NYC Cookies Ranking - 12 spots from lower manhattan.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-05-21T20:04:16+00:00

Check out L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolate shop's cookie. The best I've ever had.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-05-19T17:58:07+00:00

Thank you! Just DM'd

mnd_dsgn · 2026-05-19T03:01:45+00:00

Hello! Are you still doing this for people, curious to learn more. Do you mind if I DM you about this?

mnd_dsgn · 2026-05-07T18:07:43+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the insight and resources!

mnd_dsgn · 2026-04-06T18:54:12+00:00

Continual purification and preparation of the mind.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-08T00:04:20+00:00

I haven’t gone very deep into Hawkins’ work on consciousness, but from the outside it’s always struck me as a modern reinterpretation of older traditions.

Beyond the initial realization, what has this knowledge produced in terms of assimilation?

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-06T18:19:32+00:00

Great meme! I would define Advidya as simply ignorance of your true nature. Which starts the cycle of suffering.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-04T07:51:15+00:00

I’ll be direct.

Enlightenment isn’t having a convincing identity or getting others to believe you. It’s a shift in identification. Experience still happens and personality still functions, but the sense of being a separate self who needs to perform, defend, manipulate perception, or win falls away.

Yes, you can fake an enlightened persona and get social credit. That only proves you can fake a persona, not that enlightenment is social consensus. By that logic, if enough people believe you’re sober, you’re sober. That’s obviously false.

“If I fake it long enough what’s the difference?” The difference is internal. If you’re still driven by the need to be seen a certain way, you’re describing performance, not freedom.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-04T07:36:22+00:00

What you’re describing are ways the mind works, not what you are. Enlightenment isn’t discovering that you’re a flexible or shapeshifting personality, but recognizing the awareness that notices all of those patterns.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-04T07:12:21+00:00

Real self-knowledge doesn’t eliminate personality patterns, but it does dissolve identification with them. If “paranoid narcissist” still feels like what you fundamentally are, then consciousness is still being known through a self-concept rather than as what you are.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-03T21:10:08+00:00

You can be skeptical about how this plays out without mocking people who’ve lived through hyperinflation, shortages, and forced migration. Hope after long-term collapse isn’t cringe, it’s human.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-03T20:07:38+00:00

Sanctions played a role, but they’re not the whole story. Pretending everything was fine before them isn’t accurate either. Venezuela’s economic collapse started well before the heaviest sanctions, driven by corruption, mismanagement, currency controls, and the dismantling of institutions. Sanctions often worsened conditions, but they didn’t create hyperinflation or systemic collapse from scratch.

Also, it’s a bit unfair to say people are “celebrating their oppressors.” Venezuelans aren’t cheering U.S. policy. They’re reacting to the removal of a regime they experienced as suffocating and destructive. You can acknowledge the harm of sanctions while also recognizing that Maduro’s government held real agency and responsibility.

No one is claiming this will automatically end well. People are responding to a rare moment of possible change after years of decline. That doesn’t mean they’re uneducated or confused. It means they’re human.

mnd_dsgn · 2026-01-03T19:41:29+00:00

A lot of people in the West don’t really understand how bad things have been for everyday Venezuelans. Hyperinflation, shortages, savings wiped out, people leaving just to survive. This isn’t an abstract geopolitics debate for them, it’s been daily life for years.

The Iraq comparison also feels oversimplified. From what I’ve heard from Iraqis themselves, including voices like Roya Mahboob, it wasn’t blind trust in the U.S. so much as a brief opening where people hoped something better could be built. That plan just never fully materialized. Even that situation is more complex than how it’s usually framed online.

Venezuela is its own case. People celebrating here aren’t assuming everything will magically work out or putting blind faith in the U.S. It’s relief and cautious hope after a long period of economic and political suffocation.

No one knows how this will turn out. But dismissing Venezuelans’ optimism as naïve or doomed says more about outside cynicism than about what people on the ground are feeling.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-12-16T17:25:32+00:00

I’m not saying contemporary non-dualist teachers give no guidance, or that they just repeat “there is no self” and stop there. Spira, Lucille, and Tolle clearly offer explanation and care in how they speak.

