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@xeeky4 Look further into that urge. It could be very revealing, if you're really honest. Why do you want it? Is it because it seems like the right path, the only path? Is it because you want to escape your life in this existence? Is it because somebody told you it's the ultimate state of bliss and you can use this to escape your family and depression? Even if this is a legit urge, you should do some deep, deep inner work before thinking about going down the spiritual route, I think going to therapy to sort out your emotional problems and family problems is a good first step. You need to get your garden looking tidy first - by that I mean your basic everyday level of happiness, productivity, self-esteem, etc. Depression is incredibly debilitating from my experience and a person experiencing it shouldn't even consider looking for enlightenment. It may be a message from your psyche that you need to change shit around in your life, it certainly was for me, looking back. Yield to that message and make basic positive changes which seem right to you - hobbies, relationships, diet etc. Over time, along with therapy, this will cleanse you. It's good that you're starting from scratch in this way - you can ditch a lot of the junk in your life without the old ties to it. Keep your meditation habit, this will help you to build up mindfulness over your depressive emotions and thoughts and could also act as a soother, a salve for you depending on the technique. I would ditch the contemplation for now, that's probably not going to help you. Most of all, remember that anyone's advice on here is just one person's opinion on your life, a complete stranger giving you advice based on very little information. Follow your inner drives first and foremost. There is a drive in you that will pull you out of all this, if you allow it.

This journal is about furthering my awareness from today moving forward. The journey of my experience, observations, moments of clarity etc. I will be doing one thing from now on. I have in the past not been consistent with meditation for personal reasons. I will change this. I will do my best to meditate at least 20 minutes a day, and throughout the day I will maintain constant awareness through walking meditation techniques I learned from a Buddhist monk. I will convert the technique to every day living and will play a fun game to see how long I can keep my awareness. Day 1 observations 7-8-17 440pm est -I noticed when aware when something goes wrong I feel great joy, excitement, like butterfly's in my stomach. A challenge has arrived the game begins, as I struggled to keep awareness I felt such bliss like being tickled as a child or like the excitement of a rollercoaster ride. -when aware I observe that I simply cannot be anything but genuine as to be selfish or fearful requires ego to move to past or future. When not allowed this genuine is all that is left. For example. My boyfriend is in school and working very hard. He had a moment of weakness and gave up. Normally this would frustrate me because I would fear the outcome of his choice. His grade, how much longer school will take for him etc.... Instead with no ego... I just felt sad for him, his exhaustion, his battle with school. I felt sad for him. He defensively asked me what I was thinking and I told him of my sadness for his situation. He became equally genuine and something good happened. He felt understood even though I couldn't possibly understand. -I lost awareness while installing a ceiling fan. Physical work always seems to be a vulnerable point for my awareness. My ego has much less to overcome to gain control during tasks like this. I am still searching for a solution to losing awareness during complex tasks. I am starting to think that strengthening my focus is the best answer. Ego gained control by convincing me that no appreciation will be given for hard work done. Physical exhaustion and small problems made this easier for ego. The thing that made ego most influential was when ego judged my boyfriend for sitting back and throwing many problems with the situation and contributing no help. Ego put my boyfriend down for him lacking perseverance and creativity and convinced me he holds back my spirituality with the way things like this trigger me. I know there is a lesson in this, I am still trying to figure out what it means to me. I will learn the lesson I always do after this I stopped my awareness yesterday because it was so exhausting. I just started it again today.... I feel like a cat that's been in one too many fights haha I hope this gets easier soon lol for now I notice I am keeping awareness from 5-15 minutes about. One thing I noticed about this constant awareness is I became automated. Doing things that I have been meaning to do. I assume it is because the awareness took the emotional baggage out of the situation. Every time I put something off its like a bit of guilt is attached and ego used this to gain access yet again.

Love is the driver that drives the world. Love makes the world go round. But love is not to be taken lightly. Because love is the only force that unites the world. When we're on our spiritual path, we realize that we have lower needs conditioned by society that we keep struggling to fulfill in a hamster on a wheel lifestyle. But as we grow, we begin to have higher needs based on unconditional love and compassion. Only that brings true peace and bliss !

I've had an insight and I want to see what you guys think about it: There is no greater reason for doing something than the emotional reward you'll get from it (e.g. happiness, joy, bliss, strength, passion, etc.) or because you believe so strongly in what you are doing (when someone believes in trust, kindness, honor, beauty, etc.). Does it resonate with you guys? Please share your thoughts as this is a most interesting topic to ponder and discuss. Some other related questions: Is there another reason for doing something? Do you need a reason for doing something? Can you want something and take practical action-steps towards it without knowing that you want it (unconsciously)? What other models about the WHY of life do you find accurate and practical?

Latihan cannot bring the great awakening. It became fashionable in the West and then disappeared completely, because it created many people who had to be put into mental asylums – for the simple reason that it has no stop built into the process. Once you start Latihan you are overtaken by the process of catharsis, and it goes on and on and you don’t know what to do. You are almost without any control. But Dynamic Meditation I have divided into different sections. Latihan has to be done alone; Dynamic Meditation has to be done under instruction. Then once you have learned it you can do it alone. Under instruction, after each ten minutes, the process can be changed. So you are always in control. It never becomes so big as to take all control into its own hands. These devices are needed just to clear the rubbish that Christianity has created, and to bring you to a state of naturalness, simplicity ... And from there the only way is witnessing, which is called, by Buddha, Vipassana. Vipassana means ‘looking at’. If you want to do Vipassana, or any silent meditation, Dynamic Meditation becomes absolutely essential, because Christianity having poisoned your mind, that poison has to be thrown out. You have to go completely crazy to throw it out; otherwise that craziness remains inside you, and won’t allow you to get into a silent, watching, witnessing meditation. So do some Dynamic Meditation, do some jogging, do some running, swimming and when you feel utterly tired, when you feel an intrinsic need to relax, you are free from Christianity. Then you can sit silently, then you can watch your mind – and it is not much. You have thrown out almost ninety-nine percent of it. Maybe here and there a few pieces are clinging because they are very old and have become glued to you ... Just watch them. Watching is a process of ungluing those small pieces hanging here and there in the mind. Once they also disappear, you don’t have a mind, you have a vast sky opening. That is the explosion, and that explosion will bring you to sachchidanand, to truth, to consciousness, to bliss. Sat Chit Anand ~ Osho

