InfinityBeats

I feel like I've questioned and explored reality and my beliefs to the point where I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I can't have goals like I used to because I know they won't fulfill me in the way that I used to at least believe they would. I still do stuff like go to the gym, meditate, work on my career etc. but it's hard to really push through obstacles when they come up because it feels pointless to struggle to achieve a goal that won't ultimately satisfy me. When I feel like this, kind of like I do right now because I had a headache and decided not to go to the gym because of it, I just don't know what to do with myself. I was watching some videos about awakening hoping they would maybe help me get that permanent identity shift tonight which could hopefully put an end to all this seeking and "free" me, but so far nothing. I can just sit and do nothing- observe how my mind is craving answers, but becoming aware of it doesn't seem to change anything. How long am I supposed to do this for? Every time I've done it in the past, I came out of it with nothing and once again I feel like I need to "figure something out" so I can be free from this seeking. I have beliefs about solipsism and whatever, so I sincerely don't know if there is any "real" people out there that can help me, however I figured I should just act authentically, and right now me being authentic is me making this post and hoping that it helps me.

And to add to the above, my "wordly" life is generally successful as well. I have a great relationship and am about to get married, I have a great career that pays well with a job that I really don't mind, and I have tons of hobbies. It's just this spiritual seeking that feels like an addiction that I want to get rid of once and for all but can't seem to.

@Leo Gura For the most part, I've been really happy, especially due to teachings such as those of Abraham Hicks, which have shifted my focus away from expecting future things/accomplishments to make me feel better to just accepting that feeling better is all I want, and if I feel good and satisfied then the manifestations don't matter. Since getting into that about a year and a half ago, my general happiness levels have truly skyrocketed, and I feel deep appreciation whenever I recognize that I'm doing something that I like and makes me feel good, such as reading a book, watching a TV show, going for a walk, having a good workout etc. My post isn't talking about my life as a whole, it's talking about these moments that come along where I get stuck craving "enlightenment", and even though I'm generally happy in life, there are moments where this wanting of enlightenment is basically an annoying thorn in my side that I just want to get rid of, and I've tried just accepting the desire for enlightenment, and I've also tried meditating regularly, but it hasn't really made it go away so I'm trying to now push on it a bit more.

I do and I have woken up on psychedelics but I have always "come back" into the illusion, both voluntarily due to not wanting to be alone, or involuntarily due to the drug wearing off and me essentially accidentally getting caught up in beliefs/thoughts until I could no longer see Oneness/God/Infinity/Self/Truth anymore. I could go on and on talking about those experiences, but that would just be more thoughts. Plus the memories of the experiences themselves are also just thoughts now so they might as well have not even happened, plus I feel like if anything, they are misleading me by creating an expectation of what awakening should be.

And to elaborate on "which is why I'm hoping for someone to help me untangle this right now." I guess I'm hoping for someone to help free me. I am imagining that there is something wrong, and that someone other than me can help me fix it. To more accurately drill into what I'm feeling, I'm feeling frustrated that I'm not awake/enlightened or that I have not yet awoken to the no self realization. This frustration feels like physical sensations that I guess I'm resisting on some level + fearing/dreading continuing to experience them for who knows how long. I will try to just allow them and inquire into them.

This video sums it up well

My self identity is just a bunch of thoughts. I have no idea what "I", the thing looking right now truly is. To even say there is a thing looking is just more thoughts. But there is clearly an "aliveness"

But to be fair, there are certain thoughts/stories in my head that still have a grasp on me to some degree. I feel present right now, but I believe that If I sit here for long enough, something will make me give up and go to sleep, such as the thought that I have to work tomorrow so if I don't give up and go to sleep, I will end up tired all day tomorrow.

That just feels like another story, another future goal, another thought. Nothing that isn't here right now feels real to me, which is why I'm hoping for someone to help me untangle this right now.

