@Shaun You are misunderstanding what "everything is perfect" means. It does not mean that you don't take action to avoid catastrophes.
You don't jump off a tall building and while you're falling tell yourself "everything's perfect". That would be foolishness.

You're missing the bigger picture. Your understanding of what life purpose is is far too small. Life purpose is not a materialistic thing, life purpose is the highest spiritual thing! Your spiritual love IS the source of your life purpose. Stop pitting spirituality and LP against each other.
You just need to upgrade your LP to reflect your new spiritual values and orientation.
Life purpose is an expression of your soul. It has nothing to do with money or career per se.
How is your new spiritual awareness going to impact the world??? You're not here to sit around listening to birds chirp for 60 years. You are here to be a creator. What do you want to create?

When traditional prayer works it's due to law of attraction and intention. Your intentions DO affect reality. Intention is very powrful when it is practiced consistently and consciously.
Whatever you intend with emotion and conviction will tend to become true. Because your will is a splinter off God's Will. You literally have the power of God within you. The more conscious you become the more of it you will be able to tap and manifest.
It's not a miracle. It's because you are God, and reality is a giant Mind.

@Swagala See, that's how tricky the devil's mind is. It convinces itself that there's nothing to awaken to, and goes back to being a devil while telling itself that it is awake.
You are not awake yet. So the most dangerous thing you can convince yourself of is that there's nothing to awaken to. That's wrong. There is lots to awaken to. So get to work!
The seeking only stops AFTER your entire reality collapses and you are totally reborn.
Don't burn your canoe before you crossed the river.
Awakening is not futile. It is very real and palpable. Awakening is not part of the game. Yet also not separate from it.

The difficulty results from the fact that awareness is nothing. The mind cannot grasp it in the same way it can grasp a wall or tree or a thought.
So by trying to become aware of awareness you are really trying to realize Nothingness/Emptiness.
Yes, it's frusrating. There is no way around that. You are being asked to grasp the ungraspable.
Through lots of practice the mind must become very still. That stillness of mind itself becomes the empty awareness of awareness. You. Are. It.
Try focusing your mind on nothing in particular and just let it sit there. The more it sits there, the more Emptiness will dawn on you. Don't try to grasp it. Let it wash over you.

They are attracted to non-neediness. But that is very different than treating people like crap.
Don't forget about karma. How you treat others will come back to bite you.
The more you manipulate people, the more deluded you are, the more you will suffer in life.
Conscious & happy people do not manipulate others. By manipulating others you sell your soul to the devil.

You are best off teaching yourself Yellow and above through independent study. You will learn more through independent study than in a university. Take responsibility for educating yourself. This becomes necessary if you want to grow beyond the center of gravity of your society/culture.
Read 100 good books around this topic and you will be wiser than 99% of university professors. And you won't have to go $100,000 into debt to do it. In a sense, these days, universities are looking more and more like scam. It's not worth the price of admission when you can achieve better results by yourself at 5% of the cost. You just have to be self-driven and passionate about learning/truth.
If you read and carefully integrate the 200 books on my book list you will have a deeper understanding of reality than 99.999% of people. And I'll be adding more books soon.

Don't confuse personality with ego. Less ego = more personality.

It's not thought which is the problem so much as self-referential thought.
Practical thoughts like: "Hungry, need to buy groceries" is no problem and necessary.
Problematic thoughts are like: "Why did I screw this up again? I'm always this way. I have been bad my whole life." Etc. These are the kind of thoughts to eliminate or let go of. These kind of thoughts reinforce the narrative of the ego self. They assume a biographical self which is an illusion.

The purpose of any emotion is to create behaviors necessary for the ego's survival. Mind you, I said ego's survival, not the body's survival.
It's a preemptive defense mechanism, so that you end up getting what you want.

