mandyjw

The more conscious I become the more I feel like my introverted nature is a huge part of my ego, and was formed as a reaction to childhood. People are a huge challenge and I've noticed that I keep having unconscious expectations that other people aren't as wise as me so they can't offer me any value, but then when I interact with people with openness and without judgement I am humbled and find that that's not the case. Or if people make me angry or disappoint me it's almost always because I don't like a part of myself I see reflected in them. I do wonder if people who are extroverts would benefit from long solo retreats though.

The choice is not either or, you can live a normal life and be enlightened. There is no duality between spirituality and materialism.

I think you are very wise and on the right path. It seems like most people aren't really able to dive into this stuff until their late 20's or 30's. I don't think there's anything wrong with that because when you are young you need to focus on the world of form to ground yourself. Have faith in your own unique journey, don't try to do what other people think is the key for them if it isn't for you. Your own guidance and intuition are worth more than you know. If it doesn't feel good or right or light you up it's not getting you to enlightenment because enlightenment is feeling good, right and lit up right now.

New relationships bring out intensely the same bliss that enlightenment can bring you, only because it's conditional and depends on the person being there and acting a certain way towards you, it has a powerful flip side when things go wrong. Enlightenment is a less intense form of the same feeling, only more prevalent. For example, that love attraction, seeing yourself, being your best self kind of high can come from something mundane like looking at the sky. You're stuck in future and the present moment is the key to lasting fulfillment and enlightenment. Check out Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and try to stay away from too much theory right now. By being present you can enjoy this relationship without ruining it by clinging or ruining your own experience by having dark nihilistic thoughts about the future. Stay present. There's only ever this moment. Focus on the good, beautiful things that can ONLY be enjoyed in the moment and know that they soon lose their beauty as soon as you feel the need to lock them in to having them stick around in the future.

I think Leo's answer is correct. I've listened to hours of Tolle, read all his books and he has said similar things multiple times and never refers to spiritually awakened people abusing drugs but rather the general population. However, I also wonder about how Alan Watts drank himself to death. Most of us can only be awake in the moment, permanent awakening is after all only a concept of the mind and awakening in its essence is not of the mind so the two cannot meet. You can definitely be both awakened and addicted. If you are the universe and the universe contains addicted people, you're also addicted yourself.

Yes. Look at it closely though, it's what we hate within ourselves that we hate in other people. They can show us what we need to change about ourselves.

For some it is. Almost everything we do is motivated out of fear of death. Even seeking enlightenment. As you become more aware you'll notice easier how unhealthy foods and habits cause suffering so often you'll naturally begin eating better.

Can one become enlightened simply by working with fear? It seems like all manifestations of ego are some low level of fear. Fear of not getting a mate, fear of being insignificant, fear of not being accepted, etc. Is the primal, raw sort of fear, like being startled by a sound, also from ego? If I become fearless will I also be free of ego or do I need to become egoless to become fearless.

Is that why we're so embarrassed after someone scares us and makes us jump?

Ok, I think I get it. Can't I reverse engineer enlightenment?

With running you choose, flow state or quiet mind, or rather it chooses you.

That's a fascinating question about animals experiencing fear. I believe that animals have a primitive sort of base ego. There are some dogs that are so full of anxiety that they have to be put to sleep. Sometimes it's caused by abuse, sometimes they feed into the owners anxiety and sometimes they are just born that way. They also act selfishly and see themselves as separate entities.

Yes, running puts you in a flow state, but long distances also quiet the mind and if you're in nature, nature is all that's left flooding your consciousness. It's just an amazing recipe.

The striking thing about Jesus was that he was totally fearless. He touched lepers, pissed off the wrong people and kept on doing it, went to his death on the cross without resistance. He got angry, got sick and tired of people, got sad and cried, all kinds of other emotions. But no fear.

I have young kids that I'm responsible for on a daily basis so trying them is not an option for me right now. In the future I'd be open to it depending on my state of being at that time. I started running long distances when I was 10 and for me it's always been a huge opening into the spiritual realm, even when I was too young to know what enlightenment was. Mediation is a completely different experience. To me mediation is more like work, running is more like putting yourself in the right place and time for an enlightenment experience to happen to you. In that way it's a kind of hack or shortcut like a psychedelic but without the dramatic effects and various risks inherently involved in that.

Go for a run, a long run, 5 miles or more, (work up to it) preferably in a beautiful secluded spot. Keep your thoughts at bay, keep going back to your breath, your steps, the nature around you. It's SO much easier than meditating and you will enter a certain state of "no you" much quicker. Psychedelics are for lazy guys who like to stay on their couches too much. Of course that's not true all the time, but a lot of the time it is. Sorry guys.

So if you're going to choose your diet, wouldn't you want to choose one that had been followed by generations of people who lived long lives? The only people we have to look at who ate meat only are the Eskimos. There are many examples of mostly plant based with very little meat diets around the world that people have thrived on for hundreds of years. The Eskimos had shorter lifespans and were healthy in their youth but aged quickly and died earlier than other populations. Also within the past 50 years we have polluted the oceans and air and meat is much more full of toxins than ever. There's almost no way to get around this. If you have some horrible health issues that you believe some bizarre reaction your're having to plant based foods may be causing, maybe trying this as a last ditch effort makes sense. Otherwise it makes for great headlines and click bate. Not for a healthy diet.

I've read and experimented with his advice for years and my conclusion is pretty much the same as Leo's. The brain octane oil in the smallest starting dose made me very nauseous. I also find that including healthy carbs in my diet and cardio exercise both of which Dave shuns make me much more peaceful, present and even keel. The keto diet which the bulletproof diet is, is great for severe health conditions, if you are healthy you'll do better going with something closer to a plant based diet.

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now helped me with that more than anything.

What are you focusing on when you meditate? Your breath? The feeling of aliveness, in your hands, body?

Everyone else is just a reflection of you, so shyness is an unwillingness to see that or face certain parts of yourself. Often we are shy because we are afraid of being judged by other people. Examine it further and you'll find that we really aren't afraid of what they think, we are actually afraid of what WE THINK they think about us. So we are afraid that we will have to draw the conclusion about ourselves that we are whatever negative thing they think we are. If someone mistakenly thinks you are something you know you are not, you'll laugh. If someone thinks you are something that deep down, you are really afraid that you are it will cut like a knife.

Go into nature if you can or notice nature whenever you can. Every leaf and blade of grass is full of aliveness. It'll rub off on you.

Where consciousness meets form.

@Leo Gura This question has been bothering me a lot lately. Isn't enlightenment the ability to see all others as oneself? Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and yet actually achieving that requires one to be enlightened. In order to go around harming others there to be a you and an other, one who has something to gain and one who has something to lose. Theoretically, you could be enlightened in that you are present in the moment for the majority of your time and yet when it comes to make decisions in life your ego comes out with a fury and there's a backlash of deep unconsciousness. But I wouldn't consider that deep enlightenment.