Leo Gura

"Do not blame God for having created the tiger, but thank him for not having given it wings." -- Hindu Proverb

@Emerald Wilkins Doesn't change the fact that "hungry child", in this case, is a concept. Which is not to say you'll never run into hungry children, as if they are a myth. They are real -- when you meet one. If this causes you to be cruel to hungry children -- by say, stopping your donations -- then that's for you to reconcile. As in West World, just because you realize you're in a game, doesn't mean you have to be an asshole. The game reveals your true colors.

Of course there can be multiple causes/factors. Humans are complex critters. But it shouldn't be hard to tell what your obstacles are. Just sit down and honestly ask yourself: "What are my biggest obstacles?" Your intuition knows. Things like bad habits are obvious. Things like negative motivation is obvious. Just ask, "Why am I doing X?" and see what the reason is. Is it to avoid fear, or pain? Etc.

@jse That empathy is also a sensation to become mindful of. Don't cling to your humanity so much that it keeps you from discovering your divinity

This is not helpful to someone who is stuck in a rut or is a chronic underachiever. There are times in life when you need to surrender to just being. But NOT when you're stuck in a lazy rut. When you're stuck in a rut, when you've been a victim for YEARS, when you haven't done any serious work on yourself or your career, getting mobilized is very important. Doing is very important. Action is very important. The practical reality is that most people have enormous potential which goes 99% untapped. Telling such people to "just be", "just relax", "you are already perfect", "success is fool's gold" -- that is only going to confuse them, because that's advice you give to someone who's a neurotic overachiever, not a neurotic underachiever. The life purpose course is not designed to enlighten people. It's designed to get them moving towards tapping into their enormous potential on this mortal plane and handle their career. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is important to keep in mind. People find it really hard to follow advanced spiritual advice when they can't even achieve the basics of successful living. It goes over their head and they use the advice to justify further inaction. One needs to find a balance between doing and being. And even at the most advanced spiritual levels, being is never done at the expense of necessary doing.

That's exactly what it is, FOR YOU! The greater tragedy is not being mindful of what is concept and what is experience.

@Joel3102 Progress is always rocky. Up and down. Expect ego blacklashes after retreats or huge gains in consciousness. This is a mastery path, so it will look like any other mastery path.

If you meditate every day, you should experience a 10x exponential gain every year. Year 1: 1 Year 2: 10 Year 3: 100 Year 4: 1,000 Year 5: 10,000 Etc.

The Hindu model of Atman/Brahman may help clear up this confusion. You are both an individuated unit of consciousness (Atman) and Absolute Infinity (Brahman). "The soul" can also refer to other mystical phenomena besides this.

If someone crapped in a Zen sand garden at a serious Japanese monastery, they would probably bury that guy 6 feet under that garden, and that would be the last anyone ever heard of him.

@100rockets That is called a state of Samadhi, or mystical union, or direct consciousness, or enlightenment, or simply reality! You already are everything you experience. Right now! Already! Always! Just realize there never was a "you" who experienced anything, and what's left? The tree. The exercises listed here are pointing to Samadhi. Just keep practicing and you'll get it. Experience occurs without an experiencer. That's all there is to get.

There is hungry child when he appears before you. Otherwise, it's just an image in your mind. This requires mindfulness practice to see. Try doing the practical enlightenment exercises I pinned to the top of this sub-forum. Those will develop mindfulness in you so you can understand what is being said here.

Did you experience this through 5-meo, or how?

Well, definitely stop doing drugs. That's gonna fuck up everything no matter how hard you work at personal development. No drugs except psychedelics for spiritual growth purposes << That's just a baseline rule you gotta start following. And ditch any hard drug user friends, because they will only pull you down. Also ditch any gambler friends, they will pull you down. Then start a daily meditation habit. You need to ween yourself off of materialism. Start to notice that there is nothing satisfying about materialism, even when you get everything you want. Money, women, cars, houses, gadgets, etc. None of this stuff is fulfilling. Start to notice this so that your focus gradually shifts to growth, learning, love, consciousness, deep relationships, life purpose, etc. Find a healthy and fun activity to replace your gambling habit. Because you will certainly backslide as you continue this self-development journey. Have a plan ready for when you backslide. You might want to look into do a week-long meditation retreat. You might want to look into psychedelics if you're hooked on recreational drugs. Psychedelics will also be good for combating your materialistic attachments. If you're seriously addicted to recreational drugs, research Ibogaine treatments clinics. Your life will never be the same again.

There are so many cool fringe topics within personal development that I wish I had more time to explore. It would take several lifetimes to experiment with all the cool and powerful stuff out there. We need an army of consciousness explorers and cartographers!

The illusion is far far deeper than anyone imagines. It's an illusion inside an illusion inside an illusion inside an illusion. As soon as you think you're out of the illusion, you're right back in it at a deeper level.

No, just the opposite. Evolution is highly conscious and loving. Life is inherently awesome. The problem is that this cannot be seen from the egoic perspective. You MUST grasp what life is at the level of Absolute, which is beyond anything possible to imagine as a self.

@JJR Intuition actually is beyond beliefs and past experiences. Beliefs and past experiences can cloud the intuition. Intuition is that really deep voice inside you which innately speaks from love, consciousness, and goodness. It is possible to just sit down and tap into intuition, cutting through all the beliefs and past experiences. From this deep source, you can get very high-quality guidance. It might be hard for you to do that if you have a lot of beliefs and past negative experiences.

Spiral Dynamics proves useful here. Stage Orange consciousness tends to teach Stage Orange things in Stage Orange ways while emphasizing Stage Orange values which resonates with other Stage Orange consciousnesses. Which isn't to say its good or bad. But just to give you a rough map of what's going on. Mainstream self-help has to be aimed at Stage Orange or Stage Green, because there's just not enough higher stages around. And of course Stage Orange really cares about being mainstream because one of its greatest values is big success.

@Dodoster The practical issue here is not to rest on one's intellect but to pursue Nothingness directly. You ain't got it until you got it. The left brain is not ever going to get it. So just beware of that trap is my point. Until you're enlightened, you should really just treat enlightenment as any other conspiracy theory. Careful not to believe in it too much. Hold it as a tentative hypothesis which could break true or false, or even some third option.

@JJR Right, which is why knowing your own values really well is important. And developing a connection with your intuition is important. And setting clear boundaries is important. This is basically the difference between living each day consciously vs mechanically. The mechanical approach used by 99% of folks to leads backfiring and then much suffering. Life is too complex to live it mechanically. Which is why you're a human and not a robot. People lose touch with their humanity and become robots. And that's when shit hits the fan. And then they wonder, "Am I just supposed to accept all this shit?"

That's cool. Wanna experiment with it at some point when I get time. Seems like there is a lot of potential in those practices. Keep us updated.

@Dodoster Whatever your mind imagines Nothingness to be, it's wrong. Nothingness is not nothingness.

@Extreme Z7 The distinction between perception and non-perception is arbitrary.

@abrakamowse Don't be so sure about that. If the whole world would awaken today, tomorrow we would have nuclear Armageddon from all the Zen devils fighting over who's farts smell more like daffodils.