VeganAwake

@Mikael89 Lets try this in steps: 1) Stop assuming you know anything about the process. Completely drop any idea that you have about enlightenment. Become empty. Allow everything you think about yourself to fall away. Cease knowing anything. Become like a 6 month old child viewing and observing everything for the very first time. Empty your glass and leave it empty. Almost like you don't even have a mind. Become the not knower. 2) Realize that you are not truly anything that anybody describes you as, not even yourself. You are not Michael the banker from Wisconsin who is often depressed has high anxiety, low self-esteem, and a decent work ethic sometimes. None of those things are really who you are they're just labels Society has created that you allowed yourself to believe. They are just beliefs ideas about who you are there not the truth in any way. There simply opinions and perceptions. 3) Cease believing any of these Illusions about yourself. Simply notice their make-believe and let them fall away, every single layer until there's nothing left because it's all imagination. Something you simply allowed yourself to believe about yourself and label yourself as. None of it is true, strip these layers off for good. It really doesn't require an action just cease believing them. 4) Simply sit in no mind land and Ponder, if i am not any of the things I believed myself to be then who am i really. What is left after all the make-believe Falls away. What is left after shedding all the layers of the false self. Who are you,what are you,what is left? Keep practicing these steps it's all within not without.

The biggest road block to attaining samadhi is thinking that one already knows the path. "The biggest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge"... This can be the show stopper. In samadhi there is a saying... "No person can enter the gateless gate, So be nobody". This can be the hard part for some people, because it requires a "letting go" of ones sense of self, and all belief systems/structures a person is identified with and attached to, including all religious and culturally conditioned notions of the self. Simply put you drop your entire identity, and beliefs you have about yourself, and become like a young child new to the world and ready to learn.( come with your glass empty); ( become the not knower) This is of course where the ego feels the most threatened, because it knows that this will kill it. It will try to resist it in every way possible( mostly distractions). The trick is not to force it, but to ask it to sit down in the chair and that you no longer require its services. The letting go I'm describing also means to drop any past signs or beliefs of who or what you think you are. For example do not cling to nicknames, signs, or old beliefs about yourself that you have already used in your journey forward. The signs are there to point you 2 something, but do not cling and hang on to them to long. They are meant to be used and then transcended/outgrown and dropped( non-attachment/ non identification). Basically these were the hardest things for me to do in my own life, but once I caught on to this and trusted my own instincts, my motivation allowed me to completely drop everything, become the not knower, and dive into the abyss. This path for me has been an awakening in its self, but I can see its a definite permanent lifestyle shift as well. This was something I sent to my very good friend a few months ago..

People who are engaged in religious or spiritual practices such as yoga prayer meditation chanting or any kind of ritual are practicing techniques which are conditioned, which means they are just part of the ego construct, the seeking and the activity isn't the problem, thinking you have found the answer in some external form is the problem spirituality in its most common form is no different than pathological thinking that is going on everywhere, it is further agitation of the Mind more human doing as opposed to human being. The ego construct wants more money more power more love more of everything. Those on the so-called spiritual path desire to be more spiritual more awake more equanimous more peaceful more enlightened. Samadhi is not about attaining or adding something more to yourself, its to die before you die.

Nonduality is the truth, duality is an illusion.

This is the craziest s*** ever. Will someone or something please tell me what is really going on. Or The small scared separate self (Maya) that created an idea of a higher power to feel comforted and not irrelevant and alone in a big scary universe. Those are my definitions.

You can find enlightened people on this form. Let your heart guide you. It's an amazing resource to have thank you Leo!!

@Nahm what are you afraid of? Its just a guys perspective. Entertainment for entertainments sake. I wasn't trying to bash Leo... I give credit to Leo for many of my Awakenings, in particular the one I had after watching his Collective ego video. I just thought it was worth a share...

Yes I refer to it as a pregnant nothingness. Labels and beliefs cannot attach themselves anymore because there is nothing there. Thank you so much for sharing that is an incredible story.

@karkaore I choose to live life because life is beautiful. Nothing matters actually equals complete total unbound freedom. Existence will unfold whether you sit on the couch for your whole life or become the president of the United States. Existence does not judge... Yes I agree something much bigger, like we are evolving and waking up to realize ourselves. Like a cell realizing its a cell in a human body, but then realizing its actually all the cells and is the human body itself. Trippy right!! We are waking each other up!! It has been very nice chatting with you...thank you for just being you ?

Yes practices that quiet the mind will work the best. Here is a diagram that helped me realize my true self under the illusion. You should make your own and notice each label you believe yourself to be is just an idea, a perspective a conditioned belief. It is not who you really are. It is not the TRUTH...

