Leo Gura

You're free to do it however you want, but if you're doing a serious meditation retreat, you'll want to avoid journaling. The mind is your enemy here.

That's what happens when you don't have a proper conceptual understanding of enlightenment and its various stages. She went through 12 years of hell, and then quickly died of a brain tumor.

The root problem is that you're disconnected from being. You're running away from the void. The only cure to this is to face the void once and for all. How you distract yourself, whether physically or digitally, is beside the point. You're addicted to excitement. Even very mild forms of it. If you spend 10 days sitting and doing nothing at all, you'll see just how bad your situation is. It's WAY worse than you ever imagined. Go do a Vipassana retreat. It will be a huge eye-opener for ya. The true test of whether you've conquered loneliness is whether you can spend the rest of your life all alone doing nothing and still be deeply satisfied. If you can do that, your relationships will become magical.

Just do it anyway. What else you got to do? You can meditate lying down, or even half-asleep. You can reduce the formality of your technique and just be mindful of body sensations or sounds.

Good chillout music is delicious on AL-LAD.

@Lenny Is there a "you" aware of physical body sensations? Or just physical body sensations (without any you)? Work with any field you like. But realize, there is no you experiencing it. Be very careful with your wording. Don't be sloppy here. When you say, "Forehead", what exactly does that mean? Is a physical body sensation an actual forehead? Where is this sensation occurring? How could you know if you didn't have a mental image of it? Is a physical body sensation equivalent to having a physical body? And if you're drawing a line in the visual field, what do physical body sensations have to do with it? What is connecting the distant object to the terminating point of that line? Slowly and clinically deconstruct the phenomenal field. Notice all the things you're assuming about it, which are just pure fictions. 90% of what you assume is there, isn't.

@Gladius No. Sit down and meditate/self-inquire.

Mind is not going away so long as you're alive.

The brain/mind is a very complex system. Ego distorts personality, but never entirely. The personality always shines through. Personality is not grounded in beliefs. And even after deep enlightenment, there will still be many beliefs held by the mind. A dog has no beliefs, yet it has recurring behaviors. Behavior is not directly grounded in beliefs. Beliefs modify certain high-level behaviors only. Think of it this way, if you change the president or the CEO of a giant corporation or country, the culture of the company will not be wiped out. It will largely remain intact. Removing the ego is like the removing a bad CEO. The company then starts to naturally flourish and be itself.

Ego and self-concept are fairly similar. Self-image is more specific and refers to literally the mental images you have of yourself. How you picture yourself in your mind's eye. Personality is really different from all the above. Personality will remain even after complete enlightenment or complete ego death. Notice that even dogs and cats have unique personalities.

@Will Bigger There are levels and facets to enlightenment, but I don't like that classic 4 stage Buddhist model you listed. Because the stages are very poorly defined and mix-and-match metaphysical insights with spiritual purification, and even morality. This can become a very misleading map. There are many ways to map it, and potentially many more levels than 4, and it's not just a one-dimensional ladder. There are forks and off-shoots, and there's spiritual development which is really tangential to enlightenment insights themselves. There's also personal development. So it gets messy. What's even more complex, is that due to the incommunicable nature of this work, and the fact that people have different brains and genetics (or karma, or past lives, or whatever), levels of consciousness may exist which very very very few people have ever attained. It may not even be possible for you to attain certain levels that others have, or vice versa. You just don't know. Which is why it's a good idea to stay humble and keep working, even after you've had a big breakthrough. Chances are you'll still have much to learn. For a better understanding of the possible stages, see some of the books in my book list. And I'll be adding more books in the future on this topic. This is where a deep conceptual study of enlightenment/spirituality becomes indispensable. If you don't do the deep study, I pretty much guarantee you'll get misled by one map or another, and your attainment will be far shy of what's ultimately possible.

@Simon Håkansson Are you freaking kidding? You're going to be DEAD soon! Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!

If one is going to use any religious or mystical tradition's teachings, one needs to become good at deciphering metaphor and symbolism, almost in a poetic way. The problem that all exoteric religious teachings has been that the rational, materialistic mind likes to be literalist. Which is where fundamentalism goes wrong. It takes the teachings too literally while missing their spirit. Hence God becomes: old bearded man in the sky.

Well... just look at the havoc ego creates. Case in point. Self-hatred is big steaming pile of ego. Yes, the devil likes to use words to deepen his separation from God.

@Bodhi123 That's exactly what all the Christian Lucifer stories are pointing to. Devil = ego. I'll shoot a video about it in the future. Devil = what which separates itself from God by proclaiming itself to be its own God. And isn't that exactly what ego does? It acts like God, without recognizing any higher power. Isn't that exactly your current predicament? You little devil! Denying your own devilry! How devilish of you The holy light of God will burn your devil eyes when it shines forth upon thee. Hallelujah! The reason you can't see God, is because you already think you are God.

