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i didn't say "horrific", but alaska is quite isolated and cold and people from switzerland have major issues with depression and suicide.

@Durka_Durka Come on! Suicide is not an option! I know,no matter how shitty you feel and think, it doesnt have to end like this. Why end your life cause of those stupid thoughts? Have a little faith.Something to hold on to even if its totally fake,not existing,a bubble . Cause life is a bubble anyway. So why not? "I look out of this window and I think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and birds and everything else and I'm part of it. I didn't ask to be put here, I've been lucky in finding myself here." Morris West

My thinking is just fucked. Every subconscious thought and action I take seems to drag me toward hell, and directly away from where I want to go and live. I self-sabotage is everything, even easy things. And the only way I can think to be free of all this is suicide. I just don't know what to do and my parents (especially my mum) are so fucking unconscious that they don't know that they've fucked me and my sister. But my sister is equally a cu** as well. I just don't kno what to do. Basic self-help stuff is so fucking hard for me, especially because I'm still in my family's house. Basic self-help stuff that everyone seems to be able to do and it helps them, I can't even do. Because my fucking programming won't even allow it to work. I feel so helpless and I can't deal with the world. Suicide seems like the only way to be free

@Revolutionary Think Yes. Accept and love them for who they are. Dismiss their ways of thinking without being obnoxious yourself ( even in your own mind, keep it healthy ) Create more space and time between your interactions. Be the one in control with the power of suggestion Stay true to yourself I wrote a long article but cannot post it, sorry. I wish I could share my life that much, I really do, but in my case I had to be a warrior in a 3rd world post communist country while being a hippy with purposeful implementation. I've been manipulated, experienced betrayal and even had to accept the fact that a family member committed suicide. I wrote that small list because I gradually developed them in order to survive while not severing the love bonds between us. One more thing : "With great power, comes great responsability" [Uncle Owen from "Spiderman"]. Most of the time accepting the limits of others while still loving them, can solve more problems than you can think. Take control of the moment, wisely. Want a job ? https://www.freelancer.com/ http://upwork.com/ https://www.fiverr.com/ // Hope this helps // I am currently working on financial independence and found these platforms very useful for starters, at least for gathering resources ( money ) // I posted these ideas since I saw you said that you do not like complicated math (didn't mean to offensive), so content writing, web development or even programming could be a great start. Peace

@Mikael89 I may have been unclear. I'm not saying consciousness can be annihilated. I'm not even saying phenomena can be annihilated, just that to the enlightened it wouldn't make any difference if it was. If you're so indifferent to the world that you couldn't care less whether all phenomena disappears tomorrow or continues, what difference does it make whether it does or it doesn't? So it is annihilation. Re reincarnation, my mind has long been open to that concept (it makes sense), but I don't believe dogmas without evidence and certainly wouldn't bet the governing strategy of my entire life on it. In any case, it's beside the point, we're not considering actually committing suicide, we're using it as a thought experiment. Think of a time when you didn't know about enlightenment or believe in reincarnation. Someone says 'Life sucks. Why don't you kill yourself? Then you'll know what happens when you die'. Would you have done it? It's the same question. Re 'life is bullshit', perhaps this summarises our differences and reinforces my point about the reasons anyone would want to be enlightened. I don't think life's bullshit. .................................................................................................................................................................................................... I won't have internet access for a few days now so I'm going to wrap up my part in this discussion. I know I've been provocative, and I'm sorry if I've ruffled anyone's feathers, but I stand by my tiny effort to balance a discourse that too easily leads to unrealistic expectations and a careless 'of course enlightenment' perspective. Views some have expressed here such as 'there are no cons to enlightenment' reinforce my theory that many seekers don't know what they're asking for, and are expecting a big pay off that isn't going to happen. 'There are no pros or cons to anything' might make more sense, but could you say it and mean it? I used to think enlightenment was a no-brainer, too, but you know what - there is absolutely no obvious answer to whether it's a worthwhile pursuit. From the perspective of the human being, of course it isn't. From the perspective of God, nothing's worthwhile, who cares? For my part I will be probably be contemplating this for a while before deciding whether I return to seeking or not. Special thanks to @Solace @Emerald @Victor Mgazi for the food-for-thought.

