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On one hand I say I'm a believer in nonduality and have had some direct experience of oneness through meditation and the use of psychedelics. I'm certainly not an enlightened being, but I deliberately work at evolving my state of consciousness on a regular basis. I notice that whenever I set a goal, I immediately feel the lack of having that thing that I want. I can see that this is rooted in dualistic thinking - for example, I believe that having what I want is better than not having the thing I want. I can see that ultimately, all is one, there's nothing to do, nothing to get, etc. And I sometimes toy with the idea of saying well, no big deal, I'll just live life on this earth and do what I love be of service, whatever. But my brain argues with this. It wants to set a goal, plan to achieve it, and go out there and get it - and I really definitely DO see that it's possible to set/plan/action toward a goal without thinking that it's better once I achieve it. However, this is not the default setting I exist on. For example. I purchased an investment property with four units in it. I need to get four tenants in it. I currently only have one. I'm very attached to the outcome of my goal (ie: having four tenants), because when I have four tenants I will make profit, and when I have one tenant I will lose money every month. This makes me feel anxious and all graspy trying to "fix" the situation. I can see my belief is that making profit is good, and losing money is bad. And, as a result, I'm turning my human experience into a ball of anxiety. Can someone help me look at my situation differently? Of course I want to do all I can to make profit. I don't think that's truly the issue. I don't think desires are "bad". But I don't know how to detach from the outcome. Am I supposed to see that losing money is fine? If losing money is fine, where does the motivation to make profit to come from? I can see the fallacious belief under there that "motivation to make profit comes from anxiety about losing money", and I know intellectually that's not true, but it's currently how I'm living, and it's what I've done my whole life. I'm kind of stuck in this pattern in many areas of my life, but this is a simple obvious example. If anyone can help me tease this apart I would be forever grateful!

Books that had the biggest influence on me & why: Viktor Frankl - Man's serach for meaning - Incredible story about finding meaning in difficult situations, just an awesome read in general The art of loving - Erich Fromm - Beautiful short book about learning to love Nassim Taleb - Antifragility - Understanding complex systems & antifragility, which are fundamental concepts in any integral worldview Your Unique self - Marc Gafni - Understanding the role of individuality in a nondual world More than allegory - Bernardo Kastrup - Chapter 3 is the most insane and interesting trip report I have ever read Bernardo Kastrup - All his books! - Best rational arguments for idealism(nonduality)/against physicalism available right now The war of art - Steven Pressfield - Overcoming resistance Passion of the western mind - Richard Tarnas - Intellectual-cultural development of the modern world view - super important to understand why we think what we think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig - One of my alltime favorite books Siddharta - Herman Hesse - Beautiful little story about finding his own path to enlightenment Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas R. Hofstadter - Difficult to get through masterpiece about reality as a strange loop. Meditations on Moloch: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch - Must read blog post about the functionalities of society Bhagavad Gita - I dont think I need to explain this one Tao Te Ching - Lao tze (Laotsi) - Ancient book, full of wisdom! Difficult to understand without explanations The master and his emissary - Ian McGilchrist - Masterpiece about how left/right brain dynamics shape our worldview Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century - Edward Kelly - The best, no bullshit summary of psy/parapsychology/mind-research I have read so far. Its a huge book and super expensive. I got the PDF - if you want it, just PM me. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Grat book for money/happyness mindset Osho - Courage - little book about courage and fear, really enjoyed it! Kapil Gupta - Direct Truth: Uncompromising, non-prescriptive Truths to the enduring questions of life - Interesting book about all sorts of stuff, really apprechiate his perspective Ending medical reversal - Dr Vinay Prasad - If you are working in the medical field, this one is a must read in my opinion. Ken Wilber - A brief history of everyhting - Integral worldview must read Ken Wilber - Kosmic conciousness (audiobook) - Incredibly deep and enjoyable interview with Ken Wilber. Available on audible! Why most published reserach is wrong - John Ionnidis: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 - Ground breaking paper about certain biases in the academic literature After - Dr. Bruce Geryson - Awesome, no bullshit summary of NDE reserach Daniel Kaneman - Thinking fast and slow - Super important framework for improvement in sensemaking Helgoland - Carlo Rovelli - Enjoyable beginner level book to quantum mechanics and the propably most substantiated interpretation we have of it: Quantum loop gravity! Its the one theory that fits like a glove with spiritual insights and is therefore an awesome framework to understand QM in a non-BS way. Models - Mark Manson - IMO the most important book you can read to get good with women Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda - Classic one! - bit weird and magical, but I really enjoyed it! Breath - James Nestor - Really cool and important book about the importance of proper breathing The Art of learning - Josh Waitzkin - Amazing book about someone who goes into into the nature of learning and backs it up with real results! Just to name a few

