Leo Gura

The practical level of survival will always exist as long as you're alive as a human being. Yes, you are formless consciousness. But you are also a human avatar, and as long as you are, on the practical level, you will have to behave like a human. This shouldn't be so surprising.

@Feeble Dave Anything can affect your drive for work. It's not like your drive for work is a given. It could end tomorrow. Consciousness work of any kind will cause you to seriously re-examine your entire life. That's the point.

Truffles have the same effect. They can be even more potent gram for gram.

Awareness is EVER-PRESENT! Right now! You cannot not access it. Try right now to not be aware. It's impossible. You're always aware (unless perhaps in deep sleep). Feeling is acknowledged with thought, yes, but notice that feeling must happen before thought can acknowledge it. There must be something first to acknowledge. Notice that you can think whatever you want and the feeling of the floor doesn't change from that. Do this in your experience right now. Stop theorizing about it.

When you want sex, do you stop and ask yourself: "But how do I know I REALLY want sex? What if I stop wanting it just as I'm pulling my dick out?" Desire is FELT. Desire is passion. It's a deep yearning. If you have no desire for anything, then good. Just sit there and be satisfied without desire. You don't need anything more. Or do you? For people who have no other yearning, I recommend pursuing consciousness and Truth. Your desires will materialize as you shed layers of fake self in that process.

@DimmedBulb One strong mushroom trip or 5-meo trip would solve that problem. You're stuck in a low-consciousness trance right now and you don't even know it yet. It's hard to break out of that without a kick in the ass (which psychedelics provide very nicely). You've basically got two options with fear: face it head on, or keep running away for the rest of your life.

@MHarris Sounds like you're a good candidate for enlightenment work. Nothing in the material world will ever really satisfy you anyways. Only Truth will. So why not pursue it with a vigor? The Truth is free ya know As you get closer to Truth, I'd bet your purpose will materialize. You might also be a good candidate for psychedelics. One strong mushroom trip could really jolt you out of your funk. I say this because it sounds like you're really lacking a connection to Source Consciousness. You've gotten lost in our dysfunctional culture and materialism. It's time for you to discover that reality is mystical and your crappy life is but a dream.

@DimmedBulb Whatever arises arises, but you want to look past the knee-jerk fear reaction and use this method to get perspective on your life. If you will die, then what does that mean for how you should live life? What is worth doing? What isn't worth doing? There lies the value of this method. Working through the fear of death will require a much more serious effort than merely contemplating it. Fear of death is visceral. It can be overcome, but only through very serious consciousness work.

Interesting poll. I'm INTP, but very balanced on the N and P to the point of almost being 50/50. But I and T are very strong for me. Although that's from over 4 years ago, before doing any consciousness work. I wonder how it's shifted in the last 4 years.

@Skrotus If you do some DMT or high dose mushrooms, or start to develop psychic abilities through practice, I'm pretty sure you'll start to experience such things. 20-30 grams of mushrooms will send you into an totally nother dimension, from what I hear. You would gain a new sense of respect for the paranormal after that. Not for newbies.

That's a rather good explanation of it. Karma Yoga would be like selfless action. It would be similar to what I call life purpose. I doubt that Karma Yoga is too effective at making people enlightened. But it could be highly effective for spiritual purification -- which in a way is even more important than enlightenment. But if you're gunning for enlightenment proper, I would focus on a more direct method like self-inquiry, or mindfulness meditation, or neti neti, etc. Ideally, of course, do both! In general, seek to make your actions and your work as selfless as possible.

@Anlib Good, keep practicing self-honesty like that. Get very REAL about what you're up to in life, and why. Keep turning the focus inward, especially when the mind decides to turn the focus outward through projection, blame, bitterness, criticism, distraction, etc.

@BeginnerActualizer Life purpose is a construction. That's all. It's something you decide to create, in the same way that a child decides to create a sandcastle at the beach to entertain herself. You can be enlightened and build a sandcastle. The only difference is, you will be aware of what you're doing, unlike other people who become identified with their sand castles, only to cry when the tide washes them away. If you took my course, you should remember that I specifically talked about how life purpose is a CONSTRUCTION and mustn't be taken too seriously. And yet, at the same time, you must take it very seriously What you're struggling with here is the notion of detachment. It's very paradoxical. You haven't reconciled in your mind yet how it's possible to be super-passionate about something, and yet fully detached from it. This ability requires massive development of awareness. It's an advanced fruit of spiritual purification. So if you're doing the consciousness work alongside your life purpose work, one day you will reconcile the paradox of detachment. And when you do, your ability to execute on your purpose will skyrocket. Or it's also possible that you realize your purpose was inauthentic, requiring a big re-alignment. Either way, it's a great thing.

