Carl-Richard

Hmm. Are you taking any other supplements? When I added a multivitamin to my then existing mineral/vitamin stack (magnesium oxide/citrate, zinc citrate, fish oil with A, D, E, vitamin D), I got pretty intense chronic acid reflux feeling for most of the day. Then I learned to separate them, multivitamin first with a fruit and then the rest of the stack after the rest of my breakfast (more fatty and starchy). Multivitamin is mostly water soluble so it pairs well with fruit and water (fibers in the fruit draw water into the stomach) and it gets mostly dissolved before the rest of the stack can interact with it (and the rest of the stack except the minerals benefits from fat; vitamin D, fish oil, and now vitamin K2).

@Elliott Here is how spiritual teaching works (or how it doesn't work): "I had this marvellous experience once and I pursued it with these practices and then I became established in this experience. Come sit with me for 4000$ and we'll talk about this experience, these practices. But if you ask me 'do you think I will experience this experience by me doing that?' "No, no, no — what? Are you crazy? At no point did I say that. I just want your 4000$". This is your position.

According to you, all spiritual teachers are conmen. Some are just honest about it and tell it to your face. Some prop themselves up to keep plausible deniability, seem humble and more enlightened and sell more of their stuff. Which is a good thing irrespective. Imagine you're at the top of the Eiffel Tower and somebody is selling parachutes. They are even jumping themselves. Even if they don't say to your face "I believe this is the way, I believe I can help you get to the ground", you see they have put their life on it (invested their life into it) and tried it themselves (used the techniques themselves). The conviction in their actions speaks more than their words.

@Inliytened1 Btw, if you are in the limbo state and you take psychedelics, unless it's a teeny tiny microdose, you will either have an insane ego death (granted you drop the moth identity) or you will have a 5150. So think about that if you want to go on a psychedelic retreat (it might become a psych retreat 😝).

@Hojo What does this have to do with Hare Krishna? 🤡

Next time, ask ChatGPT to give you an academically informed answer and not a smorgasboard of pop culture stereotypes. Sorry — allergies 🤧. When you have a religious group that is an offshoot of a larger religion that have their own interpretation and claims about that religion, and they largely separate themselves from the rest of society, you have a sect. When the beliefs are more idiosyncratic and not tied to a larger religion or frame in society (and you have separation from the rest of society), you have a cult. Hare Krishna seems more like a sect than a cult.

Bro what the fuck. Most random ass post.

I've talked about this before but I think these are a gradual uncovering of different intellectual/doctrinal interpretations of the same experience. The fact that the order is fuzzy also indicates this. The cases where you have a fundamental different quality to them is more akin to the Ramaji map or other maps. If you're stuck in the "limbo" stage (Ramaji 590s or so), it's likely you've really only glimpsed 600s (Self-realization) or maybe 700s (Cosmic consciousness), but less likely proper God consciousness (800s). Jumping to 800s from below 600s is probably really only feasible with high-octane psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT (I assume you also went through all of this sober), and that's of course also initially temporary.

There is no why except God likes to express itself. There is only how.

I don't know about you but I have a very high bar for using one substance to mask the side effects of another substance. There are probably some underlying issues you're trying to mask with the first substance that you should be trying to solve, if it's not some unsolveable chronic health issue. Especially with essential nutrients like vitamin D, the goal is ideally to ensure optimal functioning, not masking pathology.

Rupert Spira calls it "the moth and the flame". The moth is attracted to the flame and wants to get closer to it, but when it gets too close it realizes for it to fulfill its ultimate desire of merging with it, it must cease to be a moth, so it recoils. But it sees the flame again and keeps coming back to it, but when it gets closer, it recoils again. Eventually the moth becomes tired of getting closer and recoiling and eventually decides to merge with the flame. You lack vision

It's atheists ironically critiquing religion from below and not above. I felt he was referring to the ChatGPT spam.

Ah, the limbo state. Welcome brother. I'll be there for a couple of more years probably (is what the ego self says; the true self wants to say no that's not true, you're already there 😼). But yeah, even if you decided to meditate for 1 minute and your crown chakra exploded into a supermassive black hole, I still believe you formed a belief to get to that place, but yes in this case, it's probably not a belief you would count as "pathological" in the same vein you would accuse dogmatic Christians of having. But a belief nonetheless.

It doesn't detract from my point again, but anyways: so you have complete non-doership right now? You can sit still and go into a state free of thoughts virtually instantly?

Can moderators on a computer edit the comments in question so we see a spoiler bar we can click instead of the entire text? Ty.

My AI allergy is 🤧 blistering 🤧 up.

