Leo Gura

@Taavi This work is inherently paradoxical. Nothing changes, and everything changes simultaneously. But enlightenment will certainly not change anything material. So if you're broke now, you'll still be broke after enlightenment. Even addictions may not change. If you're a chain smoker now, you probably will be after enlightenment unless you make efforts to change it. Enlightenment is utterly useless. It has no practical function. It just happens to be TRUE. After realizing this, your life must still go on. You still have to eat, shit, read, drive a car, go to work, relate to people, pay your taxes, avoid falling off cliffs, etc. But you will have a new perspective on life and your role in it. And emotionally, stuff should change quite a bit. Judging your life's quality is arbitrary, but that doesn't mean you want to live like a dog. You still have many preferences. You are not merely a passive observer of life. You are an active participant whether you like it or not. Every action you take has consequences (even if there is no "you" steering the ship).

That's right! This work is paradoxical. Believe it or not, it is possible in this case to demolish your house while building it too. And that's EXACTLY what you should be doing in this work. Remember that enlightenment really changes nothing. If your life is crappy before enlightenment, it will still be crappy afterwards.

@Richard Alpert Of course you gotta compare gram for gram of dried substance.

@Taavi It's a long, drawn out process. You have much more toxic beliefs to question right now than life purpose. Yes, life purpose requires some belief building, but that's just a practical facet of life. The trap here would be to think, "I gotta dissolve all beliefs. So let me start by doubting my beliefs in life purpose, self-actualization, enlightenment, love, compassion, etc." No! Those beliefs are practical and useful. Keep them if they are serving your growth. What you should be more concerned about dropping are all your other limiting beliefs. What you're doing right now is sorta like saying, "Oh, my left leg has a paper cut in it, let's amputate it." While your right leg is infested with cancer and gangrene. The paper cut on the left leg is NOT the problem. Start by amputating the stuff that's really toxic. There's nothing contradictory about -- say -- pursing enlightenment and developing a career in music. You can do both. Likewise for whatever other career you might be passionate about.

@Taavi Congrats, now you know how Hippies happen Seriously though, the truth is most striving for success or self-improvement are phony and misguided. It's like going to McDonald's your whole life without realizing there are much better meal options available elsewhere in the city. As you do more consciousness work, you will realize more and more how dysfunctional and shallow everything in mainstream society is. This can be difficult to reconcile at first, because your entire foundation for living is thrown into doubt. If you continue the work, eventually you will come to peace with all this and you will find more healthy ways to relate to mainstream society. You'll find your niche at some point, but it might take a few years or a decade. You're still so young you don't really know yourself yet. You'll spend most of your 20's just getting to know who you are and what you want out of life. Rolling with it at your age is probably the best strategy.

Even 1 gram of mushrooms can be a powerful spiritual and healing experience.

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.