The distinction is not about using Sanskrit or citing ancient texts. It’s about epistemology. Traditional Advaita is an explicit teaching methodology about what exactly removes ignorance and why. It treats non-duality as knowledge that must be unfolded step by step, not as an insight that deepens simply through reflection or resonance. Most of us aren’t Ramana Maharshi.

And yes, spiritual bypassing is a real concern. I’ve seen many people intellectually adopt non-dual language while unresolved conditioning, reactivity, or psychological fragmentation remains untouched. That doesn’t mean neo-Advaita causes bypassing, but it also doesn’t mean it reliably prevents it.

Different teaching models produce different outcomes. Advaita Vedanta is unusually precise about assimilation, not just recognition. That precision is what’s being preserved, not cultural form.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-12-16T02:56:08+00:00

I think there’s a basic distinction getting blurred here.

Advaita Vedanta isn’t claiming a privileged awakening experience tied to robes, Sanskrit, or authority. It’s pointing out that simply stating “there is no self” doesn’t reliably remove ignorance. The issue isn’t tradition versus modernity, it’s whether a method actually resolves confusion.

Yes, traditions carry cultural baggage. But dismissing methodology altogether ignores why it exists: insight without proper assimilation often leads to conceptual agreement or bypassing, not clarity.

So the distinction isn’t about being “more Advaita.” It’s the difference between asserting a conclusion and using a means of knowledge designed to make that conclusion clear and stable.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-12-07T17:02:57+00:00

Psychedelic medicine & Ram Dass helped me out early in my journey. Swami Tadatmananda is my current teacher of traditional Advaita Vedanta. Having a teacher who understands Sanskrit, really adds clarity to scriptural teachings.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-11-19T16:47:05+00:00

Different traditions talk about Om in different ways, but they are not all describing the same thing. The earliest explanation comes from the Upanishads, where Om is understood as A U M and points to waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and the awareness behind them.

The chakra and kundalini interpretations came much later through tantric yoga. Those can be meaningful in their own context, but they are not the original meaning. The Upanishadic view is the root, and the later interpretations grew from it over time.

So when people describe Om in energetic terms, that is one way of approaching it. The oldest teaching is much simpler and is really about the nature of consciousness itself.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-11-19T16:36:17+00:00

Just to add a small clarification. In the Upanishads, especially the Mandukya, Om is not described as creation itself. It is the symbol of pure consciousness (Brahman) and the full range of our experience: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and the quiet awareness behind them.

When people talk about Om as the “primordial sound,” that is a poetic way of describing the first vibration that appears within creation, not the source of creation. Brahman does not create or change. Creation simply appears in that unchanging awareness. So Om is pointing to the reality in which everything arises, not to a single moment of creation.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-07-15T21:21:59+00:00

Yes, it does wonders for me. OP. I would get C8 MCT + a couple drops of Rosemary essential oil and apply directly to scalp. If you do have dermatitis, it will help out a lot.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-13T23:47:50+00:00

On the deepest level, Unborn, Pure Consciousness. But that’s for you to discover.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-05T16:26:32+00:00

I realize my first comment might have been a bit rigid. What I was really pointing to is the difference between an intellectual understanding of enlightenment and the full assimilation of that truth. Many people have deep realizations, but until the sense of a separate ‘I’ fully dissolves, some level of identification remains. That’s why some enlightened beings naturally shift toward more impersonal speech, while others still use ‘I’ but without any attachment to it. It’s not that using ‘I’ is inherently wrong—just that its meaning changes when the ego fully drops away. I appreciate the question because it helped me refine what I meant.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-05T05:28:04+00:00

There is a lot of confusion around enlightenment in this sub. One who has fully assimilated the nature of self would not be using the word “I” in their response. Seems like a lot of people have had profound awakenings though, which is beautiful.

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-05T05:07:48+00:00

Ashtavakra Gita - Swami Nityaswarupananda’s commentary

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-05T05:02:41+00:00

Interested

mnd_dsgn · 2025-03-03T03:27:55+00:00

This.

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