axiom

Materialism requires evidence, but there can never be any since all evidence for a material world is inextricable from experience.

@Someone here Yes. For example, for something to exist, it must have had a beginning. Existence is therefore utterly impossible, but here it is.

At an Octavio Rettig retreat, the chances of a horrible death or permanent physical damage are probably 10% or even lower, so what's the problem?

@Jake Chambers Just develop a healthy dose of scepticism. Don't fall into the trap of left versus right or condemnation. Cast an eye over current affairs but don't become fixated. Above all, recognise that even if you understand all the machinations of geopolitics perfectly it won't make you happy or fulfilled.

@RMQualtrough I posted a link to the original study a few days ago, but it seems other sites are now picking up on it. The original is hugely long, but this summary should interest you: https://scitechdaily.com/physicist-claims-to-have-solved-the-mystery-of-consciousness/

@RMQualtrough Perfect.That's it! The panic will subside. After all, who is panicking? All emotions are transient, just like the tides. Time isn't the only relativistic phenomenon. Consciousness itself is relativistic. Pratītyasamutpāda. The sense of an experiencer only arises in relationship to other (objects and thoughts). When it is seen that all is one, experience dissolves to nothing and you're just left with what is. Reality is an impersonal viewpoint. It is not, and never was, an internal experience.

@Panteranegra You can’t do. You can only be, and in being you will dissolve to nothing.

For anyone with the time and the energy to read it, here's a very long paper published back in May which makes some very interesting points. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704270/full If I'm understanding them correctly, they seem to be suggesting that ALL consciousness is objective and physical, and that it isn't actually "consciousness" in the way that we're accustomed to thinking about it. They suggest that subjectivity is an illusion and it is merely an impersonal relativistic viewpoint, NOT an internal experience. Sounds incoherent? Take a read. Would be interested in hearing the thoughts of the smarties here.

@JoeVolcano Great film. Never really thought he was the best actor though.

@Matthew85 Hi Matthew, thank you for asking. I think there are no distinctions here at all. The nature of imagination is that of an infinite fractal. Try watching a Mandelbrot zoom. It’s such a helpful way to picture many of the aspects of imagination and of reality in general. I’m sure you’ve seen them before but maybe take another look as you consider what I’ll write here: What if the dream characters that appear in your own nightly dreams in turn dream up their own dream characters? That being the case, it could be said that they are all disassociated aspects of your own mind. They all have their own independent existence, unaware that they are really just shards of a greater mind. You aren’t aware of their existence ordinarily, just as you aren’t conscious of many of the bodily functions that keep you going from moment to moment. We could say metaphorically (and metaphysically) that your heart and brain are imagining you - contributing to your existence - just as much as you are imagining them. You may get to meet some of these aspects of yourself from time to time in altered states. The hierarchy is infinite. That is, infinite numbers of dream characters populate the hierarchy all the way up to infinity, all the way down to infinity, and all the way across infinity. But it isn’t actually a heirarchical structure. All levels, of all sizes and depths of complexity, are imagining all other levels. They all contribute to the imagination of the whole. There is no God at the top. There is no God overseeing it all. There are many gigantic (infinite in fact) God-like minds within it, and “God” could be said to be the structure of the thing in its entirety. But the entirety cannot ever be circumscribed, just as you cannot capture a galaxy in a butterfly net. God is infinitely lost to itself. And then there is a deeper level to all of this… which is nothing. This is where the liberation is. The rest of it, no matter how cool it may be and how endlessly self-reinforcing it seems, no matter how infinitely seductive and infinitely convincing it is, was never really anything at all.

@Matthew85 The characters in your dreams are all you. They cannot try to remember - you can only imagine them trying.

Try hyperventilation / holotropic breathing for 20 minutes beforehand.

I award the gold medal to @VeganAwake Silver and bronze still to be decided pending the outcome of further quibbling. Stay tuned.

@Barna "living by example"... Life itself, in all its perfection, is already the example. Tying your happiness to material success is to build your house on quicksand. Would you still be a good example to others if your entire life went south due to mass bereavement, business failure, and the anger from all of this ended up consuming you? Others are beyond help, just as you are. That is the true beauty of it. You are not what you think you are.

@Laxx Try a 10-day Vipassana retreat, and then you could reevaluate the benefits of meditation. You want bliss, but you don’t appear to have the required staying power at present.