Here is the entire Satsang, so it is not taken out of context- "Buddhism and the Jhanas Ram (James Swartz) 2014-04-09 Source: http://www.shiningworld.com/site/satsang/read/231 Kumar: I trust you are well. James: Better than ever! Nice to hear from you, Kumar. Kumar: I believe that the jhanas are a powerful technique to sharpen your mind so that insight might appear, take root and become integrated with your real life. It is also historically used as a tool to burn the mind of conditioning and residual karma. The insight is through vipassana practice since the jhanas do not lead to liberation by themselves. I am working backwards since I already know who I am but it is an excellent set of techniques to deepen your understanding of how the mind works. James: Well, working backwards is always easier then working forwards because the seeking has stopped. As long as we are here action is required and the jhanas are as good a way as any to spend your time. Kumar: In Hindu tradition doing jhanas would be like doing tapas, very useful for stilling the mind, burning karma and allowing the self to reflect in a pure mind. Enlightened or not, the mind needs to be carefully monitored all the time. James: Yes, indeed. Kumar: In my personal experience, doing tapas or jhanas is essential for maintaining equanimity and a calm, tranquil mind. I also realized the connection between the pranayama exercises taught in raja yoga and connecting to the non-experiencing witness through breath practice. It was a very powerful feeling knowing that breath can help connect the mind to the nonexperiencing witness in a radically different way. Of course, the assumption is that you already know that you are the non-experiencing entity. James: Yes, you can connect with the breath. It happens in the method I teach too but the big issue, as you say, is whether or not you know you are the non-experiencing witness. Seems your self-knowledge is firming up nicely. Kumar: Actually, any meditation practice or scriptural study should suffice but one advantage of doing jhanas is the bliss the mind feels while meditating. It would be the Buddhist equivalent of bhakti yoga. Also, in these deep absorption states, the knowledge that “I am limitless awareness” will stick better and continue to grow. There is some confusion in Buddhism about awareness/self as presented by Vedanta and nonself. When I asked the teacher if jhana arises in the mind or awareness, they had no idea what I was talking about. Nobody ever asked them this question before. Also, I asked who is the recognizer of the jhana state, because to recognize that you are in jhana, there has to be an element of recognition, otherwise you will have no idea what state you are in. Recognition necessarily has to happen in the mind because it is an instrument of the self and the mind is insentient except as illuminated by the awareness. James: I am not surprised that they don’t know the self. That is our issue with Buddhism since time immemorial. I have yet to meet a Buddhist that understands it. There is a video on my website of a Buddhist – the only one I ever came across who seems to know what it is and that he is it – that seems to indicate that self-knowledge is alive somewhere in the Buddhist world, but it is very rare. They are doer-oriented, experience-oriented, particularly the jhana guys. Kumar: Anyway, I found it odd that this obvious fact was lost to them. Maybe the concept of noself is misinterpreted by Buddhists as a non-recognizing entity, I don’t know, but I wish they just said that it was awareness or the mind illuminated by awareness. I had a big discussion with my Zen teacher after the retreat but it seems in Buddhism they dance around the fact. James: They don’t know, Kumar. When Buddhism left its Vedic roots it splintered into a myriad of ideas, most of them – I hesitate to say all – devoid of self-knowledge. They talk about it, they dance around it, but they do not have a valid means of self-knowledge. Kumar: That said, I have no doubt it is a powerful practice, and stilling the mind allows one to see the conditioning of the mind as a whole. I can bet easy money that “choiceless awareness” that Krishnamurti talks about is using the practice of jhana to still the mind so that at some point in time the spark of awareness ignites. James: This is probably true but, again, it just generates experience, and without a way to evaluate it apart from the jiva’s (always uninformed) interpretation it usually develops into another frustration and attachment. What do the Buddhists say is the purpose of the jhanas? We know they are good for getting a sattvic mind but what do they think they are accomplishing? There are a lot of other ways of getting a sattvic mind. Kumar: Maybe if you sit long enough and you are an intelligent person, the insight that you are awareness might arise, but Vedanta is easier. James: That’s right. We give them that. Meditation is called a leading error. It is a mistake but it can put you in the right arena and inquiry may develop and, like Ramana, you might just get that you are awareness. Kumar: Historically Buddha had to differentiate himself from the Vedic culture so it is entirely possible that he articulated the same concepts slightly differently. When I was reading Buddhism I came across their renditions of Sanskrit words, and some of them were right, some were close and some were completely off the mark. The problem with Buddhism is that it can be whatever you want it to be. There are more Buddhisms than stars in the sky. Vedanta is Vedanta. It does not change because the object of knowledge… awareness… does not change. If you haven’t been taught, you will not get it. Kumar: I am pretty sure when Buddha said anatman he meant that there was no permanent experiencing entity, which is correct. James: That is true but concepts are just concepts. Their implied meaning can point to the self and deliver self-knowledge but unless the concepts are used in the proper way – we have a definite method for using concepts – they won’t remove ignorance, they will just supply definitions, more concepts – for objects in the apparent reality and for the self. Their problem is that they don’t know what enlightenment is. You have to know that the problem is ignorance and that getting a concept of who you are is still ignorance. What happened is that, as you say, the Buddha felt he had to differentiate himself from the Vedic culture which means he didn’t understand what it actually was at its heart. He was only looking at it from the religious/cultural level. The Brahmins were corrupt so he assumed that Vedanta was corrupt and he decided he would reform it or provide and alternative. He would never have done this had he been properly taught. And if he was enlightened it was not due to teaching. It was like Ramana’s, experiential, from which he probably extracted the knowledge. But we really don’t know. Nobody knows. Buddhism was cooked up many years after the Buddha and he didn’t write, or if he did it was lost to time. What we have are a few snippets of his words. And who knows exactly what he meant by them, or what those who remembered them did to them as they were handed down? I think you are right about his meaning of the word anatman. But this is not a teaching. It is one small idea that needs to be contexualized within a much broader framework if it is going to make sense. Kumar: I hope your retreat went well. I am enjoying sitting still in silence and watching my breath unfold. The journey continues. James: Good for you. I have been there and done that, as they say. Yes, the retreat was excellent. Take care of yourself, Kumar. ~ Much love, James"

it is supposed to be never-ending and that is the fun of it, you're starting to get in touch with the essence of enlightening there will always be a NEXT step , something new to learn, and you want that, because that means you will always be able to expand and enjoy new things. the ultimate lesson, is that it's not about achieving something, it's simple but it's not about the destination it's about the journey. you will never be ''done'', there never going to be something that you will do that will allow you to go ''ah ,I'm finally there'' never. whether it's a new job, a new house, a lover, a friend, kids, never, never... drop all conditions, and realize that life is now, be happy just because you're improving, because you're tackling on new challenges, if being challenged makes you happy then you will always be happy. which requires a switch of perspective, a challenge is not a way to achieve something anymore, a challenge is a source of excitement and fun because it does exactly that, challenge you, take fun in the feeling of wanting to create something, not into that which you create. I'm literally talking about a feeling, that feeling you feel when you long or desire for something, be grateful for it, feel the energy of it, the vitality, and be appreciative of it, feel how it moves you to new places, and that without it you wouldn't be able to even move. people who are depressed lack desire and motivation and they are literally stuck in their homes unable to move, and I know this from experience, this is real. if not for our desires we wouldn't be able to even move, yet the first thing we do when we feel desire is to not appreciate the feeling, we compare our desire to what we have, and we punish it with pain! "oh I'm feeling desire for something, something that I don't have! desire is making me realize what I don't have!pain pain pain, I must get what I don't have as soon as possible'' desire didn't come and make you feel like you're missing something, the very presence of desiring is already something given to you that you didn't have before, it is a gift of real energy the second you desire something you've already added something to your life desire and longing is real energy, if you can get to a place where you're thankful that these feelings are moving you, giving you energy to go after what you want, you will be in bliss, and the results never matter, what you achieve, never matters, its simply a signpost ''go there'' ''go here'' it doesn't matter where you go, life in its infinite intelligence can make anything joyful. just see goals as signposts : ''oh now I'm going towards there, oh now I'm going there'', see how desires moves you,it's not about getting somewhere, everywhere is fine, everywhere is perfect , it's about the moving

