Search the Community

I feel the need to write about this just to get it out of my head. I am sure this may benefit some of you. In this long ass guide I will talk about quite nuanced distinctions and cover the whole topic between the balance of inner and outer work in great detail with quite a few exemples. So let's start right away, shall we ? While it may seem at first that you have found yourself in kindergarden I am simply very methodic and rigorous and prefer to be clear about every notion I will be using for clarity's sake. Introduction As human beings, we have only two options when it comes to doing because we only have : - Our Inner world : Our feelings, level of awareness, skills, mindsets, past, history, knowledge, so on and so forth. - Our external world : our house, car, spouse, cat, the food we eat, the sport we do in the morning, basically everything which is not involved in the inner world of the person, what Eckhart Tolle may call your life situation. I'm stating "our" because we do not care what happens in Africa or with the economy of the village far away in the dunes : only about your life situation. Also, it is important noting that the inside the inner world there is the relationship we have to the external, aka how we relate to your children or spouse, which is internal, while what you maybe have to do with them, aka how to alter your personnal circumstances such a spouse, for instance by divorce, belongs to the external world. (External = outer/ Inner = internal) Problem solving strategies In the same way, our problems may fall into two categories only: A) Internal problems You feel sad or depressed all the time, you have no idea what to do with your life, you can't meditate for more than 3 minutes, you never read, you do not feel satisfied with what is going on, in short, there is some problem in your inner world. B) External problems You have no money, your wife is a whiney bitch, your couch is so shitty you cannot meditate properly, so on and so forth. C) Solutions While there is an endless stream of methods to solve your problems all of those solutions always fall into one of those 4 ways : 1) Solving internal problems externally 2) Solving internal problems internally 3) Solving external problems internally 4) Solving external problems externally Everyone alive is acting upon a % of those four ways in their life. And as you may have guessed only TWO of those are great - the other two ( Spoiler : those which don't match) will RUIN your life. Let's look at those 4 ways in more detail, shall we ? Solving internal problems externally STOP DOING IT. This is the main message of this whole post : do stop solving your internal problems externally. But of course you're not doing that, right ? Or maybe you're just not aware of it ? Do you have any idea why you are doing what you are doing ? For instance, why do you believe you are distracting yourself from ? Why do you want success ? Most of what you are doing IS most likely strying to solve internal problems externally - by changing the external world instead of changing your internal world. Stop it. Solve your inner issues internally. Quick examples : A) You feel like you need to get x, y, z , be it women, cash, or a car, or w/e else so your life feels complete. Otherwise it will never feel complete. B) You need to get into that PhD program or your life will be ruined. C) You are taking a lot of action but see absolutely no change : you've made this or that, you had a lot of different experiences, but inside it still feels like the same old shitty you no matter what. A lesson from transformationnal mastery. I mainly contemplated the sentence " what is internal can only be solved internally" for a long time before I got this insight but some of the ideas came from the transformational mastery by RSD Julien. Okay, look at this : Your internal state is most likely at arround 3/10. 10/10 is happiness, joy and bliss. Which you do not feel yet. All of the garbage, the past experiences, trauma, so on and so forth are mostly subconscious and keep you DOWN at 3/10. So you do feel shitty inside, whether you know it or not, and then, well, what are you trying to do about it ? One thing : RUNNING AWAY By for instance smoking, drinking, playing games, doing this or that, in short, acting in the external world, hoping it will someone change how you feel inside. Inside you do not feel happy, nor fulfilled, joyful, present, etc. and you believe you need something external to fix it. For instance : name something you cannot be happy without. E.g. I cannot be happy if I do not finish my life as a millionaire. Is it gonna make you happy ? You will say yes because you believe it will fix what is inside and make you feel like x or y. But in the end it will always feel the same no matter what you do externally. Always. One of the greatest examples was recently Neil Strauss. He felt he needed to try out polyamory and have a household of three beautiful women. After countless awesome sex experiences he felt into depression because he realized that he was broken. Not the relationships. Not the external. He, inside, was broken. The great distinction : Scarcity VS Abundance The core assumption of the external solving the internal problem is the fact that it cannot be solved inside. E.g. you feel unhappy inside of you and there is nothing that can be done about it : this is scarcity : you feel like unless you DO ( and you have to always be DOING) to feel 10/10, happy, etc. you MUST do and act. It is impossible naturally. Abudance is the opposite : it is recognizing you've been fucking up and telling hold on...those experiences cannot fix me. I have to go inside. Abundance means you feel 10/10 to begin with ( remember when you were playing as a child) but then, a lot of bad things happened : unmet needs, bad parenting, layers and layers of garbage which put you down. So now you feel 3/10 and you've fallen into huge consumerism : do and consume experiences to feel better. You get the hit but nothing really changes. You are always on the run and you're always reinforcing the fact that you are unhappy to begin with, by doing all those things that are supposed to make you happy. how to know you're running away ? The great rule of the thumb ! Whatever state or feeling you are trying to achieve by doing something is escaping from the lack of it internally. You have to go inside and solve that problem inside. You want to feel powerful/x/emotion ? Look inside at your feelings and experiences that made you feel powerless/ x/y/emotion opposite. When you feel like you need something or some external condition, and you need to have it no matter what. Any form of attachement may indicate that. If you feel you need this or x to feel happy you are running away from your own insides. The great solution or cleansing the augean stables. Upon learning this however you will run away, maybe even more xD. You're not gonna be like oh yeah this is cool now let's just solve all of my problems internally and be done with it. You are escaping in the first place because you have no idea how to do the inner work and escaping is just so much