Look closer. Do you see a forehead? Or is the "forehead" an mental image? And does the line then terminate at a mental image? Is that what you ACTUALLY experience? Or do you ACTUALLY experience a line terminating at nothingness? And in a kid's mind, it makes sense that Santa Claus organizes the distribution of Christmas presents. Yes, "in your mind" it makes sense because it's a fantasy. In reality it's false. Your mind is the enemy here. What makes sense to the mind doesn't matter. Reality is otherwise. You can take it as an axiom of this work that no sensation perceives another. Now your job is to verify this by finding the actual perceiver. Hint: the actual perciever (you) is non-existent. You're never going to find it as an object. Because you are emptiness itself. There's no logical reason why it would. You have to discover via direct experience what you are. Then you'll see that what you are is infinite and without location (hence omnipresent). Well, be careful not to get lost in terminology. Language is a poor vehicle for this work. You need to have the direct experience of reality. "Silence" and "nothing" might point to the same thing. "Nothing", "source", and "no source" might point to the same thing. And "nothing" might point to something very different than what you imagine. Absolute reality is that which is true all the time, without change, under all circumstances. What is the ONE thing which never changes? Nothingness. Every other experience is relative truth. Hopefully you're starting to notice that all experience is changing all the time. Hence experiences cannot be The Truth. Experiences are not Absolute. To use a scientific metaphor, you might think of the vacuum of empty space as being an absolute. Although in fact, not even it is absolute, since it's merely a concept/experience your mind is having.

@Shin Lol

Consciousness != mind Emptiness != body The rest is more or less okay. Here's an idea of how to map it: Buddha = Jesus = God = you Consciousness = Awareness = Emptiness = Fullness = Divine Love Nothingness = No Self = God Ego = Mind = Sin = Devil = Hell Awareness = Holy Spirit Meditation = Prayer Reality = God Nirvana = Illumination = Kingdom Of Heaven = Bliss = Ecstasy

@MochaSlap You're not gonna understanding consciousness until you actually experience a leap in consciousness. Meditate, self-inquire, contemplate, or take a psychedelic. Then you'll know. The examples you give are tiny compared to what's ultimately necessary. Those examples are all operating on a same basic low level of consciousness. Totally new levels are available to explore. But of course, start wherever you can. Any increase in awareness is a good start.

@vikisss1 Human beings have been selectively breeding and genetically modifying plants and animals for over 5000 years. Hardly anything you put in your mouth is "natural" in the way it was in the caveman days.

@onacloudynight Great stuff! You're really growing. Don't worry about the fools who are lost in the spell of "normal" consensus reality. But if possible, keep it to yourself. There's no reason to go around freaking out those who won't understand. Try to purge all your inner demons privately as much as possible. You CAN control yourself in public. Don't let your spiritual practices become an excuse for misbehavior.

Careful what ya'll assume. Some of the most enlightened people are the most humble, least flashy, and most unassuming. Like Yoda living in a swamp. He's not walking around with a slick sales pitch, throngs of devotees, and fancy neon signs saying: ENLIGHTENED MASTER! You'd never know he was there at all unless you were really serious about seeking out Truth. Yoda doesn't run around showing off his force lighting powers in the middle of a crowded intersection. He's not stupid. You probably couldn't understand 1% of what he has to teach you. So he is silent. The more one has transcended ego, the less you will know one has. Someone like Osho is a showoff. And the reason he's popular is precisely because stupid people like flashy things.

@ElenaO Of course anything do you mindlessly will put you into an unconscious state, by definition. Before you can learn to work mindfully, you need to start practicing mindfulness just sitting and doing nothing. Once you've developed some proficiency there, you can start mindful eating, mindful sleeping, mindful walking, mindful talking, and perhaps finally, mindful working. Also, be clear about whether you mean your work is being done mindlessly, vs your work makes you irritated and drained because it's not fulfilling, because it's not aligned with your deepest values. That's another matter. For that, you need to align your work with your life purpose. Which probably means transitioning out of whatever lame job you're probably currently doing. Such a transition requires lots of careful planning and strategizing to pull off. I remember when I hated my old job.

@jdeugarte Just use some basic common sense here: If you are what you do, you'd have to stop existing whenever you stopped doing it. Cut the sloppy thinking and speculating, and get serious. What ACTUALLY are you?

@Lenny Notice, what is your current experience of the "external world"? The world you believe exists beyond your phenomenal field? It's literally nothing. That's what the "external world" turns out to be. You might say you have access to the entire external universe. It just happens to be absolutely nothing. You have to realize that reality doesn't need any external causes. It's all right here. There's nothing behind the scenes the way you were taught in science class. Of course this means you have to open yourself up to a deep inherent mystery. Hence it's called mysticism.