Emerald

I'm right there with you. I think people are assuming that America is an unsinkable ship, and that people who are cautious (like you and I) are just conspiracy theorists with tin foil helmets. They fail to recognize that this type of thing has a ton of historical precedence. It happens all the time with humanity. As far as humanity goes, longer-standing empires have fallen and democracies have (on occasion) given way to dictatorship. This is definitely a different sort of situation with Trump and he's displaying an alarming number of Fascist tendencies, so it's wiser to make preparations and be made fun of for "over-exaggeration" than to be caught unprepared in a major upheaval with no reserves or plan B. Now, if nothing happens, it's cool to live life like normal. But it's important to know the warning signs and to get out while the getting is good. Just ask the people who opted not to go to the lifeboats on the Titanic... Oh wait... you can't.

Maybe, but I'm not too sure. There are many rationales for existence (which is already suspect) that postulate that God creates finite human existence to be able to know the experience of living with ego. But this is just a conjecture that I only loosely entertain. Haha. My bad.

I don't think this would work exactly. I believe there is a very strong environmental conditioning aspect to becoming unenlightened. But I would almost say that a large part of this is simply instinctual and practical. For example, if someone didn't refer to a baby by name under the rationale of not strengthening ego-identification, this would no be very effective and would likely create a sense of "why do I not have a name" in the baby as they grow. I don't think it would be too healthy.

Well, the human being aspect of God is seemingly traumatized. Of course, there is never actual trauma to God. But it's experienced as human trauma. Perhaps this is what the Bible meant when they referred to humans having "original sin."

Oh, for sure. Don't try to get a child to the point of enlightenment. That would be disastrous. I thought you were asking for insight into childhood trauma for yourself. If it pertains to raising a child with minimal trauma, then consistency, stability, and building a positive self-image is key. You can do this by giving kids age-appropriate responsibilities to give them a sense of self-efficacy and personal control. Have a strong family bond, where they know that their family situation isn't going to shift around on them. No bad habits in the home: no smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. Get them involved in their community. And above all, prioritize their psychological health and well-being over all other concerns (beyond physical needs, of course).

Here's how I understand it. Imagine that there you are infinite... but do so in a way where you can imagine it visually. You are a huge cheese wheel and this cheese wheel is infinite and it is what you are. Then, you experience human life you come to the conclusion as a baby that you are not the cheese wheel but just a small crumb of cheese within the cheese wheel. You are specifically this very small part of the infinite cheese wheel and nothing else. This is you as a baby. Then, as you go through your baby-hood and childhood you sustain traumas, where you begin to identify with less and less and less of that crumb of cheese, as these parts are difficult to identify with due to emotional pain. So, as an adult, you end up 1/5 the size of the crumb of cheese that you were as an infant. Maybe some people sustain more trauma, and end up 1/10 the size of the crumb of cheese. Maybe some people end up with less trauma and end up being up to 1/2 the size of the crumb of cheese they were when they became a baby. So, you can try (with difficulty) to reintegrate and get that crumb of cheese back to 100% of what it was when you were born, through Shadow Work and other such techniques. And this will greatly increase your quality of life. But never forget that the most dramatic trauma and most dramatic repression happened when you disidentified yourself with the infinite and said "I am a finite being who ends at the barrier of my skin who will perish one day and be forgotten." This is the biggest repression and misunderstanding that creates the most profound and ongoing subtle suffering.

Our plan is to do an emergency vacation for a couple months to Costa Rica (not sure which city) since they don't require a tourist visa from U.S. or Hungarian citizens (my hubby is Hungarian). Then, we will make other relocation plans from there, while we're on vacation. The spiritual teacher I spoke to has already moved there, so I figured it's probably a safe spot to go for a little while to make further plans. I was also looking into Chile, but I'm not sure about it because it's located near a major fault line.

