Baller

My question to ascertain where you are stabilized is "how do you currently experience "I""? Is there a center that you experience? I'm not talking about intellectual knowledge but actual subjective experience. Can you find a center that implies a separate self, ever? Sometimes? Never?

It's virtue signaling for the most part. It's absurd to think your gf's individual actions make a difference when China is building 247 GW of coal plants. It's simply feel-good crap for people who feel guilty for some - any - reason. Sure, I'd like to see electric cars and non-fossil fuel power plants dominate as soon as possible, but I can't take that kind of asceticism seriously: it's more about personal psychology than results.

LOA is simply "remove the inner resistance to what you would like to manifest." Why is there inner resistance? Because of unintegrated aspects of the psyche which are in conflict. You may consciously want something, but your unconscious is against it. So you need to get the unconscious onboard.

The Enlightenment For Dummies answer is that "no, that's Leo's bullshit." Solipsism is the philosophy of psychic inflation, i.e. The Cosmic Ego. Enlightenment is seeing through the ego, the local or the cosmic.

Yeah, the whole "I am God" thing is very much a Leoism, i.e. an artifact of psychic inflation. The thought "I" ceases to exist internally at some point (although one still obviously uses it in conversation, but it is understood to be a social construct, not an existential reality. You understand it as just a social avatar.) I know I used to be able to think "I" and it used to mean something but now when I consciously try to think "I" all that triggers is the experience that there's only one field of awareness permeating everything, or however you want to call it. There is ONLY GOD if you prefer -- not I AM GOD.

Nope. Nope. Sure. But they cannot have both freedom and simultaneously demand a special environment that imposes on others. That's called "asking for privilege." See #3. Everyone is "sensitive, traumatized or vulnerable" to some degree. I am as well. The difference is that I'm not asking for special treatment because I feel I'm entitled to it. If I don't like what someone is posting, I can block them or stop responding. You first. Your comments on this subject reek of entitlement and victim privilege. They are a form of passive bullying, i.e. CRYBULLYING. You should recognize that the world doesn't owe you anything -- only then will your mental health begin to improve.

In my opinion, it really does depend on the physiology of the individual. It's for some people, not for all or even most.

Vulnerable people shouldn't go online. They need to be seeing a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, who can assist them in making connections with supportive people. "Well, they can't because..." Sorry, no. The world cannot be childproofed for a small minority of people. This idea that anything good can come from "treating yourself" by going on forums needs to die already, it's utter BS. Even if there isn't outright triggering or abusing, the potential for really bad advice is massive.

Absolutely not true. Kentucky has just passed a bipartisan due process law, as one example. https://www.thefire.org/kentucky-governor-signs-historic-bipartisan-campus-due-process-bill-into-law/ So this is the state government stepping in and addressing the lack of due process on college campuses. Oh please, don't give me that cant. Go take a look at the FIRE website that I linked above and then tell me that attacks on free speech are somehow indicative of students becoming "more open to other points of view." You're pretty much proving my point about indoctrination. There is zero in that statement that a person who thinks for themselves would utter, it is so cut-and-paste.

Universities are not the real world, they are little indoctrination factories for impressionable young minds. Places that suspend all due process to train little totalitarians.

OK, cool. Have you ever been to a club?

I don't think there's anything clear about it unless you have their alcohol blood levels. They could be pretending to be drunk for whatever reason (to give themselves permission to act out, whatever.) I'm just not a consent extremist, sorry. Let's stop pretending that club girls don't go to clubs to make out with guys if there's an opportunity.

You're assuming that they're drunk by how they are acting. How do you know they are even drunk then?

I love to trash Leo as much as the next guy, but those are a nothingburger. The girls are not incapacitated, just drunk. One kisses him back and the other tells him not to use tongue. That is not "inablity to give consent." Don't see anything illegal. Look up Nevada laws on consent if you want.

Do you have a link?

