Natasha Tori Maru

I'm undecided - I feel like any pinned posts don't get looked at. Unless we mean like - featured all on one forum?

Not.... The best anecdote 🤣🤣🤣 Unless the paper can talk back..... Give ideas back. Maybe that's your experience of the writing process. Certainly not mine!

HAHAH! His testicles - the final embers of his EROS - expire, two shriveled walnuts quivering gently on the bitumen

Creation is the birthright of humanity. I personally feel AI can be abusive in this process. Causing a retardation of creative thought and ability. I go to school with 18-24 year olds. They are stunted in some ways - especially linguistically. Not one of my classmates works without AI use. It is definitely a tool and can be used well. But it is almost like an intoxicating substance that needs to be regulated at this point. I find myself tuning out if I read a passage formulated by AI, or if prose has been run through it. I love the pace and flow of real prose ejected from the unfiltered thoughts of a human. Not to mention - the destructive environmental damage it is doing that no one seems to heed. The amount of processing, power and water consumption the process requires is going to fuck us up if not mitigated.

@MuadDib Have you only just discovered this thread? This is absolutely DAMNING. Just got through it. Obviously, it has the Dr. Phil drama music and spin, but Gafni is grotesque. The way he doubled down. Totally removed from reality. I want to stand on his balls with my stiletto heels until they pop like tomatoes.

@Leo Gura Pleasure pleasure - thanks for the blog tag!

This made me laugh - bias biscuits for all. Because there couldn't possible be a reason for independent tribunals right? RIGHT?

The raw, direct EXPERIENCE of the pussy. The TRUTH of the pussy... No self pussy. In the name of spirituality of course, God consciousness delivered through dick. With all the kumbaya woo shit just for the ladies

Yes indeed - elaborate on 'frame'

That is caring though don't bring the stick I beg you

Yep I discovered this also - and a few other associations that blew my mind. Cognitive dissonance in people is EVERYWHERE. Lack of consciousness

I want to touch on integrity in this thread - as it ties in deeply to many of the questions you all bring up. Integrity and true spirituality go hand in hand. It's very important to be clear that the reason Leo is obsessed with truth, and why he repeats its importance (as a Zen master beats your ass with a stick!) is because the truth is at the heart of many deep psychological issues and pathologies: Integrity is not just a moral issue. Get that shit out of your head now. It is a foundational metaphysical principal found in reality all around us. Integrity, and how it relates to YOU. That word. It might bring up morality, doing what is right. Ethics. Delete that from your mind. What does it really mean, at its base before we add on the narrative of morals? The state of being whole. Undivided. Now because I work in construction I went to this before anything else - material properties: Material integrity refers to the ability of a material to maintain its intended properties and performance under specified conditions and over its expected lifespan. When a material has a crack it is structurally compromised. Weakened. No longer whole. Diminished. When a material is internally aligned and fused, it is strong. Like carbon in a diamond - and coal is also carbon. Its carbon molecules are not aligned, not cohesive, so its integrity is shit. It's brittle. A diamond is carbon, only its molecules are in a lattice. It is whole, cohesive, strong. Undiminished. This is an example of integrity. It is baked into reality. Into existence. Its not moral! This is existential shit. You can find examples in your reality all over the place. Now back to your own truth seeking, truth telling, spirituality and pathology. When you lie (or withhold), act out of dishonesty, you do it because you want something. You want the pussy. The candy. To avoid pain. To avoid consequences. Whatever. You lie to get it. You compromise your integrity. And when you do that, you create a split in your internal state and behaviour/actions in reality. You exist in that split. You create a fissure in your consciousness. You lose some integrity, you don't function as well. You diminish yourself. Your self esteem drops. THIS IS AN UNAVOIDABLE CONSEQUENCE. You just think you get away with with it because you don't SEE THE CONSEQUENCES. This is a property of reality, not some moral idealism turds! You are literally fracturing yourself. Your whole, diamond self. YOU are doing this. Diminishing yourself. You don't see what you are doing to your experience! And you want to have a pure experience to elevate consciousness. This leads to pathological behaviour. If you aren't sensitive and don't pay real full attention to your emotional and feeling states, if your consciousness is low, you won't feel the consequences. But underneath you will cause this integrity drop. Because you didn't act out truth. Your inner state and your outside actions didn't align. You obliterated your authenticity. Removed yourself from your body. Consciousness - split. Like the diamond with a crack. And you will feel like shit! You are killing your experience. You are compromised and won't function properly from the internal fracture. Operating out in the world is now diminished. So you escape into pleasure because you diminished your experience and ability to love and appreciate all around you. You don't function optimally -there's that fucken crack. You aren't getting what you should from experience due to the fracture inside you. You have generated self hate and loathing. You did that! You try to control in other ways. Dive into hedonism. Addictions. Eating disorders. Endless social media. Hookers. Sex. Porn. You are now trying to escape the fact that you have ruined your experience of reality by falling into hedonism. This business of lies does this, because it is existential. This is why real spirituality is about Truth. Why Leo is like a bulldozer toward it (to my perception anyway Leo, don't let me speak anything that isn't my correct perception!). This is why spirituality can assist with healing on all levels. It's the truth that heals. Integrity. You are whole. A diamond. It is YOU that is doing this diminishing. I realise we cannot all tell the truth, all the time. But you have to operate with integrity, as much as you can. All this includes lies you tell yourself. And understand it is a fundamental property of the universe and God. Truth. Integrity. Not some moral bullshit. You can heal deep psychological and pathological stuff with this work. I've been trying to personally bring the realms of emotion and feeling to this to try to understand the mechanisms, because this has worked for myself. As my personal, lived, direct experience. tl;dr - what Leo said above about Ralston's book

