Adrian colby

I know about this and appreciate the reintroduction to the sentiment. But as I’ve integrated everything I’ve come across during my learning, I have come to a conclusion about ‘relational responsibility’ in a shared space( reality) . If there is no pushback then the balance falls out. If I just sit on my hands and do nothing, the oppositional opinion becomes dominant, takes over, corrupts, homogenises and eventually causes a collapse of the minor culture or community because it’s not recognising unity but fighting against itself. He is always asking why the people in the group descent into argument and it’s obvious there’s no integrity only personal benefit present in the participants. it does cause serious distress to me and a diversion of my energy. If I do nothing or say nothing I would be complaisant in my own demise…. Would I not? I spend about ten years fighting for my rights so I could exist in ‘the system’. It was peaceful and successful for a while but now with all these conspiracy theories floating about implying conscious agendas, I can see what I fought for being erased. For no reason other than unfounded fear. im sure if I ignore it and just concentrate on creating in my own immediate sphere, it will be grand… but only for a while. Eventually with no pushback there will be an increasing corruption that spreads into spirituality. I think Leo has been trying to create a bit of clarity from spiritual origins free of any belief system and I’ve been trying to do the same by differentiating between actual spirituality ( dissolution of reality to get a glimpse of the source) and belief systems ( anything from religion to narratives that take place within reality but are not descriptive of it)

What do you mean by authority? I had an issue with a ‘shaman’ recently who claimed we ‘compartmentalised’ differently… but I tried explaining that I don’t do that. It wasn’t until several iterations of responses and comments later that I realised he was viewing the situation through the lense of the very thing I was critiquing and so I realised I couldn’t get him to understand because he couldn’t step outside his own context… not even when I pointed ‘that’ out too. it started by trying to bring his awareness to his own lack of discernment and… well not knowing what epistemology is. it wasn’t until several iterations of comments and responses later that it became clear he was fragmenting and separating (compartmentalising) everything and putting himself in a box and automatically assuming I was doing thd opposite of what was in that box. Boxing me instead of what I was telling him, using all of the above as an interconnected and integrated system. he was using black and white thinking while I was system thinking. i do think it’s possible to know the mind of another but only when you pass a certain threshold of integration. People who are not aware of their unconscious patterns tend to continue a trajectory without changing making that pattern obvious. You can tell where they will end up and usually where it came from. the hard part is teaching it without coming across as arrogant or having a superiority complex ( what I think you mean by the appearance of authority?)