easier and comfortable, I mean, what would you choose between : 1) Feeling and processing your old trauma and emotions 2) Having a nice vacation in thailand with hot girls and nice landscapes You do not wanna look inside. You may look at some parts of it and never solve the inner issue because it's really painful to look at. I mean yeah doing real inner work is very painful and rewarding only after a while. Who wants to clean out the augean stables ? Of course you wanna run away. And most people run away forever. And this is not a way to live because you will always cope and never thrive. You will never truly live. Why you actually need to solve this : 1) You will finally thrise and stop running away and coping 2) This is the only way of living truly and authentically While the message is very basic, like do deep inner work, you have to notice where you are running away from it and just doing some stuff on the sidelines instead of handling the real issues. This is very important because as long as you are running away you are desperate and what you do in the world is also coming out of desperation and not insperation. Have you wondered why Leo did a negative value release in the life purpose course ? Exactly for this reason. So it doesn't run you. But the real work goes way deeper. Have you really wondered why you are always coping and not inspired to do shit ? Not inspired to go and realize your life purpose ? Exactly for this reason. It's coming out of desperation. You need your life purpose (or x/y/z) to feel complete, to get meaning, purpose, (solve a series of your internal issues), get more girls, more money, to feel better about yourself. But if you feel happy you will simply share your gift with pure joy and it will be even more rewarding. It does NOT stop at 10/10. At 10/10 THE REAL DEAL begins. You do not feel resistance (or wayyy less). You can slay it. You are giving your gifts and it feels fucking pure. When you feel joy you can finally share joy and find even MORE JOY in sharing. Same for happiness. You do not need anything. You confuse right now desires for wants. Wanting is easy it's this is nice. It doesn't have an attachement/need/cling to it/ the need has. IN short, STOP SOLVING your inner problems externally. But maybe if you are but I need this or that to feel happy, well : you're either gonna self-sabotage yourself because deep down you don't feel like you deserve it and even if you make it you are only going to feel the issue you tried to solve even deeper. If you tried getting a hot girl for the sake of it while it was to feel good about yourself, to feel worthy. You will get her and you will feel even more unwhorthy. And after a few occurences of that well, you will do the inner work. You will drop the scarcity paradigm and handle your inner garbage and finally achieve abundance. After a lot of work. What can be done. 1) Therapy. I find it amazing for exploring and going trough all the trauma inside of you. 2) use the rule of the thumb to identify your issues and work on them internally. 3) Yoga is amazing 4) how to let go and the Julien's program helped me a lot ( I'm not affiliated with him in any way I just liked it because I had all those insights) 5) Pranayama breathing techniques are also amazing 6) How to let go by david hawkins 7) Any painfull real and deep inner work you can do, be it visualisations like the ones leo does, meditations, strange obscure techniques, as long as you are solving internal problems internally it is fine. One key point is not to run away from the problem by doing irrelevant shit on the side. Because if you cannot run away to the next country your mind will find another way to run away from it. I mean, it only wants to protect you. Don't watch the second part it's annoying self promotion but the first part can be great to understand what I'm talking about from another pespective. Learn to slay it Solving internal problems internally Yes, this is what you are supposed to be doing. Quick example : You cat dies and you feel sad. Is it an external or internal problem ? (You feeling sad is internal : the cat dying is not a problem in itself) An internal solution is to handle your sadness, understand how to process your emotions, etc. And external solution is to buy a NEW CAT to fill in that role, or even worse, pretending the old cat is still alive or even doing a ritual to bring the old cat to life. Again, and once more and forever : solve internal problems INTERNALLY. Solving external problems internally I didn't even think this could happen but it does. While most of us run away from problems by acting in the outer world some of us solve problems that can be solved by taking action and acting in the outer world. E.g. Your couch hurts your back . You need to get a new couch and not find a new way to meditate so that your couch gets better. E.g. You have no chemistry with your bitchy and whiney wife but you still keep her arround. You do not need to solve your anger issues but get rid of her. (Although you have deep inner work to do in that case to, to understand why you attracted her, stayed with her, and to check whether you can actually have a successfull relationship). This falls into the category of people who are mentally masturbating a lot and not doing crap. Sometimes you need to go out in the real world and act. This is the balance between theory and practice which you have to tune - Leo talked about that in a recent video so go watch it and handle it. Solving external problems externally You have no chairs in your house so you cannot properly work so you decide that you're gonna learn the ultimate way of the yogi and levitate up to your computer to pursue your life purpose. THis is an absolute no no. Get your ass to ikea and fix this short materialistic problem correctly. Sometimes the external requires external action. You just need to carefully identify what is really an external problem and what is an internal issue. Examples and short case studies All you have to do it determine whether a given problem is external or internal. Remember : inner problems are to be solved internally. External is to be handled on the external too. (I'll maybe add more examples later on - and feel free to ask any questions ) Split the issue : solve the internal : aka learn why you may need or want a girlfriend and solve in internally. solve the external : your sexual needs can be solved only by sex hence go get it - talk to girls, etc. Act in the real world. Endless theory will not help for this. Yes. Progress is very slow. You're doing real deep painful work. It gets a bit easier the more you do it and investment pays off a LOT over time but at the start you have to work a lot. This is no fancy vacation - this is no easy task. You are not hercules and you won't be able to use two rivers to cleanse the stables. You have to take out the garbage. So do the deep inner work. Take out the trash. Do not run away. This is not fun. Not great and not amazing. The real deal is not fancy but is very rewarding. Work at it. Slay it. Do it. Solve the internal - internally ! Best of luck on your path ! Any feedback appreciated

