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@Neo I'm also a student, but I've done almost all stupids acts that are a strict no-no for a path. So I know what not to do That's all I share usually. The answers to self-equiry (contemplation/introspection) do not come through as a voice or a thought or an image. Those are just mind activities that can happen after the answer is already seen. So never expect the thought to appear first which may contain an answer, its exactly reverse, the thought may come as an after effect of answer. See, if you do not already know the answer, what will you think about? what will the voice say if it doesn't know what to say? So knowing comes first, the answer is in the form of an experience. Ok what is this "experience of knowing"? For example, when you see a flower in your garden, and you are curious what color is it, and you ask that question, perhaps just intend to know the color, you will see red (say). The experience of redness is direct knowing. No voice or thought or memory or image told you that it is red. You know it directly. Later once you know the color, the mind jumps in, it forms a thought - its red, and perhaps puts it in a language form, a sentence you hear inside. When you ask - who am I (or what am I), look for an experience, not for a thought. Perhaps who am I is too advanced for some. So start from "what am I not?" (the famous neti-neti formula). Another better version is - "Am I aware now?". Takes a fraction of second to know that. Experience it, taste it, repeat..... Later you are free to form thoughts and do logical analysis on the knowledge (the answer) you just got. Let us know how it goes. Try Leo's stuff, its short and sweet. If you can handle detailed long text, try my blog here. The physiological reflexes you are getting are a common occurrence. Your practice is something new for the mind, it causes very deep changes in it. Since the body is tightly coupled to the mind, the reactions appear in the body. You need not cure them or avoid them, they come and go. I had the saliva problem and sleep problem too. I'd get dizzy, tired and almost felt like fainting. I slowed down, and it passed. This is nothing actually, people get a large variety of "purification symptoms", some painful and some crazy, like non-stop crying or anger or sexual arousal that lasts 24x7 . Read here more, if you are interested. Anyway, if you find all that challenging, I suggest join a good teacher, just listen to him, sit together, do guided stuff etc. Some people find that more comforting than simply reading books/net/videos and doing it all on their own. Those who are serious about the path, take solid actions.

Hey there, I would really appreciate some feedback: to this day I have 2 mushroom trips and about 1.5 years of meditation under my belt (8 months of 1 hour self inquiry daily). Lately I'm really struggling with my enlightenment practise. I get up early before work to meditate... groggy and tired I sit down and go into it (mostly Neti Neti). But my mind just comes up with excuses: After 30 minutes I go kind of deep but I always have this sense of "Yeah so what you cannot find yourself... you knew that this would happen anyway... no surprises here." And it goes on and on. Day by day. I just struggle with my motivation. I tried to switch up some questions... some perceived process (more wondering) and then stagnation again. I you have any suggestions I'd appreciate it deeply. Cheers.

135th day: What was going on Ok so 8 days ago I wrote that (intuition approved) I want to go for one week without computer. I was not really sure I would do that at that point but then I did. I still used phone but the computer was turned off the whole time. It was cool. I did not have any back lash when I stopped suddenly using it and was pretty calm. All the days except today I did 1 hour SDS, 1 hour self-inquiry and 1 hour Neti-Neti.. that was also kind of cool. I went running few times and also set a new record! I have to admit that it was more easy then I expected actually not really a challenge so next time I would have to go without all of internet or something like that, still it was cool and I had more free time! Mindfulness OH... YEAH MAN! It is rockin'! I am mindful longer and more often. I could not say the time throughout the day but compared to when I struggled some weeks ago! I am doing self-inquiry in classes quite often. I do not have any problem in paying attention throughout whole 90 minute lesson (I do drift to monkey mind).. I am not feeling sleepy at all which is amazing. I have been also trying to set up new sleeping schedule, I will be working on that now. I somehow caused me to have many dreams so I wrote some down. I also want to investigate something I call now MMM - Micro Morning Meditation. I will mention it if I have any success with it. I am reading Book of Not Knowing again. Wow I just noticed how many times "I" is here, uhh . Right now I am trying to use as much time as possible during the school pauses to study physics and when I am at home I spend time by meditating. I have finally finished the first chapter in the Introduction to Modern Astronomy book. Soon I read the next one about celestial mechanics. This time it will take longer time to catch up, I will need to do some research on vectors and integrals which they use of course This means more Khan Academy when I have computer access again. Alright, I have to go to bed now. Dragallur

127th day: Enlightenment work I did 90 min SDS. 1 hour Self-Inquiry and Neti-Neti two times in a row because we had extra free days from school. Tommorow I am back though... oh well. Sometimes it gets quite deep during these sessions, I watched all of the psychedelics videos. It was good, it sounds really fascinating. Today I created a thread about living ecologically but it is not very thriving, oh well, maybe someone will implement the stuff. Intuition I want to do 7 days no computer challenge starting tommorow. I will still have access to my phone but there is much harder to waste time. Sadly I did not write my blog post for next Monday so I will turn on the computer for a short time if I decide to do it.. this of course means no journaling for one week. Insights People who build up good humor are amazing manipulators, I just came to observe it today. When you eat salad and you use dressing you basically screw it up completely. I learned to take a little bit of dressing here but stopped now. Salad needs to be much bigger than normal meal. DIaboling is quite fun after you do some difficult work like after some physics or so. Which reminds me that I really moved quite a bit with my astronomy. Today I kinda finished the first chapter problems and tommorow I will probably read the next one and then slowly work on the problems again.. the stuff is difficult but the way I do it I understand it in the end. I went running two times since my last post. Today was kind of lazy but still surprisingly fast. Cold shower is must, I wonder if I will crush with it since I did not take it as a new habit at all but simply started, it is definitely easier now also because of self-inquiry work. Finally I bough Listerine as a mouthwash. It is totally chemical piece of shit, at least it seems so.. more of a reason to save more energy and be more ecological. Also I will probably chew gum more times a day because I am slightly worried about a fissure (molars sometimes have deep "cracks" that can catch food easily and are hard to clean) on one of my teeth. When I was at the dentist they said that they checked other teeth as well so I think they saw it and decided that it does not need treatment now. It is cool to balance during do-nothing some thing on your head, that way it wont drift to other position, diabolo is great in this I want to change my breakfast a bit because everyday I eat oats with raisins and some other stuff without taste that they add in, I think the oats are not exactly best but I will have to check out few resources to find it out. Dragallur

