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I don't know if being vegan necessarily equates to being stage green. I would say the root of vegan philosophy is probably a stage green personality product but the adoption of it can easily be done by stage blue or orange. Though I don't know, it's strange that there are people who simply do not understand the vegan argument and that there are others who easily do. I guess a stage green personality would more easily adopt it? There are a lot of vegans who lose motivation and then stop being vegans, but I think they are usually mostly orange people. The argument is usually health, though you can mostly tell that it is an excuse due to the fact that they do not consume non-sentient meat sources instead, like mussels. That's when you know they don't even really want to try, though it's probably a simplification of what really is happening in their minds. I can only say how it is for me personally, but I don't struggle whatsoever while being a vegan. For me it's common sense, at this point I even get confused by people having the capacity to choose pleasure over the absence of suffering and death of other almost same level-sentience beings. To me it's on the common-sense level of not raping someone. It's simply not a struggle, and I don't even identify as vegan at all. Though I am a little confused about one thing. There are many stage green people who seem to have never been stage orange, like for example SJW-types or as you'd call "militant"-vegans. I feel like a lot of these people are the exact opposite of stage orange, like people who have been bullied in school and didn't take care of themselves, and put their frustration into group identity thinking. Though I don't know if these people would be stage blue or green? They clearly haven't gone through stage orange, unless I misunderstand something about that process, though they do try to protect minority groups. Is it possible that this could be a part of stage blue thinking as well? They are usually very angry about injustice, and I would say that is more of a blue quality, so maybe militant vegans are also stage blue as they are motivated by injustice primarily? In fact, I just checked out a chart about spiral dynamics, stage has these as negative traits: "Shy, lonely, isolated, lack of empathy, bitter, critical.", which is a perfect description of SJWs and probably of most militant vegans, too. So I think it comes down to stage blue and stage green both adoption the same philosophy and acting differently, because they both are group oriented thinkers. Of course stage blue are probably not as empathetic so they will not as often encompass other species into their empathetic spectrum as stage green do, so that is why militant vegans are the small minority among vegans in general. Ex-vegans are explained due to stage orange personalities being motivated to be vegan to "be a better version of themselves" and to "not harm the environment because it's irrational and will in the end harm the human species". These are actually two arguments that you hear very often from people, that eating meat is so destructive for the environment, when you then ask them why that is a bad thing, they will argue that it will have negative consequences for the entire human species, including themselves and their own agenda. So they are becoming vegan out of a selfish argumentation over an empathetic one. The destruction itself is not the problem, but the consequences it will have for them, or how it will make them look if they support such destruction. That is why once the veganism becomes an annoyance, or they lose motivation, they go back to being non-vegan. I remember I once suspected Leo to be motivated in the same way when he posted a video on his blog about the ecology. He argued that you would need to be ecological to be a developed human, which to me sounds very much like stage orange reasoning. It's still self-centered, but maybe I am actually confusing it with stage yellow. Either way, from a stage green perspective, if I am correct about my analysis that I actually am partly stage green, it does not really require reason to be ecological. You simply look at the destruction and you make the decision not to be part of it, to the extend that you can, the same way you would not rape someone. It's not something that you need to rationalize at all. You see the suffering you are causing and you don't do it anymore. I think this is actually a good pointer to a stage green person, you simply have to show them a video of what is happening and they will themselves change their actions. With lower stages you will need to use philosophy to explain to them why it's "bad", unhealthy, not good for the environment and thus not good for humans etc.

This is my first post here. After watching Leo on YouTube for a while I feel like this is the right community to get some feedback. To start off, I am compelled from the depths of my soul to do whatever I can to have as much of a positive impact on humanity as possible and beyond to all sentience that exists. After overcoming the depths of hell in my own life I just can't sit around while I know so many others are experiencing the same hell. Then I realize suffering to a certain degree is required for growth itself. Mentally and physically it builds resilience and character. Suffering is a mechanism of evolution and a pillar to life itself. Adversity is the mother of virtue, of beauty. We also seem to exist in this reality between a particular balance of order and chaos. There are optimal balances to everything, which includes suffering. So I think humanity should move in a direction of reducing extreme suffering, but not suffering altogether. Basically there is a tipping point of suffering that disturbs the optimal range of balance. Okay great, it seems like I am on the right path... but wait. I want to do what is good, but good is only defined by our evolutionary context, forged out of the desire for survival. Basically all things that we call good are centrally based on our survival instincts created by evolution itself. All things that we think or feel are bad are just factors related to death. Good and bad seem to rest upon complete subjectivity and have no distinction outside evolution. Well, there's also the meaning of life. I should just live true to my life purpose, which I define as following my heart while maintaining balance. Not falling too far into a cycle of chasing desire. My heart tells me I can be part of transforming humanity into the best it can be (Just part of the process. I really don't want to sound egoic here. Please correct me if I come off in a negative way). What if humans are actually a bad thing in the Universe in the end? Hell, we are fucking up this planet beyond repair. We are currently a cancer. At this point my heart is only a puppet of evolution itself to serve its purpose. Decreasing suffering in humanity is going to be a lot of damn work. This will and is requiring tremendous sacrifice. My current conclusion is that I should still follow my heart, do a lot of hard work, make the required sacrifices, but in doing so also have enough of a balance where I am enjoying life through the process. Then accept the fact that what I don't sacrifice and give to myself will just mean I allowed some people to endure extreme suffering. What does everyone think? Next up, let's discuss what steps are needed to actualize humanity. I have been thinking about it and pursing it in some fashion for years, but I am reaching a stage where I want to start discussing this with like minded people. In the end nothing will happen until we all come together towards a common pursuit with a common strategy.

