Azrael

If you have identified all of this, you are doing pretty good with your awareness work. Now, leave this enlightenment stuff to the side, and see that there is an innocent child in you, that cries out for love and appreciation your whole fucking existence and you had nothing else to do then to use every acquired spiritual judo-trick to trying to get rid of this child in you. You do this: Say to whatever you feel that you are extremely sorry for what happened to it in the past, you are sorry for what will happen to it in the future, you acknowledge its power and whenever it wants to say something to you or express itself it shall just ask and you'll let it manifest in yourself with the deepest appreciation. Because to align your over-stimulated mind with this emotional child in you, is what you were trying all of the time. But you tried to cut off your heart that is pumping your blood. See that this doesn't work, and begin to let it express itself and love it. Then you'll find peace, bro.

I began seeing this 2-3 months ago. What changed right away was that everything I perceived stopped being the effect of something else, but more like the spontaneous occurrence of itself. Like, when I took a walk outside I saw and still see something in the trees, that is also in the ground. Also in the crying kid and also in my wandering thoughts. At this time I experienced extreme bliss for a week or two and then I fell in probably the deepest hole I every experienced on this journey. I came out of it yesterday in my daily meditation in which I was deeply in my unconscious, re-living childhood memories and crazy other stuff. At some point it just felt like a rock fell off me and I intuitively knew that I was through with this. Since then, the horrors went away. Thanks for your post, man. I appreciate it. While I was having these bad cycles, I still could see it in everything. It was just that my thoughts would go nuts and fuck me up day after day. Now it feels like a silenced city after a hurricane, a few people are still there, but there is this peace everywhere that underlies all the going ons.

@Anton Rogachevski, it's easier I guess to have one intention / direction in your mind: To experience your buddha nature now. If you have this, this will blur out after a few minutes and you just be. Don't run away from the things you don't want. Run to the things you want. (And see that the one running can't go there, but is there whatever he does or wherever the wants to go.) Because, while doing meditation or being on the journey you'll come to any of the points you mentioned, if you want or not. Meditation brings you to the point, where you acknowledge that, be that and let it go when it goes. So I wanna add one point to it: 14. Trying to change this moment.

He got a few in which he talks about the "I am" practice. This in combination with what Rupert Spira talks about brought to this way of approaching enlightenment. And I like it very much. Also, I'm a huge Alan Watts addict and he probably also inspired me not to seek it but to embody it. I meditate for about 15 months now I guess.

I actually think that in the next 100 years things like meditation, mindfulness work and through that also enlightenment work will get way more normal and things to do. Mainly because the whole health sector has understood in the last 10 years that meditation really works and can change the whole outlook of your health and life and so nowadays there are so many studies looking into this. Also, if you look at physics, they get more and more they notion that everything is interrelated with everything else and that this universe isn't so deterministic as one thought maybe 70 years ago. If you look deep enough into atoms and stuff, the fact that you are looking at it changes the thing itself. So, with that in mind and a western society that gets more individualistic and open, I think that these things don't need long any more to integrate fully in the western lifestyle. We'll see.

Hey @Anton, this is actually a very good meditation. I wouldn't even call it a meditation, but more a theme one can apply to. I do this a lot while meditating, throughout the day and especially when my mind goes bunkers. I also was inspired by Alan Watts and by Moiji to just embrace my own buddha nature and so to directly come in contact with it. And it works pretty good I have to say. When you start with this you probably still want to find the thing to connect to, to hold on to. But as you go further you'll come to a place at which you just remain, you stop going anywhere, you stop not going anywhere but just remain as the spontaneous you that manifests every few moments and then goes again. You completely merge with whatever your awareness does. By that you come in perfect harmony with what is and you'll find what you searches for. I find it very helpful - especially when I started with this and didn't really know where to go - to do something like this: I feel out what is it in my direct experience that gives me the notion that I exist. I try to make out the knowing of this very moment, of my real existence. For me that's mostly a feeling in my stomach, a feeling deep inside my head and a kind of underlying screen in my vision. But it can be anything that is the thing for you. Then I merge with that, meaning that when I breathe in and out I breathe into that notion or knowing and so deepen its experience. Be careful not do overdo, just slightly deepen this knowing that is always there that you exist, that makes out your reality. As you do that, the following thing will begin to happen: The symptoms that I described (the feeling in my stomach, in my head, the screen of the vision) will blur out and you'll get a sense of something brighter and bigger, something underlying everything that is, but also being everything that is at the same time. You can't really hold your finger on it, but you kind of intuitively know it is there. If this comes up, trust in this intuition and deepen it by breathing into it and by completely letting go. If you find yourself trying to grab it (what you will try in the beginning) do that to see that you can't. In the end you just completely let go and let it absorb you. It's beautiful. Also, when I do this I get carried away from my thoughts like every few seconds and I sometime find myself in a compulsive thought stream for some time. When that happens, it's totally fine. Don't try to stop it, don't even look out for it. When your awareness brings up merging with your buddha nature again, do that. When your awareness wants to follow along in a new compulsive thought stream, do that. After some time you'll find your buddha nature not only when you deepen it, but in everything you do and as everything you do. You are on a very good track with this, I find this to be one of my favourite and most intimate meditations. I've cried several times while doing this, because I felt so much joy and love. It's overwhelming. Cheers

