UnbornTao

Addiction seems to be about repeatedly craving pleasurable experiences. Pain and pleasure are the same. The search for pleasure is motivated by pain. Seems as though something in your experience is not entirely accepted and experience for what it is. We want to avoid pain, the mundane, boredom, loneliness, an emotional need. Maybe. Look into it.

Conscious education, how to overhaul the education system.

Others are whatever they are. In your experience, other people are certainly conscious, sentient entities. No point in denying that. An enlightenment into what other is is needed.

Pick a simple, small object in your vicinity, and then strip away the value, associations, concepts, knowledge, memory, and so on, that you have relative to it. What is there as that when your additions and activities are set aside?

Also, what are we referring to when we talk about both religion and spirituality? What actions are we talking about in each case? Based on that, we can clear up the possible reasons and consequences for engaging in either of them.

Kylian Mbappé. "Go to Real already for christ's sake." Oh oh, Ramana Maharshi too.

That spirituality and religion are needed and important for understanding reality. They're not direct. I recommend pure contemplation. "What is this?", basically, "this" being whatever we're looking into.

What if humans came from Buddhists? haha

I don't think that's what's being said

And what I'm saying is that both exist in your experience as beliefs. They are concepts.

I disagree lol

I'd say that whatever we call it, humans have this innate need to believe. So whether it is X or Y, the issue lies in the predisposition to turn any communication into belief. After all, believing is much easier than investigating for yourself. The problem is that belief doesn't change your ignorance on the matter, even though you think it does.

It degrades into meaningless ritual, dogma and idiocy. What are people actually doing with "religion"? Mostly believing and asking for favors. We're talking about a complex invention based on a guy that was presumably deeply conscious. If Jesus were alive today... I'm not sure what his thoughts on all this would be. Wasn't religion used as a justification for killing millions of people? And the guy those people followed said "love thy neighbor"? Such things are an impediment to pure contemplation. It can be useful in some ways, especially for a collective. But not needed.

Assuming we'd understand each other, Jesus, Gotama and Da Vinci are some of my favorites.

I would avoid making up cosmologies and stories. There's no relationship. Enlightenment is never insanity. A breakthrough isn't a breakdown.

Moe regrets:

All of that is conceptual. In your experience, you are either absolutely conscious or not. I'm not implying that there isn't work involved or that people don't go through stuff while doing "spirituality" (meditating, praying, etc.) However, once again, process, stages, states, and goals are relative. I'm talking strictly about direct consciousness. Take Ramana's case. Although rare, it goes to show the nature of such consciousness. He was a teenage boy without the slightest interest in spirituality and awakening. In a relative's house, he became terrified at the possibility of death, so he contemplated what it would be like for him to die as he laid on the floor. He went through a process of emulating his own death. In a matter of minutes, a wide-open state preceded a sudden massive awakening. It's sudden because it's always now. It is YOU. What intermediary would there be at the moment of realization? Very well then. However, that applies only to the relative. As an analogy, there is what's done within a dream -- what precedes the act of waking up -- and the direct act of waking up itself. There's no correlation. Either you wake up or not. Given that such consciousness is absolute, what you're saying does not apply. How could it? If it can be mapped, it is relative. It is not a process! As a matter of fact, direct consciousness itself is profoundly simple and universal as it is direct and true. Not saying it is common or necessarily easy to "get."

It's easy to challenge your faith, and recommended. Notice it's a belief you're holding and that the truth of the matter is unknown to you. If it's empowering in some form, keep it, if not, drop it.

Can't transcend what you're not conscious of. This applies equally to things you've made conclusions about. You made a conclusion. A conclusion isn't consciousness. Conclusions, convictions, beliefs and so on undermine the possibility of becoming aware. By saying that, you're justifying to yourself your ignorance on the matter. That way, you're clinging to unconsciousness. Move towards consciousness. Reality is at the other side of your cosmology, and it's good! In short, begin contemplating stuff.

No.

I'm not sure I get what you're saying, could you clarify?

Huh. You assume that a practice will get you there, even when there is actually here, is true now and is an unknown. It's absolute. Only direct will do, no matter what you want to believe. Process doesn't apply when it comes to direct consciousness. What precedes an enlightenment experience is rather secondary. The mind may make up a story about what it did before the realization in an attempt to replicate such an experience, but that's not possible. You must come at each enlightenment anew, so to speak. That's the meaning of direct! What is the possibility of direct consciousness? How many of us have actually experienced it? How can changes in state and "increased" consciousness be distinguished?

Even after awakening experiences there's the possibility for confusion. Enlightenment isn't a result. What territory? You've just said it. It's a feeling. Feeling one with the universe is also a state albeit a positive one in this case. You're still holding this as a process, whereas such experience would entail direct consciousness. Again such things have negative connotations which makes me think it wasn't an enlightenment experience. The key is what is one conscious of, regardless of state, even if it's blissful?

You can count on Ralston to be incredibly grounded and honest even to the detriment of "sales" -- what people want to hear. He's a master and definitely not a teacher for newbies. You can't go wrong with a teacher such as Ramana either. These are very rare. What most of us are overlooking is that no one has become enlightened through psychedelics (and never will), and that he's coming from deep consciousness, not belief, preference and conjecture. I got a glimpse while walking my dog. Quick, everyone start walking dogs and achieve enlightenment. That'd be a hell of a religion.