axiom

It doesn't. Nothing leads to anything. It's just appearances. You are identifying yourself with the character in the film. To the character, nothing that happens in the film will cause them to "wake up" and realise it's all just a projection. The idea that is it "lame" is just something you came up with. It has no bearing on reality at all.

They do seem to say something very similar. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj used to say the same thing too. And notably, David Carse - I really enjoyed his book 'Perfect Brilliant Stillness'. But I came to the same conclusions years ago, before I heard of any of these teachers. It seems quite obvious that since we do not choose our thoughts, we are merely observers. We don't get to change any outcomes. A spiritual path may be the ultimate illusion in this respect, as it explicitly presents the idea that there is something that can be done.

@Consilience Because a spiritual path usually becomes an attachment in and of itself. It reinforces the idea of the individual, and of being able to do something to get somewhere.

Maybe! Personally I think real awakening happens more readily to those with no spiritual path whatsoever.

@Heart of Space Careful not to confuse thoughts with reality. Look out at the world, and see if you can spot the odd one out: People, buildings, mystical curses are real, the sky, the sidewalk.

@michaelcycle00 @Someone here Look out at the (apparent) world, and spot the odd one out: Sky, people, buildings, my solipsistic bubble is all there is, cars, sidewalk.

@Someone here You are making the mistake of completely outsourcing your own ideas and beliefs to others. Be wary of ideas. All ideas are abstractions, even your own.

@michaelcycle00 Why do you follow Leo or use this forum? I am assuming it is because you are interested in truth and/or enlightenment. If that's the case, then you're doing the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You're adopting the ideas of others and then developing neuroses around them. This is religious thinking. Pay attention to the present moment. Notice that the present moment contains no ideas at all. Truth and ideas about the truth are not in fact compatible. Are you interested in ideas or truth?

No. Enlightenment is nothing but the revelation that the body and anything it appears to do is not you. You don't have any control over the body nor its thoughts, and you never did. Depression can still happen, and suicidal thoughts can still happen. But you - not the person you think you are - are no longer attached to these things.

I consumed large quantities of nutmeg in my university days. I even made the world’s most disgusting ice pops using nutmeg as a main ingredient. Not only is nutmeg quite disgusting in high doses, it’s also very nauseating and dangerously toxic. I experienced fishbowl-lens view of the world for 24 hours, give or take. One of my participating friends was also violently sick. I didn’t get to meet the famed “stick god”.

Legs are pretty wobbly. Definitely need a little time (30-45 mins, say) to come around and decompress. I should state I’ve only ever had one holotropic breathing guided session. Music was played, which I suspect heightens the experience. Two hours was actually quite easy - it’s only the first 20 to 30 mins that feels a bit laborious - after you get past that point you relax into the rhythm of things. The experience was far more powerful than I expected it to be, and I ended the session convinced that breathwork can allow you to reach any of the states more typically realised through imbibement of even the most powerful psychedelic. DMT has been found in relatively high concentrations in the lungs (compared to other tissues / organs) so that may explain the efficacy of this method.

Yes, holotropic breathing (2+ Hours duration) is comparable to a 3G mushroom trip. For real. Try it.

Hate is only apparently easier. It’s not actually easier. The more awake you are, you realise the extent to which hate infects your own cells (so to speak). Hate is *always* hatred of oneself.

I recommend upping your practice to 2 hours a day for at least a couple of months if you want to really get somewhere. The trick is to reach a complete boredom threshold (usually around 35mins in) and just keep going - that’s when the real work begins. It’s not really worth meditating in sessions shorter than 45 mins. This whole endeavour is tricky as people associate different states with different words. Some would say the word “mind” is a particular flavour of consciousness involving awareness for example. By this definition the substrate is beyond mind - it is absolute nothingness, which is also everything. Impossible to understand with logic.

You've got it right, pretty much. The mind can be pictured as an energetic contraction. If you meditate enough you'll notice that the mind and objects of awareness do not rise independently. The mind is its own object of awareness also. Abiding in this state is what many consider to be the end point, but the real end point is in dissolving the mind altogether... becoming the nothing which is also infinity.

@TheSpiritualBunny The madness towards the end of the trip is due to traversing dimensions. You're coming from a timeless dimension into one where time seems to exist, so to begin with you're only able to process a couple of seconds at a time. I see this as the price of entry. But no doubt it can be scary. Most people don't do psilocybin properly. Blindfold 5g / 6g is the way if you really want to see the other side. This will be much more than shocking. God, the Empyrean, seraphim, souls, etc. Leave reassuring notes for yourself, as you'll probably forget you were ever even a human, let alone that you've taken anything. Ideally, have a very caring and reassuring trip sitter.

How can a thing be seen as "not good" without an individual to proclaim it is so? Therein lies the fruits of long hours, weeks, months of meditation. "Good" is the default state before human resistance appears and thinks it can change what is.

@Leo Gura I really like the idea of the 10% BS / 90% truth. Werner Herzog uses the term "ecstatic truth" to describe something similar he does with his documentaries. I think it would work best if that was in the text disclaimer before each video. A very unique idea and quite a radical way to teach. It forces people to retain a little headspace to think for themselves.

Maybe you should take it more seriously

Yes, I’d certainly agree with that. Holotropic movement.

Here’s a guy who thinks birds aren’t real: https://youtu.be/zNtr0RahRqM

If you wash your hair too often, it gets greasy more quickly. If you use an inhaler habitually, your asthma is more easily triggered. if you use chap stick on your lips too much, your lips get dry more easily. If you take headache pills every day, then you develop headaches more easily. In the same way, if you use psychedelics habitually, then keeping hold of that higher state (raising your baseline consciousness) becomes more difficult. Without a shadow of a doubt psychedelics show you the possibility. And for the vast majority of people, meditation seems like a thankless task until or unless you’re shown where it leads. So it’s silly to ignore psychedelics. But to realise the condition that makes enlightenment possible, for most people there’s no avoiding the hard work - and that means there’s no avoiding sitting through extraordinary levels of tedium and physical pain, both of which condition you in quite miraculous ways. Psychedelics don’t really do that. To raise your baseline level, we are talking about an energetic shift - to allow energy to run through you without blockages. Initially this comes in the form of dissolving boredom, dissolving physical pain etc… until the main blockage (the sense of I) is entirely dissolved.

Speaking as someone who is probably about as enlightened as it's possible for a human to be, I can't help noticing that many people here get mightily pissed when others don't bow to their superior knowledge. OK, so many of you have different ideas about enlightenment. Probably best not to get too religious in your thinking. The whole point is that whatever you think enlightenment is, you're wrong.

There is an old saying "How long is a piece of string?", usually used to suggest that a question asked was too broad in scope. Whoever came up with that saying probably never realised just how apt it is, because a piece of string is infinitely long. You can't just measure the length of a piece of string in a straight line, because if you zoom in at a high enough magnification, you will notice it isn't straight at all, but rather more like a jagged coastline. The more you zoom in, the more of the coastline you would have to measure. So that's another interesting way to look at the same question. But what's really going on with regard to "zooming in to infinity" is a case of seek and ye shall find. The mind is capable of inventing endless detail. That's sort of how materialist science works - some idea is postulated as to what will be found if they look long and hard enough, and walla - they look really long and really hard... and they find it. And they'll keep finding more and more. All knowledge as it pertains to an apparently physical world is top heavy. It balances on the head of a needle. At its very foundation is always a vanishingly tiny axiom that was never properly examined for its ability to take all the weight.

Yes, the body-mind has the ego - and it will always have some degree of ego depending on its conditioning. You, on the other hand, do not.