Zeidiez

Hey everyone, I've been consuming Leo's content for a while now, and I want to start by saying: I agree with like 90% of what he teaches. The deconstruction of rationality series? Absolutely on point. The stuff about survival, self-deception, the limits of science, the importance of direct experience over belief - all of it resonates deeply. I've done the work. Psychedelics, contemplation, years of reading philosophy and theology (especially Eastern Orthodox mysticism, which I think has some seriously underrated insights on these topics). So this isn't coming from a place of "Leo is wrong and I'm right." It's coming from a genuine puzzle I can't resolve. Here's where I get stuck: the solipsism episode. Leo says: "You are the only conscious thing in existence. There are no other minds. You are God, completely and absolutely." I've had experiences where the boundary between self and other dissolves. I get it. The partition feels artificial. Everything seems to be "me" in some expanded sense. I'm not denying that experience is real. But here's my question: Does the dissolution of the boundary between self and other prove that I AM the totality? Or does it just show that both self and other participate in something infinitely larger than both? Let me put it differently. When Leo says he has "absolute consciousness" and is "conscious of everything," I want to ask: how do you verify the non-existence of what lies outside your current field of awareness? To say "there's nothing outside my consciousness" seems to require you to have already checked "outside" - which is a contradiction. My alternative interpretation: What if the experience of boundary dissolution is real, but the interpretation is off by one step? Instead of: "The boundary dissolved, therefore I am everything" What about: "The boundary dissolved, therefore I participate in something infinitely larger than my previous sense of self - but that something is still infinitely larger than my expanded self" In other words: God IS us (from God's perspective), but God also transcends us infinitely. We are not God, but we are made in God's image - our consciousness is the finite version of the infinite. It can expand, approach God, but that approach is itself an infinite journey. There's always more. Why does this matter? If Leo's version is true, then "awakening" is essentially recognizing a static fact: you were always everything, you just forgot. The journey ends. If my version is true, awakening is entering an infinite process of expansion. There's no ceiling. Theosis (to use the Orthodox term) is eternal growth into God, not absorption into a blob where distinctions disappear. A few concrete questions: Leo, here's where I genuinely get stuck, and I'd love to hear your take: When you say you became "absolutely conscious of everything" and verified this many times - how do you distinguish between "I experienced the actual infinite and I AM that infinite" versus "I experienced an expansion so vast that I couldn't perceive any limits, but what lies beyond those limits still exists"? A fish that expands to fill its entire ocean won't perceive the sky. But the sky is still there. The absence of perceived exterior doesn't necessarily prove the absence of exterior - it might just mean the exterior is beyond current perception. Here's an alternative interpretation I'm playing with: maybe we don't perceive "outside" precisely because we're not supposed to. If our barriers dissolved completely, we'd mix with other entities, lose our distinctiveness, get "stained" by everything else. So we have barriers - necessary ones. This makes us, in a sense, always experientially alone. Islands. Enclosed. But that doesn't mean other islands don't exist - it means we interact indirectly, through a shared matrix that is itself a portion of God (not the totality). The solipsistic intuition would then be a misreading of a real phenomenon: we feel alone because we ARE enclosed. But enclosed doesn't mean "only." You've said other teachers (Tolle, Spira, etc.) thought they reached the end but hadn't - you went beyond their position of "we're all part of a larger God's mind." Fair enough. But then: what rules out a "beyond" to your "beyond"? If they were wrong about having reached the ceiling, what makes you certain you've actually hit it? I ask this not as a gotcha, but because the mystical traditions I trust most (Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, the hesychasts) are extremely careful here. Even in the highest union with God, the human remains human. They call it "distinction without separation." Not theological timidity - but recognition that if the finite actually BECOMES the infinite, there's no more relationship, no more love, no more journey. Just collapse into undifferentiated unity. Your model feels like collapse to me. Mine feels like infinite adventure - always more Source, always more Light, always further to go. But I'm genuinely open to being wrong. What am I missing? Looking forward to the discussion.

You’re right to call out assumptions. I’m not claiming “for a fact” that my subjective field is a holon rather than the whole. I’m saying the experience of boundlessness doesn’t logically settle that question either way. “It feels infinite” is compatible with “I am literally all of infinity” and also compatible with “my field is phenomenologically unbounded from the inside, but not ontologically exhaustive.” So if we’re going to be strict, the solipsist position is making at least as big a leap as mine. The difference is I’m trying to keep the leap explicit and minimal. When I use “microcosm / image of God / fractal” language, I’m pointing to a model: a finite field can mirror infinity in such a way that, subjectively, it has no perceived edge. That’s not a proof, it’s a way to avoid turning a private experience into an absolute metaphysical claim. And the distinction matters. If my field is literally all of reality, then other minds are necessarily just appearances inside it. If my field is a participation or reflection, then other minds can be real even if I can’t access them directly, and intersubjective consistency becomes at least a reasonable clue that I’m not in a single-player bubble.