I don't know but it seems to me that meditation is like a lot of other skills. You begin and want to be the rockstar of your field. You really wanna bring it home and master it. You have no idea what you are really into. After a few months you come a little bit off your whole excitement and you start to see how it changes the way you go about your business. At some point you really just learn not to interfere any more and just let it happen, because you see that this is really the thing what brought you all the suffering in the first place, you trying to change what is. But you can't teach someone not to interfere any more, because by teaching and trying to interfere you lose it. So, first you try hard. Then you try by not trying. Then you innerly give up at some point and then it finally comes to you. Basically, I'd say that somebody who meditated for 10 years has a complete other picture of all of this then I have with one year of experience. I guess that it deepens you forever. Advancement - if we wanna call it so - will come if you focus on doing it for it every single day. The you wake up someday and say: I'm pretty fucking good at this. I just found out a few days ago that I can now sit in half lotus for 30 minutes because I mastered to sit in the Burmese posture. For me this is an advancement and I love it, but there was no technique I used to get there. I just followed along and it came when it should've come.

Basically from what I have experienced so far enlightenment experiences can be very beautiful / frightening / opening to have and let you in on a view you never had. It's like there is whole dimension right now in front of you that you are not aware of and an enlightenment experience pops this into your awareness for a limited time - so it is overwhelming and astonishing. I always loved / love these kind of experiences. But the real difference starts to show up when it manifests in your life on a day to day basis. When you've untangled your thoughts and you are able to see how they are just triggered by events and not by yourself bringing them up, when you see that everything is just the current spontaneous manifestation and that it can't be any other way, when you see brighter colours and patterns and acknowledge that good and bad are the same thing separating itself just to play. When you slowly begin to see that, you come down from this horror trip of life you were so convinced to believe in. So both has it's effects. Let it come to you and carry you away.

You are not insane. Wait it out. It'll go.

Just go on a plane, fly around the world and wait for that 360 degree turn. Won't happen.

Interesting question! The higher and the lower self are basically a lot of games you play with yourself and the world around you that be categorized as good and bad. For example, you trying to get enlightened, doing all this meditation and introspection is automatically something you label good in contrast with you binging on pizza and watching porn - for what you might beat yourself up a little bit ... but it is just so nice. You can basically - and you do that - put your whole life in these two categories and you'll see that they fight with each other. White (your good side) always tries to win over black (your evil bad side). This is basically the story of your whole life - I'd say. And all the frustrations and worries and fears come up if white looses over black. You can also notice if you really put some attention and interest to this that even the voice and thought patterns are really like two different persons inside of you. The dark side mostly gives you these unconscious, deep urges to do something while your higher self has all the arguments, rationalizations and what not. The dark side has all the bad horror thought stories and fuck-up neurosis. So what happens to all of this once you are enlightened or even if you have built up enough awareness to grasp this? Well, from my personal experience of shining some awareness on this you see that it is first of all just a game that is playing inside of you. Secondly, you begin to feel sorry for your dark side because it really is just so dark because you always hated it, never gave it the love and appreciation you gave your higher self and it always protected you from this harsh life. It has to stand all these bad emotions for you. If you see that, you open up. You still do low consciousness stuff (but with way more fun and love as you did before) and you still do your higher self stuff. You see that it is basically the same - but it just plays different roles. You stop hanging yourself up for the stupid shit you do, because you see it is just the exact same shit as the highly intelligent things you do. You calm down from these fights.

