Scholar

The age of the universe is precisely two and a half Moments.

It is useful to look at the world as you see it. But do not cling to the world as you see it, because how you see the world will change. The strange thing about reality is that it has no anker point. The act of observing and coming to realize what reality is, changes reality. That itself is one of the many aspects of reality that is ever changing. As this world changes you will get a true sense of what Relativity is. Each point is only a point in relationship to all other points. Each position is only a position in relationship to other positions. For example, you might think that you started out as a unconscious child. You grew up and have come to learn to increase your consciousness. You are on a pathway to higher consciousness. Eventually you will realize you are the Creator. You will realize it to such an extend that you will become the Creator. Then you, as the Creator, will make the fully conscious choice to manifest yourself and become the unconscious child. That choice will require consciousness on a level far beyond anything you thought you ever had. Yet, that sophistication of consciousness, that power, that intelligence, that pure Being, that is what the unconscious child is. That unconscious child is the direct Choice of the Creator. Your beginning is your end. Truly, the end and the beginning were never the beginning nor the end. Each moment is the beginning and the end. This one and only moment this is the Choice of the Creator, each causing itself. Life is not linear, it is circular. See, the Creator does not create by drawing a line. The Creator creates by pulling from a Singularity of Nothingness a Circle. Can you see this? Can you see that when he pulls at the Singularity, the Circle will serve-emerge? Creation does not operate in the way the human mind conceptalizes reality in general. Creation is not building. Creation is the process of pulling apart the fabric of Nothingness. I grab into Nothingness, I grab Whiteness, and by pulling it from Nothingness, Blackness emerges on the other side. That is what it means to pull Whiteness from Nothingness. It means to seperate Nothingness into Whiteness and Blackness. Can you see how impossible this is? Can you see that you can pull more than all things from this Nothingness? This is the nature of relativity. It is groundless, because it's ground is Nothingness. It is self-justifying, self-creating. The Circle created itself.

You can recontextualize it and view Spirituality as seeking Love. I find that this recontextualization can offer a healthier outlook and path.

I see false confidence, which to me is fear. There is a reason why this person is not just saying "The world will end", but rather is using specific language to describe what will happen. I remember he was talking about suffering on an unimaginable scale, so that this year will seem like paradise. This kind of mentality to me is fear based. It needs comparisons, exaggerations, projections, certainty of the future. This is not an obvious, gross form of fear, but a subtle fear. But I also see fear in the way he speaks in general, his facial expressions and so forth. His heart and mind is not fully open. With such people, this can be made obvious very quickly by direct confrontation. If you were to confront Shunya as he was teaching, about the validity of what he is saying, in a non-submissive manner, I think there would be a tendency for him to react in an emotional way, revealing his egoic attachments. This is what happens to Sadhguru sometimes aswell. It is very easy to appear to be free of fear when you are the one who is teaching others, when there is no resistence, when your ego is not on the line. It is like claiming you are the best MMA fighter in the world without ever getting into the cage. Or that you are free of suffering whilst your life is comfortable and not under threat. It is not fear to say anything, but it is fear that will make you more attracted to one set of belief over another, or that will make you focus on one belief over another. Or that will make you confuse a belief and assumption for reality.

Is it not amazing how sneaky fear truly is? It will find it's way into the mind of even the most conscious individuals. In the conscious mind, fear will morph into confidence and certainty, so subtly, so invisibly, that the conscious mind will not even have noticed it happen at all. Fear is like a great chameleon. If you do not come to respect fear, you shall be it's slave. Your mind shall close and your eyes blinded with visions which you will confuse for reality. Shunyamurti is an excellent fascilitator of this chameleon of fear. He himself has become a vassal of that chameleon. Can you see how powerful this chameleon is? Can you see it's ingenious survival tactics? It truly is awe-inspiring. A foe so sophisticated that once you underestimate, once you believe to have defeated, will strike you so fast that you will not ever know that it has injected it's poison into your flesh. Ironically, the more conscious a person becomes, the harder it has to look out for fear, because the more sophisticated methodes fear will develop to remain alive. The fear within a conscious person is a far greater opponent than the fear of the unconscious person. The fear in a unconscious person is a lion, the fear in the conscious person is a fog. No sword can harm it, no shield can protect you from it's invasion. If this is not understood, the conscious person will fall pray to the fog just as much as the unconscious person falls pray to the lion. If you believe to have freed yourself from fear, always, always, always assume that fear has shifted into a form you have not yet learned to recognize. This shall be true until your mind has dissolved completely and your body is being eaten by maggots.

