Azrael

Leo does present - in these days - lots of realizations that come from the fact that you remove a lot of garbage from your perception, raise your awareness and suddenly see how certain things work + he introduces techniques how one can make this happen. And how I see it personally he can just present a very tiny subset of these realizations and patterns in life because there are in the end just way too many to draw a conclusive picture. So yeah, you can master all of these different subjects. It's more of an increase of awareness that then leads to the seeing of how stuff works that then automatically and/or by conscious will lets go of the unnecessarily shit we busy ourselves with. Here I'm talking of course about the higher psychological principals the talks about.. not about the "How-To's" he started his channel with.

Well, I'll give it a shot. The very energy / flow / changing form that birthed this angry soul into life, has now complicated itself so much that it built a thing called brain with which it could model the world it perceives and because of this limited model now goes out and argues for it. It's the same with every one of us. He just seems to be very ambitious about how the world works in his head. But it doesn't explains or can ever argue with a) the still moment in which this guy is talking and b) the ever-changing flow that appears in that still moment. Because it comes before all that. Before all the argumentation and interpretation. It comes before his own appearance. And it seems to liken the play called "What if.. I weren't God?". You can see that all over the world and it's a funny game. People go very far out for it. But I gotta give 'im some credit for criticizing new age. I personally - gut feeling personally - don't like a lot of new age as well. I needed weeks before I could watch the first Matt Khan video and it blew my mind. I don't have many new age resources except him though and I think they did a very bad mistake: They talk and conceptualize too much about it. They model it too much. And this is not bad in and of itself, it's normal that we humans do that. But it makes them attackable. That's why you won't hear so many people standing up against Zen (I'm huge Zen addict..). Because they don't talk about it. And if they do, it's like a secret language. You need months, years and decades to really understand what they mean. And they don't have many books. A few and even they are hard to read. And I think that's their advantage. And for me personally, when somebody who doesn't know me asks what my whole meditation is about I like to say: "It's about sitting." Then they give you funny look and stop asking. But yeah basically, what we are talking here about is not religion, or you might say "true religion" in a new sense of the word. Nothing you can ever fathom with words. As we try it, we fail, discuss about words and meanings and it always slips through the fingers. That's why you sit silently, until nobody is talking no more and you suddenly realize that the thing that is doing the talking is the same that makes the birds fly and is the same that makes a wall a wall. So you'll laugh because you suddenly see that every game you every played, every conflict that exists, every duality that we encounter is God playing with itself because it's so much fun to pretend.

With no doubt the one and only Shunryu Suzuki. He gives all the secrets away, it's too good ...

Funnily, you just get this attitude after you had some awakenings. At least this is how it seems to me. In beforehand enlightenment was the most important, serious thing to seek. When it comes down on you, you lose your entire "spiritual persona". All your "I meditate for x years"-beliefs, all your "I had these kind of experiences"-beliefs just drop, because seeking disappeared. For me seeking disappeared even before the shit hit the fan and was really necessarily to get it down. When you want it too bad and then see that there's really nothing you can do and thoroughly give up, it'll come and you'll laugh your ass off silly. It is that not serious. It is God / it / Tao / ... playing the most funny game with you that could be played. You play it with your self and you directed it all of the time. It's that nice. So, very important point to mention. Or at least very helpful to consider. @Rali Good seeing you around here, I wondered how long it would took. I hope for some spiritual warfare in the future or least some fun discusses. Have a good one! Cheers

Very important subject. I underestimated how bad the journey will fuck in the beginning and went through a very rude awakening. In the end I was lucky to have such a phase because it was simply too much for my head so it had to reorganize at a higher understanding, but in retrospect I would argue that there are a damn lot of people who just can not stand this and will end up in therapy or even worse in a mental hospital because they don't know whats happening. Seems dramatic, is really just an understatement of how crazy it can get. How will you react when you are still rooted in a false self when you experience how you have no free will, how you have no control over thoughts and actions, how your whole world view collapses. Will you embrace it and dive into it or will you go crazy. I would suggest that a good handful of people will at first go crazy and then if they're lucky and wise can shift that into awakening. But you really gotta be wise to see through all that.

Every Zen / Taoism talk from Alan Watts on YouTube. Probably also his books. He is very enjoyable to read. I got all my intuition knowledge from him. It's insanely inspiring.