I mean look at it! What even is this? It's so WEIRD, everything is SO WEIRD! How are we just sitting here accepting everything as if it made any sense at all? It's completely absurd! It's so hilarious, everything about reality is so much more nonsensical than any conspiracy theory ever could be! Just look around you, what the hell is audio, or vision, or anything else, and how can it even exist? I mean just look at it, it's so insanely WEIRD.
Everything is, everything is so weird. It's weird beyond all description. Holy shit it's comedic! How can we be so blind to this absurdity. It's fucking magical, I don't even know what to say. Nothing you could ever come up with is so absurd and ridiculous as everything that already exists. It makes no sense and we all just accept it, as if it was completely reasonable. It's like we are all seeing ghosts and are just ignoring them, but it's so much worse! Just stop for a moment and look at what is happening right now, what the fuck is this? 
It's not just weird or abnormal, it's literally impossible! It is completely preposterous, it's just ludicrous! Oh my god this is the most hilarious thing ever. How could I be so blind to this? It's literally FUCKING MAGIC! It is so utterly obvious, nothing could be more obvious. It's a cosmic joke, and I am taking it so seriously!
Holy fucking shit is reality weird, all of it. It's actually mysterious, it LITERALLY IS MYSTERIOUS! I don't even know what to say, it's just so absurd and we don't even think about questioning it. Flat earth doesn't make sense? Literally nothing makes sense, it's all ABSURD! The fact that anything could possibly make sense is the most absurd thing ever!
 
It's actually a joke, the fucking scariest joke I have ever seen in my life. I am a joke, I literally am a joke.
 
 

When you fully realize what ego is, it will be like you were never even born. It will not even be possible in that moment to imagine that there could ever be a self or a human.
A human is 100% a total illusion, including birth, death, mind, body, and biographical life. None of it has any reality whatsoever. There is no such thing as biological creatures who are born, live, and die. All that is imagination.
But you can't understand this at all from your current state of consciousness. Your current state of consciousness IS the imagination at work, locking in "reality". Whatever it imagines is "real" for you right now.

@Angelo John Gage The desire to change the world is tricky. Yes, part of it is genuine but part of it is also ego.
On some level you still don't accept or love terrorism and war. Which is a self-hatred. You have to make sure that you're changing the world not as a reaction against some part of it which you refuse to accept.
Are you conscious of why war is necessary? Of what function it serves?
If what you seek is one half of a duality, like peace/war, then that will not work. What's necessary is to transcend both of those and discover Peace as an Absolute which unifies and embraces peace/war. That is how you get true Peace.
See, the problem is that the terrorist too is busy creating a good world, from his POV. Everything who tries to change the world for the better is in danger of falling into the trap of the lesser jihad.
The desire to do good cannot be taken on blind faith since a devil always frames what he does as good. Good intentions are not enough to create a good world. You also have to be aware of how goodness is relative.

@Ashlyn I see. Sounds like you're resisting something.
Have you tried contemplating what the root issue is? As in: why do you feel the need to do that?
Ultimately what you want to do here is to become conscious that all the above is something that YOU ARE DOING. Right now you're not conscious that you are doing it, in the sense that it feels like something that is happening to you. To change this, you must take ownership of it. So step 1 is: "Okay, I suspect I am doing this, but I'm not sure how or why", and step 2 is: "Okay, now let me get to the rock bottom of why I am doing this. What does it get me? How is it serving me? What is it protecting me from? What bad thing would happen if I stopped doing it?"
Sit down with a journal, set aside a couple hours, and really bore into this. You want to get to the rock bottom of it so that you're clear and conscious of what it is and why it is. It's clearly serving your survival in some fashion. As you investigate this, the goal is not to go back into your past and find justifications or causes. It doesn't really matter what happened in the past. What matters is why you still feel the need to keep doing it today.
If you are able to reach the rock bottom, you should feel some release. But you have to actually reach the true source of this, not just some ideas or opinions. You need the actual source. And the source may not be what you think it is. It is often something counter-intuitive like a belief such as: I am fundamentally unlovable, or, I am afraid I will die, or, I am worthless, or, I am afraid that if I give my love freely it will kill me, or, I need money to be happy, etc.
If I were you I'd contemplate this deeply sober. Then I would take some mushrooms or LSD and contemplate it again during the trip until the issue because very clear. Psychedelics are perfect for this kind of self-reflective work.
Fundamentally what's happening here is that the ego is sabotaging itself because it has a deeply flawed understanding of itself and life. The ego is stuck in some sort of unconscious survival pattern which it feels it needs.
You could also try to address this issue from a somatic perspective. See my video: Shamanic Breathing and use that technique every day for a week and see what comes up. That should open up various blockages in your body.
Practices like Hatha yoga might be helpful for you. Also see my video on Body Awareness. It sounds like you live too much in your head and are disconnected from your body. Body awareness practices can reconnect you with your body.