I think he's referring to questions such as: what is the point of life? are other people real? what is the best use of my time here? where did I come from? what's going to happen when I die? Is god real? Are demons real? If so what does this mean for me? If God is real, should I practice a certain religion? Is enlightenment real? Can I escape suffering all together or should I just try to make my circumstances as ideal as possible? Will good circumstances make me happy? Do I really want anything other than to just be happy? Can I always trust science and rationality? Is spirituality and religion all just bullshit? etc. This is basically the rabbit hole that I would say can be summed up as just seeking understanding. It doesn't appear that you are quite in it yet, as your main question seems just to be "what is the best thing I can do to become better off in a practical sense?" which is 100% fine and I would just keep following that question as honestly as possible, basically exactly what you are doing by posting here. If you keep following that question and keep finding new methods which bring you more and more satisfaction in life, then that's great, don't ever stop. However, it's definitely possible that at some point questions like the ones I listed above will start bothering you, and nothing will become more important than getting those questions answered, and when that happens, again just seek 100% honestly and authentically. With something like god realization, you will never get the external objective proof you are looking for, you can only try to find out for yourself. So the answer to the question of "How do you know the path of "god-realization" is both true and not a waste of time?" is: you don't know. But you can get to the point where you desire to know this answer more than anything else (aka "Understanding") and you are willing to get to the bottom of it yourself. If you get to that point, do that. Until you're there, just keep doing what you're doing.

I have been wondering this lately as well and just the other day was thinking of posting this exact thread so its funny that it popped up just now. @Leo Gura I think we are all curious because what about the "no self no problem" type thinking? Isn't enlightenment the end of suffering? If bad health is basically just lots physical pain and suffering, what about the things you said in your strong determination sitting video where monks can apparently be so conscious they can go through a tooth surgery with no aneasthesia with a smile on their face? Do you think all the spiritual work has really helped you that much now that you have a health issue or is it just that when you trip you can awaken deep enough to temporarily escape it all?

Step 1: Calm down. Realize you are fine and your soul doesn't need to be saved, all of this is just your mind being overly active and you buying into everything its suggesting without even questioning "what is a thought?" Can you see that you are totally fine in this present moment and that your mind is feeding you ideas of potential problems that you are buying into?

Day 55 of 90 Total meditation time: 26 hours Two key things happened this week: I spent a couple hours working through this emotional scale: https://www.actualityofbeing.com/the-emotional-scale which resulted in a little breakthrough when I got to the boredom part. I realized that boredom is something I have a deep aversion to, which is obvious for everyone basically, but what was interesting was when I tried to figure out what the actual feeling of boredom is. Examining it a bit deeper, boredom seems to be a physical sensation, and I noticed that I experience it most while socializing. I've always considered myself an introvert, but it seems to be that I like being by myself because it allows me to sooth the pain of boredom most easily. The problem with constantly soothing the pain of boredom is that it doesn't seem to allow you to find out what you truly want to do. If you sit down with the goal of letting yourself be bored for 30 minutes, by the end of those 30 minutes, you will probably have some kind of conscious desire of where you want to channel your energy rather than just channeling it into scrolling on your phone or something because its the most efficient way to sooth that pain of boredom immediately. I also had a mini awakening while completely sober from just watching this video: It wasn't a very deep or stable awakening, but it still was the closest I've ever felt to being on a psychedelic while being completely sober. I haven't done psychedelics in years, but this video gave me such a clear reminder of what it's like when everything is exposed to be just one substance and that that substance is you. This was super exciting to feel again and even more exciting to feel without needing any drugs.

I've been meditating with lots of different techniques fairly inconsistently for years. I've had some brief periods where I was able to stick to a twice daily meditation practice from aypsite, but ultimately the routine always fell apart as I got caught up in more "material" stage orange type things, or I would always end up chasing states induced by weed and psychedelics. I believe that I have gotten lots of benefits from weed and psychedelics, however I feel like I'm currently at an inflection point where they are starting to become a distraction and the benefits are seeming more and more illusory and are leading me into more self deception. I can tell that I feel reliant upon them to make progress, and this whole paradigm is causing me lots of suffering through craving the high state and feeling dissatisfied with regular sober existence + feeling like I'm not good enough to do almost anything, not just spirituality, to my full potential without the use of an external substance. I started learning the SeeHearFeel method from Shinzen Young the other day and have been trying it out a bit and I really like it- more than I liked the deep meditation and spinal breathing pranayama that I was doing from aypsite, so I'm feeling pretty good about getting into a regular habit with this, and ultimately letting go of the need for external substances and just finding deep satisfaction with regular sober existence. The current goal I want to start with just to keep things manageable and not too far in the future is 90 hours in 90 days. I did 30 minutes yesterday and an hour and a half today, so I'll start my tracking here on day 2: Day 2 of 90 Total meditation time: 2 hours