And here, I see just another time God taking the form of a suffering human being that persists in the illusion that the world isn't perfect as it is. That pain and suffering are really bad and need to be diminished. That the killing of innocent animals is any different from a wonderful flower growing in peace. It isn't. It's a fucking game and as long as you take any of it seriously, you'll fight for one side or the other. When you stop engaging in it seriously and just look curiously how it can be that there is such an amount of beauty on the one hand and such an amount of suffering on the other, you'll find out that God aka it / Tao / nothingness / ... needs and wants to express any limitation there could be because it is so infinite, peaceful and complete in its non-dualistic essence. Every dualistic game there is is just the counterpart of the non-dual bliss out of everything arises. See that, and you'll laugh yourself silly. Cheers (...and don't take my rant here to personally, I'm merely having fun with my very limited opinions - you are of course right that we humans are all to bad killing these innocent animals and eating their fucking delicious meat on 3 occasions in the day not giving a shit at all ... fuck I did it again )

"When I'm not at work, I'm not stressed or bored." "When I'm not being insulted, I don't feel bad or wrong." What do all of these hold in common? They blame the suffering on the phenomenon, not on the internal process that is occurring inside of you that is actually responsible for the created suffering. With that attitude you'll try to calm your mind for the rest of eternity, with very little progress (because trying to calm your mind is the least effective thing you could do to attain a calm mind). What you could to be effective then is this: When you suffer because of thinking / emotions, go right to the cause of what is fucking you: the thinking or the emotion. Localize it. Where is it? Maybe in your head if it's thoughts or in your abdomen if it's fear. Then go to the localized sensation of "not feeling good" and hold your attention on it. While doing that, be curious. Be curious why this sensation makes you feel bad. Be curious how it can do that actually. Isn't it weired, that just out of a sensation like a contraction or pictures / voices in your head can arise a feeling of being unwell. What actually makes this sensation into something that you don't like. When you think you got it, go deeper. When you think it's the contraction in your abdomen that makes you feel fear, ask: But why is contraction generally bad. Why is contraction bad and feeling light good? Why is that. Then go deeper into the contraction. Go as deep as you can and stay curious. You'll eventually find that all suffering is an illusion you put on yourself and can only be held up if you look at it without much attention, suffer from it subconsciously and don't investigate it. If you do, it will just go. Don't try to get rid of the phenomenon like having thoughts or emotions. Understand what they do inside you. The deeper I dip into non-duality on a permanent day-to-day basis, the more thoughts vanish automatically and only a few very inspiring or fun ones remain. Most thoughts go after you've unlocked them. But I never asked them to. They just leave because they not longer are needed. And I'm now at a place at which I find it highly interesting and inspiring to have a thought. The phenomenon itself is very mystical. It's like being sucked into a dream that comes out of nothing, has its time and then leaves. Same with emotions. When I have a negative emotion these days I'm thrilled by the power it carries, by the way it makes me react, by the thoughts it stimulates. It's really like being in cinema. You come to this point when you get intimate with all of these, not by pushing them away or denying them. I personally know that this is hard when you're fucked up, trust me. I had my head screaming at me for 4 months this year plus my body fucking me up with every kind of emotion it had. And how did I get out of that? By letting it be okay, feeling sorry for my shadow that it has to to that and by being interested in it. Cheers

With mindfulness and meditation in general it's very weired in the beginning because you don't really know whether you are doing it right or how it's supposed to feel. Well, it'll feel every kind of way you can and can't imagine along the journey, so that at some point you stop asking this question. There'll be times at which it will feel very tensed in your body and especially your head and it seems like you really have to make an effort just to sit. There'll be times at which you just sit and everything happens automatically. This'll ping pong in cycles for some time and you'll be introduced to deeper and deeper levels of this throughout. So just keep on the show and watch. Everything that happens is just fine. One secret I wanna give away though is this: You probably try right now to always look that you don't lose your attention and that's what makes you so tensed right now. Cuz you wanna be mindful, right? Well, it'll take some time but at some point you'll realize that the holding of attention and trying to not get in thought stories is itself just a thought or let's say a game you play with yourself. So what you could do you eliminate a lot of suffering is simply sit and when nothing is on your mind recognize that. Simply be aware that you are empty right now. You are anyway. Don't try to hold it or try to not have thoughts. Simply recognize that you are empty. As soon as another thought story comes up and catches you, you'll automatically lose your awareness and go through the thoughts. At some point you'll get aware again that there are thoughts. When this happens simply be aware again that you are empty and conscious. And this will happen dozen of times. Don't try to not lose awareness or to not have thoughts. This is still neurotic because you think you could decide what happens next. Well, you can't and you'll find that out throughout the practice. That's why you are aware and conscious when you are being given the moment for that and you are lost in fairytale when that is happening. Take it as it comes and you'll have a wonderful practice. Cheers

