Absolute Truth Contradiction (?)

[Xonas Pitfall]

Question:
There are some puzzling contradictions I find . . . related to the idea of absolute truth and certain claims Leo has made.

If someone becomes more “purified” or ”cleansed” through realizing absolute truth, they are supposedly supposed naturally want to let go of negative desires, such as lying, predatory behaviour, psychopathic tendencies, etc.

However, also according to Leo’s blog posts, a person would not gain miracles or special powers because wanting miracles or higher enlightenment would be selfish. In other words, wanting God to give you powers would still be ego.

How does this follow?

In the same way they accept the truth that they cannot perform miracles or be a "higher form of a healer", couldn’t they also accept darker truths about themselves and continue being such free of conscience instead of automatically becoming morally purified? If enlightenment does not give you access to some aspects of God’s power, then why would enlightenment give you access to any kind of purification or separation from your desires (especially for people who are born with antisocial predispositions, psychopathic traits, pedophilic attractions, or extremely strong lust, etc)? In both cases, you are still acting as a human and accepting that you are human, and that this is your current truth.

If someone claims that enlightenment makes you more aligned with God, meaning you develop a desire to be more like God, then why would that only apply to qualities such as being more truthful, pure, honest, or loving?

Shouldn’t it also be reasonable to desire other god-like abilities, such as having powers to heal, bending reality in evermore magical ways, or creating things? Leo himself has said that this is one of the aspects of God: it does not need any “behind-the-scenes” atoms, physics, or rules. According to him, God can simply spawn things directly into existence in a single moment, without any underlying mechanism or separation between hallucination and reality.

Why would the second type of desire be considered silly, wrong, or unrealistic, while the first type is treated as valid or expected?

[Ziran]

10 hours ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

Question:
There are some puzzling contradictions I find . . . related to the idea of absolute truth and certain claims Leo has made.

Ok.  Let's go through them one at a time and try to work through it together.

Quote

If someone becomes more “purified” or ”cleansed” through realizing absolute truth, they are supposedly supposed naturally want to let go of negative desires, such as lying, predatory behaviour, psychopathic tendencies, etc.

However, also according to Leo’s blog posts, a person would not gain miracles or special powers because wanting miracles or higher enlightenment would be selfish. In other words, wanting God to give you powers would still be ego.

How does this follow?

It's "Splendor".  It's a type of infinity.

Imagine you're attending a banquet.  There's treats and candies and biscuits and hot drinks and cold drinks some fizzy some not.  Anything anyone could possibly desire is here and everything is ... just right.  The plates are shimmering with fancy silver.  Gold utensils are perched below long fluted glasses. 

Arriving to your seat, everything is planned specifically for you.  Your attention hops from this to that from this to that.  Hop, hop, Hop, hop.  And with each hop, the eye is pleased.  "Yes!"  With surprise!  And a gasp!  "Oh look there!  And this too?!"

That's Splendor.

Another common visualization attempts to bring the aspirant into the treasure vault instead of the banquet hall.  But the underlying mechanism is the same.  The aim is on "connecting".  ... and-this-and-that-and-this-and-that-and-this-and ... From this comes a realization of brilliant-sublime-order among miriads.

Within divine splendor every"thing" , literally, is where it should be, doing what it's supposed to be doing. "Negative desires, such as lying, predatory behaviour, psychopathic tendencies, etc" are completely out of context.  Does that make sense?  For what reason is the predator chasing its prey?  Within Splendor, the predator becomes satiated, because all is in its place already.  No pursuing.

In the same way, reaching beyond one's capabilities is completely out of context once there is a realization of this sort of divine order and connection. 

Quote

In the same way they accept the truth that they cannot perform miracles or be a "higher form of a healer", couldn’t they also accept darker truths about themselves and continue being such free of conscience instead of automatically becoming morally purified?

Can vs. Should

They can accept darker truths, but should they?

Quote

If enlightenment does not give you access to some aspects of God’s power, then why would enlightenment give you access to any kind of purification or separation from your desires (especially for people who are born with antisocial predispositions, psychopathic traits, pedophilic attractions, or extremely strong lust, etc)? In both cases, you are still acting as a human and accepting that you are human, and that this is your current truth.

Enlightenment does give access to some aspects of "God" power.

Quote

If someone claims that enlightenment makes you more aligned with God, meaning you develop a desire to be more like God, then why would that only apply to qualities such as being more truthful, pure, honest, or loving?

