winterknight

Well, it's the same advice I give for everything . Get psychoanalysis, self-inquire, etc. I mean, you can try to do a few other practical things: know & avoid your smoking triggers, change up your social situations where you would usually smoke, etc. But those are at the margins. The real issue is going to be at the emotional level for you, and whether there are conflicts in your unconscious that will drive you back or not.

Questions about enlightened beings cannot really be answered But whether as a seeker one has to work on one’s psychology or not depends on whether one is able to pursue the search with focus, concentration, and intensity. If one is afflicted with overpowering anxiety, depression, distraction, lust or greed or anger... these will hinder the search.

Basically meaning itself is a human, mental concept. Realization means seeing the falsity of all such concepts. This is not to say that reality is meaningless. That too would be just another concept.

Well clearly then your very sentences must be such a product. Seekers must pursue ideas to destroy their false ideas, and the direct experience of the flowing present moment is one such idea. To believe that one escapes ideas in any way but through ideas is self-deception.

Ha, no. Self-inquiry is not about experiences or states.

The reason it's about intellect and not experience is that no particular experience is the issue. The point are the assumptions we've made about ourselves, which are intellectual in nature, and which intellectual introspection can deconstruct.

No, experience doesn't deconstruct intellect -- intellect deconstructs itself. The looking into, the discernment of this concept called "I," is what shows its true nature.

What happened with what?

I mean, they were a very cool cosmic ride. Tons of amazing images and cool ideas. But 'after' nothing has much particular value per se except shallowly.

Beyond that duality I've done them both before and after.

I've generally avoided commenting on this topic, and perhaps it's unwise of me to wade in, but fools go where angels fear to tread , and perhaps something productive will come of it. It's a mark of my respect for this forum as a gathering place for sincere seekers of truth that I am bothering to discuss this. We all know how unproductive such discussions can get. Anyhow, I respect psychedelics, and have taken them a few times, though I'm no expert. I certainly believe they can be helpful -- for the right person -- in opening the mind up in certain ways. However, from where I stand, the problem with believing that psychedelics can take you to Truth is that it misunderstands what Truth is. Truth is not a place to which one can be taken. It is not a state of consciousness, no matter how amazing, mind-blowing, or infinite. It is not a samadhi, no matter how extraordinary. Nor can any samadhi, no matter how profound, result in the realization of Truth. These -- at best -- can be glimpses or intimations or partial awakenings, but never Truth itself. Not even with integration and embodiment. Actually, Truth cannot be integrated and embodied. To realize Truth is to understand why that's so. The realization of Truth -- and there is only one such thing, and in fact not even that -- is fundamentally the destruction of certain incoherent unconscious beliefs which are at the root of suffering. These beliefs are based in thinking, that is, in words. These beliefs can only be unraveled through a clear introspective investigation of them. That investigation happens through intellectual discernment, not through any particular experience. Words destroy words, logic destroys logic, thinking destroys thinking. No quantity or type of experience can do it, because what is investigated is something common to all experiences. It's a belief that has to be unraveled through examination of experience itself. So it can have nothing to do with any particular experience, however cosmic, nor can it be the result of such a thing. If it did, it would then become provisional -- temporary -- limited -- and that would defeat the point of Truth. Truth is effortless perfect peace eternally. If that isn't the case, it can't be called Truth.

There are many different styles and varieties of seekers coming from many different standpoints and schools. For example, you might find a community of seekers if you went to Tiruvannamalai in India (where the Indian sage Ramana Maharshi used to live) -- though you might also find a lot of other people. And clearly they will be seekers influenced by Maharshi's teachings. You will also find seekers in various Buddhist monasteries and retreats, Hindu ashrams, and so on. You'll find seekers at places like the Science and Nonduality conference, and also around any of the prominent Western spiritual teachers, though obviously those seekers will be influenced by and in the style of those teachings. Maybe you could consider watching some interviews on Buddha at the Gas Pump and see if anyone resonates? By watching what they say and what they do and how one feels about them and in their presence, one can get a sense over time of whether they 'get it' or not. Though in a sense it's limited, because the ultimate truth is that there are no enlightened people, there's just enlightenment.

A healthy ego is one in which there is sufficient clarity of mind and emotional well-being to undertake the spiritual search. Yes, it will make the spiritual path easier.

Psychoanalysis ("analysis") is the therapy that Freud started, but it has advanced a lot since then. If you enter analysis -- that means undergoing that type of therapy -- it is the best way of dealing with emotional blocks and understanding psychodynamic theory.

Call the Associazione Italiana di Psicoanalisi and ask for a referral to enter analysis.

I have a master’s degree in psychology and have studied the topic extensively: Freud and psychoanalysis and the unconscious have plenty of evidence for them, and they are far subtler than competing schools of thought. Look at the psychoanalysis section of my reading list to learn more, though by far the best way to understand it in the context of your emotional blocks is to enter analysis yourself. It’s an amazing thing for anyone who values self-understanding and is willing to commit serious time and effort to it. Google a local psychoanalytic institute in your city and ask for a referral, PM me if you have questions. (Jung though you might want to treat with a more skepticism. He tends to make claims that just aren’t as well supported.)

You're in one right now. What exactly is it that you hope to discover and explore?

Yup, it’s good

There is no such thing as deliberately "eliminating identifications." And it's not returning to the awareness. It is trying to seek the I. Read my guide about it carefully. You must inquire into who has this question.

In the spirit of Sri Ramana Maharshi's silent sitting, a short video of sitting in Silence:

With your objections above, you are confusing a philosophical/intellectual question with an investigation into your experience. For example, suppose you were in a room, and someone asked you to find the light by which everything in the room was seen. You see a couch. Now, if you examined your experience, you would say "I see this couch because of the light -- therefore it is not the source of the light." Now philosophically you could say, "Well, the couch is matter, but matter is really energy, and light is energy too, and isn't all energy one thing, and is there really a difference between the couch and the rest of the room, etc." -- you could bring up all these objections...but experientially you know perfectly well what is meant. In the same way, you're looking around the room of your individual perspective and you are looking around for the "light source" by which you know all of your experiences in that room. You know perfectly well that if you experience something, you know that "I experienced that," and that means a division between "I" and "that," and that you are looking for the "I" portion of it. You can bring up all the philosophical objections, but they are beside the point. You know perfectly well what is being asked.

Yes. Indeed, language itself is meaningless ("and yet what is this sentence?").

Mostly. Though really that's not quite true: the question is hard to answer accurately, since there is no mind actually.

I don't practice at all anymore. It was to share with other people. Although I sit like that just because I feel like it sometimes.

I guess for me it is heh I don't do SDSes unfortunately...