Yes genetics plays a huge role but that’s the body and its emergent identity that is also influenced by the environment in which it develops. Genetics are information packets that instruct the body to form in various different ways and there are so many developmental factors at play, no one gene can be used as a determining factor for the specific outcome of a human for or trait so by themselves, genes are not definitive or deterministic. Think of a seed. A seed is not a tree. It contains a pile of information we see as the potential for a tree but so many factors outside the seed influence and interact with it as it develops. the information in the seed is potential only and not actualisation. Any biological organism is an ongoing ‘process’ not a fixed and immutable object ( even though for the sake of coherence and continuity, it maintains a recogniseable and closely repeatable form. The stager I g jumbees oc factors involved and their varying degrees of interactions means there’s an infinity of variation and you never get an identical instance repeating) consciiusness creates forms and interacting forms creates patterns. Patterns interact with other patterns and end up creating increasing complexity. At some stage a complex pattern will hold itself together in a state of coherence long enough that a sense of self or identity will emerge from that point of view. Consciousness is then able to experience and express through that point. The identity or self is a mechanism that distinguishes a boundary and holds itself together in a coherent autonomous pattern. That’s what we call life and it emerges out of distinctions made by consciousness or the organising principle known as mind ( like a baby with no thoughts, language etc it is like pure existence simply engrossed in its own experience in the present moment) as time goes on it becomes conditioned by everything around it. Some of that conditioning is vital to its survival ( the continuation of the pattern over time) and some of the conditioning comes out of a conceptual map derived from its ability to use complex language, distracting it away from its direct experience and trapping it in a conceptual matrix or socially constructed environment. That’s what we environment creates adversity from which it can struggle and grow. while everything is consciousness dreaming up all these scenarios, the body and the appearance of its material forms and mechanisms have an inherently emergent identity or sense of self. Consciousness experiencing from this point of view can become lost in this sense of self so much that it can create levels and depths of self deception so convincing, it gets stuck and apathetical. as a species evolves so too does its ability to transcend immediate survival and with it starts to spend time self reflecting to the point it’s able to reference and analyse itself from a first, second , third, fourth person perspective etc. developing higher levels of individual and cultural cognitive development. a person who has genetic variations that differ drastically from a mainstream probability curve or give it other abilities are more likely to notice its culture as a conditioned construct and start to step outside of it and begin a deconstructive process of returning to direct experience with reality which may or may not end up as a dissolution of reality altogether and an awakening of consciousness from its dream of a human experience. we know identity is based in the brains default mode network as that is what is suppressed during psychedelic journeys and why we experience ‘no self’ in these altered states so it’s not too much of a leap to understand that self and identity ard inherently emergent of the bodies neurological development where consciousness which is not a thing and has no ‘self’ simply experiences and expresses through it. we recognise this in states of meditation when we attempt to suppress the senses so nothing is left but ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’. going through the process of untangling identities conditioning can allow consciousness to express through it more authentically. genes maybe the symbolic representation of the universal minds organising principle for creating nuanced distinctions. All are finite, some changeable, some not so much but in a world of vastly numberous interactive systems, they are not primarily deterministic

I would have said it was conspiracy theories through the lens of spiritual warfare being used to mobilise voter bases. ( spiritual or ‘supossed’ spiritual people getting dragged into it because of the use of spiritual language but don’t have enough discernment to see through it) basic myth and dogma are easy enough to recognise in most orthodox religions and has been around for millennia but the other esoteric traditions where spirituality has held more rigour for maintaining clarity… it has spread through and corrupted the new age, plant medicine and spiritual communities in the last decade so badly I’m struggling to keep it out of my own communities. ive actually reached a level of exhaustion constantly repeating myself against this onslaught of idiocy. It’s got so bad I’m about to loose two friends over it simply for asking that they take a moment to investigate their epistemology. Despite holding my ability to deconstruct and explain spiritual concepts with great respects, it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other, just to uphold their prior beliefs. the conspiracy of the great awakening which has nothing to do with actual awakening in a group of people who have been repeatedly told but still answer ‘epistemology’? What’s with the big words. constantly looking for answers but not willing to do the work or god forbid some self reflection! I find myself in a sea of epistemic loneliness with only infinity and some of its finite deluded parts for company. when your consciousness expands, you hold more of infinities complexity and end up with complex language to talk about it and that’s too much for them. unfortunately some of those narritives demonise the type of person/human that I am and so with hhe spread of that corruption my own community turns on me too. 🙁