It doesn't only apply to those qualities. 

Quote

Shouldn’t it also be reasonable to desire other god-like abilities, such as having powers to heal, bending reality in evermore magical ways, or creating things?

If everything is as it should be, there's no desire to change anything.

Quote

Leo himself has said that this is one of the aspects of God: it does not need any “behind-the-scenes” atoms, physics, or rules. According to him, God can simply spawn things directly into existence in a single moment, without any underlying mechanism or separation between hallucination and reality.

Yes.  Something-From-Nothing

Quote

Why would the second type of desire be considered silly, wrong, or unrealistic, while the first type is treated as valid or expected?

Not wrong.  Out of context.  Like looking for motor-oil in a bakery.

-------------------------------------

Is any of this helpful?  

Edited 14 hours ago by Ziran

[vibv]

@Xonas Pitfall All that is based on the idea you could achieve a lasting state of happiness in some kind of future, especially by acquiring material goods, fame, sex, etc. will naturally fall away once you realize what you are.

All powers are also a huge burden. If you want them out of egoic desire you're not ready to have them anyway and they would do more harm than good for you.

[Sincerity]

10 hours ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

If someone claims that enlightenment makes you more aligned with God, meaning you develop a desire to be more like God, then why would that only apply to qualities such as being more truthful, pure, honest, or loving?

Shouldn’t it also be reasonable to desire other god-like abilities, such as having powers to heal, bending reality in evermore magical ways, or creating things?

Wanting to be more like God and act in a ever-more loving way is not an ability per se. It's more like a shift in your being.

You assume "god-like abilities" like "powers to heal" or "bending reality". These aren't God's "abilities". As you yourself said, God doesn't need any "behind the scenes", and abilities would be processes which would be these "behind the scenes".

You should question the validity of concepts like "powers to heal" or "bending reality". You don't really know whether there's any truth to them. Might be, might not be. Don't assume, this isn't obvious.

Rising in consciousness doesn't necessarily grant any "powers". You just expand your awareness of what already is.

[theleelajoker]

Drop the assumption that Leo knows WTF he's talking about. 

Drop the assumption that anyone knows.

Your case suddenly gets a lot easier, doesn't it?

Re content, I agree: IMO it should lead to fully embracing yourself with all there is and not purifying something that isn't right.

If enlightenment does not give you access to some aspects of God’s power, then why would enlightenment give you access to any kind of purification or separation from your desires (especially for people who are born with antisocial predispositions, psychopathic traits, pedophilic attractions., or extremely strong lust, etc)? In both cases, you are still acting as a human and accepting that you are human, and that this is your current truth

[Xonas Pitfall]

Thank you everyone so much for the replies! 

I suppose that’s one of the more common trends I’ve seen when discussing enlightenment, psychedelics, absolute direct experience, etc.

As soon as we enter the realm of more unusual or “wacky” things, suddenly it becomes too selfish, too odd, or too unreasonable to expect. Again, I believe in Leo’s blog posts he would say something like, “Haha, so silly that you want God to give you a miracle.”

But I can also make the same argument back: “Haha, so silly that you want God to purify you and make you more conscious. Why would you even want to become more conscious or more aware of God? God gave you this finite human brain, so in order to truly be aligned with God, you would have to accept your current state. This, right now, is the truth and Love / Selflessness.”

Similarly, you might get hallucinatory distortions, but as soon as someone asks, “Okay, but can your hand turn into a tentacle or anything that could perhaps be identified by a third party? Can your leg start shapeshifting?” suddenly it’s “Oh no, that’s too weird, too selfish to ask that!” How does that logic follow? I think he also even said in one of his videos that he was 100% confident he could turn his hand into a tentacle if he wanted to, or that he could have healing powers too. But nothing was ever heard about it afterward.

Definitely some interesting things to wonder about.

I very much understand Leo can be wrong, so I’m not saying I follow 100% of what he says. Just trying to dissect and make sense of the things that are said and claimed about enlightenment, God, truth, etc.

Edited 7 hours ago by Xonas Pitfall

[Xonas Pitfall]

7 hours ago, vibv said:

@Xonas Pitfall All that is based on the idea you could achieve a lasting state of happiness in some kind of future, especially by acquiring material goods, fame, sex, etc. will naturally fall away once you realize what you are.

All powers are also a huge burden. If you want them out of egoic desire you're not ready to have them anyway and they would do more harm than good for you.

