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Hello, I have recently just got into spirituality and nonduality and it feels like total emotional roller coaster. I have just recently dropped the materialist outlook on life, partly because it didn't really feel right, but mostly because of Leo's video on brains. On an intellectual level I suspect that I'm something more than just this person, but for some reason when I read about no free will it makes me feel really miserable. Yesterday I felt really happy, active and really enjoyed everything around me but today I feel somehow drained and empty, yet in some sense I feel peace, and it goes like this for maybe a month. I know it's not really that bad and other people probably have worse problems, but I just needed to share this and hopefully get some advice on how to drop the seriousness and just enjoy living. I am also beginning to feel like there is no real freedom and everything is just determined and I am somehow trapped, which I hope is just false fear. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a nice day

READ WHOLE THING BEFORE RESPONSE! okay so this is going into the meditation section because, well, it has a lot of do with that. I gotta friend who did one tab of acid, and realized he was god he said. He did it again 3/4 a tab and smoked weed with it this time too and had a bad trip saying everything disappeared (ego death) with lots of hallucinations and freaking out. It was really bad. He then did dmt (a lot of his 100milligrams) a week later on the same day since it was weak dmt but he said time disappeared. He got no visuals. Ever since the second acid trip he’s been tripping out it seems like. Maybe it was the dmt. Changing all his life plans(he wanted to go to LA to be an actor or something along those lines maybe a director but now wants to travel across America. He said he wanted to hitchhike it last I heard), give his life to god letting god run the show (but he wants to keep a little bit of his ego he said so...i don’t know what that means) being really weird and not himself, talking really monotone, being super nervous looking and monotone and odd and bugeyed while explaining his plan to let god Run his life while saying he has no plan he’s just gonna let it happen, practicing mindfulness 24/7, and he says he feels like the next jesus(he’s been learning enlightenment from the Bible without other enlightenment study or minimal study, except what I say about it and the Bible and now some Alan Watts). Found out today that he has a family history of bipolar disorder. These psychedelics plus being a pot head is fucking him up I think. Some of this stuff seems like it could be really good, but really I think it’s a manic episode. He has took a drastic change. Within a week or two span after the dmt. I feel a dark energy. Today he took a vow of silence for a week. guess he is not talking even at work. My friend who just turned 19 your old friend is doing all this. Any advice for how to help my friend? Me and my other friends are really worried about him. Can you give me some insight on understanding what he is going through? Like what is going on here? I feel like he is falling into a dark place. And pushing too hard on enlightenment. It isn’t healthy I’ll tell you that. You would have to see it yourself to understand really how drastically he changed. It has turned neurotic I feel. He has a spiritual ego now which I get. Maybe a god complex type deal (next Jesus) it looks like to me at least. And possibly it is a manic episode. Are we just overthinking it? I doubt it. We have all noticed. And I feel like ppl do change drastically after enlightenment sometimes. But this huge shift came after the second acid trip and dmt. Not his first experience of god. After his first he just had an ego lash back. Now shits getting wacky. Any advice would help. Thanks a lot. Let me know what y’all think is happening. Maybe it’s all good honestly we will have to see EDIT: I guess I just want to know your guys opinion on what is happening with him and nonduality and his psychology and how to help him back to a healthy version of himself. And I guess I’m just asking how normal is all this after psychedelics? Maybe we’re just misunderstanding it.

God is Nothingness. But what you're missing is that Nothingness is identical to Somethingness. Thus, everything you see before your eyes right now is God. Somethingness = Nothingness. God = Everything. This is the essence of nonduality. All distinctions collapse such that everything becomes Nothingness. Nothingness is NOT a blank void. Nothingness is precisely everything you see around you. You are holding Nothing as distinct from Something. Which is a duality. When that duality finally collapses, you will realize, "Oh shit! Everything was Nothing the whole time! There is no difference between existence and non-existence, life and death, reality and fantasy."