You could see being monogamous and non manogamous as an orientation. Polyamory is a subset of non monogamy and there are many different types within it. being conditioned to monogamy from the get go, every decision I made regarding relationships turned out to be conditioned and forced against my authenticity. The way I had relationships was to fit a stereotype and conform like it was something I was supposed to or expected to do. after my awakenings, I’d describe it as my heart opening and becoming more unconditional towards people. A letting go of the need to be validated by a relationship, that my sense of self worth, confidence and happiness doesn’t come from a partner and above all that I do not possess or have rights over another person or what they do with their body or someone else. this doesn’t mean that I loose control and go out seeking casual sex or try to fulfill myself with pleasure. It takes a great deal of maturity and consideration to interact intimately with another person without taking advantage of a situation. If the other person is not complete within themselves, the interaction can end in a great deal of emotional hurt so in that sense it’s actually quite difficult to come across people who are ok with it so there are few. i have a small group of very close friends ( the love between us is quite profound because we have opened up to each other in vulnerable states and the level of acceptance there recognises and understands each of our struggles, problems and journeys as simply being a difference. The love is an acceptance of the persons being as they are instead of them having to be something to satisfy. We don’t have romantic relationships. It is a friendship that if in a moment where the connection deepens, intimacy is allowed. we always use the saying “I’ll apologise for hating but I’ll never apologise for loving”. There are plenty of moments of intimacy that don’t involve sex either. The experience is never reduced to shame or embarrassment but instead taken with gratitude. It’s never regretted and that can also be doesn’t to conversations of consent and clear expectations beforehand. our lives are all separate so none of us live in parallel like a polycule and so this is not polyamory and they are not romantic relationships. it wouldn’t have been possible if I had not first gone through my own isolation and deconstruction ( to work on myself and understanding of reality). A lot of people in new age and spiritual communities do it because it’s almost part of a new identity but hasn’t been arrived at authenyically and as someone already suggested is a way of bypassing and deflecting from personal work ( the mentality of the sovereign libertarian who just does whatever they want without acknowledging consequences or the fact that ‘spiritually’ it’s not about dissolving reality and the ego to get a glimpse of the absolute and then delude yourself into thinking you are constantly there in that state… but rather that you reintegrate everything that you dissolved, understanding it and that you hold a place as one amongst a multitude within a relational space with a shared responsibility to maintain harmony and balance within your reality. ) you don’t choose polyamory out of a sense of moral superiority but rather as an authentic extention of your own preferences derived from who you are as love at your core. What is right for you may not be right for someone else and monogamy can be a catalyst for developing better maturity through relationship. i married before I realised I was non monogamous but I love my wife too so it’s been a challenge to be simultaneously in both a monogamous and non monogamous situation … or rather having a monogamous and non monogamous person in a marriage together. My wife understand but admits she is not able to deal with the emotion of it but as long as she is more important ( the fear of me finding something ‘better’ and leaving is what plagues her mind but I see people as different not better). She’s the one I’ve chosen to live in parallel with and I’m not ‘seeking’ other partners. I’m just open to my friendships deepening in a moment and my wife’s self worth shouldn’t be tied to that. Polyamory calls that hierarchy and is frowned upon but that is the life I have. If my wife were to go to an event, holiday, festival and meet someone she got on well with and the night ended in a beautiful experience… why on earth, if I claim to love her, would I be annoyed that she had a wonderful experience? It doesn’t affect me or her relationship with me. Her interaction with another person is private and between them and nothing to do with me but genuinely as a friend to her I’d love her to feel safe and open enough to be able to share her story and excitement with me. It’s called comperssion and a sign I’ve moved beyond her as another human, being any kind of possession of mine. I think the question is whether you feel genuinely drawn to monogamy or non monogamy and whether you feel confident, mature and comfortable enough in yourself to interact and be intimate with another person without possessing them. Non monogamy expands you to more different experiences not tying you to just one but the underlying principle of maturity still stands in either situation. I feel more open, alive and accepting… more at peace with myself if I acknowledge non monogamy as my own authentic state. When I sit in monogamy I slowly but surely start to shut down, wilt and become miserable. When I accepted non monogamous as my relationship style, I never felt more alive. It was a battle at first because living in a society and culture that frowned upon it and didn’t understand it ( framing it as nothing more than cheating or promiscuity) but I still come back to love/acknowledgment, acceptance, allowance as the core of my being and resisting it just to conform to a monogamous culture goes against everything I stand for. I'm not promiscuous and it doesn’t happen often at all but it is a part of who I am.

I got fed up with the constant dismissive and down right nasty onslaught on human diversity after I had an autism masking collapse ( suicide attempt followed by diagnosis), I recovered honouring my nervous system and being authentic to who I am and my preferences. I was never identified with the lgbt culture but in light of the last 6 years I’ve recognised there’s more love there. Who you love and how you love is still love. Absolute love is beyond acknowledging accepting and allowing… it’s simply ‘being’. i wrote a song about being love and love coming from within each of us but as soon as I put down the baseline, it turned into a Gay anthem. It’s also my best production so far for a non pro music producer/sound engineer. thought I would share.