Only my Perception exists This morning I had a 1.5h neti neti session. I again got a relatively good sense that I am not there and that there is only perception. I negated my body feelings, other feelings and identity. I was left with the sense of I-am. I tried some of the exercises from Leo's list. A few days ago I did the first exercise where you draw an imaginary line from an object to "you." This became pretty quickly pretty deep, I didn't had this problem of monkey mind. What I firstly noticed that I always start to move my finger towards my body. But why? My finger stopped mainly in the area of my eye, at my forehead, at the area of the third eye or at my throat. I noticed that these all were just perceptions. Somewhere I read from Leo that perceptions cannot perceive another perception. Therefore this sense of ego cannot be the perceiver of the perceptions. If you think about it it seems so obvious. When I draw the line towards my head area it feels good. If I try drawing the line towards other parts of my body like my knee it feels weird or not real. If I draw the line towards another object (my dried pineapples to my couch) it seems absurd. I also tried the exercise with questioning the separation between me and objects and seeing them as connected, in a unified field. That is cool and beautiful. There is nothing between the wall and me. There is no space between us. I am the wall or the perception of the wall. Today in chemistry class I went to the toilet. Coming back and walking through the empty corridors I spontaneously questioned "Is my class really still there? I don't perceive them. Only my perception exists. I don't see my class, the people from my class, the chemistry room... Here is this unified field of perception." Then sitting in class again I was pretty happy. I observed my teacher and the other students. They were me. I am them. Everything is one. Everything is me. I enjoyed the end of the class with this perspective. It was funny. I had to smile most of the time. What I was doing here was absurd. This was not a real profound experience, just a little shift in perspective triggered by the neti neti meditation, doing the exercises form Leo and watching Martin Ball talking about God.

111th day: Leo's video So I just saw Leo's last video. It kind of reminds me of rant against rationality though this one was way better. Now the whole message is kind of interesting, I have not fully realised something like that for myself but there were couple of points that I want write here that bit annoyed me. First of all.. science. He says that Big Bang Theory does not explain what happened before and so on, how did big bang happen? He also says that scientists and such are ignorant about that or something along these lines. I just want to point out that this is false, it is quite clear between physicists that science did not figure it out. Actually we are quite sure about the time 10^-31 of second but not further back.. see? We just dont know which is completely normal in science! There is no theory that would be able to cover the time even further. Also, science does not think anything. Towards the end of the video Leo said something like that, maybe he meant scientists but that would be just vague generalization. What is the problem with infinite regression? I personally do not find one, how do we know that infinite regression is something bad or untrue? And what about infinite cycle? Why not? What is the problem with time and space just coming into existence? Maybe thats what happened. There were definitely other things but it does not really matter so much, I am not sure about time myself and thats ok, I just want to show that Leo sometimes says random things and uses logical fallacies. I actually do not know if I am looking forward to any of his videos about quantum physics, its just that I fear he would misunderstand the concepts after reading some popular physics books.. I mean, what else can he do, there is not time for him to master also quantum physics. I just wanted to write that people are accepting what he says a lot but in the comments under the video some are fairly sceptical which is nice to see too. All in all, I need to experience the stuff for myself. Diabolo In the end I decided I will buy diabolo for my juggling after school activity and right now I am waiting for it! I am really looking forward to listen to some audiobook and train. Firstly I thought that it would be waste of time but now I am sure that I want to try it. The Grand Project In the morning I wrote a bit as an introduction to new visitors on the still non existing page. I will look at it later and rewrite it many times, it is basically the most important part YFU meeting Yesterday I said that I am meeting today with other exchange students and other families. I was surprised by how good my german was! Otherwise its been a while since I was in contact outside of school with normal teenagers and I actually did not realise the huge difference. So hooked up on their phones, so.. uhhhh. Well some people there seemed cool and I talked with them a bit. Neti-Neti Today I did Neti instead of self-inquiry. Pretty intense, at one point I just said at one point whispering "outloud": "What the fuck". At some point I understood way better how names and labeles do not describe stuff, it is not always so easy for me but today it went very well when looking on carpet. During one walking self-inquiry I decided that I will just go without breathing. I decided I will do it until the lamp before me. Even before I got there I was really out of oxygen but then I forcefully extended it by another lamp. Then my board with map, then by another lamp. In the end I felt like totally dead, my legs were totally burning, it was cool Sometimes I need to do some random movements, its funny and might look like I have a stroke or something Oh I wanted to write something more but then forgot what.. oh well. Dragallur