@Stretch I think you missed my point. Awakening is not about ending the dream ,you can't end something that has no beginning. It's simply about being aware of the dream, the same way you would be aware in an actual dream that you are dreaming so even if you get shot(or be held at gun point) in the dream that wouldn't matter to you. Awakening is not suicide or death, it's the realization that there is no one to commit suicide or die. Similar to the way that there's no one to get shot in the dream. Everyone (including you) in that dream are happening in your head and even in this reality. You are simply part of the dream and once you awaken you will still be part of the dream because you only exist in this dream. Even the concept of a truth is part of the dream, everything you know is part of the dream! So yeah you can choose to be conscious of that or not. Maybe you like all the pleasure and pain in this dream so do what you will. It's very simple.

@Outer Once again, this argument took it as a given from the start that believing in a seperate self is a delusion and truth can be found in stillness. Doesn't answer the question. 'No thoughts is the goal' only applies if you're already assuming enlightenment is a desirable thing. Frankly, some of you here sound brainwashed. @Victor Mgazi So we're back to the 'truth for truth's sake' line. All you get from enlightenment is to end the dream of life. So really it doesn't make any sense if you're not sick of living. It's the 'life sucks, just kill yourself' argument. If enlightenment wasn't dressed up with fantastical, misleading appeals to the ego (mystical states you also have to ultimately renounce, the ridiculously nonsensical prospect of being some blissed out 'enlightened being', etc), I wonder if any mentally stable person would give it any more consideration than a suggestion of suicide? Unless, (I'm addressing everyone now), knowing the truth just for the sake of it matters more to you than everything else in the universe combined, and you'll gladly do that trade. Think you fit that category? Ask yourself why you're still doing anything at all.

@Mikael89 Sure, my mind is rebelling totally. That could be said of anyone who ever changed their mind. Only if you already assume that enlightenment is a desirable thing does that become a concern. And lol, yeah if I ask a teacher of enlightenment they're sure to promote enlightenment. If I ask a teacher of terrorist suicide bombing they're sure to promote suicide bombing. Doesn't make it a good idea. @Bobby Go on then, what have I missed? @cirkussmile Yes, enlightenment is the end of suffering, and is natural of course, as it's truth. We're going round in circles here, that was established at the beginning.

I’m having some problems to determine where on the spiral could I be and therefor I don’t know where the hell to begin working on. From one hand I’m still trapped en a very blue sense of guilt because of a lot of thing I’ve done in the past, but in a lot of things I’ve also trascended blues guilt. I think I’m mostly in orange, but in a kind of inward orange or a low stage orange because I’ve being very depressed for around three years ive had an intempted suicide a couple months ago, I am very disinterested in accomplishing anything with small lapses of entrepreneurism. Because I don’t have any money I started to attend to AA meetings (Ive never had problems with any substances or so, but I’ve found a place to empty my self of those thoughts) but even in AA I see a lot of delusion as Leo has explained. There is something inside of me that knows that what Leo is teaching is the way, but at the same time I know I have so many things to work on my self first. It’s strange! It’s like I understand everything that Leo is saying (I know that “believing” doesn’t matter at all) but my reality is so basic, and every time I plan to work on stage Orange to fully embody my stage, Thoughts of “Why even try if it’s delusion?” Comes to my head. You can see in my writing that it’s so confusing, but that’s how I feel right now. I really really hope you can help me and that I’m ready for the help.

@Primentex thoughts of suicide are just a distraction. Suffering comes in many forms, small and large, simple and complicated. But all mental suffering occurs because you want to force 'reality' to your will. And when 'reality' doesn't do what you want it to, you suffer. All distraction is just suffering in disguise; you distract yourself because you do not like reality and you do not like reality because it's not happening the way you want it to. Step away from the suicide. Step away from the distraction. Embrace reality as it is.

