Osaid

Yes, that automatically goes away. The only reason you experience psychological fear is because you believe that you can imagine yourself. You imagine yourself in past and future scenarios and then become scared of those scenarios happening to you. It is the belief that you can be afflicted by past and future scenarios which creates all psychological fear. It is essentially your sense of time which creates psychological fear, the idea that there is a you which has gone through the past and will go through the future.

Yes. There is no imagined fear, yes. Otherwise, emotions like fear are an intelligent response to what you want, they ultimately serve you and they are in direct alignment with your desires. Emotions only become problematic when you believe you can imagine yourself, because this causes the emotion to perpetuate itself endlessly since you can imagine yourself from anywhere. When you imagine something fearful, that is because you want to perserve the imagination you have of yourself, in that sense it is intelligent because it serves your goal. If you cannot imagine yourself anymore, all fear is seen as essential to help you survive and perserve your actual body, which is what you want. Fear is not seen as "bad" when it is experienced in response to an immediate threat, although it can be objectively unpleasant. The unpleasant sensation tells you to move your body away from the threat in the exact same way physical pain makes you remove your hand from a hot stove. You would not say that feeling physical pain when touching a hot stove is a bad thing or a good thing, it is just intelligent and essential for learning how to survive. All emotions after being enlightened become completely situational, which means they are specific responses to certain situations, they have nothing to do with a person or object.

Yes, that is where your life actually begins, you could say. Not being enlightened is like playing a game of Super Mario while thinking you are Bowser. This causes a lot of suffering and confusion. Enlightenment is like realizing "oh I was Mario this entire time, what was I thinking" and then actually going on with your life and then playing and appreciating the game properly.

Leo doesn't even believe in non-duality anymore. I'm not even talking about opinion. I am saying there is an objective experiential shift you can have in your experience which prevents you from thinking about yourself ever again, and that this is enlightenment. This is the same thing every enlightened person across history has been pointing to, and it is not something that can get reinvented or integrated through more questioning and philosophizing over time. It is becoming aware of exactly what you and your experience is. It's like I'm telling you that I can see the color red and you're like "but have you questioned it enough?" Questioning red is not going to make the color red more true or accurate, because I am already experiencing exactly what it is. The only thing that can be refined or polished over time are your limited beliefs and concepts about experience, AKA intellect.

If it weren't for Leo I probably wouldn't have gotten enlightened as quick as I would have, but we both agree he has basically lost the plot. It was like a necessary evil, but it doesn't have to be that way at all if someone knows what they are talking about. I was always very intellectual and philosophical so he spoke my language, and that hooked me in. But it is not necessary to go that route if you have someone to tell you "there's no need to philosophize about this, all you have to do is inquire about your direct experience until you realize that you can't think about yourself." All my philosophizing made me very good at inquiring about experience and that did help a lot especially when I did self-inquiry, but that was its limit. Anything gained from it aside from purely my ability to inquire and question things was basically mental baggage. I basically maxed out my ability to inquire years ago, then the rest of the time was just me running circles around random intellectual and metaphysical ideas which were completely unrelated to my actual experience. It took someone who actually knew what they were talking about to redirect me and say "It's not about philosophy, inquire about this instead and you will eventually immediately and permanently figure out what your experience is." The intention doesn't really matter if it doesn't work. Enlightenment itself is not philosophical or spiritual at all. It is completely secular and unique to itself. Can spirituality lead there? Maybe, but that is just what leads there, it is not enlightenment. Can philosophy lead there? Maybe, but that is just what leads there, it is not enlightenment. Enlightenment has nothing to do with spirituality or philosophy in the same way that the color red has nothing to do with any of those. You can certainly look at red in a way that is spiritual, and you can certainly philosophize about what red is, but red itself does not pertain itself to any of those.

There's a good reason why Osho and any enlightened person makes sure to distinguish it from what they are talking about. I am just trying to point out that reason.

I don't think this. This is not what enlightenment is. This is the default state of anyone who isn't enlightened. They think they exist as a concept and as a result they view reality the same. The problem in philosophy goes very deep, it ties into the human tendency to conceptualize reality. When you become enlightened you realize what thoughts actually are, not as a philosophy to contemplate or integrate, but as an experiential perceptual shift.

