SeaMonster

That's a typical enneagram 5 thing. But your solution is wrong, because you can't solve mental masturbation by mentally masturbating about it. You need to engage the physical side of life, e.g. sports, getting more and better sleep, eating right, meditation to clear the mind, etc. Playing sports that require split-second decisiveness, such as basketball, helps a lot. The goal for a 5 is to quiet the mind so that you're fully immersed in your senses, rather than analysis and conceptualization.

Thinking too much, with too many pointless negative, pessimistic thoughts can be a bigger problem than the current state of the world or your life. You're likely quite smart, it's just that your head is filled with too much shit.

The shadow work is focusing on your own goals and working towards achieving them. The more of that you have in your life, the less you care about what others think of you. You tend to care more about what others think of you when you are kind of adrift and don't have a strong sense of yourself and what you want to happen in your life. (Oh, and try to fix your sleep problem - that's important.)

I know this is old, but...2 cents...ENTPs piss me off something fierce. I don't think that match is that great. I like ENFPs, to a lesser extent INFPs and even ENTJs. So sharing functions plus intuitives seems to be a decent match.

Infants don't have an ego, it hasn't developed yet (they are undifferentiated from the mother), which kinda proves my point.

People rarely put a gun to your head forcing you to say anything at all, so a good alternative to lying is not saying anything. You're not required to answer anyone's questions.

Well, to be precise, perhaps you don't consciously fear dying like some people, but it doesn't mean you are going to throw your life away for nothing, whether through self-neglect or self-abuse. It's not the same as losing the will to survive, because, again, that's wired-in. Your lizard brain e.g. is not altered, it gets the same inputs and processes threats as it did before. The problem is that human beings with egos have a distorted view of life and death and the relationship between them, and spend too much time dreading things that are not as threatening or scary as they perceive, and in the process fail to fully live.

Apparently he needs to interact with "himself" by making videos and having a forum, for one. Otherwise, he could disprove my theory by not doing it anymore.

I mean, you have to ask yourself a more fundamental question. When Leo claims states of consciousness "beyond anything a normal human can access or even imagine", what is he really saying? Well, he's saying "it's unlikely you have accessed these states, and unless you take heroic doses of very powerful psychedelics (which he knows most people won't) you need me to enlighten you.) That's the bottom line. A teacher who helps a student get enlightened knows that the student will no longer need him. So let's ask Leo: does he want everyone on the forum to get enlightened and leave the forum or does he need everyone to stick around? It's a simple question.

Meh. Leo a year from now will teach something different than Leo today. This is due to the YT content creator model of getting clicks from novel content. There is only so much "novel content" though if you are genuinely enlightened. There really isn't much to say. Solipsism was always bullshit -- there is one consciousness but putting an "I" in front of it and claiming you are it is a special brand of egoistic delusion. Of course there is only one consciousness but it's like the analogy of waves on the ocean: yes, waves are just a localized manifestation of the ocean, so simultaneously the localized and the whole, and this goes for ALL waves.

You are confusing a conscious act of protest -- which does not require being enlightened by any means -- with involuntary deactivation of the survival drive. Plenty of non-enlightened people kill themselves for all kinds of reasons as well. The monks CHOOSE to take these actions, they are not deprived of the will to survive. Their conscience simply overrides the survival drive.

You're getting some really confusing answers here (probably due to the mahasamadhi/mahasomebullshit theory of "true" enlightenment popular on this forum.) Survival drive is not the same as ego in this context. You don't need a limited self-identity in order to survive. Enlightened people have a survival drive -- their lizard brain does not deactivate upon nondual awakening or unity consciousness.) The ego exists because it offers PSYCHOLOGICAL protection. You acquired it as a child in order to cope with the world/external reality, along with the belief that you need the defenses it offers in order to survive. (Obviously, it's a false belief, a remnant of childhood programming.)

Have someone smack you and tell you to snap out of it. And maybe to go do your homework or chores if you're not in school.

Yeah, no-one serious thinks it will decrease inflation. How much it will increase is the issue. Also, inflation affects people who already have jobs (which is most of the voting public) so they aren't gaining much from the bill. In any case, predictions about how any single piece of legislation will play out are speculative and contentious, and "Expert" predictions are often wrong. E.g. see Obama's "I guess those shovel-ready jobs weren't so shovel-ready haha" from a decade ago.