Back to Enlightenment For about the last month I was not that interested in pursuing Enlightenment. I didn't wanted to meditate for that long. I rather wanted to read, work with my emotions and so forth. A lot of stuff came up and a hell lot of resistance. I learned from it but am not able to go further that path at the time - at least I think so, it might be also just an excuse. The resistance it too big. I cannot be radically honest yet. In the last couple of days I came back to Enlightenment more. I meditated more - yesterday about 3h, today 4h or more without the intention. I am ready to do neti neti and self inquiry again. I came up with questioning external reality - todays video was therefore like the perfect summary and addition to what I was observing lately. I have set some priorities. Working out and a basic level of meditation are the foundation of my day. Then I also have to go to school (only 12 weeks left!) and study for the final exams (in about 4 months). And in all my left, I will meditate or contemplate more and work on organizing my gap year. But I still have to spend time eating and distract myself out of habit. But all of this is just a little plan, a guideline. Intuition is here the boss. WWOOFing I am currently so inspired to make this gap year happen. I have watched a bunch of videos about wwoofing (working on organic farms around the world, in exchange for food and a place to stay). This is like the perfect thing for me now. I can then work on spirituality, what to do with my life and figure out my true life purpose. Now I will "just" have to find a way to present this to my parents - this means that I will have to find arguments, work out a rough plan and practice presenting it to them. Then I will have to organize everything - buying the membership and contacting a couple of farms. I also did a pre-mortem on that. If I will get distracted (by materialism, money, parents, university) I need to visualize my big picture, the positive aspects of wwoofing and the negative aspects of directly going to university, build my vision and work on finding my true life purpose (through re-doing the life purpose course (already started)), and rewatch some of Leo's videos (How to Harness your Intuition, Bold Life Changes). I think about doing it in Germany or the UK at the beginning. Maybe I might buy a flight to some warmer places in winter (Hawaii, Thailand, Florida, Australia??). So excited. Here are some impressions and inspirations for myself: Changing my training routine

All the time boss! Ever since Leo's Neti Neti vid. It's kind of what leads to I am (blank), because any thing that I am aware of cannot be me.

I've watched the guided Neti Neti Meditation before sleep yesterday, and I had quite a vivid dream afterwards. I can't remember details, but I do remember that at one point in the dream I watched a video of a guy meditating, opening his eyes and smiling almost frantically. The moment the corners of his lips went up, I knew that he became enlightened just in that moment, and suddenly I realized that there was no difference between me and him, that the me and him does not exist. And then everything went completely crazy, I had an incredibly feeling of fear that overcame me, and I immediately tried to escape the dream. I remember that feeling from sleep-paralysis, it's like something is pulling at me, and there is the strong sense of death in case of me letting go. Like, "if I don't fight this right now, my heart will literally stop beating" kind of fear. I have always fought that feeling, I remember I had this quite often in my teens. It never takes long to escape the dream and wake up. Now, today I was aware of the fact that maybe I could just let go and see what happens, but I literally couldn't. The fear was just too great. I think that shows me that I am not remotely ready to be enlightened yet, if I can't even face death in a dream. But my question is, is it possible to become enlightened by a dream, if one is willing to let go? Or has something like this been described in any historic recordings of enlightenement?

