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@robdl Yes it is a balance of the two. Let me put it this way. There is no one meditating. Meditation is just happening. No doer!

Alan Watts- The Art of Contemplation All that needs to be experienced for enlightenment is already present, and anything in excess of this would be obstructive and redundant – like red ink on a rose. Otherwise, it is simply necessary to see that our usual "I" is a false and impotent image. But just as this phantom cannot actually will or do anything, it cannot get rid of itself. No tensing of muscles or, for that matter, deliberate relaxing of muscles, no repetitions of formulae, no self-suggestion, no exercises of imagination, no psychophysical regimens of any kind will do anything but add strength to the phantom. For, every littlest movement to change or to try not to change the way you actually feel now will be just one more of those futile muscular tensions (like trying to lift an airliner off the ground by straining at your seat-belt) which give semblance to the reality of the separated ego. You, considered as that ego, cannot get polar vision or cosmic consciousness. It might arise all of itself, as if by divine grace, but there is nothing, just nothing you can do or not do to bring it about. Yogis and Zen followers sometimes come to this point after long and heroic efforts. At this point there is nothing to do except what is happening of itself. All that remains is the simple awareness of what is going on – trees outside, street sounds, clock ticking, sunlight on carpet, breathing, body feelings, talking to yourself in your head. Usual cosmic jazz. That's what there is, and every bit of it, including memories and recollections, is happening now. It comes out of nothing as sounds come out of silence, for it should be obvious that the universe has always started from now and left traces behind, like a pen as it writes, though the written record, the seeming past, is still and only now. You, as ego, cannot change what you are feeling, and you cannot, effectively, try not to change it. There is simply and only what is happening, including those particular thoughts, images, and tensions which you customarily attributed to the phantom thinker and doer. They persist like echoes, but as it is seen that they are just static in the nervous system and not the work of any central ego, they lose interest, subside, and go away of themselves. Hoping that they will go away is just more static. If this becomes clear, the effort to transform one's own mind should collapse, and along with it the whole illusion that one is a separate center of consciousness to which experience happens and for which these happenings are problematic. This collapse would then become the state of contemplation, the realization that all is One. I may understand this point theoretically, but still there seems to be no change, for which reason I look for some process whereby I can move from theoretical to immediate or intuitive understanding – not recognizing that this is still a subtle form of the absurd attempt to transform the transformer, arising from the illusory distinction of thinker and thought, experiencer and experience. So long as this subtle confusion remains, one can be beguiled into various ways of trying to meditate, and a competent guru will suggest techniques so clever that their absurdity will be difficult to discover without resolute attempts to follow them through. Furthermore, the aspirations and minor successes of other seekers will compound a collective illusion, and even a mutual one-upmanship contest, of believing that this or that method or guru is, at last, the one that really works. Yet the intention of the guru himself is simply to exhaust the energy of the illusion by bringing his disciples again and again to experiences of the absurdity of trying to transform the mind with the mind. As the Zen patriarch Seng-ts'an put it: The wise person does not strive The ignorant man ties himself up… If you work on your mind with your mind How can you avoid an immense confusion?

@Viking Maybe it's coincidence but I was just listening to this video and the answer to your question is here @ 38:00. Keep a really open mind because the answer comes through a woman who claims she's been visited by higher dimensional beings. @ 48:00 it gets really interesting, the collapse of the low consciousness ways of society (money and government, ect).

'Bend like a reed in the wind' -Zen saying.

I found this great video about how the brain can be rewired to change the way we experience reality. It seems it has a lot to do with focusing the mind at an elevated level. I found this video interesting b-c when I experienced my first awakening there was a distinct shift that felt as if thought had come to a point of perfect focus or hyper focus. Hard to explain exactly but something distinctly shifted in awareness. I remember thinking to myself afterwards "Holy shit I never knew that was possible". It was as if something that had been dormant was suddenly awakened. So that's why I feel it's important to share this video with you guys. It's a bit long but well worth listening to. I'm going to start practicing "re-wiring" of the brain by putting total trust in the fact that the universe knows way more than I do and in the process dropping my old patterned views and expectations of how reality works so that the doors are wide open to all possibilities. So the question is, can we completely re-invent ourselves through our thoughts? I say, why not? For the most part I invented this "self" that I experience now. Why shouldn't I be able to re-invent it?

@Faceless That's the kind of thought that changes reality.

@Faceless That's a good thought!

@Faceless If you take 100 ppl none of them will have exactly the same experience of reality.

@MarkusSweden What have you done with the real MarkusSweden?

@Applejuice I don't do it as a game just to scare myself. No I have sleep apnea. It's the real deal. If I think about it too much before I sleep i have a hard time falling asleep just thinking about it happening. It started when I was about 40 and has only gotten worse over time. I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night gasping for air and only than do I realize that I had stopped breathing during deep sleep. For how long I wasn't breathing I have no idea. Sometimes it even causes me to have dreams that I am suffocating because, well I really am. I do have that awful cpap machine with the air pump/hoses and mask that forces air down the throat. But having that thing over my face at night makes me feel claustrophobic and also makes my ears 'pop' like when flying in a jet liner. Also I have to lay flat on my back in a corpse position and not move all night. I just can't sleep that way. The bottom line here, I hope you never develop the real thing or else it could become a reality and not just a mind game to play on yourself.

@tsuki The mother of Maya.

Truly understand know exactly what someone else is experiencing

@Nahm Yea one week in and 3 to go! He may find what he's looking for before that. We'll see.

@Faceless A man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark- (Zen Proverb)

"I never meet a man that gave me more trouble than myself"

@Faceless Here's another good one.

@FacelessThis reminded me of something I once heard. "A man stands in his own shadow and wonders why he can only see darkness"

@Nahm @Faceless I guess that's what happens when you get detacheched for the "moment of Now". The mind will do that to ya.

@Nahm @Faceless You guys are the best!!!!!

@Faceless What should I do? Dinner is cooking on the stove and the g-f got pissed off and walked away at something I said. Let it burn? Oh yea!

@How to be wise Very apropos for this moment within my direct experience. The G-F and I were getting into a bit of a tiff just now. Things are a bit "distant" at the moment. I applied what you said here to that situation. What a wake up call! I wonder if I could get her to see this and we could laugh it all off at the nothingness of it.

@Joseph Maynor Maybe you didn't see Leo's latest video? He outlines future plans for the forum here @20:00 and how he wants to take it to the next level. But he most important overall message from Leo was "Start Doing the Serious Work". https://www.actualized.org/articles/going-buddha

@Key Elements @Nahm IMO, Leo is becoming the perfect diamond free of all aggregates of self. I wish him such clarity that his presents can only be known by it's surface reflections.

@Nahm I'll second that! @Shroomdoctor Just to add this. Experience is a great teacher too. Keep expanding/growing in all directions inward and outward and you find there are no limitations to anything! It's wide open and you are it- it is you. I'd like to leave a short but powerful video by Eckhart Tolle that I listen to at least once a day. "Under the surface all things are interconnected"

@Guillem You can easily see at least one aspect of animals that is close to what is considered to be enlightenment. Animals live totally in the moment of now. The concept of past or future, birth and death has no bearing over them in their experience reality. They take every moment as it comes with no personal judgement. So it would be fair to say from that observation alone animals are far more "enlightened" than most humans.