Haumea2018

Good luck with that. Seriously, it's a worthy task but a difficult one. They are by now figures shrouded in myth. You could read the Bible and the Koran, but unless you are already enlightened it's hard to interpret them correctly as it's not a trivial, straightforward, literal task. There is just so much context left out that it's really difficult.

It's great for consciousness work. Probably as good if not better than anything else because of how deep it goes. If you are generally healthy (no heart, lung or liver problems, there may be some other you'd need to consult a provider about) it is safe. Reputable places do medical screenings these days. The reason people have bad trips is that iboga really works. It flushes all your mental crap out. One may have a bad trip, but it has beneficial after-effects (i.e. short-term pain for long-term gain.) Just go to a reputable place, don't try it at home. Do it with a shamanic provider. (Frankly, I think doing it on your own is nuts, but different strokes etc.)

What about anything I haven't mentioned?

OK, let me be less abstract here. Different people have different basic fears. Since I don't know you, I don't know what your fears are. Some people are afraid of dependence. Some are afraid of independence. Some people are afraid of being selfish. Some people are afraid of being taken advantage of. Some people are afraid of expressing anger. Some people are afraid of seeming weak and vulnerable. Do you get where I'm coming from? Etc. etc. etc. Knowing yourself matters. The "secret" of enlightenment is that you are going to be who "you are." But that means ALL OF WHO YOU ARE. Not a part. Not half, like you are right now. That means the parts of you that are "yucky" to you right now. When Jesus said "resist not evil" he meant it. That's what he was talking about.

The only thing practice is necessary for is to see that practice is neither necessary nor sufficient. Practice doesn't "get you to enlightenment." Practice gets you to end of seeking. End of seeking is when the ego gives up trying to control this process of awakening. What "gets you to enlightenment" is everything the ego is afraid of doing (and is most likely not even aware it's afraid/rationalizes it.) You are already The Self which is seeking its full expression, but right now the ego is in the way of it. So when you consciously go looking for full expression, the ego says "aha! This should be easy to derail. I'll just send it on a wild goose chase! Anything but to face what I fear. I'll have him/her practicing for 50 years." That's what a lot of people don't get. Spiritual seeking isn't like learning to play the violin: put in your 10-20 years of correct technique and you're there. That's goal-oriented thinking. Spiritual seeking is avoidance of admitting you can already play the violin, but you're afraid to. Because fear is so deeply ingrained you don't know it's fear. It's just "who you are." All defenses and crutches and projections have to be examined.

Let's set the specific issue of being motivated by emotional sensitivity aside. Look at it this way: would you enjoy this line of work? If you would, then you'd be deriving pleasure from it, and so it would be selfish to some degree. On the other hand, are you supposed to hate doing whatever it is you'd be doing, so that there's nothing in it for you even emotionally? That would be pretty perverse, and how would you even persist unless you were masochistic? So yeah, you can't escape the conundrum. Unless you totally hate yourself, you better be enjoying (and hence deriving selfish benefit from) your work.

Considered and rejected.

Hey, my advice to any spiritual skeptics is, as always, if your beliefs, whatever they are, are working for you, that's fine. No-one's going to force you to change. "If you like your ego, you can keep your ego."

The ego stays alive by hijacking the awakening process. "I can only get enlightened THIS way, or if I do THIS, or THIS." This is a way of not facing your fears, which are the ego's self-protection strategy. So basically, do that thing which scares you to death. But first you have to admit all your basic fears to yourself. Like, if this forum were a large encounter group where everyone just called everyone else out on their fears, it would expedite everyone's awakening process.

The Absolute is beyond non-duality. It is transcendental duality. It is a reconciliation of opposites (duality and non-duality.) So as Leo said above, something can simultaneously have Absolute value and no Relative value for you. The contradiction is resolved in a synthesis.

Almost entirely status, and its behavioral correlates. That's the honest answer.

Not exactly. It isn't differential valuing that causes it. It is your craving to possess that causes it. As long as you have senses and a body, you are going to make differential value judgments, enlightenment or not.

The first stage of enlightenment can be pretty rough, nihilistic, even hellish for some. So you keep going, and get past it.

I wrote a whole explanation and deleted it, because I'd rather draw this. Archetypes are the little circles. These are various roles (or rather abstractions of roles.)

If, like many people here, you're already a reader/thinker/in your head a lot, then more reading isn't going to help and Markus' advice is sensible. Enlightenment doesn't come through what's already natural and easy for you, it comes through confronting what is challenging.