I have a story to tell relative to Trump and getting out of Dodge. I got to spend some time with a fairly famous spiritual teacher earlier this year who is known for having psychic abilities. I was in a small group of about twenty and people were asking the teacher questions. One lady, who (like myself) was a major Bernie Sanders supporter, asked the teacher if Bernie Sanders would become president. They said no and that Donald Trump was set to win the election because ("from the perspective of the non-physical") he would make the system collapse quicker to bring us closer to a new era with a better system. They said that Donald Trump would be involved with Vladimir Putin and that they would start a war with China (and maybe North Korea- if memory serves) , and this would become WW3, although it would end up in history books being credited to George W. Bush and be seen as a continuation of the military conflicts that he started after September 11th. They said it would be a time of great suffering for most people on the planet, and that the only safe place to go would be Central and South America. So, when I heard this, I was still in denial. I really wanted Bernie to win the primary and eventually the presidency. So, I was bummed about that and not really taking the prediction seriously. Though, as things have unfolded, it's like literally going down a check-list. Everything has been true so far and I see how the other predictions could easily come to fruition. So, I have my sights set on a few countries in Central America or Northern South America, as my go-to for if things go south. Also, I plan to invest my tax refund into gold and the Yuan (which doesn't have the dollar as its reserve). I plan to stock up on plenty of non-perishables too, when I get my tax refund also. But, I'm still planning for if things don't go downhill as well. If things are fine, my family and I will stay and life will go on like normal. But if these things happen, we will leave immediately: 1. Trump threatens nuclear war with any country 2. North Korea does anything with nuclear weapons toward another country or America (not Trump related but still...) 3. Trump gets the power to start gathering small militias in order to "fight terrorism" because of (fill in the blank) future terror attack. 4. Any sign that something like the Japanese Internment is happening or about to happen (the laws are still on the books that allow this) 5. Trump's rhetoric normalizes violence and discrimination to a point where it's visibly noticeable in public places. (i.e. You go to Walmart and it's a given that you're going to experience this once or twice)

I was literally just thinking about this a few minutes ago. I think this is a likely probability for the future as well.

It's pretty interesting the studies they've done on split-brain patients. There were some instances where someone's left hand would be doing an action that the person wouldn't be rationally aware of, like unbuttoning their own shirt.

Well, the attraction would still likely be there. But you wouldn't be able to lie to yourself about not wanting to be in the situation. I was in a relationship with this guy, Jeff, for four years. I was with him from age 16 to age 20. I had this idea in my mind that I wanted to marry him, have kids with him, stay together for life, and that I loved him more than anything. But life with him was difficult. He was manipulative and had anger issues and smoked weed all the time. He was always getting arrested and I was constantly stressed out. But the degree to which I was capable of convincing myself that I was happier with him than I had ever been, was profound. I wasn't able to see how much he took advantage of my loyalty to him. I couldn't bare the thought of letting him go. Then I tried an entheogen, which catalyzed my first experience of ego transcendence. I was musing about how beautiful everything was, and he came up and held me and told me he loved me. I sensed a disingenuous air to his "I love you" that was suddenly super clear to me and I realized that my response of "I love you" was just as disingenuous. And I realized in that moment that I had been sacrificing all of my happiness for the relationship and that I was lying to myself and enslaving myself to the idea of 'forever.' I was just afraid of breaking up. I didn't want to be near him. There was a part of me that hated him. I never knew any of this before. It took an enlightenment experience, to see through my own bullshit. So, you might (or might not) still be attracted, but you won't be able to bullshit yourself into staying in a bad situation.

Unfortunately, surgery is the only thing that really works. You can't tone the breasts through exercise like you can do for other parts of the body as muscle isn't the thing that holds breast tissue up in the first place. However, while she's lactating, if she needs to wear something that might make it more obvious that her breasts are not as perky, she can pump earlier in the day so that the baby can drink the milk from the bottle. Then, she will become slightly engorged on the milk later on, which will make the breasts really full until the next time the baby nurses.