No worries at all. I don’t really care about having powers. I’m mostly using this argument to point out a contradiction that has been bothering me. So you can think of it as more of a logical or argumentative point rather than me actually wanting something magical to happen. It’s more like a necessary implication of what is being claimed. I hope I’m making sense.

[Ziran]

10 minutes ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

“Okay, but can your hand turn into a tentacle or anything that could perhaps be identified by a third party? Can your leg start shapeshifting?”

Not "turn into" nor "shapeshifting".

It's adopting roles and attributes.

[Leo Gura]

18 hours ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

If someone claims that enlightenment makes you more aligned with God, meaning you develop a desire to be more like God, then why would that only apply to qualities such as being more truthful, pure, honest, or loving?

Shouldn’t it also be reasonable to desire other god-like abilities, such as having powers to heal, bending reality in evermore magical ways, or creating things? 

Dude, you are mixing up unrelated things.

Purifying your mind is very different from having magic powers to bend the laws of physics.

There is no contradiction here at all. I don't even understand how you can equate these things.

You can desire whatever, doesn't mean you should get it. There are many things which humans cannot physically do and no amount of Awakening will change that. However, you can stop being a liar or a predator.

Edited 7 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Xonas Pitfall]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Dude, you are mixing up unrelated things.

Purifying your mind is very different from having magic powers to bend the laws of physics.

There is no contradiction here at all. I don't even understand how you can equate these things.

You can desire whatever, doesn't mean you should get it.

Quote

Similarly, you might get hallucinatory distortions, but as soon as someone asks, “Okay, but can your hand turn into a tentacle or anything that could perhaps be identified by a third party? Can your leg start shapeshifting?” suddenly it’s “Oh no, that’s too weird, too selfish to ask that!” How does that logic follow? I think he also even said in one of his videos that he was 100% confident he could turn his hand into a tentacle if he wanted to, or that he could have healing powers too. But nothing was ever heard about it afterward.

How so? Asking genuinely! Being able to have crazy enlightenment insights into alien consciousness, or turning / seeing an entity, etc. how would that not be even more bizarre to expect to experience compared to, say, some simple third-party verifiable bending of reality? I’m not even talking about something extremely crazy, just something like moving an object from A to B, changing eye color, etc. I understand that as humans we have limits, but I don’t feel like a lot of these statements are irrational to compare or equate. As I recall and said above, you claimed a lot more wacky things in the past, but I don’t know if you’ve stepped away from that or not.

Edited 7 hours ago by Xonas Pitfall

[Ziran]

3 minutes ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

Being able to have crazy enlightenment insights into alien consciousness, or turning / seeing an entity, etc. how would that not be even more bizarre to expect to experience compared to, say, some simple third-party verifiable bending of reality?

Because insight is an inward-probing.  It happens between the ears, within the grey matter.

[Xonas Pitfall]

1 minute ago, Ziran said:

Because insight is an inward-probing.  It happens between the ears, within the grey matter.

Hmm... not sure what argument or reason you’re using there. The brain and its grey matter are an incredibly complex system. I don’t know whether that system itself would be more or less complex when it comes to causing something like a profound alien awakening, compared to, say, a system involving aspects of your brain and an external object that you would want to slightly shift or move. I don’t intuitively know which of those would actually be more complex, or why one would be considered more reasonable than the other. If we are using the concept that “all is consciousness,” and that the difficulty of control depends on the complexity of the system, then I’m not sure why one type of experience would be considered more reasonable than another.

[Ziran]

15 minutes ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

Hmm... not sure what argument or reason you’re using there. The brain and its grey matter are an incredibly complex system. I don’t know whether that system itself would be more or less complex when it comes to causing something like a profound alien awakening, compared to, say, a system involving aspects of your brain and an external object that you would want to slightly shift or move. I don’t intuitively know which of those would actually be more complex, or why one would be considered more reasonable than the other. If we are using the concept that “all is consciousness,” and that the difficulty of control depends on the complexity of the system, then I’m not sure why one type of experience would be considered more reasonable than another.

It's not complicated.  Third party verification is external.  Insight is internal.   If the realization is internal, then it's reasonable to expect an inner outcome.  Whether or not this leads to 3rd party verification depends on other factors beyond simply "enlightenment".

[Inliytened1]

18 hours ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

Question:
There are some puzzling contradictions I find . . . related to the idea of absolute truth and certain claims Leo has made.