I tell myself regularly to not be cheap. 2_ ways to not be cheap Focus on health first Don't stop trying Give value to yourself the way you are. Do not care about societal expectations of yourself. Embrace your uniqueness Express yourself fully and be honest and upfront and not pretentious Be detached and indifferent from the world. Be a goal setter but don't be too ambitious. Give value to your time Stop giving value to objects. Take care of your self Remember that you are better than you what you think you are Remember that you are important Do not spend your time in frivolous stuff Stay away from anything that is even slightly toxic Cut off people who are annoying, painful or harass or difficult. Be very open and assertive Be matured in your choices Develop healthy habits If you constantly feel like you are not good enough or you wish you could have been this or that or you had something you wish, it's natural to feel that way, but remember that you are not the only one and remember that life is not meant to be living with pity and regrets but with hope and faith towards a better future. Be appreciative of whatever you already have and embrace and accept it and nurture it. Make good out of whatever you got instead of feeling sorry for what you don't. Remember that there's just nothing about something that doesn't exist or lost, but salvage that which you can. Regretting your life is like crying over spoiled milk, the milk is not gonna come back, so what's the point of crying and regretting and feeling deprived or unlucky for not having what others got. It has no benefit other than a momentary feeling of upset and disappointment and sadness. It's like adding insult to injury. Find peace. Constantly reminding yourself of what you can't have is a recipe for adding unhappiness to an already frustrated unhappy mind. One thing is - you never know if others have it better. What if they don't. What If they are tired of their shit and want out. ..you might think they have it better but maybe think don't think same. Often times we hear a celeb commiting suicide and we think it's absurd but it's actually not. You never know what they had to deal with. Therefore don't be quick to judge or don't think everyone has it perfect. In fact most don't. It's just that most people don't tell how they suffer cause they are shy or embarrassed to open up about their struggle...... ..... So if you think you aren't good enough, don't beat yourself, you weren't expected to be, you are already good as you are and frankly if you are constantly thinking that then you are obviously taking life too seriously. Fuck that shit. How does it matter if life turned out bad or good. Competition only exists because you create it. Your create your own thoughts of misery and despair. Yes life can be complicated and painful but we can control how we react, we can definitely choose not to react at all. So it doesn't even matter if things didn't work out. If you did your best, you should be at peace. Remember that nothing in this universe is perfect or free from chaos. Even if anything is perfect its mostly rare. And everything that is perfect doesn't stay perfect forever. That's how time causes everything to finally degrade and disappear. So enjoy it in the hear and now. Beauty lies in experiencing beautiful moments every now and then because these moments once gone are not gonna come back ...... .... Appreciate who you are because you are the product of your circumstances and you are not to be blamed and you are not at fault. You can only do as much good as you can and that's the testimony of how much good you are. Your trials are a witness of your strength and your determination to make it good. Don't be let down by them. Life may not be worth living because there's not much to enjoy but it's definitely worth struggling and fighting for. Don't let it slip by just cuz it doesn't get better. Your effort to better your life will bear fruit one day even though now it looks like an unfulfilled dream.

@Primentex The nature of the universe is to evolve. Suicide thwarts that nature.

@Primentex There was a time when I thought the secret to life was suicide. I'm not sure why, but everything around me was pointing to it. I wasn't depressed or anything. It just seemed to come to me like an insight or something. Suicide seemed to make sense on so many levels. At the time I had been really diving into teachings of enlightenment and was expanding my mind at a really fast rate. Back then there was no internet, no forums, no one to discuss my experience with that understood. So it was a very lonely journey. Instead of ending my search for understanding and allowing suicide to be the answer, I kept going deeper. Until I found myself in a place of a gratitude and wonder. Reflecting back on it, I think I was misunderstanding most of what I was reading and experiencing. I was taking everything too literal. I think suicide is a very self centered trap on the road of self development. I think it's healthy to contemplate death and to practice accepting death. Life is a paradox. So considering life to be an illusion or dream, doesn't make it any less real. I don't know if you play video games but you can think of it this way... you know the game isn't real but it's fun to play! If you kill your video game character, he really dies in the game. But the point of the game being created is to play it through until it's end not to just kill your character and stop playing. You're here now in this beautiful/ugly illusion, why not use the opportunity to explore and play!