Review of 2016 The new year started pretty shitty. My mood was down and I think the reason for it was a lack of purpose. For Christmas my father bought us a pretty good telescope and for me two books about astronomy stuff. I studied astronomy a bit and kind of came to the conclusion that there is absolutely no meaning in life. The universe is soo huge and one human being makes absolutely no difference at all neither humanity. We are just some particles, some matter, some energy ordered in a certain way. The universe still expands or eventually collapses and everything will become so dense again. I still think that this is true but I made the wrong conclusion. I took it a nihilistic way. I was too deep into rationality. I didn't see the beauty of this. At that time in my mind the only possible, reasonable life purpose was it to contribute to science, physics, mathematics, astronomy, etc., although the discoveries again would have been meaningless. So I started researching a bit, studying a bit, reading a bit. But I was not fulfilled. I had no meditation highs anymore like I used to a few months prior. I was stuck with my old bad habits and even slided back into some habits that I already have overcome. I ate a lot, I spent a lot of time on the internet, wasted time with other activities... I had nothing meaningful to do. I even didn't liked it to have no homework to do. I remember one day that I had nothing to do and that I felt so empty. Then in the middle of February my father decided that I should begin with my driver license. I finally had something to do. I could study for the theoretical test. I always listened to the same songs, again and again. Now I associate these songs so much with my driver license stuff. I loved it to have practical driving lessons. After every lesson I was kind of just waiting for the next one. Then after about three months I got my driver license without failing any tests. I have stuffed the emptiness with diver license stuff. Another reason for the deep phase was that I got injured. On the first day of the year I went running. I decided that I would start the year with a long run (13km, this is long for me). I felt great, but as I got home I felt pain in the front of my left foot. This meant that I could not run and I loved running at that time. I could not run for two or three months. I got into biking, going on a crosstrainer or doing bodyweight exercises and stretching instead. I hated that. And I didn't make any progress. I was stuck. After my injury had cured I got into more endurance sport again but it was more balanced - half of the time endurance and the other half of the time strength. But in the summer I identified again more with endurance, then after the summer again more strength, and from fall on again more balanced. I know, I change my priorities a lot. I noticed when I get to rigid with either endurance or this strength stuff I identify myself too much with it. And when I don't get results and progress I suffer. Balance is important and as well as doing it out of fun and intuition. At the moment I have relatively little identification with sports. I do what I want, intuitively. I noticed that I don't like strength stuff so much. I rather like endurance and something like yoga, stretching, handstand... I don't know what the exact trigger was but somewhen in May or June my overall mood became better. I discovered the website and app "Habitica". I tried to improve my habits with it. It kind of worked for a month but it was very neurotic. I also was finally able to purchase the Life Purpose Course with he help of my best friend. This was a huge thing. I went through the whole course in two weeks while cleaning up my whole room. My results were okay. I still don't know my exact life purpose but I got a good perspective and good understanding about the whole topic. I began to work on my life purpose in the summer holidays. At the time it was "I spread consciousness through teaching wisdom." I began reading philosophy books and tried to write blog articles. I also thought about creating a permaculture garden where I can teach enlightenment related stuff. Later the life purpose shifted to making art (fractals) through programming or through programming something else. One thing that I am very clear about is my impact statement: contributing to increase the consciousness of humanity. Right now I feel like I want to coach people. I want to bring them more in touch with their emotions, help them with their shadow work, make them more open-minded, etc. At the beginning of the summer holidays I went with my father into the Alps. With a group we hiked over them in about eight days with a 10kg backpack. I really enjoyed the nature, the beautiful landscape and the physical exercise. I was by far the fittest one of the group. But I really disliked the very unhealthy food there. Afterwards I often thought about doing such a tour again in the future. And some habits improved. I ate less raisins and oats. In the fall holidays I went with my family to Denmark for two weeks like every year. I finally wanted to move from just doing the theory to doing the practical stuff. Therefore I committed to not using the internet for one week. It worked out and I got a lot of stuff done. I did a lot of shadow work, meditation, self inquiry, visualization, values assessments, self-love... I also began to discover my whole belief-system, my identifications, etc. In the second week I began to use the internet again but less. I also had a little awakening experience or just a meditation high. At one moment in self-inquiry I began to feel soo much love. It lasted for a day or two. I started to become more authentic and go out of my comfort zone - at least a little bit. I questioned cultural norms and stopped removing hair so often. At the moment I don't shave my legs, my armpits only once in a while, and do nothing with the bit of facial hair anymore. Well, it is easier in the winter. I will probably shave more regularly again in summer - or maybe not, it depends on my courage at that time. At home I don't wear bras anymore, even in the summer in T-Shirts. In the winter it is again easier because I mostly wear just hoddies. Sometimes I even don't wear a bra in school when it is not so visible. I also wash my hair only once or twice a week and endure having oily hair - my parents don't like that at all. Because I cleaned up my wardrobe and minimized my amount of clothes, I wear often the same clothes. In school they probably think that this would be very unhygienic. I started becoming more honest. I tell my best friend some rather uncomfortable stuff regularly, wrote an honest letter to a former best friend and became more honest with my mother. I begin to feel more into my emotions, look at all my judgments and listen to my intuition. In November I purchased the booklist, again with the help of my best friend. She also ordered me the books "Neti Neti Meditation", "The Book of Not Knowing" and "Zen Body-Being". I got into a very good reading habit effortlessly. More little insights and discoveries about myself followed. I am slowly implementing all of it. I will be getting more books in the future. I think 2016 was until now the best year of my life. I think I say/think this every year since I got onto this personal development track (2014?). I finally feel like I see a little part of the exponential growth curve that lies in front of me. What will life be like in 5,10,15,20 years? Thoughts on 2017 2017 will be the year. The year of the years. The year for which I have been waiting for such a long long time. It will be the year in which I will turn 18 and finish school. Little J used to think "Wow, 2017 will be the year of the years. I will finally be independent. And so grown up. But it will take so long until I am there." I will gain more freedom and a bit more independence from my parents. But together with this freedom will come uncertainty and fear. I am confused about what I should do. Should I go to university? And then to which university and which major. Should I move out? This road would be more certain but would also "imprison" me for 3 to 5 years and maybe even more. Or should I do something else like taking a gap year and travel. And should I after the gap year go to university or take on the call for my life purpose. This would be the very uncertain path, the path with fear and resistance, which my family would dislike soo much. I am confused. Well, there is one thing I do know. I want to follow my intuition. I trust my intuition to guide me through those tough decisions. It will take the right decision. I will just have to take the courage to follow the decision. And if it choses the uncertain path there will be sooooooooo much resistance. AAWWHWWWAAHAW!!! Another thing is that I want to go to a 10 day vipassana retreat. And I want to finally work on my eating habit. Should I decide on a motto for 2017? What about "Shut up and follow the intuition"?

That's really good @cetus56 ! And @Earnothing I feel that the neti neti method is really powerful. I had a no-self experience too with it and at some point I even noticed the blood flowing through my veins, I felt like if I was inside of my body, I was aware of the air entering on my lungs, it was crazy... We just have to continue working without wanting to repeat, as you said. I think cetus advice is awesome, I will do that too.

Just did the Neti Neti Inquiry and I felt like I kept getting stuck because I believe I am the voice (thoughts) and the perceiver too -- so I perceive what I do. I didn't really think I thought I was the body. In fact I'm a little surprised some people think they are as it seemed obvious to me that I am the one perceiving the sensations (Spiritual Enlightenment part 3 helped come to this conclusion). Now I don't know where to go from here. I feel like some thoughts I have no control of and I don't know what the next thought will be but yet feel like I have control over these thoughts -- after all how can I do self-inquiry if I didn't have some control over thoughts? I also didn't fully get why fundamentally ''I'' have to be constant. Why can't ''I'' fundamentally change from moment to moment? We only have the present moment so why does it matter what I was in the past? Another thing I'm confused with is that ''I'' am nothing yet it seemed convincing that I am the sensations that happen in the present moment like in the short Guided Mediation video. So how can I be both nothing and the sensations?

