Just want to offer this today: I was walking around the house doing this and that, a week after my mum’s dying, and heard your voice on repeat on TH-cam (doing a short clip over and over again from my open iPad ), saying, “You might call it god, but at some point….” I heard it 8 or 9 times before realizing the same clip was playing again and again, and laughed because that one phrase says everything I want this morning. Life as it is is pretty perfect. Thanks for everything. ❤
Nisargadatta led me to the first awakening with his book Consciousness and the Absolute. I thought it was all bulls**t but after a few days, it happened, of course i went back and read it again and it was so clear.
Hey Angelo, concerning the topic of Animals and Veganism: Of course, in terms of realization, you were right on the money. But I wanted to point out some things in what you said. For me personally, the switch to veganism came naturally with the awakening process, and I experienced it similarly to Lisa Cairns that certain aspects of it changed. But in my opinion, moving towards veganism can very much be a byproduct of awakening, depending on how much you are exposed to the suffering of animals. Most people just haven't really seen and felt what it's like, but if you expose yourself to documentaries or even just pictures/social posts of actually seeing what is behind the food most of us consume on an everyday basis, it's very likely, in my opinion, that something will start to shift. The zen person's point of how veganism is speciesism is an interesting topic, and in the comparison of shooting 1 elk vs. how many animals die from crop farming, I'd agree, but how many people only hunt their food and do not rely on grocery stores, butchers, etc.? Because most of the crops farmed are actually fed to livestock. So if that's a topic one is interested in and wants to reduce, veganism would be a great way to reduce that(or only hunting your own food). And we already are speciesist, most westerners do not eat dogs or cats. And the reaction to "death" is also valid, from an absolute point of view, it really doesn't matter, but that also applies to everyone's life, and just how realization tends to increase one's compassion for humans in the relative; the same thing happens for animals. If realization has sunken deep enough and you are confronted with actually seeing the suffering of animals, compassion and thus action could very likely arise. But of course veganism can be a fixation as well, of course, like everything else. Thank you for the live, Angelo 🙏
Hey Angelo, thanks for addressing my question about the treatment of animals (and my other ones). I feel like I should address a couple of the points you raised and then share a thought on the connection between realization and the health of the world (with the understanding that this is mostly from a relative - yet still important - standpoint)... I was careful in wording my question to not make it about veganism or even vegetarianism but rather about the effects that we have on the lives of animals. I was alluding to the fact that nearly all of our systems of animal agriculture force animals to live lives of suffering that is extreme, constant, unnatural, and unnecessary and the fact that when we support those systems, we effectively inflict that suffering with our own hands. Of course, it's true that life on earth requires the consumption of other lifeforms, but it doesn't require subjecting those lifeforms to entire lives of torturous conditions like these systems do. And it's true that much of our plant agriculture also harms and kills animals, but this is actually another reason to eat more plants and fewer animal products - since farm animals have to eat a lot of plants throughout their lives, consuming animal products actually multiplies one's total consumption of plants (and thus the destruction and suffering they cause) several times over. It's also a reason to look into and support more ethical farming techniques (and to legally mandate them but that's another topic). In light of all this and other considerations (like the mind boggling environmental destruction that animal agriculture causes), I think it's safe to say that support of this industry can't be justified for the vast majority of us in the vast majority of circumstances (perhaps with the exception of certain smaller farms that go to great lengths to work more ethically and responsibly but such products aren't easy to find or cheap to buy). The assumption behind my question - which I can now see to be faulty - was that everyone is already well aware of this, so I figured that realization would naturally cause people to start living in harmony with that understanding. But I'm now being reminded that 1) realization only allows these body-minds to become guided by their intuition, 2) that intuition is only as good as the information it has to work with, and 3) the combined forces of powerful industries, culture, misinformation, and wishful thinking do a lot to hide and obscure much of the information that is needed for ethical living in a highly complex world. For example, the animal agriculture industry has worked very hard to keep us from seeing how they operate so that we remain disconnected from the effects that our actions have on other creatures, future generations, the planet, and even ourselves, and this causes good people to effectively do things that they would never even dream of doing with their own hands. It creates a kind of collective delusion and lack of awareness that even realization is powerless to dispel. To anyone reading this who is willing to arm their intuition with more of this kind of awareness, I invite you to watch a documentary from 2018 called Dominion. It's free to watch on TH-cam. Watching it isn't easy but I think it's important. You often say that waking up and continuing to wake up is the best thing we can do for the world. I agree that seeing through the illusions of identity is extremely important, but it seems to me that there are other kinds of illusions that might be at least as important to see through since they happen to affect a larger number of creatures in ways that are arguably even more significant. Without good information about - and connection to - the effects of our actions on other creatures, we can easily become well meaning, realized or even liberated cogs in a destructive machine of the collective ego. As you also often say, personal realization involves removing the apparent divisions from our experience. Perhaps collective realization will involve removing many of the divisions from our collective experience so that we become reconnected to the ways in which our actions affect the experience of other creatures. Sorry for the length of this but thanks for reading! Any feedback (from anyone who has carefully and thoughtfully read the whole thing) is welcome.