@Truth Addict Yes, now you get it.
It's sort of like trying grab one part of a blanketing using another part of the same blanket because all you have to grasp with is blanket itself. The blanket is oneness. Oneness is trying to grasp itself but can't ever succeed in total. How can a blanket grasp itself totally? It can only grasp itself partially. To grasp itself totally is must simply be itself (without any grasping). And that is enlightenment.
The moment you realize that it's impossible to grasp yourself, you've grasped yourself
The Nongrasping Grasp. The Gateless Gate. The Groundless Ground. The Selfless Self.
The self-licking ice cream cone.

Actually, all symbols are just territory. There are maps proper. A map is what you get when you confuse part of the territory for another part of the territory.
To make this real clear: if you draw a map of Florida in the sand on a beach in Florida, your map is literally Florida. There isn't a map + Florida. There is only Florida, which includes within it a smaller version of itself drawn in the sand. So what it means for Florida to be Florida is that is has drawings of itself within itself.
Notice the fractal nature of how this works.
Now expand this out to reality itself. A thought/image/symbol of reality is itself a part of reality. Such that all you have in the end is reality. All you have is the territory. So in fact: the map is the territory!
Strange loops are not a bug here, they are a feature. They arise due to the self-reference problem: when you have only one thing in existence, how can it point to itself? There cannot be a duality between map/territory. Symbols cannot stand outside reality because they are within reality and because there is nothing outside reality. Inside and outside are of course one.

Yeah, I think that's possible to some extent.
5-MeO-DMT is already that technology in powdered form.
It still won't be that easy in practice because to deeply awaken your entire mind has restructure itself. It's not as simple as cutting a few wires. Your entire web of beliefs needs to be reconfigured too. Otherwise it will be a half-assed enlightenment leading to Zen devirly and pathology. And awakening alone is not enough, there is also the need for Spiral development which cannot happen simply through some surgery or even a chemical.
There are all sorts of rare and interesting abnormal brain case studies. For example some people can hallucinate monkeys or see the world as a cell-shaded cartoon. Some people convinced that other people are robots. The brain/mind is a very tricky thing. Enlightenment is far from the only interesting mystical thing that the brain can do.

To me awakening means a permanent disidentification with form. An ever-present state of nondual awareness. That's not something I have yet.

@Immortal peace You're sort of conflating two issues there, existential issues with mundane survival issues.
If you care about survival there's no escaping that you will have to handle those survival issues. For example if you're starving and you have no money or food, no amount of meditation will fix that issue. But what meditation can do is allow you to die in peace. How? Well, you'd need to become very good at meditation or you'd need to awaken to realize that death is an illusion. The body will die from lack of food, but you as God will not.
If you want the body to be alive there's no escaping finding food.
Which is why spirituality is not an escape from everyday obligations. That's a bad way to look at it. You want to get masterful at handling survival issues. Which in your case means: design a way to make a decent living. Don't try to offload this issue on meditation or enlightenment. Learning how to earn a decent living is a whole skillset. It's tempting to think that you can avoid developing such skillets through "finding peace" via spirituality. That's a bad approach.
As your practice spirituality though, even though you'll still have tricky survival issues to deal with, you will deal with them more calmly and effectively. They won't stress you out as much as they would otherwise because in the end you know that whatever happens will be okay. And you will have more emotional self-control.
A simple way to calm yourself is to breath slowly and deeply for a few minutes or hours.
Sedona Method is also really good for clearing out emotions.