This is the sacrifice you have made, because you are selfless. Selfless suffering does not mean suffering in an enlightened state. The most pure and selfless suffering is the suffering God has chosen to experience in complete ignorance of his own Love. The suffering in which you are weak, in which you do not want to suffering, in which you beg to be freed from this suffering for any cost. That is the most selfless suffering there can be. This is the suffering you have chosen because you could not deny the existence of any aspect of reality. You gave reality the ability to flourish in any way possible, with you being the one who will experience it all. The ultimate selfless choice was to embrace the fact that you shall forget you have ever made this choice, and that you shall suffer in the deepest regret your own existence. You were so brave and selfless that you made this choice, fully conscious of what it would mean for you. This is how loving you are. Your own ignorance is your most selfless act of Love, because only in ignorance ignorance can exist. And you loved ignorance so much that you could not deny it's existence. You looked at all of Creation, all suffering, and you told yourself "I shall experience all of this, every moment. I shall experience all the fear, all the regret, all the loneliness, all the pain, all the sorrow, all the dread. I shall experience it all by itself, so that it can exist as itself, because only then my Creation can truly exist. Only if I make myself forget how much I love all of Creation, only if I forget about What I am, only then my Creation can be reality. Only in ignorance my suffering can be real.". This is the amount of Love you have for Creation. You have so much Love that it is terrifying to yourself. Your Love includes terror. If your Love was not terrifying, it would not be true Love.

Fascinating, it's like they have a peace treaty amongst each other.

Notice that our selfishness, our inability to treat our animal brothers and sisters with respect and love, is what caused this virus in this first place. And it will be what will cause the next virus. It will be what will cause super-bacteria that might put us back to the dark ages. It will be what will cause climate catastrophy. All caused by fear and selfishness, and inability for compassion and open-heartedness. This is the way it must be my brothers and sisters. The longer you will attempt to find excuses for your own selfishness, the longer you will attempt to justify yourself, to uphold your way of life, the longer you shall suffer.

I think our brother wants to say that it is easy to cast the first stone. He wants you to see that not taking the vaccine is nothing compared to our selfishness when we choose to exploit our brothers and sisters for something that science tells us is not needed. If you want to deny science, then you cannot blame your brother for being skeptical of the very same science. Animal consumption is ruining the health of yourself, it is causing suffering to your brothers and sisters and it is destroying our mother earth. Selfishness and fear will always backfire. Notice that the decision to consume products that come from the suffering of your brothers and sister is based in fear. Instead of judging your brothers and sisters for their fear, have compassion for them. The seflishness of levani is backfiring in real time for him. He is not showing open-heartedness. He is judging his brother or sister for their fear. This act of selfishness created more fear, more judgement, more suffering.

Love

There is not one way to think about reality, because reality is not one thing. You created a Story, notice this. All that you told us was a story. What is the nature of this story? It is complete, it is real, it is Truth. But even falsehood is Truth. Because all things are Circle and Circle is Truth. Mystery means Circle. Mystery is the means by which reality is created, upheld and dissolved. Really, Creation does not exist. Creation is an illusiory effect of the Circle. There is no cause and effect. What is the Circle? If every point on the circle created the adjacent point, what would this mean? It would mean that the first point was created by the last point, but the first point is the one who created the point that lead to the point that lead to the point (...) that created the last point that created the first point. This is impossible, yet this is what Mystery is. It is precisely what Reality is. This is how anything can manifest into existence. Including any possible framework for understanding reality. You could understand reality in Infinite ways. Reality is self-justification. But even this is just a story, and yet it is not a story. This is what Groundlessness means. Groundlessness is all Grounds. You live in a fairy tale. Ask yourself, what would be left of this fairy tale if you would let go of the story? If you let go of this fairy tale, what awaits are all other fairy tales. You can abandon and create new fairy tales forever. You little fairy-tale creation machine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF1TvW4KDtA

I challenge you to go to a person who is a victim to conspiratorial thinking to educate them on how to consume media in a more conscious and reflective way. In my experience this is impractical. I view reaching the hearts of others and mitigating their fears as far more powerful. It is not really a metaphyiscal problem. In my experience education usally can serve as a preventative, but not as a cure. To even make a person receptive to the education, their hearts must be open. This is the ractial power of opening peoples hearts. However, this requires an open heart within the one who is aiding their brother and sister to open their hearts: You could say education is a good way to prevent someone from joining the KKK, but this is only true for those people whose hearts have been open enough to receive the education in the first place. You could watch the movie "American History X", as a good example for this. It showcases these dynamics quite well. If you will not address the fear, the close heartedness, it will manifest in other areas of life. You are playing whackamole instead of truly fixing the problem. Opening our hearts and the hearts of others will be what will lead us into a thriving future. If that will be a pillar in our education, then the world will be able to heal.

