kinesin

@tatsumaru I came out the other side far more spiritually developed, with a whole new perspective on things. There's a quote from zen buddhism which is relevant to the process - "Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters." Of course, being told that it'll all be okay doesn't necessarily make the process any easier. I believe it's an inherently traumatic experience, having all your norms and core categories by which your brain processes your reality stripped away. It's for the best though, but like I said, just don't do anything drastic. Don't make any big gestures or actions in the face of realising that the world is illusory and you'll be alright.

@Leo Gura Don't be so glib, Leo. Have you never been through such a state that OP described? Or have you simply forgotten what it's like? This person's going through serious psychological turmoil and the best you have to offer is to call him a 'killjoy' and basically just say get over it? That isn't right.

@tatsumaru About 10 years ago my meditation practice led to a total breakdown of form where I simply couldn't escape the perception that everything in my visual field, every thing and every person I knew were simply configurations of atoms. It lasted around 6 months and during that time the only thing which held me together was the fact that I didn't do anything drastic. I knew everything was an illusion, but I kept doing things pretty much as normal, I kept eating and sleeping, I kept hanging out with friends and family and I just tried my best to go along with things as normal. The fact is, time truly does heal all wounds and a state like that simply isn't going to last forever. So just allow time to pass, and you'll come out the other side eventually.

@Plabs This is why spiritual seekers need to disconnect themselves from worldly things. When a person makes their views publicly known and develops a 'position' or a 'system', they're effectively turning their ego into a solid object which then becomes nearly impossible to change. For me personally, part of my spiritual journey involved a period of around 8 months where I came to believe that thinking about spiritual matters was a delusional pursuit. Being a regular individual without any public reputation for being 'the spiritual guy' or anything like that, I experienced no resistance whatsoever to exploring that view for 8 months, and then eventually I rediscovered and reintegrated a much more nuanced and profound sense of spirituality. If I'd been the owner of a spirituality youtube channel with 1 million subscribers expecting at least a video a week, could I have done that? No way. If I'd put out systematic approaches to certain aspects of perception and reality, would I have the freedom to completely let go of them and explore the opposite view for a while? No way. Imo for Leo's own sake, I believe he'll have to sell Actualized at some point so that he can continue his own personal development without being trapped by expectations of consistency.

@One Day The morality of the decision depends entirely on the specifics of the action you'll be taking. If you won't tell us the action, we can't provide any appropriate advice. I respect that you're reluctant to go into detail here, so instead I'll make a suggestion so that you can approach a conclusion yourself. For the next week, spend a solid 30 minutes each day writing (in your own private document) whatever thoughts you have about the action you're considering. Make the case for it, make the case against it, write about your motivations for doing it, write about the consequences. Exploratory writing is arguably the most powerful tool a person has when it comes to developing insight, and if you do that for 7 days at the end you'll have something resembling the backbone of a detailed 10-page essay exploring every angle of the question. Once that's done, you'll understand what to do.

@Podie45 Rather than trying to come to an answer or conclusion about the ethics of fishing, instead simply recognise that your perspective has shifted. I believe that in order to develop wisdom, we have to explore as much mental territory as possible. Mental territory in this context means allowing ourselves to be fully immersed in a certain belief, for example the idea that fishing is cruel, and then forcing ourselves to fully immerse in the opposite belief. The trick is to not allow yourself to rest permanently in a specific belief - don't allow yourself to believe that it is the truth, but rather after 6 months or a year or so, force yourself to change. Only once you've fully explored and integrated both views can you gain a true understanding of the whole.

@Plabs When I see Leo's struggles, his haters who call him a cult leader, the sycophantic followers who treat him like one despite him telling them not to... one thought comes to my mind every time - thank fuck I never went down the path of turning my own spiritual development into a brand.

@r0ckyreed Before you read Aurelius, read Epictetus. Personally I believe it's quite unfortunate that Aurelius is so broadly associated with stoicism while Epictetus goes forgotten, as Aurelius was simply a guy who idolised the writings of Epictetus and wanted to be more like him. Everything good in Meditations comes directly from Epictetus. Start here - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epictetus/ then go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_of_Epictetus and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchiridion_of_Epictetus

@One Day I believe it is related, as you seem to be alluding to something like a moral question of whether it's appropriate for you to take advantage of the opportunity or not. Is it cryptocurrency? You aren't considering putting your savings into a shitcoin are you?