Talks of realms. While you know only this one is pointless, and talks of this realm being a hell. Even more so. Calling this planet, the lives in it, and the suffering in it an illusion. Is itself an illusion. Suffering exists. So do egos. They are very real, however you can get rid of both and live in bliss if you so choose. "After satori one might think mountains are no longer mountains, and trees are no longsr trees, but after enlightenment. Mountains are once again moutains and trees are once again trees"

*points at you* there you are I found you! see? you are right here right now. you are a mind, you are a body, you are suffering and you are bliss, you are your home and your family, you are your town your country the world you are the universe. you are I. you want to stop suffering - I suggest accept it, not in nihilistic glee no. but realise that you have coexisted with it before and yet you remain while it fades in and out of existence. so just allow it to be, notice it but as an observer. be patient with it, meditation at its core is just patience and attention. if you can't exercise that through meditation, practice it whenever you remember it. when you brush your teeth, wait for a meeting, in the moment. over time it will strengthen.

Some help for my low conscious self ❤ You have a resistance to mindfulness; a little resentment. But I think a lot of the time mindfulness is actually the one thing you need. Of course, as will always be said, when you're in it, it feels so much bigger; you can't understand it properly. The painbody: it's like a blaring screetch of stress that blinds you from all proper rationality or sanity and worst of all the only way you can express how it's making you feel when it's absorbed you is with the kind, welcoming words of "FUCK OFF!!" The alternative is silence and stillness. I'm saying this not academically as just words or in theory but from where I am right now: in it. I'll use loads of different words for it: silence, stillness, not thinking, bliss, empty mind, conscious, accepting, surrendering/ed, present, not trapped in the painbody etc. so don't be so tight and cling to certain explanations as if they're all talking about different things. All this advise is always pointing the same way becsuse it comes from truth at some ingredient. Closemindedness is the main stumper here. Anywho, my help for you now is to focus on making your mind still. Your buzzing mind will try to avoid this. There are many ways to stop your mind. One way can be to play music and listen to it, focus on it, and don't expect yourself to feel any certain way about it. I've found myself, when Im feeling shit, not liking music that I usually like, because I'm actually in the back of my head expecting it to make me feel better when I listen to it, but by doing this I'm resisting how I feel at the time of listening to it, telling myself I should feel a certain way, which of course is not what you want to do. So you can use music to slow your head down so you can see how your emotions are going and usually it will be that you are expecting yourself to feel a certain way and are telling yourself off or resisting how you do feel because it's not the "perfect" way you should be feeling. Most of the problem seems to be not accepting how you feel right now, alongside worrying too much and focusing away from right now. Another way is simply just focusing on simply stress management because that's really what's going on: you want reality to be one way but it's not that way so you're freaking out; you feel you don't have control. Focus on your lack of control. Focus on how it makes you feel. Focus on your reluctance to focus on things that will help make you feel better. Just bring your focus to what you're feeling. Don't try to force feelings or hold onto them. But also if they are sticking around, don't try to kick them out; look them up and down. I really don't know what to type to help you but hopefully this can be enough to help you wake up. You already know all you need to know. You know how to get where you want to surrender to. I just hope you're able to when you need to.

