lmfao

What feels like a long time ago, I heard the story of evolution. A layman's understanding of how natural selection works. For while I've never really thought about it, and it's a random little specialised sub domain if you're interested, since I see spirituality as ultimately about subtraction. So I have zero insights or any opinion to offer, I'm just making this thread for fun in case people want to post stuff about a topic I don't engage in with much. A main aspect of the story being fed is one of randomness and dry logic, in terms of what is stated explicitly. The story I was told was that sometime long ago on earth, the conditions were right for the first single celled organism to exist. And then evolution and natural selection occur over very long timescales, so that tiny steps within our reference frame for time add up to something extraordinary over those long timescales. So what happens is gene mutations occur 'randomly'. If the mutation favours the survivability and chance to reproduce of your species, the organisms with that mutation outnumber the organisms who don't have the mutation. And these tiny advantages from tiny gene mutations, they add up over long timescales to the overwhelming dominance of some genes over others, until those other genes are extinct or branch off into something else completely. So there are all these 'random gene mutations' going on, and some set of genes is selected by the environment. The environment containing things needed for the survival of your species but the environment also containing things that threaten to kill your species. And so in a certain way, someone could see it as drab. Whatever the end result of evolution is will be selected by adaptability to survival and reproduction, and its drab because it's kinda tautological. What survives, indeed survives. Hence it is here. What doesn't survive, well it doesn't survive. Hence it is not here. ---- But I don't think it's drab inherently. I think that's an illusory conception you can have if all you are concerned with are the words and bland textbook theory. Rather than looking at the beauty of and living nature of it. A tautology needn't be drab. Reality is a tautology, and it's an infinitely complex and vast one to explore. Getting fixed on words like "randomness", "entropy" or "nihiliism" in the context of a non-articulated set of assumptions makes it so that you can have a pessimistic and dry view of things. And of course if the assumptions were articulated and brought explicitly into someones awareness in their psyche, they'd be less likely to be consumed by them.

This is one of those tricky things about materialism and causality. Whether material conditions cause consciousness. There are physical correlates and expressions to things, whether that means causality I don't know. Math can be an aspect about reality without being the essential nature of reality. I'm not into psychedelics. Leo claims that by taking these physical drugs you paradoxically become conscious of the limits of physicalism.

@Khr hahaha pretty much

I love vaush. That said, he seems to call everything right of Obama to be fascistic. "Fascist" is his replacement word for all of stage blue. And that's pretty dumb, you can call all religious folk fascists with the logic. The label becomes watered down and kinda meaningless.

Shin basically summarised it. Not being sexist but I haven't met any or talked to any yellow women, whether in real life or online. (with the exception of this forum). On the other hand, I've come across more yellow men. Most of the yellow folk I've met have been INTP or INFJ lmao.