@David Turcot Great post. You’re at the peak of conceptualization, (your OP), it can’t take you much further. A breakthrough is around the corner which will recontextualize literally everything. This God mode you’re referring to cannot be understood, or imagined, or conceptualized, or described with any words. Only direct experience will do, though it is not an experience, nor is it nonexperience, to think of it in those terms and apply negation, is to be stuck in duality and denial of it, it is not of the mind nor is it no-mind, nor is it time, nor timeless, not meaningful, nor meaningless, it is not “the void” nor is it voidless, all of these are the dualities of your own illusion. It's The Being -the only being- with all the universes and galaxies obviously an unfathomably tiny illusionary, and totally insignificant, speck of a thing you’re doing, as insignificant to you as any single rain drop falling somewhere else on the earth is now. Until “you’ve seen” this, you have not been outside of the illusion to see what you are and that you are outside of the illusion, the manor in which you actually exist, doing the illusion - you will remain an ego - even if you nullify duality in your mind and achieve mental equanimity, or believe your thoughts of what you are not, for your entire life, even if you did practices for 18 hours everyday for the rest of your life. Until this, you will not know what you are, nor the true nature of your life, nor the actuality of others, reality, illusion, or God - you’ll be happily & cleverly resting, abiding, in a comfy trap of birds eye view of duality & spirituality, no self, oneness, “being”, nonduality, infinite, etc, etc. Until this, you’ll be less than honest, and you’ll know it. So you will either live this life knowing that and denying it, or doing what must be done to have this realization. What you rule out, what you discredit and don’t do, is exactly what will prevent this realization, the teacher you don’t like is your ego tricking you, the psychadelic you don’t like is tricking you, the “idiot” you don’t listen to IS your ego tricking you - and you’ll see all the world through a lens a fear, while in total delusion & denial of your fear. It will flip you and your entire reality on it’s ass, rewire your brain to accommodate the knowing of the Truth, and you will never for a second be able to see anything the way you do right now again.

I think that you mixes up some therms and understanding here... the brain is not maid out of counciousness, the perception and our experience of somw brain is made out of counciousness not the brain itself, sou youre wringly atributing the propertis of your own experience to the outside world witch is false... It is imposibile for me to percieve anything without my counciousnes, but it is wrong to conclude that nothing exist without my counciousness. Youre making conclusions in the way that you always put you, particualy your experience (or experience of counciousness) as the one and only valid reference point, and one and only ,,mesurement tool of truth"... i day that a first person experience is not valid at all-i can have an experience of my wings, and of course thata not the apsolute truth, also my experience of the brain is not right, it is the rendered ,,version" of the outside reality or particulary of the brain witch is not evan close to the complete aspects and properties of the brain, that can as example be caught with instruments but not with my experience... One of many proves that back up what I say is that the brain, as an object in the outside world that really exists continues to exist evan when you and your counciousnes goes in the other room, when you dies and so on... other people see it and it still exist no matter how many people look at it and go away and come back and so on, also instrument can by they properties proove it, just take a vide camera, film a brain, take every lifw away for five minutes, let the camera run, come back, there is a tape of the brain existing avan as we were away... Conclusion, youre contributing the perception of the brain, and your experience of that perception of the brain, to the brain it self, and on this false assumption youre basing youre whope teachings and all of your knowledge and videos... Now you can answer like: how do youre know that there is a brain if youre not there, does the brain trully exist if you dont look at it, where doea this brain exist and so on... but thats running in circles based on the first false assumption that is not questioned or proven... Its imposibile for anything to percive and experience without counciousnes (for a human) but this does not prove that nothing exists or that there is no material world. Machins percive without counciousnes, evan does the human body, there are many perceptions and informations and proceses that take place that we are not aware and councious off, however this is not the point, prove me wrong and pls answer... i really put my strongest doubts in here with the hope that i will be debunked and that nonduality can win heh, peace

