Emerald

Out of the three, I resonate more with Eckhart Tolle. I could probably chalk this up to him being a Westerner. But I've watched Sadhguru, and read a book by Osho about creativity. I enjoy Sadhguru from time to time, but I don't resonate with him a whole bunch. The Osho book, I really disliked because of his broad strokes about the art world, but not having the requisite knowledge to speak of it. So, his perspective on his perception of the art world from a lay-person's point of view could have some validity. But I have two degrees and a minor relating to fine art, so I thought it was a bit ignorant seeming to cast the judgements that he was casting, without knowing much about art history or the artists that he was talking about. However, this was six years ago, so I may resonate with him more now. Maybe I would be able to read more between the lines now. But they all are probably "equally enlightened," it just may be that you resonate more with the perspective of Osho.

I doubt it. Most enlightened teachers that I've seen seem to be really regular people. But they are generally pretty cheerful and free from affectation.

It's interesting how many blindspots there are in the average mode of consciousness. One of the main insights that I had when I had my experiences was that I was constantly deceiving myself to protect my ego from uncomfortable truths. Even knowing this now in an abstract way and having a clear memory of this insight, I still make the same mistake on an almost hourly basis. The only difference is that I'm a bit more aware of it. I consider it progress, but a very modest amount of progress. I still continue to struggle against my reality even though I realize that it is an illusion. My ego just won't let things go and tries to control the situation to amplify its own existence. So, in this scenario, I am both the person running away from the alien and the person telling myself that it isn't real. When I was a child, I remember having a dream once that me and all my family members were taking a fitness test. My mom woke me up for school and I told her that I could get up yet because 'Dad hadn't taken his P.E. test.' The mind is such a tricky thing.

Sounds like an amazing experience. Mine were like a deep, familiar feeling of finally 'being home.'

I think that the main issue with the experience is that you experienced depersonalization, but it wasn't accompanied by feelings of connection and oneness that accompany enlightenment experiences. You were still attached to the "me" but you glimpsed the emptiness in it. The problem is that you attached a negative meaning to it, sort of like nihilism. You may want to look into the topic of depersonalization/derealization disorder which can come up from trauma, psychedelics, and occasionally even meditation (though this is rare). Take heart in knowing that the reason for the negative, nihilistic feelings that you experienced on the mushrooms aren't indicative of truth. When you truly experience the truth of no self, it is optimum happiness and a feeling of significance beyond what you know of yourself.

The difficult thing is to hear about this truth abstractly without an actual enlightenment experience. I have had two, where I was truly living the truth of no self and it was the most amazing feeling. I had complete peace of mind and all of my insecurities and fears completely left me, including what was before a crippling fear of death. I could have been told that I was going to die in an hour and I would have been fine with it... even though I preferred to live and would have chosen life had I had the luxury to chose it. So, experiencing the truth of no self, is the optimum happiness level that you can experience as a human being. But this goes against everything that you've ever known. We are taught that in order to be happy, we have to work hard to create the best ego that we can. Individuality is highly prized and we are constantly in a struggle with the ego between self-congratulatory thoughts and self-deprecating thoughts. The problem is that you have come to know happiness only through your actions and your sense of individuality. These are all masking effects to an ever-present and deep suffering that you are likely acclimatized to, to the point that you don't know how much you suffer psychologically on a minute to minute basis. If you experienced true selflessness even for a minute, you'd never want to go back to identifying with your egoic sense of self. The ego knows nothing but constant struggle and fear is a constant backdrop. Without ego, nothing can harm you because there is no you to harm. You realize your infinite nature and connection to all that is and realize that you can never die. Trading the ego for enlightenment is equivalent to trading a penny for a million dollars... but you even get to keep the penny. You just realize that the penny is only a small part of all that is. But a major caveat that I offer is DO NOT try to repress your ego or sense of self just because you understand logically that it is illusory. It will only cause a repression of ego, and not ego-transcendence. The only way to move toward understanding this truth is through mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, and self-inquiry. Forcing the ego away will only cause more issues.

This is a trap that I see most people fall into because they don't understand the idea of paradoxes. They think that there is one perspective that is most true and that they have it because they've probably worked hard to learn the things that they have learned. But what they don't realize is that all perspectives are valid and that beliefs by their very nature, hold no empirical truth to them (even if they allude to truth). So, there is no need to argue or stand firm on conjectures and beliefs. I find in most instances that is most valuable just to explore a variety of perspectives. But from their standpoint, they have to defend their beliefs because on a deep unconscious level they know that they are only imaginary.