@Heaven Would you mind trying this method and reporting back to let us know how it went for you? I personally found it extremely effective. Here's a tip - if you feel like you have to force it to happen, that's totally normal. The sensation isn't like shaking uncontrollably from being cold, it feels like something you're in direct control over. You can start the process, you can control the intensity and you can stop it.

@Mellocean I believe it depends on the porn. If one is mindful, it's quite straightforward to know which porn is harmful to us, you can tell by the feelings it brings up within you. On the other hand still images of a generally vanilla nature? These won't cause any negative feelings or consequences unless you've been preconditioned (usually from religion or nofap) to feel shame toward all sexual images regardless of their nature.

Technically I'm not Leo, but you might as well have asked me instead. Yes I've done nofap, and for a while it was good. I enjoyed a decent amount of clarity, and it felt good to be exerting self-control. I felt empowered, undistracted and aware. Over time I came to realise that where I used to be able to enjoy masturbation without issue, after nofap it became filled with guilt and shame when I would eventually 'fail'. After nofap, masturbating started to cause within me all of the negative symptoms which nofappers often link to masturbation. This struggle stayed with me for around 2 years. Within the past year, I've been able to deprogram myself from nofap, and now I'm once again able to enjoy masturbation without any negative consequences whatsoever. I realised that self-repression isn't the way.

I'm just gonna roll with the vibe of the thread - Can you see the eternal dance of creation?

@Kevin256 How is your breathing? Do you utilise your entire diaphragm while breathing, or is it quite shallow? Do you ever breathe through your mouth? Have you ever been checked out for sleep apnea?

@Leo Gura What prompted a response such as this?

Your old atheist materialist assumptions are here in full force, Leo. Such statements based on broad stereotypes are both unhelpful and unrealistic. You aren't speaking about any real people here, you're only displaying to us your own preconceptions about illusory categories of people.

@Proserpina I don't know the details of your experiences so feel free to disregard this if it's entirely off base, but I feel as if I can provide some insight based on my own previous experiences of similar states. When your perception of others is stripped of its judgment (I use the word 'judgment' in the sense of categorising and understanding, as opposed to 'judging' in a negative sense), any baggage or generally negative or fearful feelings are also stripped away with it. What's left behind is either absolute neutrality or a sense of love and sympathy for them. There is a common pitfall which an individual becomes at risk of falling into when they reach a state of perceptual non-judgment where they begin seeing the 'raw data' of their surroundings and others, which is that the brain still wants to categorise and label things. The label of 'person' may be stripped away, but that gap leaves room for a new label to arise in its place, and it is in these new labels that many of the more psychosis-related delusions dwell. If the thought arises that "ah... these are not people, they are aliens/gods/reptilians/insectoids/ect", that's a sign a person has not only fallen back down into judgment, but that their old judgment has been replaced with an even more false one. Here's a relevant quote from zen buddhism - "Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters."

@Proserpina Would you mind writing a bit about what you found interesting about it? I have a feeling that if you found it interesting, that means it may have prompted some insight or connections within your own mind which, if you wrote them here, would make a great addition to the thread and possibly enable further insights in others.

@Delis Yes, it is indeed a weird perception to feel. It's both normal and good that you're experiencing it though, as this shows you're developing an ability to observe reality without judgment. A crude analogy which comes to mind for me, to anyone who may struggle to relate to these perceptions, is the feeling you might have just after you've finished looking at porn. During the act your perceptions are being warped by your body's sex hormones, and the moment you finish you look at the very same images which had a hold of you just a few moments before, but all you see now is strange slimy genitalia, distributions of fat and bizarre behaviours.

