Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Davino]

6 hours ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

How do you know that Omniscience was reached? 

If it happens you'll know.

These types of Awakenings happen when you're getting into serious infinity territory and limits start being unimagined.

[Rafael Thundercat]

Cell Biology is hallucination

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc6JCdFxLeQ/?stkn=NzhhaG82endvNHA1

 

[Jordan of the Shire]

@Leo Gura @Davino 

Couldn't you achieve high levels of awakening, jhanas, deep metaphysical territory without complex epistemological investigation?

It seems like I can still experience life, bliss, peace, without needing to go into things on an epistemic level. And it's not that I'm ignorant, but that I'm training a specific skill. 
How valuable is epistemic wisdom if you don't really need it? I don't think it's necessary to sort through all the different forms of duality and relativity. I find that through the practice, I get to know the things in my experience.

What I'm finding is that certain things are less interesting. LIke getting lost in videos, or entertainment. Finding it more entertaining to absorb into the perceive functions that are happening in body and mind, releasing. Or other people, or the environment. This seems to be a profound practice in itself.

I think it is useful to investigate the truth of things, but mentally it seems like a bit of a masturbatory exercise, correct me if I'm wrong. And i'll follow that up with, what is the line between masturbatory epistemology and true epistemology.

Also, depending on your role in the world, I think deep epistemology is helpful to know. I would say then, that this can depend on what actions you want to take, what role you want to play, and how you want to affect the world.

I'm also not solid in my views, they are subject to change, but interested to see how people respond to this. 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Jordan of the Shire

[Davino]

23 minutes ago, Jordan of the Shire said:

Couldn't you achieve high levels of awakening, jhanas, deep metaphysical territory without complex epistemological investigation?

Yes, in that case you would achieve high spiritual experience with low spiritual intelligence and probably also low ego development.

This has been the case for all religion traditions till now, which is why there are so many absurd myths and religious crusades. You had very spiritually accomplished monks that went to religious wars because their mind, epistemology and egoic development was very crude.

Although in the forum a more common trap is high spiritual intelligence with low to medium spiritual experiences.

59 minutes ago, Jordan of the Shire said:

I think it is useful to investigate the truth of things, but mentally it seems like a bit of a masturbatory exercise, correct me if I'm wrong. And i'll follow that up with, what is the line between masturbatory epistemology and true epistemology.

One leads to delusion and the other to insight and truth. The quality of your mind and life is also very dependent, to a certain degree, to your epistemology.

It's true that after a certain threshold, unless you love philosophy, there's no much point on reinvesting skill points in that area in the detriment of others, therefore reprioritizing on what yields greater holism and a balanced fulfilling life.

[Thought Art]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Omniscience merges epistemology and ontology into ONE.

Quote that shit my man. 

[Yimpa]

@Thought Art  

 

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Jordan of the Shire said:

Couldn't you achieve high levels of awakening, jhanas, deep metaphysical territory without complex epistemological investigation?

Technically yes. But Awakening is not all there is to this work. You will still have low cogntive development and be prone to self-deception.

There is more to this work than just mystical states.

Yes, your role in the world matters. If you do intellectual work you need more advanced cognition. If you work at Starbucks, perhaps you don't need it.

I have the bias of being an intellectual. An intellectual loves to think about deep things. If you are not an intellectual then you don't need so much cognitive complexity.

Edited 12 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Jordan of the Shire]

7 hours ago, Davino said:

This has been the case for all religion traditions till now, which is why there are so many absurd myths and religious crusades. You had very spiritually accomplished monks that went to religious wars because their mind, epistemology and egoic development was very crude.

Yea that is an unfortunate consequence of the lack of epistemological and egoic development. 
Reinterpretation of mystical states through the lens of conditioning. I can see how epistemology is an antidote for this. 

7 hours ago, Davino said:

Although in the forum a more common trap is high spiritual intelligence with low to medium spiritual experiences.

This is interesting because I see high spiritual intelligence as a potential block to spiritual experiences. What do you think on that topic? @Leo Gura @Davino
This is a particular thing I find keeps me from exploring deeper on the intellectual plane. But a good metric is if it leads to insight and truth.

