Carl-Richard

Give me a practical example of where an ethics board impinges on the practice of spiritual teachers in a way that justifies eliminating the ethics board.

Tl;dr? ?

@A_v_E If you're suicidal, you're not dead. Go get some help.

This place is too pure for you ?

A.k.a non-duality.

Solipsism is when you take your limited human perceptions as fundamental. Non-duality is when you take the limitless nature of consciousness as fundamental.

I basically answered this already, but make the distinction between professional roles and private persons.

If you're a lecturer and responsible for some of their grades, it's definitely putting into question the impartiality of your practice, and the teacher could also certainly levy some of that in their favor ("if you have sex with me, I'll give you an A"). It's generally considered unethical conduct. Rock and roll and the like is not really an organization where you have roles and titles with set expectations and interactions with people in a professional setting. A groupie who goes backstage to meet their idol doesn't experience a conflict of roles. They're there as a private person, as is their idol. A student goes to school to get an education. That's the purpose of the student-teacher relationship. Once you start blurring the lines between professional roles and private persons, that is where ethical misconduct begins. If there is a power differential, sure. We can keep going through all kinds of examples, but you can't deny that there are levels to these things. A spiritual teacher is dealing with people in a very vulnerable situation. It's not just people who come with issues like in psychotherapy, but they also come to deconstruct their sense of reality. The "weighting" on the power differential and the potential for misconduct is much greater than in almost any other example I can think of.

If it's for the direct sexual pleasure of some higher-up person in the organization, and if it's also not overtly stated as a part of the organization's activities prior to people joining, then it's most likely unethical conduct and likely manipulation and power dynamics going on. If you on the other hand join a hippie commune and end up having sex with some new friends, that's not necessarily a sign of unethical conduct on the part of any powerful person in the organization.

In BDSM, you get what you signed up for. In spirituality, it's a bonus, a "pleasant surprise" which you get persuaded into doing "for your own good", through subtle manipulation and gradual erosion of boundaries, power dynamics, group pressure — you know, all that good, innocent stuff. The difference of course is that spiritual teachers are holy men of God, while Catholic priests are not...

What kind of rationalizations do you think Catholic priests use? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_the_causes_of_clerical_child_abuse Oh, was I being culturally insensitive now? I'm sorry.

@Nilsi So the answer is: fucking your students is not ethical. It's the go-to example of unethical conduct. "The absolute" doesn't justify it. If you feel like fucking your students, and you execute on it by framing it as a spiritual practice, you're a devil, regardless of whether it leads to somebody's awakening or not. It's worrying that we're even having this conversation.

Is it? You tell me. I think spiritual teachers actually need ethical guidelines the most because of their socially transgressive "holier than flesh" tendencies. "The absolute doesn't care about anything you care about. Let it go, let it go, let it go... and let me have it".

They get laid despite their lack of understanding of Chess.

Are you against ethical guidelines for psychologists or other healthcare professionals?

You think ?

True or false: dumb himbos get laid more than nerds.

A.k.a. it's autistic.

Bruh

Who said you can't use Discord?

This 11 year old with a 2550 rating on the TV should be a pimp then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang

I'm seeing way too much unnecessary confusion about many things, particularly words like awakening or enlightenment, and how it relates to things like spirituality or psychedelics. I would like to maybe present some clarity of language. One of the biggest virtues of teaching is clarity of communication, and while spirituality is in some sense doomed to fail from the start in that aspect, the way this problem is being exacerbated by conflating what I think should be treated as two separate categories is certainly not helping. What are these two categories? One I will call "spirituality", which is familiar to most people, and the second I will call "psychonautics", which I believe is Leo's "main shtick". I say "main shtick" because it's of course not a full representation of his work, but it's certainly his main area of focus and that which he thinks makes him original. I'm also not going to criticize or devalue any of these aforementioned things. I only wish to shine light on the problem of language that is occurring between how Leo chooses to talk about his main shtick and a more collectively established area of inquiry which I call spirituality. Spirituality – "growth > states" In a nutshell: purifying and deepening your default state of consciousness. Examples: Sadhguru Osho Rupert Spira Adyashanti Eckhart Tolle Ramana Maharshi A very general definition of spirituality, which I'll borrow from Kenneth Pargament, is "a search for the sacred". How this is usually expressed within various spiritual traditions (from the world religions to the New-Age) is that you seek to align your life with the sacred and integrate it into yourself as a person. More importantly, when it comes to the mystical traditions and their emphasis on the direct experience of the sacred, their concern is not as much with the experiences themselves, as the potential growth one can gather from these experiences, as well as an eventual goal of merging with the sacred. In other words, the concept of a final destination (often called "Enlightenment") is generally preferred over a temporary glimpse (often called "Awakening"), and it's tied to a gradual process of refining yourself as a person, of self-transformation and self-transcendence. Psychonautics – "states > growth" In a nutshell: experiencing the highest states possible. Examples: Leo Gura Terrence McKenna Martin Ball Psyched Substance Psychonautics, on the other hand, refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research cabal in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the accompanying experiences. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychonautics The reason I'm characterizing Leo's main shtick as "psychonautics" rather than "spirituality" is because of the emphasis on "having the experiences" vs. "integrating them"; states vs. growth. The reason I think psychonautics is largely distinct from spirituality, is that if a state is not properly integrated into yourself and made into a platform for organic growth, then it's either forgotten or outsourced to the intellect. When given the option between intellect or integration, the former is the less spiritual option. So what is going on when Leo says "none of your gurus are awake", or "this is not God-realization", or "I have awoken to God many times"? Well, he is talking about a "temporary experiential state", with a definite start and an end, and it's induced by psychedelics. It's not the same thing as refining your "organic state" (your baseline, your default state) through other means like meditation. Therefore, for any of these two parties (spirituality or psychonautics) to dismiss either one as "not awake", is a category error. Again, I'm not here to pick favorites, and I'm not going to deny the possibility of refining or deepening one's psychedelic trips over time, or of the general impact they can have on one's psyche, or the potential benefits for spiritual growth. I'm simply spelling out how I think these two things should be treated as distinct categories. If I were Leo, I would try to make my language much more accommodating to the dominant paradigm (which I've called spirituality, and which most of his viewers have a connection to). Language does not exist in a vacuum, and language that confuses or misleads is bad use of language.

I don't see at all how the spiritual teacher pointing their finger at the absolute changes the fact that they're pointing with their human fingers for other humans to look, all in the relative realm, and that this is a source of problems.

Are the spiritual teachers backing the ASI clueless? Who passes your bar? It isn't a magic pill. It just helps.