Well, I think it's good that you're asking yourself these questions. But my thought is that, because you're considering this, it's more likely that you're just passionate about the things that Leo talks about. When I really resonate with someone, I tend to dream of them and think of them often. I tend to develop what I call "platonic crushes" on them. So, I feel attracted to them in a non-romantic kind of way in the same intensity that I would have a romantic crush. When I feel this way about someone, I know that I'm listening to something helpful to myself in some way. It's like my emotions and mind are telling me "Yes! This is exactly what you need right now!" So, it's okay to have very strong positive emotions about a teacher. But on the flip-side, you must also recognize that teachers are just a mouthpiece and that you may go out of resonance with them eventually at different points in your journey. So, it's okay to feel a sense of love and admiration toward a teacher but it's very harmful to be attached. So, if you have a platonic crush on Leo, it's probably because you see reflected in him a part of yourself that wants to grow. Follow your intuition and emotions, and you won't go wrong. But do so in a detached way, and know that it's never been about Leo but only about yourself.

I just finished up with "The Science of Enlightenment" by Shinzen Young. It was really good, and I enjoy his writing style. His personality comes through well in the text.

I believe the problem becomes that enlightened teachers forget exactly what it was like to be unenlightened. So, they teach from the enlightened perspective and take for granted little details of difference between the enlightened and unenlightened paradigms. So, they may miss how the average person may interpret their meanings.

Given the nature of my experiences of ego-transcendence, I would say that it definitely made me more compassionate not less as I was aware of my emotions on a much deeper level. My joys and sorrows and lusts and angers were recognized as being so many shades more complex, and they carried a deep intuitive wisdom to them as the sensations swept freely through my body. The overwhelming amount of love that I had for everyone and everything was absolutely riveting. Though I could clearly recognize my murderously destructive drives and their consistent profound impact on my view of the world, there was also an out-pouring of compassion toward all life and a deep respect for the fragility of this human experience and the sentient experience in general. I would be careful not to sneeze at compassion, as somehow unrelated to enlightenment or as some sort of soft coddling that degrades the fabric of society through indoctrination. This view has likely come about through indoctrination into a society steeped in emotional resistance and ignorance. We tend to get ridiculed and ostracized for being emotional because we have a great many unwritten social rules around emotions, causing us to ignore that entire facet of our reality. Experience ego-transcendence first. You will likely see that compassion is key, and that emotions play as big a role as they've always played. But in transcending the ego, we no longer have need to ignore or repress them.

I can't speak to Byron Katie's perspective because I have not heard or read very much from her. But I have heard these types of criticisms of her work before. I think there is a fine line (on the intellectual level) between transcending a negative situation through a realization of oneness/ accepting 100% responsibility for your life and blaming yourself for things you did not deserve or cause and engaging in self-flagellation. For someone who speaks to large groups of people, who are likely not enlightened, this doesn't seem like it would be the appropriate advice to give. Many people will mistake the meaning, and will end up making unwise decisions from it. For the average person, they need to hear "You did not cause your abuse. Get out of the situation now. Don't blame yourself. There are options." To say, "you are the cause of your abuse" may be true from the perspective of oneness (as if there is only one, who else could cause or create anything?), but most people have not experienced this... so this just becomes intellectual fodder that fogs instead of clarifies. An enlightened person knows the Truth... but a true master knows what to teach to whom from exactly where that person is.

That's true. It certainly is a concept, and for a seeker of Truth it's very important to realize this and to be able to separate belief from first-hand moment to moment experience. I just think it is a bit dangerous and potentially inaccurate for anyone to conclude that there is factually no existence beyond a person's firsthand experience, and to make a sweeping statement like (paraphrased) 'there are no hungry children out there'. Actually, it's more than likely inaccurate due to the fact that this is a human understanding of the phenomenon of reality. My view is that if it makes sense to a person, then it should automatically be regarded with suspicion. I just think a lot of people won't understand Byron Katie's perspective, and become callous to the suffering of others.