What I've learned: Fructose can never be 100%-ly absorbed by the gut. Some fructose will stay inside the gut and cause some problems there. The human body is not designed for being a fruitarian. Bottom-Line Contemplation separating your reactions from your emotions questioning the root cause of your emotions deeply discovering your core assumptions my bottom-line is something like "I need the support of others to survive" Nature of Emotions: Fear: about the future, unwanted experience Anger: about the past, incapability, feeling hurt, demonstrating capacity through destruction Desire: about the future, desired experiences, suffering in the present Pain: primitive, eliminating it through being present and letting go of the distinction "pain" Breatharianism is possible There are life principles which are more inclusive - not just exclusive and centered around the ego e.g. honesty (-> serving the Truth), communication (-> listening closely, speaking about experiences truthfully without manipulation, self-agenda) What I fear will most likely not happen I like analyzing the psychology and structure of thinking of other people I need to make bold life changes. Otherwise I will stay in homeostasis I feel a drastic effect of less meditation (because of Christmas). It is very very important for my mood to meditate at least two hours. I really don't like doing strength training. I really like endurance training, stretching and other stuff like yoga and stretching or practicing a handstand It is very important to truly know ones values, strengths and big picture Proper standing posture: Feet: about shoulder width apart, external rotation Tension on gluts and abs -> no pelvic tilt moving chest up/out, shoulder back and locating the head above the spine looking straight forward You are so drastically influenced by your childhood vows. I am very limited through those vows How I am moving towards becoming a sage: Implementing a new morning routine meditation + drinking tee while practicing gratitude and visualization + yoga/strechting and doing exercises for dorsiflexion + cold shower and not using my phone or computer until I am ready Waking up directly, not lying down again, sitting upright Drinking lots of tea Having finished reading The Book of Not Knowing Noticing negative emotions, anger, fear, judgment Having some deep neti neti meditations in less than 1.5 hours Comforting my sister with unconditional love Watching desire and craving arise Noticing that I like Teal Swan although here is a lot of negative discussion about here going on Analyzing the psychology of my parents Questioning fears Trying out yoga videos Writing E-Mails to my best friend Trying mindfulness meditation and noticing that I am very bad at it Speaking honestly with my best friend Starting to read Zen Body-Being by Peter Ralston and directly taking notes to every chapter One day in school I had almost the whole time this feeling of unconditional love for everybody, smiled and was happy Assessing my values again Sometimes doing breathing exercises in the morning outside Making notes for a full review of 2016 What my intuition is telling me lately / how I will move towards sagehood: Creating many mind-maps about core concepts form The Book of Not Knowing Meditating for multiple hours per day Doing more mindfulness meditation Doing sports only intuitively Reviewing my older journal entries more closely Taking a gap year Finally attacking my eating habit 2017 and fixing the root cause Music: I noticed that I am often having a loop of music inside my head while meditating. This was really distracting and annoying. I wanted to know what happens if I stop listening to music. So I stopped listening to music for a few days. Initially I wanted to do it for one whole week. I started Wednesday but today I listened to a few songs. I don't really mind. Anyways I couldn't avoid all the Christmas music and the radio around the house. It is almost everywhere in the house as soon as I leave my room. I quickly noticed that the music loop stopped and my meditation was a little bit more concentrated. I also noticed that I am a bit addicted to music. It is a habit to listen to music while doing something else. It is like a constant drug, which prevents you from questioning and thinking deeply. From now on I will only listen to music when I want to enjoy it purely without any other activity going on. Just notice how this artist is enjoying and mastering his craft:

@Saarah Yes I totally agree with the raising of awareness. Been doing a lot of Neti Neti lately and it is working nicely. That along with all the other personal development stuff like working towards and becoming and embodying my goals and desires, radical action, learning about life purpose is doing me well and seems to be "attracting" more of what I want in life.

86th day: Enlightenment work What a freakin day. From 10-11AM I did SDS then right after lunch I did Neti-Neti for 56 minutes and then I just waited for the full hour to go by. After other stuff I did 1 horu of self inquiry in the evening and I just finished another 30 minutes of SDS, I planned whole hour but it did not clap with dinner and such. Cool, all of it was sitting crosslegged basically not moving especially during oficial SDS. Towards the second half of self-inquiry something interesting happened. I was wondering who the hell recognizes thought when it comes up. It is recognized by someone right? Well there is somebody otherwise the thought would as well not exist at all.... and then something happened. I had this insight about this "field" that reflects these things, it did not have any form. I was like: all right then, I better remember this! I tried to recreate the complete experience but was not succesful. I feel great now anyways and it was something remarkable.. I also understand more this concept of not clinging to experience. Physics Alright, I did some Khan Academy. Mindfulness Quite good and it is not even school! No computer games (30 streak) Stuff I went running today. I ran over 8 kilometers with tempo something like 6 minutes and 10 seconds for kilometer.. that is definitely weak for me but I do not mind, I enjoyed the run a lot. Knees are completely ok just the bone under it hurts a bit. Two days ago I actually was doing parkour and I finally had the courage to jump one of the more difficult jumps! I also did some exercises for knees again. I joined the no music for one week unofficial challenge! Leo's practical guide to enlightenment is great. The Grand Project Have you been wondering how is my work here going? Well I have finished first course on HTML and CSS in CodeAcademy and now today I started PHP. Otherwise I am getting some better idea what will be my way of approach to this thing but it is kind of abstract to write here. I need to study a lot a lot, thats why I have to go to University because I could not learn the stuff by myself so easily. Of course I can start before I finish my school. That needs some studying too but if I start to prepare the most of the surface stuff it will be easier to work with it later on. I realised that blogging (that is around 250 posts on my blog each roughly 400 words) really improved my writing skills. Just the other day I received 11/12 points on english writing and the only problem is that I never learned to use "articles". This is nice indeed. Dragallur

Karma yoga - action without expectation. Bhakti yoga - surrender to reality as it is - exercise for every second especially for bad moments and mindfullness. Raja yoga - meditation and asans and nidra and neti neti and inquiry. Jnana yoga - knowledge and concepts from enlightened people / advaita vedanta.