Totally hear you. I think we’re actually closer than it looked. I agree with your basic point: epistemically, I never step outside the field of experience to verify a “server.” Any model I propose, single player, multiplayer, whatever, shows up as content inside the same field. So yes, in that sense, both stories are equal. And I also agree that the “tell” isn’t the concept, it’s whether the sense of lack relaxes. That’s real. That’s not a belief. It’s a noticing. Where I’m trying to add a small nuance is here: I think “no need for a beyond” and “there is no beyond” are two very different moves. I can fully accept “no need for a beyond” as a psychological and spiritual shift. The search can relax, not because you proved anything, but because the system stops manufacturing an external horizon to chase. That feels like grace to me, in the most basic sense: gratitude and presence replacing compulsive reaching. I’m with you there. But I don’t think that relaxation licenses a metaphysical closure. Not because I can disprove closure, but because I don’t see how any finite viewpoint, even an extraordinarily expanded one, can honestly claim it has exhausted the mystery of infinity. If I say “there is no beyond,” I’m not just describing a change in tension inside experience. I’m making a statement about the total structure of reality. And I don’t see how the field can certify that, because the field can always feel boundless from within. That’s basically the only thing I’m guarding: not the need for a beyond, but the inagotability of the Infinite. I also want to be transparent about my own psychology here. Part of why I’m sensitive to solipsism language is that it scares me. It threatens meaning, it threatens love, and it threatens the coherence of relationship. So yes, I admit there’s a part of me that wants to believe in real distinction. But I’m trying not to turn that want into “proof.” I’m trying to keep the epistemics clean. In my own terms, what dissolves in those peak states is usually the internal partitioning inside the field. The ego boundary collapses, the subject object split collapses, and the whole matrix feels like one seamless thing. I’m not denying that. I’m saying the interpretation “therefore there is literally nothing else” is one step beyond what the experience itself strictly gives you. And this is where my Christian bias comes in, for better or worse. I don’t actually think union means fusion. I think it’s possible to be radically one without collapsing distinction. Distinction without separation. Not as theological timidity, but because love requires an other. If all distinction is annihilated, relationship becomes meaningless. And for me, relationship is not a superficial human add on. It’s the point. So when I say “beyond,” I’m not really saying “I lack something and I need to chase it.” I’m saying something more like: even when the thirst of lack drops, even when you’re drinking from the well, the well can still be inexhaustible. The search can end as compulsive seeking, and the path can still be infinite as participation. Rest doesn’t have to imply ceiling. If you want a biblical image for what I’m pointing at, it’s the Samaritan woman scene. The water that removes thirst isn’t “I’ve reached a final conceptual conclusion.” It’s a living spring. It’s not anxiety driven reaching anymore, but it’s also not dead stillness. It’s an ongoing source. So I think your noticing stands. A beyond isn’t necessary to relax. But I’m not convinced that relaxation implies there is no beyond. For me, the more honest posture is: I can rest, I can be grateful, I can stop grasping, and still remain open to the possibility that infinity is genuinely inagotable from any creaturely point of view. If that’s all you meant, then we’re basically saying the same thing in different vocabulary. If you meant a stronger closure claim, I just can’t see how we get there without quietly smuggling in an absolute standpoint we don’t actually have.

