Leo Gura

@Heart of Space Good! This is a test from the universe. A threshold guardian. This is the perfect opportunity for you to double down, apply your mindfulness skills to the craving for experiential pleasure, use your wisdom to see through Maya, and renew your meditation practice with an even greater vigor! Or, you can allow yourself to get seduced by Maya. Then maybe you will have enlightenment in the next life. You beat Zelda, the highest rated game in years -- and what did it do for you? Nothing. You're just as miserable as before you beat it. This is how the universe teaches. Karma 101. The universe created the perfect Zelda to teach you that you don't want Zelda. If you're too dense to learn the lesson now, don't worry, it will keep creating more and more Zelda's until you get it, or die trying. If there's anything Nintendo's great at, it's pumping out the same old favor of Maya. And now you've even got the convenience of Maya on the go! Now you can experience Maya in full force while sitting on the toilet.

Because they don't study all the traps, and inevitably fall into them. Or they simply don't desire it enough.

I cannot be enlightened at all. Empty awareness is already your true nature. It cannot change. You cannot change into it. You are it already. This just needs to be cognized. You don't occur in time, time occurs in you.

@Driven Woman Channeling is a deep rabbit hole. I've cited the Law Of One books before. My opinions about its veracity are still uncertain. If you're interested in channeling, I think the best course of action is to actually attempt to do it yourself. Otherwise it's just belief which doesn't grow you much. If you become a channel, only them will you know what it's really about. There are many books available which teach you to do it. But also be ware, your time might be better spent getting enlightened.

Enlightenment will make you more stoic than Stoicism. So fear not.

Total overkill

@My_Name_Is_Mud I don't see many hot girls at meditation or contemplation retreats. They must be partying it up at the clubs instead. Can't blame them. Being hot isn't easy

That is NOT how it goes. Don't conflate YOUR lack of personal experience with what others have experienced.

Good Firstly, that's a good question for you to contemplate, and also inquire into when on your trips. Secondly, all the standard spiritual practices: meditation, concentration, mindfulness, self-inquiry, clean diet, etc, etc.

Tons of enlightened females. They just don't get as much attention.

@Not a shaolin monk If you want to quickly see that time doesn't exist, just try a psychedelic. You will see time is a construct of mind. It will just become very obvious.

If your sense of identification with body/mind ACTUALLY disappeared, then it was a genuine ego dissolution experience. Although enlightenment is not just a temporary change of state. It's a deep knowing. A knowing which remains and doesn't disappear.

@Wind Yes, you are awareness. It's not a given. You have to become conscious of it. We just assume it as a short-cut for purposes of guiding you there faster. If you want to inquire very strictly, then don't assume anything at all and derive everything from scratch. The end result will be the same. But also, intuitively, you hold that your life has been constant. You don't believe that you stop existing every night you go to sleep. And you don't believe that every new day is a new you. The you is the same from day to day, even though all appearances change. Your consciousness itself doesn't change.

They were blown out into outer space by the giant meteor

@Magic I don't talk about it because these are very nuanced, complex, technical subjects which require decades of experience to fully understand. They are definitely worth investigation.

Because we have no words in the human language for something beyond experience. So when we speak of an "enlightenment experience" we mean it very loosely. You have to understand that it's actually not an experience. Even though it may be accompanied by an experience when it occurs. But it also actually doesn't "occur" because it's outside of time. 1) Get a guide/teacher who can work with you one on one, who is specifically good at direct pointing techniques. 2) Go to a retreat, workshop, or seminar. 3) Start practicing Mindfulness Meditation with strict labeling, as I explain in the Mindfulness Meditation video. 4) Take some psychedelics. 5) Get more serious. Stoke up a burning desire to know What you are. 6) Spend more time doubting your present belief that you are a body/mind, so you really don't know. 7) Spend A LOT more time inquiring. You need to build up momentum. Long chunks of time are necessary. 1 hour here and there just doesn't build enough momentum. Try spending a whole weekend doing solid inquiry until you're absorbed in it.

@bobbyward Go deeper! Until it knocks you off your feet. There is nothing subtle about realizing all of reality is unreal.

@Loreena See my Practical Guide To Enlightenment post. It lists all the key questions.

@Epiphany_Inspired Sorry, there's no way to rescue it on our end. There needs to be a successful submission resulting in a post. Sometimes your connection can time out, which means the forum never got your data. Most web browsers allow you to click the Back button or CTRL+Z to go back and retrieve your own data.

That's right. "Normal" and "paranormal" are just social conventions. What's paranormal for mainstream Western society might be totally normal to an experienced yogi or a shaman in the Amazon rainforest. Is seeing a demon or an angle paranormal? Most Westerners would say Yes! Because what "paranormal" really means is: "My paradigm of reality doesn't allow such a phenomena to be possible." But of course, one's paradigm of reality could be wrong. A smart phone would have been viewed as paranormal by the ancient Greeks, for example. To us, it is normal. If you showed up to a forum in Athens with a smart phone, you would have probably been called a witch, put to trial, and hung.

Yes, that's what you should be shooting for. Fancy experiences are not it. You are guessing. In this work, you cannot take anything for granted. Everything must be derived from scratch. You don't even know if there is such a thing as enlightenment. You have an illusion of control (which is called ego). There is no one in control of anything.

@EmilyCook26 You'll need 1000s of hours of serious meditation practice before the inner voice starts to quiet down. Especially if you live an intoxicated lifestyle. I don't have a quiet mind when I meditate. And that's okay. I still get many benefits. Spirituality is not a magic cure. It takes real work to get the fruits. But it's worth it. Have you started doing self-inquiry yet? That might be helpful.

Simple, you don't know what your values are or what you want out of life. Probably because you've never seriously contemplated it. Or you're just going through a big transition, which naturally leads to confusion.

@electroBeam Aren't you bored of being scared yet? How long you gonna play these silly games? Get enlightened and get on with your life already! ...rather than furiously jerking off to yourself in the mirror. You're like the groundhog who surfaced to jerk off to himself, but mid-way through saw his own shadow, got scared, hid back in his little dank hole, only to repeat the whole thing the next day, bragging about it to his groundhog friends.

@ChimpBrain The evidence for paranormal phenomena is overwhelming. And it makes perfect sense given that reality is nondual and conscious. But nevertheless, I think most people into LoA understate the mechanical aspects of it. Changes in thoughts lead to changes in emotions lead to changes in actions lead to changes in results. You don't need some fancy quantum mechanical explanation for that. Although there probably is paranormal stuff going on around the fringes or for very advanced spiritual practitioners. People into LoA tend to crave "spiritual" explanations for things. Yes, if you want to get super-spiritual you could argue that the muffin you eat in the morning was baked by God. But it's also simpler to say it was baked by your oven using chemical heat. Yes, your oven is technically God, so if you want to get all spiritual about it, you can. There are many different frameworks for explaining natural phenomena.