My recommendation is to push through it. Even if you have ADHD, this is something that everyone goes through in one degree or another. I have the same urges. So, think of your ADHD as just a slightly more cranked up version of what the average person has. It isn't like there's something 100% different about your psychology because of it. This is a very limiting belief to bust through. Just notice the thoughts and urges as they come up, and maintain your focus on the breath. If your mind is running 200 miles an hour, just notice it mindfully and bring the attention back to the breath. The great thing about meditation is that it actually has neurological effects on the ability to concentrate, so if practiced over time, it will likely alleviate the attention issues quite a bit. In fact, I've read articles about scientific studies that suggest that the long term effects of meditation are conferable to the effects of using pharmaceuticals to treat certain psychological problems.

I'm currently reading "The Book of Not Knowing" by Peter Ralston. I'm a little over half way through and it's really great so far.

I get a bit annoyed too, but I understand because I've been one of these people and I'm still working through my blockages in this way. But this comes mostly from people being indoctrinated into the notion that it is good to always "know" and be "rational" and to avoid seeming gullable/crazy at all costs. These are the same people who are quick to whip out the word "crazy" and stand proudly and self-righteously on the ground of science, rationality, pragmatism, and sanity. What many of them don't realize is that their reasons for clinging dogmatically to rational/scientific beliefs aren't rational at all but are extremely emotionally motivated. They are worried that they will be judged as crazy if they begin thinking outside of the rational paradigm. They fear losing credibility, so they shut their eyes to systems of thought that SEEM antithetical to science. They paint themselves into a corner in their own mind because they are afraid that they will be judged in the same manner that they judge others.

Thank you. I've experienced void states during sleep paralysis, where it feels like I'm just floating consciousness in blackness. It's happened a few times. But I've never had it in waking life or as a result of meditation.

I thought about that before I posted, but I've gotten tons of helpful responses. Plus an enlightenment experience doesn't always entail full-blown, permanent enlightenment.

When I had my first experience, I realized foremost that I was experiencing the phenomena referred to as God. I realized it wasn't a deity up in the clouds but a unifying force that I was inextricable from, as was the rest of existence. Heaven was on Earth for people who have the eyes to see it. Prior to that experience, I was Agnostic with strong leaning toward Atheism. But I realized that I was hung up on a 'god-image' and not the reality of the force which is incomprehensible from the average level of consciousness, as it can't be understood logically. Also, I have had a lot of sleep paralysis experiences. I made a video about sleep paralysis recently. Would you be interested in watching it? If so, I can direct message it to you.

I live close to Jacksonville, FL.

What has been most difficult for me is that I wasn't raised in a way that values traditional feminine gender roles and was conditioned to see them as weak and inferior to traditional masculine values. But I happen to resonate with some of the traditional female roles and some I have fallen into only by happenstance. So, I have a lot of neuroticism between social expectations and my own expectations, plus a habit of ignoring my intuitions. I spent the first 20 years of my life developing myself with un-remitting focus on personal development and career goals. Deep down there is a part of me that resents being a woman. This came out in my teen years as a strong identification with masculinity. I was a very strong teenager with ironclad willpower and a defined sense of self. I got into a good college and paid for it with scholarships alone without emotional or financial support from anyone but myself. Then, when I was 20, I had some transcendental experiences, following traumas I incurred from a terrible end to a four-year-long emotionally abusive relationship. I realized all of my goals toward self-actualization were the result of trying to outrun the reaper and to feel significant. So, I made a choice to resist the personal development that had been so normal to me for a more Yin approach to life after I broke off my bad relationship. I decided to let life happen to me instead. Shortly after, I met my husband on the street by chance when I was working as a street musician. I got pregnant seven months later by accident. I graduated college shortly after that. I decided to pare down my personality to be only a mother. I was too wild. I needed to vanillify myself. So, I stripped my persona of all the interesting qualities (many of them masculine) that I had built in during my teen years. Because of this I began to see my looks as my primary value instead of my worldly contributions and began to play second-fiddle to my husband; whom I developed a deep loathing for (I wonder why :))This lasted for 6 months and I got really depressed. We were living under the poverty line, so I had to go to work. This was never what I thought would happen when I had a child. I had wanted to stay home. I wasn't able to find a job as an art teacher right away so I worked as a substitute teacher for a year. I eventually got a job and got pregnant again (this time on purpose) my second year as a teacher. I'm quite young compared to most teachers so my superiors let me go at the end of last year with no reason given, as a teacher in their first three years can be let go for "any reason and no reason" in the state of Florida. I suspect pregnancy discrimination, but there's no way for me to know for sure. Now, I have started a Youtube channel as a means to share my insights, which I hope to eventually monetize to support my family off of. I am trying to expand my consciousness to figure out which direction to go in. Insight seeking has always come naturally to me, ever since childhood. It's the only thing I truly feel passion for. I know that it teaching, helping, and insight seeking have been important to me for as long as I can remember; so I hope that I'm on the right track. My life has been full of turmoil, a series of steps forward and steps backward. I feel some of this relates directly to being a woman coming from a lower socio-economic-status. But sometimes I wonder if all the turmoil comes as a way to get me to surrender my willpower, stop fighting, and to flow downstream toward my life's purpose. Life has lead me in some unexpected directions for sure. But I'm getting along with my husband again and trying to be the best mom I can be to my son and daughter. After 10 years of working actively toward a career as an art teacher, and losing that job to the whims of the administrators of the school, I realize that job truly isn't for me. It would never have fulfilled me. So, it opens up new possibilities for me. It is scary but exciting. Like all the plans I've ever made got destroyed and now I'm at square one.... only now I have two small children and an immigrant husband who hates his job as a waiter counting on me to do something to make life better.