Yes, that's my point. That makes language relative vs absolute. @Leo Gura Funny how we agree on that and proceed to draw contradicting conclusions from it. It makes me think that there is a difference in scope of what we consider language. To me, of course: there is English, Russian and Polish. Those are languages. There are written languages, spoken languages and 'inner' languages in which we think. There are also more subtle languages such as, for example, painting and music. It is much more visible in those that: Especially in abstract art, in which - when we don't know the context - everything we interpret is our projection. There is still value in doing that if we want to observe ourselves and need a Rorschach blot. There is also nothing wrong in learning the context of that art and interpreting it via this lens. We should however acknowledge that the context is incidental in the sense that is the lens through meaning manifests itself. When we learn the context for abstract art, we are still in a context of learning. We project that context onto the context that we learn. Derrida famously deconstructed painting by questioning whether the frame is a context for interpretation. To establish what I mean by language, let me carry this deconstruction out further. Not only that the frame is the part of painting, but also the wall it is on. The wall is the part of museum, which is a part of a city, which is a part of a country and the world. That world is a part of cosmos, which is possibly a part of multiverse and so on. All of that is a part of the painting through the possibility of deconstruction in relation to Materialism (which is not absolute). All of that, the total sum of everything in relation to the painting is a subject to language to me. From this point of view, English is a language, but so is the situation in which you are sitting in front of a computer. We are 'reading' any situation 'as if' we were communicating. We are projecting meaning onto this blank Rorschach blot of reality depending on the unknown context we're currently in. It something similar to what you said in the video about deconstruction. Derrida was just a bit short of explaining nonduality. The other movement is by recognizing that there are various possible contexts and context is always absent in a sense. The possibility of deconstructing context is what I previously described as openness and meeting the other as neither master, nor a pupil. By 'other' I do not only mean a person, but in this broad sense of language - even a table by which you sit. When we meet a table as an equal, we are willing to let the table be what it is. Not only as a place to sit by, but we let it be whatever it is. (Even firewood, or whatever else with total surrender). This interplay of context and content is what constitutes the mind in the universal sense. The mind between the ears may use English as a language, but the language of the universal mind is Tao. The Ego of the brain-mind is personality, but Ego of the universal mind is more in lines of Law of Attraction. In this sense, language is total. All of it is a metaphor because of projection. Even if language is relativistic, there is nothing dualistic about metaphors. The mechanism through which metaphors work is Absolute. This absolute is present in any everyday interaction, even when we talk about trash. That is because of inherent ambiguity of relativistic divisions. They are like blank skeletons of meaning that we can apply at various places. There is nothing relativistic in the movement that applies them.

Just watched this youtube video featuring 3 people that are very very, intelligent. They discuss nihilism, but of course from a dualistic perspective. Many, many times they border on the possibility that all of reality is groundless, but that's never really explored... Well ya can't blame them, the only way to explore it is by drowning in silence Just as a disclaimer, I'm not trying to discredit these guys at all. I just found it fascinating that you could intellectually reach the edges of duality but nevertheless end up trapped. I suggest you check out more of Cosmicskeptic's stuff, though he is fundamentally one of those "Atheist channels" that seem to run contradictory to most of the stuff we do here at Actualized.org, the guy really does try hard to push his boundaries and you can see him questioning a lot of things including himself.

@tsuki All language is dualistic. For language to work at all it requires making relative distinctions. You're way overcomplicating this. The Absolute cannot be spoken or even thought. Wittgenstein did not fathom nonduality and his philosophy is not worth much even though he has a few great lines to quote. Derrida's analysis of language is much more on-point.

There is nothing pedantic about nonduality - don't confuse the messenger for the message. This is what muddying the waters with the intellectual mind's obfuscation looks like:

That's a good point. In the moment it's all shits and giggles but I guarantee you that the vast majority of those people are unable to sit quietly in a room by themselves and be content. That shit haunts you eventually, you know. You'll grow old and solitude will catch up to you... it's a matter of when you face it, not if. I think going out and partying once in a while isn't bad per se, but when it's culturally encouraged that's when I start to feel pity. Have you seen Leo's video titled "30 ways society fucks you up the ass?" He talks about how a lot of our daily life is "an amusement park for the ego." Realizing nonduality is so bloody hard to begin with, the way people party like there's nothing better to do is just insult to injury. I've tried talking to my friends about this stuff you know, all they do is go out all the time and it seems they will continue to do that haha more power to them I suppose?

“Wave function” points at reality (You) from within a scientific vernacular and paradigm , particles are dream stuff (you). The only way ‘around’ nonduality is self deception (pretending there is something other than You). Doesn’t matter if it’s a “lofty” topic like QM, or something as simple as a drop of rain. The observer, the observed, measurement, ‘collapse’, etc, all dream stuff. When seen in it’s entirety, the illusion is just light. The benefit of seeing you exist as pure potentiality........whatever you want to be. Freedom from the conditioning of believing in the appearance of consistent “reality”. Shocking freedom. The brain doesn’t like this because it’s purpose is to hide this very fact by assigning meaning. Put another way, the role of the brain is not to solve the observer “problem”, but to hide the Truth, that there is no problem. If there’s no meaning, there’s no problem, if there’s no problem there’s no story. No meaning assigned = total freedom. Everything you could want to do is the same when you let all meaning go. Because in truth it doesn’t matter in the most literal sense what you are doing right now. It traces back to the concept of identity, which is all falsity. If I want to be nice, there’s meaning. If I want to be smart, there’s meaning. But there is no such thing as identity, because there is no such thing as something else to identify you. You can think you know more about what you are, and you’ll know less about what you’re doing in this life. You can focus more on what you want to be doing with this life, but because in that you’ll be changing (in a mental appearance / idea of self sense), you’ll paradoxically know less about yourself while discovering more about yourself. Until there is only self. The pure potentiality of you. The wisest person I’ve met once said, “It’s nonsense”.