@S33K3R Interesting idea! Maybe I'll try to compile some of what I've gone through in my experiences though it wouldn't be as good as basing it from many people's experiences. Though, these stages remind me of Riso and Russ Hudson's mental health stages for different types of people, where people have 3 main manifestations in how they deal with fear, shame and anger. In their book Personaliy Types. Really changed how I think about growth for myself. Here's some of my own experiences and how I dealt with each stage based on the 10 stages of meditation above. Note that my experiences can be different from others. You guys might wanna see this. @Nahm @Shan @Max_V@AleksM@Dodo@jon hinkle Stage one : I often questioned how useful meditation was. Really? Sitting doing nothing? How could that help? I was a pretty easily distracted person and at this time, meditation was painfully boring. How to solve it : Start small. Because if you start with something too long — you'll probably be demotivated soon. Think 5-10 minutes. Then 15. Then 20. Or more if you like, steadily increasing it when you're ready for the next.. It's best to do this at the same time and place each day as habits formed in the brain tend to be more easily imprinted this way. You can read the benefits of meditation and visualize how it would affect each area of your life in detail. Or even learn about a meditation master's life to be inspired — feelings are more easily made if you can imagine a concrete example of what the benefits are rather than abstract descriptions. See the blog James Clear for more motivation, habits and procrastination tips. Best blog I found for the area of discipline. Stage two : I remember meditating in a car getting distracted by all kinds of thoughts. I could daydream endlessly throughout the meditation and I could even spent the entire session distracted I was so pissed — how can I do this? How to solve it : People are better off using a guided meditation as without one, they're likely to get too distracted. Try to be gentle when you notice your thoughts drifting off — like placing a feather on your thoughts and placing your attention back to the breath. Its best to left the thoughts drift away like watching clouds than forcing it. Forcing it just makes more thoughts about how annoyed you are. Don't overcomplicate going back to the breath — that just creates more thoughts. Just do it. Stage 3 : I often had trouble getting sleepy with meditation here. I always did it in the morning and add to that my lack of sleep the day before — I was tired. I'd tell myself to open my eyes during the meditation but I was often tempted to drift off to sleep. Later I'd tell myself to meditate in the afternoon instead but I was impatient enough to not do it often. How to solve it: Sit up straight while allowing your shoulders to relax. Sit with "dignity". If you're still falling asleep, you can have the option of opening your eyes or having meditation on a time of the day when you're less tired. Ground yourself in the surface under your butt and your feet. Stage 4 : I remember being focused on my breath but like a daze. That I had to make lots of effort to keep it that way and it felt like I could get distracted any moment. It felt like trying to hold an umbrella still in a really windy day. How to solve it : Focus on the sensation of dullness. See how it changes with each moment. How it rises and falls. How it moves around. And focus on the breath with more specifics — how fast it moves with each changing moment. Its intensity. Where it is in your body — it can be from your nose, your chest or your belly. And even subdividing your focus in even smaller areas of that area. It's also helpful to remember your motivation before or as you mediate to avoid distraction. Not only motivations for yourself but how your meditation practice can change you in a way that benefits others. Greater awareness brings better control. Greater motivation allows more sharpness in focus. I also found it helpful to deal with strong emotions here in a certain way. Often by asking what the texture, the color, the shape, the movement or any other sensory description to your emotions. No need to overthink it. Just say the first thing in your head. This counterintuitive technique allows a deepening of awareness in emotions. Stage 5 : This is where I felt a greater peacefulness as I meditate. This is likely the time where I really enjoyed getting back to meditation. In my practice as I looked closer, I noticed the breath. But I didn't really focus with sharpness. Think of it like the difference good enough definition of a movie and a high definition of a movie. How to solve it : I was lacking knowledge so I googled it. I find this article especially helpful. http://dharmatreasure.org/on-mindful-awareness-vs-dullness/. What I remember the most is practicing meditating in louder environments. Stage 6 : A greater sense of peacefulness enters my daily life. It feels like I'm meditating even as the day passes. A regular bliss begins to form and it's more happiness than I ever thought possible. I focus with ease but still can get a bit distracted by things. Birds chirping. People talking outside. Sounds of airplanes passing through the sky. I was the type of person who was sensitive to noise and crowds — but as my focus deepened, I found I'd stopped even noticing the existence of busy environments around me. How to solve it : Now that I think about it, this stage was triggered by my attempts to focus longer in my everyday life. I've been steadily focusing on more in depth content but at a time, I thought I'd really try this. I read books more. I stopped watching 10 minute videos or similar and watched a tv series or documentaries longer than an hour instead. I stopped going to short content sites like Reddit and found longer articles in Quora. Finding videos in playlists more and trying to learn from more in depth online content like courses from universities like the sites Edx, khanacademy or Coursera. I even moved my meditation time from 40 minutes to an hour because I liked it so much. Everything I did — I made sure I didn't just glaze over it — but concentrate deeply in my understanding of it. This was also strongly triggered when I tried Self-inquiry for some time. Especially with Peter Ralston's book, The Book Of Not Knowing. As well as deepening my thinking about thinking. I make sure I'm aware of what exactly I'm focusing on — rather than just focusing without awareness. As I said earlier, it's the difference between focusing on the road and wheel in front of you and also knowing what and why you're heading somewhere. Stage 7 : I feel an even deeper peacefulness in this stage but it still hasn't pearmeated throughout my whole life. In daily life, there's often stresses yet the thing people know less about is the subtle stresses. Small amounts of impatience, slight sadness or more. And in this stage, I find a deeper awareness of every feeling that passes through me — down to the tiniest details. And those feelings are often different types of bliss. I find that I learn more quickly things I never dreamed of understanding. Time goes so fast 10 minutes can feel like 20 years has passed. But the problem is that my mind feels like it has to force this experience out. Like having to carry heavy bags as you walk up a mountain with a majestic natural view. You're still someone pretty strong — but after some time, it gets burdening. Then I'd drop to lower stages. It feels wonderful, but it's also straining. How to solve it : Continue practicing concentration. It's a good idea to focus on continuous focus and trying to lengthen it over time. When it's time to lessen the effort of focus, think of it like this. Remember someone you admire. Notice that you're not forcing the thought to come out. You're simply recalling it and it even has a certain ease to it. You can practice moving with this ease of focus in a meditation as you move your awareness from the top of your body to the bottom as many times as you like. Allowing all that focus with the softness of placing a feather on your focus object. It's also helpful to practice being aware of how much force or ease you're supposed to do to concentrate on the moment. Stage 8 : The few times I've been here I felt a peace. Time didn't just go faster, the concept of time disappears entirely. Bliss seems unnoticeable, because it has become a natural part of functioning. During these times, self control becomes outstanding. I don't have the same urges to procrastinate or eat junk food. Deep focus and discipline feels as light as carrying around a coin. But during this, I can feel some bizzare sensations. Like a hyperawareness of itchy feelings and even an erupting joy cascading through my body. Recently today I focused so well it seemed that the visible environment was subtly warping around me — as if the furniture around me was breathing. With all these extraordinary sensations, I couldn't help but focus on them and get momentarily distracted. How to solve this : I don't know for sure as I haven't passed this stage. But if I had to make an educated guess, the answer might lie in determination sitting. It's a meditation where you don't move so makes the meditator have to learn how to deal with this uncomfortable body sensations. Any critique of this? Or any additional information to place? Maybe I'll have to edit this later on. Edit : Upon reflection, I learned that I had a few experiences of stage 8 to add. I remember a technique from the Headspace app that taught me about effortless focus.