Meh. There are two different meanings of "ego", one spiritual, one from analytic psychology. There is no law that says the only correct meaning of "ego" is the psychoanalytic one. Plenty of words have more than one meaning, each for a different context. "Ego" in the context of "ego death" (i.e. in the spiritual context) refers to the limited, separate self doer/thinker narrative. "Ego" in analytic psychology also refers to the conscious, self-identifying portion of the personality. When one identifies with the (analytic psych.) ego as "the self", and then there's an awakening, it is this association that dies. Naturally the archetypes that express themselves through that portion of the personality don't die. Thus there's no (spiritual context) "ego" in full enlightenment, there is however a personality expressed in a "natural state" (psychoanalytic ego complex of archetypes integrated with shadow.) There is now a Self.

Consciousness doesn't exist in separation from Manifestation. It's Shiva-Shakti. The body and its sense organs are part of Shakti. Consciousness gives rise to Manifestation. It's not that the body doesn't exist, it's that it has no independent existence outside consciousness. But it's not less "real" than the perceptions it gives rise to. In other words, consciousness can modulate and constrain itself to produce whatever simulation (i.e. perceptions) is necessary. The constraints of consciousness aren't "unreal" but they aren't "real" in the sense of unchanging or Absolute or unconditioned.

To go off what dlof said, Ken Wilber makes the pre-egoic, egoic, post-egoic distinction. Animals are pre-egoic. If the word enlightened means anything, it must mean going from egoic to post-egoic.

Also keep in mind that you're 15. In other words, you are still developing and maturing. You have your hands full just developing your mind and body. It is not surprising that you'd be bored meditating for an hour. Maybe you should actually be more active physically so that you are capable of relaxing into other activities. When I was 15 I was very much into sports. I did a lot better academically when I was playing soccer, e.g. Better concentration and reasoning ability. Sometimes we need to do more physically in order to do other stuff.

Listen up y'all, You have to understand that different people are at different levels of spiritual development. Not everyone is a spiritual seeker or ready to become one. Don't attempt forcing a square peg into a round hole. If you find people who you think are ready, inform them. You gotta have respect for the evolutionary process, though. Some people haven't even mastered basic rationality yet. Leave them to progress at their own pace. In other words, be wise about introducing people to spirituality.

The One who watches everything cannot be seen, because he is what sees. He is The Seer. (The "you" that "you" think is seeing doesn't exist, it is The One that is seeing.) This is The Absolute.

The bottom line is that the vegan diet is constitutionally more appropriate for some chunk of the population (typically blood type A) and the paleo diet is more appropriate for another chunk (typically blood type O.) [I oversimplified this explanation because there's a whole system I don't want to get into here.] This accounts for the positive experiences some have on the vegan diet and others on the paleo/ketogenic diet. Different strokes for different folks. People need to figure out what works for them on the individual level. And other people need to respect and tolerate individual differences and stop trying to remold others into their own views or lifestyle. (AMS, out of curiosity, can you poll your FB group for blood type? ;))

I haven't read McKenna's book, but "mystical union" usually refers to a stage of enlightenment after Cosmic Consciousness. It's an intermediate stage of non-dual awakening, marked by devotion to a sacred object (e.g. Jesus, God, Buddha, etc.) and the experience of all as bliss. It is not the Absolute. Mystical union is union, i.e. 2 ("you" and "God.") There is still a subtle duality due to the I-thought arising. The Absolute is identity, i.e. 1. There is only The Self.

Here's the real scoop on enlightenment. 1) You feel everything, good, bad and neutral, but you don't resist any of it. 2) You still have desires, but they are not driven by the limited self/ego as a crutch or compensatory mechanism. 3) You are psychically integrated, both civilized and instinctual parts. 4) There's no paralyzing neurotic fear. In a nutshell, it rocks. If Buddhism fails to properly describe that, then it's either the writing or the translation or the interpretation of the translation or the audience it was originally directed at or some other reason. I'm not a Buddhism scholar, so I don't know.

Before you follow any one-size-fits-all dietary advice, figure out what your blood and body types are. Wheat is ok for some types but not ok for others. Scientific studies do not take this into account, it's statistical analysis on one factor vs. a control without taking a lot of these other key factors into account. It is impractical to properly study these things since there are multiple confounding factors, and so the studies that do exist are fairly worthless. I'm type O blood + "Hunter" genotype, so in my case eliminating all wheat, rye and corn has done wonders. But I have no idea what you are, so I would never recommend the same diet. If I remember correctly, something like 2/3 of genotypes shouldn't consume whole grain wheat, but that leaves 33%, not a trivial number. Never follow general recommendations on any given food. There are few that are right for everyone. Know yourself and eat accordingly.