I like to call it abstraction. I was talking to a new Ager and my brother in law overheard. He went to his mother to say I was mental so I ended up having to explain symbolic language and getting to what the person is trying to point at using simile, metaphor ,analogy to similar patterns in different style language or framework. I called it abstraction. Likening it to the Socratic method or what Pierre grimes would do with dreams. I did it with my dad in hospital when he was up to his eyeballs on morphine. Everyone else dismissed his slurred rambling and left the room. I had one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had with him. I also get what you say about meaning but only in context. This became very apparent to me while figuring out how AI was stringing words together to make intelligible sentences. It’s also something that has cropped up after my (very recent) autism diagnosis and that is not understanding what people are saying particularly in short group chat comments on the likes of WhatsApp and it’s because the word or sentence lacks the context. Just as with the nature of reality, meaning cannot mean something unless it relates to another meaning. It’s the relationship between the two where any understanding or distinction can occur. that’s just going to send me off into an expanding contemplation… I’ll stop my brain before it keeps itself awake all night 🫢

@Leo Gura Love and hate are distinctions that arise at the relative level from an originally undifferentiated unity. In that sense, hate is not separate from the absolute, but a conditioned expression emerging within multiplicity. Love can be understood as the absolute itself when resting simply in being, whereas hate appears when consciousness moves from pure being into identification, division, and reactive doing contrasting against itself. i watch people come back from trips. Their ego Co opts the experience, then they struggle to hold both absolute and relative simultaneously mistaking their ‘I’ for the absolute.

I always take these ideas as contemplation fodder so I’m thankful for the answer. there’s probably some truth in what you’re pointing toward regarding identity formation like social mirroring and autistic differences in social processing. But I’d be careful about reducing autism to simply ‘weak theory of mind’ because modern understanding is moving away from that idea as a blanket explanation. Many autistic individuals can understand others deeply…sometimes excessively deeply through analysis but may struggle with rapid implicit social interpretation in real time. That’s different from lacking empathy or lacking a theory of minds altogether. I’d also be cautious with the idea that identity mainly comes from copying others. Social mirroring certainly contributes, but identity appears to emerge from many layers like biology, temperament, nervous system structure, endocrine influences, embodiment, attachment, memory, social interaction, and self-reflection. Ironically, many autistic people report not a weak identity, but an unusually persistent internal sense of self combined with exhaustion from masking and performing social expectations that feel unnatural. That has certainly been part of my own experience and the phase of exhaustion I’m currently at. Where I think discussions like this become dangerous is when a leap is made from ‘autistic people process identity differently’ to ‘therefore trans identity is simply confusion or imitation.’ That doesn’t logically follow.Autistic individuals are often less socially conformist, more introspective, and more likely to question imposed roles rather than automatically absorb them. So the same observations could support the opposite interpretation: that some autistic people are less capable of suppressing internal incongruence for the sake of social harmony. In my own case, having a DSD complicates things further because we’re not talking about a purely social or conceptual phenomenon. There are biological developmental variables involved from the outset. I think these ideas are worth contemplating carefully, but I’d avoid collapsing a very complex interaction of biology, neurology, embodiment, and social development into a single explanatory mechanism. A lot of the problem I find is A lack of understandable communication between divergent ways of processing and one trying to pathologies the other. my wife is very good at interacting with me. She does a lot of animal behaviour work so is clued into highly sensitive nervous systems ( she communicates with that, not my intellect) Humans are constantly faster, bigger, louder, overstimulating, desensitised, short attention etc so when someone like myself goes into an environment where there’s so much change, it interruptes the hyper focus I have my baseline in, it becomes very overwhelming very quickly. I tend to remove myself and enjoy the quiet and subtle nuances of natural environments instead. I'm going to stop yhere cause I realise I’m diverging away from topic.