Your old structure and your old identity must become the dead soil out of which new growth comes. The first step to awaking is to realise that we are identified with the matrix of the human mind, or the mask. Something within us must hear this truth and be roused from it’s slumber. There’s a part of you, something timeless that has always known the truth. Your divine essence has become enslaved. Identified with a limited self structure. The great wisdom – the truth of who you are – is buried deep within your being. Identification with the ego mind is the sickness, and samadhi is the cure.” – Samadhi Documentary.

Yes each religion is a blind man touching a different part of the elephant.

@karkaore yes everything perfectly contradicts itself and ends back at zero. Between nothing and everything is. Or take the middle path. When I say "nothing really matters", what I mean is there is no one way to live your life or goal to reach unless you give yourself that goal. Existence is the good and the bad stirred into one. The value of life = The value you give it. If everything matters gives you absolute love and Bliss you are home. The best way I can explain enlightenment on an emotional level is, it's the end of resistance and suffering.

Hell is resistance to what is. And repeating that same pattern forever.

The spiritual ego is the most armor-plated of all egos. It really is the toughest nut to crack. Many in their journey to return to wholeness experience this phase where the ego takes on yet another layer of inflation, of “identity”. Only this time it deems it legitimate because it has a spiritual label. This phase of the ego is still the ego however now it becomes largely impenetrable. From my own experience some of the traits of this phase are: Becoming overly identified with intellectual knowledge Defending that knowledge – spiritual righteousness Spiritual vanity and pride Spiritual superiority ( seeing others as less than) Lack of genuine emotional vulnerability and transparency Lack of radical self-honesty Lack of self-awareness, self-observation Lack of genuine curiosity Teaching more than listening and learning Lack of gratitude for others as teachers in their own right (students are teachers) Resistance to being “called out” – lack of accountability Wearing a mask of positivity (arising from fear) Engaging in spiritual debates (arising from the need to be right) Every one of these expressions is simply a defense against awakening. As such they represent the ego’s many and varied delaying tactics.

Oh yeah... It snuck in the back door on me a while back when I was at home on a family vacation. It took me awhile to even admit that that's what had happened. Becoming aware early on is definitely helpful. When one is awake the Consciousness shines through these masks..

@Serotoninluv haha yes that's funny about the retreat. Divine Liberation describes it well I think... I honestly really can't say if it's absolute truth but my heart tells me it is.

@Serotoninluv I completely understand what you are saying... I am just the sign pointing to the truth. What we are discussing was one of the many big hurdles of my understanding. No one wants to hear nothing really matters but it's simply the truth...

This is a little about what I was saying. In our culture, however, the pursuit of ‘enlightenment’ (which really means abiding in direct awareness of reality) has become confused and mixed up with the self-help / self-improvement project. People talk about wanting to grow and become a better person, and often imagine that the terminal point of this growth process is something like enlightenment. This demonstrates a real lack of understanding of the nature of the spiritual path (as conceived in the Asian traditions, anyway). Not only is abiding-awakeness not the endpoint of the growth process, it doesn’t even lie in that direction. What??! Look, if you stop and think this through, you’ll see it’s obvious: according to all the Yoga traditions, your true nature is always already perfect, the core of your being is pure radiant divinity, and you are always already one with the infinite divine Consciousness which gives rise to and supports the entire universe. TAT-TVAM-ASI: you are That; here and now. Therefore, realization of this truth does not depend on any degree of personal growth. Rather, it is a paradigm shift in which you stop identifying with the phenomena within Awareness (e.g., thoughts, emotions, body-image, etc.) and wake up to the fact that you are Awareness itself—the only constant in the ever-changing world of your experience. And yes, it is possible to become so awake that you never fall back asleep again. You don’t become a categorically different kind of person, you just finally see the truth so clearly and completely that you can’t unsee it, and thus you dwell in a different paradigm from before.

The perception that an alcoholic beating his wife and kids and causing trauma and suffering is bad is again in itself the conditioned thought pattern. I think the problem is you are getting your personal self-help agenda mixed up with the enlightenment process.

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when one takes the stress off of themselves that they need to be a certain way. It's like when the stress of perfection is off your shoulders you naturally gravitate towards unconditional love understanding and compassion.

There literally is nothing to do... if someone tells you otherwise it is a conditioned thought pattern. Just their perspective an idea a belief. A flower or a tree doesn't strive to be perfect it just is.

Just the thought that there is behavior that would be considered perfect or imperfect is a conditioned thought pattern in itself. For example one might believe that their grouchy behavior in the morning is imperfect and they need to work on it, but the truth is, that is just a conditioned thought pattern...they can be grouchy all they want. Yeah they might not have very many friends but that doesn't mean they're imperfect.

@karkaore in my experience it's more like the realization that you were already Perfect all along and your conditioned thought patterns we're creating an illusion that you were not perfect and needed to do something. There are not certain behaviors that qualify someone to be enlightened. It's not a future destination... it's a realizing what you aren't to realize what you are process. I hope this helps good luck I am in the military as well thank you for your service!!

Meditation and emptying my glass was also very helpful for me.