@Shanmugam All thoughts have stopped but it's not like I can't think anymore, I just have to force myself to hear mental sounds(thoughts). I can think whenever I want to think otherwise I abide in this awarness of no-mind all of the time. Sometimes thoughts appear without me consciously wanting them, but when they do I can stop them by not asigning them any meaning, not paying attention to them and then they disapear into nothingness pretty quickly. BTW. I am sure that I'm enlightened. Emotions stills arise when I am in this awarness without thoughts, sometimes they are very painful but overall I don't suffer from them because I don't identify with them and by being in this awarness they lose all the power(the power for suffering). Negative emotions are just a constructed meaning an interpretation, positive and negative are constructed meanings from the mind and I can let go of that meaning now, emotions just are, existentialy they don't have an asigned meaning to them. I can be happy NOW, I don't have to wait to be happy, I don't need a thing to be happy. I don't need people, situations, things, achievements, thoughts, emotional stimulations, interpretations, good and bad, a position, meaning, control, approval, past or future, comparing, gossip, seriousness, a purpose, communication, inspiration or insight to be happy. I can be happy even if my body feels like shit. I am detached from all of that. Emotional hights are not times when I am happiest. I am happiest when I have piece of mind. This is pure bliss to me. Don't ask yourself if the cup is half full or half empty, just realize there is no cup. The mind state is a fantasy. You maintain it with illusions. Illusion of meaning (existentially there is no meaning), identification (existentialy you can't identify yourself as a thing), control (there is no free wil), with comparing yourself with others (that makes sense only to egos), with attachment, judgement, gossip, seriousness, proudness, with a sense of you (the big You - consciousness can not be perceived with senses).

@Leo Gura said that a true hero is one who sacrifices himself and in the end does away with the illusion. So it brings me some comfort that in the end he cared for so many people and that took a toll on him. He sacrificed himself for so many people so he is a true hero. When I didn't have a car and my mom and dad were bickering about it he took initiative and thought to himself that it wasn't fair for me to take all those driving lessons, have my license, and live in a place that needed a car which I didn't have. He came with me and my mother to the dealership negotiated for the car and gave the down payment. That is a man of dignity and compassion. I just wished he took more care of his health so we could keep him longer but, then again you never know. Like you said @jimrich he's in a better place now with no more pain and suffering. May he be in bliss and peace.

Day 7: So my Uncle just died 2 days ago and it seems extremely surreal. Somehow we're all under this illusion that we can take life for granted because death will never happen to us. Modern society seems like it never takes time to embrace the void... until it just comes up and takes them. Very family oriented cultures such as the one I grew up in are always looking to get together, talk, and do some kind of activity. If you're not up for that they'll sometimes want to force you into it because they're automatically under the impression that you are suffering if you aren't part of that. The education system culture is the same but, instead of leisurely activities they want you to always be keeping yourself busy. I had one teacher who told us students that she just didn't want us to "sit there and vegetate". PARTICIPATION PARTICIPATION PARTICIPATION!!! It's so important right. Well I don't remember signing up for that and I don't remember signing up for existence either it was all forced on all of us and it's also our decision if we want to force it unto others. So I engaged in a little experiment in trying to get comfortable with the "void" quite literally. Just went to bed and put my head on a pillow. I myself am an extremely light sleeper so that's why I even meditate while lying on the bed. While I was sleeping in that comfortable position I felt this state of bliss. One problem though my own mind wasn't letting me sleep that's the problem my mind most of the time doesn't let me sleep their is this constant dialogue that never shuts off. Then at that moment I was thinking that death if it finally takes away this torturous constant dialogue it's a form of peace and liberation. So as bad as I felt for my uncle at that time he was in the hospital and he was sedated I thought to myself hey I was lying my head on this pillow but, my thoughts wouldn't let me feel peace they just kept going and going and going and going. So then I thought about him in the hospital and I said he doesn't. That gave me some sense of peace. Other than that 2 weeks ago I felt great with all my printing projects and I was having so much fun. Then his situation kept getting worse and worse and I felt so bad for him. Then when he finally passed I said to myself well we all gotta confront this. No one in this world is immortal and I think his passing also acts as a wake up call. To wake up and make the most of what this thing we have called life is before it leaves us. I miss him but, I take solace in the fact he isn't suffering anymore and nothing can bother him.

About three months ago I had an LSD experience that has left me a bit traumatized. I've tripped on LSD dozens of times on higher doses before, but this particular trip was the strangest. I took 4 doses and smoked a few blunts throughout the trip. After about 20 minutes of taking the acid, I could feel a wave of unease coming. It was abnormally strong. So strong that I couldn't stand anymore and so I laid down and listened to some music. That calmed and relieved me down a bit, but the wave was still coming in strong. During the peak of the trip, my reality was fluctuating between pleasure and pain. I was having visions and imagining a life of extraordinary pleasure and then a life of excruciating pain. I began to think that all of my friends old entities, old gods that were waiting for me to wake up. The most unsettling part of this entire experience was the feeling that I was inside of a simulation. I kept thinking about life lines. I would have glimpses of really dark realities where I would be raped and tortured for thousands of years inside of a dungeon and then a few moments later I would have an unexpected sense of bliss where I would see rainbows and a future where I'd be creating music and spreading love. Also, I would very clearly become aware of alternate realities, where the characters of my life would do very unexpected actions that they wouldn't do in my reality. The characters of my life all seem to blend into one energy. The idea of old souls come to mind. Everybody that was around me during the trip, felt like a very old entity who had taken form as my friends. My friends all felt really old, beyond their physical form. And i was realizing just how much physical forms we had all lived through. We had all gone through many many forms of life to end up where we were. The entire trip was extremely unsettling. And I haven't been able to get it off my mind. Sometimes I find myself questioning what's real in my every day life. It's not a pleasant feeling. I feel like i might be delusional. I keep remembering the vivid emotions that encompassed that trip and i find it really strange. I have a deep feeling that there's something really weird going on but can't put my finger on it let alone explain it. I'm just been very in awe after this trip and would appreciate some guidance and experiences. I wanna know if i'm deluding myself or if i really did tap into something strange.

Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world. Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life. Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden.

@Shan Wow, Shan. Thanks! love meditation and I love descriptions about stages in something that has to do with personal development. (Okay, maybe stages in general. Haha.). And now these two are combined. . My concentration on reading this article was stable. And I feel a stable bliss — with a certain texture to it. It's like how emotional ache feels similar to an actual physical ache. Bliss feels like silk — amazingly smooth, light and spacious. Often being cold is associated with being cruel but strangely, bliss feels cold. It's like a refreshing cold breeze in my head. I think I'm in level 6 right now. As I look closely with subtle distractions I could hear the faint sound of a family member watching TV in a nearby room. And some birds chirping outside. And that's right now — where there are some parts of the day where I'm not as focused. I can't seem to concretely remember a moment of what subtle dullness in stage 5 is — but it might be like how I practiced focusing on a book not just lightly but really trying to focus and understand in depth. Even drop to level 4 at times — hello, embarrassing memories. The funny thing about level 6 is that I can focus on things too deeply. When I switch to another object to focus on — it takes my mind a bit of time because it feels like I'm moving away from paradise that I've gotten from sustained attention. Might be why I type long posts — I concentrate deeply and I'm not that good at turning it off at times. I almost got late to class because I gotten so absorbed in a book or even tell people to wait a bit as my mind loads to talk to them. Eheh. I'm not sure I get this stage but metacognitve is another word for thinking about thinking. And I'm taking a guess that it means that I should be more aware at what my mind is focusing on rather than focusing without awareness. Difference between focusing deeply the wheel and the road in front of you and also knowing that you're driving to somewhere for the right reasons. Also stage 7 says they gained the ability to focus to focus as broadly or deeply as they want. Which I don't right now. Guess thanks to this I know what to try to do. Haha. Shan, I haven't reached stage 8 but I did seem to surpass stage 4. 5 years meditation since age 11. Sometimes 40 minutes a day. Sometimes 20 minutes. Sometimes an hour. Occasionally more than 2 hours. As well as mindfulness in daily life. Like in eating. During lectures. Reading. Taking a bath. Internet browsing even etc.

@Joseph Maynor Buddha said that there is no God (Brahman) . If there is God, you cannot be totally empty. You may not be there but the God will be there, the Divine will be there. And your mind can deceive you, because your Divine may be just your mind playing tricks. Buddha said that there is no soul, because if there is any soul, ATMA, you can hide your ego behind it. Your ego will be difficult to leave if you feel that there is some self within you. Then you cannot be totally empty because you will be there. Just to prepare the ground for these techniques of emptiness, Buddha denied everything. He was not an atheist but he appeared to be an atheist because he said that there is no God, he said there is no soul, he said there is nothing substantial in existence – existence is empty. But this was just to prepare the ground for these techniques. Once you enter emptiness you have entered all – you may call it the Divine, you may call it God, or ATMA, soul, whatsoever you like – but you can enter the truth only when you are totally empty. Nothing should be left of you. Hindus thought that Buddha was destroying religion, that he was teaching irreligion. And people who heard him, even they couldn’t follow, because whenever you go somewhere, you go to seek something – you never go to seek emptiness. So those who went to hear him were seeking something – nirvana, moksha, the other world, heaven, truth – but they were seeking something. They had come to gratify their ultimate desire: to find the truth. That is the last desire. And unless you are completely desireless, you cannot know the truth; the very condition of knowing is to be totally desireless. So one thing is certain, you cannot desire truth. If you desire it, the very desire will become the barrier. There were masters before Buddha who were teaching, ”Don’t desire, be desireless.” But they were talking about God, about the kingdom of God, heaven, paradise, moksha, the ultimate freedom and liberation – and they were saying, ”Be desireless.” Buddha felt that you cannot be desireless if there is something to be attained. You may pretend that you are desireless, but this pretension, desirelessness, is also from some desire to be fulfilled. It is false. The masters say that you cannot attain to ultimate bliss with desire, and you want to attain ultimate bliss – so you start being desireless, you try to be desireless, so that you can attain the ultimate bliss. But the desire is there.You are trying to be desireless just because of the desire. So Buddha said that there is no God to be attained. Even if you desire, there is no one to be attained... so be desireless. There is no moksha somewhere, there is no goal. Life is meaningless and goal-less. His emphasis is beautiful and wonderful – no one has tried that way. He destroyed all the goals just to help you to be desireless. If the goals are there, how can you be desireless? And if you are not desireless, you will not attain to the goal – this is the paradox. He destroyed all the goals – not that those goals are not there, they are there and they can be attained – but if you want to attain them, if you desire to attain them, it becomes impossible. The very basic condition is you must be desireless– then the ultimate happens to you. So Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Drop all desires and when there is no desire you will be empty. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2 ~ Osho Before Buddha , Jainas denied God, but they do not denied soul. There were schools of Hinduism which denied spirituality, they were materialists, atheist , a Hindu can be a atheist too, a Hindu can be monotheist, polytheist too.

Ilusion of Success So I just watched Leo's video on how paradoxically pursuing success makes you even more miserable and how it radically departs from happiness in the moment. I've spent 2014 to 2017 reclaiming childlike happiness and re-connecting with the passion, simple pleasures, and going back to my original purpose so I can re-discover myself. I tasted that deep bliss twice in San Francisco while sitting on a pier and in the park and feeling this deep joy surge through me. It was because "the moment was golden." I feel like that's been my new mantra "the moment is golden!" However, I also want to focus more on pursuing authentic success that's aligned with the authentic self's desires. I proposed the idea of Purpose Driven Hedonism which is focused on how pursuing pleasure aligned with authentic desires maximizes happiness. I returned to the state of childhood happiness.

