mandyjw

You need to find something to pursue that lights you up.

All I'm saying is focus on the change you want to make, do not give the suffering a single thought. You're giving it too much weight. Also yes, accept the ego backlash. It is a really beautiful thing. It's the thing that tells we we made a superficial change because we thought the problem was superficial and didn't really understand what the deep problem was that we needed to address.

Yes, stop the work. Keep the consciousness. Why do you think studying will give you a good life? Do you really truly want the job that you're studying in order to get?

You've created a separation between your normal life and your meditative states. You need to watch your thoughts as you go about everyday life. You cannot expect meditation to fix your thoughts when your mind is active throughout the day, you must bring space and bits of meditation in throughout the day. Eckhart Tolle is an AMAZING teacher for doing just that.

Suffering is secondary. It has value as guidance, but never in itself. Suffering means that you aren't accepting. Seeking out suffering doesn't mean that you'll accept more, sooner. There are no hacks to acceptance. You can't hack your way to surrendering. That's what ego backlash is, it means you went too, far too soon. The value in the suffering from ego backlash is that it shows you what you still must accept.

Do you realize how analytical and masculine your approach is? You've got to balance things out to fully grasp truth on a deep level. You've especially got to balance it out when you're teaching people who are struggling to get a basic understanding of that which cannot be understood.

Living unconsciously means that you'll fall into suffering. It can be tempting to CHOOSE to suffer as part of a spiritual quest because when you choose to suffer you have the power over your suffering, and also the goal of some future state of bliss that may be obtained by your noble choice to suffer. That's another trap. It's the trap that religion has sold for hundreds of years. Religion says, look at all these people going about their lives living unconsciously and seeking silly pleasures, they are miserable. You must CHOOSE to suffer and have FAITH in this future goal you'll get if you can purify yourself through suffering. You can choose to be free of suffering now. You can be at peace now. You absolutely do not have to suffer. The entire point of this work is deciding, ok I'm done suffering. I wanted to suffer in the past but I no longer want or need to suffer. I accept what it, I accept life, I accept this present moment as it is without needing it to be something more. I'm here to meet it with love and peace and acceptance and therefore I no longer suffer.

You have the power to focus on whatever you want and draw into your experience whatever you want. There's absolutely no value in seeking out or giving any of that stuff your attention unless it is unavoidably your experience in the present moment. If your intent is to feel better give attention to that which makes you feel good.

Yes, that's a very important point about the difference between self treating a condition and using them as therapy in a controlled environment. My concern is that when people hear that drugs can save them years of work, the temptation to do them before they are ready is huge because they want to be like other people they see and they want what they want now. If you are already spiritually advanced enough for psychedelics to become part of your path, they will be. I think the discussion and suggestion of using drugs to people as a general audience is a major disservice. It's easy for me to tell other people that they shouldn't use drugs because I'm happy with my progress and haven't touched a single substance. It's also easy for people to tell others that drugs are a powerful tool because that was their experience. The most important thing is to trust in your own experience and not get caught up in the idea of conditions needing to be just so because the problem is not your conditions but the power you give them over you.

This is all distraction and comparison, with some more comparison thrown in. They have nothing you don't.

How can you have any true approach that doesn't undersell God? You can't paint a grand picture of something that someone can only attain in the future if they do the right things. That's religion, not non-duality. That's seeking a conceptual future instead of understanding that you're already divine in this moment.

This is half right. Kids or babies are enlightened until around age 2 when all hell breaks lose and the ego begins to develop. If you've ever lived with a toddler you know first hand the turmoil and suffering that a developing ego causes. They are still enlightened in a lot of ways, but it's a pre-mind pre-conceptual understanding kind of enlightenment. The same kind that animals enjoy in a way. They don't regulate their emotions so they can be very present and fully enjoy experiences in a way that we can't because in learning to regulate your emotions you create resistance and repression. So if you define enlightenment a something that happens spontaneously, yes they are enlightened. if you define it a state you enter of your own conscious choice then no.