@Podie45 Ask yourself - what is the reason you find yourself idolising these people? If I myself look back to various people I've idolised over the years, it's been because the character I happened to be at those times saw something to learn or gain from those individuals. Maybe they exemplified a character trait which I myself wanted to develop, or they expressed perspectives which I found myself drawn to. Over time each of these idolisations faded as my priorities and interests continued to shift. You say that you later realised many of those people were bad in some way and that you shouldn't have been idolising them. Have you considered the possibility that you only realised the errors of their ways because you'd allowed yourself to fully explore them? If you had never idolised them at all, would you have reached those same understandings about their failings? Would you have recognised those issues within yourself, and been able to move beyond them? Making mistakes, falling into wrong beliefs and delusions, idolising the wrong people... all of these can be greatly beneficial things. Often it is only by going partway down the wrong path that we become able to recognise the right one. There's nothing wrong with being wrong. The only thing you need to have with you at all times is the willingless and ability to backtrack in your views. The last thing you want is to reach a point where you realise you've followed the wrong person or wrong belief, but that you've gone too far for example by loudly proclaiming to everybody that X thing is the best, or getting a tattoo of Y. To give an analogy - think of hardcore Trump supporters, specifically those who still to this day believe that Trump is the legal president and that Biden is a clone giving fake addresses from a soundstage. Why are those people stuck in that particular hell? Because they walled themselves into it by publicly self-identifying with Trump to such an extent that they can't backtrack without a soul-destroying level of embarassment. Simply don't make those kinds of actions (for example telling all your family that Leo Gura is the new prophet) and you'll be alright.

@Patrick Lynam Remember, Leo is only human. He may be wrong about that - his beliefs on the matter may only be the result of a temporary step in his own spiritual journey. To me it strikes me as a statement which may have been true for Leo himself at the time of that interview - that although he's a spiritual seeker in search of escape from his suffering, he remains trapped within the ego due to fear of what may happen if he untethers from it completely. Imo there's a very practical reason why so many spiritual seekers isolate themselves physically from society and others - it's because interacting in the world as an individual ties you more firmly to the ego. Leo has a known persona, he has a brand, and he doesn't want to go 'off the deep end' and risk losing or altering those things. Do not fall for illusory things like a name, a brand, an image or a sense of authority. Leo is truly no different from us, even if his worldly status lends his words the appearance of credit. Don't feel like you have to force yourself to understand and conform to whatever he says is true.

@BipolarGrowth I don't believe this kind of experience is what OP is referring to. That sounds more like a psychedelic delusion to me. @Delis To clarify, are you referring to a state where other people still look perfectly human and normal to your eyes, but rather your mind is processing their form as if for the first time, giving you the perception that you're looking at something extremely alien? If so, I've had this experience myself. Imo it's caused by a disidentification with the usual categories your brain uses to process the world (such as 'person), so you're left looking at the 'raw data' so to speak.

@Frenk Your concern is understandable considering the nature of the traumatic bad trip you had. I myself went through a short period around 10 years ago when I had some difficult experiences while meditating, and for a while I had to stop entirely because even just reading the word 'meditation' would cause me to panic. It was very similar to the way you describe the feelings you've been having - I'd get the sensation that my sense of reality was about to shatter irretrievably and that would cause me to slam on the brakes. What I did was simply have a break from meditation for a while until my interest naturally brought me back around to it again. I think it was probably around 3 months that I stopped for. Fears fade over time.

@Fran11 Here's something you may find interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory 'Materialism' isn't as restrictive as it was even just a few years ago, it's expanding. Many self-identified materialists in various fields now consider such things as systems, concepts and behaviours as 'material' because they fit various phenomenological criteria of material behaviour even if they may not be physically interactive or measurable in the traditional sense.

To craft a reason-based argument against this would be a fool's errand. Not everything can be explained by reason, and it's important to be able to recognise the limits of such communications so that one doesn't waste too much energy trying to do a futile thing. As of right now science has no generally agreed-upon mechanism for consciousness, so nobody can show you a proof like they could for the existence of, say, gravity. In my opinion there are 2 primary ways by which a person comes to believe that consciousness precedes the brain - 1: They encounter some mention of the prospect and it catches their interest, and they find their mind open to the possibility. 2: They have a direct experience of brain-independent consciousness. For me personally, I believe that our direct experience of consciousness is a quantum phenomena and that our perceptible sensation of the inward-spatious quality of the mind is actually a dimension reaching all the way down to the quantum level, enabling the brain to interact directly with quantum potentials. In my view, although the brain allows us to process sense data, which gives more complexity to our conscious experience than the majority of conscious entities have access to, the 'observer' which witnesses that sense data is actually a fundamental property which covers the entirety of the universe. You might as well just treat this theory as fanfiction though.