the capability to reproduce. In the end, it is all a play of form. Maybe you should inquire how 'life' (or the 'active' fight against dissolution of form) and living-forms began in the first place. It is possible that somehow, inanimate form was randomly or suddenly rearranged in a formation that gave rise to the capability of resisting it's dissolution, transforming it to a life-form. But I never inquired this, so I will hand it over to you. You can start by researching the tiniest organisms of life-forms on planet earth. Why would Amoeba would care to exist at all?

The thing that is stopping you from experiencing mystical experiences is the belief that your current experience isn't mystical. Greedy bastard, life is mysical. Learn to recognize this and see how the mystical experiences will come to you.

@Jimrubin Dude, what's with advocating this book in such a religious fashion?

"When you meet the Buddha, kill him." And I would add: "Immediately".

I wish you a profound experience. Haux Haux!

Hey, Yes, as you become more and more awake to the nature of mind, and specifically to the activity of thoughts and their function for self-preservation, it will gradually "put them in their right place", so to speak. When you become more conscious of this activity and it's nature, you will notice that you use it to manipulate others and reality, rather than acting in accordance with your authentic internal state. In time this will cause the mind to "take a step back" and have less dominance over your experience, ultimately leading to a place where your understanding of this function is deep enough so it will be utilized in the appropriate circumstances. I would not say that they completely stop, because the activities of mind are functions of the organism which you are, and they developed over time for the necessities of self-survival. However, due to the development of language and modern culture, the pursuit for gratification of the senses and social approval, mind activities became the dominator of human experience. Awakening to this facet of your experience 'degrades' mind activities back to their original use. Have fun, Batman

Ken Wilber. OP - he is a very foundational teacher within our realm. I would assume that a lot of "seekers" miss him out due to his articulative and analytical style. He has lesser degree of new-age vibe, unlike Tolle, Adyashanti, Spira, Kahn and so forth. I should clarify that this is stated without judgement towards any direction. It actually reminds me when I was a teenager who was digging into spirituality, I came across Wilber's work but could not resonate with any of it. Only later I find out that he's work (and other models of psychological development) explains exactly why that was. Ahh, the irony.

Existence is a function of mind. Meaning, that anything in your present experience (the "Now") which you are conscious of, is your existence. Of course, there could be infinite aspects of experience that you are not conscious of, and therefore they will now exist for you, but may exist for others. It does not negate the possibility that a certain aspect of experience might exist for you in a "future" Now, or that you will know of certain aspect of past experience that you were not conscious of in real-time. Meaning, the existence of New Zealand (which is a legal concept of itself) is purely conceptual in your present experience. Even if you visit New Zealand and return to your home country, New Zealand return to reside in your experience as pure concept, belief, or any other mental activity you would like to classify it. This means that your experience of it has degraded to a mental activity. If it is not actual for you and you do not directly experience it, than it does not exist for you. By the way, knowing is also a conceptual framework. You can posses in your mind conceptual knowledge of New Zealand's existence, even though you've never been there. Your only way to overcome or address this impediment is to become conscious of, or awaken to, the mesmerizing depth and mindfuckery of the distinction between direct experience and mental activities (such as thoughts, beliefs, stories and concepts). Becoming awake of the degree to which your experience is dominated by mental activities will blow your freakin' mind, and leave you with an astounding headache. But you will also mature dramatically by this awakening, ultimately allowing you to grasp better the mechanics of mind, and sharpened understanding of the saying: "The mind is a loyal servant, but a bad master". Yours, Batman

I hope it is okay to invite myself to propose a (slightly) different approach. The word Mind generally serves as a representation of certain activities within the different domains of experience, generally known as mental activities which are absent of object, such as thoughts, emotions, internal chatter and so on. Therefore, it appears that Mind is a distinction within human experience. That is I wouldn't classify it as a "feature" of Consciousness, which is generally regarded here as being prior to Mind. It also seems as if Mind has a self-referential aspect to it, provided that the activity of mind is the generator of the distinction Mind itself. Also I would not hold that the activities of Mind serve as the foundation or source of perceptions and emotions (unless you wish to recontextualize the general interpretation of the word 'Mind'), because they seem to exist almost entirely independent of each other (although probably impossible to recollect, I would assert that an infant experience perceptions and emotions, but lacks the Mind faculties needed for interpretation, identification or other form of mental activity which is required to establish the 'requisite' relationship to the content of their experience). Of course that everything stated above is rather pointless if your intention by using the word Mind with capital letter was to refer to a certain meta concept of mind. Please clarify. By the way, I am thrilled to hear how did you experience Brahman. Yours, Batman