The reality is you need it.
Enlightenment without personal development work produces enlightened assholes and rubes.
Personal development without enlightenment produces polished egos who can never find fulfillment no matter what they achieve. This would be like the Tony Robbins effect (sorry, Tony, my projection )
After enlightenment you still need to master the following things:
Relationships Socializing Science Business/career Family Health Bad habits & addictions Bad cultural conditioning like sexism or racism Embodiment of unconditional love Old childhood traumas Ethical behavior

@Raffaella Takes LOTS of practice.
So get started!
You need to practice active ALLOWING! When a negative emotion comes up, just recognize it and try to allow it fully, rather than resisting it the way you normally do.
Yes, it ain't easy at first. After all, there's no one in control in that skull of yours. It's empty if you haven't noticed yet Nevertheless, it's still possible to open up and allow.
You can even actively ENJOY the deepest suffering. Like your dog dies, and your heart is broken, and you ENJOY it! That's the ultimate goal, but it will take you awhile to get there.
You do realize, right?, that you can ENJOY any suffering. You can do it instantly at any time simply by deciding to. The problem is, it's extremely counter-intuitive and you have limiting beliefs telling you its not right or not possible.
There is no HOW. You just have want to enjoy it and remember to do it.
Next time you feel terrible, simply ask yourself, "Can I allow myself to enjoy this?"

Dude...
When you abandon your entire lifestyle and go live in the woods or a cave for 10 years, living off one coconut per day, meditating 12 hours per day for years on end, for 10s of thousands of hours, begging for food, and eating it out of a bowl made out of a human skull -- THEN you can talk to me about seriousness.
No TV, no internet, no sex, no jerking off, no bed, no house, no fresh clothes, no money, no friends, no family, no A/C, no heating, no bed to sleep in, no sleeping bag, no tent, no health care.
I don't hold enlightenment nearly as seriously as yogis, Buddhist monks, or Zen masters.
You say such things not having done your research, and not having done any serious contemplation.
Try contemplating for 100 hours straight, non-stop. Then let's see how you feel. (That would still be newbie-level spirituality.)
And laughter or playfulness does not preclude seriousness. Those are actually by-products of it.
AFTER you've contemplated for 20,000 hours, then its easy to laugh. At that point, ISIS could be chopping your head off, and you could be laughing.
You, as you are now, have almost no capacity to laugh. As soon as you experience the slightest discomfort, insult, or even a minor calamity, you vent, cry, curse, get depressed, get agitated, etc. You can't even sit still on a comfortable couch for 60 minutes without serious suffering. An itch on your nose can send you into agony.

Hi. Yesterday i tried changa for the very first time. Gotta tell you that taking a full tab of LSD is like taking a cup of coffee compared to smoking changa. I did it in a wrong set and setting though. My apartment was a total mess (i-just-moved-in type of mess) and I didn't meditate.
LSD lets you know there's something more. Changa lets you travel between dimensions. 
LSD shows you that the spirit is affecting the matter. Changa is purely spiritual.
 
I started hearing a beep. Then i was in a place that was constantly morphing, colors were red, white and black, but mostly red. There was no up or down in that place. Colors changed to cream, blue and yellow it was beautiful, and very scary. When i tried to resist it, it stopped being beautiful, the shapes stopped moving and i felt like trapped by some other shapes. I didn't have a body, i was/am pure spirit, a ghost tops.
I saw the serpent everybody talks about, but it was drawn by the geometric shapes. It was not an entity. But it probably would have come alive if i would have stayed longer.
I never lost connection with the ''real world'' but i was definitely close to.
This material reality is just a curtain.
There are other (infinite amount probably) dimensions.
 
Insights:
-I am not my body. I no longer identify with my body.
-I am an infinite spiritual being that exists interdimensionally.
-I was never born, i will never die. I have never been alive. I just exist.
-I am nothing. I am pure spirit.
 
-I might be god. I might be living everything simultaneously-infinitely. But idk.
 
 
 Notes:
1. I can see the potential of this substance for addiction treatment.
2. I liked the smoke and the taste. I expected it to be harsh.
3. Minutes after the experience i told myself: -'' I might do this again in 10 years'' Now after integrating i understand that i want to go to that place again and more prepared.
4. ''Shamanic'' preparation is wanted. Like eating super clean x amount days before the experience and meditate during those x amount of days. That's for those of us who still don't have a daily meditation habit.
5. I was prepared but i could have been more prepared.
 
