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@Emerald Is there a difference between our understanding of yin and yang? You seem to be saying that people have both energies, and I'm saying that there is one energy that can be seen as yin or yang. A perception of this energy (as a perspective) is what constitutes a person/identity. Wouldn't it be a form of ignorance to mistakenly take this universal energy as fragmented into two? (I'm not using the word ignorance in a condemning way)

@Arkandeus No, you're not. Let me explain. As it is present in the icon, the yin contains the yang and yang contains the yin. You are showing this connection in your post. A popular belief is that yin and yang cause, or complement one another. That one cannot exist without the other because there would be no point of reference to distinguish something. That yang is yang because there is yin. That is true, but there is another, deeper level that you have expressed in terms of male and female energy. There is a way in which yang can be seen as yin and vice versa. That is because yang contains yin and yin contains yang. They are identical to each other. It is symbolized by the contrasting dots in the symbol. It is often said that a man has the initiative in a relationship. That he is supposed to lead and decide and a woman is supposed to listen. That a man is a man because he can express himself with a woman as a material. That a man can mold the woman into whatever is necessary for the relationship. That is only partially correct, because it is disrespectful to the woman. Yin is submission, but submission is a strength equally great to dominance. To dominate another is to submit to yourself. To submit to another is to dominate yourself. A woman has the strength of rejection, or selective submission. If a man is the seed, a woman is the earth. The earth has to be hospitable in order for seed to grow. It is by far the most visible in the act of courtship. Nothing is more humiliating to a fully yang man than rejection by a woman. Relationship is like a dance. Someone needs to lead in order for dance to occur. But leading has to be wise. The leader may only place his foot, where his partner is absent. The leader may only lead in the direction that will let his partner keep her balance. A painter needs a canvas in order to paint. A painter may see himself as yang, and see the canvas as yin. Any good painter knows that he does not know exactly how the painting will turn out once he's finished. In the process of painting, he uses the randomness of his technique to give the character to the painting. In doing so, he learns about himself - by observing his mistakes and imperfections of his own style. In this sense, the roles of the canvas and the painter are reversed. From the point of view of the canvas, the painter is the material in which it creates the technique. In this sense, the canvas is yang, and the painter is yin. Yin and yang are identical and whole. One may say that yin has power over yang, but that would be a mistake in the same way in which one can say that yang has power over yin. Yin and yang coexist, because they are identical through the shift in perspective.

@John Iverson I don't intend to offend you - I think that your curiosity is priceless. What I intend to say though is that you are probably asking a question that is way out of your league for now. I'm having trouble grasping what exactly is intelligence, not to mention infinite intelligence. The only answer one could say is: try and see for yourself.

@TheSomeBody Each of the paths you mentioned point to the exact same enlightenment. The essence, or the methods, of these traditions are equivalent because they share the same effect. Contradiction you point out may occur only within their dogmas, but these have nothing to do with enlightenment. Logic that explicates the contradiction is precisely what needs to be transcended in this work.

@AstralProjection If sex is interesting to you, then by all means go ahead and engage in it. There is no jumping stages. You cannot become fully green unless you become fully orange. The process of growth is dialectic. You need to experience the excess in order to see the unhealthiness. It may actually be beneficial for later stages to engage in excesses to free the suppressed urges and desires. I'm not saying that lap dances are bad though. If you're okay with them, then why don't you try something more extreme? Prostitution can be seen as exploitation, but there are kinds of 'prostitutes' that will engage in a more therapeutic sex with you. Sex is nice, but it is not anything better (or worse) than any other part of life. Like any other part of life - it can become unhealthy as well. It is fundamentally up to you whether what you're doing is healthy or not. In order to decide on that - you need to test the waters first and burn yourself first-hand to know where are your limits.

@MarkusSweden The idea that life has to be either serious or playful is a false duality. Living a serious life, trying to accomplish things is the greatest folly. That is because ultimately you will die, and everything you accomplish will turn to ashes. Living a playful life, trying to have fun is the most serious matter. The best games are the ones in which you play with fire and the stake is your precious life. It doesn't matter whether you are serious, or playful, as long as you understand that one is the other side of the other. The key to this realization is totality. Being playful about seriousness and being serious about playfulness.