Spot on. I have too experienced something like that on LSD. I "realized" that I cant escape myself or the world, so if I commit suicide I will be just where I was before and I will live forever in a limbo. So it was nonsense, but it felt very very real. What got me out of it, was to firstly become aware that it is happening, then become present and ask myself: "what is true? what is true beyond my thoughts?". Then I realized my panic was rooted in a thought, and a thought is not the ultimate reality. So the panic stopped right there. Then I laughed. You talk about "meaninglessness sucking you in". One reason for that could be that you resisted your experience with your mind. Your mind is a meaning and connection making machine. When it suddenly can't find any, it panics and clings to what ever it can get a hold of. Sometimes that meaning is pure delusion (say, a psychotic episode) but the mind does not care, it's a survival mechanism for it so it could not care less if the meaning it comes up with is true at all. You started to distract yourself, that was a mistake. You tried to deny it was happening, but that denial was a superficial layer on top of your true experience. It was a attempt to take back control of the situation. But really, you have no control over anything, so you used all your (non-existant) "tools" available. You simply jumped to an experience that you maybe was not ready yet. How to know when you are ready for some psychedelic experience? When you are facing it. How to recover? Ground yourself in what you know is true. Ground yourself in things you enjoy. Not what you believe is maybe true. You don't know anything about death, and thats okay. Take your time to just live your regular life. Right now, the experience is over, but the memory of it still haunts you. Have you read Echard Tolles "Power of now?" If you haven't, read it. If you have, read it again. Happiness and joyful living is available for you right now, every second. Only reason you feel scarred is that you are not in the now, you hold on to a memory. Of course letting go of that memory is not as simple as "dropping it", as it will find it's way to your consciousness. So what you are facing here is a process of becoming present each time you notice you are somehow re-living the experience. Also, don't take drugs for now, that's obvious I think. If you can't get past your trauma say, in a few months, consider therapy and/or a healer. Im clueless about healing myself, but I have read it's very helpful for many. Also one thing what you can try if nothing else works, try taking something around 80mg of MDMA. It is a powerful way to work with trauma, and lots of research is being made on it's effects to cure PTSD. If you decide to go that route, your standard drug safety guides apply. Get a milligram scale. Good luck! Come on...

Just look around you. Is there anything that you see that is not calm and quiet? Have you see the trees wondering about comitting suicide? Or a chair? Or a rock? If you are observant there’s only one thing that is not satisfied with what is and that is the voice in the head having these kind of conversations with itself. Are the entire universe wrong or is it something you haven’t figured out yet? If that voice is not there you will see that everything around you is perfectly fine with being what it is.

@fireworld Let me rewrite what you wrote from stage Blue's POV thinking about your stage (Orange). Orange Stupidity: The idea behind Spiral Dynamics is that you go through the stages and incorporate the previous stages into the higher ones to some extent. Given this shouldn't stage Orange have a decent amount of understanding of how religion and morality works? I understand that there are limits to religion and that it can be done in an unhealthy way, but from my perspective every person that i have met that is in stage Orange is extremely selfish and disconnected from "moral living". Take the human body as an example of a system, we know that this system called a human body operates in certain ways that keeps it healthy and strong. Proper food, sleep, prayer, fasting, chastity, and so on. But the stage Oranges seem to be extremely against any "set" rules for keeping your materialistic cravings in check. They will take something like casual sex or greasy fast food or alcohol and call it healthy even though we know it isn't healthy at all and is most likely going to be the thing that kills you. The same is true about business, or relationships or anything that we have a deep understanding of. Our religious leaders have long ago pointed out the evils of having a materialistic worldview. Materialism leads to a rejection of God, a mindless belief in technological progress and science, and is responsible for greed, corporate exploitation, objectification of women, sex addiction, drug addiction, food addiction, pornography, crude humor, violent video games, nuclear weapons, depression, suicide, loss of direction, broken marriages, single mothers, STDs, abortions, and much more. Isn't Orange corrupting the very fabric of decent society, turning it into the devil's playground? How can Orange be so stupid as to expect happiness from money, fine clothing, technological gadgetry, TV, video games, Facebook, sex before marriage, pornography, drugs, and rock n roll? Isn't Orange the embodiment of depravity and godlessness? Isn't this the greatest limiting factor to stage Orange? Is that they are completely ignoring how spiritual reality actually works and that's the reason they end up in so much trouble and pain?