Uh, meet the flatlander. Hi flatlander. You are correct that no one should take someone's anecdotal account of extinction as Truth and then stop there. Do the work yourself, then run your mouth - hence: Consider that the scope and framework of reality is created by and totally subservient to what is manifesting as life itself, and not the other way around. Your mind even in your little "skeptical" attempt is forgetting this and acting as authority again to whoever told you there was an amygdala. In this capacity, as Mystics, the only real skepticism that is of value is that which is 100% self-directed. Otherwise, you are a seeker and have not yet found your vehicle, so why not be studying and practicing and not talking. Your ignorance preceeds your unskillful arrogance. I don't even know there is a body, or an "organism"...whatever there is that is life and universe, was totally made up by "me", and keeps doing it every tick. Kensho reveals all your knowledge to be anecdotal, and reality to be open ended to the point of infinity -- simultaneously. Feel free to maintain a staunch closed position and never know anything about reality ever. Nobody gives a damn. Of course you can't learn anything from his glimpse, or my direct consciousness. Only yours. And you don't seem to want to know. That's fine too, and a valid choice. The Buddha didn't claim any personal authority here, he simply said to try the practice and see, if you are curious. If you do, and do it right, you will see. When fear "runs amok" as you say, without an object...this can be due to the fact that the sense of "mind" has stumbled on the inimitable fact that there is no sensory activity and separate sentience witnessing...but rather just sensory activity. Next the thing starts to segfault and freak out wanting the comfort of separation and dualism and familiar good old burn of suffering again. Once it comes back, along with the bull sense of deceptive security, then the person recovers back to the "bondage" of the previous abidance. Damn, most of the people on here are really really talking out their ass. Why such scientifically and mystically ignorant folks would be attracted to a forum like this is beyond me, but this is pretty disappointing. The only valid source for your Insight is what has been won on the zafu and agreed upon by your learned realized teacher(s). Direct Consciousness #1 source here. This isn't the laboratory and you aren't a dead corpus of data.........or are you? M

I tried to search for this topic and was surprised it has not been brought up, please remove if it has and I am just beating a dead horse. From wikipedia: "Bicameralism (the philosophy of "two-chamberedness") is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human mind once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,[1]wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago. The hypothesis is generally not accepted by mainstream psychologists." The argument is that originally humans heard orders in their heads and just followed them as if they were directions from the gods - we had no consciousness. It theorizes that we still talked, grieved, celebrated etc however it was not consciously. It gets too out there for me when it uses the old testament as an example of this "Bicameral Mind" still in effect and that the authors of the old testament still had no consciousness. The writing style of the old testament is very strange I admit, it has no emotion, no internal thought, no suffering, god was more like Zeus, the forces of natures etc, constantly people act on visions of god and everyone else believes every vision. He uses this quote about an ancient war where he claims the Romans had developed consciousness and they claimed to fight "Noble Automatas" - people who still operated under the Bicameral Mind and not sentience. He suggests mass population increase and the joining of groups of people all worshiping different gods was the catalyst for sentience. He claims a schizophrenic or religious person having a genuine vision of the divine to be the last remains of the Bicameral Mind. India definitely has the strange deities reputation and that would be another example of the Bicameral Mind. The theory is out there, but looking into it many people have been using his Bicameral Mind theory to come up with less out there theories. It seems to give examples of the ego and the observer, but then the pure awareness is still not explained. I was loving the theory until the time frame of only 3000 years or so ago we actually developed consciousness. It does explain a hell of a lot about the thousands upon thousands of gods and why every ancient structure serves no real practical purpose other than worship.

