Identity

If it is just being, how come I am experiencing struggle? If I experience struggle, that means it is true right, because it is? How can there be illusion if all there is is truth? Why cant I just let go, why does there have to be a process?

Its all just pointing to one thing, but why then is there this struggle? Why cant it just be?

@Nahm Wow, that just made so much sense to me. Thank you for sharing.

So, overall my life is going really well I would say. I feel like I have a nice direction going and am growing a lot. On a daily basis I feel great, see an increasing amount of beauty, and yeah, well I’m doing just fine. However, I do experience ego backlashes on a regular basis. I would say once a week/two weeks I have this day where I just can’t get anything done. I feel like if I don’t watch bullshit on youtube and eat junk food, like I am burning. Like I can’t handle the light of awareness or something. It makes me just want to scream. The video where Hitler reacts to non-duality resonates a lot with me in this situation haha. I don’t think it’s just spirituality, more a combination of every way I am trying to grow. Sometimes it just feels like I need to get so much done, and that it has to happen right now. I am 22 years old and it just seems that I need to find my life purpose right now, get better with girls and relationships, be social, get good habits, etc. At the same time that I have gotten pretty deep into spirituality. My back has also started to hurt in the last half a year. It’s this really annoying feeling, like I want to crack it or move it in some way, but it won’t go away. I’m not sure if this is related at all, but it seems to get worse at times of highs and lows. Now, I know that ego-backlashes and suffering and stuff is part of the journey. But a few days ago I had a dream in which I was driving a car, and for some reason, the breaks were not functioning properly. They were working slightly, but the car was still gaining speed. So I was trying desperately to break, and keep the car on the road. I ended up crashing. Usually, I don’t do much with dreams, but this one stuck to me. I looked it up and some sites suggested it meant I was losing control. Anyways, I am not exactly sure what I want from anyone responding, since I think it’s hard to judge my situation from the outside. Just wanted to put it out there I guess, and express it, since I don’t have a lot of people to talk to about this stuff. Thanks for reading! ?

@bejapuskas Thank you for your reply yeah, defininetly have the idea that things have to go to perfect, and very quickly as well. Indeed, Ive got a morning routine going, as well as other habits. However, at my bad days these tend to fly out the window, at least some. Reframing the ego backlash will definetely help. I tend to get into victim mindset a lot as well.. ”PS. Who is going too hard” mehh not today ? I will go meditate for a bit though!

@Peo I think there can be value in communicating about your non-dual pursuit and belief systems to other people. I don't know how far along you are, but for me it started as just beliefs and theory. At this stage you still have a very persistent sense of self, just your identity and perspective on the world changes. At this point I mostly kept to myself because with every conversation I tried to start about this type of stuff I pushed people further away. This however created problems for me because it created this rift between what I thought and felt and what I said and did, for which I felt increasingly inauthentic. This closed down my throat chakra. I had to work quite a bit to restore this balance again. Not sure in what position you are and what is wise to do for you, just wanted to share my experience so you are aware that not talking about it can produce some problems. I like welcometoreality's approach: talk about it in a way other people can relate or understand a bit. For me the dream metaphor and virtual reality worked all right. Also, writing your views out can help.

@Highest It feels more like a process for me. Detaching from myself and seeing myself as an occurance. Throughout my days I go to a variety of states, being more or less attached. I’ve had some peak experiences, but don’t think I have hit rock bottem yet. I have a hard time interpreting these peak experiences as well when “I land” again.

No

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This made me cry like a baby

@Serotoninluv Thank you very much!!

@Serotoninluv What Rupert Spira explains in the video is what confuses me. What is the relationship between seeing the screen and the movie changing? The way he explains it is as if getting enlightened will not have any influence on life. But this is not the full story, right? Because when you do get enlightened you change yourself as well.. and you are part of the movie... There is this side of being more loving, moral, at peace and all this is all form, right? And also it is possible to grasp insights about the absolute in relative form, I mean Rupert has the capacity to explain it in some way.. Isnt this talk about there being nothing to grasp, the absolute, only part of the story? What is the relationship between absolute and relative?

