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nikto ne dobilsa prosvetleniya ))

How can I do it? With self-observation? Then why does dark night happen? If somebody is not yet enlightened, how can he get liberated and feel better in the journey? Until enlightenment life is a misery, is not it? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill There are far more such reports on internet. I am in depression for 3 weeks now. I suspect my self-image is a lie. I cant connect to my true-self. Ok. I feel incomplete because I have not got enlightened yet. But I dont want to feel like that. What if I never get enlightened, like millions of people in this journey. My life then will be a misery. But I want to enjoy the life. To marry. To have kids. The problem is the idea enlightenment became an obsession. I think about every second. This is not healthy.

What if somebody gets stuck in the procedure, in negative feelings? What if somebody kills his ego, but cannot connect to the source.? I am in a huge emptiness, meaninglessness, pain, horror. Is enlightenment the only cure for this? Do you feel happy in this journey? I have read of reports of long term meditators whose psychology deteriorated because of meditation and psychiatrists started to cure them.

What does decomposing the shadow mean? Thank you. I want to love everything but I cant. I cant force myself. What can I do? I meditated for several months and got depersonalization/derealization. I was seeing around through a tunnel. As If I was two - one who talks, walks and one who observes. I did not like this. Has it ever happened to you? Do enlightened people see around like this?

Thank you, friends. To be honest I dont want to try to get enlightened. I am surprised that there is such a "should" exists. Millions of people devote themselves into this path and only some dozens get enlightened. And what happens to those who never get enlightened no matter how hard they practice. I even saw a guy who was a monk for 30 years and had not get enlightened. I dont want to take such a risk. Is happy life impossible with ego? The idea "enlightenment" is like an obsessive mission for me, as I have OCD. I know that if I start this journey I will desperately stuck to this procedure and miss the life. The idea "enlightenment" does not let me live in the now. Really, what happens to those who never get enlightened despite the hard work they did? Are they happy or devastated? People say, do self-inquiry. I have done them a lot years ago, when I was unaware of enlightenment and that just made me depressed. So do you guys advise me to live my life and not pay attention on the dark night of the soul, as it will go away naturally? Or is enlightenment the only way to escape this terrible state?

Do enlightened people see the world through a tunnel? Like depersonalization. Many people who have done a lot of meditation report that they see through a tunnel.

I have done many self-inquiries before and never got any certain answer, conclusion. The certain answer would be “I dont know”. The rest (like life is an illusion) is just a theory. Doctors say I am depressed, dont follow existential thoughts. While spiritual seekers say it is a dark night of the soul. I see many people get stuck in this stage for years and most of them forever. I dont kill my ego anymore. I dont want to take such a risk, to be stuck in dark night of the soul. Can I escape this and go to my default mode.

In Obsessive Compulsive Disorder there is a branch called "existential thoughts" and also "existential anxiety". But some people assume you should think deep and find an answer. I have existential thoughts since I am 13. They all without an exclusion give me fear, discomfort, depression, demotivation and etc. I have been meditating since June. My state deteriorates day by day, I feel like being on the edge or close to it. Want to cry. Because am so fed up of it. It has been 17 years pain. Do you think I should involve in them and seek an answer or stop thinking (at least trying)? I doubt I will ever find an answer by thinking, I even doubt there is an answer. I watched Leo's video about unconditional happiness. I would say I have unconditional unhappiness and my successes and gains dont give me happiness. I feel trapped. But I also dont want to commit suicide. (That is the reason I have endured it for 17 years). But I am afraid I have limits and beyond that limit I will commit suicide if I dont get relief. I have endless questions in my mind. Should I stop seeking answers and just live and observe the life? What can I do besides meditation for raising awareness?

I have done very small self-inquiry and meditated for several months. 20 minutes every day. I suspect now I have what is called “dark night of the soul”. Will it pass by itself or should I do something? By the way I dont want to chase enlightenment, because when I get depressed I cant go to work, but I have to work. Furthermore I got depersonalization/derealization, which was scary and discomfort for me. That is why I dont meditate anymore. I will live my average life. Am I coward? Yes. But I dont think I can handle all of this.

How are you sure there is no self and everything is an illusion? Then why not to have a reckless life and commit suicide?

Like Eckhart Tolle?