 

7 hours ago, Davino said:

One leads to delusion and the other to insight and truth. The quality of your mind and life is also very dependent, to a certain degree, to your epistemology.

It's true that after a certain threshold, unless you love philosophy, there's no much point on reinvesting skill points in that area in the detriment of others, therefore reprioritizing on what yields greater holism and a balanced fulfilling life.

Okay, yea, I do feel like some of the work I've done with spiral dynamics theory, and early philosophical inquiry has helped me not fall into some traps. Such as the above mentioned.

Also, I was thinking on a walk just now that, some of my mentors had really sophisticated epistemological processes, which may have been passed onto me without me having to do the cognitive heavy lifting of creating those roads, which could skew my view of the importance of epistemology ... And Leo, I checked you out probably 7 years ago. Your videos laid some foundation for my thinking. Ken Wilber yea ... (represent 8 hour world of warcraft sessions while listening to actualized.org videos) I chuckle now a days laughing at all the times @Leo Gura would say, this is not something to listen to while playing video games.

I think the skill point analogy is great. 

I see what you're saying.

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Technically yes. But Awakening is not all there is to this work. You will still have low cogntive development and be prone to self-deception.

There is more to this work than just mystical states.

Yea ... there is ... 

 

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, your role in the world matters. If you do intellectual work you need more advanced cognition. If you work at Starbucks, perhaps you don't need it.

Yea - this does inform some next steps for me. I think to me it is more about understanding how to work around the complexities of the world and people in a skillful way - in the different roles i serve in. Discernment is really valuable. 

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I have the bias of being an intellectual. An intellectual loves to think about deep things. If you are not an intellectual then you don't need so much cognitive complexity.

Okay - yea I get that. I don't have that same drive so it's a bit foreign to me, and perhaps i then create biases for my particular style and get caught up in not quite seeing clearly the distinctions and values between. Interesting. 

[Leo Gura]

Sense-making is more than just Awakening or mystical experiences. Sense-making is an even broader and deeper thing.

Today we live in a very complex, abstract world that is very challenging to make good sense of. 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago, people could have their Awakenings and then return to a simple lifestyle and a simple world. But today that is no longer possible. That's why stuff like Buddhism and Vedanta is so outdated. We live in a much more complex world which requires a much more complex level of cognitive development to make sense of. You didn't need complex cognition in Buddha's day, but today you do. Just making sense of our political situation today requires a decade of research and study. You are not going to understand politics without that. And you are not going to understand science and academia either. If you want to understand such things, that's where you need more than Awakening.

Just look at how much more stuff there is to understand today than in the Buddha's time. Today you see a woman with a dick and you gotta somehow make sense of that. Buddhism can't teach you that.

Edited 5 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Joseph Maynor]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you do intellectual work you need more advanced cognition. 

I'm curious as to why you think this is primarily what you do.  

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I'm curious as to why you think this is primarily what you do.  

Because that's what my passion is. This is not a utilitarian project for me, this is a passion project. I'm not doing this work to get someplace, the understanding itself is the point.

Keep in mind that most people are not intellectuals, so they don't need so much detail and complexity. But I need it because I have a need for deep understanding.

When you go to university, all the professors are intellectuals and nerds. That doesn't mean that you as the student need to go that deep, but the professors need to go that deep in order to teach at the highest level. You don't ask the professor, "But why are you going so deep on this topic? Why not just chill out and take it easy?" The professor isn't just there to teach you, he is also there because he wants to innovate the field with cutting edge research. In fact, that's primarily why he's there. He's not just there to be useful to you, because what is useful to a student is so shallow that it cannot generate innovation in understanding.

So yes, I do treat this topic like a nerd. Does everyone need to be a nerd of the topic? No. But a teacher should be a nerd of the topic he's teaching.

Edited 5 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Yimpa]

Oh My God?

Oh My Lip Plate!!

[iceprincess]

im skimming through leo's older blog posts from years ago and so many videos are unavailable  i really wanted to learn about things like the geopolitics of oil and docs he shared on different countries