We need time to comprehend the human experience. Time is only possible with sentience I believe, can an animal experience pain or pleasure and understand that it will pass? Or is it 100% a slave to its instincts? Humans can understand a stimulus will last only a certain amount of time, prepare for future events in a methodical way and not by instinct. Is time purely devised by human minds? In particular the human ego?

“You are not a thing that is sentient. You are not an object that is aware. You are not a sentient being. You are sentience itself.” - Thomas Razzeto https://infinitelymystical.com

Why we make a distinction between Awareness and consciousness The above post talks about my essay “The Loving Heart of Enlightenment.” In that essay, I talk about awareness a lot. I talk about how there is only One Awareness and how it spontaneously emanates as the totality of created reality. This is why my mentor, Timothy Conway, and I refer to this awareness as Source-Awareness. But in that particular essay, I never used the word “consciousness.” This is only because I did not want to go into the difference between the two in that particular essay. But I later clarified this subject in a comment I posted in a thread titled: Why we make a distinction between Awareness and consciousness Here is an overview of my comment: Awareness is the power of sentience, the capacity to perceive. Consciousness is the window through which the One Awareness looks. This Awareness is what you truly are, fundamentally. This Awareness perceives, but it cannot be perceived. Just as a window cannot see anything, consciousness is also completely blind; it is not sentient in any way. Yet consciousness serves as an instrument (a viewpoint) for the One Awareness (or God, if you are comfortable with that word). Your personal consciousness (soul) permeates your body and this combination provides a viewpoint through which the One Awareness experiences the world as the person you seem to be. The full comment is here: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/14555-difference-between-awareness-and-consciousness/#comment-149233

@Heart of Space Hi Heart of Space, I am glad you are comfortable with both your mind and your intuition. The skillful use of the mind is very helpful. As false ideas are removed from your belief system and true ideas are integrated into it, your intuition will grow deeper. As your intuition deepens, your cognitive understanding becomes even clearer. And of course this continues, round and round. They are like two hands, each hand washing the other. This is very beautiful and quite profound. This is what I mean in my essay, “The Loving Heart of Enlightenment,” when I say that “these concepts are transformed into a living truth that burns within your soul.” But many people block this process by making the mind the enemy. I have literally heard people proclaim in front of a large group that "the mind is the enemy." Hmm. I don’t think God created you with a built-in enemy. And yet it still is important to use the mind skillfully and not let it run your life all by itself. Use everything; use your mind, use your intuition and use your heart. When you drive your car, you use the steering wheel, the throttle and the brakes. You can't drive very well with just one of those controls. When the personal consciousness (soul) has a purified mind coupled with the deep Intuitive recognition that each and every person is fully divine in both their form and their essence, the loving heart of enlightenment bursts open. This provides the strongest motivation for kindness and compassion. Any selfish or self-centered desires or tendencies are washed away. This will take some time (maybe lifetimes) but when it is complete, the personal consciousness (soul) will be completely free, completely liberated, and this is the second aspect of enlightenment. The first aspect of enlightenment is being fully awake to the correct understanding of your True Self as this One Divine Source-Awareness, the One Self that arises as all apparent selves. This also takes time to deepen, again, maybe lifetimes. You see how these two aspects work together. This is a very simple wisdom. Yet it is so much different from how things initially look. For example, the conventional understanding is that the biochemistry of the body and brain lead to the “emergent property” of what the scientists usually call “consciousness.” This word “consciousness” usually means (for the scientists) the ability to perceive the environment around the body and the ability to think logically, remember things and so forth. And that is a fine definition. We all know what they are talking about. But that is really the combination of what I call pure Awareness and your personal consciousness when the personal consciousness is permeating the physical body. OOBEs are just one way to clearly recognize that your power of sentience does not arise from the body at all. And yet, after experiencing an OOBE many people get stuck thinking that they are fundamentally their soul. But that is okay. Eventually they will move into the full understanding that they exist fundamentally as pure Awareness. Anyway, I hope this helps a bit. - Thomas Razzeto