Guys, I read from different sources that, you can recover from suffering only after enlightenment. So in this suffering I surrendered myself to pain, fear and was in the now. The fear, anxiety took my body and I was shaking. I stayed like that for hours, but did not get enlightened. I was checking constantly "is it enlightenment?". I thought if I never get enlightened I will be trapped in this torture. The fear increased. I waited may be increased suffering would make me stop identifying with mind. But nothing happened. And the next days I found out that I have new obsessive mission. ENLIGHTENMENT. I read for hours about enlightenment on internet. All I had in my mind was enlightenment. "I should achieve it, otherwise I will be incomplete forever. This is my only salvation." I wanted to stay in now and I was able to do that for several seconds and when my mind wandered I would bring it to the now. Although the now was horrible, boring, empty and frightening. I was trying to stay in the now with hope that I will train my mind not to feel emptiness in the now by practice. But the idea "enlightenment" does not let me do it anymore. It says "why are you in the now, move your ass and get enlightened as soon as possible. You are either in or out. It is binary. Devote yourself to enlightenment completely and after achieving it, you will live your life. Enjoy your tea, hang out with your friends and etc." I have had a lot of obsessive missions before, and I know how hard to kick them, almost impossible. And if I am able to kick them a huge emptiness replaces them where I have no drive to do anything. Please, tell me what to do? I surrender to pain and fear, but they dont subside. Does surrendering mean that I should live with them forever? But it is impossible. I cant relax, enjoy my life when I have pain and fear. Can an enlightened person enjoy the moment while somebody is cutting his arm off. I bought Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now" last year and started to read it slowly. In the beginning I thought it is a book of a wise man who fought against depression and won. Who will give practical advice how to be happy. But it turned out this book was somehow mystical. Who speaks about existence, god, and claims all people feel incomplete and unhappy because they are detached from god's energy and will always be like that until they rewire to that energy. And his practical advice does not help me as well. He says when you are in the now you will feel energy. But I dont. I feel boredom, fear, anxiety, emptiness, no drive to do anything. My mind says "come to me, think, find an answer and get content". I do, find an answer, get content, but for seconds. And this cycle repeats. I have found answers which seemed to make me feel full forever, but it lasts short. My mind is always hungry. But when I come back to now I dont feel any attachment, love to now. It feels like alien. I had hope that I would rewire my mind to be in now with meditation and forcing myself to be in the now. But now I got a belief that whatever I do, how much I do, does not matter if I dont get enlightened. I want to persuade myself that I am not my mind, but I cant. I had a hope that with practice I can get a happy, content life. But now I dont. Because even if enlightenment exists and I practice hard to get there I probably will fail with such a desire to get enlightened. Psychotherapists say "you have a disorder and we can cure it", I say "no, it is not a disorder, all people including you psychotherapists are in pain, because we have dewired from existence and will suffer until enlightenment." So here I am paralyzed, not knowing what to do. I started antidepressant therapy again and actually it reduced my anxiety and fear a little bit.

But people say, you can feel full only after enlightenment.

Are you enlightened? Or did you recover before enligjtenment? Eckhart Tolle says, only with enlightenment you can recover.

Thank you all. Thank you very much. You spend very valuable thing - your time for me here. I appreciate it. I dont know how somebody without this forum, psychotherapists can recover (or get enlightened). I have millions questions. But I will stop asking them in here. Just last questions and that is all. I will sometimes come to this forum to read, but not to ask question. Yesterday at night in my bed I was existing in pain and fear. But at the same time I was not scared of fear. I thought (or became aware, I dont know the difference) they will not be able to kill me. At most I can die of starvation, because I had a lump in my throat and was non-stop dry-heaving. My brain seemed to explode and I was not sure if I was in my mind or in the now. I personally dont feel that being in the now alleviates my pain. Even in the now I feel on the guard not to go to inside mind again. Yesterday at night I was suffering, but existing in the now. And was expecting enlightenment to happen. I was in the now, but the ego, the pain, the pus was inside me as well. And also coping with state, acting mindfully, I was praising myself and bragging "I am brave", "I am so special", "I found the way" and so on (this was beyond my control). And I was comparing my state to the state of Echart Tolle and questioning if this is enlightenment, transformation or etc. I think I should drop this enlightenment issue, because it seems to become the desire of my ego. (Especially I see enlightenment as revolution, not evolution and starting to make it a new mission.) I will see my psychotherapist on Wednesday. If she wants to prescribe antidepressants, I want to refuse it. Anyways as soon as I come to the end of antidepressant treatment (when the amount has substantially decreased), I start to feel terrible again. What do you advise? Should I drink or not drink anti-depressants? It is weird for me, how can substance make you feel good, if feeling good, happiness is a spiritual thing. Is enlightenment just the big amount of serotonin, dopamine, endorphin and etc? Why do people practice so hard then? Better to research hard to invent medicine, consumption of which will make you enlightened, as what matters is chemical procedures in your brain. Is recovering from this psychological disorder and having a happy life the same with enlightenment? If not, which one should I pursue? I will come and read your answers (of course you are not obliged to answer, you have answered a lot of questions, thanks). But I will not write. Because I write in autopilot and dont want any questions left unwritten, it all takes me to my mind again. Take care.