FUCK NO. Dude, if you honestly don't have the urge to do drugs, NEVER and I fucking repeat NEVER EVER do drugs. Not because they are bad, they are not, and not because you would get instantly addicted and your life is over, that's also not the case in most cases I've personally seen, but don't talk yourself into doing dangerous stuff. If you have at some time the urge, an intuition or just pure lust to try some shit and have some fun and you think that you can handle it - yeah give it a try. Personally, from knowing SWIM for some time, I saw that there are certain drugs you can have a lot of fun with for some time in your life. But it's very dependent on who you are, what you like and what kind of fun you enjoy. In the long run some drugs will have very bad side effects on your body and psyche and it's probably healthy to level them down to a few. But that's all a question of what kind of like you'd like to have and I can't give you an answer to that. I could give you enough reasons to fuck yourself up with drugs and have fun or to go to a monastery and get enlightened. There really isn't a right choice to pick here, pick the one (or whatever other) that feels naturally for you. For me it's definitely enlightenment for now and SWIM likes to pepper this up with some good-ass fun . But be wise here, don't talk yourself into drugs.

@Emerald Wilkins, interesting answer! In the last year I had some periods - mostly a set of 3-5 days every few months - in which I felt completely enlightened. It then always went away and brought cycles of horrors and transformation after it. What I found so astonishing while I had theses enlightenment experiences is that I felt like somebody just pulled a cork outta me and I just felt like after all this time I am home. It kinda expressed itself in every little part: I moved a little bit slower, I acted and breathed very rhythmically just out of intuition and it felt a bit like flying - like you are weightless. If you meditate, focus on that one sensation of feeling unwell. There is this one feeling that nearly all of the time is inside of you. For me it is a lot in my upper body and brain. It's like a tension. This is your experiential guess that you are separate (in my experience). You feel this a lot if you sit for 90 minutes or longer. It is like the centre out of all the urges to stand up, to worry, to fuck your mind up comes from - it feels like that. When you have an enlightenment experience this tension just loosens up and by default you feel to be everything you can possible perceive. And out of this release of tension I felt that all calmness, all understanding, flow, tears of joy and knowing just came by. If you have this a few times and you see it then tighten up again - loosing tightness and you have this in cycles - you begin to notice how you are mainly talked into the illusion of yourself by your thoughts that come up and everything you come in contact with in the normal society. I just had to think about how as children you tighten up yourself if your mom and dad found out you had a little bit too much fun. This sensation probably manifests at some point in life because you feel it again and again and because this is so unpleasant you begin to play all kind of games to not feel this. And by that you let a seed of separation grow inside you.

Yeah, I guess it's some form of cold reading or something along the lines? Read about this some time ago. I gotta give them some props though. My description was fucking accurate, I can't believe it. It is even in the exact words and interpretations how I see myself. Pretty good job!

I fucking love this guy! All of his material is pure gold.