Thank you for posting this. I am experiencing a kundalini awakening. It has been going on since November of last year. It has been a slow process and I can't seem to find the help I need around where I live. I felt it first in my third eye, and after that kept feeling each individual chakra every two months. I now feel the energy going through my body but not out of the crown of my head. There have been times where I feel like my head is being operated on and there are moments of bliss and love. Many emotional things are being resolved however I feel like there is so much much more to do. Once an emotion resolves, it feels like a piece of me (my ego) goes away. For me its a struggle because I have two kids and we are trying to move and make decisions but I am just going along with it. What is also confusing is I don't know if I will be awakened and enlightened or in a mental institution for the rest of my life. Does that make sense? My ego is definitely afraid. So once again, thank you for the post.

@Annetta Modern man have to go through catharsis... Osho Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in. Now in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger everywhere and anywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be too costly, and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted. If you become angry, the group is not repressive. Rather on the contrary, the group helps you, provokes you to be angry, brings out all your violence and aggression, accepts it -- WELCOMES even, gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there is no expectation. Nobody's expecting that you should not be angry or this and that. Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be THAT. A group is an artificial situation. The society cannot allow that. Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying. How much poison is there in your system. And only when this poison has gone, that smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find insight or bliss methods like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger to it. You can watch, you can watch people, and you can see their dances have different qualities. Somebody's dance is a kind of rage; anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody's dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance. Somebody else's dance has compassion in it. Somebody else's dance has ecstasy in it. somebody else's dance is just stale and dull, he is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them -- mechanical. Watch. Why this difference? -- because they are carrying different layers of repression. When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you will dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing -- it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, then your dance will have that. Now it is a problem for Indians to participate in the Sufi Dance. Many have written to me. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, wrote a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days afterwards, he wrote 'I am feeling very guilty, because I become sexually aroused. Whenever I go into the Sufi Dance, I become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.' He was asking forgiveness 'Osho, forgive me.' And he became so afraid that he stopped dancing. Now the whole life of repression... He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such dancing energy of women, men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel guilt. It is just the whole repressed life. Now this man who becomes sexually aroused in Sufi Dance, is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt, and he will not feel spiritual at all! He will feel sexual, and he will be in a turmoil. He will be very much confused. His whole being will be on a volcano. He may start trembling, and he may become afraid that he may DO something. That's what he wrote to me -- 'I cannot participate in Sufi Dance any more, because I may DO something. I may not be able to control myself I become so aroused.' This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help. Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha's time they were not so needed because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive live -- uncivilised, spontaneous lives. So VIPASSANA -- VIPASSANA means insight -- was given by Buddha directly to people. But now you cannot go into VIPASSANA directly. And the teachers who go on teaching VIPASSANA directly don't belong to this century; they are two thousand years backwards. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two persons out of one hundred, but that can't do much. I am introducing cathartic methods, so that first what the civilisation has done to you can be undone, so that you become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight becomes easily available. Then bliss methods work -- never before that. "OSHO" I Say Unto You, Vol 2 Chapter #8 Chapter title: Significance is Inner Nourishment

Anyone who says , there is direct and simple method which is suitable for everyone is deceiving you. J. Krishnamurti was insisting his whole life that there is no technique for meditation. And the total result was not that millions of people attained to meditation; the total result was that millions of people became convinced that no technique is needed for meditation. But they forgot all about what they were going to do with the obstructions, the hindrances. So they remained intellectually convinced that no technique is needed. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. 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. You can meditate, force yourself to be silent. the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both.

The whole of life has to be meditative. Only then will you begin to feel things. And when I say that the whole life is to be meditative, I do not mean to go and close your eyes for twenty-four hours and sit and meditate – no! Wherever you are you can be sensitive and that sensitivity will pay. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?” Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.” Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together. 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. 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.