Interesting point, but I think you're kind of restating the position rather than addressing the question. Let me try to explain where I'm coming from, because I realize I didn't fully unpack it. I use the term "subjective matrix" to describe something specific. Everything you perceive right now - this screen, the room around you, your body, other people, the sky, memories, thoughts, emotions - all of that is being "rendered" somewhere. That somewhere is what I call your subjective matrix. It's the totality of your experiential field. Not just the visual stuff - everything. The whole bubble of your existence as you live it. Now take this idea for a moment (for the sake of my argument 😅): this matrix is made in the image of God. It's a microcosm. A fractal of the infinite. That's why, when you go deep enough into it, it FEELS infinite. Because in a sense it is - it's the finite version of infinity. It reflects the whole, but it's not the whole. So when anyone takes 5-MeO and experiences "being everything" - what I think is actually happening is this: the barriers WITHIN the matrix dissolve. The usual partition between your ego/avatar and the rest of your experiential content collapses. You become one with everything inside your bubble. And that feels like becoming God. Because your bubble is godlike - it's structured in His image. But here's the key move solipsism misses: the barrier OF the matrix itself doesn't dissolve. You're not suddenly perceiving other people's subjective matrices from the inside. You're perceiving your own representations of them - their avatars as they appear within YOUR matrix. Think of it this way: other people show up in your experience as characters, as rendered representations. When your internal barriers dissolve, you feel unified with those representations too. "I am them, they are me." But those representations are not the same as their actual subjective matrices. You're experiencing your interface with them, not their inner reality. So the solipsistic intuition is reading something real - within your matrix, there's only you (in the expanded sense). But that doesn't prove other matrices don't exist. It just proves you can't access them directly. You only see their projections in the shared space. The feeling of infinity is real. But feeling infinite and BEING the totality of existence are two different things. One is experiencing your microcosm fully. The other is a metaphysical claim that requires more than the experience itself to justify. Does that make sense? I'm not saying the experience isn't profound or genuine. I'm saying the interpretation "therefore I am literally all that exists" might be one step too far. This is really well thought out. I appreciate you laying it out step by step - it helps me see where we converge and where we might diverge. Let me push back gently on point 17, because I think that's where the leap happens. You say: "If everything must come through awareness, then everything IS awareness and there is nothing outside of it." But I'm not sure that follows. Let me try to explain how I see it. For me, awareness is basically rendering something inside your subjective matrix. When I "see" an apple, what's actually happening is that an apple-representation appears on my subjective screen. There's no direct contact with the apple-in-itself. I only ever deal with my rendering of it. Now here's what's interesting: how do I distinguish that rendered apple from, say, an apple I just imagine? Both appear in my matrix. Both are "content of awareness." The difference, I think, is consistency across matrices. When I talk to another person (who is also rendered in my matrix, of course - I have no direct access to them either), and they describe the same apple in the same location with the same properties... that tells me something. It suggests the apple-representation isn't just my imagination - it's being generated by some shared input. Something external to my matrix that multiple matrices are picking up and rendering, each in their own way. We're like bubbles inside God, communicating through smoke signals that we each recreate inside our own bubble. I never touch your bubble directly. But the consistency of our smoke signals suggests we're both responding to something real. So when you ask in point 17 "does stuff exist when it's not in awareness?" - I'd say: it depends on whether I'm the only matrix or not. If solipsism is true and I'm literally all that exists, then yeah, maybe unperceived stuff only exists as potentiality within my infinite. But if there are other matrices (which I can't prove but seems more parsimonious to me), then something I've never perceived might still be "materialized" inside someone else's matrix. It exists - just not for me. The shared material reality would then be like a consistent input-layer that all our matrices tap into. Not the ultimate reality, but a real interface. A portion of the Infinite that we all render from our own angles. Point 23 is gold, by the way. You're right that solipsism requires an "I." And if that "I" is a construct... things get weird. My take: the ego/avatar is definitely a construct inside the matrix. But the matrix itself - the field of subjectivity - is real. The question is whether it's the ONLY one. I genuinely don't know. But "I can't access other matrices" feels different from "other matrices don't exist." The first is an epistemic limitation. The second is a metaphysical claim that seems to require more than the experience alone can provide. Does that make sense? Interesting move, but I think it cuts both ways. You say my need for a "beyond" is ego projecting infinity outside itself. Ok, maybe. But couldn't the opposite also be true? Couldn't "I am literally everything, there's nothing else" be the ego making the ultimate power-grab? Think about it: which claim is more humble? "I participate in something infinitely larger than me" or "I am the totality of existence"? If we're going to play the "that's just ego" card, I'm not sure solipsism wins that game. But let's set that aside. I'm more interested in the epistemics. When you say "there is no beyond" - how do you know? I'm genuinely asking. Is it purely experiential? You felt no limits, therefore there are none? Because here's my concern: what if the subjective matrix (the totality of your experiential field) feels infinite precisely because it's made in the image of infinity? A fractal of the whole. From inside, it would feel boundless - because it reflects boundlessness. But reflecting the infinite and being the totality of the infinite are two different things. There's this Rick and Morty episode - "Roy: A Life Well Lived" - where Morty puts on a VR headset and lives an entire life as a guy named Roy. He forgets he's Morty. When Roy dies, Morty wakes up in the arcade and realizes it was all a game. Leo's model feels like that. God puts on the headset, forgets it's God, lives as human, then "wakes up" and remembers. Single-player game. The other characters were also Morty, but playing in a timeless-way... or they could be NPCs too... who knows. It's doesn't matter. But what if there are multiple headsets? What if it's a multiplayer server, and each player can only see their own screen? From inside the game, the experience would be identical - you'd feel like the only real one. But other players would still exist. How do you rule that out? I'll be honest: there's part of me that fears dissolving completely. Losing the "me" in an ocean of undifferentiated experience. Maybe that biases me toward wanting a "beyond." I admit that. But I think solipsism has its own shadow too - the desire to be everything, to need nothing outside yourself, to never truly depend on an other because there is no other. Both positions have their temptations. I'm just not sure experience alone can settle which one is true.