It's a very challenging place to sit. There should be consideration of suffering, challenges, difficulty, etc. Should the eagle, the lion, the shark feel guilty for their necessary consumption of other animals? No, they have to eat them. Fair. Should we consider that plants respond directly to damage to their tissue, growing in response to it, moving towards light and nutrients, releasing toxic compounds in response to injury, communicating with other plants to protect themselves after damage? Acacia trees responded by producing fatal levels of compounds in their tissues when eaten by herbivores. What makes us think we have the right to eat a plant then. It is just as alive, merely less mobile, less directly interactive. Bacteria, paramecium, many, many single celled organisms will avoid damaging circumstances, and seek environments where they can reproduce more freely, what makes us think we have a right to kill them so that we may live? I would definitely say you're not wrong to want the best for animals but it gets difficult. Fast.
@@johnpienta4200 I don't think it gets that difficult. Animals in the wild are able to eat each other without forcing each other to live their entire lives in torturous, unnatural conditions (and we can do that too if we must with skillful, considerate hunting). Regarding plants, I don't think we have any sound reason to think they can feel pain. Even if they are conscious on some level, they don't have a central nervous system and they don't have any reason to have evolved the capacity for pain - it wouldn't serve any function since they can't move out of the way when they're being harmed or eaten (I'd make the same point about bacteria, which we have symbiotic relationships with). What we know is that animals are conscious and capable of feeling immense pain and sorrow and that there are simple things we can do to greatly reduce the suffering that we inflict upon them. And as I mentioned, it's a lucky bonus that doing those things also greatly reduces the plants we consume (and the animals that are harmed in that process), so if it turns out that plants do somehow feel pain or sorrow, that would be yet another reason to make such changes.
About eating meat, if it's good enough for my cat, it's good enough for me, too-although I get that it's cuter when my cat does it. 😸 Yep, I'm deliberately being facetious bc this topic is an endlessly debated mind-constructed conundrum that will outlive you, me & everyone else. Sometimes all you can do is laugh, as inappropriate as it seemingly appears to be.
@@JohnnyLovesPuppies My comment was clear that it’s not about eating meat but rather about the extreme suffering that we needlessly inflict upon trillions of other creatures (especially in factory farms), which is *not* “mind-created”. Notice that your points could just as easily be made about slavery, human trafficking, genocide, or any other horrific thing. Do you also laugh at those things, write them off as mere mental constructs, and believe that participating in them is just fine? If so, what if you and your own friends, family, and pets were affected by them?
@@johnpienta4200 I don't think it gets that difficult. Animals in the wild are able to eat each other without forcing each other to live their entire lives in torturous, unnatural conditions (and we can do that too if we must with skillful, considerate hunting). Regarding plants, I don't think we have any sound reason to think they can feel pain. Even if they are conscious on some level, they don't have a central nervous system and they don't have any reason to have evolved the capacity for pain - it wouldn't serve any function since they can't move out of the way when they're being harmed or eaten (I'd make the same point about bacteria, which we have symbiotic relationships with). What we know is that animals are conscious and capable of feeling immense pain and sorrow and that there are simple things we can do to greatly reduce the suffering that we inflict upon them. And as I mentioned, it's a lucky bonus that doing those things also greatly reduces the plants we consume (and the animals that are harmed in that process), so if it turns out that plants do somehow feel pain or sorrow, that would be yet another reason to make such changes.
I remember when I was in a 3 day blow out awakening experience, I was repairing a motor. No one could figure it out. They gave it to me and my body and mind repaired it in less than a minute. Everyone was amazed including me. “I” didn’t do it. “I” still don’t know how I did it. How do I explain that the me/I could see what was happening without “being” the one who was doing it?
I’ve had that very clear heart chakra opening experience on psychedelics. I even had a 5meodmt trip where the heart opening happened and it stayed open for a couple months. Eventually it felt like my heart chakra contracted and closed and that’s around when lots of deep shadow work started to happen. All the pain I’d been suppressing started showing up. I’m wandering how to open up again.
Lol. You just mentioned doing a video from the shower. Kramer from Seinfeld popped in my mind lol. The episode where he made dinner from the shower. Loved that show. A show about nothing.
