lmfao

@Anna What are the panic attacks like in intensity and duration? I've had panic attacks in conjunction with suicidal ideation in the past. Whenever I have had a panic attack I just keep hyperventilating non-stop for 20-30 mins. What you should do about it really depends on where you intuitively feel the panic attacks to be coming from. My advice to you is to just examine where/why the panic attacks are arising and then decide from there. My panic attacks were coming from a deep pit of neurosis which almost made me dead serious about committing suicide. Obviously that doesn't sound like the case for you but just check that you are really convinced that your panic attacks are coming from a place of purification rather than a place of deep despair. Because people can experience deep shit when their neurosis resurfaces and is being cleared up from mindfulness. Just make sure you've investigated your psychiatric health. For your panic attacks, are there any triggers? Any particular topics or ideas which send your mind into a crazy spiral? Are there any triggers for the uncontrollable surge of emotions you feel? Do the panic attacks arise completely randomly? In reference to my first paragraph the duration, intensity and causes of your panic attacks completely define the context and significance of your panic attacks and hence they completely define what you should do about them.

Depends on how you define enlightenment. There are different degrees to such a thing. Most people when they meditate should be experiencing enlightenment to a very small degree I think. I think that raising your consciousness will invariably eliminate suffering. The main key is to let your deep meditative states and enlightenment experiences permeate your 24/7 experience. It's what I'm trying to do. Addressing any addictions you have is key to emotional mastery and its where I need to do a shit ton of work because addiction is the number 1 obstacle to emotional mastery and mindfullness. All of reality is just raw experience/consciousness. The entirety of reality in the present moment has no cause. Now is forever, and you are always in the present moment. At any point during your existence as a conscious being, you exist in a situation which has no cause. The existence of a cause requires a past but the past doesn't exist in your present moment existence. There are all these thoughts, sounds, sights, bodily pressures in your consciousness which are in this uncaused, completely spontaneous present moment. Reality is in a situation which you literally did nothing to achieve. This is true for all waking moments of your life, and the higher the degree to which your awareness "can see this truth" the higher the degree to which life feels effortless. I believe that this truth I am pointing is formulated within the concept of "Wu Wei", as I understand that particular concept.

@Leo Gura What are the usual circumstances under which paranormal powers are unlocked? Do they unlock for people who are enlightened? Is that it?

@Wisebaxter Bear in mind that the contents of your consciousness right now have more than enough ground in them for you to reach infintiely high levels of consciousness and so if it is the case that if you're looking for a mystical experience just bear in mind that it is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Once you have a mystical experience you'll think "How did I never notice this earlier?".

Just typing up this post as a brief "trip report" on armodafinil because its worked well for me. Today's my first time trying armodafinil (I've never done modafinil) and I took a 150mg tablet about 8 hours ago. I took roughly 45-60 mins to kick in. The drug really does change your mental state. I felt a massive boost in concentration and also a subtle boost in motivation. It seems to have an effect on speed of cognition as well it seems. On a whim, I decided to clean my bathroom, bedroom and do my laundry. My bathroom and room were hella dirty and messy but it only took me 2 hours to clean it because I was focused and efficient. It would have normally taken me 3-4 hours to do what I did. Armodafinil is extremely potent and hence quite drastically changed my state of consciousness, so I find it hard to articulate how it has felt so far. One thing that I have found interesting is that I was experiencing a paradox between concentration/focus and monkey mind. Monkey mind in regards to negative feelings and thoughts were actually reduced, but monkey mind in regards to random shit was increased . Like I have this one song playing over and over again in my mind slightly louder than usual. Despite this monkey mind there is still intense focus. And wow, meditation was interesting for me. I meditated for 80 mins instead of 45 mins because it felt like time just zoomed by really quickly when meditating. Anyone who's established a routine of meditation, self inquiry, yoga and etc will have a common set of feelings/energies they notice in their body coming up in their practice over and over again. When I started meditation today, I noticed the "energy" (emotions and feelings) in the different parts of my body to be very different. There wasn't much pain and negativity in the start of my session (compared to normal). It felt like my body was overflowing with this cool, refreshing, neutral energy. Its like there's this subtle, cool refreshing energy which is constantly present in my experience from the drug. Meditation felt harder in some ways because my feelings, sensations and emotions were so unfamiliar to me that I didn't know what to do. I was getting lost in monkey mind for a decent chunk of time. It got to a point where when I detected a familiar flavour of pain that I've encountered many times in previous sessions, I felt relieved because the flavour was familiar and it gave me the sense that I was in more familiar territory. The drug had already partially accomplished some of what I normally get after meditating. But since the essence of meditation never changes no matter what state of consciousness you're in, I was able to go as deep as I normally do and perhaps possibly deeper. 2 hours after taking the drug I was starting to feel overwhelmed for 10-15 minutes. It was like I was overloaded with "restless" energy. I simultaneously had racing thoughts and good concentration, it felt very paradoxical. However, I quickly overcame the negative feelings I had and it feels great. Meditation has muted the monkey mind to a degree. There was an acute sense of single mindedness in any task I was doing and I entered flow in cleaning my room and washing dishes. I've never even touched psychedelics, so I'm curious about how they compare in intensity to armodafinil.

Pretty much man. I have found that if I'm trying to reach a high consciousness state, I must initially put in mental energy and be proactively surrendering. What is happening here is that I am trying to to stop trying. Once I am in a meditative state I can then stop trying to stop trying. That's because trying to to stop trying is a paradox. The cessation of trying requires that you do not try to achieve this cessation. Whatever you do, do it mindfully. If you stick to that commitment you may find that in some situations you will naturally be inclined towards the "higher consciousness" choice. I'm talking from personal experience here. Listen to the video I linked my nigga.