This can be quite a harmful assumption to make about the nature of reality. You don't really know one way or another whether there is a hungry child if he is not there before you right now. It is not actually knowable by anyone, no matter how enlightened a person becomes. We all conceptually know exactly nothing about the nature of reality. So, it is probably best, in these instances where there are actions we can take to improve the lives of others, to pretend that we know there are people separate from our experience. It's better to err on the side of caution for the welfare of other sentient beings, and to treat the situation practically as though there are people separate from our immediate first-hand experience. But it's also important to detach yourself from the notion that you know without a doubt that there is or is not a world going on separate from your first-hand experience of now. Don't fall on the other side of the horse of naive materialism, because that would be just naive non-materialism.

I don't think I've ever heard any truer words uttered before.

Name: Emerald Wilkins Age: 27 Gender: Female Location: Florida Occupation: Substitute Teacher Marital Status: Married Kids: Two Hobbies: contemplation, personal development, reading, health, and (previously) painting, playing the guitar, and writing. I got into personal development when I was 16 in high school. I was always very interested in growing myself as a person. I thought of my life as an art piece, and I had a huge grand-master plan for how I would bring that to fruition. I developed my skills in painting and other creative endeavors and was constantly seeking to add more value to myself by developing new skill-sets, learning more, and refining my personality and habits. I got into a good college completely paid for through scholarship after graduating Summa Cum Laude from high school. Then, when I was 20, I decided to try Ayahuasca and experienced ego transcendence. I realized that the masterpiece identity that I had been creating through various types of personal development was just a huge bandaid to cover over the deep wounds of my childhood. In fact, my refined identity and all the unwritten rules that I had for myself were causing me great suffering. So, I began repressing my drives for personal development, because I thought they were wrong. They were the thing keeping me from the liberation that I only ever felt through letting go of my identity. I started specifically trying to undermine my identity by ruining my self-image. I did a lot of crazy, destructive things during that time. My grades dropped, I became promiscuous, I repressed my logic, I repressed my drives for social acceptance, I repressed my drives for having boundaries, and I let go of all my moral values that I cherished so much. For a few months, my life situation became very unstable. I had no home so I was couch surfing and making money through playing my guitar on the street. I would wonder around in the middle of the night by myself, just contemplating. I had some traumas occur during this time. But then I met my now-husband, and I settled with him. I said 'never again' to the crazy, unsafe lifestyle that I was in the middle of. I sought to vanillify myself through adorning a very restrictive form of traditional femininity in combination with a solid career as a teacher. No major aspirations. No striving for higher values. Just existing in the most forgettable way possible. And it was hell. Then a couple years ago, I found Leo's videos just by chance. I was looking for a way to spice up my bedroom life. But then I saw that he had videos on enlightenment. I did not actually know what enlightenment was, at the time. I had always just been trying to undermine my identity to get "back" to what I had experienced when I was 20. So, I watched his first video on enlightenment and I was like "Holy ^!%@^%^!!!! That's what I'm looking for!!!!" And I was like "Ya know what. If this dude can pursue enlightenment and personal development in tandem with one another, maybe they aren't as mutually exclusive as I had assumed. I'm going to do it to." So, I just started personal development back up 2 years ago, though I still have many negative voices about how I shouldn't be doing it. But I'm working through it. Personal challenges I've overcome: Extremely sheltered as a child, I always felt I was behind everyone else in terms of social development and practical competence. I was also made fun of a lot because of this, which gave me a lot of issues with self esteem. So, this gave me the desire in the first place to be competent. As a teenager, I realized that I was capable of becoming competent and even excellent at most undertakings if I really put in the effort. This was incredibly liberating. My older sister is mentally challenged, so I realized when I was about 8 years old or so that I would one day have to care for her when my mother passes away. So I had a lot of fear and mental blocks about not being able to have time to go to college, get married, have a social life, or do things that I wanted to do as an adult. Thoughts like "What's the point in pursuing these things anyway if I'm just going to be my sister's care-taker for the vast majority of the rest of my life?" So, this awareness added a sense of urgency to my desires for personal success. I come from a working class background, and I've been under the poverty line many times in my life. There were times when I was in art school that I had to choose between art supplies and food. I lost 30 lbs when I was in college, just because I had little access to food during that period. Finances have been a pretty constant stumbling block to all of my aspirations, though it's much better now than it ever has been. I haven't lived with either of my parents since I was 16. I lived with my dad until I was 16, but only lived with my mom until I was 12. She and I have always had a distance. She has spent a total of 5 years of my life not speaking to me. Then, I moved in with my boyfriend who was 18, so I really had to learn many things on my own without a safety net. This contributed to my ability to be independent and self-motivated. Due to issues with my mother and general social attitudes regarding femininity, as a child I developed a deep sense of misogyny and identification with masculinity. This caused a lot of self-esteem issues, and always felt like I was trapped by being female. Not in a trans-gendered kind of way, but in a self-loathing kind of way. So, even after I became a teenager and no longer hated women as a whole group, I was still never content with being a woman. Because through personal development I wanted power and to be on top the whole world... I was very megalomaniacal in many way ways prior to my awakenings. But there was always this feeling that even if I had the whole world in the palm of my hand, I'm still a woman and no one would take it seriously. Then when I age, I would lose my attractiveness, and all of my power that I had earned through work ethic and personal development would just be ripped away from me. None of it would matter, I would still be powerless and worthless. But now I recognize that power and worth as illusory concepts, so this isn't as much of a stumbling block anymore. I'm more okay with being born as a woman than I have ever been before. I was in an unhealthy relationship from age 16 to age 20. So, this was a big drain on my personal development efforts, as I would often feel obligated use the money that I saved to pay for college related expenses on bailing him out of jail. He was also very impulsive and angry, and used these tendencies to intimidate me and manipulate me. It was a difficult relationship to leave, but doing so has made my life exponentially better. I used personal development as a means to escape from a great many issues, and accomplishment for me was the best emotion that I was capable of back then. Then, I had my ego-transcendence experiences, and suddenly that emotion became wrong to feel. So, I slipped away into my own inner hell completely for a few months, experiencing the dark night of the soul. I had really fallen down a rabbit hole. But over the years, I was slowly able to pick myself up out of it and rebuild my inner world in such a way that it is conducive to psychological health and wisdom. It all had to be torn down, then it took years to build back up again the right way. I finally have stable footing in my own psychology and I can relate to a lot of people's issues, which allows me to help others. What I'm working on now: - The ability to just be without some struggle to overcome or some end-state to get to but also -healthy diet -exercise -being a good mom -enlightenment -growing my YouTube channel -being able to enjoy life -breaking bad habits (internet, too much thinking) -shifting my focus more toward others instead to self

