Sam Harris is a good real world example of what happens when a stage Orange person has some mystical/nondual experiences.
It's not all that deep. Rather surface level spirituality. But still better than nothing. At least he advocates for meditation. But he does not understand the full depth of this work.
There are many degrees of wokeness.

@Winter Anything you use in your present state of consciousness to ground reality is itself subject to your current state of consciousness and therefore in question.
As soon as your present state of consciousness changes, everything you hold to be true and correct will simply disappear as though it never existed.
You are unwittingly trying to ground reality in something -- anything -- which prevents you from realizing that the Absolute nature of reality is groundlessness (AKA, infinity).
What the LSD was showing you was truer than what you are presently conscious of. But it was too radical for your mind to integrate/understand. So as soon as your state of consciousness dropped (after the LSD wore off), you fell back asleep.
Your mistake is assuming that your present state of consciousness is the highest/truest one. It is not. You are currently asleep and trying to figure out reality from a state of asleepness. This cannot work. It leads to delusion. It's as though you are using a cracked microscope to look at reality without realizing that you are the crack in the lens and therefore you are the source of the distortion.
The solution is to do a lot more LSD and seriously contemplate what reality. Your work has barely begun.
Right now you are under a spell of self-deception. But you do not know it even when I tell you this. That's how strong your self-deception is. It's total!

Free will vs no free will is yet another duality.
The way the whole question is framed is fundamentally dualistic and silly because it assumes there is more than one entity.
If there only exists one entity/object, does it have free will or not? See? It's an absurd question because anything it is, is identical with its will. There is no other outside it that could control it. The whole notion of control breaks down because control requires two objects: a controller and the controllee. This cannot hold if nonduality is the case.
Being and Will turn out to be identical in a nondual state of consciousness.

@pfletcha You can't in the sense that it isn't aligned with Truth and Love, and you do it unconsciously.
See, if you were deeply conscious, those habits would break your integrity and connection with the Truth.
If you lie and steal while doing enlightenment work you will not get very far. Your lying and stealing will catch up with you. Karma 101.
That guilt you feel is your soul telling you that you are not living up to your highest potential as God.

@kieranperez Thinking empowering thoughts is far better than worrying.
Affirmations will of course not resolve the fundamental issue of duality or ego. But they can be a good intermediate technique. Not every technique has to be existential.
This work requires nuance.

@K VIL The conceptual self you're surviving is a very complex and sophisticated thing. It's not merely the ego in general. It's a very specific ego. The ego of you! Your particular self/psyche. The thing that makes you uniquely you.
You are never going to describe your psyche fully using language. But as you study your own survival you can get an idea of what your psyche is up to, what is needs, what it wants, etc.
So the goal is not to perfectly describe your self. Rather just become more and more familiar with it -- in the way you might get to know a child.

@chudders Thoughts which are fear-based have a tendency to be self-fulfilling. What you worry about tends to become true simply because you obsess about it so much.
It's hard to improve your life when you're constantly in fear.
The solution is to change your thoughts to love-based thoughts and shift your state to a more positive, optimistic, empowered one.
Research Law Of Attraction.
You want to create a positive, exciting vision for your future. Stop focusing on what you don't want and start focusing on what you want to create.
Negative stuff can always happen, but constantly worrying about it is not a solution.

Absolute Truth cannot be spoken, thought, or imagined.
It cannot be qualified in any way whatsoever. You cannot even say of it: "It cannot be qualified".
What you're unwittingly trying to do here is capture the Truth in some framework, which cannot ever work because Truth is infinity and it escapes all attempts at capturing it. This is just the nature of Truth/Infinity/Absolute. Hence the Zen-like riddles and paradoxes.

I started going out at night by myself 3 weeks ago because i was tired of my wingman. He always making excuses and doing the same thing every night thinking that magically some girl will pay him attention and hang out with him. Literally we did the same shit several months 1/2 days a week and i noticed that i was wasting time and that he was robbing me energy. The last night we saw each other was a night that i got a date from Bumble and i hanged out with this girl and her friend so i invited him cause he lived near where i was. He came over but the friend of the girl i was dating was already approached by other guy so he left lol.
I noticed 2 things:

1) I'm not gonna use any of those shitty dating apps to get girls because personally i'm making an excuse not to approach, i don't learn anything from it, i don't grow up if i do not approach and my social skills won't grow even though i ended up having sex with that girl after 2 weeks of hanging out, she's still into me but i decided that i do not want anything serious right now, what i want right now is to go out 3/4 days a week alone, and do hardcore game, i do not care if i have to do this many years, if i commit to do something, hell man, i fucking do it
2) The benefits of going out alone are big. First of all because you don't need nobody to be with you to meet new people, literally, you can meet girls whenever you want so you don't have to wait for your wingman, or demotivate if your wingman can't come with you. Second, your confidence can increase a lot by doing this by yourself and that's what all women like, confidence in a man, does not matter what you do, what car you drive, where you live, if you dress well or not, if you have money or not, women like confidence, do not be embarrassed by what you do, be proud by what you do and what you are, if you work as a dishwasher, do not be ashamed, be fucking proud because only a superior man, everything what he does is for his purpose. Currently i'm working as a valet parking and i used to give a fuck that the girls will see me as a poor man, or laugh at me because I have no money, but i realized that i wasn't respecting and loving myself, and i even wanted to start my business to have more money and to feel more confident with girls. Bad move, girls don't care about money, and thanks god i realized this soon enough. I'm still running my business since August 2018, i already have lost several thousand dollars but i don't care, i will be persistent because i want to be a millionaire. Eye: And i don't do this because of i want to attract girls anymore, i will be a millionaire because all i want is free time, i want free time for what i do, more time for my spiritual practices, time for discovering my ultimate life purpose and do it, time to help other people to grow themselves financially, emotionally and spirituality, i don't give a shit about running my business to get pussy, what a low level of consciousness is that