@AleksM @Heart of Space [All of this is just my opinion and I celebrate the fact that everyOne gets to choose what they want to believe and how they want to live their life. Hooray for that!] Why we make a distinction between Awareness and consciousness Overview: Awareness is the power of sentience, the capacity to perceive. Consciousness is the window through which the One Awareness looks. This Awareness is what you truly are, fundamentally. This Awareness perceives, but it cannot be perceived. Just as a window cannot see anything, consciousness is also completely blind; it is not sentient in any way. Yet consciousness serves as an instrument (a viewpoint) for the One Awareness (or God, if you are comfortable with that word). Your personal consciousness (soul) permeates your body and this combination provides a viewpoint through which the One Awareness experiences the world as the person you seem to be. More expanded explanation: In my essay “The Loving Heart of Enlightenment,” I talk about awareness a lot. I talk about how there is only One Awareness and how it spontaneously emanates as the totality of created reality. This is why my mentor, Timothy Conway, and I refer to this awareness as Source-Awareness. But in that particular essay, I never used the word “consciousness” and I will now clarify why I make a distinction between the two. (I did not use the word “consciousness” in that essay simply because I did not want to go into the difference between the two in that essay.) Timothy taught me to make this distinction but we also find this distinction in the ancient texts. For example, in the Hindu tradition, we have Shiva (pure, formless Awareness) and Shakti (universal consciousness, which is the first “thing” that arises from pure Awareness via the process of creation). From this universal consciousness (also called the Word, the Logos, the primordial seed vibration and so forth), flows the rest of creation. So all of creation is made of consciousness, so to speak, and all of creation is rooted (or sourced) in pure, formless, unchanging Source-Awareness. Source-Awareness is what you are in the most fundamental way, and yet you are also the totality of created reality in a profound and yet nonfundamental way. In other words, God is arising as everyOne a lot like an actor arises as a (nonessential or nonfundamental) character. And finally, you have a functional identity as the person you appear to be. All of this is fully divine and seeing everyOne as a unique manifestation of God is what opens up the loving heart of enlightenment. Within creation we have what Timothy calls “personal consciousnesses” or souls. The ancient texts use the word “jiva” to point to this. Timothy also uses the word “viewpoint” and these four terms are synonymous. I sometimes us the word “window.” Each person has a personal body and a personal consciousness – a body and a soul. During your normal waking state, your personal consciousness permeates your body and together these provide a dynamic perspective through which the One Awareness (your True Self) experiences the life of the person we think of as “you.” During a nighttime dream, your personal consciousness permeates your dream body (not your physical body) and together these provide a perspective through which the One Awareness (your True Self) experiences the dream events and the dream objects. [The following is from my essay, What Is Enlightenment?] Imagine you are the One Awareness and that you are in a room with many windows. When you look out into the world through one of these windows, you see a certain view. In this way, you have all the experiences of one particular person. You see what they see, feel what they feel, think what they think, remember what they remember, dream what they dream and so forth. When you look through a different window, you have all the experiences of another person. But you are still the same Awareness; this has not changed in any way. If you experienced all of these perceptions altogether through one big window, it would be just a huge jumble of color, noise and so forth. Our individuated personal consciousnesses or windows are what allow the One Awareness to have all the experiences of billions of different people without it being one big, messy overlay. This is how the One becomes the many. By the way, drugs and alcohol affect the body and the brain but not the Awareness. If someone is drunk, this window becomes unclear or distorted but the Awareness still has perfect 20/20 vision, so to speak. So while this Awareness is not affected at all, the overall experience is much different. Although your personal consciousness (your soul) does not depend upon your body in any way, it uses the body to create that razor sharp feeling of being present in our physical world as a human being with a physical body. It feels like your body is an integral part of you because your personal consciousness permeates your body. Imagine a driver not only getting into a car but also infusing himself or herself into every single atom of the car. When you add to this the One Awareness looking out through the combined viewpoint of the body and soul, you get the extremely vivid experience that tricks you into falsely believing that you are a separate, mortal, sentient, physical being. You certainly do not appear to be divine in any way. [End of excerpt] Again, you exist fundamental as the One Awareness, this open capacity for experience. In the deepest way, this what you intuitively know yourself to be. And yet paradoxically, you also have a functional identity as the person you seem to be. Quite amazing. Thanks for reading this long post. Here are the links to those two essays I mentioned: The Loving Heart of Enlightenment A summary overview of spiritual awakening in simple, clear English https://infinitelymystical.com/essays/the-loving-heart-of-enlightenment.html 3 pages What Is Enlightenment? https://infinitelymystical.com/essays/what-is-enlightenment.html 8 pages In truth, I honor your divine nature, Thomas Razzeto https://infinitelymystical.com