John Cena has been low key teaching nonduality in wrestle mania, shining as the invisible light of awareness Your time is up, my time is now You can't see me, my time is now Its the franchise, Boy, I'm shining now You can't see me, my time is now

In order to find out for yourself, there first has to be the faith that absolute knowledge is possible. Faith in the practices. Faith (really, trust) of this sort eventually transcends itself. And the culmination of absolute knowledge is not a dualistic knowing. Any ideas about nonduality are false. Only the direct lived-reality will do, and it's the absence of doubt or belief -- i.e. faith. I can tell which faith you're talking about, and I agree with you, but that's not the faith I'm talking about.

Hey guys, I wanted to let you know that I feel a dozen times better than ever. I dont know what it is that guides, it's essentially just choosing thoughts that feel good to me. I dont have to focus on bad feeling thoughts. And this is what guides me through everyday with a goddamn smile. With that understanding I can totally be with whatever comes. Seeing that there are not two is absolutely liberating. Because it is just the most verifiable "thing" in direct experience. Srsly this is the song Im jamming all day long at the moment. Just fits perfectly (of course it doesnt imply nonduality directly)? https://youtu.be/jUjDcqdvCrk?t=1m01s

I'm happy because I actually follow Nonduality as my contextualization of reality. There is nothing else but this, and this is perfect.

What was the first thing you heard or stuck that brought you to this topic of nonduality? Mine: After 12 years of analytically studying everything I could to get some sort of evidence that would lead me to know the bible is true without a doubt, I couldn't find any. In fact, it lead me away from it. I then did my own study of comparative religion and realized that they all seemed to have the same origin in one way or another. I then stumbled on this Youtube video (forgot the channel) that gave me the "aha" moment I needed to know their was a god, and it was something like this: If no thing in reality existed, the truth would be that no thing in reality existed. Therefore, the truth would always exist. The eternal, impermanent, inescapable Truth. Truth surrounds reality. I didn't quite understand (and still don't) but also knew at this moment that Truth was inescapable, meaning whatever "God" was it was Truth. About a month later I found nondualism and while getting an understanding of that I found Leo's very helpful channel. Though on this path for roughly two years, I've no awakening or direct realization and everything is still on an intellectual level. I do know that the ever changing Truth can never not exist, which I thought at the time was close to my life goal...nope, now the goal is to awaken from this ego and directly experience it. Anyways, what was your "aha" moment that made you realize life isn't just a body followed by cessation.