You have to give up on this idea that simple polling tells you anything. Let me explain. Let's says Manchin votes for BBB (a huge spending bill) and it passes. As a result, inflation spikes even more than it is now. Manchin's constituents will get hammered by the high prices. He will absolutely be blamed for it and get voted out. Voters aren't thinking about the negative consequences of any particular piece of legislation, but when it comes back to bite them in the ass, they will most certainly blame not themselves, but their senator.

There is ambiguity about the term "ego" but it most commonly does NOT apply to the unconscious mind. It applies to the conscious mind. Jung refers to the integrated conscious-unconscious as The Self.

You also don't seem to get that your thinking about politics is reductive. All you do is repeat the meaningless buzzwords "caring" and "progress/progressive" over and over again. That's not an argument for any particular policy and how it affects someone's constituents. It's sort of a "progressives good/conservatives bad" mantra. You have to recognize that those particular senators know their state's needs as well as politics better than you do. This also goes for the more socially liberal Republicans in Northeastern states, like Susan Collins in Maine. It's equally crazy to think that she would vote the exact same way as a senator from Kentucky or Texas.

You have to shitcan this idea of "wage slavery." Firstly, you have to actually be useful in some capacity to even qualify as a slave. You're worrying about that prematurely. No offense, but you're depressed not because you can't face being a wage slave in the future, but because you're useless right now. This is the hard truth about human psychology: people need purpose, not just money to be happy. Don't worry about how you measure up to others or your SATs. No, you don't need to go to a top university to have a good life, you need to find something you both like doing and are good at or can get good at with work and practice. If it's languages, you need to look into careers which use that skillset. You may need career counseling of some kind.

You might be at the point of no return. The point of no return is not the same as a stable nondual awakening. It's a state where you go in and out of experiencing no center. Stable nondual awakening is where there is no center permanently and you feel like the brakes are off. You would have to provide a more detailed description of your state. That's how you "get enlightened", it's not by consciously aiming but by noticing -- becoming aware -- that you are clinging and letting go, sort of like a trust fall with existence. The ego is what aims for enlightenment (i.e. it's an ego con as the ego obviously doesn't want to die.) Don't worry about that. Survival needs aren't going away, but at some point it will be easier to remove the obstacles to getting them properly met.

Mahasamadhi is mahasomebullshit. Enlightenment has nothing to do with physical death. There is no human/enlightened dichotomy, that's a particularly stupid and dangerous dogma. Enlightenment is being fully human, without ego hangups like hating the body.

LOL. Using that logic...progressives are racist because they protect actual racists by labeling any perceived minor linguistic or ideological/policy transgression as racism. Hilarious lack of self-awareness there.

Anyone who needs to be spoonfed sourcing information on this forum may be too lazy, immature, unresourceful (is that a word?) and unprepared to do psychedelics. If they want it bad enough, they can do their own research.

I think you are actually at the point of a breakthrough. Those happen when you feel like you're getting nowhere; like you're beating your head against the wall and nothing is working. So now you are ready to surrender. Before you can discover what will work for you, you must first cease with what doesn't.

I don't think you get the fundamental nature of spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening is not awakening to a conceptual understanding. It is a state of being that you can imperfectly describe, but you DON'T HAVE TO. It's how you exist in that state that matters. Talking about infinite love ISN'T GOING TO MAKE ANYONE INFINITELY LOVING. Let's get fucking real on this forum for once. All it does is give you the opportunity to break down limiting and harmful ego defense mechanisms. The nature of reality is fucking irrelevant unless you awaken and then seize the opportunity to become "whole." HOW DO I MAKE SURE I'M RIGHT is just ego talk. Only the ego cares if it's "right."

You miss the point, I think. "Openminded" doesn't mean anything in this context. People aren't motivated because they are openminded. You have to answer a fundamental question: what is the motivation for people to become spiritual seekers/practicioners? The most common motivation is suffering that is not easy alleviated by common societal practices. Mental illness, existential angst, etc. Another motivation is that people want the benefits of a better life - yes, MATERIAL BENEFITS. They want a better state of mind that will get them love and money, to be crass. Most people could give a rat's ass about the philosophical dimensions of this issue if it doesn't directly address the above. That's the bottom line. And if they get these things, they DEFINITELY couldn't care less about the philosophical dimensions.