@Leo-Tzu The implication is nonduality, but I don’t think he or Joe see this.

@Igor82 That’s really broad but an example might be having a good understanding of psychology, neurology, biology, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, nonduality, Christianity, Islam....so there’s a moment on a trip where you realize how it is an illusion, and how people (ego wise) are creating their own versions, how science was only ever people describing things. Then it sticks because it is suddenly the only obvious possibility. And kinda BAM, you remember what you are.

LWAM, Season 1 episode 7 Hey peas! Sorry for the delay of the show, my writers were on a strike due to the whole losing to France thing. I've written some pretty deep stuff last month, but I feel like sharing it later on. Instead of describing my experience and the chaotic peacefulness that is currently overshadowing my reality, I'll give really bad advice for the 3 most frequent spiral dynamics stages while they are still hot topic in here. STAGE BLUE: Have 2 and 3/4 kids, 2 dogs roughly speaking, and a white picked fence. Get a tattoo of Trump on your heart. Never ever have a thought of your own. Blame Muslims for all your political problems. Demonize psychedelics while binge drinking. Talk badly about your country every day except on national days when you're a ultranationalist. Debate how all religions are wrong except yours. Devide humans in us vs them category. Never question authority figures. Look down upon all alternative lifestyles outside of the system. Kick your lgbt kids out of the house. View divorce as a sin. View anything outside of tradition as a threat. STAGE ORANGE Have about 15 Armani shirts that say happiness is in the small things. Celebrate your birthday at the gym and work out while eating the cake so it doesn't ruin your six pack. Pay more attention to your things than your children. Choose life. Choose a job. My bad, wrong movie. Demonize all religions, but be religiously atheistic. Quote Tony Robbins in every conversation. Categorize people in terms of their usefulness to your success. Never allow a moment of silence - bombard yourself with constant stimulation and noise. Favour superficial relationships over anything real. Form connections based upon image. Worry more about being presentable in society than personal happiness. STAGE GREEN: Justify everything with nonduality theory. Jerk off to your superiorty on the spiral dynamics. Eat 20 avocados a day and post each of them on Instagram. Change your name into something hindu. Don't wash your hair because it's egoic. Have a~ meat is murder~ sticker on your backpack. Completely deny that money exists and that you need it. Play the victim card when someone questions the beliefs of your group. Call people closeminded when they won't buy into your ideology. Be obnoxiously self-righteous about everything. Stage Danielle Use humor as a self defense mechanism. Choose nonduality over self esteem issues because you're too evolved for such basic tasks. Only listen to songs 20 people have heard. Enroll in a course called popular culture while being a hipster. Send people to dead-end streets when they ask for directions cause you're socially inept. Have a crush on a straight girl for the thousand time.Have Heat of the Moment as your ringtone for 4 years because you're that afraid of change. Lastly (not clickbait) life saving tips Stop reading vampire romance novels. Start a band in which everyone plays triangle and perform only Ode to Joy. Stay alive for the drums in When the levee breaks. Pet cats. Do balet moves in a night club. Make strong eye contact with strangers. Never finish a post without being cynical. End credits: Everyone's begging for an answer without regard to validity. The searching never ends and it goes on and on and for eternity. Directed by Green - yellow Croatian Doctor Phil.

Neither of you "have clothes" in this specific debate Leo is making an assumption that just because something is his concept of an "illusion" or "illusory" it is not "real." Whether something is "real" or not is based on the defined concept of "real." In the situation. Just because something is an illusion also does not mean its "not real." What is real is a point of view including the existence of Leo. Also Leo could be said to be God or God to be leo or leo can only be god when there is no leo communicating from one perspective or leo is always god from another by mere fact of existing with no seperation "of which we know", but ultimately this "real" or "not real" neither of these are ever correct inherently hence nonduality. Every single thought and perception can be real if it fits your definition, Your ego can totally be real if it fits your definition of real, etc. Nothing is inherently "real' or "not real" because it is a concept itself. No label can be utilized ultimately, neither this nor that. YOU CHOOSE what is "REAL." That very well may be "an Illusion" to Not Leo or No one but its Real to you unquestionably. Once "real" is involved, becuase it is a concept means that it is up to interpretation, so to say "this is not real" OR "an illusion is not real" or "because somthing is "an illusion" - a concept i am defining it is not real" is definitely not absolute, along with "this is real."