@Serotoninluv Well, I get what you are saying. And yet I prefer to make the point that the idea that the illusion points to is simply a false idea. The illusion is real and yet the idea it points to is false. The mirage exists as a mirage. Otherwise we could not see it. So it is a real mirage just like a dream is real as a dream (otherwise we could not see the dream). But of course the mirage appears to be something that it is not. One dictionary I checked offered this definition of an illusion: a misleading image. Some illusions are persistent. A mirage in the desert might disappear after a period of time due to changing temperature and other conditions but it will not disappear just because we recognize that it is a mirage, although when it disappears, we will certainly recognize that it was a mirage. (By the way, I like to use the word "recognize" rather than "become aware of" but that is strictly because I reserve the word "awareness" to point to the power of sentience. No biggie, though.) One analogy that I use is this: the sun appears to move across the sky. Even after you recognize the truth of the situation, this persistent illusions will still seem to point to the idea that the sun is moving across the sky. The sun is certainly not going to stop in the sky just because you have a new understanding! It is the spinning of the earth that creates the apparent motion of the sun across the sky. The illusion of the personal "self" is also persistent. It is what I like to call the person but it could be called the false "self." I also call it the functional identity because that is what it seems to be and this is very useful. I am a very practical guy. Anyway, when you recognize the truth of the person, it will still seem like it is who you are fundamentally. That is an experience. But this experience will soften a bit. Yet it won't disappear completely. It will always remain to some extent because it is useful. It provides functionality - functionality in the hands of God. I like the metaphor of the actor and the character. God is the invisible actor who is arising as each and every visible character (person). The character (person) is not fundamentally who the Actor really is since the role of the character can be dropped. But still, the Actor is the character (person) in a nonfundamental (nonessential) way. The actor arises as the character through the process of pretending. God arises as all of creation and everyOne in it through the mystery of the miracle of creation. This will never be fully explained but it can be described to some extent. This wisdom is just a sliver of a description, it is not an explanation. The questions of why and how will be largely unaddressed. Yet you can spend some time with these ideas, these slivers of a description. They are not hard to understand but they are very different from the way we normally think. That is one reason it takes a while for this to click. - Thomas Razzeto

@Serotoninluv You touched on a point that I am going to be a little picky about: (paraphrase) you said that if something is an illusion and doesn't exist, then why do we (etc). The correct definition of an illusion is something that exists in a deceptive way. I go into this (and much more) in the following recent post. The comments about correctly understanding what is meant by the word "illusion" is right in the beginning of the post: Now let's get to the main point you make about using "I," and "you" and so forth. I think it is perfectly fine to speak conventionally most of the time. For example, if you want to know if someone went to the beach (or whatever), just ask with conventional pronouns. Now, when it comes to what you truly are (fundamentally), well, by that I mean pure awareness, the power of sentience. This is the One Divine Awareness and "it" is the Source of everything. This is why my mentor, Timothy Conway, and I call it Source-Awareness. (Very few people in the so called nondual community use this definition, but that is a different and long conversation. Ha, I think it is very, very, very few people that use the phrase Source-Awareness but I really like it since it reveals the two capacities of this transcendent Reality. I go into that in many essays but especially the one titled The Loving Heart of Enlightenment.) Once you get the hang of it, you can easily tell from the context what is meant by the pronouns. Does a sentence make sense with the conventional understand? Yes? Then use the conventional understanding. So if you ask someone if they went to the beach today and they reply that they are the unborn formless Source-Awareness and can go nowhere, well, that is true in the larger sense but it is a dysfunctional reply since it does not address what was really being asked. I touch on the value of being able to use these pronouns and still hold the nondual perspective in the following essay, which I first wrote about two years ago but recently rewrote. Note the part where I talk about the sentence "I love you." Here is the link: Why Do We Call It Nondual Wisdom? https://infinitelymystical.com/essays/nonduality.html 4 pages You might find that essay helpful. All my best. In truth, I honor your divine essence. - Thomas Razzeto

[All of this is just my opinion and I celebrate the fact that everyOne gets to choose what they want to believe and how they want to live their life. Hooray for that!] Hi everyOne, I am a spiritual teacher and would like to offer the following 3-page essay from my website for your consideration. Here is the link: The Loving Heart of Enlightenment Spiritual awakening in simple, clear English https://www.infinitelymystical.com/essays/the-loving-heart-of-enlightenment.html 3-pages Here are some excerpts from that essay: I use this word “awareness” a lot so I want to be clear right up front. I am not using it in any special way. It just means the power of sentience. Yet I use the phrase “pure awareness” to emphasize the idea that this awareness is not a thing. You are not a thing that is sentient. You are not an object that is aware. You are not a sentient being. You are sentience itself. […] The recognition that you exist fundamentally as pure awareness comes about through a spiritual intuitive awakening. And to be more precise, there are three key awakenings regarding this awareness. […] The first awakening is the one that I’ve already touched upon several times: “Ah, I am not fundamentally my body, and I am not even fundamentally my soul. Instead, I am fundamentally pure awareness!” That’s the first awakening. The second awakening is this: “Ah, the awareness that’s looking out of my eyes is the same awareness that’s looking out of your eyes … and his eyes … and her eyes … and the eyes of every sentient being on all the worlds, both physical and spiritual. There is only one awareness.” […] Now, here’s the third awakening. This awareness arises as each and every thing that it is aware of. What we are talking about here is God and creation – Awareness (God) and the objects of awareness (creation). It is very simple. […] In form, we are many; in essence, we are one. In this, we see that it is only through the many that we can share the One Love of God. When you look into the eyes of another, you are looking directly into the eyes of God. It is God who plants a seed in your soul that grows into the loving heart of enlightenment. - end of excerpts - Thanks for reading this post. In truth, I honor your divine nature Thomas Razzeto https://www.infinitelymystical.com/