Ne is divergent creativity which acts spontaneously. You can jump from domain to domain instantly, connecting the dots. You can jump from place to place, tendency to go on tangents and present a million angles to look at something. Ne will go from the few to the many. It diverges, and it isn't trying to reach a definitive conclusion. And just connects the dots and sees the connections "for what they are", the "for what they are" attitude being the attitude of extroversion as extroversion sees itself as not letting introversion/"subjectivity" distort its perception of things. Ne see things as networks of connections. A spider web. It can flip between different metaphysics, flip between different ways of connecting the dots. Downsides of Ne can include adhd, instability, out of control mind like a tornado, bipolar tendencies, inability to stay on topic, insincerity, schizophrenic paranoia and delusional beliefs through conspiratorial thinking. It can make false connections between things and make up the most outlandish pieces of bullshit stories. For ENTPs. Resorting to winning a debate by overwhelming you with a large volume of shit from so many different angles that you don't know how to respond. If you can speak in 5 fallacies per minute whilst your opponent can only debunk at a rate if 2 fallacies per minute, you win to the audience. I know all this because I use Ne a lot and I recognise it in others. Now to talk about Ni. I'm an INTP, so this is less familiar for me. But Ni is amazing, it's paranormal and extraordinary with a genius. I've seen it in INFJs. Ne creates a spider web of connections between dots. However, Ne is often very superficial in its extroverted nature. You can argue it makes superficial or obvious links. Ni on the other hand, it can make the most profound and earth shattering insights into things. It can crystallise a myriad of different things and see their common essence. It is in this way that it's more conclusive than Ne. It can notice things that no one else notices, get an insight into the unifying theme behind things. As an introverted function, it involves the subject more. It can make extremely large and insightful connections and jumps in abstraction thanks to this. Ni is the type of thing where someone will drop a one liner or give you one concept that will completely flip your perspective and understanding of something. It's this weird, ethereal, advanced deep intelligence. Psychic and mystical. It is imaginative and come up with things out of nowhere. Carl Jung is a genius Ni user for example. Ni feels psychic. It can predict the future and trajectory of things with someone who's talented. My INFJ friend in high school had this uncanny sixth sense to just know exactly how a situation would unfold. Feels a bit creepy and scary. A potential downside of Ni is closed mindedness and gross misunderstanding of a person or situation by making the weirdest and craziest mental jumps. Ni can be very judgemental, and it's hard to change an Ni users mind Ne users on the other hand, they are the most open minded people out there on average. Also, secondary Ni users are fake intuitives. ENTJ and ENFJ hardly pass as Ni users. INTJ users can be good. But most of what I typed above only applies to INFJ Ni users. And a couple of INTjs. The rest of them are crap. ENTJs and ENFJs are effectively just sensors. I'm honestly not sure if ENTJs and ENFJs even have Ni. I know it goes against all the mbti theory, but idgaf. If you get what I mean then you get what I mean. They are not intuitives, they are glorified sensors. I'm not sure they even have Ni. All I see is their dom function + Se, sorry. ENTJ and ENFJ have none of the psychic qualities of Ni, they have an extremely very weak version of it. But it's just strong enough that they end up being closed minded and dumb. The difference between a dom and secondary Ni user is night vs day

The exact language and concept I used is immaterial, you keep conflating map for territory. Look that theory up. Look up finger pointing to the moon. The reason you can't break through the map and reach the territory is because you believe your current assumptions and mind too much. --- If after all I explicitly stated about the problem of communication, how concepts don't contain truth, you strawman me as selling you another belief you're completely off. Your current trajectory is one of aimlessness and getting lost in your head. You're not on a journey for truth. I'm not gonna repeat my refutations for your foolish misconstruing for the millionth time. I can tell that you're completely clueless about direct experience. This is all just mental masturbation and a fun thought experiment to you. This isn't airy fairy philosophising, this is dead serious. It's the realest and rawest thing there is. There is no bigger thing than this. And unless you can see that, you are but completely lost and clueless. But there's no rush. All life pursuits are valid. It's up to you what you do. Whenever you're ready to be serious, truth will be waiting for you.

@Nthnl just edited my post. Anyway, im off for now, peace.

My opinion and perception is that you might end up in a paralysis due to this if you aren't careful. I might be wrong though. On the other hand, this looks like it might all be part of the process for you and isn't paralysis. In which case, charge ahead soldier. You seem pretty hardcore. ---- Side note of recommendations for teachers or books. You might like Jed McKenna a lot. I'd primarily recommend him based on my interaction here. If you can get over this philosophical hurdle of not trusting direct experience or people who use those terms, or whatever we just talked, I'd then recommend Peter Ralston. "The Book of Not Knowing" by him.

This is where I disagree, as I see you taking a sort of ultimate nihilism in the undertone of everything you've said so far, that there's no action or no point in trying. That humans are that biased and everything is so relative that there's no point in trying.

^Don't believe us ; )

Maybe it is yeah, we won't ever know. All you can do is take the leap, and discover and watch what you can. What else can you do but try? A very good objection and point, but I still think you might be lacking direct consciousness ; ). It's crazy and makes no sense, I know. But reality is crazy and makes no sense. Take the leap and attempt to do it if you want to. I think that once you get a glimpse of the absolute, it is not confusable with anything else or as anything else. Sure there are different depths and levels to glimpsing, but you can glimpse and experience and be it. That's all I can say.

