AlwaysBeNice

Cool. Also see how receptive people are in the comments! Truly the times we're living in, it's happening! =)

A bs thought someone might belief in You control your own energy a 100%

The ego was made to deny it's own suppressed feelings/fears, to look superior, even to your own self (because it (almost) meant death to you as a child if you didn't). And what's a better hide-out idea than 'someone who is beyond it all'! After all someone might even understand the enlightenment concepts, which has always been the norm for 'getting it' in the west. I think especially intellectual men generally have it rough on the path and will almost always go through a spiritual intellect ego trip for a while, it's so tempting to be the understanding king of the universe, yet your also and perhaps even more ironically still in petty thought trip.

This. If anyone talks about enlightenment as if it even remotely is a bad thing, you can know that they have not had their real first glimpse. The joy of love is utterly magnificent. Yet ego, which is based on denial of the self, out of conditioned fear, will of course like to project it's misery onto that, because it's the very thing it's afraid of.

Consciousness creates matter http://evidenceforthesoul.weebly.com/quantum-mechanics.html

I don't see the difference. Waking up happens spontaneously or when people can let go fully from what I understand. Enlightenment is embodying the energy of love/lightness, which requires letting go of judgment and emotional suppression. And letting go gets more likely to happen as well the more you are comfortable with life/yourself/God. So advaita is very much like therapy too, but it's different in the sense that it's not about believing in the story behind it, not needing to know why release is happening, because it does happen automatically as you return to the present.

Ramana Maharshi to his mother when she was crying: 'The more you cry the better'

Sure do therapy and just continue the meditations, it will pass. But seriously, it's not a problem, it has nothing to do with reality, as it's just old stuff, just some thoughts/sensations that really do not hurt you at all. In fact, be excited about it, you're discovering a hidden part of you that plagued you for so long unnecessarily! What helped me recently, after visiting and being told by Ad Oostendorp I mentioned, that to release these suppressed emotions: Feel them, but don't fixate on them only, also notice the space of consciousness in which they arise (so you can say: don't zoom in too much, don't zoom out too much).

Why don't you want to feel the fear? What might help is to think: 'thoughts, thoughts thoughts' when it happens and see that your fear (which has thought at it's base) has nothing to do with what is.

Yeah it's crazy how easy fear can be dealt with when we learn to just be with it. Somehow through this mass delusion of demonizing it and collectively avoiding it automatically, it seems like a terrible idea to allow it, but that's what only cause the pain and confusion around it, of course when ur unaware that there's also peaceful consciousness space beyond it it does have more of a grip also.

I think we should see a basic income in 5-10 years, because also the social climate is just changing, and because a technological breakthrough shouldn't be out of the question either. But aside from that, you can live just fine being a beggar usually or live in a monastery.

Investigating fear, and how it just some bodily sensation and some thoughts, is nice to learn at the moment. Also thinking 'thoughts thoughts thoughts concepts' when ever I am lost in thought to remind me how untrue and futile my thinking is. And thinking about my dead dad, and knowing he knows me in this moment, is very effective at opening my heart. edit: Aside from that, practicing -just being (awareness/the body)- will be the only thing I'll ever do as a meditation I think, the most effective, easiest, and effortless technique.

Either they don't have a master as a teacher, or they just don't want negative ego's to keep seeking attention or they don't want them to be distracting themselves by continuing to play out their social games. But there should be some space to ask questions I think.

Whose there to say there's no free will. Sure, if there's no separate person with free will.. because there's no separate person. But you always experience making choices through intelligence/creativity, sure it's spontaneous but.. that makes it even more free.. .. Ah, free 'will', now that I think of it, all this discussion around it probably arises because of a lot of different definitioning on the 'will' part. If you see it as: 'there is a separate will of your own', then you are wrong. But I think, if you say, there's a free choice, every moment, that's certainly true, because God has infinite choice and because that's our experience.

Yeah Rupert is pretty nice I think. Many of the teachers on the satsang site are good, you can see interviews with them if you click on their names. http://www.satsang.nl/agenda-sep17.html Specifically I like Ad Oostendorp and Naropa a lot, both old timers with a proven long dedicated path and nice personalities (imo), Nicky Verbeek is also really unique and nice, but there are so many good ones and just like with picking friends, some resonate and some do not. I'm also still exploring by the way, I'm visiting Max Rettu, Philip Renard and JanKees Vergrouw and maybe some more new names next month (I'd like to get a taste of most of them before sticking to a few teachers also being in the presence of masters is always uplifting and reassuring). I personally would not recommend Randolph or Hans Laurentius, albeit they are probably awake (on some level), they both seem to have some undealt stuff and seem to carry arrogance. And there are 100's of interviews with primarily Dutch teachers here, or non-duality enthousiast, though many do not qualify as a good teacher, it's interesting and exciting to see it being so alive in our country https://www.youtube.com/user/NonDualiteit/videos Of course, yeah, their presence should is visible on videos too (though 1 to 1 is still deeper to me), en plus they are on your side, you have nothing to fear.

Super human effort, or not, to just surrender.

Transmission/human contact with a master is probably the easiest, fastest and safest way to enlightenment, maybe next to psychedelics, but that's just so different/optional and much more tricky (esp. without a teacher), and teachers are too good to miss out on anyways. It's like meeting a future self in a sense. Not surprising all the traditions mention it. It's also different than youtube, because they are easier to attune to IRL and they can attune to you as well and help you accordingly. - I'd like to share my experience so far: living in Holland, they are really quite a big good amount of good teachers, and also a good amount of mediocre teachers, which you want to avoid. So if you live in a somewhat evolved/populated area, imo, it shouldn't be so hard to find a really good teacher, simply by going around, and looking at the different teachers. In my view things to look out for to spot a good one (it gets easier as you progress too): Presence, the love/openness/directness you sense in eye contact, uniqueness, fearlessness (but not faked), their experience/life story, the desire you sense in them to help you awaken and that they talk about the end of suffering/absolute joy that's possible with confidence. To avoid; Arrogance, lack of empathy, being needy for students approval, not being happy about life and social fears. By the way, sometimes good open teachers can take over some bodily fear twitches related to other people's twitches (just like animals), simply due to them being open/focused on you, related to evolution/survival. Yet the biggest things to be aware of is the pessimistic cynical of the scarred ego, projecting it's fears on the teachers/this process, sabotaging you.

Of course, that's your intelligence working. And spirituality won't make you distant from others in the long run, different yeah, but not incompatible with others. Your teacher referred you to a motherf*cking priest? Get another teacher

Most definitely, just observe little children and how they put such faith and attention on their parents, copying a great amount of not only mental ideas but through the empathic connection as well.

Some of these things might be good to get beginners into it I think, given they can see instant results. But still not that useful I think, the deeper state itself should be enough of a signal

Hard to find a master who doesn't have a great sense of humor isn't it

Or some grace, spontaneous awakening, usually related to a crisis in one's life seems to be somewhat common, maybe half of the time compared to consistent spiritual practice. Speculation: maybe even this is so, aside from compassion, because the ego can't make a trophy out of it.

Staring at the inner sun is probably a quicker way to attain all those benefits and more ^^

Who says they aren't. Just through habit and fear we go away from it, it's not inherently hard however.