@Aaron p Yeah the Kriya yoga book has been laying on my shelf for quite some time, right now I am implementing a lot of things, so it will have to wait a bit longer. I will definitely get to it though! "Don't worry about confusion, just watch the one who is confused. And if you become clear, watch the one who has become clear." This is great, thanks, I will use this. @Nahm "What do you mean by “the relative and the absolute?” What do you currently see as the difference and or relationship between them?" "What do you mean when you say “the relative?” Right now I see relative as part of absolute. But I see it as different perspectives kind of. Like infinity includes all finitudes, so from an absolute perspective, there is no separation between anything. But from the relative, finitude, ego, my current perspective there is this idea of separation. I feel like I have to kind of zoom out from this relative perspective, let the identification with the part go to move towards this absolute perspective. Like the ego fades more and more till it completely seen through. "How is it that you are not already formless? (Pen & paper - keep answering each question which arises beyond that one)" I tried this, here is part of what I wrote down: How is it that I am not already formless? Who is the I that has to be formless? Where am I? Who is looking for me? Can there be a looker and someone to look at? Who am I trying to impress right now? (mind wandered) Where is this taking place? What is this? Who is trying to focus? (mind wandered) Where am I trying to go? Who is trying to go somewhere? "Describe this thing or process you refer to as “becoming aware”. What is that?" To me it feels like separating awareness from myself, trying to look at what this self without categorizing it as me. Also, a lot is trying to shut myself up, which I know can't be done by thinking more about it... but just trying to kind of keep still. It feels like if I keep still enough awareness kind of shines through, kind of like I zoom out a bit, or become more of the screen then the one in the movie. This process I have been able to follow until I, for example, look at my handwriting something down, and no longer feel like I am writing something down or that it is my hand. This is what I wrote down: "It's possible to literally let yourself be guided by the creativity and intelligence of reality. Let yourself be guided by nothing, watching how form gets created, and letting it come from yourself, or better, see yourself as part of the painting". That's one of the experiences I think of as a mystical experience. I have more of these types of experiences, but I find it hard to interpret them afterward. At the moment it seems very obvious and clear, and after it, I question whether I was just deluding myself. Also, the range of my experiences seems very large to me. Like I am only able to reach these states at a very small part of the time. Ps. These questions really put me to work, which is great, thank you

Is enlightenment something that only takes place from the mind? So, meditation, self-inquiry, contemplation type practices seem to focus on the mind. At least, to me it feels like I am really in this battle with myself in my head. "trying to let go", surrender, "catching yourself", finer distinctions of how the mind operates and trying to let awareness shine through it. To me this feels what is mostly talked about, at least in the content I am watching. In this part, I also feel like I am really making some progress. However, the heart also seems to play an important role. Someone on this forum recommended following a few teachers with different orientations, mind centered, heart-centered, and something else I don't remember. Also, Leo emphasized the importance of a "teotlized heart" and has mentioned love as one of the "facets of the absolute". So are this different, and are there perhaps more, facets of the absolute? Like different fingers on a hand? Or is enlightenment one thing that these different avenues lead towards? Like different rivers ending up in the same ocean? Or am I completely confused? How fucking big is this thing? It feels like I'm in a dark room and have been told there is an "elephant". I might or might not have been able to touch this elephant with one hand. However, I am not sure if it is this supposed elephant or just the wall.

Thanks for your responses, they are very helpful @Nahm Pretty sure that most of that, except for the "that's what she said" part, flew over my head. I guess what really confuses me here is the relationship between relative and absolute. So, if I understand you right, you are trying to point me to the fact that everything that arises, all form and categorizations are part of the whole. Creating this distinction between the mind and escaping from it is a duality and overlooks that all of it is consciousness, there is nothing not IT. But how then is it that becoming aware of this influences the relative as well? There is to some degree always this duality between you and it until you become completely formless, right? There is always someone or something that becomes aware, because otherwise there would be nothing, right? @WelcometoReality Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I tried this for a bit and it felt great, so I will keep experimenting with it, thank you.

@Mikael89 That makes some sense, but from the perspective of the ego you are doing something to realize you are a small flame part of the sun, to extend on your metaphor, right? When I am doing these practices whilst not at that moment aware of the full truth of myself, I am doing something... Either calming the mind, or questioning myself, "melting myself off myself". Letting your mind get fucked by reality feels like a pretty accurate description. In a sense, you are disidentifying with the self to realize the True Self, and identity takes place in the mind... Pff, I am getting confused lol

@Recursoinominado Sure, here is the link to her website: https://www.integralemassageiris.nl/pagina22.html She also gives courses in massage, in case you might be interested in that. I believe she also wrote a book, not sure if it is specifically about massage though.