So obviously spiral dynamics isn’t a map that truly deals with nonduality or enlightenment. I think it’s clear that there’s correlation but going back hundreds of years ago, it’s pretty safe to say Stage Orange didn’t even exist but there were still spiritual masters that may have been mostly blue or purple or even red (depending on the person, their shadow, era in history, and culture, and I’m sure many other factors). I’m curious though on possible examples of enlightened people at Stage Yellow. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this considering a. I’ve yet to have a real awakening experience, and b. It seems like too much conceptualism for an enlightened person to spend much time in... I say that lightly though. Given that there seems to be degrees on the nondual path I don’t want to make such bold claims like that. So I take that with a grain of salt. Thoughts on this? Possible examples?

When you realize what nonduality is, who would you ask a question to? All knowing = you are already that which you might otherwise consider knowing. It does not mean you’ll have all the knowledge. Just that you’re aware knowledge in total is illusory. There’s no past, future, present. There’s Now (You) , and not in the ‘time’ sense. It is indeed magic (an illusion). The deeper magic, once you know the Now is You, is that you don’t know what happens next. That is an inconceivable magic.

for people asking about a younger teacher: Lisa Cairns (is 35 or something): tried psychedelics: yes (lsd), Recommends?: NO (said she damaged her brain and doing nonduality work would be easier if she hadnt) BUT there are many spiritual gurus who do recommend. Blazed wrote a list of people who dont agree. But you still need to consider the ones that do Teal Swan: tried psychedelics: ?? (i think so?) Recommends: YES, HIGHLY Ralph Smart (IDK hes seems more of a pep talk person rather than an actual "guru"): tried?: yes recommends?: YES if anyone knows any other who recommends, i'd add them here. I think the reason why all of the most famous gurus dont is because they know the huge influence they have and know a lot of people who watch them might have unstable minds (depression/psyhotic episodes) and psychedelics would damage further. Maybe theyre against it because psychedelics would pull the person away from their teachings (since alot of them are business men, no? maybe people who misuse them would blame them (the guru) and then the media would make the guru look really bad and theyre trying to avoid that or trying to avoid getting sued. we have to look at every angle here.

that's a very meaning-based view of the world, the opposite of nonduality. To me love is just an emotion inside awareness, it's not everpresent whatsoever. It's definitely a very powerful emotion, but it's not existence.

Thank you for that. Laughed for 10 minutes. Thank you. You won’t get any further without humility. You don’t really know what enlightened means yet. Nor, obviously, nonduality.

It is collapsed. It is illusion / appearance. This apples to the entire illusion. There’s no such actual thing as ‘travelling’. There is no such thing as ‘the speed of light’. Leave it in the appearance, don’t try to port it into nonduality. (I realize this appears to imply a duality, only direct experience will do here.) Your true nature is infinitely beyond anything you could reference. Yet, there is a “light”, and you could say it’s one of these: But this light is not the light referred to. It absolutely does not collapse. You are just about to the ‘edge’ of logic & reason though. Consider psychedelics and inward investigation to the same magnitude. Very excited for you. Also, consider a reveal in this that absolute is “””limiting”””” to itself in the appearance of reality. So light is collapsible because light (not the same “light”) the absolute, hence the law of one, nonduality, same for love, same for intelligence, (and I’m pretty damn sure humor) though these facets of absolute are not facets and are not what is referred to in the (collapsed) illusion with the use of these words. Maybe more clearly summed, absolute can’t be experienced, one can only experience it is what they are. Such is the light, the love, etc.

To take it a step deeper: the idea that the room you were looking at is not true is also just a thought, with no more relevance than a bird chirp. Talking nonduality is really hard since language is dualistic.

You are Nothingness, but it’s not nothing, nor is suffice to refer to it as no-thing, even calling it infinite, or nonduality, is not “it”.

I have spoken about nonduality A LOT at this point. Go see the Enlightenment video category on the website.

I don't think so, I absolutely AM so. I said in my consciousness video that a rock is not conscious, but it is consciousness. Which is exactly what I am saying now. Go do some psychedelics cause you are clearly lost in your own mind beyond help. What I am saying isn't panpsychism, it is pure nonduality. You just lack the direct experience necessary to understand it.