So going back to the point i started going out by myself 3 weeks ago and damn bro, it's being hard because it's more than 1 month that i do not game and it's my first time going out alone at night, but i'm 100% commited that i will do it, sometimes my ego says: go back with your wingman, find a wingman, this is hard by yourself, but i do not want that, i commited to do this by myself and that's it. I went out yesterday, all i just did is 1 two set indirect approach but i was blown out immediately. What i'm noticing every time i'm going out alone at night that my ego say these things:
- I wanna go home right now
- Everybody's watching me right now, i can't even move and this is weird
- Take your cell phone and pretend that you are chatting with someone to see yourself as a social person
- I tremble
- My throat closes and i think that i can't talk loud enough and that's when I block myself and I do not open
- I'm scared and feel embarrased about the security, ego say that they will see me as a weird person and i will feel observed

As you see the biggest thing that is blocking me right now to do apporaches is that i pay too much attention about what people are thinking, about their opinions so the solution for this, besides my meditation practice that i started two months ago is that every day that i go out put myself some challenges, from low to high, the challenges will be something not that easy but also not that hard, something that i'm nervous to do it but also is not very hard or for a skilled pua. That's the way i found could be the better for my case, so i will create a pick up plan, and every day i go out i will plan what i will do and my challenges.

I will keep you guys updated! Thanks!

Mother's love can be extremely conditional, as many kids can attest.
It is a myth that mothers automatically accept their children. If only that were true.

I can't really answer that.
You just gonna have to walk your path and see where it leads. Part of the process is letting go of control or the need to plan it out or have a safety net.
You gotta trust that you'll sort out the obstacles as you encounter them, not beforehand. That's life. Life's gotta be lived. It's a visceral experience. Get more comfortable with improving and letting things unfold organically. Experiment. Trial and error. Adventure.

Some do, some don't. At that point is hardly matters. And yet some of them still work to make an impact. That's the paradox of detachment.

@ColdFacts All understanding is metaphoric.

It's a common defense mechanism, especially at first.
Do inquiry after a good rest/nap, when you are max alert. Don't do inquiry at the end of the day when you are dead tired. Inquiry must be done at the peak of your day, not as an after-thought.

@1liamo78 You are still assuming an external objective world within which beings reside. This notion must be discarded if you wish to understand spirituality.
Don't assume the Earth's population or even the Earth as an object fact.
You are inside a dream. Never mistake the content within the dream as having a greater reality than the dreamer of the dream.

You are just parroting words here without actually bothering to investigate your direct experience.
Locate within yourself the distinction between a thought and a feeling. It is there to be located.

Actually it's the most common scenario that even after an awakening or two the identity still stays.
Very rarely is the identity totally transcended. Usually a spiritual identity is created. This happens even with many gurus, monks, and yogis.
To transcend all identity completely is a very rare and challenging thing.

Yes, it would certainly work, and work powerfully.
But be careful what you wish for. Depending on how many inner demons you got, it could get hairy. But then again, that's where the real growth is.
There tends to be an inverse relationships between growth and comfort. You can't have both at once.

Actual vs conceptual is a duality.
Mind vs not-mind is a duality.

Suffering is a principle tool of survival. You create suffering to ensure you stay alive.

It certainly can. People create whole identities out of seeking Truth.
@Norbert Lennartz Do not conflate thinking with feeling. They are distinct. You can feel without thinking.

@egoless You set an intention for what you want to know, and you apply your keen observation skills to the issue. As you observe a thing with an open mind and genuine intent, the answer will be revealed with time spontaneously.
See video: Learning = Observation
Boredom is usually just an illusion you have to bust through by becoming more curious about the thing at hand.
It sounds like you lack discipline, focus, and follow-through. Without those, you will never succeed at anything. You must learn to discipline yourself to have a work ethic. Or accept that your life will forever be mediocre.

@Hardkill Depends on what your expectations and sticking-points are.
If you are a newbie and having trouble with cold-approaching and opening consistently all night long, it should definitely help push you past that.
Learning how to approach consistently is one of the biggest problems people have. Bootcamps are designed to force you into tough situations and make you bolder.

Keep in mind that in many of these places you actually spend more time working, cooking, cleaning, socializing, etc. than meditating.
If you want the most effective and direct path, find a cabin in the woods and live there for 6 months by yourself. Then you can get some real work done. Even just 1 month totally solo will be life-changing.
The deepest work is done solo, where you have zero social obligations. All you gotta do is handle your food, water, and cleaning.

Here's a meta-thing for you guys to notice:
All your opinions about gender are a function of your survival. Because gender is central to your identity. None of these opinions have anything to do with truth or reality, but rather about self-definition. Notice that.
Gender is one of those hot-button issues like religion or politics because it's so central to one's fabricated identity. The more fabricated a thing is, the more it must be defended, argued, and justified.
Your opinions will be precisely whatever helps you survive and get your needs met. That's what opinions are!