I had this weird experience last Friday. I met up with a woman who works a lot with healing through massages but also helps to guide people on their spiritual path. We were just sitting down having a cup of tea. She was sharing all types of experiences and insights, enlightenment experiences she has had, how everyone around you is just a reflection of yourself, and a lot more. I was already in this crazy mindstate from just talking to her, it was like I could see the emptiness when looking in her eyes like she pulled me up to her level of awareness a bit. So then, all of a sudden, when we were talking everything around her face turned vague and white, and all I could see was her face. It was a bit like her face was the center of the sun and everything around it where strays of light, like a child would draw it. Her face also seemed to change a bit. This lasted for maybe a minute, and I was kind of going in and out of it. Strangely enough, at that moment it did not seem very weird at all. I mean, I was surprised by it, but reality seemed so moldable when I was with her that it was just another thing that happened. Anyways, I told her what I just experienced. She was like "oh, you experienced it too, then we experienced the same thing". She went on saying that we were looking into past lives of each other. From the experience, I couldn't tell anything about her or her past life, but she had quite a bit to say about mine. At this point I don't want to share what exactly she had to say about me, but it made quite some sense. I'm not sure how to interpret what happened. Before this experience, I didn't really have an opinion on past lives, but I was more on the skeptical side. So far I'm leaving it open whether it was really about my past life, or maybe just some insight she had about me, and really I'm not very attached to what it was either way. I'm curious though about what you guys think about it, and if others have had similar experiences.

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

@dimitri Thank you! Indeed I guess it's really up to me to find the right balance. Just writing it out and expressing it helped me to get some clarity already. Also, I just watched Leo's new episode in which he addresses exactly this point. I will make sure I don't slack in fixing the concrete parts of my life, and follow my intuition from there. Good luck to you as well! ?

So I have been watching actualized.org contend for quite some time and have been doing practices as well. However, I have done this mostly in isolation and it has been tough for me to share my worldviews and experiences with others. I wasn’t very aware I had this problem until a few months ago, when I experimented with a few chakra reading and healing sessions. Here it became clear to me that my throat chakra was “blocked” or whatever you call it. Anyways, since then I have been trying to communicate my path more with others, with mixed results. It has come to the point now that I have embraced this new identity quite a bit (not the end goal, but a step forward I think). Probably also the reason I am able to share this. Anyways, because I have been sharing my worldviews more with others, I have come out of my own thought bubble and have gained opinions from others on what I am doing. I have just returned from a week-long yoga retreat. Here I talked for quite a while with one of the yoga instructresses. She told me that I should focus more on grounding myself, focus on mastering the lower chakra’s. Instead of doing a lot with of meditative and psychedelic practices I should focus more on working with my body. Also, I showed her my vision board and her opinion was that I should create way more tangible short-term goals. She told me I am getting into too many abstract notions and that I can get carried away into delusion easily if I don’t operate from a solid foundation. Some of the things she said made sense to me, but I’m also skeptical about it because of the big picture view she had. I would categorize her as stage green. She is a yoga instructor, but the stream of yoga deals mostly with physical aspects. Although she has more than 10 years of experience with meditation, she didn’t think of it as a method for discovering Truth. When I asked her about her views on enlightenment, she saw it mostly as delusion, the desire to escape reality or to feel special. Her focus was more on inner mastery, working with emotions, with the chakra system as one of her main conceptual models. This got me thinking about how I am balancing my life, and what area’s I should be pursuing the most at this time. I would like to get some of your views on this. To be able to judge my situation, I will explain a bit about myself. I’ve gotten into personal development around three years ago, before which I was a really lost lazy student. Mostly through watching actualized.org video’s I’ve been creating a vision for myself and bootstrapping myself up. It has gotten to the point now that my life has really started to get some direction and momentum going. Here is a picture of my vision board, which I am quite proud of ?: So, on the bottom you see the different habits I have in place now. In the middle, it is more of a freestyle section, in which I try to write down a new statement every morning. Besides that you see some different domains I am pursuing. Have been working on my personal development mostly through creating this large picture vision and by getting the habits in place that support that vision. Although I am tracking my “productive hours”, I don’t work with any goal setting methods or have a lot of tangible goals. Spirituality has been taking an increasingly large role in my life. I have been meditating consistently for half an hour a day for close to two years now. The last year or so I have been taking psychedelic mushrooms every two weeks. I also attend a meditative yoga class once a week. Besides those concrete habits, a lot of my time is spent just contemplating and self-inquiring throughout the day. I have been accessing mystical type states during psychedelics and meditation for some time, and it has started to spill over to my everyday life as well. Overall my spiritual pursuit and desire for Truth have really gotten some momentum. At the same time I am at a pivotal moment in my life, with some practical domains demanding my attention. I am a 22 year old master student and in 1,5 years I have to go to the job market. I’ve got an idea what direction I want to go in, but it is not concrete enough yet and it needs time and effort to materialize. The end of my masters really feels like a deadline to me and it is important to not get sucked into wage slavery. I’m in an awkward situation when it comes to girls. I had quite a bit of success about a year ago through RSD pick-upish type of methods. This started to feel really incongruent and unsatisfying though, and I turned away from dating for a while. In the meantime, I did inner work on myself and I feel like I now accept myself and my sexuality a lot more. I have started to see the results with girls as well, and feel like if I committed to this domain now, it could really start to blossom. I used to be a quite popular guy with a lot of friends. Because I have changed so much and have really turned inwards I have been lonely lately. I left a lot of my old relationships behind me, that were more stage orange. I haven’t made many new friends though that share my new values, more stage greenish people. The people in my life now don’t understand the things I am pursuing and I have no one to share my experiences with. I could focus on building new relationships, but it would suck up a lot of my time. It's not that I am not working on these issues as well, I certainly am. However, a lot of my energy right now is focused on spirituality. I’m investing a lot of my “points” into spirituality. Working on more mundane aspects of my life does not flow very easily at the moment, it costs me quite a bit of willpower to get practical things done. I would love to hear your opinions on my situation: Should I prioritize the dream, or awakening from the dream? I mean, I realize it is not a one or the other decision, and I certainly have to find a balance. As my plans are right now though, I think I would be moving more into the direction of spirituality. At the moment this comes more natural to me and gives me more excitement. I am planning to increase my meditation habit to an hour a day, would like to do more yoga, more psychedelic trips, do retreats, read books on spirituality, etc. However, I am not sure that shifting the balance more towards spirituality would be a wise decision because of the number of practical things I have to get in place right now. Then again, I already notice right now how easily I get sucked into all type of activities. I could have some mystical insight or state for a bit and then all of a sudden for three days straight I am completely unaware of any of it.