83rd day: Enlightenment work Well lot of monkey mind. I am going throung Neti-Neti too fast. Since winter break is coming I am planning to do long distance walking again. Two times I walked already in summer 65 kilometers and 50 kilometers once in a day. SInce I am not so fit at the moment I will probably start with 40 or so and if it goes alright I will walk more. Really looking forward to it, just realized that this plan was made up by intuition probably!!! Physics Wow today... I spent most of the day doing physics and math. I need to work so freakin much. I tend to look towards the people that have around 100% on one of the hard-core physics seminars and then I take look on the problems and its like another language.. The problem is that I have learn to expect that I will solve problem fastly or that I will see the solution immediately. At the same time I persuaded myself to do some research before giving up and I found the stuff I needed for one of the problems and basically understood everything in it which was great! Lesson: I need to learn more patience and really dive into the topics. I have really fun sometimes with derivatives, its really cool to do them. Mindfulness No comment. (no comp. games) I watched the new video of course. This one was pretty good indeed. No time to loose, there is really lot to do and physics and enlightenment need to be mastered. I forgot to say, about week ago I had spontaneous lucid dream, cool but it was short as hell. I spend a lot of time on the computer and on internet.. I think it is alright since I do not procrastinate these days and I need to learn physics on computer since I do not have here any books anyway. Also I realized that I did another intuition thing. I decided that I will stop heating my room completely. It safes water which is good for environment (I was just re-learning something with calorimetry and hell, water takes so much energy to heat!!!). It is right now pretty chilli and my feet are freezing a bit but I can adjust! After today I feel this strong urge to really learn physics cool. One of the best threads ever on this forum was created when Leo shared the book of Ra. Interesting was that the part I read I took pretty ok, but no I do not believe in UFO. It is not actually very important to take ANY position here, you can just let it be and let evidence show up, which I really like. Leo mentioned that there is some part about meditation and it is pretty well described to what he experiences which sounds cool. Its all alright I know that my emotional reaction when I hear about somebody being religious is going pretty close to zero! I see how the yellow stage is amazing. I am not there, I have been thinking about it a long time but I am not there, definitely, long way to go.. but hell yeah it is great to feel peace and not disgust when somebody talks about these things. Dragallur

What I've learned: I will be less effected by my circumstances though honesty, letting go of value, detachment from this social person and taking things less personally. I need to be careful to distinguish what my intuition is telling me and what social conditioning wants me to do. Beliefs = consciously adopted beliefs + programming + assumptions Through eliminating beliefs one will become radical open. Life will become magical again. I need to master one domain. Otherwise I will not be able to create something valuable. I am absolutely free. Only my mind/social survival is limiting me. I just need to get free of social survival. Many philosophers have discovered aspects of nonduality. They knew that language is an illusion and cannot display absolute truth. Many people today are not aware of this. Physics is fascinating. When matter and antimatter come together a huge amount of energy gets set free. Or all those thousands tiny particles that make up our matter (quarks, leptons, neutrinos...) I only work out to stay healthy and to feel good in my body. I don't want to reach some ideal. Just working out for one hour, a combination of endurance, strength and mobility is totally enough if I stay relatively active throughout the rest of the day. I am annoyed when the day does not work out how I imagined and others occupy my free time. I am easily influenced by my father and other persons with authority. There is a huge gap between poor and rich. The poor people become more and more. They make the government responsible for their circumstances and therefore search for other types of government (Trump or the AfD in Germany). We need to care about these people, otherwise conflicts will arise like we are seeing at the moment. Be the change that you want to see. Raise the consciousness of humanity. I am still very very closed-minded. While I read a few pages of "The Law Of One" I noticed how much resistance I have. But it clearly could be possible. Contemplation Pre-Contemplation: Presence, Clarity, Possibility Contemplating: Intent, Openness, Focus, Questioning I don't take Enlightenment seriously enough. I need to study other traditions more. Enlightenment is just the beginning. How I am moving towards becoming a sage: Eating less raisins and exchanging it through tea and raw fruits. It starts to work out. Reading a lot in the Book of Not Knowing. I am getting to the really interesting parts now. It is getting easier to take really cold showers. Feeling and observing my emotions. Not repressing them. Dealing with them. Creating an intuition incubator - simply a little journal/note book with things my intuition told me. I review it every day and look what I can do, so that I really act upon it and don't forget it. Surrendering to this confusion whether I should just listen to my intuition or to be more realistically. Visualization and assessing my values. I found a technique to stay awake in the morning. Just sitting upright in bed, and not lying down again. A big difference! Working out intuitively without any plan. Self Love. Feeling strong emotions of love with become almost painful. Having quite a few "successful moments" with neti neti and contemplation. I feel like I am growing a lot at the moment. What my intuition is telling me lately / how I will become a sage: Taking more and longer cold showers My life purpose could be AI and programming. I could develop apps which analyze how people think, their beliefs and how they should move towards Enlightenment. But I also could become a coach because I recognized how much I like analyzing the psyches and shadows of other people. I could combine AI and coaching! Writing a big review about 2016 Meditating and Contemplating throughout the day for short periods of time Doing more mindfulness meditations Creating a strong morning routine Not spending much time on the Internet in the morning