@MarkusSweden If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Hint: It's a question and it is related to your thread.

@tentacion The error comes from assuming that reasoning about everything is subjugated to causes. If everything has a cause, then does the fact that everything have a cause also have a cause? The paradigm in which there is universal causality requires that this very causality is causeless. To say that reality is causal is to say that causality is something more general than reality. Reality is something, which (by definition) is everything, so it is the top-most generality which includes all other. Causality has to be born within reality, and governs at most a subset of it. Under close examination, the notion of reality is a paradox, so reasoning about is illogical. Paradoxically, it is precisely what allows reality to be itself because, by necessity, it has to include everything. Once you assume a paradox, you can prove anything (which you did in the original post).

@Prabhaker I follow Jung's teachings, but I think that he was wrong in this respect. Having a strong ego and detaching from it is definitely possible. These are two disjoint dimensions of existence. They do not intersect and conflict. It is a false duality. It is done exactly through slapping Eastern spirituality on top of a western ego. The key is to slap it not on top, but besides the western ego. Can you relate, @Joseph Maynor? I think that you follow a similar path to me.

@11modal11 @Mikael89 There are people that need to feel like the life is a struggle in order to feel accomplished. To them, happiness has to be deserved and earned the hard way. By practicing, discipline and hard work. The fact is that you can be happy regardless of your circumstances, and it is a valuable skill that outshines any practice in existence. It is the greatest practice and the hardest work. To dedicate your life to be happy, no matter what. That is the path of totality. In a sense - hard work that betters your circumstances is the easy option to those people. They simply cannot fathom the idea that they can do nothing and still be content. They call it laziness, half-assing life and other names. Don't let those names stick with you. Or do let them, but understand that unless you do the hard work, your circumstances will not improve and may even deteriorate. That is the opportunity to practice your happiness on a new level, or grind yourself to improve. @MarkusSweden can you relate to @11modal11's story? @Mikael89 If love Kahn talks about is truly infinite, then it is nothing other than nothingness. Everything speaks enlightenment if you know how to listen.

@Faceless I just wanted to let you know that your language has improved drastically over the last few months, friend. Keep up the great work ?

@11modal11 Conventional spirituality is crafted to have traction with a conventional human being. You are probably not one of them, so feel free to pick and choose the version that resonates with you the most. You already know how to be authentic - just listen to yourself. Even though various versions of spirituality sound nothing alike, they all talk about the same thing from different perspectives. Suffering is not obligatory here. You may already have become enlightened prior to learning about it and simply gotten used to it over time. Can you pinpoint a moment in your past that dramatically increased your love and authenticity? Matt Kahn may be a good teacher for you.

@MarkusSweden "I love you"

@Kamo Everyone always knows what you think because all there is, is you. Any thing you hear is your interpretation. Any response you give is a response to what you understood. The self plays the role of I and the other by communicating through the voice. This communication is the stream of understanding that makes reality tangible. When you are being dishonest to another person by saying one thing and thinking another, the other will not verbally address your thoughts. What he will say in response, however, will be interpreted in relation to what has been thought secretly. You will not hear him saying what you thought, but you will look for confirmation of what is held in secret. At the very least, you will be conscious of the possibility of the other person being dishonest (just like you are). You may start to play a game of trying out-think them and predict what they say non-verbally (and read his thoughts in the process). All of that is predicated on your own dishonesty towards that person. There is no secret thoughts. The self sees everything.

@Victor Mgazi You have connected to the oneness and you know that everything is nothing. So did I. I am not (only) the psychological person that arrived at oneness. The person keeps asking questions though. The person arrived at oneness through various paths, but it is the same oneness it saw at the beginning. Each path revealed the same thing, but from a different perspective. The psychological person had changed through all of these encounters. There may be people that are simply content with enlightening and seeing the nature of everything. I am not one of them. I did not seek enlightenment, enlightenment found me. I simply asked questions, which I still do. I know the the answer to all questions, but asking them and seeking the path is what drives the psychological me. I simply let it do its thing. So yes, after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. What if chopping wood and carrying water is asking questions, though?