Arc.

@santerton For fucks sake, STOP WATCHING MGTOW. Period.
And never visit 4chan ever again in your life.
It's all toxic, dogmatic, egotistical, unconscious, devilsh garbage.
It is not even worth debunking or arguing against. It's so false and wrong it's hopeless.
MGTOW, RedPill, and Incels are the American equivalent of Al Qaeda Islamist radicalism. By ingesting their videos and discussions your mind is getting programmed with that mind-virus. That happens because as you watch and listen, it appeals to your desperate needy ego. Triggering all of your worst fears, hates, insecurities, and victim mentality.
If you want to get better with women, you can do so and have amazing loving sexy relationships. But it will take self-improvement and spiritual work.
Dating coaches are not liars. Dating coaches can teach you how to get really good with attracting women. I have interacted with dozens of dating coaches and their advice is top-notch for attraction. Not so good for relationships. For solid relationships you will need a more spiritual approach which you can layer on top of the attraction advice.
Once you become spiritual and consciousness enough, sex will not even be important to you any more. You will be so deeply happy without sex that chasing women will be a joke.
Awakening is 1000x more enjoyable than any sex you will ever have. With that said, you can do both.
Here's the practical solution for you: Stop sitting in your Mom's basement browsing toxic forums, and GO OUT and talk to real females. You will never get laid by sitting at home. It is not physically possible.
See how simple the solution is? Yet you refuse to do it. Because it takes emotional labor to face your fears and grow yourself. You much prefer to sit at home and rant against how bad women are and how nothing can change.
Rule #1 of all personal development: You must take 100% responsibility for your life, your beliefs, your feelings, your situation. No one is to blame.
MGTOW is not a teaching. It's egotical, reactionary rantings driven by fear, hate, insecurity, selfishness, woundedness, and neediness. It's very similar to Hitler's rants against the Jews and communists.

Need/desire is a duality.
You are the one defining them. Whatever you say is a need becomes a need.
Strictly speaking there is no need to do anything. You could just lay down and die. There is not even a need to live.
Practically speaking, sex is one of the most powerful human drives. Good luck ignoring it. It's designed to be unignorable.
By saying that sex is a need all we're saying is: it's a core biological drive which dominates human survival. It can be overcome, but not easily, and not through something as simplistic as NoFap. You might as well be practicing NoShit.

@Patrick Lynam I'm not really sure anyone offers MDMA assisted therapy since MDMA is illegal in most countries and a serious therapist would not want to risk it.
You can either do psychedelics on your own and that itself is the therapy.
Or you can consider doing psychedelics with a shaman like with Ayahuasca or toad venom or ibogaine clinics in Costa Rica, Canada, etc.
Traditional talk therapy certainly works, but nothing compares to the therapeutic power of psychedelics. You don't need a therapist to administer it. The psychedelic is 100x wiser than any silly therapist. The therapist is more of a distraction than of help during a trip. The psychedelic will show you everything you need to know about yourself and your issues if you come to it with a genuine intention. All that's required is that you want to know the TRUTH about your issue. That's all. The psychedelic will show you all the answers, as much as you're willing to stomach.
Just make sure you follow a proper tripping protocol. And start with small doses.
It's very smart to take charge of your own mental and psychological issues. No one can really sort you out but you. Which is why traditional talk therapy is so gradual. The answers are all inside you, if you'd only sit down with a notepad and introspect.
You can teach yourself how to diagnose and troubleshoot all of your own psychological problems.
Of course if you have the cash to burn, talk therapy could be good too. But you can't just rely on talk therapy to fix your life. Your life will require a lot deeper work to truly sort out. No talk therapist even understands how deep this work goes. So it's worth your time to learn how to self-help.