What our speech is trying to point you towards is direct experience THAT IS NOT is not the same thing as our speech or believing in our speech, or any word in this sentence. The place to find truth, we're trying to point you there. What I am telling you is this. That there is a way for you to find truth, and that it can be directly experienced, and that it isn't any concept. It isn't a concept or thought about experiencing it or being it. It is about being it, period. And I'm saying that if you don't get this, it's maybe because you haven't had direct consciousness of it. Feel free to argue with that, disagree, it doesn't make a difference. Since you know what I'm trying to say, and that's that.

Like I said, the words dont contain the truth. They are pointers. This is the black hole where concepts fall apart and we're doing our best to communicate even though the concepts are what we're trying to transcend. But instead you don't seem to get that, and think that we claim the concept is the truth. This work is about transcending beliefs. Everything being written is a concept. This is communication. Your logic taken to it's conclusion would mean you would criticise all forms of speech and communication, say there's no point to any of it. I could turn this right around on you, and criticise everything you say as a belief. You're strawmannirg because you don't understand the paradoxical difference and unity between the domain of the relative vs the absolute, or of map vs territory.

Truth is another way of saying "what is". What is is what is in your consciousness. Since consciousness points to your experience right now. And experience is all that is. These strange-loops and circles go on forever with thinking. None of this can be logically explained and brought to you through thinking. It doesn't matter if you use the term "direct consciousness" or not, that's immaterial to you grasping things. What's being grasped isn't a concept, so it doesn't matter if you reject that term. For some people that label points them in the right direction, for you maybe it doesn't. The concept and labels are tools. I think you might still be lost in confusing this for a belief system. It's the classic issue of map vs territory, finger pointing to the moon, etc. also the hard problem of "the absolute vs the relative"

Because consciousness (is the same as)/(means) all that is. This is about truth. And truth is about what is (which is a tautology). What is is just in your consciousness. All your thoughts and ideas are occurring in consciousness. This work isn't about conceptual knowledge and theories, which you seem to be equating what we're saying with. It's about deconstructing it all and seeing what is for what it is. These concepts are all tautological and self-referential, just pick a word. So there's no conceptual ground 0, and we don't pretend there is a ground 0 and that we've encapsulated the truth in a concept. You'll get it if you get it. "Direct consciousness" is a pretty direct way to describe the tautology. As I described before, the concepts like "infinite mind" are just pointers and dont encapsulate truth. Finger pointing to the moon

@Nthnl Yeah don't believe in what they're saying. None of us should pretend to understand something to "get with it". I haven't tried psychedelics, but Leo's narrative or teaching is that psychedelics will take you further than anything else can and that you can encounter these facets from using them. The infinite mind thing, I kind of get it when it comes to the manifestation and creation aspect of things. I think you're pointing out a mentality thing. We all have to use concepts, and concepts do have a meaning. It's just that when you say something again and again and talk about it it becomes an abstraction rather than direct consciousness. And the only way to combat that is vigilance of yourself and what you see. Bear in mind that at least some of the people here are probably vigilant and watching, and talking from direct experience, and are aware of the limitations of the concepts. The majority though? Probably not. But that's not the case anywhere.

I don't reckon gore videos are good for this sort of thing. I don't think they're helpful or important. But I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it. Gore videos are mostly like watching a mindless horror event. Putting aside the gore videos involving intentional violence, with murder and suicide. Maybe it invokes something positive from you when you watch someone dying in an accident going about their day to day life. Doesn't really invoke that in me. There isn't any emotionality and sentiment to a gore video. Maybe if it was a documentary or news report combined, talking about who the person was and giving it context, I think it would be meaningful. Otherwise you're just seeing blood and violence (accidental violence) where there's no soft emotional impact to it. It's just a gross video.