Hehehe... the notion of "a reality" is a cultural bias. Not to mention: time, space, science, math, self, other, life, sentience, death, mind, brain, language, money, society, country, race, age, pain, good, bad, up, down, and intelligence. You're grossly underestimating how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Ekhart Tolle sought till the brink of suicide. So that should give you a good idea of how much effort this process demands. I'm not here to be ideological. What I say, I say for pragmatic purposes, to guide people, anticipating common traps. The most dangerous idea they can get is that they will reach enlightenment by continuing their lazy, unconscious way of life, hoping to mirror Ekhart Tolle's 1 in a billion instant enlightenment. That is a totally invalid strategy. Not based on my ideology, but based on simple common sense pragmatics. Seeking tends to auto-correct. Non-seeking rarely does. As evidenced by 7 billion non-seeking, unenlightened people. This is not about Leo. This is simply about laying out the raw facts of the spiritual path and what it takes to get shit done. The overwhelming problem is that people fail to get it done. If 90% of people were getting it done, I wouldn't be writing so forcefully. The reality is that less than 1% will get it done. Don't worry about me, I will get it done. My cause isn't just to get myself enlightened. I have bigger plans. If you feel that's egotisical, well... that's your projection. I know my cause and what the universe wants me to do. I'm not gonna wait for my own enlightenment to help others. You have to understand that everything you know, absolutely everything, including physical space, is a mental construction. You have to appreciate how brutally significant this is. It means that the distinction you make between physical/non-physical, real/unreal is a construction! Which means -- when you realize this -- that you will physically die! Enlightenment is equivalent to physical death from the ego's point of view. Not just psychological death, but physical death. Because you will cease to exist as a physical object. Because you will realize that physical objects are illusions. This is why it's so difficult. Everything you think of as solid physical reality will unravel like a cheap sweater, and so will your physical body and brain. The body, the brain, the mind, you, other people, life, sentience, language, physics, chemistry, history, morality, mathematics -- all of these things are totally unreal. This is a very radical thing we're talking about. It's nothing short of annihilating reality. To complete this enlightenment processes fully means the body will remain, but you will be dead inside. Because there will no longer be an inside! The idea of "an inside" will die. It never existed in the first place. You merely assumed it. And as you should know by now, assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. Don't worry too much about it though, your death is the most beautiful thing that could possibly happen. P.S. Did you really think you could become immortal without dying? This enlightenment thing is good, but it's not THAT good. You gotta pay the ultimate price. Your head has to go on the chopping-block. Yes, it boosts self-inquiry enormously, as I have said many times. I use exactly the technique as I say in the video. Don't make it complicated. It's a very simple technique. You just have to discipline yourself to do it. And it's not even that difficult to start.

JUNE 1, 2017 - Thursday *sigh* Defense got moved to Monday. And I got so worked up and sleep deprived last night. Oh well, at least I got some stuff I wanted to do done today. Not all of it but still good work. I was mostly busy on college work today. Here's the stuff I got done and also stuff I wasn't able to do: Spent about an hour coding my game project. The session could have been more efficient but I got good work done. Didn't draw the Land/Ground part of my game's World Map like I mentioned yesterday. I just didn't feel like I wanted to. Instead, I decided I was gonna do some sketching practice instead. Check it, drew a couple of perspective-based practice drawings: Credit for the idea goes to Barrington Barber with his book, "The Fundamentals of Drawing" Did not spend the time to watch the videos I mentioned in my goals yesterday. Hopefully I can by tomorrow. Didn't spend any time to read. Sucks. What to do, oh, what to do for tomorrow? Spend more time coding my game, obviously. One hour minimum Watch the video I missed for today Read, gotta goddamn read. Do the drawing that I originally wanted for today. What a busy day, I have this gut feeling that tomorrow, smartphones will gain sentience and take over the world! (actually, they may already have done so. what with the mass distraction and what not.)

Yea admittedly when I was typing this it seemed that it had more to do with sentience than consciousness. I could be wrong but I think if technology is to become conciouss, it would have to be sentient and therefore achieving sentient AI would be a relatively major milestone on the road to creating AI consciousness if it's possible.

@Rocky What you're talking about is sentience, not consciousness.