@Shin That's a really good one too. My dog seems to have had some sort of a stroke last night, so it was good timing to watch that again.

As he said in the video, it's both! But if I have to pick one, I pick just is.

@thesmileyone Drugs are for people who are completely caught up in reality. They artificially destroy your resistance to things. They can only give you a glimpse at best of what reality could be like without resistance. Dropping your resistance is a practice you can only do when you are lucid. Drugs are also only for people who are really advanced so that you don't take chances of entering states of psychosis or extreme depression and confusion. In my opinion drugs should only be used is cases of those who have severe PSD or similar issues. I get their value in a lot of cases but I think the drawbacks way outweigh the benefits. You put a huge block in your path when you credit a drug for letting you achieve a certain state. The problem with not using drugs is that you think there's a problem with not using drugs.

I had the same exact experience with The Power of Now. I think he is incredibly clear at explaining things. He really does a good job of keeping concepts out and not misleading people into going back into concepts.

Now? The fullness of life? There's the concept and then there's the experience. The present moment is the thing that has to be experienced for itself.

God is love, love is connection. God is connection. The absence of love is disconnection. Blaming someone else for one's own disconnection is hate. God is not everything. In order for God to exist there has to be an absence of God. Just like in order for light to exist there has to be darkness.

@Scholar I agree. @Leo Gura You are God. You created this community and attracted all the people in it. Their pain and misunderstandings are your own pain. The curse you brought upon yourself as a guru and teacher is that you will need to address the problems of this community as your own before you can evolve further. You need to go back and correct the imbalances. You cannot become free of ego and separate yourself from their basic misunderstandings and self-created pain and problems. Stop focusing on your own high level goals and instead focus on the basic problems of the community and your highest goals will become realized at no effort of your own.

Yes. It's ironic and paradoxical and too hopelessly tangled to sort out by using language.

I'm starting to apply this question to anything I do for spiritual reasons. Am I doing this out of hope for future happiness or salvation? More and more I believe the only useful approach to doing anything is because it makes me feel fulfilled now. I was raised by fundamentalist Christians who dropped the fundamentalist part when I was still quite young. I was still really devout as a Christian until I became a young adult but I had liberal views and studied on my own. My entire life, I was told that you had to do the right things because other people decided they were the things that would make you more spiritual. My entire life I believed the idea that happiness is a complete non-concern in the present moment because our faith means we will get ultimate happiness in the future. I keep falling into this same trap with non-duality and doing things try to obtain a permanent state of enlightenment. There's no such thing. Just now. I feel like letting go of the idea that I should meditate or listen or read any teachings. I fell into a state of depression and nihilism a few months ago and letting myself want things and do things for fun without judging how they might affect my spiritual progress not only made me happy again, but also made me a lot more present too. The things I want to do end up leading me into having some pretty amazing spiritual experiences. They are not scheduled and I don't sit and close my eyes to have them. They are spontaneous so i don't have to feel bad if I don't have them. Why do I need to cultivate something that's already my essence anyway? I think that this is all there is. I think I'm OK with that. I just don't feel like there is anything that I can get out of doing this "work" anymore. I'm happy. Anyone just lived their life and said screw it to what they thought they should do? There's a part of me that thinks this approach is really foolish or even dangerous. But is that part the ego?

David has a different definition of enlightenment than our collective definition that we have on this forum. It's a definition that I'm starting to embrace more and more, because the other definition is a fiction. HOWEVER, he who says "I am enlightened, I am free of the devil" has become the devil. Enlightenment is only bringing the light of awareness to your dark side, denying the fact that you have a dark side is how you end up becoming a zen devil.

You reject and throw away an incredible gift and your potential to enjoy and create and be part of a beautiful world.

Get rid of the idea that you should be meditating, that you shouldn't binge eat carbs and that you're lost and tell me how you feel about that experience.

But haven't those of us doing certain practices to get enlightened just replaced the afterlife with enlightenment? It's the same algebraic equation, we just replaced the values. My mind can't plan or think about the future and be present. I can but I realize that I need my ego to do the planning