If someone becomes more “purified” or ”cleansed” through realizing absolute truth, they are supposedly supposed naturally want to let go of negative desires, such as lying, predatory behaviour, psychopathic tendencies, etc.

However, also according to Leo’s blog posts, a person would not gain miracles or special powers because wanting miracles or higher enlightenment would be selfish. In other words, wanting God to give you powers would still be ego.

How does this follow?

In the same way they accept the truth that they cannot perform miracles or be a "higher form of a healer", couldn’t they also accept darker truths about themselves and continue being such free of conscience instead of automatically becoming morally purified? If enlightenment does not give you access to some aspects of God’s power, then why would enlightenment give you access to any kind of purification or separation from your desires (especially for people who are born with antisocial predispositions, psychopathic traits, pedophilic attractions, or extremely strong lust, etc)? In both cases, you are still acting as a human and accepting that you are human, and that this is your current truth.

If someone claims that enlightenment makes you more aligned with God, meaning you develop a desire to be more like God,

Awakening and morality are two different things.  You can be enlightened and then still go and be a complete asshole.  Its all how you want to look at things.  But if you think about it God is all the "bad" stuff too so is that not aligning with God too? Is aligning with God relative?  If everything is Absolute Good then you actually are already Perfect and Complete in the eyes of God.  Its more of a human thing you want to purify yourself of sins because it will tend to lead to a happier and more peaceful dream here rather than a nightmare from YOUR finite perspective. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Inliytened1

[vibv]

1 hour ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

No worries at all. I don’t really care about having powers. I’m mostly using this argument to point out a contradiction that has been bothering me. So you can think of it as more of a logical or argumentative point rather than me actually wanting something magical to happen. It’s more like a necessary implication of what is being claimed. I hope I’m making sense.

Lying, cheating, manipulating falls off by itself after seeing through it and how that ultimately hurts you.

You don't want to be more God-like in a sense that you have a concept of what that entails, but you want to see clearly and live life consciously and in a way that is not backwards, so to speak.

After you realize that what you have been doing precisely hinders you from getting what you supposedly desire, there isn't even a choice anymore, it just drops by itself.

It's about seeing what is and doing what works. You could call that living truthfully.

And what do you want? LOVE of course. It's all about LOVE in the end.

Edited 5 hours ago by vibv

[Willy Phallicus]

19 hours ago, Xonas Pitfall said:

If someone becomes more “purified” or ”cleansed” through realizing absolute truth, they are supposedly supposed naturally want to let go of negative desires, such as lying, predatory behaviour, psychopathic tendencies, etc.

Enlightenment has just as much potential to turn you into a total asshole as it does to turn you into a compassionate and magnanimous human being.  That's not an either/or deal either.  You could be totally righteous but still have your asshole moments or vice versa.

As far as telling the mountain to move and having it move magic stuff this isn't the realm for that.  This isn't home.  

One day you will go *On and if you managed liberation here the promise and miracle of the infinite will be there for you.

[Joshe]

11 hours ago, Sincerity said:

Rising in consciousness doesn't necessarily grant any "powers". You just expand your awareness of what already is.

Significant expansion is a pipe dream because human awareness has limited bandwidth. People mistake the practice of channeling awareness for expanding. 

You can practice a specific conceptual or perceptual skill so much that you gain compression artifacts substituting for a lot of granularity that you can experience as a gestalt, and those can feel profound, but that isn't "expanding" awareness. It's just focusing/channeling awareness on a specific thing.

One could do nothing but train their mind to perceive reality as pure consciousness to the point they live from that recognition, and they could ponder the logical implications and work to integrate those, and this would still not produce "expanded" awareness. Trained awareness, yes, expanded, no.

Conceptual spirituality (interpretation + metaphysical narrative) is held together by unconscious, accumulated logic and premises that, over time, coalesce into a metacognitive gestalt. The experience of the gestalt is often mistaken for "expanded" awareness or transcendence or awakening.

If a practice is largely building and compressing an interpretive framework, then "more practice" doesn't strip away filters to reveal what already is. It's just replacing one set of filters for another.

"The only way to verify my claims is to build the same compressed gestalt I have, at which point you'll agree with me."

Edited 3 hours ago by Joshe

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Joshe 

Define awareness.

Define cognitive bandwidth.

Otherwise the claim won't hold. It can, depending on how you are defining those terms.