Nice to see another Psychonaut going the path here. Keep posting, I'm very interested. When you snort the MeO, snort it with the least amount of energy up your nostril (so that it stays there). Put a finger on the nostril opening, do the other one, keep a finger on that one and then tilt your head upside down and massage it into your nostrils. For me, with this technique, I begin to get heavy effects 3-5 minutes after I do that, with nothing even remotely running down my throat. I wanted to take my next dose a few days ago, but I'm a little sick right now. So I gotta wait until next weekend. I'm thrilled.

The one and only thing I have learned from Matt Khan and from nobody else - as a matter of fact everybody else teaches you the exact opposite and that's why self-help never really works fast and good - is: All your weaknesses, all your negative emotions, all your limitations are not the devil trying to make your life shitty and neurotic. They are the coping mechanisms of your lower self (your inner child / your unconscious) that built up while it was trying to handle all the situations in which you were mentally attacked. And even when your mother told you that you can't have that toy you were mentally attacked, because you had to face a situation that was not according to how your ego likes to have it. Over the time we all built frameworks, interpretations and mechanisms to work with misery and out of that comes something like: feeling fear, anger, doing stupid stuff when you are afraid, having compulsive thoughts ... Now, this in its essence is a neurosis that built up over time and that you can just get rid of if you learn how deal with negative emotions and events, see what they really are and change your internal processes. And easiest way to do so (like Matt suggests) is to be sorry for your lower self that it has to do all these neurotic things to deal with negativity. In that way you get access to it, it'll feel safer and the neurosis will begin to melt away. And that's what you ultimately want. You want to reconnect with all of yourself, not just the things you like about you. So, to start with that integration treat your lower self like a five year old in pain. Not like your ex that fucked your best man. When you really get that, things will change really quickly. At least they did for me. Cheers

To really mean it. Picture this: If you walk the Rocky Mountains and fall off them and one of your buddies catches you in the last sec, that kind of gratefulness you'll have then is really authentic.

All this work we do, all the contemplating and meditating and all the frameworks we spin around it, all this does is putting every experience including fear into its proper position. As long as you are a human being you'll have fear, love, boredom, wisdom, overwhelm ... as an experience, just because life happens to be that way. What can change though is the way you internalize these experiences. Right now you're maybe very afraid of fear and negative emotions. You might be wired to do everything to get around it. But why is that? What is it that makes fear such an unwanted thing? Is it the experience itself, the blast of intensity that it carries? Is it the way your mind makes it into this huge ball of thoughts, emotional reactions and triggers? Find that out. Make it clear to yourself what this is and why you are trying to get away from it. When you've decluttered all the mayor emotions and triggers that make up your individual self and you know it intimately, things will fall into place. And you'll come out at place at which fear will blast at you and you have a smile on your face and say: "God, what a show. What a beautiful show."

Yeah, but don't forget that it's not your conscious decision to bombard yourself with all that. You basically have to completely re-evaluate all of your programmings, the whole society, how nature works and how you stand in relationship to all that to really see that everything is okay and there is nothing to be worried about. And you come from a position in which you are completely lost and every earthly attempt to get out of that gets you even more lost. So it's a twisted game.