@Leo Gura Thank you. I took several days to prepare for this experience. As well as a lot of prior research on psilocybin mushrooms and psychedelics in general. I used many of the usual meditation techniques that I normally do, however one thing which really helped me to prepare for this trip was the extensive usage of negative visualization. I have been using negative visualization since long before I became interested in self actualization and I kicked it into overdrive during the days leading up to this experience. I would meditate and intentionally let my mind come up with the most messed up, demonic, morbid and downright horrifying things that it could generate. I would think of the things that would freak me out the most and then completely bathe my mind in as many of those thoughts as I could. Whilst experiencing these negative thoughts I would challenge myself to simply watch them and not judge them no matter how horrible they were. I felt that this way it would be very difficult for me to experience a bad trip on a psychedelic as I had already begun to train my mind to be equanimous even in the face of extreme horror. This preparation paid off, as when I was facing complete obliteration during the trip my awareness was able to transmute chaos into bliss. When I thought I was screaming it was not out of fear but simply out of pain from the feeling of being violently erased as an entity. I also read a lot of trip reports and found many common themes as to why people get extremely freaked out on psychedelics. Being afraid of ego dissolution, making psychedelics social, not respecting them, not being meditative or contemplative, no preparation and simply put exhibiting stupid behaviors were almost unanimous in all of the bad trip reports that I have come across. I also listened to Martin Ball and Kilindi Iyi and what they had to say about properly using psychedelics. (I came across both of them because of you. Thanks Leo!) You are absolutely right in that psychedelics will kick my ass. I was physically exhausted for roughly the next 36 hours after the trip ended. I greatly respect these substances and take the utmost care and preparation when planning to ingest them.

This is my recount of my first experience with psilocybin mushrooms. I took psilocybin mushrooms for the first time in late June 2017. I woke up a bit after 4:30 am in the morning. I made sure to go to the bathroom and get a bottle of water before the trip as I did not want anything to interrupt it. I retrieved my psilocybin mushrooms and weighed exactly 5 grams of dried Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms. Before I ingested the fungus I took about five minutes to sit in silent meditation. My room was also in complete silent darkness as psilocybin preforms best in this environment. During these five minutes I listened to some calm music and mentally prepared myself to completely let go of everything. I got into a mindset in which I was ready to die; right there and right then. I was ready to be completely obliterated. After this meditation of complete surrender I turned off all technology around me. I paused out of respect for the fungus, I then looked at the mushrooms and said “I will go wherever you take me, with grace”, and then I ate the mushrooms. They actually tasted quite good. After eating the mushrooms I then got into lotus position and meditated at the edge of my bed. This was one of the stillest meditations I had ever had. It was almost as if my body knew the profundity of what was to come. After about 20 minutes of silent meditation in darkness I felt the first effects of the psilocybin. My body began to feel heavy and I felt a tingling all over my body especially in my spine and in my head. I then leaned my back against the wall as I meditated. I began to feel nauseous as well; I was prepared for this as I had a vomit bucket next to me. As the effects intensified I then had to lie down flat on my back. The effects became more intense. As I laid down I immediately got in a bilateral symmetrical position. Somehow I knew that this was going to be very important. I remembered listening to interviews with Martin Ball and the importance of bilateral symmetry during psychedelic experiences. Then the weirdest and most profound experience of my life began. As I laid in the silent darkness of my room on my back with my eyes closed it was as if my ego structure was sucked right out of my mind in an instant. Through no volition of my own my body began to contort into various bilateral symmetrical poses very similar to the ones that martin ball discussed. It was an extremely strange yet beautiful experience. I had no control over these movements and it felt like the psilocybin had possessed my body. My nerves were tingling the entire time this happened. I could feel my nervous system trying to balance itself as the psilocybin entered. As my body continued to contort into these various poses they became more wild and intense, it felt as if the psilocybin was testing the waters. It was entering my body and trying to see how it could take control of my nervous system and guide me. It felt to me that it was trying to get accustomed used to being in a human body. My perception of time dissolved as well. When I opened my eyes I saw intense visuals in a grid like pattern overlaid on my vision. At this point I could see the light from the sunrise through the blinds in my room. As I peered out it was so bright. Brighter than anything I had ever seen yet so beautiful. The bodily contortions slowed and I heard an intuitive voice say something along the lines of “ok, that was your introduction, now are you ready for what I have to show you?” There was no ego present however I knew that this was about to get very intense. At this point I don’t really know how to describe what happened as there was no ego and no sense of time. But I will do my best to recount. My consciousness / awareness was then catapulted outside of space and time in a void of complete nothingness. I then heard the intuitive voice say something along the lines of, “I need you to understand the profundity of the things that I am showing you.” “People rarely get to experience things like this.” In the nothingness a light formed and I was that light and the witness of the light at the same time. The ego then tried to ask questions to try and understand, label and interpret what was occurring. The psilocybin did not like this at all. Immediately as the questions of the ego arose the experience began to turn negative. In the void I saw red and black vivid colors emerge. I saw hundreds of psychedelic demons come into existence and general chaos ensue. Keep in mind that I was the colors and demons and chaos. The ego of Thomas roger became concerned at this and tried again to ask questions and understand. But it was as if the psilocybin said “NO!” “You will wait until I am finished showing you what you need to see before you begin to intellectualize any of this!” “Simply sit back, experience and observe this.” After the psilocybin said this, the ego of Thomas-Roger was obliterated in a sea of destruction and chaos. I felt the pain and agony of being completely ripped apart in every way possible. The ego was screaming at the top of its lungs. The ego screamed out into the void and was abruptly silenced. The ego was dissolved and transmuted into the chaos that had annihilated it and the immense pain was turned into infinite bliss that I had never felt before. Now that the ego was not going to be a factor anymore in this experience I was now the light in the void. However even after this there was still a witness of awareness. At this moment I felt as if I was everything in existence. Then the psilocybin said “ok, great, now we can continue.” As the experience went on my awareness/ consciousness began to traverse the multiverse with the psilocybin as my guide. I was shown the intricacies of our illusory concepts of space and time. I was shown that all is absolutely ONE. Next even more strange occurrences ensued. I was shown a massive psychedelic “city” made of pure light that existed outside of the multiverse, space and time. This “city” of light was large enough to make Earth look tiny in comparison. The psilocybin guided my awareness through this place. I saw technologies made of what I can only describe as light. I saw technologies so inconceivably advanced that they would make the greatest human technological marvels look like less than stone age tools. All throughout this “city” were beings of pure light. Some of them were humanoid in shape some of them were so alien in appearance that I can’t even begin to describe them. These beings could bring things into existence simply by thinking of it. They could travel anywhere in the multiverse by teleporting. They created worlds for fun. The psilocybin told me that I (awareness/consciousness) could do this as well. I saw many other things here that I can’t even begin to describe with language. All I can say is that this was a beautiful place of love and light. The most memorable thing that I saw in this place was a vast library of all of the knowledge in the multiverse. It was like a cathedral and a library made of pure light. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I lack the vocabulary to describe just how beautiful it was. After seeing this beautiful place of love and light at one point I was shown a nexus of information in which streams of information were pouring out at an extremely fast speed in all directions. This information consisted of every way that we humans use symbols to communicate information. This included but was not limited to all forms of language and all forms of mathematics. I felt at this time that I knew all languages, all modes of communication and all relays of information. Information was everywhere. From the sub atomic to the molecular all the way up to the multiverse. I saw information in DNA helixes, plants, animals, myself and everything else. I (consciousness/awareness) literally knew everything. At this point I experienced the most intense and breathtaking part of the experience. I felt like I experienced everything that had ever happened in all of existence simultaneously in less than a second. It was so powerful that the witnessing awareness/ consciousness was obliterated. The witness was the last vestige of anything resembling duality at all. Now there was only the happenings of existence and I (pure nothingness) was all of those happenings. It was as if I had created existence and decided to experience existence in every way possible. From bacteria to entire civilizations spanning light years, every life, every breath, every experience was one. And I was that one. It’s very hard to describe with the limits of human language, but I will continue. I felt like this experience lasted hundreds of millions of years. It was so vast and visceral. I lived as thousands of people, plants, fungi, bacteria and animals. I saw entire alien civilizations rise from the stone age to type three civilizations and fall. I lived as various men, women and children. In all of these experiences there were vast, various things constantly changed about them but one thing remained the same. The consciousness that was experiencing life remained. I don’t really know how to describe that. I experienced childbirth from both the perspective of the mother organism giving birth and from the perspective of the child organism being born. I experienced sex from both the male and female perspective simultaneously. I felt both masculine and feminine energies as ONE. I felt how integral sexuality was to existence and just how profoundly divine sexuality is. Sexuality is not simply a bond between a male and a female. Sexuality is a vector in which novelty can be introduced into the universe and existence as a whole. All of the millions of experiences and perspectives were happening so fast and it was impossible to keep up with the experience. It was moving so fast that it was overwhelming it was a sea of chaos and yet I was this sea of chaos. After all of this profound stimulation everything returned to the void. This void felt like infinity. I was in this experience for eons. It was unborn and undying. I was this void of absolute nothingness from which everything stemmed and I was that void. After experiencing eternity in the void of absolute nothingness standard reality began to form. Thus commenced the comedown phase of the experience. The witnessing consciousness reformed. I came back into my body. My body felt extremely heavy and difficult to control. My mind went from states of being conscious to unconscious. Slowly my perception of reality shifted from that of cosmic consciousness to that of human consciousness; however my perception was still nondual. I felt all of the information that I had witnessed being embedded into my nervous system. My whole body was vibrating as I began to come back. My head was ringing/buzzing for the entire rest of the day. This headache did not go away until the next day. As I slowly came back to physical reality all of my bodily senses were very sensitive. I felt everything so vividly. It was very intense to even feel my body lying on the bed. Feeling the air being pulled into and pushed out of my body was also very intense in a way that I can’t really describe. I was so immersed in tactile sensations that I began to feel the bed very gently. It felt like this was my first time touching something. As I tried to get up I fell several times over a dozen before I was even able to get to my knees. As I looked around my room I felt completely in shock. The best way I can describe how I felt at this time is I felt l how the character David did at the end of the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, after he had come out of the stargate. My room looked like an alien environment to me. I felt like I was seeing it for the very first time. I had not felt like this since I was a baby. As I looked around I thought it was VERY strange that anything was happening at all. I thought that it was very strange that we humans could not simply do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. I then looked at my hands and I was blown away. I saw the complexity and strangeness of the biological machine that I was looking at. It was very amazing. I struggled to get to my feet. After falling about 6 more times I finally managed to barely stand up. I was amazed at how my body was working. I was amazed that I even had a body. I looked at my bookshelf and I was almost in reverence for it. I nearly cried when I looked at it. Reason being, after seeing that library of light during my experience, I have a newfound respect for information. I had to use the bathroom afterwards so I slowly walked to the bathroom. Walking wasn’t easy after the trip. When I entered the bathroom and saw my reflection in the mirror the first thing I thought was WHAT THE FUCK?! It was so strange to see a body looking at me. It was so strange to see a body at all. Again it was like I had never seen a human body before. On my body I saw visuals like patterns and glyphs moving all over. However the visuals were the least of my concern. They were cool and interesting to observe but I was more mesmerized by the fact that I had a body at all. My body looked like an alien organism to me. After using the bathroom I asked my trip sitter what happened to my body. He said that for the most part after the contorting poses I was passed out. He said that at one point that I began flailing, grabbing things and swinging them around and making incoherent noises. It surprised me that I was not screaming at the top of my lungs at one point during the experience. This is because when the ego was being obliterated I could have sworn that I was screaming at the top of my lungs in complete agony. After learning from my trip sitter that most of my trip consisted of my body simply lying there I was ok with that. I walked around my home feeling like this was my first time seeing it. I decided to walk outside in the backyard and when I did it was a bit overwhelming. I marveled at all of the lifeforms outside. I simply sat in the grass in awe of the planet I had just returned to. All in all the psilocybin experience lasted for nearly six hours. It was the strangest, deepest, most profound and most beautiful experience of my life thus far. This experience forever changed the way I look at reality and it has supercharged my existing meditation practice. Psychedelics are really an amazing tool for learning, consciousness exploration and enlightenment work. They can lead to many beautiful things if the student is ready for the lesson. Here is a video explaining the positions that my body was contorting into. Skip to about 5:25 in. The grid visuals I experienced during the come up portion were very similar to this. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/Thermodynamic-Horizon-76214599 This is what the "city" of light was similar to. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/ET-Contact-676996115 This is what the visuals overlaid on my body looked similar to. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/Vitis-Animae-264377166