I always find it silly that people automatically assume that if someone wants to suicide , it's surely because he doesn't know people love him. like : "oh why do you want to kill yourself ? your mom loves you , your father loves you , everybody loves you ". why do you assume that any suicide related question is about love somewhere ... lack of love , or lack of awareness about the love he receives ? Maybe someone just want to end his life , because he doesn't see any meaning in it ... maybe he got the feeling that life being an illusion , it has to be a joke, a bad joke filled with non sense.

@Nahm that's rough man sorry you had to go through that. This topic is coming up so much, suicide is not the answer - and I believe you will just get dumped into another miserable existence when you do until you learn your lesson and achieve enlightenment, however many lives that takes.

If you are enlightened even just being is enough. Your beingness will touch people's lives. Have you heard about the homeless man who was about to commit suicide and because of the eye contact and smile of one single stranger while the crossed each other, he decide to stay alive and totally turned his life around?

@Primentex Went to my friend’s funeral yesterday, who committed suicide. Some reasons off the top of my head not to do that; his mom, his sister, his friends, his niece, his nephew, his coworkers, his uncles & aunts, his cousins, his grandma, & that he could have gotten the help he needed and lived a happy and amazing life (he was 23). And I don’t mean he shouldn’t have done that for the sake of those people, I mean he could have realized he had all those people loving him already, and he could have loved them. He probably would have seen that life typically get’s easier in just a few years from 23. Also, if you actually were aware (realized) that this is an illusion, you wouldn’t be thinking about nor asking about suicide - that reveals you are in the duality of believing you are alive. Upon realization, there is all the love & joy in “life”, as there is in “death”, as they are actually the same, with regard to You.

Life can be sheer joy, a beautiful dream. People think of committing suicide because they don’t know how to beautify it.

You'll just be catapulted into a new life anyway. Reincarnation man. And in this new life you might not be aware of actualized.org and that suicide is really not that much of a problem. Better work a bit on your (illusory) karma while you have the chance.

Man, there's been a lot of suicide talk here lately. Do you think you've gone as far as you can in your life? Nothing more to figure out? You're here to learn.

After meditating, I had this thought : why should I avoid committing suicide, this entire life is an illusion anyway. I know that suicide isn't a bad thing to do in dreams, but If life is a dream, then why is it bad to do it there ???