Sorry I did not understand it. Is ego complete and vulnerable at the same time? English is not my native language, so my English is not perfect. You dont have ego now? Did you get enlightened or enlightenment is not the only way to lose ego? Can we live without beliefs? I myself have not conducted a research to prove myself that cigarette is harmful to health, but I believe it and based on that belief I gave up smoking. How can I find "I"? Without help of mind. Nice article. So control is not a bad thing. She says we should not control our thoughts or emotions, but we should control our behaviour. Does not it mean that we have to be on guard all the time to act mindfully? So even thinking mindfully is ok (for example to do stuff related to job)? How can I differ mindful thinking without non-mindful one? She says "to discover real me", "what really matters", "values". I thought about these things now and came to some answers, like "family" and etc. How can I know that this is not mind made wants but things that really matter to real me? How can I see it? By daily practice? What if after seeing it I will unsee it again.

Even during the time when I was thinking existential thoughts, I got no result. Just the number of questions increased. I got no answer. Sometimes I relax myself and be in emptiness without thinking. I suffer. But I be there. Is not it facing emptiness? The only control right now I try to hold is to stay in present and not dwell in my mind.

So meaninglessness, emptiness demotivates my ego, not me? My real me (I have no idea what it is) is content in emptiness, meaninglessness? Because I (or my ego) see emptiness, meaninglessness as darkness, as tragedy.

The bad thing is that I am lost. I dont know what to do. i dont have directions. Here also I get contradicting responses, some say dont think, some say think. I am lost to the point that I dont know if I should strive to get better or just leave it and not have attachment to life. To the point I say why to run away from pain and death, why not to let have a miserable life or commit suicide. There is no meaning in anything anyway. What is the point to live happy or unhappy if eventually I will die and it will not matter what a life I had. But my instincts say: live, avoid pain, live happy life. Enjoy every moment. Love. Marry. Have kids. Get old. Years ago I found the facebook profile of the 20 years old guy who jumped off a building writing a status that, he cannot bear it anymore. I investigated his profile and I saw that he was once a believer, muslim, who then started to rationalize life and became an atheist (just like me) and questioned the meaning of the life and was debating with his friends about the life, existence, about its meaninglessness. His parents took him to psychotherapists, but his state did not improve and he committed suicide. I was so scared that it would happen to me as well. When I say I should not believe in my mind, who says it? Not my mind? Can anything else in me can understand, speak, decide, contemplate besides mind? I try to quit thinking. But when I give instructions myself how to cope with my current state or figure out something related to my state, dont I use my mind? I read Echart Tolle's story how he got enlightened in midnight. He says: "I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. `Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the `I' and the `self' that `I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real." I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. So did he use his mind to get enlightened or what? Is not no-mind impossible? If I dont believe my thoughts what can I believe? Should I have hope for happiness or be without expectations? I have endless questions. Endless. And I worry if I dont find answers to them I will not have a direction to recover. By the way Mighty Mouse and Natasha recommend think and resolve my questions. I got confused. If I catch myself in flow I will try to sustain it and spoil everything. Sometimes when I meditate I notice that I have not thinking for seconds and meditate very well, instantly I spoil it and start to think. Or for example yesterday suddenly I noticed that I feel ok and there is no fear and tried to sustain it and pain and fear came back.