Yes. And I have stopped much of my own suffering. My posts in this thread are from lived experience and deep understanding of my own behaviour. Contemplation, reflection, self analysis, hypnagogic states where subconscious elements 'appear to come out of no where' but they don't. They have a source. Dreams are similar. Many nights and evenings spent listening to music, paralyzed in thought, static, sitting on the carpet in my lounge while my mind unravels understanding and integrating. I do find this sort of work stops me in my tracks. Time stops. I can be frozen, thinking, for a long time. The suffering is the story I lay over the pain. It, in effect, through friction - enhances the pain. 'This is so painful, this is never going to end. Why is it happening to me?' Think of this as a property of reality. Force between 2 objects - concrete floor and a pile of bricks. Imagine the pain as the force of the bricks baring down on the concrete. Suffering is attempting to push the bricks aside - notice the force downward on the concrete (pain) is the same - only now you have introduced more pain/suffering because there is a terrible friction between the 2 surfaces. Both concrete and bricks are wearing down. Heat is also arising from the shearing force of YOU pushing the bricks (the narrative). Notice that you pushing the pile of bricks is something you are doing - its the narrative generating suffering 'labouring UNDER the pain'. The labour of pushing the bricks. Once you realise you are DOING this, you can grasp it. And stop doing it. This comes down to discernment. Deep interception. Because it is very difficult to be clear what is suffering and what is pain. In my personal experience - suffering can enhance pain. But when I meditate and fully focus on the pain, I notice with keen transparency that 50% of the pain is generated from my fear of it. From wanting to escape it. From judging it - from the narrative. When I focus down on the pain, it is just a sensation. I can acknowledge it is unpleasant. But it is only a sensation just like any other. It feels... neutralised. And because you are a woman, you will be familiar with the waves of crippling pain that come to CRUSH you, and just when you think you are going to throw up, cry out - it abates. The waves begin to feel less like tsunamis of pain. More like the sea gently lapping at the shoreline. Focus on your ability to feel. Go into it. Learn there - discernment is key. Just my experience. I want to finish this by posting the image of the Monk on fire meditating, but this image is very sensitive. It speaks to my points above. As you go further into the work, your ability to control your body raises. Again this is a truth you have to discover for yourself <3

It can be done, I can foresee how it could be. Agree with your statement. Indeed there are a few steps before it can be achieved I deliberately took the opportunity to move from retail management to construction 5 years ago based on AI and future development... Although No one is safe 😈💀

I understand. Might I push to you - what IS experience, not what it ISN'T? As, assuredly, it is as you say, a step removed from the above 'thoughts' (⁠｡⁠♡⁠‿⁠♡⁠｡⁠)

More on the side characters: Marc Gafni

@Someone here I am glad to facilitate understanding Much of what I wrote is elaborating on what Leo communicates, but it is reworded. Sometimes it just needs to be said differently for different people. A lot of suffering. The details aren't needed, but I have been through some very bad things. It might be helpful to know I am almost 40 now, and the spiritual process has been going on within me since my teens. Darkness had me as her lover for a good 15-20 years. The work is, well, work. No shortcuts. Many mistakes. Lots of learning. While you are shedding huge amounts of self-trash, the process is really scary. It is very destabilising. Most people reach for spirituality to ease suffering and transcend (or maybe they want meaning) - they try to learn something new - but the path is not actually about building something new. Not about building a new concept on how to be or see. One other element - you have to seriously care for your body. Take that very seriously. Sleep, food, water. Balance. Movement. Even just walking contemplation - my favourite and most delicious type! It is about the pristine marble YOU already are - you are chipping away at it, revealing the sculpture already inside. It's not nihilistic at all, it is about truly experiencing reality and exploring it all. Minus all the shit. You are uncovering. Subtracting everything that's not it. You are going to encounter many paradoxes along the way - natural. The caveat here is - this is just my personal experience