Question: Beloved Jesus, what would you say about fasting (in a sense of totally abstaining from food) as a way to accelerate one's spiritual growth? The idea to pass through the 40 day fasting (while totally abstaining from food) - as you did when you were in the desert, and as other spiritual seekers, ascetics and hermits did - inspires me a lot. So the question is: can it give some benefit or harm? And how one could abstain from food without harming himself? Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels: (May 26, 2011) I strongly discourage anyone from trying to go for 40 days while totally abstaining from food. There is simply no way to do this without harming your body, and there is not spiritual benefit from doing so. It is a misunderstanding that I spent 40 days in the desert without eating anything. You can take two basic approaches to any aspect of my life. One is the literal approach, where you think the Bible is the literal word of God, and thus anything mentioned in the scriptures happened exactly as described. Through this approach, you will never understand the true meaning of my teachings and example. The other approach is to realize that even so-called actual events from the scriptures have a deeper meaning—and thus you must always look beyond the literal interpretation. So what is the deeper meaning of me spending 40 days in the wilderness? You might see this in terms of the contrast between two environments. You have human society, an environment in which most everything is controlled by man-made rules and ideas. Then you have the "wilderness," an environment in which things are not controlled by man but are closer to a natural state. So the symbolism is that I withdrew for a time from the world of man-made rules, doctrines, beliefs and ideas. Yet doing this does not necessarily mean going out in nature. You can do this almost anywhere, as long as you can be in a quiet space and turn down outside distractions. You can even do it in the middle of a city, although it is a bit more difficult because of the more intense mass consciousness. Fasting does not necessarily have anything to do with food. I "fasted" by emptying my mind from man-made ideas, thereby creating an empty space that made my mind open to intuitive impressions from a higher source, namely my I Will Be Presence and my spiritual teachers. Do you see my point? What is the purpose for which you want to fast? If it is to gain a more spiritual state of consciousness, then it is not necessary to abstain from food. It is necessary to abstain from certain types of heavier food, such as meat, and to abstain from eating too much food. However, it is not necessary to abstain from all food, and it can indeed be counterproductive to do so. What will it take for you to have a more spiritual experience? Everything in your life revolves around your attention. If your attention is on worldly affairs, it is more difficult to have a spiritual experience. So in order to get a higher experience, you need to take your attention away from worldly affairs, including the physical body. Yet the simple fact is that abstaining from food is not the best way to take your attention away from the body. Most people who fast by totally abstaining from food find this to be such a difficult experience, that they end up putting more and more attention on the body the longer they fast. So the true meaning of fasting is to take your attention away from worldly matters and focus it on spiritual matters. Yet even this must be understood more deeply. For there are many people who think that focusing on spiritual matters means studying a spiritual teaching with the intellect or practicing a spiritual technique. This is not necessarily invalid at a certain level of the path, but when you come to the higher levels, "fasting" truly means to empty your mind of everything and attuning it to your Presence. Fasting means focusing on experiencing pure awareness, so you truly become the open door for the Presence. Meaning you have no preconceived opinions that color the impressions from the Presence. You cannot do this at the lower levels of the path, but at higher levels this is your main goal. What has happened over the centuries is two things. First of all, Christianity was hijacked by literalists, who thought everything should be interpreted literally—according to their definition of a literal interpretation. Secondly, during the Middle Ages, Christianity became hijacked by people who focused on life as suffering. You will see that in most art from that period, I am depicted as hanging on the cross, suffering greatly. So instead of focusing on my positive teaching – that I came to give all people life and that more abundantly – Christianity became focused on the few hours I suffered on the cross. And then came the belief that it was my suffering on the cross that "bought" humankind's salvation by somehow compensating for people's sins. You will easily see that this was influenced by the age-old belief that sacrificing an animal – by bleeding it to death – could pay for one's sins. A belief that was in complete opposition to my true teaching, but which nevertheless came to dominate the view of my mission. As a result, it came to be believed that God – who was seen as good – required that you suffer before you could be free from sin. The insanity of this belief can be seen by considering the following. You have done something that caused suffering to another human being. You acknowledge this, and now you voluntarily put yourself through a process that causes suffering to yourself, thinking this second suffering will somehow compensate for the first suffering. Yet in today's world, you know that everything is energy. What you did to another, created a certain amount of misqualified energy. When you cause yourself to suffer, you create even more misqualified energy. Two wrongs do not make a right, because misqualified energy cannot eliminate misqualified energy. The only way to compensate for one's sins is to produce positive energy, which can indeed transform the misqualified. Yet it can only do so if both sides have truly forgiven, which is why I emphasized forgiving all who have harmed you. So my point is that over the centuries, the focus on suffering caused people to think that since abstaining