SeaMonster

By definition, every spiritual seeker is brainwashed and manipulated to begin with, since they believe certain things inculcated in them by their upbringing. The irony here is that the people telling them "there are no teachers" ARE serving the function of teachers. A nondual or solipsistic teaching is still a teaching. So you can't get around it -- you can't pretend what you are offering isn't teaching. At that point, you have to take actual responsibility for the teaching you're offering and this is the issue here.

Please, dude -- try to be honest and not conflate separate issues into the category of "spiritual teachings." This is a rhetorical gambit that allows you to victim-blame and defend questionable ideas, such as the "teaching" of solipsistic dogma as part of "spiritual teachings." You basically criticized and attacked the video guy who directly experienced the negative effects of certain types of "spiritual teachings." You threw out the red herring of kundalini awakenings, which had nothing to do with the issue at hand. If you want to talk about ego and self-deception, that was pretty much a good example of that. Can you admit that teaching solipsistic dogma to spiritual seekers can be harmful or not (without blaming the victim)? This guy is not the first and only example of this negative impact, and not everyone who has experienced such suffered from schizophrenia either.

Kundalini awakenings are one minor aspect of spirituality, I would hardly characterize understanding what one is as "understanding spirituality." And what does this have to do with the video that I watched? The person in question suffers from schizophrenia and was negatively influenced by solipsistic dogma that is very much part and parcel of what I'm referring to as this notion, popular on the forum, that spirituality is to be "explained" and "understood." Did we watch the same video? But this is not "understanding spirituality." This is merely a minor technical aspect of the effects of certain techniques or drugs. You are being awfully evasive and refusing to address the elephant in the room, which is that certain ways of approaching spirituality can be harmful to many people.

To be fair, this notion that spirituality is to be "understood" is an egoic delusion perpetuated by Leo and accepted by many of his followers. To the contrary, I have found no evidence that the right way of approaching "spirituality" is to "understand it." I mean, it may be true for SOME people who have vast deficits as far as their intellect , but it isn't true for Leo or most people on the forum. For most people who are already inclined to be cerebral, the right path to spirituality is physical/action-oriented/emotional. You DO NOT fucking double down on your strengths to get "more spiritual." You address your biggest weaknesses, what is scary and unexplored and unfamiliar to you. And for most people here it's not contemplating their fucking navel as far as consciousness or God or anything abstract. That's the path of feeding the ego.

God created free will, so God created the possibility to believe or not believe in him. I disagree with the fundamental premise of the atheists that belief in God is intellectual in nature. It may be all that atheists are capable of, but many people are capable of intuiting the existence of God.

I do think it is the big growth breakthrough you've always wanted to experience. Your description is pretty consistent with shadow integration. I assume the breakup shocked you out of your negative habit patterns and unconscious contents surfaced so you experienced more wholeness.

Assuming that I am correct about some things other people have trouble seeing, I also know that trying to correct them without them asking for it is pointless, as you just trigger their egos and they dig in more. So basically I don't bother with unsolicited corrections. I'm frankly done with all that shit. I understand how mine and others' psychology works much better now, so I have less inclination to engage in pointless interactions.

One of the perils of psychedelics is what Carl Jung called "inflation." I think this may be what you're experiencing. I would not do any more psychedelics, and dedicate myself to humility and service to counteract the effects (it is doable.)

The trouble with the test is how to answer the questions: based on lifetime average or based on current circumstances, based on narrow or broad interpretation. I would recommend answering based on lifetime average/long-term tendencies and interpret broadly. If you interpret the questions too narrowly or based on current circumstances you will get the wrong result. If you still have trouble, you may need to ask someone who has known you for a long time which of the descriptions fit best. And basically, yeah, you can't change the basic function stack, but you can develop and integrate the weaker functions so you're better rounded (which really makes all the difference in the world.)

(I'm talking about them at their peak.) Messi is the greatest dribbler and accuracy shooter I've ever seen. Ronaldo is the greatest combination of power and accuracy I've ever seen, and is more athletic than Messi (crazy vertical and header ability.) There is a reason there is a debate about who's the greatest. The two were not that far apart, no matter who you think is better. There is a bias towards forwards in football because they're typically the guys that score/assist most, they're the stars and the others are more of a supporting cast. It would be more accurate to say those are two of the best forwards of all time, so you have a point.

Reality is reality. Defining A in terms of B doesn't really change the nature of A, does it? It merely restates it. Not if I'm present. If I'm present then I'm not worrying about the future - by definition. I don't have to "understand reality" -- I merely need to surrender and accept "what is." If you're talking about some sociological/political/economic model of reality, what does that have to do with spirituality or enlightenment, and how does that affect how I react to things that I don't like and don't want to happen? If I'm in a state of acceptance, then whatever happens, happens. YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER IT ANYWAY. SERIOUSLY, WTF, DUDE?

Being present is all I need. What is "knowing what reality is" anyway? I don't know what it is nor do I care, I just want maximum inner peace.

Out of curiousity -- what hard truths about yourself have you faced after your psychedelic journeys?