Emotions: I the last couple of days I am spending relatively little time on the Internet and rather sit there in "silence & solitude". Most of the evenings I just sit there. This gets me really in touch with my emotions. I want to understand them more and really feel into them. What do they mean? What are they like? What do I want to do know with this emotion? One day I had a relatively negative emotion inside me. I had time and planed to read or meditate. But I felt that I wanted to do neither of them. I just wanted to do exactly nothing. So I sat there for about an hour and did nothing (but not the meditation technique). Sometimes I sit there, listen to some music and feel into my body. Sometimes I do shadow work and feel the emotions arising in relations to my father or some childhood events. Sometimes I sit there and feel this deep love. Love for myself and others. Accepting myself and others. Sometimes I read The Book of Not Knowing and feel this love and gratitude. But today these emotions became somehow too strong. I meditated for two hours in the morning (neti neti) and got some sense that I am beyond perception. I felt this deep love again. This feeling came up again and again throughout the day. And now in the evening I wanted to meditate again for two hours. But this love became somehow too strong that it is almost painful. So I stopped after one hour. Now I am kind of distracting myself to ground myself again. I can understand why infinity might be threatening. What I am experiencing is probably just a tiny tiny aspect of infinity. Maybe its like 10⁻¹⁰⁰ times of the love of infinity. But wait, infinity is infinite, so my love is already infinite. Some music which brings me in touch with my emotions:

73rd day: Oh it has been a while since i posted, well few days. Anyway interesting stuff is definitely going on: Enlightenment work I bought the book Neti Neti meditation. It has only 50 pages but enough material for decades I guess So since I deleted my excel charts I kind of changed my meditation, not really though right now I do everyday 1 hour SDS and then 1 hour of Neti-Neti or Self-inquiry, today for example it was Neti-Neti. Pretty neat, I often feel during these two things as though I am standing in front of huge beautiful dragon (those are my favorite animals) and not even that I can not comprehend its appearence and majesty but I do not even know that it is dragon and there are 3 feet of wall of smoky glass between us (and I do not wear my glasses ). Btw I hate the imperial units but this time it seemed nice ot use feet since in the song While We Sleep by Insomnium, they say "wall of glass thick and deep"... oh wait there is no "feet" there, ouch.. Physics I am working on problems from one seminar. The one that I need to solve right now goes like this: you are on a beach with your girlfriend/boyfriend and you watch sunset. Since you want the romantic moment to last, you brought an elevator.. find out what speed does the elevator need to drive in order for you two to be able to watch the sunset. Mindfulness Last week was better. No computer games (17 streak) Wow, I would not expect this to be so easy. I almost played one really old game yesterday, I completely forgot about this. It did not work though because of WIndows 10 so.. I will not try to wake up at 5:00AM for some time now. I feel like I have a bit of sleep deprivation and I need to catch that up so I stop falling asleep during SDS. Pick Up Well this is where things go as much personal as they have been ever in this journal, I guess. Well. Girls. Yup. I was in a friendzone at least 3 times (I am 16 and one of them was for like 6 months at least). This never made me angry at this kind of stuff and rather learned me quite important things about myself. So no, I never had girlfriend, I have some good female friends, I had one about 2 years ago who was for some time probably the closest person to me ever but thats about it. While I called it pick up it was not much of a pick up. Today during lunch I had a great opportunity to talk with one very sympatic girl since she was sitting alone. It was completely catastrophic, but hey, I almost laughed out loud during my Neti-Neti about it. In the afternoon I summarised the conversation, highlighted important parts and commented on my mistakes, yeah they were really dumb. Thats my first experience with walking to person of another gender without even knowing their name and starting conversation out of nothing with no idea where it will go. Random stuff I started to watch Game of Thrones again but only in German. Wow, it is pretty hard, otherwise my german has improved a lot, I quite like it these days. In physics test I got 13/21 points. Well, I had EVERYTHING right except one minus and then the teacher did not like that I do not write units often and my way of working through some problem. She does not have much of physics-problem-thinking. She always inserts value into equation and after that she evaluates it instead of manipulating it so that you have something you want to find out equals to stuff and then inserting the values. Dragallur

What I have learned: Through visualization, gratitude, meditation, movement, cold exposure and healthy food everyday might become absolutely beautiful Confusion is good, it is not knowing It is much more effective to learn something new firstly by getting an overview, a big picture about the topic. Only later detailed knowledge is useful. You should be able to summarize a book on a normal A4 page and to explain it in 5 minutes. Otherwise you have not understand it properly. Through summarizing you have to deal with all the topic intensively, so that at the end you will know all the details too. The intuition is so powerful. I have to learn to listen to it throughout the whole day to take the right decisions. Even for stuff like what I should eat for lunch. Our perception is distorted by our beliefs so much. My life is a story. Everything is a story! Society appreciates you only if you fit into the societal norms. Otherwise you are apparently worthless. It doesn't matter at all what I will do with my life! In a few thousands of years the sun will collapse and "I" will be just matter/energy. All of humanity will just be matter/energy. Everytime my family is holding me back from pursuing my dreams, they just care for me out of love. They just want to understand me. Every negative consequence will most likely never happen. I will still be alive. There is a possibility to combine physics with consciousness (look at John Hagelin, Ph.D.) Lower stages (red,blue,orange) will bring up problems (war->refugees->migration->racism etc.) that will catalyse the development of higher stages (green,yellow). People will recognize that ones culture isn't superior to others. People will spread messages of tolerance, peace, love, open-mindedness. So much is happening already. It feels like Peter Ralston is just talking about stuff that I have already came up with by self-inquiry/spiritual autolysis in the last months. He is putting it into nice language and concepts, what was for me just vague ideas. What my intuition is telling me lately: more Neti Neti meditation making a list of possible plans for the future less internet this forum is just an ego game (mostly for me), but also a source of great information doing shadow work regarding my father letting go of my identifications (health, sports, school) "self coaching" - imagining speaking to a life coach, telling him stuff about me and coming up with answers he would give me How I acted upon my intuition lately: only taking cold showers going outside every morning in light clothes (-5 degrees Celsius), running around, stretching and doing breathing exercises for about 10 minutes "getting out of bed" (off the floor) almost immediately puzzling doing Neti Neti meditation almost every day visualizing almost every day Life Purpose: My intuition came up with this: I want to make people more open-minded and skeptic. So many people just take the beliefs of our culture, the story of our lives (the song title "Story of my life" now has a very different meaning ), everything for granted. They never question anything about his. But they are not responsible for this, they never get the opportunity to take a look outside of the social matrix. I want to show people what different possibilities life has and how limited their view is. I want to inform them about Enlightenment, beliefs, the mind, religions, spirituality, ancient times, philosophy, psychedelics, history, consciousness, science, controversial theories, quantum mechanics etc. I'd like to do this through building a huge website with a lot of sources of information. The only problem is that I dislike writing stuff like informative blog posts. I thought of rather making mind maps, audiofiles, some texts, pictures and links for other resources. The whole website will just be a HUGE mind map where are thousands of connections between all the topics. Baby-steps I will take to improve my life: doing Neti Neti occasionally throughout the day and becoming aware that life is just a story 5 minute meditation before every food intake getting into a better, loving, visionary mood before going to school to transcend the negative mood of everybody in school researching a little bit about quantum mechanics.