So in the last few months I kind of purged through a transformation - I still am - which is completely new territory for me. I don't know if one can read and guess it through my posts on this forum but at some point you probably will. What happened is that after I watched Leo's "Free Will"-video I meditated on the question "What is my next thought?" and for the first time in my life I had the sensation of having a thought w/o having the sensation of originating it from myself. It's kind of like if you talk to yourself and then the sensation of "you talking" stops but the talking itself doesn't stop. I had this throughout the meditation a couple of times and I think I probably cried out of joy / fear / confusion - I don't recall. I proved the first time in my life - after meditating for like 8-10 months or so - that this enlightenment stuff is actually the real deal. Before all that, although I had some mystical experiences and what not a few times you could still write them off as something that's weird, not reproducible, mystical. But that meditation opened a whole other chapter and should introduce me to a few new things. And I cover them in detail in a sec. Basically from then on I had my typical meditation cycles of feeling good and bad but it deepened from week to week and a complete new dimension you could say came into picture - my awareness heightened (and still does). The following things happened and still happen to me and I connect them with the heightening of my awareness (basically through observation): 1.) You think you are mentally ill. One of the first reactions after and still in the meditation I mentioned is that I thought I'm schizophrenic, that I'm done. This really fucked me up for some time. You may have the intuition that this is your spiritual progress but at first it seems like you are getting worse then you ever were. Why is that? Basically, you are now - as a normal person - resting in your illusion that has been successfully built over the years. You have your problems - what is probably the reason you wanna get out of yourself - but it's mostly okay. When you start to break that shit down you will reach the moment where you are totally lost, you are trying to find yourself, thoughts come up, feelings come up and you just think you are ill. Maybe you have even moments in which you sincerely think you are dying - I had those. You will have to come to the point where this is okay for you. it's hard at first, trust me. 2.) You begin to see patterns in everything (you think you hallucinate). If you've ever done acid which SWIM has apparently done you know how it feels when you get out of your head and into your senses. It's not like you are seeing your dead grandma, it's more like you have now in your normal state a very clear hallucination of the separation of things that was implanted in you from the early days on. This vanishes when you are on acid and also when your awareness heightens. Of course not in such a dramatic way like when you are heigh on psychedelics, but you will have some very interesting moments. Like for example you take a walk and you feel a sudden recognition how the trees next to you represent the flow of nature, how the grass and the flowers are highly ordered in their flow and how even the most unnatural human-made thing is completely bound to nature. You can see that a lot in fancy hotels. They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it. I could bring up a whole lot of other examples, basically you will rest in your senses way more and feel a intuitive recognition how everything is descending from this natural flow. (When I first had this I got really fascinated with Taoism and I still am highly addicted to that stuff. It's a real good sum-up of what is happening if you ask me. Probably the closest you can get with words.) 3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay. At some point it becomes very apparent to you that you actually have no control at all. This comes and goes but over the time you can prove that for yourself. I did and still do that sometimes. I focus a lot on the arising and vanishing of my thoughts and actions and are now able to at least see that I do not create them. It's scary shit as I said. But also - when you are through feeling scary about it - you will begin to rest in it because there is nothing else to do. As you do that you will reconnect with your intuition and through that be able to push the boundaries in certain situations and be totally fucked up and okay with that in others. Basically you become aware of the dance of love and terror in your day to day life and see that it is a game and that you were and are completely fascinated with trying to let one side win - well this doesn't work. If you become aware of that, you will find rest. And guess what, then you kind of sudo-won. Because even though you might be shitty at some times, you don't feel connected to it any more. 4.) You completely let go of what you think and do. This again, is very scary at first. But you'll reach a stage in which you have the sensation of not being the source of your thoughts and actions in such clarity that it seems like you are the container in which they arise and you are acting them out. At this stage, there is still some separation left (the feeling of being pushed around) but it's totally surreal. 5.) You begin to not care about your ego so much any more. At some point I just found myself making fun of myself in front of a buddy of mine and I felt complete peace. I laughed myself silly. In that moment it completely strut me that I would never do that. I would feel completely shitty and would try to manipulate the situation in such an advanced way that I don't make a foul out of myself. This intuitively stopped (to some degree). This is completely freeing if you experience that. Also, pain seems not to harm you so much any more. Not in the sense of you can cut an arm off and be well but you hurl yourself somewhere, feel the pain very consciously but not be affected by it very much. It's very strange to experience that at first. Well, I could go on and on with similar points but I think you get the drill here. Also, I want to mention that all of these experiences came and come in phases in which they presented themselves very clearly and then lowered again. But it seems like your base-level of mindfulness slowly gets adjusted by this and you tap into a whole new world. So, if you see any of those think back to this post, lay back and smile. You are on the right track. Cheers to you,

Here are the stats, Miss : I meditate for about 14 months now, I currently sit for a hour since 12 months I guess (before that I sat for 20 minutes), I can sit 120 minutes in a strong determination sit (but still with pains - I'm not through yet) and I only have done a few private retreats, like sitting 3-4 hours a day when I have the time to do so. But I'd like to do formal retreats in the not so distant future. If you go to the east an meditate, send me a message in beforehand and I get on a plane if I have time.

I'm talking about how fancy hotels try to give you the illusion that everything is clean and fresh always. They put tremendous effort into keeping this illusion up so that they can be fancy. I used this as an analogy.

Dude, you can't expose me like that?!

@Falk good topic, man! When I started meditating a little more than a year ago I was ashamed of talking about it because I didn't want to become that "spiritual", "new-age", "yoga-kinda", "hippie" person. I study computer science and I'm around a lot of very scientific people. My friends and family are very open-minded - but in no wider sense religiously or spiritually involved. So, I basically kept my mouth shut for the first few months and just after some time I developed the confidence to talk about it - because I had some good inner transformations going on that came from meditation (or were influenced by it a lot). To my surprise no one was really shocked or interested that I meditate (probably because I live in Berlin right now and you find meditation and yoga courses like every 10 yards ). Also, some good friends of mine are let's say interested in the psychedelic movement and they all know what we talk about here - trying to recreate it themselves and so they all were (also to my surprise) not foreign to that - some of them meditate sometimes as well and even know about astral projection and all that stuff. So yeah, I basically told my family what it is like to meditate and I didn't tell them about the whole spiritual stuff. I find it is not a good idea to confront somebody with that who has not ambitions to find it for himself. What I do is this: Talk about meditation, what it does with you, how you change and when you want to get into deeper territory begin to bring up examples that are profound but against the normal way of thinking. Like you could talk about how a mirror can only reflect something if somebody looks into it and how this implies that vision needs somebody who see and something that can bee seen. Or who a few billion years ago the earth were just stones and over the years there came the oceans, then the forests, the animals and now us. And isn't it strange how beautiful nature by design is and how intelligent? Things like that, easy to follow and going in the right direction. I also make sure that I don't bomb people with this stuff and that I take them spiritually where they are and slowly increase their radius if they like it. That way you can have a lot if fun. My parents at least started meditating last year and they like it. I make a guess that meditation in like 10-20 years will be completely normal, like taking your meds right now is or like sleeping and eating. I feel that a lot of people begin to see how big this is and studies are proving right now one after another that this is fucking awesome. So yeah, I think we are cutting edge here.