Stop believing your own story. You seem to take your issues extremely serious and there is probably this big fear in the back of your mind that ... what if this whole thing called your life doesn't play out? What if? What if you lose? Well, I have a suggestion. It's a fun one, so listen. And I'll guarantee that if you do that, you'll hugely transform. Every morning - starting tomorrow - the first thing you do after you wake up is go down on your knees, bowing to the sky and talking to yourself innerly: "I'm grateful for [...]" and in these brackets you put every issue you listed above, your whole nightmare story. You say that you are grateful that you have the time, energy, the life and the power to be completely lost in this fairytale. It would be kind of good if you reach tears at some point of your practice to really get into the attitude, here. I'm not kidding. Read further. In addition to that every time in the day when your negative thoughts and emotions come up and you can remember what I'm about to tell you, you do this: You say to yourself (as well on the inside - don't be a psychopath talking to yourself out loud when people are around ) that you just cant fathom how masterful you are in spinning the worst kind of nightmares and creating the most painful kind of life scenarios. Be astounded how good you are at this. Astounded like you saw one of your buddies hovering in front of you out of nothing. That kind I mean. Now, I'm not joking here at all. I'll guarantee that if you start doing that - starting tomorrow - and you make little notes in your calendar, or your mirror or wherever that remind you of doing that, that you'll lose most of your negative thought chains, your emotions will come down and you'll eventually achieve what you want to do. And all of this much faster then if you would started meditating today, read 20 self help books, become addicted to that crap like the rest of us and spend your life doing nothing else then researching that shit. Guys, don't take me to seriously with that one, I'm having fun here. But the essence is this: You desperately believe that the story you tell yourself is real. And what I just offered you is the fastest and most direct way to show you that whatever you tell yourself is a story and not reality. And by working with my story the other one will automatically melt and you come out somewhere in the middle, being pretty grounded. Have a good one!

Be careful. You get a weak idea here. Just because external objects, purposes and whatsoever will not give you the fulfillment you project onto them, doesn't mean they aren't fun to play with. Your whole life, everything you do is like a dream in which you can do whatever you want. You can get completely lost and play the most far out games that there are, and if you look at society it is perfect at doing this. It is completely lost. What we say with this whole enlightenment crap is simply: To the people who really are interested in why they're never really happy, why life can be such a drag or what this is all about.. there is a way to find that out and there is a recognition inside of you that can take place and then you see for yourself who you really are. So to those, who'd like that, go do it. But that doesn't mean that this wonderful playing ground called earth is useless and sick. It is what is, and that's fine. Have fun with it while knowing who you are and it'll be a fun ride.

Yeah, you do it right. But I'd suggest not meditating more then 20 minutes in the first 3 months if you wanna do it consistently for the rest of your life. If you try to go for a hour right in the beginning, you'll quit in about a month. Be assured. Start slow and then increase the time as the habit is rooted in your daily routine. There is no race you can win here by over-doing it in the beginning. You'll just lose motivation.

@Psychonaut Could you throw some into my apartment, please? This is way too epic.

You have to see that "you" or "your ego" or however you wanna call it, isn't bad. It's everything you have to your individual existence. Everything you can feel, sense, think and make sense of right now is your ego. It is that deep. What spirituality simply tells you is: "Look here, although you have your very limited individualistic view on things, that itself is being made in every moment just as the flowers are made to grow, the birds are made to sing and the sun is made to rise. You are fundamentally this self-enforcing power that does that in and of itself." And that's profound and very interesting to explore. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't follow your passions, deny your character and strengths and be a yogi. You can do that, but really don't have to. You'll see a funny thing with enlightened people. Most people who start out on this quest and begin to see into the reality of things a little bit will make it the one and only, the greatest and nothing else now matters anymore kind of thing. That's a phase and it's an important one, because you begin to shift your neurotic attitude that was mainly focused and your life onto what is greater than that, so you become neurotic about it. When you can see the reality of things and who you are and how shit works on a consistent basis though, this neurosis over time just vanishes and you begin to live a very moderate, chilled life, focusing on whatever you naturally want and not praising one thing and blaming another. So all in all, there is nothing wrong with you following your passions. It's great that you have such good motives, act on them. This world needs people like you doing that, I'd say. Cheers