It's all extraordinarily simple and basic. We're all just walking meatbags of trauma and can go to amazing lengths to avoid facing our pain, so we stay stuck in our bad habits. That's all psychedelics do (and need to do.) They show you this so you can't hide from it (although some people do actually manage to hide from it.)

My guess is that the difference between the two is that the people whose lives got better actually applied the hard truths they received during their journeys and the person who got deep into LSD didn't want to face the hard truths. That's the only reason to get "deep" into a psychedelic -- you receive a harsh truth...and you go "I don't like this answer, I want a different answer." In other words, you don't want to face the truth. The truth is simple. It relates to your life, it's not some kind of abstract metaphysical bullshit for you to lord over people who haven't tried the psychedelic. It's what you're supposed to change in your life. And most of the time it has to do, like you said, with healing. Trauma causes self-neglect and self-abuse, and the proper insights can restore self-care and self-love and self-respect and change one's life in the process. There is nothing complicated or complex about any of this shit -- anyone telling you otherwise is taking you along for the ride on his ego trip.

It's not a good question, because abstraction is a way of avoiding the concrete, specific things one needs to be doing because they are too painful or scary. You have to get to the level of the specific so that it hurts or is uncomfortable.

"Contemplating the present moment" is an oxymoron. Either you are present or you're in your head, somewhere else (the past or the future or contemplating something.) Either you are fully in your senses or in your thoughts. Most people are in their head because they are distracting themselves from their pain or negative emotions.

I'm not even sure that "desire" is an adequate translation and I'm not a Sanskrit or Pali expert to really know what Buddha was talking about. It probably means a type of ego-clinging kind of desire like you said. The only "bad" or clinging desires are those that are only present when the ego is present. If they are present when the ego has been totally seen through, then they aren't "bad" desires. The ego only sees its own agenda, it doesn't know if its agenda is healthy or right. So if the ego wants A, it cannot see that maybe getting A isn't ultimately good. It's a blinkered kind of -- blind -- desire.

But again, what exactly does he mean by this? If we're using common nonduality terminology, realizing The Self is what a lot of the best known spiritual teachers already aim for or have taught. e.g. Ramana Maharshi: But you're saying that's something beyond enlightenment, which means it's something else. But in order to know if Leo knows what he is talking about, one has to gauge if he is even at the consciousness level of these teachers. If he is, he should explain what his experience of "I" is like, if there is any. It would take a few seconds. If he isn't, then he is just saying things that are confusing or nonsensical using terminology that other teachers have used in his own idiosyncratic context. (In order to be "beyond enlightenment" -- whatever that means -- one must in the very least be AT enlightenment, no?) If he is talking about integrating the psyche post-enlightenment, then he should specify (I've already described that as the work to be done after the most subtle ego strand is gone.)

That's not a bad range, I would say 30-36. Of course, there are some very mature kids. I was a camp counselor once and one of my kids was an extremely mature 9 year old. I think he went on to be very successful on Wall Street. That's rare, of course, but there are people like that of all ages. The problem with being too young and immature and becoming awakened is that...you're still young and immature...and now you may think you're somehow more advanced or better than your elders. But you're still young and immature. Being spiritually awakened hasn't granted you life experience/wisdom or domain knowledge of all kinds. So it's possible for the prematurely awakened to be super-obnoxious, or maybe more socially isolated than they would have been otherwise. The no-self awakening is just the first step on the road to Self Realization, and it's a particularly tricky stage to navigate (it's where a lot of Zen Devils are.) Mix that with youth and you could easily have a juvenile delinquent if the personality is otherwise disordered.

What does "deconstruct your mind" even mean? The most charitable interpretation matching reality is something like the self-inquiry technique. If that's so, why would you need a particular psychedelic in the first place? From Wiki.

Keyword in bold. There isn't a single spiritual teacher out there who thinks that an "awakening" as defined by him/her is "temporary." That's an experience of some type not an awakening.

But it's not even about empirical evidence yet -- it's about defining our terms. I don't think Leo uses the term "awakening" to mean the same thing as any other spiritual teacher I have ever read. This could mean that Leo has made up his own definition of "awakening" and hence he is not "wrong" within the context of his definition, he's just "wrong" with regard to objective reality (i.e. how all other spiritual teachers define "awakening.") Awakening is a permanent shift in awareness, it is not an intellectual insight per se. The only answer that one has to give is, what is my experience of "I" right now, if any? One doesn't need a philosophical lecture, just a simple answer. How am I experiencing "I"? Can Leo give a clear, unambiguous answer to that question so that his level of consciousness may be gauged or is he going to continue to insist that his definition is paramount, unique and unquestionable?

Merely notice what you're "clinging" to. There's a repetitive thought, focusing on a point, calling it "I." But it's just a thought, a belief. Become aware of what you're doing. Become aware of your conception of "I."

Leo is an INTP E5 and he sets the tone. Well, I think it's down to this: everyone must be careful not to spiritualize their own innate personality tendencies (i.e. their own ego.) If you're naturally cerebral, that's just your freakin' personality. If you're naturally emotional, that's also just your freakin' personality. If anything, the height of spirituality is being whole (HOLY) meaning integration, meaning becoming more than your personal -- ego -- comfort zone.