Leo Gura

@Visionary Don't forget, it is you. You're like a shadow who saw the groundhog and tried to run away.

Logic is Sam Harris' religion

@2000 If you're doing your practices, there will be all sorts of emotional highs and lows. Just keep doing you practices and really emphasize MINDFULNESS of the emotions. Try to become the passive witness of them. Especially the really negative stuff. So you sit there and observe, "Oh yeah... my mind is acting really pissed off right now.... Okay... I guess that's what it wants to do... Let me observe where this goes... Kinda interesting... Do I want to feel pissed off? No? Then why am I making it happen? How silly..." Massive, massive mindfulness! Over and over and over again, because there will be lots of forgetfulness in you.

@wingsofwax Sounds like you have an issue with control. The do-nothing technique would be good for you. You gotta learn to fully let go. Mindfulness of the breath is a very distinct thing from deep breathing. It's hard at first to just watch without manipulating it. Ego loves to manipulate everything.

I'm seeing too much nonsense on this sub-forum. Too much speculation, too much gossip, too much ego stroking, too much distraction, too many pointless questions. This is not the place for such nonsense. Your biggest obstacle on this path -- if you really care about spirituality -- is your monkey mind's limitless ability to distract you from the real work. The purpose of this forum is to share high quality information, personal experiences, resources, and seek solid guidance in a serious way. Not to shoot the shit about your fantasies of enlightenment, philosophizing, dicking around, taking sides, getting offended, and doing everything BUT working towards enlightenment. Without naming names, I'm noticing certain members here are just engaging in mental masturbation, over and over again, month after month. Some of that is tolerable, especially if you're new here, but I expect more from you. Realize your nonsense and put a lid on it. It's one thing to distract yourself with your monkey mind, but then you also start to distract others who might be seriously into this work. So whatever nonsense happened in the past, leave it in the past, and from now on be much more mindful of what you post. Make sure it has a good reason for being posted, not just verbal diarrhea. And cut the gossip about people, gurus, teachers, and other forum members. Cut the gossip entirely. This work has nothing to do with any personality or person. Before talking about enlightenment, do the work! Show us you're reading, practicing, meditating, self-inquiry, and seriously trying -- not just blabbermouthing. Nobody really cares about your opinions about enlightenment. Folks who continue to blabbermouth, will get warning points and bans. And if the forum continues to engage in such behavior as a whole, the entire thing will just be shut down. I would rather shut it down than see it turn into a mental masturbatorium. Please help keep this sub-forum on-point. In the future, warning points will be given for the following kinds of offenses: Gossiping Creating drama Speculating about enlightenment, opinionizing Arguing/debating Pointless topics/questions If you have nothing valuable or experientially-grounded to say, then best not to say anything at all. If you have legitimate insights or questions from your practice which you'd like to talk about, that perfectly fine.

Excellent trip report.

The key is to realize that "other people are so happy" is an optical illusion. They aren't happy at all. They just seem that way on the surface. Even if they have Brad Pitt's good looks, 5 hot girlfriends, and 5 Ferrari's parked in their mansion's 5-car garage. It's all surface. Look beneath the surface and such people are in really bad shape. If you're gonna envy someone, at least make sure they've got the thing you think they got. Try envying a masterful yogi -- he's got everything you ever wanted. P.S. It also sounds like you're equating self-help with lots of thinking and analyzing. This can be a big trap. You need to be more active in how you do it. Try doing a more physical form of self-help like yoga, breathing techniques, massage, Tai Chi, etc, so you get out of your head. The deepest growth happens when you're out of your head and NOT analyzing.

Yes, of course stuff like that will happen. That's the spiritual growth process at work. Your energy body is changing, your physical body is changing, your mind is changing, your beliefs are changing, etc. Kundalini energy is rising. This is very complex topic. It's not just about what's going on in your brain. There are subtle spiritual bodies at work in this process. This process is not just psychological or physical, it's deepest roots are existential and spiritual. Yoga, Buddhism, Tantra, and Daoism talk a lot about this. I touch on this topic in my Dark Side Of Meditation video. A lot of weird stuff can happen when your Kundalini starts to rise from meditation/yoga, ranging from the annoying and frustrating to full blown paranormal. If you feel yourself losing control of your life, then you might ease off on the meditation for a while and do more physical exercises to ground yourself. Otherwise, proceed and trust the process, but also listen to your body and intuition. A book about the nervous system is not going to be very helpful for this stuff. You want to look for books on Kundalini, Qi, chakras, energy work, etc. Western science doesn't understand this stuff almost at all. Because it only happens to serious meditators and it's non-physical in nature.

I have already seriously considered shutting it down. Not only the forum, but all of the comments sections and even all of Actualized.org.

Brian Johnson's Philosopher's Notes have a lot of great books. Especially on health and nutrition, and basic self-help. https://www.optimize.me/philosophersnotes/the-books/ I'll be adding more unique and rare books to my list in the future. Books for serious spiritual practitioners, and other deep topics. I want my list to be unique. Books you would normally never hear about.