Just some additional kind of unrelated thoughts: I saw some people talking about Kanye on the forum and I saw the interview of him with Tucker Carlson. Then I started looking at the comments and seeing how invested people were in all of this and how completely polarized peoples opinions can be on stuff like this, and I just want to write this here to keep reminding myself to stay completely away from all that type of shit unless its being consumed in a super light hearted way or if I'm specifically analyzing those types of situations for a specific purpose. While my meditation habit has lots of room to improve, I think all the work I've done so far in my life, including all the spiritual "theory" I've consumed over the years, has made me soooo much better at not getting too caught up in distractions like these. I can't think of a better term for it than distraction. If my reality and my mind are infinite, and I can choose to focus on anything, why would I waste my time on things like that?

Day 48 of 90 Total meditation time: 23 hours Still struggling to maintain my hour a day, this time it's because my fiancee and I got a dog on Monday. I've never owned a dog before and it is definitely a big responsibility. I'm seeing that while it's easy for me to get into those nice happy flow states like mentioned above when my external environment is good, I still struggle a lot when I have to deal with external stressors. All the meditation and spirituality work I've done over the past 8 or 9 years has definitely helped me deal with these kinds of problems better than I could have before, but I still think it could all be handled waaay better. I've been trying to not be too hard on myself to keep up with a really strict meditation routine because I've been very strict with myself before and it always ends in some kind of burnout, but the at the same time, discipline clearly has value. I will need to get a better understanding of how to balance this.

Day 41 of 90 Total meditation time: 22 hours I haven't been keeping up with my hour a day goal at all lately. Going to Italy really threw all of my routines off, but I'm not too worried about it. I think trying to come back to this journal more often is important though, so I will try and update it a more regularly. Similar to day 17 when I was feeling great and finding myself in that flow state of consciousness where I just "get it" and things make sense, I've found myself slipping in and out of that same state of consciousness over the past hour or so which feels really good. I'm going to bed soon, but I'm going to try and not lose focus, and maintain this state of consciousness until I fall asleep. When I'm really in it, it feels so free. It feels like I'm reconnecting/remembering what my state of consciousness was like when I would have fun as a kid- just a very free flowing, fully immersed feeling of "flow" where I'm so involved in what I'm doing and all the additional mental baggage that accompanies my more regular state of consciousness, even at very subtle levels, is all gone. That mental baggage disappears because I know that I'm the one keeping all those thought structures in place, which means that if I want, I can choose to let them all go.

Had a realization today which I've also had a few times before- it's basically this idea that on some level I have some kind of boundaries or resistance to extreme levels of positivity/abundance. Like if there was a possibility for things to get really really really good all of a sudden, I tell myself that of course I would gladly take that, but there have been times where it feels like all my dreams are about to come true, and a part of me freaks out and resists. I want to spend more time visualizing exactly what it would feel like if things got that good, and how it would feel to completely allow that to happen.

Day 30 of 90 Total meditation time: 20 hours Went on vacation to Italy for just over a week and didn't get much meditation in there at all, but I'm okay with that. I do want to continue this journal though and get back on track with things.

Day 17 of 90 Total meditation time: 16 hours Today has been a really good day. Both today and yesterday I have felt very "on track" in life. I feel like I'm often finding myself in a state of consciousness where I just "get it", and this feels really good. I feel like I'm doing well. I feel like there is lots of progress to be made still, but in a fun way, like levelling up a character in a game. I'm getting random little glimpses of a feeling of love/bliss. Been experiencing some little synchronicities. I hope to experience more of all of these good things, but I'm also feeling very content with this moment, and I'm cautious of letting my mind get too attached to these future ideas because I don't want to let all my attention get turned away from how amazing this present moment already feels.

Day 16 of 90 Total meditation time: 15 hours I'm pretty much caught up on my meditation time now. It's only 1pm right now, so I still have time to get my hour in today. These days I'm noticing how effective it is combining different techniques. I was feeling really burnt out from going hard with SeeHearFeel for an hour a day and it just felt wrong that meditation was making me feel worse in a burning out kind of way. I know it can sometimes trigger difficult emotions to start coming up throughout the day and other ego backlash things in that sense, but when it comes to just leaving me feeling exhausted it feels different. I've been burnt out many times before and it's always the same kind of thing where I simply need to chill more. To counteract this, I've been mixing in lots of mantra meditation (specifically the AYP deep meditation) while laying flat on my back, and it's been helping a lot.