There cannot be emotional mastery without enlightenment. Emotional mastery is even harder than enlightenment.
But if you just want to do some basic self-help stuff and work on emotional issues, yes, you can do that. You ain't gonna be anywhere near understanding the true nature of emotions. But it can be helpful.

@ardacigin I don't think that such medieval methods are healthy or lead to the highest understanding. Sure, those monks are badasses, but I doubt how much of reality they really understand or how Spirally developed and well-rounded they are. I would bet most of them are underdeveloped on the Spiral, which would be a great shame.
The thing is, running marathons has little to do with insight, development, or understanding. Don't automatically assume that doing brutal rigorous mechanical training methods will get you to the highest levels of understanding. I highly doubt it would. I am much more in favor of a thoughtful contemplative approach which incorporates study of psychology, sociology, semiotics, science, etc. I think some of the hardcore Eastern schools are not thoughtful and scientific enough. They can be too grounded in tradition for tradition's sake without evolving with technology and the times.

No, I think it's definitely possible, just very, very rare and difficult. Yogis and sages have definitely accessed the highest levels of awakening without any chemical assistance. I suspect though that they were exceptionally gifted, whether due to genetics, karma, past-lives, upbringing, the right brain chemistry, luck or a combination of all the above. I don't know exactly why some people are exceptionally spiritually gifted. That is still a deep mystery waiting for an answer.
5-MeO just makes it so much easier and more accessible to ordinary people.
I recommend a hybrid approach.

@ardacigin I know all that.
What I meant was, he's still missing a few deeper layers of awakening like Absolute Infinity and Absolute Truth.
Last time I spoke with him I asked him why reality exists and he was not able to give me an answer. Nor was he aware of Infinity.
Of course I still consider him enlightened. Just not at the highest level of understanding possible because I've clearly become conscious of why reality exists. So I know it can be done. Just probably not through mindfulness meditation and labeling.
Being aware of God is one thing. Being aware of the mechanics of God is another yet deeper thing. There is a lot of important stuff to discover about the mechanics of God. How does God actually materialize reality? And why? This can all be understood and it is worthwhile to understand it.
Don't take this to be anything negative against Shinzen. He's still great.

Hehe, that's mostly what self-help as a field/industry is. That's okay. It's mostly geared towards stage Orange/Green folks. There are still very important lessons there, just don't expect it to come anywhere near the depth of the stuff I teach.
Most self-help does not include a metaphysical, epistemological, or spiritual component. As a result, it cannot possibly be profound or an ultimate solution. But I'm still a big fan of even that type of basic stage Orange self-help. People really need it in our society. In fact, most people who follow me probably need it more than they need my metaphysical musings. Metaphysical stuff is quite advanced and assumes you've already handled other basic parts of life.
Of course Reddit is not a high-quality source of life advice. You should expect a lot of keyboard-jockeys there. For the best advice, read quality books.

@kieranperez I'm not clear what you wrote, but anyways...
Whatever thoughts arise in your human head/mind are of course God's doing. God does not think somewhere elsewhere from human minds. When God is thinking, it's using a human to do it because thinking requires form. So God as a formless entity technically cannot think unless it first materializes a human who then becomes a vehicle for thoughts.
So you might say that God as formlessness cannot do anything at all, but at the same time it can materialize all of physical reality and then whatever physical reality does, is equivalent to God doing stuff.
So formless God cannot eat a cheeseburger (because eating is form), but it can spawn a Big Bang, wait 14 billion years, spawn a cow, spawn a human, spawn a chef who cooks the cheeseburger, and then have the human eat the cheeseburger. That's how God eats cheeseburgers
God as formlessness lives vicariously through all form. Remember, form and formlessness are identical. So God literally is the taste of the cheeseburger. Ta-da!
Or think of it this way: when you're playing a video game you cannot directly enter the world of Mario as a human. But you can live through that world as the Mario character. To manipulate Mario's world requires that you use Mario as the interface. You become Mario while also being a human who's distinct from Mario. Mario can die but it does not harm you.