from food causes you to suffer, this was a way to pay for your sins. And thus, has come the added belief that the more you suffer, the more you pay back sins. And this was then tied in with the idea that I fasted for 40 days, and some people then came to see this as the ultimate form of suffering through fasting. Some have even thought that if they died trying to fast for 40 days, they would surely be rewarded in heaven. They thought, "I will not surely die." Do you see that this is a complete misunderstanding? First of all, trying to abstain from all food for 40 days would kill many people, and suicide is not the way to a higher state of consciousness. Secondly, those who can survive fasting for that long, will end up focusing most of their attention on the pains of the body, which takes your attention away from being the open door for the Presence. So what is gained by this? And thirdly, deliberately causing yourself to suffer will produce misqualified energy that will not help your spiritual growth. Concerning the 40 days, it should be considered that 2,000 years ago, people did not conceive of numbers the same way you do today. In today's world, most schoolchildren understand that you can count to very high numbers. How many of you tried to count to one thousand when you were children? Yet 2,000 years ago, most adults could not count to one thousand, let alone conceive of this number. So back then, people simply could not conceive of the kind of numbers you today use to calculate the national debt. And even today, you will see that people have trouble visualizing how much money a country like the United States actually owes—it is simply too big to relate to anything in "real life." You may have heard that animals cannot count any higher than two. The same goes for some native peoples, who distinguish between one and two, but anything above two is seen as "many." Well, there was a somewhat similar mechanism at play 2,000 years ago. People could count to a dozen, but anything above that was seen as "many." The words used for that has since then been translated to the western "score," but even the word "score" was originally used about an indeterminate amount and it was only in more modern times that a precise number was attached to it. So when the Bible says that I fasted for 40 days, the actual number was not 40. It was simply a "large" number of days I spent in the wilderness. And here is another point. I went into the wilderness – and I did actually go away from human settlements – in order to have a spiritual experience, and I stayed only long enough to have that experience. During that time, I ate whatever food I could find, so as to keep my body just comfortable enough that I did not have to put my attention on the body, but could keep my attention free from outer distractions to focus within. So if you try to imitate this by forcing yourself to fast for 40 days, you will actually put yourself in a frame of mind, that will make it more difficult for you to have a true spiritual experience. Because you will not simply be open to letting the experience happen at its own pace—you will be seeking to force it. And what you seek to force, you will be pushing ahead of you, as the donkey pushing the carrot hanging from a stick in front of its nose. Any time – and I mean ANY time – you seek to force a spiritual experience, you will not have a true experience. Instead, you will open yourself up to lower forces, who can indeed give you an experience that is far beyond your ordinary state of consciousness, but it is not a true spiritual experience because it does not make you the open door for your Presence or ascended beings. Over the centuries, many people have attempted to take heaven by force and have opened themselves up to lower forces, thinking they had had a genuine spiritual experience. That is why fasting should not be attempted by people who are not balanced and who do not have both personal protection and spiritual discernment (discernment of spirits). Do you see that fasting can very easily become an ego game? The ego wants to do something extreme, because it either wants to set itself apart from others, or it even thinks this will earn it points in the eyes of God. So, in conclusion, the way to fast is to take your attention away from whatever draws it outwards. You need to empty your mind so you can be an open door for the Presence. The only way to do this is to approach fasting the same way as you approach everything else on the path: through always striving for balance. This is simply the only way for you to pass the initiation of encountering the tempter, as you will do whenever you rise to a higher level of consciousness, and as you saw that I was tempted by the devil after my however many days in the wilderness. You also need to see that it is not constructive to take what I am saying here as a reason to withdraw from society and isolate yourself. It is valid to withdraw for a time in order to establish your inner connection to your Presence. Yet once you begin to have this connection, you can now get involved in society without losing it. And in the Golden Age, we need people who can be involved with society while being the open doors for ideas from the ascended realm. In today's age, I would say that the most important way to fast is NOT by abstaining from food. The best way to fast is to eat enough to keep your body a non-issue and then keep your mind away from all of the "information pollution" with which modern people are bombarded. It is not the physical body that is the greatest hindrance for modern people; it is the fact that your minds are overstimulated by the information that comes at you from so many sources. So the best way to fast is to turn off this stream of external information. And then turn off the internal bombardment, caused by the mind creating problems and then trying to convince you that you have to solve them. It is all a matter of monitoring where your attention goes. The kingdom of God is within you, so you will not enter it as long as your attention is constantly focused outside the point of stillness within you. So try fasting from "information food" for a while. The good news is that abstaining from keeping up with what your friends are doing on Facebook won't kill you—even after 40 days.