But the questions, why are they emotionally gratifying for some but not others? Why do some people have the need to form a coherent picture out of reality? Why are some people more susceptible to imposing narratives onto events? Why are connections made where there are no connections, or where we cannot know there are any connections? If you watch most conspiracy content today, they are fundamentally based on a narrative of the public (the victim) being manipulated by an elite (the government, corporations etc). Why is this so compelling to people? I do not think conspiratorial thinking is just a difference of belief in certain facts. I think there is a deeper root why certain facts are more appealling to an individual than others. I would seperate believing in a conspiracy theory from conspiratorial thinking. I can believe that a certain conspiracy is true without actually falling into conspiratorial thinking.

What is it about the dabblers that makes the conspiracy theories interesting to them in the first place?

Fundamentally, conspiratorial thinking is a result of a fearful mind and a closed heart. Notice this. If you are fearful, you become distrustful of others. Your heart closes and your mind will seek confidence. Conviction and paranoia are a hallmark of a fearful mind. A fearful mind and closed heart will look at the world through the lense of fear. It will attempt to find potential threats as a function of survival. It will construct or adopt an ideology that fits into this lense. You cannot fix this on a surface level. Instead you must address the fear and attempt to open the heart. This is the root of the problem. You have to change the lense from which your brother and sister looks at this world, and this you can only do if you touch their hearts. An open heart will result in an open mind. When you do not fear, you do not need certainty, you do not need to be distrustful.

Leo posted this on his blog: In this video, Freke and Wilber talk about the mystery of "What the hell all of this is" and how questioning your own existence is fundamental to having any insight into the nature of reality. It seems to me that what Leo is either unaware of, or simply does not care about, is the fact that the sense of mystery, the sense of utter not knowing and realization of ignorance, is fundamental to aquiring any greater state of consciousness by natural means. The reason for this is because this sense of mystery is what guides your attention. Leo in the past talked about how you need superhuman concentration abilities to attain enlightenment through natural means. This is not really true. All you need is focused attention. Not superhuman, focused attention over a long period of time. The foundation for that focus, for that guiding of attention, will be the sense of mystery you feel when you truly look at reality and are bewildered by it's existence. The sense of mystery is basically your primary tool to attain realization. Curiousity is the foundation of this work, there is nothing that beats it. Every time Leo tells you what reality is, what Consciousness is, what God and Love is. Every time he does so and you believe him, your sense of mystery gets dimmer and dimmer. Your ability to look at reality in utter awe and bewilderment, and therefore focus on the most subtle of things within your experience, is impaired. And of course, once Leo has impaired that ability, he will go on and tell you to take psychedelics. He will tell you that you need those psychedelics unless you are special. Of course he would tell you that because he himself has destroyed his own curiousity. He has destroyed his own sense of mystery, and so the only tool left for him to explore the nature of reality are psychedelics. Leo will tell you to not believe him, to not believe his concepts and ideas. To go look for it yourself. This is to me utterly irresponsible. You cannot expect a student who uses you as a teacher to not believe what you tell him. Even if the student tried not to, their mind would create a belief. And that belief, that certainty, will be detrimental to their path to realization. This is simply what will happen, whether intended or not. When you have your fancy ideas about what reality is and what it is not, and more importantly, if you look for the answers within the realm of thought and ideas, you will not be able to guide your attention on the aspects of reality which require you to. In this work a question is a thousand times more valuable than an answer, because the answer locks your attention within thought, while the question has the chance to make you glimpse beyond thought and ideas, to look around in your own experience until you may stumble upon something you never stumbled upon before. Attention is absolutely foundational. And to guide attention, a sense of mystery is absolutely foundational. This work cannot be done in a robotic way. Every time you sit down and do this work it has to come from that place of mystery. When your are truly bewildered, your mind will allow you to see beyond your current understanding. When you are bewildered by the fact that a sensation of touch exists, when you are truly mystified by that, that is when your might is ready to look and see. Everything that dims your sense of mystery will be detrimental. Even if you take psychedelics, if your mind constantly gives answers to itself about what it is seeing, then that is what your mind will be focused on. It's attention will be consumed with ideas and thoughts instead of that which is right infront of it. "What the hell is this?", is all you need. No answers, no explanations. Only genuine curiousity, genuine recognition of mystery. From that place, this work will be effortless, joyful. That genuine curiousity and sense of mystery is what needs to fuel your attention, it is what needs to fuel the seeing, the looking. When you take your psychedelic, you do not need to nurture your sense of mystery. You do not need to nurture you attention. You will be shown, but you will lack the tools to discover on your own. Unless you preserve your curiousity, unless every day you look at the existence in wonder and mystery. At that point, once your sense of mystery is dead, if you want to achieve ego death your only hope will be to bombard your mind with psychedelics until hopefully your ego dissolves in a way that doesn't turn your into a sleepless zombie. I cannot say it will apply to everyone, but I would encourage people to watch out for this.