Good question! But no, don't worry that when awareness rises you will feel more shitty. It's the opposite. It might seem that way if you just think about it logically - like you do - but it is more like this: When awareness rises you literally become aware that everything you do is like a play. Sometimes you play the "good" side (when you are in your higher self and for example learning you for studies) and sometimes you play the "bad" side (when you are in your lower self and for example smoking pot while binging on ice cream and watching a netflix marathon). Not only your action separates in these categories (good / bad - white / black) but everything goes on in a similar way. For example you try to live your whole life (very passionately) not to die, because you have the sense in you that dying is something that just mustn't happen. Through awareness you begin to acknowledge how everything can bee seen as games, cycles and similar patterns. Not only that, but you also begin to see how you began to involve yourself so passionately in trying to make the one side win that now you are terribly afraid that black might win. Moreover, you know back in your mind that black will win in the end so you structure your whole life to get so involved in all kind of bullshit (other games) so that you don't have to face the fact that black wins in the end. And you just make too much of it. Awareness shows you that you are nothingness, incarnating itself in all kind of different games and patterns and that you are white and black, life and death and really can't die. If you begin to see that, you might still come across pains but it won't fuck with your head any more. It is by far one of the most cleansing and nice things to experience that you as the great self are immortal. It feels like being let out of yourself. And now ask yourself this: Isn't that really what you try to accomplish with all your bullshit involvements you make in your life? Cheers from Berlin,

It'll get way freakier my friend. But relax, nothing to fear here. It's normal to be freaked out by this at first. I also had times in which I was completely afraid of going to sleep or having these kind of experiences. As you go on they come more and more, at some stage you will try to create them (which you can't) at another you'll try to get rid of them (which you can't). Over all, you'll see that mystical experiences have their fun and value but are like the candies of the whole game.

It does work for everyone, it works for you as well you just can't see it right now. I experience very similar symptoms as you describe. I meditate for over a year now and I have phases which are the total horrors. Way more worse than you describe here. As I go on with my meditation practice these horrors also increase in their horror. It's nuts sometime. The thing is this. In the beginning you were kind of calm in your illusion of having a separate self, you still existentially thought that is the way it works. When you started meditating it brought even more comfort, flow and passion into that and so it created an even better situation. Over the weeks and months it however brought you to a new stage in which it starts to break your illusion of self. This is starting with you, I'd suggest. At least it was the same exact way with me. When this started I had and still have very intensive cycles of having the complete horrors and others feeling completely enlightened and one. I'm now at a stage at which I have seen for myself experientially that my sense of self is an illusion - however I still automatically rest in that - I'm not on the other side yet. Through that my ego is in such an confused state at times and my meditation brings up more and more shit that just fucks the whole situation up deeper. If you really wanna get far with your development, relax and take it. Will it be hard, yes harder then you think. Will it be worth it? I wouldn't write this if it wouldn't. So cheer up!

End of story, bro!

No, it's not necessary I'd say, but if you want to live a good life you need some pennies and why not combine the both? Is Leo manipulating us? Yes, of course. How bad is it? Pretty bad. And for fuck's sake, I hope I wake up some sunday and he just figured out how to enlighten me through hypnosis. No kidding, I'd love that. More money and bitches as well (that way). The thing is, I read up a lot about marketing and businesses a few years ago, also a lot about psychology and I haven't seen a single human being who puts so much effort in trying to cut the bullshit and get right down to fundamental truths like Leo. Is he failing with this? Of course, because he uses language and by nature of language you create dogma, beliefs and separation. Leo does so as well. But if you are a little bit wise, you see that it can't be any other way and that he does one of the best jobs trying to keep it down. This forum is by far as addicting as facebook. But I love it. People help me here and I help others. That's enough