Fascinating. The statistics say around 2/3rds report experiencing doubt. And that's subjective reports, in a culture where you allege doubt should be non-existent and presumably shunned and repressed out of the psyche. Surely you didn't get enlightened though, you got a glimpse. Didn't you continue practicing afterwards? Didn't you see where it could lead? Didn't you have a belief now (that was strengthened) that this too became possible? A belief also formed when you merely became curious, but certainly more fleeting and with less conviction. Science and mysticism, combined with concepts and practices you got from religion, with science which you got from religion, with mysticism which you got from religion. Works for me Nevertheless, certainly postmodern, individualist, even quite Western. You know a Christian. There is this course in university that causes all this trouble, my favorite course of the entire degree. It went by the name "Spirituality, Religion and Existential Questions". Today it goes by a more pompous name ("Psychology of Religion" or something). I was allowed to write an essay about my spiritual experiences and also do a research paper on how psychology students understand the term "religion". Go figure.

Have you never heard a Christian struggle with their belief? Regardless, when somebody tells you it's possible to get enlightened and you get curious and decide to practice, you don't sit down and practice for hundreds of hours if you believe it's impossible. You believe it is possible, and you arguably believe it is true. And you keep practicing despite the lack of "direct evidence". You only have breadcrumb trails, intuitions, glimpses, intellectual conviction, belief. Because you are religious. I'm defending you (and myself)

Even within the mainstream, there are some hardcore Christians that don't just do it for the community, the Christian nerds, the intuitive-introvert Christians, the INFP Christians who follow their own internal compass, the INTP Christians who care about the underlying truth. I believe they are intertwined. If you are curious enough about the truth that you pursue it, there is a belief born that it's possible, that it is true. Belief always involves doubt, ask any Christian. I sense an allergy to "belief" similar to an allergy to "group-think". Maybe it's something to look at rather than push away. The mistake is believing it's not already corrupted and that it's not an endless struggle. The belief of Christians is present in you.

How did this get derailed into "women are insane"? 🤡 That's pretty insane. Only a man could be that insane (jking; I won't enforce my edgy observation that most people on the forum are Bluuee 🟦).

There are some scholars that have a slightly different definition (search for "significance" in ways related to the sacred), which could capture some of the more mundane expressions of religion that we see today (e.g. going to church for the communal aspects and not so much for the sacred aspects). But yes, as a foundation, you find the sacred, and then you find various expressions around that which can be more or less direct or tangential. This is perhaps captured by Leo's "fake vs true spirituality" distinction, in that those who care less about the sacred (truth, Consciousness, the Absolute) and more about things that bring significance to their own lives (e.g. community, belonging), would be less "truly" spiritual. And you might notice the definitions aren't really that dissimilar anyways (at least on the surface), because you can load "significance" with the sacred itself, and mysticism (because for some, these bring a lot of significance to their lives). And when you simply define religion as the search for the sacred and then specify the different dimensions (intellectual, mystical, communal, etc.), you can explain the variety by simply people weighing the different dimensions differently (and therein you reconstruct an analog for "significance").

Leo is not the only New Age guru. Why? It was invented by religions, it is a part of religions and has been a part of it for millennia. The foundation of religion is the search for the sacred. It's true that belief is involved: you believe there is such a thing as the sacred, you believe you can describe it roughly and take steps towards achieving it. You believe that, not just Christians. Your religion places individualism and postmodernism as doctrinal and methodological cornerstones: "find it out for yourself", "you don't have to subscribe specifically to one doctrine or one tradition". That's described as New Age, New Age religion.

Yet religion is where science came from historically. You're confusing dogmatism and the intellectual/doctrinal dimension for religion. There are dogmatic scientists, stuck in their intellectual frameworks. There are dogmatic spiritual people, stuck in their intellectual frameworks. It is not specific or endemic to Christianity, or Judaism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Jainism, etc. Leo didn't invent mysticism, religions did. Mysticism is a prolific dimension in various religions. What happened with the "mainstream" Christianity we see today was a slow process of generally phasing out mysticism and calcification of doctrine. It wasn't that mysticism was never there. The notion of apophatic theology contradicts this. Dogmatic Christians persecuted Galileo, but Galileo was a Christian.

You have a "search for the sacred" (the highest value), be it truth, Consciousness, God, the Absolute, the Good. You have different dimensions like intellectual frameworks (doctrine, theology), mysticism (experience of God), practices (e.g. psychedelics, meditation, contemplation, "prayer"), rituals (go to the Church of Actualized.org/forum and talk shit about e.g. the Catholic Church), institutions and communal aspects (e.g. again Actualized.org, YouTube, scienceandnonduality.org). Where they differ is mainly the cultural and traditional backdrop. New Age has a postmodern and individualist orientation where they pick and choose from religious traditions they like and create a smorgasboard of all kinds of religious stuff. Meanwhile "Christianity" (or what you call Christianity, which is actually a specific kind of Christianity, let's call it "traditionalist Christianity") is indeed more traditionalist and follows traditional Christian doctrines and practices more strictly. "The New Age paradox" which I coined earlier is the paradox that while they claim to be in favor of individualism and "doing it your own way" or "going it on your own", they claim so on platforms like Actualized.org or YouTube where like-minded people congregate to share their opinions and experiences, where they learn about practices and techniques and theology and doctrine endorsed in those spheres.

I didn't because I already knew what it was about: placing New Age religion as the true spirituality, anything else as fake. We also had a discussion about the variety that exists within Christianity, and you might remember I disagree with that as well.