Will do if that happens haha

Pardon the coarse title but I came across a whole new rabbit hole of ideology and conspiracy thinking when on the interwebs I'm talking to this person about their spiritual beliefs. Conversation started with me asking what a "starseed" is, since she thinks she is one and buys into it. This girl believes in this system where most humans in their past lives lived as aliens. There are all these difference races, and you can find out what race you were. She thinks we was a reptile in space. She thinks that the "God" of the bible is a hivemind of 144,000 different gods/elohim and that this God is involved in an extraterrostial space war, and that she's neutral to this entity, although in her past life she was abused and controlled by this God. What she said is in quotes I CANT . I JUST CANT LIKE WTF IS ORION WARS. THIS IS SOME DR WHO SCIENCE FICTION. My fucking brain. It hurts. I can't. Like I have no words. My mouth is left wide open by the ludicrously of their worldview.You know when someone is so crazy and or so far away that you have no words (I have more quotes and beliefs from her but don't want to post too much out of respect and privacy. But she has an elaborate story about what race she was, the exact happenings of a particular space government, genocides which occurred in space, wars, etc) ---------- https://ascensionglossary.com/index.php/Main_Page https://bibleproject.com/videos/elohim/ WHAT IS THIS NEW RABBIT HOLE. WHY DOES IT EXIST. --------------- I'm gonna keep talking to this person now and then it's interesting. Maybe I'll uncover something, I have no clue. ----------- Back to the main question at hand What is up with these new agers and whacky space belief systems? What the hell is going on here? Why does or how does anyone end up in this shit? I'm not familiar at all with these new age circles, whacky space shit. My brain is literally just fried by this shit. I discovered a whole new world of wackiness and peculiarity.

@X_X I'm trying to get in touch with my own death too. Awareness of death is a universal spiritual practice. I think your question is the same as asking "How can I stay mindful?", it's an ongoing process. If it was easy to stay mindful there wouldn't be the need for any of this. Death awareness goes together with an intense awareness of the present moment. That this moment is it, and you aren't beguiled by thoughts about future and past. We all live our lives in denial of death, distracting ourselves from it. That denial of death allows us to be consumed by distractions and scattered attention, untill suddenly you're lying down your death bed, realising you let it slip away. By taking death out of life, hiding it, it allows us to live unconsciously. Death is the ultimate reminder, the ultimate imperative to not remain in the dream state. Typing this all out, it's been a reminder to me to remain vigilant. "momento mori". @r0ckyreed had a good suggestion.

@Keyhole Fair enough. I probably won't go out my way to do lots of research and practice for experiencing aliens. It would be a tricky journey, and my main focus is enlightenment. If it comes up it comes up.

All the free information and novelty, I think it taxes the brain, dopamine more specifically perhaps. As far as explanations go for dummies, drugs are addictive due to dopamine system being abused. Apparently, its a statistical fact that smoking is more addictive than other hardcore drugs. Because with smoking, you can take puffs very frequently 24/7. And some other drugs don't have such a frequent and regular input, hence less addictive. But the Internet, that's like taking puffs very frequently. Every scroll, click, etc, your brain treats it like a slot machine. Since you have to sift through information and posts you pay attention to from those you won't pay attention to. So there's uncertainty in reward - - - - > dopamine high of a gambler. Obviously that's a little bit of an exaggeration with calling every scroll or click a slot machine, but in the grand scheme of things that's how it works when put together and flowing. We've all had that experience of scrolling and scrolling, looking for something. That's the slot machine at work. And the when your dopamine is wrecked, your motivation and ability to take action is worsened

@Preety_India I don't know how it was for you in India but my cousins in Pakistan were exactly like this with over the top flattery and compliments lmao

@JayySur The Donald indeed has some good people skills. He's amassed a following and a crowd. Donald talking in regular conversation is a likeable talking salesman. They butter you up a bit, feed your ego a bit of reinforcement. It's a way of saying "hey, you're like my tribe or family" and building a bond. A very simple thing that is apart of socialising Everyone does that buttering people up and reinforcing people's self esteem to them as well, but not in the same way that Donald does it necessarily. Because with some people like Donald, their flattery can be over the top. It's overcompensating, those people can be the snakiest.