Well, I sit down on my couch and close my eyes I firstly think of what my life will look like if I had a really good eating habit and would use the internet almost never. I try to imagine how good this will feel. Then I visualize what I want my life in general to be like (location, people, environment, activities, life purpose). Mostly then I am in nature meditating with people around me doing the same. I do the Neti-Neti meditation as described in the book "Neti Neti Meditation" by Andre Doshim Halaw.

One of your best journal entries, good job, I can see that you are really moving forward! How does the visualization of yours look like? Do you do neti-neti form Leo's video or do you have some other source?

I didn't feel like writing much here in the last week. I started journaling daily in my private journal again. I wrote down some positive aspects of each day, something that I could improve, what I have learned, what my intuition is telling me and stuff that I am grateful for. Each morning (except for today) I reviewed the last journal entries and visualized stuff. Now I will sumarise what I find important: What I have learned: Visualization is powerful! Through visualizing and meditating for a few minutes multiple times a day I will become more consciousness about my actions. My actions and habits will automatically change to the better. Visualization is one of the most important habits. Building this habit is more important than just changing my eating of internet habit. Visualization is a keystone habit. Not-knowing is the natural state of being. My intuition is the voice of my subconscious mind. My intuition knows more than I do. I should listen to my intuition more than to myself. I am able to understand, write and read English well. I often even think in English. But I have to little practice of speaking English actively. Having a fluent conversation in English seems harder to me than I thought. I need more practice. I am scared of moving away from home but it would bring me much more growth and new opportunities. It is a risk but it has a lot of potential. Change is important. I do not have to spread non duality and become a spiritual guru to have a positive impact on humanity and to make humanity at least a little bit more conscious. The impact statement "raising the consciousness of humanity" is to general. There are so many ways in which I can do that. I have to look which way I am most passionate about. I could work at McDonald's as an enlightened guy and still be happy. At the end nothing is important at all. It isn't a good idea to look at WhatsApp and this forum right before I am about to meditate. This is just fuel for the monkey mind. Don't tell the devil that you are killing it. We live in a time full of risks. I cannot be sure about that I will still live in a few years. Money is an illusion of security. An economic crisis could always happen. Money could lose its value. Authentic deep relationships are more important. I do not want to have to persuade people by argumentation. I want my actions and achievements to speak for themselves. I want them to be inspiriting and making people act upon this inspiration. I want to live in peace with nature. Not just in near future. I can now begin to realize this and help the environment. Neti-Neti meditation is soo powerful. What my intuition is telling me lately: moving out or traveling after finishing school wwoofing after school, getting out of my comfort zone I want to try doing different things before deciding what I will do with my life. I don't want to start studying directly. doing more and longer Neti-Neti sessions writing my German and social science teacher an e-mail on how she could improve the classes studying maths when I want to How I acted upon my intuition lately: playing my guitar after a few years of not practicing it painting having 'done' two long (90-110min) Neti-Neti sessions rearranging my room a bit studying maths not writing here so often Baby-steps I will take to improve my life: waking up and standing up every morning immediately without spending time on my phone reading my last journal entries each morning and visualizing fore 15 minutes visualizing my internet usage for 5 minutes before using the internet visualizing my eating pattern for 3 minutes before eating or preparing food

Hello everyone! I've been on the spiritual path for nearly 2 years now and after a rough start I've achieved significant progress over the last few months. My awakening experience happened in July and its forever changed my life, since then I've watched my ego like a hawk. Every single movement, thought, feeling, belief, etc was carefully observed and dis-identified with until there was nothing left. During this time I had many dark night of the soul experiences but loved every minute of it Having been severely depressed and suicidal before I stumbled upon this path I feel has given me the intense desire to keep pushing along to find Truth no matter what cost it takes. Well I've finally made that breakthrough, I decided to seriously sit down and meditate for the first time along my journey and made the decision to not get up until I found my True Self. I used the Neti Neti method and after about an hour the space between my eyes began to vibrate very rapidly and I just felt everything disappear. For the first time in my life I finally felt free from the illusion, it was like I was back at home. There's still further to go on this path but liberation awaits! I had no one to tell in real life but I just wanted to share this accomplishment with someone