BipolarGrowth

Relax from trying to get the desire to come back, and chances are that it will come back faster than what you’re currently doing. Right now you’re having resistance to depression which is likely making the depression more of a problem and giving it more power. What would happen if you simply went with the energy you have now and allowed it to play out on its own terms? Do you think you’ll get stuck in some permanent depression and never achieve any goals again? I say that whatever was in you to motivate you before is still within you, and it will rise again when the time is right. Be careful when forcing things. I say all of this while experiencing a similar loss in motivation, desire, and drive. Just a couple months ago I was pushing myself harder than ever in multiple areas.

It all comes down to being as precise as you can be. Rather than saying “this was amazing, transcendent, or an ‘awakening’”, you can try to describe the actual sensations of the experience themselves. I think the best thing which helped me get more clear with my phenomenological descriptions of states was reading Daniel Ingram’s book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. The book gives a lot of frameworks within Buddhist meditative experience for describing things more precisely simply by knowing a larger vocabulary of powerful and intricate concepts, but more importantly, it shows just how exact one can become with this territory which never can be 100% conveyed to another person. We can never give the full picture, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t give a good representation to a degree.

At the end of the day, experience is an uncontrollable and self-automated process. The saint should receive no praise as they had no choice or alternative, even if to the untrained mind it appears that they did have a choice. Similarly, the psychopath should receive no hatred as they also have no control over the matter. The same is to be said of awakened or unawakened people. They also had no choice in arriving at either designation. Life lives itself. The only question is: how well can you live with that? Solid post btw.

@EdgeGod900 Great to see you take the suggestions seriously. MCTB is available for free on MCTB.org as well which makes it convenient to read on the go. If you find yourself having questions about how to perform the techniques or integrate the insights produced from them, feel free to send me a PM. I am happy to help.

You probably won’t often come across someone with more direct experience of such things in a spiritual context. The simple advice is that accepting/contacting the influence has been incredibly beneficial to my life journey and was directly related to the unfoldment of the process which brought about my deepest awakenings and permanent perceptual shifts which have allowed me to significantly reduce suffering and resistance in my life.

Atman to me seems quite similar to Leo’s God-Realization I just think it’s more a question of degree and intensity with maybe some other components but yet similar structurally you might say. I came to the Atman side of things much earlier than I came to anattā which might explain my bias toward anattā and Buddhism. I got to experience Buddhism through a Hindu-strengthened base of practice you might say. They are both incredibly beautiful and both totally “useful”. Maybe something to check out on the Hindu side of things would be the Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg tradition. It had a great power for me even as a beginner and is still quite enjoyable to return to at times. I’d certainly consider Daaji to be one of the most balanced and embodied spiritual beings on earth although his representation and expression of teaching is in many ways antithetical to Leo’s teachings or at least the main focuses and ways of prioritizing teachings and insights. Heartfulness is good because it is a transmission-based practice which can produce strong results for some right away while also being quite widespread and accessible for a deep tradition operating in the modern world.

@Danioover9000 well the inspiration definitely relies on “external” sources mixing with “internal” sources IMO. Copy catting done poorly is just that. It’s just not that appealing because it’s done poorly. If you can “copy cat” better than the original source of inspiration, then this is copy catting done exceptionally well which usually takes off and can even be seen as original just because of how good it is. People really care more about the quality produced more than where it comes from in practice, at least that’s my view.

The vast amalgamation of inspiration in an artist’s mind is what is truly original even more so than the content which is created.

Can I please formally be the first person to go from having the “member” title to “Crazy Mfer” title? Not joking.

I will say that banning @Consilience would seem like a horrible mistake to me. He’s one of the most dedicated people I’ve seen on here, and from memory, generally pretty pleasant and respectful. Its a bit worrying to see this exchange because it brings to mind the thought that “do the work” seems to these days mean something closer to “do the drugs” which is not feasible or tenable for many people. I know for a fact Leo himself has seen the nonsense, not at all his fault, that came from me following his recommended methods.

You might want to try some new techniques to see if they are more powerful than the “do nothing” technique. The simple and 100% accurate advice on how to stay in higher consciousnesses states is to get into them more often. You want to use whatever method, technique, substance, or combination of those which allows you to healthily and sustainably get into radical states as often as possible. The more you do this, the higher chance you will reach the point of a permanent shift in baseline awareness and perceptual capabilities. This is the barebones, zero dogma or bias way of looking at this process. If I were to suggest something based on my own bias and experience, I’d recommend doing vipassana and looking directly into the three characteristics perceptually. Great starting points for this would be reading Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram and Rob Burbea’s Seeing that Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising Vipassana and meditation for most people will not be enough to reach significant and radical alterations/improvements to baseline awareness. For those without crazy motivation, discipline, and talent, psychedelics and a myriad of other techniques from other traditions might be needed to make truly noteworthy and rare levels of progress.

Sounds like you’re progressing well. I would like to point out that many of the elements of this report of events lines up with some insights into emptiness though. Seeing the liquidity of form is a stepping stone to seeing emptiness. Seeing no self is a stepping stone to emptiness. No self also goes deeper than ego death though. No self insight can eventually show the emptiness of the Atman (Self).

Good to know you’ve maxed out the capabilities of Buddhism to know that it can’t compare. That’s incredibly impressive… If you talked with people who do Buddhist practices at much depth, you’d probably find that they have contacted much of the stuff you’re saying is better than Buddhism. They just use different language and interpret other insights as deeper because well… they kind of are deeper from my experience of playing with both sets of toys.

Great choices for mods! @puporing and @The0Self are certainly top notch imo.

I’ve mostly inadvertently invested $100-150k in net worth into my spiritual development not considering opportunity cost, and I would have to say it is the absolute best investment I could’ve made. It’s ironic that to the world and even myself so much of the process looked foolish and certainly unhinged, but I think this is what the expression of spiritual development for essentially of any person with a more severe case of bipolar disorder will likely look like.

An interesting video for sure. I’d say the majority of my personal spiritual development has been related to this type of effect of basically exposing oneself to novelty which might have previously been strongly rejected at previous levels of consciousness. A lot of this has happened accidentally with me. My bipolar disorder, especially the most intense manic episodes have exposed me to many experiences which hardly no one (including my normal mood state self) is willing to do. Leaving 20k in liquid assets which was much of what I had at the time on a sleeping homeless man’s belly in Las Vegas is one example of the types of activities that ultimately break one out of bondage to certain attachments and value systems, at least temporarily, and to some degree in a more permanent sense.

The OP is pure imagination, grounded in nothing. All there is is appearance while appearance is appearing to be that way. There is no beach outside of experience, outside of appearance.

This was one of my old favorite pieces of content on Awakening maybe five or six years ago. It’s odd to think of what my direct experience might have felt like back then from my current perspective laying in permanent zero gravity and infinite space. Anyway, enjoy the video!

It’s great to see you being truly authentic Leo. I respect the changes you’ve been making in your self expression.

This seems to be the most direct and valuable of Hindu teachings I’ve found. I hope you guys find it useful.

This is an amazing breakdown of fighting as a sport. Incredibly well done.

Nothing only belongs to the Dream ?❤️

If you continue to practice, you’ll eventually get to the point where crystal clear and useful thought happens on its own without any sense of control, at least if you can keep progressing that is. It puts a whole new meaning to no-mind.

It’s infinitely young.

Sounds like fun!