Leo Gura

It can still be difficult for them. Plenty of spiritually gifted people have harrowing journeys to awakening (like the many classic shaman stories). So don't get the idea that being spiritually gifted makes this process a walk in the park. You can be spiritually gifted and still have a lot of shadow material to work through. But the biggest thing is, most people will never even attempt to awaken or know about awakening otherwise, unless they are lucky enough to stumble upon it. A big secret to successful awakening is have the right motivation, curiosity, and desire for it. That in itself is a very rare thing which already requires a certain degree of spiritual attunement. If you motivation is strong, the rest is just a matter of time. If you motivation is weak, almost nothing can help you. So getting your motivation straight is crucial. Which is where psychedelics can be especially helpful. People would be a lot more motivated to awaken if they had a direct experience of God or Infinite Consciousness. It's very hard to build motivation off hearsay and fairytales. It's crucial to experience God for yourself so you know that it is more real than a brick wall. It's very hard to be motivated to pursue a thing for years which you doubt is real.

Not so hard really. If you ask most masters about their childhoods and how they got into spirituality, many of them will tell the same story of having spontaneous (psychedelic-like) mystical experiences, kundalini activations, astral projection, lucid dreaming, etc. when they were in their teens. Not to mention that basically all of them were deeply interested in metaphysical and spiritual questions from their youth. It is not at all an accident that they got involved in spiritual work. I notice this in myself. I was born a philosopher. I would estimate I have double the baseline level of consciousness of the average human and my sensitivity to psychedelics is at least double or triple that of a typical human. But even so, I never had spontaneous mystical experiences as many masters do. So I am nowhere near the top of the bell-curve of spiritual giftedness. But it is no accident that I ended up in this line of work.

That is exactly what mediation is: worming your way up Mt Everest. If it sounds needlessly slow and painful, that's because it is.

No, they just skirt the issue and teach to a very mainstream audience -- whoever will listen and pay. Besides, what do you expect them to do about it? They can't recommend psychedelics because 1) they have no serious experience with them, and 2) most of their followers can't access them, and 3) they would get into trouble. The more mainstream the teacher, the more mainstream and mild his techniques need to be. Do you really expect Sadhguru to stand up in front of 10,000 people and tell them point blank: 99% of you will not awaken? Why would he do this? Of what benefit is this to his followers or his organization? Also, when you are highly spiritually gifted from birth you have no idea what life is like for people who are not spiritually gifted. It is like living in a different reality. So easily many teachers can be dismissive of the struggles of newbies and normies. You have to ask yourself, what is it you want and how badly do you want it? Do you really care to know what reality is? How important is it to you that you discover the answers in this lifetime? See, Sadhguru's agenda is not that. He will not resolve this for you. He is busy building his organization. If you die without reaching the ultimate answers, it won't bother him one bit. But if it would bother you, then you need some sort of reliable plan for how you're going to get those answers.

@Consept It's not that the psychedelic will do all the work for you. It's just a way to understand reality at the highest and deepest level which would otherwise be virtually impossible. The psychedelic will motivate you to get serious about the work. You basically won't understand half the things I say until you do some psychedelics. And then the real work can begin. Most of those gurus became awakened by fluke luck, so it's not wise to count on that happening to you. You are not Sadhguru, so don't expect his results. You are you, so you must deal with the cards life has dealt you. Life has dealt most of you bad cards, so you will want every tool at your disposal to overcome that. If you insist on crawling up the mountain on your belly, go for it. But you could also just take a helicopter.

What is the point of building a deep relationship if you two are already agreed that it will end within months? Don't kid yourself. What will realistically happen is that as soon as she or you hook up with your next partner, you will forget all about her and there will be no friendship left at all, since the function that this person served in your life will be gone. Don't forget that relationships are functional, transactional exchanges. If the function is lost, the relationship will fall away. The relationship must serve both of you in some significant way. Once you hook up with someone else, this old relationship will actually become a potential threat to the new thing you got going. I would not waste too much time trying to maintain this thing if you are already clear it will not last. You are young and in university you will encounter a thousand other girls into whom you can invest your energy. Likewise on her end. She will almost certainly forget about you once she hooks up with her next guy.