"Ask youself, if wading through delusion requires such force, what is it that's pushing back? How about we investigate a little more deeply into it, and see if we can't address that force directly, instead of blindly knocking our heads against the wall. What we're up against is our own inauthenticity, and you can't break that with more inauthenticity. Just not gonna happen." This is great advice.

I understand your perspective, but I want to mention a few caveats. It seems to me that your perspective is that of 'don't resist what feels right to you.' This is a very important practice on one hand. However, paradoxically, it can also lend itself to a person's many self-deceptive tendencies and derail progress. For example, because realizing the illusory nature of the ego is emotionally uncomfortable, the mind can come up with lots of ways to justify not doing it. It will manufacture all sorts of thoughts and justifications. So, be mindful of what makes you want to stop meditating. If it's coming from urges during the practice to get up, be sure to stick it out. However, if it comes from a genuine desire toward something else, do that something else.

I think that true inspirations probably come from a place deeper than the ego but the ego is the reason for most of our desires. So, when you get those urges telling you to get up and do something else or to stop meditating, you can be sure that they come straight from the ego. The ego doesn't like to be unraveled and it will manufacture thoughts which trigger emotions to derail your progress.

I still have some judgments about my thoughts from time to time because I forget not to associate them with my self-concept. But detachment from thought has probably been one of my biggest leaps and bounds forward while exploring this path.

That makes sense. So, the experiences are things that are happening at a given time. So, Kundalini Awakening is something that happens to a person. Where enlightenment is realizing and becoming present to what already is .

I didn't know about enlightenment when I had my experiences either. I wish I had... I would have Googled it and saved myself a lot of guesswork. I spent a long time afterward using really abstract ways to attempt replicating the experiences and feel that deep connection to no avail. Only when I found Leo's videos about enlightenment did I realize that what I had experienced had been an enlightenment experience. So, since then, I think I've made a lot of progress toward this state of being.

Wow. I can really relate to the violence as beautiful phenomena experience. Now, as it stands (as I'm not living in an enlightened state), I have an extreme aversion to violence and I feel like it's terrible. And certainly suffering is objectively pointless. But when I had my second transcendent experience I was able to observe in myself that I had a creative impulse and a destructive impulse that were clashing with one another constantly. I honed in on the thoughts created by the destructive nature and visual images of me pushing my thumbs into a friend of mine's eye sockets came into my mind accompanied by deep feelings of rage. If this thought would occur to me now, I'd be repulsed by it and reject it. But I just watched the experience of the thoughts and emotions and saw the beauty in the chaotic nature of my mind. Watching this clash of opposites within me was like watching a natural wonder unfold. Also, there was this deep sense that no matter how violent or bad the state of the world was in, that it was still 100% perfect the way that it is and that everything is always in divine order. Best of luck with integrating this experience.

What I mean by real 'being' is the truth of what's really going on in subjective experience beyond our concepts of it. I don't mean that something fantastical or other-worldly would be going on in the experiences of an enlightened person, but rather that an enlightened person sees everything as it is. But my question was more about differentiating spiritual experiences as experiences (oneness, Kundalini, etc.) from the state of being referred to as enlightenment. What I had were two experiences, that gave me a taste of ego-transcendence. But I'm curious if enlightenment is very different than those experiences.

I think these may be akin to the feeling of dis-identification with the self. Sometimes I have felt like the observer, at times when I look in the mirror and it occurs to me "Is that really MY face?" or if I think about my name and I think "Wow. My name is Emerald. That's very strange." It's always been a fleeting feeling of depersonalization. But when I had my experiences, it was a deep acceptance of and connection to everything that was.

I enjoy Marina Abramovic too. She's done some pretty extreme work, like the one where she allowed bypassers to do whatever they wanted to her for an entire day. I remember that one person cut her hair, other people cut her clothes off, and another person bit her nipple. But if I had to pick a favorite, I like Wangechi Mutu. Her work makes me think of the subconscious projecting itself onto the outside world