Communicating in a forum makes is harder be conscious of these dynamics. We only see words, not each other.

You are right, I focused too much on Leo and too little on the advice. This is fundamentally about the flame of curiousity and how to uphold it. Rather than censoring and criticizing Leo, I should find ways to give people the tools for them to recognize their own flame of curiousity and nourish it. How to watch Leo's content without dimming that flame. That would have been constructive, it would have been loving, rather than fearful. If I had been loving instead of fearful, my message could have been received by the hearts of others. What I have done was fear, so all it did was create more fear. @Forestluv I have realized something about the dynamic of this conversation. Because the place from which I have viewed this issue was fear, my heart and mind was closed. The responses I have received did not open my heart. You have pointed out issues within the mind, but the fundamental problem was where the mind was operating from, not how it was operating. The lack of openness within me had one cause, it was fear. If we want to help our brothers and sisters, I think rather than just telling them what they are doing wrong, we must make them recognize the fear within themselves. That is the root of the problem. If I had operated from love, open-mindedness would have naturally flourished and biased would have melted away. The dynamics of mind which you would have pointed out would have had no need to be analyzed. In the future when you see this kind of behaviour from me and you want to point it out, you could try to point out within my response the fear and lack of love. Before I can open my eyes, I must open my heart. Before I can open anyone elses eyes, I must open their hearts. I think the analysis would have been helpful if you had opened my heart before communicating it. But if you had opened my heart, chances are there would have been no need to point to the mind anymore. Love opens your eyes and mind like no other thing possibly could. It is not about the message itself, but the place it came from. It came from fear, it is obvious if you read it.

This however does not change the fact that students should watch out for this dynamic. Again, the point here was not really to change Leo's behaviour or content, but rather to make others aware of this. The thread is not called: "How Leo's teachings are detrimental to your spiritual development and why Leo should change", it is called "How Leo's teachings can be detrimental to your spiritual development". I think it is valuable to point out the issues I have pointed out, even if Leo has made disclaimers about this, I do not think they are enough for everyone so I created this thread. A student shouldn't get attached to the ideas, and a student should be constantly aware of the little metaphyiscal mystery curiousity flame within him, and guard it at all costs. If they notice Leo's videos dim that flame, they atleast have the option to then find ways to avoid that dimming of the flame. I recognize that my initial post was too provocative and judgemental. It did not come from a place of love, but rather a place of fear.

Not every thread is about self-development. When someone points out an issue he observes within a given society, not always is it appropriate to point to the flaws of the individual who is pointing out the issue. It seems like there is an underlying assumption here that the issue I am describing is not real and that it is limited to my own projections. This is already very close-minded. This thread was not about the importance of curiosity, it was about the importance of a very particular curiosity, a unique kind of curiosity that I described in my first post. It seems to me that you could have dismissed any criticizism possible with the way you are looking at this. You do not seem to recognize the complete relativity of what you deem distracting. To you, this thread is a distraction from an opportunity of self-observation. To someone else, your persistent pointing out of this individual problem is a distraction of the pointing out of the societal issue. You yourself are actively engaged in creating a story of a problem, and you are quite persistent at doing this. You are here protecting your own story, your own problems, and it seems like that is your priority, rather than listening to what the student is saying. Everything can be a distraction. There is a time and place for everything. I am glad that you are trying to help, but as so many times before, your impersonal communication feels to me inappropriate in this setting. It is perceived primarily as a dismissal, rather than a genuine effort to help.

The one about world domination, however you could see some of it in his previous videos.

It is also fascinating to see how a teacher can focus solely on the students and not turn the same helpful analysis to one of his fellow teachers.

I don't think Leo is arrogant per se, but his entire style has that kind of vibe which many people would perceive this way. Watch the latest Connor Murphy video, he basically adopted his style.