You may have awakened to your true nature, but there are still things that you are ignorant of (like I am). You know what you are, but what is the other? What is language? What is thought? What is understanding? What is a 'what'? Just like you can become directly aware of what you are, you can become directly aware of other things as well. In a sense, the original awakening is something that lets you perceive things differently and this perception is something to be integrated with your everyday experience. It's a work that will consume your whole life if you're into it. I am.

@Kamo The relationship between your inner hearing and the other is that the inner voice always has a recipient of the talk. Just like there is the verbal talk you do out loud, there is a written talk that I do right now and there is an inner talk that you do, unless you engage in the other two. There are always two parties that are being engaged in the talk. The I, and the other. The other is always something concrete, just like you are something concrete that I communicate with. My understanding of you is informed by the post in which you described your revelations. My interaction with you is informed by the way in which I understood what you wrote, so in essence - all interactions via talk are interactions of the self with the self. That is because the self is what both talks and interprets what is being said in response. Let's say that you imaginatively argue with your mother via inner hearing. You say mean things to her and she is upset and grounds you for a week (in your imagination). This mother you just argued with your inner voice is the same mother that you talk to when you speak out loud. That is because the inner interaction with her informs the image of her you have, and will influence further interactions with her via verbal voice. You will interpret her verbal words in relation to your past interactions with her (even the mental ones). That is why you are right - everyone, always, knows what you think, so thoughts influencing reality is a thing.

@Viking I wrote about a similar experiences in this thread: I hope you find it useful.

@PsiloPutty Can you tell me more about what I write? Why is it easy to understand? I'm asking because I oftentimes experiment with putting enlightenment to words and I don't understand the meaning as I write them. I can tell that various things that I do (not only say) are an expression of enlightenment, but there is still this vagueness about what links all those expressions. I believe that repeated exposure to these expressions of awakening will deepen my understanding and allow for more clarity. This is my main motivation to write on the forums.

@molosku You are a thing that does not know what it is (without knowing that it is a thing that does not know what it is). It is simple, unless you put it into words. The only words that are of value are the ones that confuse you into looking with your own eyes.

@electroBeam Very good. Can you see what is the extent of interpretation? Interpretation is yet another thing that you 'see'. The tricky thing to notice is that the intepretation and what is being perceived occurs in the same space. Look at your hand. Its 'handness' is not 'in here', behind your eyes, but 'out there', juxtaposed with what you see. The link between the hand and its 'handness' is what we call obviousness. Contemplating obviousness is a great tool of self-inquiry.

@molosku I link my first deep awakening with reading Martin Heidegger's Being and time. It is a book that gives you tools for self-contemplation and I used this knowledge to explore myself. I did not know that I was looking for enlightenment at the time and I think that it is an important factor that prevented me from distractions. There are benefits to reading, because books are food for thought when you try to re-contextualize them to apply them to your everyday experience. It can be beneficial for enlightenment, but if you do that to read what enlightenment is, it may get tricky very fast. The problem with spontaneous awakenings is that you have no context to ground your experience and it becomes very difficult to integrate it. In my case, proper integration took place a few years after the experience. Only after I learned things from @Leo Gura's channel. By no means I was hopeless on my own, but knowledge helped me a great deal to re-connect to what had happened. The question of whether I'm fully awakened, or not remains open (even to me), so you will have to judge for yourself whether this post is of any relevance to you. If full awakening (whatever it means) is the main criterion for you, you may have a hard time getting responses here, as even Leo seems to be seeking it via 5-MeO.

@Mikael89 No idea, only assumptions about this. When a person seeks enlightenment, he may very well spend his whole life looking for it in various places. After attaining it somehow, he realizes that his whole life was used to accumulate knowledge that becomes useless in a sense once you awaken. The only other thing you can do with it is to teach others how to enlighten. This is how I can explain the origin of a person that calls himself a guru. According to Osho, the defining quality of a guru is that his presence pulls you towards yourself. It may be a universal quality of enlightened people, or a technique one accumulates via being in the presence of gurus your entire life. My enlightenment has something to do with manipulation of meaning, so I'm wondering whether it is possible to make anything (any mundane thing) into a guru for me. I can treat ordinary people like gurus and listen to their unrecognized wisdom, but inanimate objects are a different thing entirely (for now). Infinite wisdom, huh?

@Nahm That's beautiful. Is it a photo?