The infinite is always here. There's no method to "access it". If you're aware of this, you're enlightened. Strictly-speaking, there is no method for enlightenment. Enlightenment is beyond all methods. There's nothing you can do to reach it because it's already here, right now. It is effective, but if you want to get enlightened, 1 hour per day is generally not nearly enough. You should be doing week-long retreats. You're not serious about this work unless you've spent at least 100 hours straight doing nothing but meditating, eating, and sleeping. You should be doing at least 1 or 2 week-long retreats per year. The daily 1-hour of meditation is basically maintenance work. Although it's still WAY better than having no practice at all.

@smd I've heard that it requires a lot of reading, as Ken gives you a large book list and expects you to read most of it for the program. Other than that, can't say whether it's worth the cost or not. Most of the self-help industry uses dishonest marketing techniques to maximize sales, so that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

@quantum You sleep, but just keep the intention to be mindful while falling asleep and as soon as you wake up. If you do that, you'll notice that even during sleep, while you dream, mindfulness will sorta be at work, keeping a vigil. You don't need to consciously manipulate anything during sleep itself.

@Naviy As explained in that video. Basically noting and labeling experience.

@Anlib It's not a matter of trust, its a matter of self-honesty. You know when you're honest with yourself about an issue. The above sound like genuine insights. But be careful about how you assign meaning to them. Be careful about your emotional reactions to insights. And be careful about judging or blaming others. This path is about taking 100% responsibility for everything that happened in your life.

Yes, hundreds of hours of mindfulness meditation does the trick. So does self-inquiry.

Actually, look closer. Is there an "I" who is aware of sensory experiences? Or is there only sensory experience, without a YOU? If there is a YOU, point to it. It should be easy to find. As you carefully investigate all this, don't dismiss the possibility that there may not be a YOU there at all. After all, why would there be? P.S. The reason you're stuck is because the thing you think exists (YOU), actually doesn't. It's like you're trying to find a needle in a haystack when there never was any needle to begin with. Now... the only question is, how long will it take "you" to realize that?

@oysterman For me self-inquiry is a combination of thinking and being. There are generally two ways to become enlightened: 1) Use the thinking mind to eat itself alive, finally seeing through the illusion. (The method of contemplation or questioning or deconstruction) 2) Just be still for so long that the mind quiets down and Truth reveals itself. (The method of meditation or mindfulness) In reality, you will intermix both methods because it's very hard to only do one method for years on end. You will naturally have intellectual questions arise. You will naturally want to actively think about your thinking and logically investigate your beliefs. And you will also have to go beyond thinking, still the mind, and reside in raw awareness. So I think it would be a trap to so start a debate in your mind about whether method #1 is better or worse than method #2. You really want to master both. For some people, one method will be much more effective than another. That's okay. Experiment with methods until you find one that suits you. Don't be rigid with methods. There are many methods and you will not know which is effective for you unless you try it for a while. I've personally found week-long mindfulness meditation retreats most effective. It's really hard to not get a glimpse of enlightenment after 100 hours of full-time mindfulness meditation. But that's just me. And I have done a lot of intellectual deconstruction already, so that set the foundation for the mindfulness work. Because my mind is very conceptual and creative, meditation tends to be very effective because it stills the mind. To me, deconstruction & meditation are like peanut-butter and jelly BTW, the "Who am I?" and "What am I?" questions are NOT meant to be intellectually answered. You ask those questions and then BE the answer! It's a dredging up process. You keep querying "What am I?" until all the false answers are purged from your mind and you BECOME the answer. Any intellectual answer, any linguistic answer, is NOT the answer. The answer is an experience, not a thought or sentence.

If you do hours for cross-legged sitting every day for years, it can screw up your knees. So if you're afraid of that, just use a well-padded chair for long sits.

No, it's not. You can feel the floor without any thinking whatsoever. Notice that when you stop thinking for 3 seconds, the floor doesn't disappear. If thought was required for awareness, the entire universe would cease to exist in between each of your thoughts. A thought is just one kind of arising WITHIN awareness. Awareness is required for thought, but thought is not required for awareness.

@Martin123 Well, it's a physiological fact that your right brain controls your left hand.

@Martin123 Of course. Stuff like shaking or twitching is often the direct result of suppressing emotions and improper energy flow through the body from years of low-consciousness living. And it can be reversed.