Media Consumption Analysis: Self Development Channels Earlier in 2021 I decided to take a break from self help content and I think it has paid off a lot. I developed a healthier relationship with self help, was able to branch out more in my interests, and not get into this cycle of constantly fixing things about myself. I think it also helped me develop relationships with people because I feel like often times when you get so caught up in self help, there is a part that can sometimes consciously or subconsciously develop that is like *I'm so developed, I'm more developed than most of the people here, it's lonely at the top* or that is like *look at all of the unconscious masses, they are so superficial.* And yes, while it is true that odds are you are more aware than some people and that there are indeed superficial people out there, there are also plenty of people who are interested in growing as people and having good conversations about what is going on in their lives even if they aren't immersed in self help or spirituality. And sometimes, you need to just give yourself some distance from the self help/ spirituality content and let yourself just be a person. A lot of Ana Psychology's content coincides with her research and studies as a psychology doctoral candidate. I really appreciate how she breaks down multiple studies and adds nuance to common presumptions especially in things like dating so there aren't a bunch of hard and fast rules and so that the audience goes out to handle each situation as it's own rather than applying wide sweeping generalizations. I feel like I don't have to expand on HealthyGamerGG's content but yeah I really enjoy Dr. K's content. I found that Dani Foxx's content was crucial for me to get out of the spiritual ego I built for myself and heal/grow in a more sustainable pace. As for Actualized.org and Teal Swan, I have to admit that during this year I didn't delve into their content like I usually do. I did this intentionally because I needed to develop a healthier relationship with self development. I think this space helped me realize how the channels were and weren't serving me. I find myself in a gap in the content, especially when it comes to Leo's content, because it's like conceptually and from a self development point of view, I find myself already have integrated (I'm using the term integrated pretty loosely here to mean I have a good grasp on the theory and can apply it to a certain extent) a lot of the things he and Teal Swan talks about and much of it feels repetitive. That's not so say that Leo's content or Teal Swan's is repetitive rather it's to say that a lot of the concepts do overlap on one another and intersect other topics. But then there is this gap that forms where there is a large chunk of the content that feels repetitive and like I've already integrated it while there is a sizeable chunk of the content that I don't find myself anywhere near ready to integrate. This mainly has to do with Leo but personally, I'm not ready for a lot of the lessons on nonduality and psychedelics and I don't think I'm in a healthy enough place to implement those teachings in a healthy way instead of misinterpreting them. Like I've been saying, it's important to pace yourself on this journey.

Computer & banana are thoughts which appear and are believed quickly, and it seems like there are separate things, and thus it seems like you are a separate thing which was born and will die. Thought activity (and therein believing thoughts) slows down meditatively. Analogously, there are no computers and bananas in a dream. There is nothing ‘in’ a dream. One can not think enough to see reality as it is, as it is the activity of thinking which veils. The thoughts are dream too. Nonduality has no meaning in the sense the word doesn’t label or define anything, only points to what “it” is not.

@Tim R put it really well. As a scientist myself, let me tell you some words of caution: Doing actual science is extremely difficult, boring, repetitive, highly statistical and has for the most part nothing to do with the grandiose ideas you put forwards in your post. In fact, any reasearch faculty around the world will laugh at you if you come forward with such propositions. Can you do it without them? Propably not. Even if you could come up with the necessary financial support, your ideas just wont be taken seriously at all. So, either you are going to play after their rules, or you are not going to play at all. Also, what exactly do you want to work on? Science is an extremely broad term - like sports. Also, do you realize that futuristic science/conciousness science already exists? Psi-reaserach has experiments which are methodically immaculate, highly statistically signicant, repeatable ad infinitum - and are still, mostly ignored by the mainstream. Thats the behemoth you are up against. If you really, really want to double down on this (which is a great life purpose by the way) - then you just WONT get around recieving a degree from a decent university in that chosen field. By the way, with degree I mean that your name has to be followed by the suffix "PhD". Without that, no chance. I also wanted to change the medical field after realizing nonduality a couple of years ago. Let me tell you that it took a lot of sweat and blood to get where I am now and it will cost even more to actually change stuff. After years of doing slave-like work, starting in university, I slowly start be taken seriously by peers and financial supporters. I am nowhere near at enough reputition where I could put out ideas and concepts that really could change the medical system for the better. In fact any "woo" I put out now will come back to bite my ass in my later years. Still, the fight is worth it and lets see where it goes!

It can definitely happen. You know how in nonduality meetings, when someone asks how they can get enlightened, the speaker will say: "You'll have to go elsewhere for that." ? Well, in a sense, they're actually not kidding... Though, of course, at the culmination of the process, it will invariably be obvious that there was no process. Some ways to avoid bypassing are 1. self inquiry (and/or viewing yourself as already being fully surrendered to activity) and most importantly, 2. the art of determining exactly what it is that you authentically desire. That's sort of the whole game, in my view.