A well lived life is highly subjective but I've been pondering the question. To me, a well-lived life is self-created and self-defined. I see a well-lived life as a life focused on discovering and expressing your potential. It's realizing and acting on your deepest desires! It's a life that's lived in flow state where time just flows by and you're hooked on a feeling of energetic passion or deep bliss. It's discovering AMAZING possibiltities! It's you realizing "I have freedom over my life and I can create my own life."

I've been since kid a hard-case introverted, shy with social phobia. I improved a lot and learned to socialize, but never erase my social phobia at all. I forced myself into social events to fight against my fears, but when I got into self development and Leo's enlightenment episodes my ego find the perfect excuse to avoid uncomfortable situations and my lifestyle became like a enlightenment junkie monk. I work in a job at night without people contact to detach from my ego. I can find bliss being alone, If I want I can find joy in meditation. But I know this is a trap. For some reason we are in this life to overcome our fears, and if we avoid them, they will come back again and again in different situations. This escapism of masturbatory enlightenment has been my rationalisation to stay in the comfort zone. If I'm happy in the now why to approach girls and be rejected? why be married and risk to divorce? why run a business and get broke? I owe it to myself, to stop avoiding the fears of life.

Everything I offer here is just my opinion. Although there is no universally accepted definition of enlightenment, here are the two key criteria that I use: 1) Being fully awake to the correct understanding of your True Self as this One Divine Source-Awareness, the One Self that arises as all apparent selves and 2) Being completely free from all selfish or self-centered tendencies. These two aspects work together to automatically produce the unhindered flow of all the divine virtues such as loving kindness, compassion, peace, humility, generosity, patience, and the divine bliss that holds all human emotions. In this way, your personal consciousness (your soul) becomes a well-tuned instrument in the hands of God, sharing the fruit of enlightenment with everyOne, including yourself. So we see that being fully awake and being completely free leads to being entirely available for the sharing of the One Love of God, without any fear at all. You can read more in my 8-page essay: What Is Enlightenment? http://infinitelymystical.com/essays/what-is-enlightenment.html But perhaps a better place to start would be here: The Loving Heart of Enlightenment http://infinitelymystical.com/essays/the-loving-heart-of-enlightenment.html

Spiritual Experiences I'm beginning to learn about spirituality but I have a growing interest with spiritual experiences. Flow states, peak experiences, divine inspiration, lucid dreams, Shamanic visions, trance states, bliss and ecstacy, Tantra, the Tao, having numinous emotions, self-discovery and self-realization is deeply fascinating to me. It feels like I'm tasting and catching brief glimpses of these experiences but I want to deepen these experiences and deeply ground them in my life. For example, sometimes, while meditating, I feel deeply relaxed and undisturbed. When writing, I can go into a flow state and words pour from me. While cuddling, I felt a deep sense of union and this deep bliss. Holding a girl's hand felt so warm and in that moment, the moment was magic. I want to craft a strategy and go on my own journey to practically apply spiritual experiences in my own life but without relying on religion or scriptures. I feel like i'm reclaiming something deeply emotional! Like i'm fulfilling a deep longing! I feel like my journey will focus on a middle path without going too hardcore with mortifcation of the flesh, or torturing myself, a vow of poverty, or starving myself. I want to achieve these experiences because they fascinate me and so I can experience such profound and staggering emotions or experiences. I feel like I deeply desire authenticity!

"Although the experience of the inner self is invariably uplifting and intensifies the quest, it is always confusing because the knowledge gained from these experiences challenges the view of oneself as a needy, incomplete, inadequate isolated creature. Many of these experiences can accurately be described as the experience of oneness with all things, limitlessness, and transcendent bliss. During this stage, which might also be called the meditation stage, the mind, formerly riveted on happenings in the outer world, turns inward and fixes itself on the self, the light within, and at some point, usually after intense investigation, realizes the self. This realization is invariably formulated in experiential terms and is thought by many to be the end of the search, the ultimate state. But the science of self inquiry says that while this is a welcome and enjoyable state, it is not the end, because there is still a sense of separation between the experiencer and the object of experience, the self. When there is separation there is doubt, and the doubt is always that this state, like all states, will end, plunging the experiencer back into darkness. This fear is invariably fulfilled as the experience is not the direct experience of the self, which is impossible for reasons already discussed, but a reflection of the self in a still mind. No blame. However, the mind is subject to change, so the experience inevitably ends. This doubt is due to the failure of the experiencer to understand that what is experienced is just his or her own self, in which case it could never be lost, because when do you not exist? The failure to convert the experience to knowledge is usually caused by the twin beliefs that knowledge is merely intellectual and that there is such a thing as a permanent experience. Experience is permanent in samsara but discrete experiences are not. So when the experience happens, the intellect is submerged in the bliss, peace and radiance, switches off, as it does in most intense sensuous experiences, and stops inquiring. To enter the final stage, which is not a stage, inquiry must continue during the experience of the self. In ordinary perception, a thought wave arises in the mind corresponding to the nature of the perceived object. You see a tree and you know it is a tree because the self, awareness, illumines the tree thought as it arises in the intellect. Similarly, when the ego experiences the reflection of the self in a pure mind, a thought corresponding to the nature of the self, an unbroken “I” thought, arises, and this thought needs to be owned. When it is taken as one’s own, the “I” thought, backed by experience, destroys the notion in the mind that it is limited, incomplete and separate. At this point, due to inquiry, everything stops and there is a subtle shift. The ego and the Self switch places. The Self, which heretofor has mistakenly been seen as the object of inquiry, "becomes" the subject, and the ego, which had mistakenly been taken to be the subject, "becomes" the object." From "How to attain Enlightement" ~James Swartz @actualized3434 This may not answer your question, but may be helpful.

Talk 326 BY Ramana Maharishi Here is another illustration. Suppose a cow plays rogue and strays into neighbours’ fields to graze. She is not easily weaned from her stealthy habit. Think how she can be kept in the stall. If forcibly tethered in the stall she simply bides her time to play the rogue. If she is tempted with fine grass in the stall she takes one mouthful on the first day and again waits for the opportunity to run away. The next day she takes two mouthfuls; so she takes more and more on each succeeding day, until finally she is weaned from her wicked tendencies. When entirely free from bad habits she might be safely left free and she would not stray into neighbours’ pasture land. Even when beaten in the stall, she does not afterwards leave the place. Similarly with the mind. It is accustomed to stray outward by the force of the latent vasanas manifesting as thoughts. So long as there are vasanas contained within they must come out and exhaust themselves. The thoughts comprise the mind. Searching what the mind is, the thoughts will recoil and the seeker will know that they arise from the Self. It is the aggregate of these thoughts that we call ‘mind’. If one realises that the thoughts arise from the Self and abide in their source, the mind will disappear. After the mind ceases to exist and bliss of peace has been realised, one will find it then as difficult to bring out a thought, as he now finds it difficult to keep out all thoughts. Here the mind is the cow playing the rogue; the thoughts are the neighbours’ pasture; one’s own primal being free from thoughts is the stall.’

Talk 141 Jnana, once revealed, takes time to steady itself. The Self is certainly within the direct experience of everyone, but not as one imagines it to be. It is only as it is. This Experience is samadhi. Just as fire remains without scorching against incantations or other devices but scorches otherwise, so also the Self remains veiled by vasanas and reveals itself when there are no vasanas. Owing to the fluctuation of the vasanas, jnana takes time to steady itself. Unsteady jnana is not enough to check rebirths. Jnana cannot remain unshaken side by side with vasanas. True, that in the proximity of a great Master, the vasanas will cease to be active, the mind becomes still and samadhi results, similar to fire not scorching because of other devices. Thus the disciple gains true knowledge and right experience in the presence of the Master. To remain unshaken in it further efforts are necessary. He will know it to be his real Being and thus be liberated even while alive. Samadhi with closed eyes is certainly good, but one must go further until it is realised that actionlessness and action are not hostile to each other. Fear of loss of samadhi while one is active is the sign of ignorance. Samadhimust be the natural life of everyone. There is a state beyond our efforts or effortlessness. Until it is realised effort is necessary. After tasting such Bliss, even once one will repeatedly try to regain it. Having once experienced the Bliss of Peace no one would like to be out of it or engage himself otherwise. It is as difficult for a Jnani to engage in thoughts as it is for an ajnani to be free from thought. The common man says that he does not know himself; he thinks many thoughts and cannot remain without thinking. Any kind of activity does not affect a Jnani; his mind remains ever in eternal Peace.