Consilience

Meditating 2 Hours Every Day - 1 Year Later (& Psychedelics vs. Meditation)

146 posts in this topic

On 10/4/2021 at 10:29 PM, Consilience said:

Hell yes man! Good luck and more importantly, have fun! 
 

First, thank you!  

My go to meditation practice recently has been the "do nothing" technique, just sitting down in a space of complete surrender, except if I notice "trying" to surrender, then I surrender that lol. This is after having done tons of work with normal shamatha and vipassana techniques like those outlined in The Mind Illuminated or for example, Seeing That Frees/Shinzen's See Hear Feel technique. 

Honestly, if contemplation is what resonates do that! I think the big piece is the silence and stillness of formal practice. If that practice is holding a question and trying to directly experience something's fundamental nature, great! In a sense, this is what we're doing with meditation, but it's not quite as direct. 

Since you're really into contemplation, I would HIGHLY recommend Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It's a book of koans that you can use as meditation objects during a form sit, or just read and contemplate as you read. 

Other books, The Mind Illuminated, Seeing That Frees, Mastering the Core Teachings of The Buddha, Science of Enlightenment, The Book of Not Knowing, Pursuing Consciousness. If you embodied what's in all of these books, you'd be a full blow Buddha haha. 

Thank you so much @Consilience
 

I think the main reason why I find contemplation more fun and natural is because I am Westerner, and that paradigm emphasizes the importance of contemplation as a way of finding answers such as Socrates, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc.

Whereas Easterners place more emphasis on surrendering one’s self and desire for answers, to clear one’s mind which allows that no-mind to discover the answers. It’s like seeing one’s reflection in a clear pond vs. one that is noisy by thoughts.

I personally agree to a good extent with both paradigms. I do side more with Westerner’s paradigm, but I think both paradigms are correct to a good point. My concern with Eastern thought is the stigma I have seen against thinking. Meditation can help gain more awareness and clarity in thinking, but if contemplation is neglected, then a world other world of understanding thought, mind, and reality is neglected. I think it’s important to know how to think in a way that helps live an examined life. So in a way, I think the best practice is when contemplation and meditation merge as one.

Thank you for book recommendations!


Meditation is a lifestyle of developing a calm state of mind WHILE engaging in one’s ambitions!

Counting your breaths, chanting a mantra, and the rest of it is all ratshit and a complete waste of time. What is stopping you from meditating WHILE working on your life purpose?

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On 10/3/2021 at 6:38 PM, Leo Gura said:

But to me, actually, to fully grasp God, intellect is crucial, and it gets demonized too much in most meditative approaches. Thus ultimate understanding is missing even if very high states are reached. Reaching a high state is not the same as understanding. And for me the key for God-realization is understanding.

God completely understands itself. It is absolutely omniscient. This aspect is not really taught in meditative schools.

Yeah, too much of a focus on surrendering the mind and not enough focus on being with ones own curiosity. Must be a balence between the two. 

I feel to get the most out of a trip one must follow their curiosity, but curiosity must be grounded in actuality, direct expirence, otherwise people can get sucked into mental masterbation, & perpetuate nonsense. Thus why I feel meditation & other introspective foundational practices should be solidified before one does deep trips. So one understands how to channel towards presence, remain calm, relaxed.


The how is what you build, the why is in your heart. 

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5 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

I personally agree to a good extent with both paradigms. I do side more with Westerner’s paradigm, but I think both paradigms are correct to a good point. My concern with Eastern thought is the stigma I have seen against thinking. Meditation can help gain more awareness and clarity in thinking, but if contemplation is neglected, then a world other world of understanding thought, mind, and reality is neglected. I think it’s important to know how to think in a way that helps live an examined life. So in a way, I think the best practice is when contemplation and meditation merge as one.

Conscious contemplation is powerful. For me, it is more about resonating with the presence invoked by the words, rather than conceptualizing the words themselves. For example, when I contemplate the Bhagavad Gita, there is simply Self-realization, beyond thought.

The stigma in Eastern spirituality against thinking is the recognition that we are not our thoughts, and of the danger of identifying with them. Meditation reveals this profoundly. You realize that you are the spacious awareness within which thoughts arise, but thoughts are merely phenomena that come and go.

Thinking is important. Not thinking is even more important. As I see it, the merging of the two is being present, and allowing presence to guide your planning in life. When planning arises out of presence, it is more creative, more inspired, and more likely to produce positive results.


Just because God loves you doesn't mean it is going to shape the cosmos to suit you. God loves you so much that it will shape you to suit the cosmos.

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On 10/5/2021 at 6:17 PM, impulse9 said:

What good are psychedelics if they can't give you a happy and joyful existence? ;) From a high consciousness point of view, they just tend to complicate your life further by filing your your ego with more imagination noise. Whereas a master enjoys every single moment, however that moment might present itself.

You'll grow out of this phase Leo, just like you grew out of the phase where you thought psychedelics were useless.

I 100% agree with this and I think we'd all love to see Leo shrink his ego a bit and grow out of this phase :D. At the same time though, the way I sometimes see it is that it makes perfect sense that Leo behaves this way and sticks to these perspectives even though they may seem weird or counterproductive sometimes.

If my higher Self as God created Leo as a teacher/a path to follow back to awakening, it would make sense to use Leo to convey a bunch of useful and accurate ideas, but at the same time to throw in some questionable ideas or arrogant behaviour in order to force me to think for myself and reclaim my authority and not give it all away to some teacher. If something Leo says ever triggers me, at the end of the day it honestly helps expose when I'm caught up in my mind :D

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