So much understanding packed into one video. Thanks to all for making these understandings happen ❤☮🙏☮♾🛐🕉
Just want to offer this today: I was walking around the house doing this and that, a week after my mum’s dying, and heard your voice on repeat on TH-cam (doing a short clip over and over again from my open iPad ), saying, “You might call it god, but at some point….” I heard it 8 or 9 times before realizing the same clip was playing again and again, and laughed because that one phrase says everything I want this morning. Life as it is is pretty perfect. Thanks for everything. ❤
Thanks!
@@HungerPang thank you 😊
Thank you 🙏
Nisargadatta led me to the first awakening with his book Consciousness and the Absolute. I thought it was all bulls**t but after a few days, it happened, of course i went back and read it again and it was so clear.
Hey Angelo, concerning the topic of Animals and Veganism: Of course, in terms of realization, you were right on the money. But I wanted to point out some things in what you said. For me personally, the switch to veganism came naturally with the awakening process, and I experienced it similarly to Lisa Cairns that certain aspects of it changed. But in my opinion, moving towards veganism can very much be a byproduct of awakening, depending on how much you are exposed to the suffering of animals. Most people just haven't really seen and felt what it's like, but if you expose yourself to documentaries or even just pictures/social posts of actually seeing what is behind the food most of us consume on an everyday basis, it's very likely, in my opinion, that something will start to shift. The zen person's point of how veganism is speciesism is an interesting topic, and in the comparison of shooting 1 elk vs. how many animals die from crop farming, I'd agree, but how many people only hunt their food and do not rely on grocery stores, butchers, etc.? Because most of the crops farmed are actually fed to livestock. So if that's a topic one is interested in and wants to reduce, veganism would be a great way to reduce that(or only hunting your own food). And we already are speciesist, most westerners do not eat dogs or cats. And the reaction to "death" is also valid, from an absolute point of view, it really doesn't matter, but that also applies to everyone's life, and just how realization tends to increase one's compassion for humans in the relative; the same thing happens for animals. If realization has sunken deep enough and you are confronted with actually seeing the suffering of animals, compassion and thus action could very likely arise. But of course veganism can be a fixation as well, of course, like everything else. Thank you for the live, Angelo 🙏
Well stated
As always, thank you for everything! 💙
Hey Angelo, thanks for addressing my question about the treatment of animals (and my other ones). I feel like I should address a couple of the points you raised and then share a thought on the connection between realization and the health of the world (with the understanding that this is mostly from a relative - yet still important - standpoint)... I was careful in wording my question to not make it about veganism or even vegetarianism but rather about the effects that we have on the lives of animals. I was alluding to the fact that nearly all of our systems of animal agriculture force animals to live lives of suffering that is extreme, constant, unnatural, and unnecessary and the fact that when we support those systems, we effectively inflict that suffering with our own hands. Of course, it's true that life on earth requires the consumption of other lifeforms, but it doesn't require subjecting those lifeforms to entire lives of torturous conditions like these systems do. And it's true that much of our plant agriculture also harms and kills animals, but this is actually another reason to eat more plants and fewer animal products - since farm animals have to eat a lot of plants throughout their lives, consuming animal products actually multiplies one's total consumption of plants (and thus the destruction and suffering they cause) several times over. It's also a reason to look into and support more ethical farming techniques (and to legally mandate them but that's another topic). In light of all this and other considerations (like the mind boggling environmental destruction that animal agriculture causes), I think it's safe to say that support of this industry can't be justified for the vast majority of us in the vast majority of circumstances (perhaps with the exception of certain smaller farms that go to great lengths to work more ethically and responsibly but such products aren't easy to find or cheap to buy).
The assumption behind my question - which I can now see to be faulty - was that everyone is already well aware of this, so I figured that realization would naturally cause people to start living in harmony with that understanding. But I'm now being reminded that 1) realization only allows these body-minds to become guided by their intuition, 2) that intuition is only as good as the information it has to work with, and 3) the combined forces of powerful industries, culture, misinformation, and wishful thinking do a lot to hide and obscure much of the information that is needed for ethical living in a highly complex world. For example, the animal agriculture industry has worked very hard to keep us from seeing how they operate so that we remain disconnected from the effects that our actions have on other creatures, future generations, the planet, and even ourselves, and this causes good people to effectively do things that they would never even dream of doing with their own hands. It creates a kind of collective delusion and lack of awareness that even realization is powerless to dispel. To anyone reading this who is willing to arm their intuition with more of this kind of awareness, I invite you to watch a documentary from 2018 called Dominion. It's free to watch on TH-cam. Watching it isn't easy but I think it's important.
You often say that waking up and continuing to wake up is the best thing we can do for the world. I agree that seeing through the illusions of identity is extremely important, but it seems to me that there are other kinds of illusions that might be at least as important to see through since they happen to affect a larger number of creatures in ways that are arguably even more significant. Without good information about - and connection to - the effects of our actions on other creatures, we can easily become well meaning, realized or even liberated cogs in a destructive machine of the collective ego.