Day 11 of 90 Total meditation time: 9.5 hours The past week has been stupidly busy. Funny enough, my life seems like it's the busiest its been in a while since I started this 90 day plan. It seems like almost everyday I'm getting slammed with back to back things after work so it's been hard to fit the time in, but I'm doing what I can. I had a couples therapy appointment with my fiance after work today to try and work through some issues we've had for a while so we can go into our marriage with all that sorted out- particularly some of my past issues with weed and psychedelics that have caused us some serious problems. In this appointment, I realized that my orientation in the spiritual journey has gotten a little fucked up. Turning inwards has become some sort of escape, whether I'm high or just meditating. Meditation should involve directly facing reality and accepting it, but it seems like my approach has sneakily twisted things into me trying to basically meditate my way out of this world. I've always been aware of this to a degree and tried to take it into account and course correct, but something about the realizations in this therapy session hit REALLY deep (it basically felt psychedelic) and made me realize I have much more work to do in figuring this stuff out. I still have so much to process but I'm so exhausted from this past week that I feel incapable of doing so right now. Hopefully I'll have more time over the next few days to understand everything more.

If you were stuck in a void where you were nothingness but your thoughts continued forever, what would stop you from imagining endless beautiful realities and stories? The assumption that it would be a hell state implies that you are not stuck inside a void, but rather in some kind of reality where some being other than yourself is causing you to suffer. If it was truly a void with nothing but your thoughts, there wouldn't be anything to make it a hell state. You wouldn't be bored, because you would have your mind to endlessly stimulate you. If took a break from stimulating yourself with imagination, you'd basically just default to bliss because you'd essentially be in a state of being that contains no "problems" because those would have to be imagined. If some kind of problem existed underneath everything when you stopped imagining things, then it wouldn't be a void. Endlessly stimulating yourself with imagination doesn't necessary work this way when you're a human (or imagining yourself as a human? ) because we have bodies that get uncomfortable, restless, tired, hungry, etc. but if you were just a mind in a void, these "limits" wouldn't exist unless you put them upon yourself by imagining them, so you would basically be in heaven, not hell.

Day 7 of 90 Total meditation time: 7 hours Managed to get 2 hours in today. I struggled a lot through my first meditation this morning. I was feeling pretty shitty physically and I reeeeally had to pee halfway through, but I figured that created a good opportunity to be mindful of the discomfort that comes with all that, but to be honest, I don't think it worked well and if anything it just made my meditation way worse. As someone who's not an expert, I feel like there's a only certain level of discomfort that can be explored mindfully before it just becomes too much of a distraction that prevents me from going deeper. Maybe I'll change my mind on that later but that's how this morning felt. My second meditation actually went extremely well. The full hour was pretty tough, but I managed to start creating a deeper separation between actuality and imagination. I've been doing the SeeHearFeel technique, and in this meditation it started becoming very clear that every time I "feel" something, only about 40% of my consciousness (as a really rough estimate) goes towards feeling, and the remaining 60% is still "seeing" things. For example, if I feel my breathing, yeah I'm feeling those sensations, but so much of my mind is still visualizing a body breathing, but at a much more subtle level. Or if I feel my feet touching each other when I'm sitting cross legged, I still think a majority of my awareness is taken up by my mind visualizing what my legs look like and the seated position of my body vs actually just feeling the tingly sensation of my feet or legs. It seems like it will take a lot of practice to untangle this, but I can picture massive benefits from doing so. This meditation alone started triggering psychedelic memories of what it's like to feel without the additional context of the mind visualizing a body or adding any other thoughts on top of the actual experience. Without all the additional context, the present moment starts getting very alien and "flexible" in the sense that it is able to change in weird ways due to not being grounded in so much context. Cool stuff.

Day 6 of 90 Total meditation time: 5 hours Had a crazy busy day yesterday and missed my hour and then another pretty busy day today but I managed to get my one hour in at least. I should finally have a nice chill day tomorrow so I should easily be able to get 2 hours in and get myself back on track.