The distinction between Self & other arise together. When you make the distinction of yourself, you are already Creating the distinction of other. Do you notice that? When you were young the distinction of you as a separate entity was created, and from that other as a separate entity was created also. See? Do you ever notice that the conceptual image of "you" arises more often around "others" There is a particular feeling that you get around others, something that indicates there is another entity that has sentience here. When you are walking down a road by yourself and then you suddenly see another person, the vibe of the moment changes doesn't it. This relationship that you have with other is created by thought and feeling. And is illusory. It is something you can only become directly conscious of. The whole social world that you live in pretty much 24/7 is all created by conceptual add ons over what's really occurring. For example when you are talking on this forum, in your experience you are not merely writing words on a screen. You are talking to other people. A whole community. But can you notice that this isn't really the case, this apparent whole social community is only thought, is only a concept layered over words and profile pictures. That might be difficult for some of you to understand for the moment. Do you notice that when you are around other people, what's really there is a animation, of somebody, with shape and colour ect. But we perceive through us as a self concept and image first and that self then interprets others self concept and image. Tricky stuff. you baffled yet? Let me try to explain further. If there was no thought there would be no sense of self or other, there would only be what is. See? The reason it can be so hard to get away from the sense of self you have is because there is a constant stream of thoughts showing you different right? Showing you that you do exist. But if its appearing for you, its not you. You don't have to silence the mind, its the belief in the mind that obscures you from seeing your true nature. if the image of you comes & goes, it can't be what you are. When you are watching TV you may forget about yourself and image and yet you don't disappear! hmm interesting All this stuff might not make sense at all right now, but that's the nature of this work. Its not like finding a answer and concluding from that. This stuff takes serious investigation. Peace.

Mindfulness: the Watcher state. Awareness: where your sentience is focused. Consciousness: the state and expanse of the mind. Yeah, that probably doesn't help without practice. ?

No, but perhaps they could become sentient if the mechanics of the design were correct. You probably wouldn't think of a virus as sentient, but you (mankind) supposedly evolved from something like a virus. It's not fair to compare 100 years of computer evolution with 2 billion years of human evolution. My current theory is that given that everything is one substance -- consciousness -- this one substance, if enfolded in on itself in the right ways, will create sentience. The question then would be, what is the correct type of enfoldment? One enfoldment creates a rock, another enfoldment creates a virus, another enfoldment creates a tree, another enfoldement creates a human baby, another enfoldment creates Skynet, another enfoldment creates a demigod, etc.

Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean a computer cannot develop sentience just as biological machines (humans) have. Don't create it artificially. Create it genuinely

All I see is circles!... Is it normal that all I can see now is circles? I feel the wind, I think of the hot and cold air streams making their circle around earth... I see the water, I think of the circle of water becoming steam and clouds and rain... I see the soil, I think of the soil becoming plants and the plants being food, becoming us or crap or a dead body and then soil again... I see the energy going along with the circles, making its own... I see sentience and life making one... It´s causality that goes along with humanitys fate and the more causality I see, the more I see how I influence that. Even though I am so small and just one person. You know... It´s not just that I am facing the questions of who and more fundamentally what I am but also what I want to be. And I know that we humans are creators. I´ve come to the point that I understood that what I have to create is not something outside of me but something inside me. Without saying that creating anything else is wrong but that within is the real deal. I remember at school there was this girl who had really artistically painted nails and I said: Some people like to make art and others like to make art of themselves. Here I am years later having stopped being addicted to HAVING things like most, but becoming, BEING things instead. When you ARE, when you embody something you can share that with people, rather effortlessly by interacting with them and that will make its circle like everything else. Only problem here is that the process of becoming something is harder than the process of getting to have. I have a fascination with ammonoids, in fact I have a necklace with one which my uncle bought me at a dinosaur exhibition, it broke some years ago but I still keep it. It´s an extinct group of marine animals. Ammonoids lived before 415 million years for around 350 million years and died out 65 million years ago. I find these fascinating numbers but much more fascinating is the fact that my brothers first word was "Stein" which means stone. NO I AM KIDDING, just testing your attention... What is fascinating about fossilization is that it is a breaking of a circle. (Even though the possibility that the last thing my bro saw in his last life was a stone is too ).The biological and chemical properties changed. A once living thing literarly turned to f****** stone! Nothing remained but... Minerals. Of course if we pulverize the stone and add it to the soil it´s all back in the circle but I want to stress here that with enough time and under the right conditions crazy things can happen. Millions of years are millions of years but a human lifespan... Is a human lifespan. We might not be able to turn to stone (and I guess I consider that a good thing?) but we should be able to change a couple of neuronal... Circles... Circiuts... Hff... You get the point.