If anybody is interested in hearing an extremely profound talk on the whole idea of Enlightenment and improving yourself, here's one: In a different video Alan Watts phrases the issue of waking up by saying that to ask how to become enlightened is the same as asking "How do I get to here?". Getting to here is very tricky, hence people meditate and do conciosuness work. It's perfectly fine to chase Enlightenment, so long as you realise that Enlightenment is about accepting and being at one with the present moment and Enlightenment isn't about the acquisition of some golden material or golden spiritual goody.

@Leo Gura Sound epic

@kieranperez that's some deep stuff my brother, I feel you. I don't know your life situation and I myself barely have a life purpose so I don't really have anything to tell you. On the surface it seems simple, and should be simple. You just do what you find interesting. All I can really do is just try to relate to your experience from my own. Right now I'm in university studying physics. I really like maths and physics but despite this I have huge motivational issues. Hardships in life launch me into a spiral of suffering and I lack the motivation to look to "meaningful" sources of joy and instead turn to low consciousness sources of joy (e.g. Video games).

@Leo Gura @Leo Gura I remember you put this video on your blog: The student responded to his koan by yelling "Mu" yet master told him his answer came not from emptiness. When you say "Mu" is the answer to all koans, are you perhaps saying that it isn't the phrase "mu" which is the answer but the answer is anything which exhibits that you've been in contact with emptiness? So does solving a koan depend on your ability to convince a master that you're coming from emptiness? Like if I had to present an answer to what sound one hand clapping makes I'll just shout "Pop" or something to show that the sound happens and comes out of nowhere despite no cause. Idk what I'm talking about at this point lol. Edit: or better yet, if I was a smart ass I might just answer the riddle by clapping both my hands to show that what is two is one and what is one is two or some shit.

@Leo Gura do you know what the sound of one hand clapping is?

@MM1988 There's a correlation between those two things and there's also a link that is partially causal between those two things. The way I see it, only a subset of people with low consciousness end up depressed. But if you're depressed, high consciousness will inhibit depression.

EUGENICS HERE WE COME BABY. Imagine if in 300 years time or something every person born has an IQ of 200 and is ultra non-neurotic

@Hellspeed Are you referring to the charity workers becoming addicts to money? Or are you saying that the recepeients of charity become addicts? If its the latter case, I don't think funding humanitarian aid for starving African children is gonna create addicts. Neither is helping the disabled, disease stricken or extremely poor gonna create addicts.

I dont know how accurate/true the video is, it's just a perspective im linking to you

@Rilles the idea that charity CEO's get paid too much is an ignorant claim, according to this video Very good talk I watched a while back.

@Leo Gura what kind of abilities are we talking? Sounds fun

I'm looking forward to the day my entire existence is made obsolete by AI *sigh*

@kieranperez Sounds like you already might be in an existential crises

The keyboard jihad will never end. Now if you'll excuse, me and my keyboard are about to go destroy some egos and open some third eyes. I'll become the zen version of Ben Shapiro.

Take this free bump

Disclaimer: I am no way shape or form advocating physical suicide. I know this might sound like a silly question and I feel as though the answer won't be known till I do work, but I'm asking it anyway. I feel like it's starting to hit me that this whole Enlightenment stuff is serious shit. Whenever I talk about Enlightenment there's a tendency for me to compartmentalise stuff and forget I'm talking about the nature of all existence and reality itself. I remember I was meditating yesterday and had just a few moments of clear perception. It freaks me the hell out because it was like I was never there. I'm just feeling scared now after that experience. It felt extremely beautiful to me yesterday but right now I'm just freaking out for some reason. My mind is just racing with the thought "I don't want to die" and I'm just having a existential crisis. I'm wishing I never did any of this meditation or consciousness work in the first place, because it's making me think that I can delude myself into thinking I'm alive but I've always been dead and have just been an empty void. I feel like I'm going insane. I'm just feeling a wave of negativity. I know that the way I'm phrasing it is silly and unuanced but I'm just curious about people who are completely enlightened (if such a thing is 100% possible). Are these people like talking corpses? All these words can come out their mouth and it looks like they're alive, but they're really dead?

@Butters Populism is a hard term to define. Imma just refer to far-right, very heavily anti-immigration conservatives as populist. Bear in mind that in order for us to say whether a point of view has merit or does not have merit, we are invetibaly bringing in our egoic standards to the conversation. That's perfectly okay, I just feel the need to preface it around these conversations because there exist people who will never see beyond the illusion of ego because of their absolutist beliefs about reality (and topics within reality like morality for example). A couple of years ago I watched quite a few videos by the Anti-SJW community so I feel as though I understand populists. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Anti-SJW ideologues acted as a bridge to far-right ideologies. It was from this I grew an interest in the alt-right and why it is they had such irrational beliefs. I'm ethnically Pakistani and I live in England. There are a sizeable chunk of populists from lower class families around in the fringe political parties. The thing is, populism just seems deeply rooted in ignorance and tribalism. What happens is that you very heavily "otherise" another group of people and fail to recognize that the people in that other group are humans just like you. If you're someone who has strong ideological values about religion and culture, seeing another race which has a different culture and religion will very heavily trigger you. Also, populism a lot of the time is just a fear of the unknown. And also there's just resentment which a populist has due to their egoic filter interpreting inequality and unfairness in situations where there is none. Imagine you have your narrow minded view of the world of how things work and how they ought to be. Coming along are these groups of people with different values to you. But you're an ideologue who cannot see relativism. You're stuck in black and white thinking when it comes to morality and culture. Hence you just are hostile to these other groups of people. In order to protect itself, the ego will form ideological groups in order to meet their needs and also in order to try and change the world in the way they see fit. This change might involve gassing Jews at the extreme end of the spectrum. I don't think there's much merit in populism, at least when we compare it to other common world views.