stephenkettley

@Davino I have been brainstorming how to self-actualise for a living. Would be amazing to pursue Leo's content and the entire realm of self-actualisation as the LP which is my current LP. I've been wondering about a future where I can potentially combine my skill of programming with self-actualisation.

@r0ckyreed You're right! I guess you carry with you your spirituality, metaphysics and epistemology within your experience as your pursue your LP. It's all together as one.

@A Fellow Lighter Amazing! Where in South Africa are you from? I currently live in Knysna. Moved here from Johannesburg recently.

I have started the journey of building spiritual practices. I have been meditating for nearly 6 months everyday, as well as doing concentration every day with my meditation, also for nearly 6 months. I have also been slowly building strong determination and mindfulness with labelling over the weeks. I have also been taking psychedelics maybe twice a year for a few years. I am not in any rush but rather curious, at what point does the spiritual snowball really start rolling where one has proper mystical experiences and glimpses of enlightenment (seeing the tail of the ox...)?? How long did everyone get deep into the practices before starting to see life altering results?

@vibv I am still doing the work to figure it out.

@Leo Gura I definitely agree that LP is a part of self-actualising. Basically, I think my main concern is, is it valid to use the rest of my twenties for LP and then only start deeper epistomology, metaphysics and enligtenment around mid-thirties?. I always feel like if I spend my time on LP deeply, then I am falling behind in watching your other content and reading books on these other topics. I do need to remind myself that life is a marathon and that there is more than enough time for it all.

@Michael569 Good perspective thank you!

@Leo Gura This makes a lot of sense. In terms of the psychedelics, I have mostly involved myself intentionally in psilocybin. I definitely have had some interesting experiences of becoming far more conscious of the profundity and mysterious nature of the reality in front of me. During one of my trips, I definitely came close to being conscious of the fact that "Of course! It's me! This is my dream!". So I probably have had some slight mystical experiences. Recently, I have been trying to combine psychedelics in conjunction with life purpose as I am struggling in this area at the moment. I am hoping that as I build up my spiritual practices daily over the next few years that it will start to feed my journey more and more as I move through discovering life purpose, studying deeper epistemology and then on to deep consciousness and enlightenment work for the remainder of life.

So, as we know, according to the teachings of enlightenment and no-self, the world we experience is not materialistic and is not a permanent world made of objects or matter, and further, we do not exist as an object in the room - we are not the mind or the body. I have been contemplating the following question regarding the above: if all the illusions of materialism and being a mind/body in a world that is separate from us happened to be the truth (in an alternate reality), how would that change what we currently experience? Or would that feel exactly like what the pre-enlightenment state feels like? Because, if when enlightenment occurs, none of the perceptions and feelings change, then I wonder what a material world would feel like and what difference there would be in experience if we were in fact a separate body and mind in this world? Any thoughts? Hope this makes sense.

@gettoefl So I understand that materialism isn't true but then what would materialism feel like is what I am curious about. I agree that no self is the truth of our nature (I haven't yet awakened to it yet, but putting in the work) but then what would being a mind and body feel like?

@James123 @James123 What I am asking is if what we currently experience is, according to teachings, a non-materialistic world where we are in fact a "no-self" that is not the body or mind that we previously believe whilst under illusion, then what would the experience of a material world feel like where we are the body and the mind? I am very curious. Basically, if the world was in truth materialistic, how would we experience this differently to how it currently is?