As you also often say, personal realization involves removing the apparent divisions from our experience. Perhaps collective realization will involve removing many of the divisions from our collective experience so that we become reconnected to the ways in which our actions affect the experience of other creatures.
Sorry for the length of this but thanks for reading! Any feedback (from anyone who has carefully and thoughtfully read the whole thing) is welcome.
It's a very challenging place to sit. There should be consideration of suffering, challenges, difficulty, etc.
Should the eagle, the lion, the shark feel guilty for their necessary consumption of other animals? No, they have to eat them. Fair. Should we consider that plants respond directly to damage to their tissue, growing in response to it, moving towards light and nutrients, releasing toxic compounds in response to injury, communicating with other plants to protect themselves after damage?
Acacia trees responded by producing fatal levels of compounds in their tissues when eaten by herbivores. What makes us think we have the right to eat a plant then. It is just as alive, merely less mobile, less directly interactive.
Bacteria, paramecium, many, many single celled organisms will avoid damaging circumstances, and seek environments where they can reproduce more freely, what makes us think we have a right to kill them so that we may live?
I would definitely say you're not wrong to want the best for animals but it gets difficult. Fast.
@@johnpienta4200 I don't think it gets that difficult. Animals in the wild are able to eat each other without forcing each other to live their entire lives in torturous, unnatural conditions (and we can do that too if we must with skillful, considerate hunting). Regarding plants, I don't think we have any sound reason to think they can feel pain. Even if they are conscious on some level, they don't have a central nervous system and they don't have any reason to have evolved the capacity for pain - it wouldn't serve any function since they can't move out of the way when they're being harmed or eaten (I'd make the same point about bacteria, which we have symbiotic relationships with). What we know is that animals are conscious and capable of feeling immense pain and sorrow and that there are simple things we can do to greatly reduce the suffering that we inflict upon them. And as I mentioned, it's a lucky bonus that doing those things also greatly reduces the plants we consume (and the animals that are harmed in that process), so if it turns out that plants do somehow feel pain or sorrow, that would be yet another reason to make such changes.
About eating meat, if it's good enough for my cat, it's good enough for me, too-although I get that it's cuter when my cat does it. 😸
Yep, I'm deliberately being facetious bc this topic is an endlessly debated mind-constructed conundrum that will outlive you, me & everyone else. Sometimes all you can do is laugh, as inappropriate as it seemingly appears to be.
@@JohnnyLovesPuppies My comment was clear that it’s not about eating meat but rather about the extreme suffering that we needlessly inflict upon trillions of other creatures (especially in factory farms), which is *not* “mind-created”. Notice that your points could just as easily be made about slavery, human trafficking, genocide, or any other horrific thing. Do you also laugh at those things, write them off as mere mental constructs, and believe that participating in them is just fine? If so, what if you and your own friends, family, and pets were affected by them?
@@johnpienta4200 I don't think it gets that difficult. Animals in the wild are able to eat each other without forcing each other to live their entire lives in torturous, unnatural conditions (and we can do that too if we must with skillful, considerate hunting). Regarding plants, I don't think we have any sound reason to think they can feel pain. Even if they are conscious on some level, they don't have a central nervous system and they don't have any reason to have evolved the capacity for pain - it wouldn't serve any function since they can't move out of the way when they're being harmed or eaten (I'd make the same point about bacteria, which we have symbiotic relationships with). What we know is that animals are conscious and capable of feeling immense pain and sorrow and that there are simple things we can do to greatly reduce the suffering that we inflict upon them. And as I mentioned, it's a lucky bonus that doing those things also greatly reduces the plants we consume (and the animals that are harmed in that process), so if it turns out that plants do somehow feel pain or sorrow, that would be yet another reason to make such changes.
Oh Angrlo
I remember when I was in a 3 day blow out awakening experience, I was repairing a motor. No one could figure it out. They gave it to me and my body and mind repaired it in less than a minute. Everyone was amazed including me. “I” didn’t do it. “I” still don’t know how I did it. How do I explain that the me/I could see what was happening without “being” the one who was doing it?
I’ve had that very clear heart chakra opening experience on psychedelics. I even had a 5meodmt trip where the heart opening happened and it stayed open for a couple months. Eventually it felt like my heart chakra contracted and closed and that’s around when lots of deep shadow work started to happen. All the pain I’d been suppressing started showing up. I’m wandering how to open up again.
Brilliant💞
🙏🙏🙏
“Realized the absolute aspect” 7:49
Leaving myself breadcrumbs
Lol. You just mentioned doing a video from the shower. Kramer from Seinfeld popped in my mind lol. The episode where he made dinner from the shower. Loved that show. A show about nothing.
😂😂 great episode