Of course paranormal abilities are real. They just don't work according to materialist's expectations. Which is precisely why materialist science excludes them from their domains of study, creating a self-fulfilling blindspot. In other words, paradigm blindness at its finest.
That's what happens when you ignore epistemology while at the same time engaging in epistemic pursuits.

Isn't all spirituality "fake" spirituality when taught? How does one who is not yet in a spiritual state differentiate between "fake" and the "true" without having any understand of what truth is?
Sadhguru proposes during his talks that at one point any being comes to an impasse of understanding everything is nonsense, or everything is sacred. Both are beautiful viewpoints, and both equally enlightening. The reason I quote that is to say that any experience or metaphor is illusory, or fake. Whether they are sacred, or nonsense entirely depends on your present view. Leo proposes in his latest video on human knowledge that even everything he is teaching or has put on actualized.org is all illusions, it's all nonsense. What is different here is that his nonsense is claiming it is nonsense which may give you an insight into other illusions present in your world view.
In my humble opinion this is the true purpose of any spiritual teaching. To give you insights into the illusions you cling to, and perhaps assist you in avoiding illusions down the way. In that sense both "fake" and "true" spirituality are important. Both can give insights (albeit in different ways) into life, and the illusions permeating "your" existence. It all comes down to how open minded your present state is, and how "you" receive the information.
Sometimes falling into a trap is extremely important, only in falling into the trap and extricating oneself from it can one learn to see the trap for what it is. Furthermore that realization that it is a trap had to come from within, and can then spark the motivation to not just avoid future traps and see them for what they are, but to pursue the actual truth.
And that's what this whole thing is all about is it not?
Truly
Z

Well...gaming is bad that is true.It fills your mind with shit, taking so many hours of your life and the most important it drains your willpower.Its OK playing only one day per week continue it and when you will feel ready you will drop it.Its not that bad situation once per week relax.It would be better to stay away but there are other stuff in our everyday life that have bad impact too like too much social media and stupid YouTube videos.Try not playing more than 4 hours.Relax and do your best when you meditate!!!

If you want to get over your addictions, then you need to find a way to generate sweetness from within. Once you're blissful by your own nature, all external cravings will fall off effortlessly.

Running a high consciousness community is very challenging, especially when you get hundreds or thousands of people involved. The leader has to be extremely responsible and conscious, and even then, things will likely get out of hand behind his back, or after he dies.
A community's interactions are a direct reflection of their individual levels of consciousness and ego.
Collective ego is a very tricky thing to manage. Political factions will break out, and the leader has to know how to deal with them appropriately. Every spiritual community tends to splinter. This is true not just of spiritual communities but all communities in general. Nations have to crack down on splintering. Hence the American Civil War for example, and the stuff going on with Brexit, Spain, etc.
The challenge is maintaining unity without becoming a dictator. That's something even this forum faces.
It requires stage Turquoise consciousness to pull off well.

Universe/mind is a duality.
The ultimate Truth is nondual. You cannot grasp nonduality via dualistic distinctions. You can try, but all you will get is paradox and strange loops due to the self-reference problem.
You are the universe trying to ask itself, "What is the universe?" If you don't know, who else can tell you but yourself?

Osho had great sense of humor and liked to provoke mainstream culture. He was not into materialism. He exposed the absurd materialism that runs in society. His cars was an easy way to show how people make fools out of themselves by only debating his cars.
The jealousy was enormous. Mainstream society felt threatened and all of a sudden there were no interests in his philosophy or teachings, journalist and mainstream society only wanted to know about the cars. They couldn't tolerate it. 
Osho was not afraid to be hated and to have enemies, he could use that energy to turn it into something good. 
Osho was dedicated to life, joy, happiness, love, dance. And his "selfish" behaviour came out of selflessness. But people won't get that. 
 
 

Holy shit, Osho attracted a lot of looney's. I watched the entire documentary and its pretty shocking to me to see such low conscious behaviour from a spiritual community. 
To me it seems like a lot of followers just wanted to be part of a group to boost their (spiritual) ego's. A lot of us vs the rest behaviour. 
I really wonder if they were truly wanting to wake up and work on their shadows. It seems like a lot of them were only in it to feel special and be part of a group. 
This became really evident when the outside pressure got higher. It made a lot of shadows come out of the dark. Trying to murder and poison people because your little community is under threat...Damn 
This documentary was a big reminder for me to walk this path alone! 