Great observation. I'm curious, were the hallucinations interwoven with reality seamlessly or was it a part thought/part visual phenomenon kind of experience?

This may be too personal so you don't have to answer it. But I've always been curious. Did your family move from Russia to escape the social ails (poverty, social decay, mafia, political upheaval, etc.) that resulted after the collapse of the Soviet Union? I've heard that the early 90s was pretty rocky.

Thank you. As I move further away from having a career in the arts, I start to get little cravings to paint, here and there. I really do enjoy the task of resolving a painting. I think I got disenchanted with it because I was so involved in the idea of being a successful artist as opposed to just enjoying the process of creating. And I also had a lot of unwritten rules for how I had to create and how much I should create.

I too have similar ideas like this that I like to believe, and I hope to contribute to this through my work. But it's also important to realize that this belief, while it's uplifting, may not be true and reveals a potential attachment to the anthropocentric view of the universe. It also sets happiness and fulfillment in the future, when the future never actually comes. Reality is always perfect and complete, regardless of what happens to humans. Humanity is an individual human's everything, but is not anymore significant or less significant that any other thing in existence. So, if humans evolve and self-actualize and develop toward a better world, it's perfect. If we kill ourselves and all living organisms on the planet through nuclear warfare, this is also perfect. But I certainly prefer your way. So, it's important to follow these preferences and advocate for them.