impulse9

Yes.

You can go through a surprising amount of material on https://www.khanacademy.org/ (all lectures are 100% free). There's other online courses you can take, some free, some paid. Udemy is a popular one. Aside from that, books. Books, books, books. Find good study material, get the books, and go through them. If you want to grasp material in any kind of meaningful way, you'll also need to do the practical parts, which usually means solving a lot of problems on your own. If the course has any kind of projects or lab exercises, that much better. Furthermore, there's university tier lectures all over Youtube from Stanford, Oxford, Harvard, etc. Those are by far the most in-depth sources you can access for free and to get a solid theoretical grasp on any subject, you'll have to sit through hours of these lectures while fully alert and present, taking notes, and then solidifying that knowledge through practical means. Needless to say you'll need discipline for this. In short, you can self-learn but you'll need strong determination. If you enjoy it, it won't be a problem. And learning, when done right, is always enjoyable. Yes. It's not important in the ultimate sense, but understanding sciences well grant you a lot of freedom in this world, particularly when it comes to logical problem solving and being able to separate truth from bullshit. Hope this helps some. Good luck.

Thanks for sharing, worth looking into I guess.

Lol no. Science if wonderful. As long as you don't attach ontology to it.

The only thing that will destroy a materialist is a strong dose of psychedelics. And even that doesn't always work. I've had people who took large doses of psychedelics argue to me that "it's all in your brain" and utterly dismiss any sort of mystical interpretation.

You're only fully God-realized when you can instantly materialize a brand new house with the snap of your fingers.

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Truer words have rarely been spoken.

That's a good one. I always found that fascinating.

Also some of you said you can't function normally on it, but I'm a living counterexample. In college I smoked like crazy, there wasn't a second where I wasn't high, and yet I got straight 10s and I was in the top 1% not just of my class but entire university. The trick I did was I smoked like crazy when I studied, and it had the effect of making the study material infinitely interesting. I got so much enjoyment out of studying I feel like I've broken the system. I also took the tests high. The funny thing about being a functional weedhead is that on the odd day where you show up sober, people will start wondering if everything is ok with you. Because everyone is used to you being high, whether they realize it or not.

Just keep doing it. It sounds like you're doing the right thing. Keep your expectations at a minimum and see what happens. As far as motivation goes, you shouldn't rely on it. You'll have bad meditations, and good ones. You'll have days where you don't want to meditate because you're too lazy or too tired. The best meditations in my experience are those where you initially don't want to do them, but you do them anyway. Rely on discipline rather than motivation, which is flimsy and unpredictable.

Also you said Castaneda isn't about God realization, but Don Juan was very specific about this very point. So ok, he didn't mention solipsism. But he did absolutely mention that YOU are creating your reality right now. And the method to stop it is to stop talking to yourself. Everything you know, hear, see, experience, is basically YOUR own creation. This is a very fundamental lesson in those books.

Nope. I've had trips like that on mushrooms and Salvia though. Where oneness of everything and the fact that my perception is the only thing that exists was so apparent that it simply couldn't be questioned. But in my daily life, I have no such awareness. Nor do I think I would be able to even survive if that was my continuous perception

@Leo Gura I guess not. Since I've had my mind blown by those books as a teenager, I've been struggling to find some kind of middle ground between that, the nondual teachings, Zen, Tao, your teachings, etc. I've found none. Reality seems to work at too many levels at once. And what do I know, maybe your realization is the highest, I have no way to empirically test it. I know that my Salvia trips have shown me without a shadow of a doubt that there is no end to mystery, all I can do is theoretically say, ok so maybe it's God simply playing tricks with me through all these various methods and ways. Honestly the more in harmony I feel with reality, the less I tend to even ask any questions about it. The scent of a flower is self-sufficient. It doesn't need explanation.

Also I would disagree that any teaching doesn't address these issues directly. For me the most profound books I've ever read by a considerable notch are the books by Castaneda. You may have a different opinion of those, but they have profoundly influenced me and shaped who I am today. Don Juan (the Yaqui shaman in those books) was very specific about these substances. He said basically that they are immaterial entities, essentially ally spirits. He was very clear that the magical domains they help you to enter are infinite and unknowable. He said there is no end to the mystery, and this is simply something a person on this path has to deeply and fully accept. He also said that after your initiation into non-ordinary states of awareness, you should work towards raising your own personal power, at which point you'll be able to heighten your consciousness enough to enter these magical domains with ease and without any aid. And until you can't do that, you are working with borrowed power, and you will never be able to tell whether or not these spirits are simply tricking you, or showing you the truth. This is the nature of their existence. They are tricksters.

That's by design. It will never plateau. I mean look, I've done at least a 100 mushroom trips, some of which were proper breakthrough experiences. Then I did a bunch of Salvia sessions with the last one being the one that finally broke me to my core, and then I decided to stop doing them because basically I've seen all I care to see. I know it goes infinitely deep, so why bother any further. Eventually you get to experience things that are absolutely impossible to integrate at any level, so what can you do at that point? Keep doing it forever? Towards what end? The endpoint should be humbleness and riding on the wings of power. This is why I have infinite respect for people like Eckhart Tolle. He's simply grooving with the universe. Like a humble little Yoda.

Decent explanation. Basically all effort is God's effort, which makes it effortless. You can enlighten yourself effortlessly, but it's going to take a ton of effort, LOL

Yeah I agree in principle @Leo Gura. I don't feel psychedelics are absolutely necessary for spiritual growth, but since our society and civilization is so damn materialistic and so lost in the ego identified mind, they can be a potent way to break that illusion. But once you break it, why insist on doing it? Just groove with the universe. If you get it, you got it.

Fair enough. I believe that story. I've experienced weirder occurrences around enlightened people. @Breakingthewall If you think that's impossible, wait until you hear about people who can talk to animals and plants, or travel 100s of miles in a second, or conjure magical objects on the spot.

@Leo Gura An excerpt for you from one of Ram Dass's talks :).

Congratulations and welcome to the fun part of reality.

@supremeyingyang Sure, if you want to burn out and not achieve your highest goals. Neutrality doesn't get you far with your life's work. You need true passion and true love for it to stand out. That's why OP's question is wrong. It should be "how many hours can I put into what I love" instead of "how many hours do I have to suffer to make this work".

@Carl-Richard Yeah I suppose that's the paradox of awakening. Effortless effort, and all that.

Y'all are forgetting the possibility of sudden enlightenment, a satori. You're all acting as if there's some algorithm to awakening, which I find rubs me in all the wrong ways, lol. “Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.”- Ramesh Balsekar

@Leo Gura My mom has been meditating for 40+ years and she told me countless times that love is everything that exists and that ultimately nothing else exists. I knew about all this decades before I found your videos. She calls it unconditional love, and every spiritual teacher worth their salt should have intimate knowledge of it. I'm not really sure who you're talking to that you get apparently unsatisfactory answers.