Hey Leo, @Leo Gura I just watched your new episode, and after watching it launched me to this crazy state, enough that it brought me to tears. This has happened not once, but your videos lately are more to me like the texts you describe that can give insight, they are going beyond theory. The impact you have had, and still have, on my life is absolutely astonishing. Your content really has changed the entire trajectory of my life. Even though I feel like in many ways I have just started this journey, the last 3 years or so that I have been following you have just… recontextualized my entire notions of life as well as my every waking second. Your leadership displays such strength. I can only imagine the amount of adversity you had to overcome. It’s like you not only hack through the jungle with a machete, but you’re laying a fucking road there so people can navigate this mess more easily. Really, it’s ridiculous that I have never written anything to you like this before. Mostly because of all kinds of personal problems of acceptance and expression. Also, I guess I figured the dynamic we have got going on is already weird enough without me sending you thank you letters. However, letting you know how much I value the things you do is long overdue. So, from the bottom of my barely opened heart, I want to thank you. Although I have a hard time expressing it, I deeply appreciate the path you create and just how much you put all your followers before yourself. All the things you did not have to do, those might be the things that made the biggest difference. Martin (aka. Identity) Ps. From tomorrow onwards I am skeptical again. Pps. This was supposed to be an e-mail, but on your website you say you rather have it here… so here it is I guess.

I was just thinking about my information intake and how I use Leo’s material as a source for my own growth and understanding. A rather large part of my overall information intake is selected from the actualized.org paradigm. Books I often read from the booklist, I see most material from the blog, look on the forum every now and again, not to forget Leo’s videos themselves are not exactly short… ?. Spiral dynamics is also a model that I use as a filter and judgment system quite heavily. It is not that this is the only information I take in, I follow some different teachers as well. However, those teachers are then selected and perceived through the actualized.org lens. Its, for example, hard for me to watch someone like Jordan Peterson and find the valuable nuggets of wisdom in his material. Then again, although maybe I shouldn’t do it as blindly, I have quite some trust in the material presented here. It has made an enormous difference in my life already and I can intuit that there is much more to come. Are there people in a similar situation? How dependent are you on this actualized.org? How large is the influence of this outlet on you? Where is it retarding your growth rather than enhancing it? I figure this is a dilemma you contemplate yourself as well @Leo Gura , finding the balance between sharing content and making sure your viewers don’t become overdependent and ideological about the perspectives you share. Maybe ironic to ask you, but what is your vision on a healthy usage of your content?

@Solace Those are some beautiful words. I am currently reading the book of not knowing by Peter Ralston which talks about similar stuff. Although I understand what you are saying conceptually, actually doing it is a different ball game. My heart has definitely started to open up, but letting it influence every part of my life is challenging. @Serotoninluv Yeah, the theory part definitely comes easier to me. I've got meditation, yoga and psychedelic habits going tough which have really started to have an impact. @cetus56 That finger is so shiny though ? @Leo Gura Well, I'm currently deep in stage 2. Who knows, maybe some early signs of stage three coming up.