Nilsi

It's called ego-death. Obviously you were still there, else you couldn't experience the beach. You're not your ego, get over it

You're not conscious that you're the beach, that's the only problem.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. How can you disappear, if all there is, is you? You are talking about the ego dude.

Why does he champion Ralston then? Doesn't make sense to me. I have no idea how deep the psychedelic rabbit hole goes, but there is still only one God and I'm not sure that changes as you awaken more deeply lol. Maybe I'm a bit myopic right now, but it still seems not genuine somehow.

I hear you, but that's just the i. The I can not disappear.

I don't think it's about the content, that would be silly. He is doing the mind trick as far as I'm concerned. That's how I would do it at least and I don't see a way around this, but this whole Ralston thing was quite bizarre, so maybe I'm wrong. I have no issue with teaching, but why do you have to teach the one thing that can not be taught lol. It's just funny to me. Someone has to do it I guess, but it's still comical.

"Sex, Ecology, Spirituality," "The Selfish Gene" and "The Bible" are pretty good

It may not be very interesting, but it's the truth. I'm not interested in talking about this either, I just thought I'd jump in and clarify the misunderstanding. If you talk about awakening in any relative way, you are actually just bullshitting yourself and that's the problem with all those gurus. Only God can be awake and there is only one God. If you can put 1 + 1 together, that's all there is to say about this.

I'm not saying that. God can be conscious of itself, but that's the end of the dream.

I know I'm doing the magic trick here, but I have to if we're seriously talking about awakening. We can talk about spirituality and all that jazz and I find that wonderful and worthwhile to pursue, but God is beyond all of that.

I don't even know what enlightenment means.

Infinite possibilities, yet only one God.

That's absurd though. There is no one to awaken but yourself. If you want to become a spiritual guru and live your life that way, that's cool, but don't fool yourself into believing there is actually some other that can be awake. I hear you and I guess there is something to be said about keeping this knowledge alive, but that's really just a nice gesture and not about awakening itself. The problem is that you can not have it both ways; either you're God or you're not, so it's a bit schizo to spend your life talking and teaching about God.

I'm just dicking around. I'm not so foolish as to believe there is anyone to teach this to.

You can not teach it, obviously. All you can do is leave some clues and reminders. I know this is silly and I hate sounding like Leo (no offense), but it's just what it is.

All of language is just a story, so what? It's still a good pointer.

Dude, this is beyond reason and logic. You can not point to any other when it comes to awakening.

It's game-over. The bitter pill to swallow here is that ultimately there is only one consciousness that can be awake unto itself.

I don't see anybody claiming awakening (if so, it's bs).

It's not "Leo's concept," it's the proper use of the word awakening and it's also not an infinite regress.They are probably talking about some kind of no-mind state or whatever, which sure you can meassure, but that's not awakening.

I am not awake right now, yet everything still exists. Being conscious of yourself as God is an important experience, but it's the kind of thing you'd rather forget about after the fact.

It tells you nothing that is relevant about the actual experience. Awakening is beyond neuroscience, that's nothing new. I love science myself, but I'd rather be honest about it's limitations.

Come on man, you know that kind of reductionism doesn't tell you jack shit about absolute reality. I understand what they are saying, but that's not what awakening (or God-realisation) actually refers to.

Lol. Awake as in you're conscious that you're God.

https://www.complexityexplorer.org/ They have great free introductory lectures about complex systems. Also just type in "systems thinking goodreads" or "complex systems goodreads" into Google and you will get enough book recommendations for the rest of your life. As far as "options" for you life purpose go, you can basically work in whatever field you want and approach it from a complex systems/holism paradigm.