The ego-mind returns surprisingly soon. Like within 30 minutes you're back into standard ego operating mode. But of course shaken to your core. It's often a relief to return to ordinary life. But there is also a deep regret for losing that full-on God-consciousness because nothing in life will ever top that.
Sometimes the God-consciousness lingers for a few hours or even into the next day.
The saddest part about 5-MeO is that you cannot be that high 24/7/365. Losing touch with God is one of the deepest pains. But as you awaken more, you will start to realize that God is present all the time, even if you're not on a peak. This takes a lot of tripping to start to realize.
Enlightenment is right here, right now, at all times. But only if you're awake enough to see it. It does zero good telling an unawakened newbie that enlightenment is right here, right now, at all times. He just cannot see it. He needs actual breakthroughs and mystical experiences to demonstrate it to himself. That's where the 5-MeO comes in so handy.
After enough tripping, your whole life will start to feel like a trip. The materialist paradigm slowly gets snuffed out forever. I no longer experience myself as in a material world. The world gradually becomes self-luminous.

Perception, thought, and creation are not two.
The universe is hell for devils because of how they perceive and how they think -- which is their creation.
How you think about reality affects reality directly. By thinking of the world as a place where you exist, where others can harm you, and where one day you will die, you literally create your own hell.

Yes, but Green is still not thinking about it systemically. Green is mostly doing it from her heart. That's all great, but it is not the kind of full-bore systemic thinking I described.
Green is still looking at the situation from a personal agenda level, it just so happens that saving the Earth is now part of her personal agenda.
Yellow and above is more impersonal. And yet still very personal! Tier 2 is more detached.

God created relationship so that the depth of your love could really be put to the test. It's easy to love the world when you're sitting alone in a cave because there are no fools or devils to deal with.
Try being enlightened while running for president. Now there's a real test of your consciousness!
Osho was an enlightened master, but his community was full of devilry.

@NoSelfSelf You are missing that you are member of society whether you like it or not, whether you're enlightened or not. Society can only function when its citizens are well-educated and conscious. If the most conscious people stick their head in the sand and only focus on making their own personal lives work consciously, then society will be seized by the most unconscious right-wing nationalist tyrants. That's how Hitler and WWII happens.
As a human being you have to take responsibility for your role within a collective. Personal enlightenment is good but not good enough! Which is why enlightened masters become Bodhisattvas, to help elevate the rest of mankind. They are playing  a much bigger game than their own personal enlightenment. Personal enlightenment is a cake walk compared to enlightening society.
If you are the whole universe, then you are also society. You cannot treat yourself as only an individual unit, only a personal human life. You are also the collective! The life of all beings is your responsibility. You are God after all. How can you neglect your creation? Are you really going to sit by and watch devilry prevail? No! You cannot. It is actually impossible. Love and consciousness will move you to towards the highest Good.
To be fully conscious is to take responsibility for EVERYTHING to the point where you are willing to lay your life down for the greater Good. That is literally God's work. God did not design this wondrous creation through negligence or selfishness.

This has never been about the money. It's about helping people understand reality.
You might as well ask, why didn't Jesus or Gandhi retire and live in a cabin in the woods?
They had much higher callings.
Do not confuse these callings for ego. That would be a big mistake. God does its work through conscious people. How else do you think Goodness happens?

There is not one strategy, there are many
You could focus on gaining financial security first and then go hog-wild on spirituality.
Or you could do just the opposite.
It really depends on what your heart wants and what you can handle. It can be very painful to force yourself to work on mundane financial stuff when you are itching to be creative or spiritual.
Then again, if your financial situation collapses, that might force you into slave labor and out of your spiritual quest. Again, depending on who you are.
The most spiritually gifted people will never be stopped by financial concerns. But that's not most people. You have to be realistic about what you're gonna be able to handle.
If you want the most direct path to the highest human life, drop everything and go balls deep into spirituality. But that's very hardcore and too difficult for most people to pull off. Most people won't be able to handle it. Hence there are more gradual approaches.
Personally, I focused on locking in financial freedom first. But it was pretty painful, to be honest. I would not wish that kind of pain on anyone. But it sure beats being a wage slave.

It is easier to get enlightened out in nature than in a busy building full of people. There's a reason yogis meditate up in the mountains and forests. Nature has a tranquilizing effect on the mind.
But don't make this an excuse. You can practice spirituality anywhere.
The problem with rural areas is that the people there will be more closeminded and rednecky. Don't go telling them you're God, or they might hang you. City-folk are more tolerant and open, but more lost in the materialist race rat.

@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.