I’ve Deffinately come across that before, many times. If someone’s neuroendocrine pathway development is divergent from the reproductive sex it’s certainly in line with a type of neurodivergence. there must be some truth to it because I’m trans and also have a DSD… and just today I started the proper assessment process for an autism and adhd diagnosis. ( age 40+, the typical collapse of masking revealing all the sensitivities). my sexual variation had a part to play in triggering my awakening but my awakening triggered the slow collapse of my personality. first time was an intellectual deconstruction, the second time was the exhaustion of an unfit adaptation. No more being inauthentic. others have suggested following his authenticity and I second that. Be what you are, whatever that is and you know, when you start to function better. … and definitely integrate both masculine and feminine aspects. For me that had nothing to do with being a man but a balanced human being.

I think the cult documentaries are going to be timely and interesting. im currently watching a friend ( ceremony facilitator/druid/shaman/healer etc blah blah) claim to have gone through a transformation and become his true self ( again!) and this time “shits getting real”. after a lengthy speech to ‘headhunted’, ‘special’ helpers, my red flags are flying in all directions as I can clearly see a tragectory ( not yet a cult) but with serious potential to turn into one. i think I might start a journal in the journal section with my analysis of the ‘problem’ but I’m expecting to see similarities in the documentaries Leo is sharing.

I have a friend coming over tomorrow who sent me a video of JFK ‘making a speech’ ten days before his assassination. ive told him before to stop jumping in with assumptions based on the framework other people sell to him that is highly reactionary and emotionally provocative. He claims he knows it’s nonsense but it’s telling that he would send me the speech because a part of him is not sure still. the speech obviously goes on about ‘secret society’ and ‘control over American citizens’ but in this decade it can sound like he’s talking about the ‘current’ conspiracy narrative Maga, Qanon and a lot of spiritual people have fallen into “the great awakening”. A lot of spiritual/ceremony community spaces have that print map by the artist “champ parinya“ draped across the wall like some kind of prophetic bible.a concoction of narratives by conspiratorial groups with no connection… tomorrow I’ve to sit him down and explain ‘context’ who was the audience JFK was addressing?( journalists) what year was this speech made?(1961) what was going on globally at the time?( Cold War, covert operations , information control, espionage, communism etc) Was he talking about the evil satanic cabal? No! He was talking about the culture of secrecy and lack of trust between nations. The tension between national security and transparency, freedom of the press v state secrecy. the interpretation is constrained by… ’context!’ it’s the difference in a narrative driven cognition and a detail driven cognition. If the narrative takes priority, it tends to make a person fit the details into it by picking some and ignoring others rather than looking at evidence and allowing those details ( all of them) to form the basis for any real conclusion. if you go with narrative first, it reduces complexity, gives something a quick ‘meaning’ and sense of orientation which is great as a stabilisation mechanism for the mind ( albeit a deception). Someone who is automatically reactionary is going to look to stabilise something that is chaotically senseless by making it ‘feel’ like it is internally coherent. part of human survival is ‘pattern recognition’ like recognising faces, finding threats and finding meaning so for the most part ‘fear based’. This is a normal and valid human function but it overextends itself when linking things that have no causal connection to create that ‘certainty’ to alleviate the fear and claim to be ‘in the know.’ It’s not irrational but a misuse or overreaching of a valid survival function. it’s not about challenging someone but illuminating the ‘structure’ of how meaning is constructed. ( a projection on reality not a constraint from acceptance of reality) my friends repeated exposure to being sent these stories or it being brought up in new age communities can make it start to feel plausible because it becomes familiar. He doesn’t ‘beleive’ it but doesn’t know how to dismiss it either… enter epistemic responsibility… to look at how you think, not ‘what’ you are thinking about. Examine the method rather than defending the beleif. It’s not whether it is true or false but rather what kind of thinking produced this? Then moving into discernment: are you noticing patterns that are actually there or are you building a pattern by connecting incomplete pieces? One is properly grounded. If the connection isn’t solid then you need to learn to tolerate “I don’t know”. That’s the antidote to conspiracy thinking. I’ve noticed some spiritual spaces can drift into this because once you start questioning surface reality, it’s easy to keep going and start questioning everything without always grounding it again.So instead of dissolving illusion, it can turn into building new ones that just feel more meaningful. ( delusional) and naive psychedelic users in these spaces are highly susceptible to it. Way too many facilitators peddle this as a true worldview connected to being spiritual. a lot of conspiratorial narratives use language that is conflated with spiritual language like ‘awakening’ and ‘seeing behind the veil’, ‘good v evil’ etc. so rather than deconstructing reality to get a glimpse of the source, they get caught in narrative within the illusion. most people in spiritual spaces don’t know what spirituality is and are actually there for trauma resolution, personal development and ways to figure the improvement of their health/life. If you think there is a conspiracy against you, it can certainly redirect your attention and bypass understanding your own mental mechanisms, conditioning and emotions … that would otherwise lead to improving your life.