People in commune were mostly white, highly-educated and affluent. In the Rajneeshpuram there were rules about no drugs and alcohol. 
There was also a group of psychologists from the University of Oregon, professors Norm Sundberg and Richards Littman and Hagan, and graduate student named Carl Latkin, who wrote articles and a dissertation out of data they collected at the Ranch. This latter group published a research note in the journal Sociological Analysis in 1987 which conveyed a demographic and psychological picture of Ranch residents gathered from surveys done in 1983.
Their findings were pretty interesting. 54% of residents were women. The average age was around 34 and74% of residents were married. The other 26% either single, divorced, widowed or separated. 65% reported that they were living with their spouses. 75% had been sannyasins for more than 3 years, nearly half for more than 5 years and 63% had lived at an Osho center before moving to the Ranch. 91% were Caucasian and 60% reported themselves as not being religious before taking sannyas. When asked “How did you first hear of Rajneeshism?” 40% mentioned friends and 30% said books or tapes.
Ranch residents were incredibly well educated compared to the general population, 95% having graduated from high school and 64% from university. Fully 36% of the residents had a masters or doctoral degree. About 60% of the degrees were in arts and humanities or social sciences. Almost 50% of Ranch residents came from cities of 100,000 or larger, an urban group, to be sure. 62% professed liberal or radical politics, and 36% said they were neither liberal nor conservative. 66% said the highest earned income they had seen was $30,000 a year or less.
As for psychological well-being and mental health, these sannyasins scored quite high as compared to the general population. 93% reported being in the top two categories of life satisfaction. Their mean rating on the Perceived Stress Scale was 15.22, much lower as compared to 23.34 for the general population in one study. The mean score on the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List was 37.91 as compared to 36.5, the higher score indicating more perceived social support. The mean on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale was 5.86, much lower than a study which yielded means of 7.94 to 9.25 for US Caucasians. On the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale the mean was 35.71 as compared to a general study of 29.82, much higher.
These findings were summarized as showing that Ranch residents scored much higher on measures of affluence, education, mental health and psychological well-being than the US population as a whole.

@Angelo John Gage Yeah, I've skimmed over that one before.
Good thing that high levels of consciousness are not much compatible with the evil shit the CIA is up to.
They tried to use psychedelics too to create super-soldiers, without much success. The soldiers started loving everyone too much to shoot them. Lol

You might not. Self-actualization is in many ways a luxury.
So I would say take care of yourself first if something like that happens.

be yourself (your real 'soul' self not your wannabe cool guy self) and be needless (don't be needy, don't try to get something): don't just follow these two principles but become these two principles, don't underestimate its power, its really worth it, thats what girls really want to see
and keep going man, its a nice share  

@Lorcan Nobody can judge for you if you fucked up your text game. When you say something that feels authentic and real to you, it's all good. When pretending and misrepresentation starts happening, you took the wrong turn. 
1) You feel deep inside that you are being fake and that eats away at you
2) People are attracted to authenticity so when you are not, they will pick up on that
This is what I've learned this year of school so far. Stay real man, it's worth it.
 

The paradox is, if your #1 priority is happiness, you will never reach enlightenment.
Your #1 priority must be truth. Then, as you go down the rabbit hole of truth, it will end up killing you, and then happiness will dawn.
Happiness is incompatible with being a "you". That's problem. You want happiness, but to get happiness, you must first die. But the whole reason you're unhappy in the first place is because you're busy avoiding death.
So you say you want happiness, but to get it, you will have go through the thing you fear the most.
Which is why it's best to pursue enlightenment not for happiness, but for truth. Because you will have to surrender your notions of personal happiness to get to true happiness. What you currently think of as happiness isn't true happiness, which is why you're unhappy with it! If what you thought was happiness was real happiness, you'd be happy by now and this whole conversation would be moot. You wouldn't be here looking at Actualized.org
Happiness is a very tricky thing, which is why almost no one has it. Also notice, truth too is a very tricky thing which very few people have. Hmmmmm.... might these two be connected??

Nonduality does not depend on any authority and would be true even if tomorrow Einstein and Bohr were revealed to be charlatans.
I appealed to their authority precisely because it might help convince arch-materialists because they will not be receptive to critiques coming form outside of science.
But even so, most materialists would sooner discard the opinions of Einsteim and Bohr than re-evaluate their materialist dogma.
Materialism is a religion. So it does not repond to reason or evidence. It's an unfalsifiable position by design. The mind does not play fair when defending it because, unbeknowst to the materialist, his very life hinges on it.
Nonduality is not an argument or a proof. It is a fact of which you can become conscious if you wish.
Brute facts are never proovable. Facts merely ARE. "Proof" is a psychological game which depends on how receptive your mind is.
That would be your projection.
I take no offense at this critique. It is just laughably off the mark.
And I have deep compassion for his ignorance. I have devoted my whole life to helping people cure this ignorance. It always breaks my heart to see people intellectually shooting themselves in the foot. I know exactly where they are making their epistemic errors, but I cannot convince them of it because they lack the radical openmindedness necessary, because they fear ego-death.
That is the tragedy of this whole thing. This guy is not even conscious of why he is closedminded. That is the tragedy of religion.
So in the end, what can we do but laugh? Maya is a sneaky bitch.
My experiences of nonduality are not going to be shaken by any rational critique. So critique away. All critiques are just a consequence of Infinity.

