Carl-Richard

@Nak Khid What Leo said reminded me of that meme. That's all.

I love the transparency at the end there hahahaha

Reminds me of this one hahahaha:

@Serotoninluv So in other words, I just need to develop a vivid sense of imagination in order to simulate an experience that is free from my own limited identity? Is this what empaths do?

Freedom... hmm... reminds me of these memes:

No offense, but I feel you're being overtly contrarian and digging for "gotcha's" in the words people use. Are you genuinely interested in what love is or is this just a lol-fest for you?

@Serotoninluv I sometimes doubt that I've really explored green to its fullest. I feel like I understand green concerns on an intellectual level, but I don't know if I've actually "felt" it thoroughly like you've pointed out. Then again, I'm an ex-pothead who lives in the greener parts of Europe haha. Is there something I can do about that?

If you look at this carefully, violence or aggression isn't "inherent" to any particular stage, but rather they're symptoms of certain values being played out in different scenarios. A stage red warlord or a stage blue king isn't aggressive all the time, but they're more likely to display aggression in certain situations, say if their authority is being threatened. Likewise, a stage green person would likely feel aggression when faced with deep unjustice. It's highly dependent on which values are being challenged in which situations.

That's orange thinking.

Hahaha no keep it. It's just a funny thought I had

@Someone here Just on a wild tangent, your profile picture reminds me of one of the recurring phases of my childhood night terrors

From what I can remember, there wasn't any single thought that caused the shift in awareness. It was just a gradual sense of my muscles becoming more relaxed, the colours behind my eyelids started to form ocean-like cyan waves, and my sense of hearing became very sharp. It all just culminated in me opening my eyes for no reason and feeling like I was floating about one foot above my head, like I was a hidden camera on the wall behind me, and my visual field was very widened. I was also kind of staring into the grainy texture of the brick wall in above the fireplace, and the particles seemed to be moving, kinda like on LSD, but just very very fine-grained. Then gradually it felt like I was ascending up towards what felt like a higher existence (it distinctly felt like I was looking up at the windows of a church from the inside), which quickly was followed by the recognition that I was about to disappear forever if I didn't stop it, and that is when I stood up and walked out on the porch just staring at the ground in disbelief while my ears were ringing and making ocean-like swishing-noises. Then I sat down and just felt like watching a movie, first A Scanner Darkly (freaked me out, thought I was going insane), and then Arrival.

@JayG84 I just did some very standard vipassana meditation (following the breath). I also had a nondual glimpse during my 3rd successful meditation (it made me get up in fear), and I think that was really what changed my baseline frequency of thoughts.

My dad has bipolar 1 disorder and I've taken 100-200 µg LSD 4 times, and I'm still fine 5 years later. However, back when I used to abuse weed and compulsively think about philosophy all the time, I slowly turned into this sort of semi-dysfunctional weirdo where I was a bit stuck inside my own mind, but I didn't really have any true symptoms of psychosis. Then I discovered meditation and my mind became silent

@Nak Khid Oxytocin is more accurately called the bonding hormone. It invokes a social form of attachment-based relative love. It doesn't encapsulate all aspects of relative love, like hobbies and food etc.

Who said suffering doesn't exist?

That is because you're subscribing to what is so accurately called "feel-good spirituality". It's a stage green fairy tale. True spirituality is not a joke: you accept death, you accept all fears, you accept all suffering, because it is You.

Try to imagine what is outside the universe, or what atoms are made out of; what existed before the beginning of time, or where you will go after you die. Try to get a sense that this nothingness is always present or atleast inevitable. If fear arises, that means you're on the right track.

Lower stages aren't necessarily "bad". Stage purple is cool

@Nak Khid When you immerse yourself in something and you feel good as a result, that IS what you define as love. I think your main problem isn't that you don't understand what love is: it's that you don't understand what nonduality is. When you follow relative love to its ultimate conclusion, to the point where you see through the distinction between self and other, you break through to Absolute Love. You realize that the love that you only extended to a limited amount of reality is actually an intrinsic part of all of reality, even the parts that you used to hate (death, suffering, injustice).

@WisdomSeeker You're right that Ramana's realization has had a huge impact on primarily spreading the word of enlightenment, but Sadhguru's realization has had a concrete multi-faceted impact (economical, social, environmental etc.), exactly because of his worldy involvement in those things. Even though self-actualization has its dark sides, be careful not to demonize it too much. The path to self-realization is also riddled with delusion and dysfunction. It's all a mixed bag.

I'll try to bridge the conceptual gap between relative love and absolute love by sharing an insight I had some years ago: When you do something you love very much (say your favorite hobby), your immersion and attention towards that thing increases, and it feels very good. That means your experience of that thing is bigger and more in tune with the reality of that thing. You can use neuroscience to back that up: dopamine increases attention, motivation and feelings of pleasure -> increased performance -> more in tune with reality. Then when you REALLY love something, your immersion and attention becomes so intense that the distinction between you and the thing vanishes, and you and the thing are ONE. If you concede that your access to reality is determined by your immersion and attention to that reality, then it logically follows that reality is dependent on LOVE. When you reach these higher states of love where you merge with the thing that you're in love with, then you realize that Love is Absolute. Love IS Reality. Everything is Love.

Thanks. I didn't know that.

@WisdomSeeker You're onto something there. Sadhguru has a level of self-realization, but he also has a deep level of self-actualization. He is involved in many different aspects of worldy affairs, highly resourceful, highly skilled and experienced in many areas. You can argue that Ramana has a deeper level of self-realization, but the sheer impact that Sadhguru has on his environment is on a totally different level. The worldy impact of his self-realization is global and multi-faceted because of his high level of self-actualization. Ken Wilber uses the distinction between "growing up" and "waking up". Western self-help emphasizes the former and eastern the latter. One is associated with materialism and worldy impact, the other is mysticism and spiritual growth. Both are essential for living a fruitful life (and things like "cleaning up": emotional/trauma work etc.). How much you're willing to emphasize each aspect is up to you.