blog post Beyond insanity part 1: when not using psychedelics, this is what my yoga nidra or astral practice looks like. Not much different than meditating sitting or lying down, beyond the no self state, another reality will form. one session I decided to allow literally anything horrific that I could imagine. I let my mind let rip and instead of disgust or horror, I loved. That broke a boundary and love entered insanity. I go through phases where the darkest realms are the most beautiful and I actually prefer them.

I’m a man ( trans/DSD containing both male and female). I like women ( sorry that’s boring and traditional). also a field of awareness that is neither a man or woman ( sorry again but this is the actualised forum and I have experienced god realisation and nondual awareness). I can say I like all women but it wouldn’t be true because I have preferences/biases. I have preferences for certain types of women and that can be cut down again into specific women I find attractive. Would I with a trans woman? It completely depends on the person. I have come across one I was attracted to. ive had a rigid preference for women shorter than me but I fell for someone taller than me and that prior ‘dealbreaker’ flew out the window, so it’s completely dependent on the person. It’s my preference, and a preference is not something prescribed for others and not for others to judge me over ( that’s stepping over someone else's boundary implying moral superiority… not ok!) It’s not “Im not attracted to a person because they are trans”, I’m not attracted to them because I don’t find them to be an attractive person. I can’t fake that but I personally wouldn’t use being trans as an excuse because I wouldn’t just be rejecting them but invalidating their identity as well and that’s stepping over a line. I wouldn’t want it done to me so I wouldn’t do it.

I’m trans. I don’t identify as such but I’m aware of the biological incoherence in my own system even though I had no external influences. There’s a difference between biologically emergent identity and symbolic level identity regardless of symbolic level influence, a biological system will always have an inherent identity. ( incoherence within a system becomes part of that innate identity.) I had no internet growing up. I wasn’t exposed to any lgbt culture, I’d never heard the word trans and I don’t think there was anything other than binary biology at school. There were no doctors in my country at the time who knew anything about it or treated it. my identity was persistent and sustained from 4-5 years old and it became a severe problem at 14. I stayed away from the lgbt or any activism. I did go to check out that scene when I was part the way into my treatment but I was not impressed with the behaviour. I didn’t gel with anyone in that community and figured it was just another culture to conform to. it was more the case for me, get treated correctly and reintegrate back into society as normal so I’m straight male and the condition once treated no longer exists…when I was treated by a competent team, I was diagnosed with a DSD and gender incongruency. No one knows about the condition. I didn’t talk about it, kept up with healthchecks at the doctors but just got on with my life. I see others making a show of themselves, shouting at people and demanding respect ( I understand the anger and frustration in them, I’ve been there…but) you’re heading for a punch in the face behaving like that. being prior to 1990’s when I started having problems, it wouldn't have made a difference in my case, what timeline widespread education happened. I was treated incorrectly in the beginning so the only benefit to growing up post ‘90s is that I would have had access to the proper healthcare and not suffered a rake of issues that could have been avoided. I think I would agree that educating about the different types of people in our species reduces marginalisation but telling kids they can do whatever they want without undersranding complex biological systems is playing into symbolic identity which can fragment someone from innate identity. That’s not a good thing for a regular kid or trans kid either.