@The Monk Just look around. Everything that exists is BEing. That's what it does. It BEs. But the magic of being is lost on you because you're deeply mired in a conceptual matrix. Your mind slices and dices and projects upon the raw being which is there, turning it into fantasy. To become really conscious of being is an amazing thing. As an exercise, try picking up an object like a pen, and just observing it closely in your hands as though you're seeing for the first time. Forget that it's a pen, or that's it has the human function "to write", and just observe it lovingly and curiously, like a baby. If you do that for a few minutes, you'll start to get in touch with the magic of being. Although not fully, because to fully contact being, you have to get rid of the self/observer, so that you literally become the pen.

@Noname It all depends on how you go about it. Remember, you do have limited time, so the time spent reading books is time not invested in spiritual practices. But reading books is still important. It just requires striking the right balance. There are important concepts in psychology to understand, but just knowing psychology will not solve most of your issues, because they reside at the existential/spiritual level, way deeper than any kind of psychology. So the answer is, ideally you want both, but in the right proportions.

@krazzer That's great. But keep in mind there is more to be grasped and mastered. And just because it sticks around for a few days doesn't mean much. There are many people who have it stick around for a week, a month, even 4 years, and then they lose it, because it wasn't fully comprehended. So don't get cocky. Take your time to fully integrate it.

@John Iverson Yes, that's fine. Not moving refers to no conscious movements. Unconscious body reflexes like sneezing, coughing, etc. are okay.

@John Iverson It's extremely important that when you do a formal daily session, your spine is erect. You can meditate standing, but do NOT lie down unless you broke your back. And even then, try to sit up. Be very careful with sloppy meditation practices. You will just waste years of your life.

@Dino D You're just lost in monkey mind. If you seriously cared about knowing the truth, we wouldn't be having this discussion. When you really care about the truth, you wouldn't mind spending 40 years searching for it and coming up empty. It should be that important to you.

@bobbyward No, don't do that. It can be dangerous, and it will not give you a strong trip.

@Dino D With that attitude, you're def fucked. Before you go embarking on enlightenment, teach yourself some basic laws of success. Some Tony Robbins or Brian Tracy or Law of Attraction. Not only will you not get enlightened, you will suck at life in general if you keep thinking like that.

Hehe, you speak of meditation as if it's cannabalism. Every place in the world knows meditation exists and is practiced. Serbia probably has a strong Orthdox tradition. Orthodox prayer is very similar to meditation. Sounds like you gotta upgrade your social circle, if people are really gonna question you for meditating. Also, you don't need to announce it to anyone. Just do it silently. I don't go around telling people to watch my videos. Unless they ask, I keep my mouth shut. I rarely even mention it to my Mom.

It's an experience beyond experience. Spirituality is a direct consciousness of the nonphysical, nonmaterial nature of all conventional experiences. It's like accessing a hidden dimension of reality, but at the same time, your ordinary sights and sounds never change. Your old experience simply gets recontextualized, but this happens on an epic scale, which is way more significant than your mind can presently imagine. Psychedelics can give us a very good glimpse of how this recontextualization happens.

@Dino D Man... this work is no joke. You are asking to understand the very nature of ALL OF REALITY and to become IMMORTAL!!! Seriously! Can you fathom the significance of this??? Enlightenment is not just some self-help goal like losing 40 pounds. If you want big things, you gotta be willing to work for it. Is it emotionally difficult? Fuck yes! You have to face your very death. That's exacty why it's so rare and worthwhile, and why you're complaining about it. Of course you will complain. You haven't even faced the real emotional labor of this work yet. You've but dipped your toe. There will be real agony ahead. But also amazing beauty.

Just keep practicing consistently. Allow the spiritual purification process to happen. If you sit daily, you should see the process working on a weekly basis. Emotionall crap will surface, and then pass away, in cycles. The key is to not get fed up and quit. Trust the process. Give it time to work. Strong negative emotions means progress. Don't judge your results by how happy you feel. Happiness is a long-term by-product.

Of course. Skepticism is often used as the ego's greatest weapon. Rather than active skepticism, the much better position is to admit that you really don't know. That is actually what's the case. You just don't know what the truth is. So just stay with that, and try not to let your mind entangle itself in speculation. Speculation is very tempting, but it is a tool of the devil. Not-knowing is a VERY counter-intuitive move.

As I've said before, mastery in this field takes 20-40 years. But that doesn't mean you need to wait that long. There is a big difference between mastery and one enlightenment experience. You can have one experience quite quickly. And you can grow a lot along the way. None of the work is "wasted". You life will be improved by leaps and bounds even if you don't go all the way. Yes, of course enlightenment is rare. Most folks here are just getting started on their spiritual journeys. Don't expect to find enlightened masters hanging around on a forum. Once you have an enlightenment or two, you'll quit this forum. BTW, I have seen people here having awakenings. Can't tell how deep they are, but people are doing it. Or at least getting glimpses, which is still an epic and life-changing thing when you have it. This ain't no Usain Bolt situation. The only problem here is, you don't really want enlightenment bad enough. So a lot of time is wasted beating around the bush. If you just discipline yourself to self-inquire, you will make quick progress. You'll feel it.

@goodwig You're right about that, it's very not good for YOU That's enlightenment. The issue is that you don't really want it. You're searching for goodness, not Truth. So don't be surprised if you never find it. Yes, of course psychedelics can give you a deep glimpse in just 15 minutes. It also helps to go to retreats. Lots and lots of retreats. This issue requires massive work for most people, and for some, extra extra massive work.