The self/other or internal/external duality is unfortunately much more than just thought. This is precisely why you can say you already felt to have this intellectual understanding yet had not had the deeper realization of it. Someone can feed themselves thoughts or have them arise spontaneously from having consumed certain spiritual content about the self/other or internal/external divide being illusory, but the thoughts alone actually do very little. What is more fundamental is how perception is occurring in relation to the sensations which are present. Thoughts are in many ways sensations which are more tapped into the mind’s ability to affect meta-shifts in the sensory field though, so they are still very helpful for making useful changes to perception. Almost in all cases, there will be a basis of related intellectual understanding before directly experienced perceptual shifts one might call insight occur. What is most important though is to actually feel the shift in perception which aligns with the intellectual understanding. This is why psychedelics, meditation, and other techniques are so effective at producing insight as they are altering perception and in turn changing the very nature of the sensations which are accessible in one’s experience. When it comes to being sure of one’s own insights, it’s helpful to always remain open to new perspectives and focus on high quality sources of information to temper one’s personal insights. If you know something for 100% certain, this is usually more of a flaw than a sign of a solid understanding IMO as even some of the most time-tested and plausible perspectives around nonduality do not at all deserve 100% certainty. There’s no need to drive yourself crazy over needing to constantly reassess things. Why not fall in love with the exploration process rather than clinging to certainty? Certainty is almost always a clear sign of a bit too much or at times way too much bias.

@WokeBloke There are words, and there is the silence that follows after words. You are that which comes after words that is nonduality, the word "nonduality" being used here is not a word, it is a description of something that can't be described @Mason Riggle &@Vincent S , and everyone else on this forum, including me, and you everyone out of this forum, including your neighbor and a dog walking on the street. The phone you own, the objects that can't see, the bed that you sleep on, and the floor that we walk on, is all nonduality. We human beings label them with words to make sense of things, function, and most importantly, play the game of pretending that it is not all one. But "human beings", is also a label that we have put on ourselves, so we can make sense of the thing that we "think" we are. That is the power of mind, but mind is just a little bitch when it comes to nonduality ?

@Preety_India ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I would sign everything you said. I had a very powerful awakening 7 years ago, it kept going effortlessly for half a year, during and after that I was trying to force nonduality as the only way to view and live life. It did not solve my human issues one bit and I suffered terribly. Only after a year of forcing something that was not natural I quit, finally found a very sensitive psychotherapist with whom I was able to learn over the years how to actually address trauma (and that it was repressed trauma that was the source of my place in life, also suicidal back then). Awakening did not help me on that front. Only now after many years of sensitive human work do I feel safe going back to feeling my true nature as for so long I had it very strongly associated with rejecting the human. The human emotion, the human pain, the rejection, the joy, the sadness, the surprise, ... Now I know they are my deepest friends. I am not to heal them. They heal me. Also, If you don't feel safe in your life, don't use psychedelics. Don't let yourself be swayed by the childish notion that if you're not willing to take them, you're not doing the best you can (yes, Leo can often make it sound that way, please accept that he is not developed equally in every way, he has deep insight into many things and a tendency of saying very unskillful things confidently). It's not worth it, you're much more likely to suffer than to learn something deep. I've made this mistake too many times in my life. Please, I know you are doing your best. You are doing just fine. Please, acknowledge how much you are really asking of yourself, to instantly reorganize billions of neural networks, which served a purpose, their state is not a cosmic mistake, nor do they need to be all untangled instantly. Take your time and rest. It's okay. It's safe. ❤️

Really got into Leo in 2020, did the thing where I basically took everything he said with faith (unconsciously) cause it felt like he was the only one who got me lol. Fast forward a few years, digging deeper into nonduality, some subtle awakening experiences here and there, very active mind trying to conceptualize and model everything out into a way that makes sense. Feel like ive been hitting a wall, everything ive ever assumed and taken on about this thing seems to be utter unknown bullshit that I dont really get. I feel like im at a stage now where my models and ideas cannot get me any further and im just bypassing important aspects of my life. Ive been cracking into philosophy and metaphysics much more and I find it hard to hold all of that aswell as a direct groundless grounding in the absolute unknowability of this thing. Bit of a mind addiction, dont want to put the learning and taking on of things down. Can talk up a whole storm about consciousness is this, the mind is that blah blah, but it all just feels like a distraction from the real thing and im insecure. My mind will have a tendency to get frustrated looking for answers and just default back to materialism even though every ounce of my being knows its gotta be BS. Any tips for breaking out of materialism for good? Really getting this directly without needing to continuously hold it all so tightly? Im tired

Most Christian monks see themselves as just tools or servants of God, probably monks/nuns in other religions are the same. They give up ego, identity, personal desires, but most still aren't enlightened or aware of nonduality. If you can completely give up separation then by definition you'd be in a non-dual state. But easier said than done, you can't just do it intellectually.