My sense is that it's a mistake due to narcissism. Actually, when you look at "stages of enlightenment" models like the Ten Oxherding Pictures/Maharish Mahesh Yogi/David Hawkins, etc., God Consciousness is a middle stage, so not a complete realization. So yeah, you can very much get stuck there if you don't drop the dualistic God concept. (Last stage is identity with God, i.e. no separate Self but The Self.)

Talk about cherrypicking by Leo. Here's a better Ramana Maharshi quote:

Yeah, I agree. My conclusion is that if you have a personality disorder, especially NPD, psychedelics are to be avoided. My own experience is that I did have a short period of mild inflation, but then I was brought back to reality by some experiences and reoriented myself. Certainly it was nothing close to what apparently happened to Leo, thank God. I didn't think I was an avatar of Absolute Infinity (LOL, love that Leonism) or the only object in existence but I did think the experience qualified me to teach others. But there was so much more to let go of. But yeah, you have to integrate any apparent "progress" on the path, otherwise you're going to get humbled and quickly. Humble yourself or get humbled.

I agree in principle, but I don't think he came to that purely via logic but rather he did have psychedelic experiences of the infinite and then when he came down his ego "snapped back" with a vengeance as would be true for any strong narcissist and then he channeled the experience through the filter of the ego and its conceptual maps. This is pretty much what e.g. Ram Dass warns against in "Be Here Now" on pp.98-99. Psychic inflation in Jungian terms.

Yeah, most certainly. And you wouldn't even have to kill bad people like Dexter. 😉 Even if they aren't lying or delusional, one has to be very careful about broadcasting such things. I mean, Sam Harris doesn't do spiritual practice just to remain at his current level of spiritual awareness. But even if they are, if one uses it as sort of a trump card or a license to mindfuck other people, that is bad.

I mean, driving some people to suicide with your teachings is pretty fucking bad, if you ask me. Of course there is more opportunity for mischief with physical as opposed to online cults, but he is nevertheless quite dangerous a figure. I think the basic idea here is that overriding serious structural brain issues is pretty difficult, if not virtually impossible. So whether you're bipolar or a psychopath, that's not something you're just going to turn off. Now, it is possible to maximize your social utility as a psychopath. E.g. becoming a sniper in the military, or a surgeon or other occupations where being coldblooded and fearless is an asset. So the spiritual path for a psychopath - in my opinion - is that of maximizing social utility to others. However, having said all that, some bad people stay bad (i.e. the path of power as opposed to the path of love) regardless of being enlightened. And it's important to understand the distinctions. Not that I think Leo is in any conventional sense anything but partly or slightly enlightened. There is just a huge lack of self-awareness and self-understanding there.

You have to remember the context. He is talking to Westerners and he knows the kind of cultural and philosophical baggage they are bringing to the table. But it doesn't alter the essence of the teaching.

That's exactly correct. That's the name of the game - surrender. And it usually comes not when you're all fat and happy, but when you're suffering and feel like you're stuck. Spiritual practice isn't some linear process, when you gradually and consistently advance. It's practicing until you're about to give up because you feel like you're not getting anywhere. And then you surrender and the leap happens.

As far as proselytizing, the more secure in your beliefs you are, the less need there is to form or join a cult. I've been researching it and practicing in an amateur way for 22 years. The number of people who actually have a good enough technical understanding of it to get results like that is pretty low. The average person who is into it has a very low, pop-astrology level of understanding (which naturally draws skepticism from anyone with brains.) Then you get people who have read more about it and have a little higher understanding but even they are not going to get impressive results. Then there are very few who've done the research and the work who have a pretty good understanding. You need more than an understanding of signs, like the lowest level person. And it's not even planets and houses. It's the geometric relationship between planets, the configurations they form, certain pieces of data like planetary stations, etc. So it's stuff for nerds.

He uses the word, but he doesn't smuggle in all the implications that Leo does. In other words, whether he uses the word or not, his teaching is inline with traditional understanding of nonduality. When you are talking to people who still have an ego/empirical self, it is difficult to explain the paradoxical nature of the egoless state (both at once dual and nondual.) So the focus is on the "nondual" part, as that is what the ego-bound person is "lacking."