It has recently come to my attention that Osho is not a philosopher. I have seen him explicitly state this multiple times in his teachings because he is often misinterpreted as being one, and two on the forum have previously convinced me that he is one. There is a distinct difference between someone who teaches enlightenment and someone who teaches philosophy. Philosophy points to concepts. Someone who teaches enlightenment uses concepts to point to actuality. What is especially tricky is that the philosopher is not going to be aware that they are merely using concepts to point to concepts, they are going to believe that they are pointing to what is actual. Someone who is enlightened is someone who recognizes the exact limits of conceptualization, so they use it with perfect utility. The enlightened person uses concepts to make you realize the limits of concepts. The philosopher does not realize this limit, and so their entire world is made out of intellect which points to nothing of any actual existence, because they are imagining that their intellect has some sort of existence beyond their imagination.

If triangles had a God, they would give it 3 sides. Humans are very good at deceiving themselves, yes. They are so good at deceiving, that they even ascribe divinity to it. God/consciousness has deceived me. The entirety of existence is just deception because it keeps fooling me. Yes, that must be it.

The post asked about enlightenment, and the answer is very simply that enlightenment has nothing to do with that. What you're talking about is supernatural powers or something, completely unrelated to recognizing what your experience is. It is literally a duality of "having powers" and "not having powers" which you must induce by putting a substance in your body in a very specific way, so there is no way it is something absolute or inherent to experience, otherwise you would not need to go through this process. Enlightenment is recognizing what you are currently experiencing, not changing it because of some logic you came up with regarding God and the universe.

It is very important not to get your awakenings or insights confused with enlightenment or absolute truth, because those experiences are temporary and partial. All awakenings can essentially be seen as "makyo" as it is called in Zen. They are just glimpses. Don't hold on to them. They are just something to speculate about.

Maybe your "God-realization" is false or partial? Maybe you're just imagining that you should be able to manipulate things because it is "your consciousness." How did you reach that conclusion again?

Is your inability to find purpose or meaning related to everything being "BS"?

Why do you want a teacher anyways? Seems like you got it figured out already. Are you trying to figure out a way to get back to "metaphysical love"?

Right. If the ego is active during or after the experience, it will have to come up with an identity to explain it: "I am everything therefore I am made of love which means I must love myself" or some kind of logic along those lines. You cannot have a thought which says "I am a piece of shit" during the emotion of love, because it is impossible to have that identity while feeling love.

It is not a state or experience in the future, or some elusive boogeyman. It is just exactly your current experience. You are always infinite, but humans have the capacity to think that they are not infinite. There is nothing finite aside from your thoughts about experience. Realizing that you cannot think about yourself is realizing yourself as infinite.

Limitations are quite literally imagined by you. They are created by your intellect. Recognizing this brings you to what is "infinite", meaning you realize that your experience has no boundaries or limitations or distinctions. It is what you find when you stop comparing and inferring things. That is all it means.

🎯

This is a great point. You can have metaphysical ideas or experiences which feel very grand, loving, amazing, epic, etc. But that doesn't mean they point to something absolute. There are many delusional ideas about reality which can make you feel loving and peaceful.

Non sequitur. Consciousness has nothing to do with being reborn an infinite amount of times, that is impossible to directly experience and it is a relative scenario. You are conflating things. You are anthropomorphizing consciousness by adding some intention to it, as if it has some job to reincarnate people. You don't even know what the weather is going to be tomorrow, let alone what happens after death. Your experience says nothing of it, so live from that experience.

What's the alternative scenario? What does it look like if existence is impossible?

Do you think anyone there is enlightened or on the level of Ralston? I doubt any enlightened teacher would use that to guide people towards enlightenment, unless they are talking about what their current experience of reality is like. However, that is trivial for someone who is seeking it, because those are just ideas being put in your mind about what your experience should be like. They are always going tell you to meditate in silence or go do self-inquiry or some such thing, not "go think about love." If you tell someone to go think about love they are going to come back with an entire romance novel planned out in their head. It is fine to be guided somewhere helpful. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're being guided towards enlightenment. Could the idea of love cause you to question yourself at a deeper level? Maybe. But it is just an idea. It should be treated as fuel for contemplation. There are many who get enlightened without being taught such things.

"Love" happens at the end, it is irrelevant for reaching enlightenment because you only have ideas of it prior. Thinking about love is not going to get you to enlightenment faster than self-inquiry. It is ultimately a distraction that your mind will spin ideas from when mentioned prior to enlightenment. You are already overly fixated on it. Right. "I want you to teach me how to be enlightened but make sure that your teaching is loving enough first." If you want someone to talk to you about love, Leo has hour long videos about that which will satisfy you. If you want to become aware of it, go for enlightenment. Awareness has no such talking.

New year no me

If you add a bit of butter to your oil, makes it less sticky for some reason. Anecdotal observation from me. Aside from that, literally just make sure your oil is hot before you put anything in it. Really that simple.