Yes, it's worth it. It certianly won't get you awakening, but at least it will be a gateway to more serious spiritual pursuits in years to come. If you want a chance at awakening via meditation you will have to do at least week-long retreats where you meditate nonstop all day long, every day. Month-long retreats would be more realistically necessary.

If water is real, why drink it? Can you see that your drinking of water has nothing to do with its reality or unreality? You do not care what is real, you only care what advances your survival. If survival turns out to be unreal, you don't care. You will still keep doing it because you are addicted to survival and don't a damn about truth.

Even if that were true -- and it certainly isn't from the absolute perspective -- so what? Do you not have a brain filled with chemicals while you meditate which causes sensory effects and changes in perception in unpredictable ways? What do you think makyo are? Taste your own medicine. Everything your mind thinks and sees is makyo. The Earth you think you're sitting on is makyo, and so is your brain.

The mistake you're making is confusing psychedelics with makyo. Psychedelics are precisely NOT phenomenal distortions but pure insight, deeper than the insight of Zen meditation. The visual distortions that some psychedelics cause are to be completely ignored. The visual distortions arise with psychedelics precisely for the same reason they arise in meditation. They arise even more with psychedelics because they are like meditation x100. So you get 100 times stronger visual distortions but also 100 times deeper insight. Ignore the distortions and keep the insight, just as the Zen masters advise. There is no mistake in the Zen advice, but the way you are applying it to psychedelics is precisely backwards. You should dismiss makyo whether you're meditating or tripping balls. And don't forget, all of physical reality is makyo. So don't forget to dismiss that while you're at it This can vary for different people. In my view yoga is signficantly more powerful because it is a bio-chemical-mechanical change of the body-mind organism. Much moreso than meditation. Yoga leads to effortless meditation by a mechanical silencing of the mind.

Of course Which is why I still advocate meditation.

Be careful with your judgmental attitude especially in this Journal sub-forum where people are being honest and vulnerable. Alcoholism can be a very challenging habit to kick. So be supportive here. @Amandine Don't let this get you down. You're on the right track. I had an ex-girlfriend who struggled with alcoholism, and yeah, it can be very challenging.

No, it's not useless. But it just cannot compare to a powerful psychedelic. It's the difference between a bow & arrow and a nuclear bomb. But also appreciate this: if you don't have a nuclear bomb, a bow & arrow is still damn useful.

Direct exp is prior to interpretation.

This is nonsense.

I want to understand you better, to better tailor future content to your needs and to be a better teacher. To that end, post here your biggest challenges and obstacles with spirituality and enlightenment. Avoid obstacles related to basic life success or general personal development, because we have a separate thread for that in the Self-Actualization sub-forum. I don't need to hear your entire life story and all your petty problems. Try to condense it down to two or three core issues that you feel really stuck on within the domain of spirituality. These might include being stuck in a 9-5 job and thus not having time for self-inquiry, or not understanding how to self-inquire, or fear that enlightenment will screw up your social life, or not understanding why enlightenment is not an experience, or just not being able to motivate yourself to meditate every day, etc. What's bugging you? What's keeping you up at night? What's triggering you emotionally? What's keeping you stuck? What's got you confused? Note: This thread is not meant to be me coaching you or giving you solutions to your problems. I just want to gather some data to better understand you. In the process, you may also better understand yourself. Thanks!

Self

Hahaha....

You need to practice talking more about yourself and what interests you. Push your personality out onto others. Share yourself. This takes courage and practice. Probably you feel deep down that you will be rejected or that people are not interested in what you have to say. This boils down to a low self-esteem issue.

Your time would be better spent doing spiritual practices than deciphering Lacan. But whatever. If you like to intellectually torture yourself, have at it.

I have not. I basically don't consume spiritual teachings any more. As I have my own personal and deeper understandings.

Imagine having that creepy thing wiggling around in your belly! Haha!

My dread is everyday life without spirit.

Just suffer thru it. Let go of needing it to go away.

@Bno If you are a progressive, going after TYT just feels like shooting yourself in the foot. TYT is so progressive it will take 50-100 years to enact all their ideals. The bottleneck lies elsewhere. You could choose to be happy that something like TYT even exists and that they got people like AOC elected. Learn to appreciate small victories. Progress is always happening, even under Trump.