Logic doesn't tump emotion with regard to transcending/dissolving the ego. Emotion is real and tangible and logic is abstract and idea-based. The thoughts are real, but what you're thinking about is not that important, unless it distracts you from actual reality. So, ignoring/repressing emotional awareness is a resistance to reality as it is. Many people who seek enlightenment begin valuing an intellectual understanding of Truth as opposed to their subjective experience of reality (which includes emotions), and this always results in simply spiritual bypassing. There is a great quote from Marion Woodman that describes what happens, "Spirit without matter is a ghost, matter without spirit is a corpse." Both, are dead. I believe what you think I'm doing is advocating matter without spirit/intellect, this is not the case. So, you're leaning more toward spirit without regard to matter, and valuing the intellect/logic more than what's real. That is a mistake to think it will yield you results toward enlightenment. Plus, what would be the point in reaching enlightenment if it didn't have some positive emotional payoff? There is no escaping the fact that emotions are what motivates you. Either you want to feel good about yourself because you reached some special spiritual state. Or you want to feel the clarity, wisdom, and fulfillment that comes from the transcendence/dissolution of ego. Or you want to get away from the suffering that comes from identification with ego. Or you seek simply because it feels good to seek. There is no pursuing anything without an emotional motivator... to gloss over this fact will create so many blindspots. You will fail to understand yourself at every turn, if you don't understand this fact of sentience: emotions motivate. Also, we will never not be animals. So, we must live as an animal. We cannot take the animal out of ourselves. It is not as though, in transcending the ego, we cease to be animals. So, it's important to accept this fact of reality. We have a body and our body makes us an animal. The problem is to balk at and resist our animalistic nature while holding up our higher/spiritual nature as the more desirable part of our reality. This aspect is incredibly important, of course. It's like a tree. The higher nature is where the fruit grows and the higher the branches grow the more fruit that can grow from the tree. But our animal nature is the roots of the tree and all the dirty dirt that surrounds it. If we believe we can somehow uproot the tree to make it grow higher, this is a mistake. The deeper you are aware of your animal (emotional) nature, the more you can expand your higher nature, the more fruits that will grow.

this is what i've sort of always believed. which has been the reason why i don't like the word God because i assume sentience or intelligence when i hear that word. i also don't like calling it a "he" because i just assume it would be of more of a being essence so it'd be feminine. That and i also just like the term "Mother Infinity"

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject I'm choosing to call Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence. The idea is that there is an intelligence permeating all reality. I'm talking about a kind of highest supreme intelligence that has its own volition, creative ability and responsiveness. This is how I choose to interpret this intelligence, your view may differ: The intelligence would be the summation of at least all the information available aka all creation, and possibly even the summation of all infinite potential. It is the natural spontaneous collective creativity that is the result of its own propensity or whim to exist at all. I am not talking about intelligence in an abstract sense, like we might sometimes vaguely refer to as the wisdom of stillness. I'm talking about real, impacting, dynamic intelligence. If we could use the metaphor of a garden, then we can see that plants have their own sentience and their own kind of intelligence. We could also argue that their intelligence is dynamic as they have their own form of decision space, albeit limited (how to respond to certain stimuli). This intelligence and volition has its effect on how the garden looks. One step higher is the gardener. He is a higher level of dynamic sentient intelligence and really designs the garden. The higher the level of dynamic sentient intelligence, the more creativity and wider decision space, and therefore greatest ability for further creation. So take your mind up many, many levels, to the highest level of intelligence available given your understanding of reality. Those who follow a more empirical mindset may say they have no reason to believe that they have experienced any level of dynamic sentient intelligence higher than that of their own, and that beyond personalized consciousness, the world seems to be a mechanistic runoff biding its time. Others believe that the Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence is governing all aspects of creation in a very calculated, precise and effective way, and that this intelligence is accessible, either as a source of power to be petitioned, or as an extension of oneself: ones birthright. So I'd like to hear what perspectives you subscribe to: Do you believe there to be a dynamic intelligence beyond yourself, permeating all of reality, or perhaps at least your physical reality? Why/Why not? Do you believe this dynamic intelligence has an aim, a goal, a volition? Why/Why not? Can this dynamic intelligence be accessed? If so, how can one leverage this dynamic force for their own journey? Thanks for reading. EDIT: In timely fashion, from the thread Hypnotized by Infinity, Leo offers an interesting alternative perspective that I think should be perfectly stimulating for this thread. Leo's proposal here initially creates resistance inside myself, which indicates it's probably a direction I should start to face. Honestly, intuitively it seems to make more sense that this kind of 'indiscriminate - brute-force-of-love' would be its nature, and looking at Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence as the 'commander in chief' perspective feels naive. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. I just don't know. Here's some music to play while you think.