To me all prophets are false because there’s really nothing to be taught. 
Teachings ‘answers’ imply ‘questions’ and choosing between ‘duality’ implies conflict and problems. 
Thought creates problems and tries to use thought to solve those very problems. 
The very asking of a question is the result of a past answer. Knowledge that has been considered in the past creates this impulse to ask certain questions. 
To see that thought creates all problems and that problems dont really exist outside of thought is wisdom.
Therefore no need for the falsness of a prophet at all huh. 
lol 

The more enlightened you become the less material things are gonna be sought by you for happiness.  You’re gonna be at peace needing very little.  So, it’s not that asceticism leads to enlightenment.  It’s that enlightened people tend to become ascetics because they don’t need much from the external world to be happy.  They have peace and bliss already.  An enlightened person is just as happy meditating as doing anything else.  Enlightened people don’t personalize experience — they detach from connecting Egoically to the changing Dream.  Awareness doesn’t do anything but awareness — and that’s all you need!  

Changing patterns of behaviour too fast will lash you back. Instead of 100 km/h, do 20 km/h. That will make the transistion smoother for you. New habits can be tricky to form.
I get that too. Everything is going well, I can meditate forever, read a ton of books, but then I get sick, and allow my self to download some game again and start playing with friends. All of a sudden, when I feel good again, I have started playing games. Although there are nothing wrong with playing games, I'll rather use that time on other stuff.

@Amit
It's not about the amount of work you do. It's the fact that people who we might call workaholics are working from a place of inner deficiency and low self-esteem. They're out of touch with their spirit.
As long as you keep up your spiritual practice (meditation, yoga etc), I wouldn't worry about it.
And if your concern is productivity, you should be structuring ways for you to work less, not more. That's what productivity means: get more done with less time / effort.

Dealing with such indecision is a big part of this whole journey.
The hero is always reluctant to accept the call. The journey is long and filled with real dangers. So of course your mind wants to play it safe.
See my video: The Highest Hero's Journey. It expains all this.
In the end, you gotta get more clear about what you really want from life, your highest values.
The Life Purpose Course can help you a lot there. You can make enlightenment your LP.

Does not help his case. He is still wrong.
He isn't even conscious of the difference between direct experience and concept. What more is there to say of such a person?
Stephen Hawaking was a better physicist than this guy, and Stephen Hawking was wrong. So what? Appeal to authority does not equal truth. Dogmatic people appeal to authority and credentials because they refuse to be conscious for themselves.

@cle103 Just realize that BEING is far superior to meaning. BEING is already complete. You don't need to spray paint it and cover it in glitter and rainbow sprinkles.
BEING is the most beautiful thing. Just get that ego out of the way. More trips will help with that.

@Crystalous A grain of sand is infinitely large.
Yes, thought is a form of reality. There is no boundary between a thought and a car. The substance of reality is one.

@billiesimon
This is a really nuanced and important question.
If you're in a relationship with a girl, you don't want to hide things from her out of fear she'll "find out". That breaks trust and communication. Plus she's probably going to know you're hiding something anyway.
For instance, if she asks you how you day was and you say "fine" when in reality you're tripping out because you got fired from work and don't know how you're going to pay the bills, that's bad.
Much better would be to be honest about what happened. Let her express her thoughts and offer help if she wants.
She also doesn't want to be with a robot, she wants to feel. So one of the single best things you can do as a guy is learn how to express a large range of emotions and give that to her.
At the same time, you have to recognize what your girlfriend ultimately is not.
She is not here to take care of you.
She is not here to fulfill your needs.
She is not here to feel sorry for you.
Failure to recognize this will result in her either resenting you or leaving you. And if you think it's her job to do any of those things, that's because you've been conditioned to believe that co-dependency and victim-thinking is normal.
So the solution is that you need to handle you. Meet your own needs through your spiritual practice, life purpose and whatever else makes you love life.
Once you do that, you'll be able to communicate authentically without her feeling like you're leaning on her as this weak man.

Enlightenment may be the end of suffering for you as a human (assuming you become massively enlightened and embody it totally).
But all the other creatures will still carry on in their ignorance.
For example, The Buddha supposedly became full enlightened and ended his suffering. Okay, but now here you are! You are The Buddha! Do you suffer? Of course! Since you don't know you're The Buddha, you're back into suffering. So The Buddha continues to suffer as every unenlightened life form.
If one enlightenment were enough to end all suffering in the world, all suffering would have ceased to exist since 2500 BC onward. Yet here we are, still trying to get enlightened. Every individual must complete his/her own enlightenment. It does no good for you that The Buddha once got enlightened -- even though you are identical to him -- because you are not conscious that you are identical with him. That's the whole problem.