Bliss can most definitely be reached via meditation. It is not merely the state of no thoughts. It is the state of recognising that you are simply a vehicle for whatever is already unfolding (God). Bliss is total surrender to God. Total surrender to your true nature.

@Laxx Here’s the truth. Everything is relative. You won’t notice bliss in the absence of pain. That is, if your everyday experience is relatively pain-free mentally and physically, the low levels of bliss from modest amounts of meditation will be less noticeable. Bliss is the realisation that you are not connected to the pain, that the pain is not yours. Ultimate bliss is the recognition that no matter how extreme the pain, it is not yours - you have transcended it by dissolving the self. Psychedelics allow you to witness this directly because they give you an overview effect of the suffering that is innate to being human, yet position you very much outside it. If you are not reaching this state then longer hours in meditation might help. For example, you could try sitting through the pain of 10 hours per day of motionless meditation without any back support, on a very basic cushion with very little padding. Switch things up a little Once seen it cannot be unseen. The feeling that you are completely outside the pain is bliss. You will laugh, you may even cry tears of joy. Eventually the pain itself will reveal that it was always illusory, merely an energetic blockage that was inextricable from your level of consciousness. Do this enough and eventually you merge with God. Your body is rebuilt to do the work of God alone, and whatever you thought you were dissolves to nothing.

@UpperMaster Leo has, to my mind, yet to awaken fully to the reality of zero free will. However, the idea of a sandbox in a sense seems correct. All of the failures, all of the heartaches, all of the obstacles encountered in life could be seen as merely preparation for awakening such that, when the time arrives, a form is willing and able to fully surrender and thus God can move through it unimpeded. God sculpts reality over time to continuously refine and optimise the ability of forms to fulfill their (its) purpose.

@Waken Love it. Very true. One of the wisest things I have read here. I admire the selflessness of your returning here to post this. I would probably refine some of what you’ve said. For me, it is about dissolving what you think of as yourself and surrendering to what you really are: God expressing itself through your form. We either stand in the way of God’s expression - wishing this or that to be different - or we surrender to it. If we experience enough suffering in our lives, then we might eventually come to the conclusion that “being in control” is and always was an illusion. It is when we relax into the flow of this awareness that “obstacles” - which seemed insurmountable at first - will fade away, and bliss can ultimately follow. Living life for oneself, or in fact thinking oneself to be real at all - is the primary cause of suffering. Being a vehicle for the expression of God’s perfection, and awareness of such, is the perfect freedom.

@m0hsen Mushrooms are a profoundly spiritual psychedelic, but can have an awful comedown filled with madness and dread. Other substances can be much easier in that respect.

As God, you manifest everything, but all human desires disappear. You cannot become God and remain human.

@Someone here See if this resonates. God is waiting and watching. It waits for you to be done with all of your dancing. It waits for you to give up your longings, ambitions and regrets - knowing doubtlessly that that in time you will turn to it - exhausted, discouraged, and empty. It sits within you quietly waiting for this moment. Yet while waiting, it was actually directing the entire play all along. It was God who inspired all of your thoughts and acts, impersonally utilising and manipulating them so as to first allow you to build up your faculties and your strengths to be used as a tool for its most perfect expression; and then, finally, to bring you to enlightenment. The self is but a training ground for Godhood. You must put aside everything you think you are. Only in complete surrender is awakening possible. Petty egoistic notions of manipulating reality are not what it’s about.

If a character in your dream had their own lucid dream, and was convinced that they had somehow learned to control their dream, all of this is still within the dream. So it is with the "waking state". You are a dream character, and a dream character cannot change the content of a dream. In the same way, a movie character cannot change the script. A simulation with pre-set parameters and variables always runs the same way. The sense of self is like an energetic wrinkle, a misapprehension. Under certain circumstances (meditation, spontaneous awakening, 5MEO, DMT, etc) it can seem to iron itself out.

@Salvijus Chakras are like energetic knots that keep the sense of self intact. Like everything else, they dissolve into nothing.

@Someone here I get the sense you want to change something about your experience. This is impossible. Utterly, totally impossible. And that is precisely what makes existence so indescribably beautiful. What is, is all there is. Always. There is never anything except what is. There never could be anything except what is. You will NEVER be able to change a single thing.