@Princess Arabia Yes this is actually a skill only masters have, in general. All my skill has come from endless copies, repetition. I learn the form. Then from my mind I can create. However, most artist still use reference material as a base. Its a skill born of repetition - most things are really. It's just that most people don't stick with problems long enough. All the greats really stuck with problems and didn't let them go. Always good to remember - drawing from reference is still artistic creation. It's your direct, personal interpretation of what you are perceiving. Regardless of the source. I will add on I had a genetic gift for art and motor skill from my grandfather. But repetition is key. Without execution talent means zero. Here's another one - not finished. Peregrine falcon - the fastest creature on earth. I am going to collage this over images of all different bird feathers in unusual configurations:

Her styling is so odd - I perceive her as looking so old, but also young.

*trauma intensifies*

@Princess Arabia This is really good - hands are one of the most difficult things to render! I start with cylinders and try to link them up. Feet are equally as troublesome for me

@CARDOZZO This question made me think a lot. I am not loyal to any one mentor, but I have listened/read/studied most - Allan Watts, Peter Ralston, Sadhguru, Eckhart Tolle, Teal Swan (more interpersonal domain), Leo Gura. All at different steps in my journey, particular teachers have resonated more than others. At each interval I took some knowledge, but always empirically tested and acted out the 'doing' in reality. Sometimes the truth I revealed acted in conflict with what was being communicated. Its very difficult to be sure if I misunderstood, or if the teaching wasn't right. Lots of reflection is needed. There is also a strong element to my process of repetition. I return to works or teaching I previously walked through over and over. And over. Really important to separate the mentor from the method. The art, from the artist. The concept of the person gets in the way. As you go into this work you also realise some things cannot be communicated. So they aren't spoken of. Sort of why they say YOU need to discover truth. Otherwise it is a belief. The questions people ask on this forum tell you were they are at in their spiritual path. So you see many people on this forum for example - they can conceptualise God, God realisation. Infinity. Intellectualise it. But they ask questions about it that imply they didn't actually have direct experience. Just an example. The questions you ask are more important than the answers. I digress...

@MsNobody I do - but construction I use it as an analogy a lot because it is ripe with great metaphor and simile! Its also a corrupt industry - to the core. I know all the sneaky ways to be corrupt in this industry. I've played the game myself to survive. Throwing glitter on the shit Yes, Aubrey is really something else. Fascinating to witness the ego there

It is highly humorous isn't it? You are trying to reach something that is a concept, it isn't real - perfection. But you really really believe it. All of society is telling you it is real. It only exists as a social construct. When you sit and look at a sunrise and have an experience. Direct. Eyes sensing colour, nose smelling the salt of the sea, ears hearing the gulls. That is where the truth is. Just you, being. You aren't inserting in any weird narrative about the sunrise 'If it were JUST to the left, it would look better, more perfect!' That's an example of you inserting your survival based agenda - the self - into the experience. And you do this all over the place! Its what you are taught from the age you become self aware. Even meditating, stopping thought... You do it to try to reach enlightenment, awakening... THATS ALSO AN IDEA THAT ISN'T REAL. Until you EXPERIENCE it - then it is TRUTH. Direct experience. The more you engage in this process the more is revealed. Things are revealed you won't expect. You bring wonder and awe back to your experience of Maya. It's key to realise to have this true direct experience you need to be OUT in the WORLD. Doing shit. Experiencing. Work. Play. Walk. Listen. Do those chores. Wash the dishes. Sink into the mundane because there is more to get out of that experience that you have blocked out. This leads to actualization. Authenticity. And hey - I know all about truth in the material domain. I work in construction. Brutal. You do anything untruthful and the building collapses and kills people. You execute. It's an experience and it becomes so easy once your self is moved out of the way. No hesitation to give hard facts - your self isn't there to care if you upset anyone. No worry about shit going wrong with a plan, that is a concept and not real... until it is. THEN it comes into truth and you deal with it. And you don't panic, because there isn't a stupid narrative about 'how did I fuck up?' There is just - truth, and fixing. Doing. Action. Sorry for the rant, I am trying to express how consciousness work assists in your career, in my career, in reality. It will help you execute in a way you didn't think was possible. Some of this might sound obvious to some, but it needs to be said. Because the social domain and survival is a literal cataract over your direct experience of events, things...

Adding in that a lot of the pain you think you feel is the fear of it itself. The internal friction - that is a narrative you generate as part of the self. Fear is always at the centre You will begin to reveal you are mixing in a lot of pain with suffering. 2 different things