Because it fits so good with nonduality teachings ( You are god taking different forms)

Like @Bazooka Jesus pointed out, we seem to get lost and wrapped up in ideas about ourselves existing in time, nonduality is the mind sort of catching up with the logical understanding of what it directly knows are true. I'd suggest reading The Power of Now and seeing if it resonates. It's a great place to start but also isn't nonduality. Have you ever experienced the future outside of a thought about it? How about the past? So all there is is now. It can seem on the surface like a dumb realization but the ramifications of living it totally changes eveeeerything.

Oh nice this went straight to nonduality! Love it

I see a lot of this “all is one” nondualism around these days, like it’s trendy, and I’m puzzled by it. My question is very simple: what's the upshot of nondualism? How does believing that "all is one" change anything about your reality? Monotheists tell us that eternity in heaven/hell are consequences of belief/non-belief in God; what are some consequences of belief/disbelief in “all is one”? I.e., how is this anything other than mental masturbation? (Note that I’m not trying to start a “nonduality war”; I’m genuinely curious and don’t have a position on the matter.)

Nonduality is not about happiness or peace. Nonduality is about Truth. The truth shall set you free, but it wont make you happy. Happiness and peace are emotions experienced by the self. self, happiness and peace only exist within duality. After happiness comes sadness, then happiness comes again. After peace comes war, then peace comes again. The best thing to do is to minimize your suffering, such that any future disturbances to your inner peace are mere scuffles, rather than full blown wars. I recommend studying the 4 nobles truths, eightfold path, and the 3 characteristics of Buddhism in addition to Non-Dualism to help bridge the gap.

@DavyTee Because it's not the concept behind nonduality that can make you at peace. The concept behind nonduality isn't nonduality - or should I rather say, it is nonduality, but you're confusing the concept for nonduality instead of seeing that nonduality is also the concept. What you think nonduality to be, is not nonduality, is what I'm trying to say. Or maybe you just think that. You think that in order to understand nonduality, there's some missing piece you still have to "get". No. Get rid! of the damn puzzle pieces. And when there's no puzzle left, nonduality will be plain. It doesn't!!

This guy is rapidly becoming my favorite spiritual teacher at this moment, precisely because he's not a teacher. He's not using that overly-present long-pause monotone nonduality-teacher voice. He's not sitting in half lotus pose, cloaked in robes, telling anecdotes in front of a crowd and subtly making them feel silly for their human weaknesses. No. He's just very matter-of-fact, telling it how it is. He's been to heaven. He's been to hell. This is why we're here guys. What else you wanna know?? No act is being put on. He's not appealing to any audience, he's not even really trying to convince anyone of anything. He just knows because he's telling this from his own memory. So refreshing.

Existence is synonymous with infinity. Dualistic words, which point to nonduality. There is no nonexistence, like there is no fear. But that is a pointing, and as such is instantly contextualized. The why though, when that is explored, there is actuality. (Also a word which can only point) ‘There’ is only linguistic. You’ve never been there. You’ll never be there. You = here, and as there isn’t a there, there can be no here. Same for past, future and now. But thought makes it seem so.

What is a tulpa, is it it's own being/soul/entity or is it a part of you/ your personality structure - in the sense... do you create it like a parent creates a child and then let it loose, or does it create itself?... or is it a spirit all unto itself that was at some point alive - or is it a completely different entity? I love this kind of stuff and I find it so fascinating. I work with two beings - Kali Ma, who is a goddess and an archetype, and "the Wolf" who is an archetype and a machine elf. He doesn't have a name and prefers to go by 'Wolf' and we have a long history - it would take away from your thread to write about what he is and I am much more interested in your tulpa - I have not gone through this thread yet so if you could give me a quick synopsis, that would be so cool. I love that other people here like you have these experiences as well, it normalizes them and brings something interesting to the otherwise sometimes stale normal nonduality nomenclature. These are my two guides: Kali and Wolf: