Indisguise

@Robed Mystic I am Tim R. I didn't leave Actualized.org (I got kicked out as you know), and Phil is not my guru. Neither is nor was Leo nor Actualized my guru or authority. I also didn't "replace" Leo with Phil. I questioned my relationship to spiritual forums in general after Leo kicked me out for getting invited to be mod here. Yes, I questioned my integrity and thought about why Leo would ban a, dare I say it, valuable member like I was. Because when accused of treason (or anything for that matter), I will first hold myself responsible, and try to see if perhaps, Leo was right. That's why I questioned my integrity. I never a priori believed my integrity to be violated, I just questioned it. I don't post nearly as frequently here as I posted on Actualized - which has nothing to do with this place, I like it here, and hey, you want to be let in on a secret? I post here more frequently than there🤫 which again, has nothing to do with the forums or the guys who run them. I just enjoy being on forums and helping some people whenever I can.

Same. I often feel like the biggest step is actually just buying fresh fruit and vegetables (+ all the cutting work). But man, once I got a fat bowl of fruit in front of me and no junk in the house, I'm inhaling that sucker like nothing😂

100%. Diet has such an immense influence on how we feel, it's literally unbelievable, at least it was for me when consciously comparing two strongly contrasting diets. Eat a bag of chips and a bar of chocolate in the morning and see how you feel for that day and how messed up your digestion will be for that and probably for the next day. Compared with eating fresh veggies and fruits, you will feel absolutely amazing. More energy & better and more stable mood. Even waking up in the morning is easier and feels better. One day often isn't quite enough to get you into a really stable good feeling in my experience, after 2 or 3 days the body has changed the most, especially the digestion and you really start to feel the effects. Doesn't even have to be uncooked veggies, I absolutely love pan fried vegetables, as far as I know they are more easily digestable - but for this very reason, unprepared veggies can be extremely good for your digestion, just don't overdo it😂 When I'm on a healthy-eating-streak and I break it and eat some nonsense, I will almost immediately afterwards feel like I've poisoned myself a little bit, it's not even pleasant to eat garbage "food" like chips anymore. Robs you all the energy and mood.

Reality/Consciousness is like a giant mirror. Unlike a normal silver-glass mirror, this mirror has neither a shape, nor a location, nor a color, nor a surface, nor any other physical, or even non-physical properties. All reflection inside a mirror which has for example a red glass staining, will also be reflected red. There won’t be any blue or green reflections, because the mirror itself is red. What this shows us, is that the reflections in a mirror entirely depend on the mirror itself; when the mirror is red, the reflections are red. When the mirror is curved, the reflections are curved, when the mirror is broken/fragmented, the reflections will appear in fragments. The reflections are the mirror, but the mirror is not the reflections. The reflections aren’t only contained by the mirror, they are the mirror, appearing as the reflections. Without the mirror, there would be no reflections, no appearances. Thus, the nature of the reflections is 100% identical with the nature of the mirror. Only a mirror that has no color can contain all colors. Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German mystic said: “It is because my eye has no color, that I can see all colors.” The only thing therefore which can contain every-thing, is no-thing. The mirror which contains reality is: nothing. Nothingness, emptiness, void, etc. This is consciousness. Consciousness is an in-finite, i.e. boundless mirror, with no properties whatsoever. Unlike a normal mirror, consciousness doesn’t require any external source of illumination. Because “it” is infinite, there is nothing external to consciousness, and in turn, nothing internal. Consciousness is its own source of illumination. “Illumination”, in this case, doesn’t literally mean “light”, but rather, its capacity to “generate” reflections within itself simply by appearing to be finite, as the universe. All appearances are consciousness, but consciousness is not an appearance. Nothing in the universe “is conscious”, as if consciousness could be like a secondary property that things or beings can “have” or develop. The question “are beings conscious?” is like looking at one’s own reflection in the mirror and believing that the reflection of oneself is the source of the mirror. The reflected image is the mirror, yes, but the mirror is more (and simultaneously less) than just the reflection. The mirror is independent of all appearances, and no appearance can either be “conscious” or “unconscious”. Whichever reflections appear, they are all the mirror and nothing but the mirror. The question of Solipsism (“are other beings conscious or not?”) is based on 2 assumptions. First, the assumption that there are “other beings”, i.e. separate selves, which exist independently and next to one’s own separate self, and second, the assumption that these separate selves can “be conscious” (or unconscious). Once the realization occurs, that there is in fact nothing but consciousness, both assumptions reveal themselves to be false, and with them, the issue of solipsism as meaningless. One’s own body & mind, as well as the appearances of other humans, animals, plants, etc. reveal themselves to be consciousness reflecting itself.

Sent it to you on skype

This morning, I had a conversation with Forza about Solipsism, and I've been thinking abour writing a few pages about certain topics, consciousness and solipsism being two of them. I thought I might share a page with you guys, gals and everyone in between, maybe you can derive some value from it. There are more pages coming, regarding different topics, so if you like this sort of thing, stick around🙂 Mirror.pdf I added afterwards:

There is no "Jiva". It says: It doesn't say that the jiva is the only thing there is and that all other Jivas aren't real, it says that there are no Jivas at all. There's not even a need to conceive of people as "other" than you, and then to believe that they might not be real. People are absolutely and 100% not "other", they're as much YOU as YOU can be YOURSELF. No difference whatsoever. You can care about yourself waking up, just like there truly is a self to wake up - because that way you might discover that there's no you to wake up. But that rather, you are the very wakefulness that you sought to attain. And that once you wake up, all other people get exposed as the same wakefulness.

That's a nice, simple and spot-on analogy👍🏼

How do you deal with being overwhelmed by life? When work, family, health, plans, etc. all suddenly come together and demand your attention all at once? I even find meditating stressful in these times because my mind tells me "go pay attention to all these things, sh*t needs to get done" and then I tend to not do it (the meditating), which is probably not good...

Oh nevermind I just found the comment and your reply to it... what the hell?

@Lester Retsel Off topic question, but: under one of your videos (can't find it rn) you commented "he killed my father" as an answer to a comment asking why you don't like Leo... what did you mean by that?

Do you believe that you yesterday and you now are the same person? If yes, you're being reincarnated. If you realize that there is no time, and that there is no "you" to reincarnate, you've broken the cycle of birth and death. You constantly die and are born, it's the exact same thing. Leaving one place is entering another place. There is neither birth nor death.

I found another pretty damn accurate description of what it feels like. Watch the video, it give you a nice impression of the absolutely infinite immensity of the universe - and then suddenly you snap back out of it and see your human role in it. We're infinitely small, and at the same time infintely large. It feels like becoming aware of this relationship, of this difference of property in size, in a physical, bodily way. It's so, so, so, so fucking vast, it's completely mind blowing. It's like you just want to scream your lungs out because there's NO way of describing or conveying how big it is, but even screaming is totally and completely futile and so all you can do is sit in absolute, all-engulfing, infinitely deep silence - that's what it feels like, I can describe it more accurately.

People who love it don't think beyond the scope of this video. They watch t, think it's a cool idea and move on, to them it's a thought experiment.

Tell me more!🧐

You experience this every morning?😆

Hmmm... hard to tell. I guess the state of mind is the bizarre immensity I described, and it's followed by feelings of overwhelment and existential dread. But ins some really strange way, the "state of mind" feels like it's the state of the body, but in the sense that the body is completely immersed in the bizarre immensity to the point where you can't tell the difference. I'm not nearly lucid enough in that state to make these distinctions, it's difficult to even remember these "dreams"...

Yes, it does feel "existentially wrong". Like reality is just somehow twisted, but in an absolutely undescribable way. It's kinda like a nightmare, but not in a scary way, just... unbearably bizarre. Yes that's definitely a part of it.. It also kinda feels like I'm at the creation point of reality or something. Like "this is what reality is like before it has manifested itself yet". And if you tweak this infinitesimally small piece of hyperdimensional whatever, you will destroy or create planets the size of Jupiter. That's the feeling of immensity and twistedness.

It happens only very, very rarely. It used to happen more often when I was a kid, probably like every month or so, maybe a bit less. It happened to me 2 nights ago, and it hasn't happened in... years, I guess? At least I can't remember, because I ususally don't remember when it happens, just like we don't remember most of our dreams. It's basically impossible to describe in words, that's how strange it is. But I'll give it a shot - and who knows, maybe there's someone here who also experienced something like this? Although I kinda doubt it tbh. As the title states, it happens at night, only. It's like a dream, but it doesn't contain anything from this world. It's mostly a feeling, like a felt understanding of the situation. Imagine a marble, just an ordinarly glass marble that a kid would use to play with. And we're going to play a game. I'm going to hide this marble somewhere on this planet. Literally, just anywhere. I could burry it 50 ft under ground somewhere on a remote island in the Southern Pacific ocean, I could drop it into the sewer somewhere in your neighbouring street, I could hide it in a crumbled piece of paper and put it in the paper trash bin of some office building in Northern Mumbai, I could burry it under 4 inches of gravel somewhere on the Northern side of mountain Chiumo in the Himalaya, I could hide it anywhere. The possibilities woud be virtually infinite. And you have to find this marble. Now imagine what it would feel like to live forever. Because now, you can play this game with me. You have all the time in the world to find this marble, and one day, you'll find it. What would it feel like to roam and scan the entire planet and absolutely every possible place where I could hide the marble? Now compress this journey of finding the marble into 5 minutes of time. What it would that feel like? Or imagine this: I give you a book that is 100.000 pages thick. Now I give you a copy of this book, except: somehwere in this copy, there is a comma missing. Find the missing comma. Imagine what it feels like to filter through 100.000 pages of text within 2 minutes, and finding that one missing comma. Imagine dropping a pebble on the ground. Technically speaking, the earths gravity pulled the pebble, and so it dropped. But also; the pebble pulled the earth towards itself, because the pebble has a certain mass too. So Imagine you could drop the earth on the pebble. What would that feel like? There is this feeling of an almost infinite immensity. It's absolutey mind-blowing, literally, I've tried to give you these analogies to describe the overwhelmment of this feeling. It isn't exactly painful, but just unbearably immense. Ad for some reason, at the same time, extremely light (like dropping a pebble on the ground). There aren't any visuals accompanying this, no sounds either. Just this feeling. And I have no idea what to make of it, but each time it happens, it just feels absolutely unreal, like reality just got destroyed by this. I don't know how to describe it, it's just too damn weird...

Do you sometimes feel the need to just cry? (rhetoric question, of course, we all do) To just let out - whatever it is exactly that needs to be let out? I never learned how to have a healthy relationship to my emotions. And it's not even that I regularly feel on the verge of crying, because it's burried so deeply within me that I don't even have this urge - except sometimes, when something or someone, or beauty, or Love, gets me to the verge of crying. Then I notice that I crave this emotional relief, but I never learned how to do it properly. Nad so I never fully get there, just scraping the surface. I don't even want any sophisticated solution to specifially adress any psychological issues or anything, I'm like a rugged, unsophisticated emotional blob that simply needs relief. Over the last maybe 3 years I've been trying to get more in touch with my emotions and allowing them, but it's still hard for me. Advice? Really, I'm just asking for crude techniques like watching sad YouTube videos or whatever😂 anything will be appreciated🙏🏼❤️

I think one of the issues that especially in Western forms of spirituality is hardly acknowledged is the degree of privilege of one's life that is sometimes necessary to pursue spirituality, as well as the delusion and ignorance with regard to ones privilege and its role in ones spiritual life. Those who are poor, who struggle with severe family problems, who have problems with unemployment, etc. have a much harder time in terms of spirituality than those who live a prosperous and (survival-related) carefree life. Now you might say: "but what about those south-east Asian Buddhist monks who live in a hut and own nothing more than their robe, a sewing needle and a razor and only eat 2 bowls of rice and steamed vegetables a day?" The difference is that in those regions and societies, there exist whole structures that can allow one pursue this kind of life, whereas in the West, there don't - and so it would be exeedingly difficult to try to live that way; you would just be considered a homeless bum and in fact, that's most likely what would happen to you. This kind of "privilged spirituality" that I'm talking about is perfectly embodied in a clichee; that of the person in their mid 20s to 30s who never worked a day in their life, who have very wealthy parents who afford them a flat in L.A. Silver Lake, and who are into this kind of "Neo-Advaita-the-universe-will-take-care-of-you" spirituality. I'm sure you know what I mean. And worse than that: privilege and blindness tend to go hand in hand, and many people who are blissfully ignorant will, when they encounter people who live a life that is the precise opposite of what I've been describing so far, give them solutions that they apply to problems in their own life; á la "the universe will take care of you, just let go, repeat these abundance-, wealth- and health- mantras 108 times in the morning, etc..." I found a YT channel which couldn't be more clichee in this regard, it's packed with stereotypes, enjoy😄 My self Love routine You I think it's because spirituality itself is a privilege, at least in the Western world. And I think that's not good because it shouldn't be only for priviledged people. We are a spiritually crippeled society and we're destroying ourselves and the planet because of it. What are your thoughts?

Perhaps I didn't explain "Leonism" well enough. Leonism is not "you are God", that's not what is meant by that. What is meant is this: (thank you @Blessed2) If I follow someone who is deluded, I will be deluded as well - but the whole trick with delusion is, that it appears to be absolutely true. Leo's enlightenment-/god realization-/level of consciousness- hierarchy, his dismissiveness, his lack of compassion, his arrogance, all that is why people left. And all that is baked into what he will call "absolute truth".

Leo has no claim to "ultimate Truth", nobody has. Before Leo, absolutely nobody talked about "your parents are imaginary, you can be enlightened and a total asshole at the same time". That's what's meant by "Leonism". 100%

Some people here have been negatively impacted by Actualized, should we not discuss this?

I appreciate the several cups of herbal tea that keep me warm tonight😊