Let me say it another time. You cannot reach enlightenment through anything. And I know exactly what thought you have right now: "Yeah... but you kinda can because meditation and self-inquiry makes you more aware and then someday this awareness will be enough to recognize that you are everything and nothing." So let me say it again. You cannot reach enlightenment through anything. Just that it gets in. Someone like Leo who seemingly does a lot of meditation and self-inquiry and focuses his whole life on this quest might not be faster then you doing 20 minutes of a breath meditation once a day. Why? Because the "speed of you recognizing your own nature" is bounded by when you will give the show called you. When will you be really earnest to yourself that you just don't know how you miraculously keep on living from moment to moment, how thoughts just come up, actions just come up, the flowers just grow and even your game of "I'm a free agent who is responsible" is kept up. This is a shoving away of shit you tell yourself and believe to the point where it becomes apparent. And this shoving away is being done by giving it up, not by keeping it up. By giving up the journey, by knowing that there is nothing you can do, by knowing that everything that you do is just another very nuanced game that you can get it with effort. So maybe the best meditation to reach enlightenment is to sit for 10 minutes, crying your eyes out and praying to God, nature, it nothingness that it makes you give it up. I sincerely think this might be better then anything else because this would at least foster the attitude you need to understand. Every other meditation technique is more about how can "I" be better, calmer, more focused, more relaxed. Well, that's mostly a joke. So, why am I being such an asshole here with you? Because it needs that. It's important that you get this down sometime so that you don't try years over years getting something that isn't there. Luckily, I got that early on (after about 1 year of my journey) when I studied Taoism and Zen. Maybe you wanna look that up. So, to end this rage: How do I meditate now for most of my journey? I sit down, sit for 60 minutes and get up. Whatever happens in these 60 minutes is completely accepted. And when it can't be accepted, that's accepted too. I mostly don't move because I practiced strong determination sitting for a long time (so apparently still do, but really don't care anymore). With this technique most other techniques will come up over time, like focusing on your breath, repeating a mantra, counting the breath etc. Just because you don't limit yourself. Right now I'm also using HoloSync with it, that boosts my integration process and especially my spiritual quest like nuts. It's ridiculously potent. But yeah, that's about it. You could name it: Giving up. Because I am giving up with every second to that that makes me. And by that, I become that. Cheers to you

From that answer, you can read the solution you wanted me to say. Go ahead!

Don't distract yourself here. I'm not saying that there isn't a lot of good stuff out there, but keep it simple. What you are trying here is getting rid of your bad side and always feeling good and pleasant. Well, be surprised but even a Zen master will feel shitty when his friends and family dies, just because it's natural for a human being to go through that. Now, we Westerns I think make too much outta this. We beat ourselves up about any little thing that comes up: work, relationships, packets from Amazon needing that extra day when you paid for Prime. You name it. To get at peace with this (not to get rid of this but to really be okay with it, you do this): When you are in a state of envy and regret you acknowledge how it gets you. How do you feel? Maybe very loaded. What thoughts arise? Probably automatic chains of negative and compulsive thoughts. Okay, great. Now you do this: Feel on the inside into these feelings and listen to your thoughts consciously and say to yourself on the inside: "I'm very sorry that [...] didn't play out as you wanted it to be. Life is a bitch, I really don't like seeing you suffering over this, but feel free to rage about it however you want. Whatever feelings you may trigger, feel welcome to do so. It's okay." Talk to yourself like you would trying to calm a 5 year old down. Get on your own side and stop opposing a side of you. Then integration shall begin. Cheers to your regrets, Azrael

Put it off, clean your Mac and make a Windows partition. Then game the shit outta that thing when you need a pause from becoming enlightened or finding your life purpose.

@InsidesOut, yes the Ken Wilber video is the one that inspired me for the title and gave me the concept, you caught me.

Listen, it's like this. What you're trying to do is you want to understand it logically, you wanna make sense out of all that. Which is of course understandable. Because that's the way we humans mostly go about our business. But if it comes to recognizing your own nature, you have to see that logic, scientific investigation and especially words are and always will be a subset of the thing itself. These methods and frameworks are something that come out of your own nature but never ever can represent it fully in its integrity, because there is more to it. That's why when I say "If you don't understand it, you begin to understand and if you understand it you need further investigation" I am pointing to what I just described. I'm pointing that your ability to abstract and model reality will not be sufficient to catch it, to get hold of it. It's like using a net to catch water, it'll always slip away. So how do you get it? You sit down and accept that everything your mind comes up with is not the thing you're searching for. And after some time you'll begin to see that there is something underlying your thoughts, your feelings and everything you know that let's these things exist. They come from it and go to it. It's the same with birth and death. You say awareness is born and will die. I'd say look again. If that's really the case what then birthed awareness into being and what takes it out of being, hah? What's underneath that. What is this ground of being that is ever-present but seems to slip through your fingers when you try to look for it? What is this thing that isn't a thing? Of course these are all brain-twisters but they're supposed to wake something up in you that knows exactly what I'm talking about. What you have to do is to look further into this until some day it's looks right in your face and you can't deny it anymore. Then there will be a sudden shift. I know this is hard to understand, it was for me as well in the beginning. Just trust in your ability to see it and it'll come with patience. It's actually not that hard. It's just that people like to make it very hard and put it on a pedestal when it's really the ground that holds the pedestal up. Cheers