Do you mean I should keep thinking to wake up? When somebody says this I get defensive of not thinking, because my first problem arose because of long thinking when I was 13 (In 2000). I remember clearly, how I thought about life, existence, Allah (I was muslim), soul and etc several consequent days and jumped to a conlusion that there is no Allah, or any other extraordinary omnipotent power, there is no soul, nothing is sacred, we are just biologic creatures with mind. I was shocked. As if something very valuable disappeared inside me. I fell into emptiness. The fear took the whole me. I tried to kick those thoughts away, but could not. The following days I thought more and I could not understand why we are here, who am I, can I trust myself, what if everything is an illusion. Very freak thoughts came to my mind which I cant articulate well. When there is a period that I am very busy with something (material things), these thoughts dont come or come rarely. But since 2013 I feel terrible and on antidepressants. When I contemplate existential stuff, I get worse. Do you think, I should think no matter how I feel? I have been meditating since June and since December it seems I have decreased the amount of thinking and daydreaming. But have not seen any improvement in my mental state. Horrible. Constant pain. And I desperately want relief. When fear is overwhelming I panic, cry, beg. When fear is not that strong I embrace it. I embrace pain. Especially during meditation. My heart seems it will stop, but I go on. However neither pain nor fear disappear. Today I told myself I would not involve my mind until 1st March. So after that date I may start to think and seek answers. I was somehow successful in it. Although pain went up, I tried to stay in present moment and neglect mind, no matter how insecure I felt. But as soon as fear came, I tumbled down to my mind again in order to find immediate relief with the help of thinking. The worst is when I am outside, because even in such a situation I dont want to show my weakness to strangers (I care other people's opinion so much) and therefore fear doubles outside. I know why I need to answer my questions. I want to find absoluteness. So I wont get lost. I want to see the meaningfulness. I dont see meaning. But I guess I would not see meaning even if there was a God. I would still say why and feel discontent. I remember when I was 13 I imagined eternal life in heaven and got scared. I thought dying and not having a soul is better than eternal life. But actually when I feel terrible everything sounds scary to me. I am on treatment since 2013. I have seen two different psychotherapists. I want to neglect the pain and live my daily life outside of my mind, but it consumes my energy. Can anybody with a strong headache dance? Nor me with strong mental pain. What to do then? Meditation? Can I get better without enlightenment, or will I suffer until I get rid of ego (which I doubt will happen to me) ? Is it better to neglect mind completely until I am doing something related to my job? The more I neglect the mind, the worse I feel, sometimes a huge pain, which I think I wont handle. But it seems the only way to recover. Should I decrease mind day by day or stop it abruptly? I have quitted cigarette, cannabis, alcohol. Is quitting mind also like them? I have a huge emptiness inside me, which seems to produce fear. Yes I try to avoid pain and bad feelings. I try to focus on something else, because I am afraid I will not be able to handle those feelings. Are not all thoughts different and independent of each other? Should I believe in fairy tails, happy ends or live without expectations? Do you think existential thoughts are easily defined concepts? Actually sometimes I dont get those thoughts, but get those feelings that everything is alien, stranger. Everything is dark. I want to live so much. I think this is also a problem. I should face the possibility that I may suffer forever or may commit suicide. Eternal pain is sometimes inevitable.

Is enlightenment a one second process (revolution) or the result of slow daily improvement (evolution)? Is it a point where you change permanently or can you deteriorate again and drown in your mind days or years after enlightenment?

I made a resolution for 2018, not to smoke, drink no alcohol, no daydream. Also to meditate everyday and exercise 3 times a week. Now I get nervous, because I really dont want to deviate from my resolutions. Especially exercising is a huge burden. I know if I dont exercise 3 times a week even once, I will get discomfort and feel empty. Should I keep it like that or deviate from resolutions on purpose at least once or what should I do? Also I should mention that despite of making a resolution I daydream everyday, I would say, every second. But I still feel nervous and being forced to obey other resolutions.

I think I could not explain my situation very well. Actually exercising itself is not a problem, but attachment to it is. If I have attachment to even easy things, they become a burden for me. I feel stressed. When I wake up in the morning, I say "Today is an exercise day, I should do it. I wish evening came soon and I exercised and got rid of today's burden and felt relief. Same applies to me. When I make an obligation, something I enjoy becomes an annoying thing. When I make resolution I make it for my health and happiness, but afterwards I get attachments to them and they become ego-feeding things. If I dont do them I feel miserable, even anxious, if I do them I feel fulfilled, does not matter if they contribute to my health and overall happiness, I dont care, I just get short joys from accomplishments. If I set a goal to do 20 push ups, but did 19, I would feel sense of lack, like something is wrong in my life. The most important thing in my life are numbers, they direct me, they tell me if I am good or bad, if I am on the right track or not.

She says daydreaming is egoless mind. But my daydreamings are all narcissistic. She says go to your childhood and find your true identity. But do we have a real identity which is not imposed by our mind? Are we born with a real identity?

Many people visit psychotherapist complaining about emptiness, nothingness and etc. Is it the same? Were they facing the Truth but did not know it and were terrified? When I was 14 years old, I got a big emptiness, meaninglessness, nothingness inside. I was terrified. I was a watcher. Years passed like this. Then I made my brain busy with school and etc. Do we understand reality by mind? Do we get enlightened by means of mind? When I meditate how do I decide to focus on breath - by mind? No? Can a schizophrenic person get enlightened? What about dumb people? What about people who were born deaf and blind? What can they focus on to be aware of reality? Sounds frightening.