No, not because we're bored. You are bored and desperate for truth, and that's understandable, that's God calling you. You can talk and think about this stuff all day: why, and how, but no answer will satisfy you. You need to learn to feel again, purge the conditioning that's suppressing your child like bliss.

One of the reasons for much of the suffering that we go through in life is taking life too seriously. It is not uncommon though; almost everyone is so serious about the drama of life. So, everyone has assumed that there is no way out of it. But, there is a potential for a change in your attitude towards life which will make you to treat life as the lifelong movie in which we all are just characters. There is also a potential to remove all the unwanted suffering that we have imposed on ourselves by removing the serious identification with the character called ‘you’ and your story.. I went through a journey myself that helped me to realize this potential and make it possible. (You can read more about my journey here: The Journey of a Seeker). I will call that whole process as ‘Awakening Through Mindfulness (ATM)’. If you believe in God, you can use the belief itself as an aid towards changing your attitude. Many people consider themselves as a puppet of the God’s hands. That helps them change the way they react to the situations and stop taking everything personal. But it is just a coping mechanism; No one is actually sitting up there and directing your life. Life and the force of the life itself is a deep and interesting mystery. If you want to call that force God, you can. That is a beautiful personification. Warning! For many people, beliefs have actually been a hindrance in the whole process. There is a way to really experience life as a movie and to be not affected by your self-image. You can completely detach yourself from the identification you have with the self image. .. Changing the attitude is the first step to ending the self created suffering and experience the life impersonally.. Your personality and your ego that projects the personality are just a part of the mask that you, as the character of this movie, are wearing. What hurts the mask doesn’t hurt you anymore, once you start experiencing life this way. Not only your ego and personality, but every thought, emotion, experience and knowledge that you witness in your consciousness is a part of that mask. Remembering this analogy of the mask and contemplating on it can help you to change your attitude to be favourable in the process of awakening. As you proceed with this journey, you will eventually have to drop a lot of your beliefs and directly choose to know what you believed is true or false. Then, either you know or you don’t know. There is no need in believing something. The sense of security that we get from beliefs will not at all be needed anymore once you start experiencing the life devoid of self-created suffering. You don’t need any solace from the beliefs anymore. That life experience which stands apart and independent from your identity is what I call as an ‘awakened life’. What you Call as Self is an Illusion! The next step is just to realize and remember always that there is no self; I am not kidding! It is a scientific fact. What you perceive, think and experience every moment is the result of millions of neurons in your brain communicating with the neighboring neurons through electrochemical signals. This constant perceptual activity gives an illusion that there is a static self. This self which is experienced as being the one who inhabits the body, being the one who is thinking the thoughts, being the one experiencing emotions, being the agent of actions and having free will is an illusion. Also, every person you see is a complex network of forces communicating with each other in cell level, chemical level and atomic level. 2500 years ago, a man called Gautama Buddha revealed the truth of the no-self for the first time. Seeing this in neuroscientific perspective, what you experience as you and your story is just a result of activity happens in a combination of brain structures called Default Mode Network DMN). This network is active when you are mind-wandering,thinking about others, thinking about yourself, remembering the past, and planning for the future. Hyperconnectivity of the default network has been linked to rumination in depression. Studies have shown that meditators and people who claim spiritual awakening have less or almost no activity in DMN. This illusory self is not consistent and static; it is ever changing. But the only thing which is consistent and constant throughout your life is your existence; the conscious, moment to moment experience that you are alive. Three Aspects of the Absolute Reality There are three aspects to what that is consistent: Existence, Consciousness and experiencing. Existence can be defined as whatever that exists in the ultimate, absolute level. You perceive and know that objects exist because of this. It is the sense of being alive.The objects may keep changing but the existence itself is something that is constant. It is not a ‘thing’ though. It is the basis of anything that is subjective. Consciousness is like a light that shines up everything in the existence. It can be compared to the light in a movie screen using which your thoughts, emotions, perceptions and experiences are constantly being played. The movie screen is static all the time. It also exists in sleep, but there is nothing to show. Since consciousness is completely dark and since voluntary functions of the mind are shut off, there is actually nothing much is happening that is worth to be recorded in the brain and stored in long term memory. Experiencing is not about various experiences that you go through every moment. It is the base of all experience, which is naturally peaceful. Peace is always the first and last experience of the lifetime. Even in death, the final moment is peace; a lot of scientists believe that a neurotransmitter called Dimethyltryptamine or DMT released in the brain during the last moment of death which gives peace and bliss. You are so peaceful during the birth too. You can obviously see that in the new born babies. Even throughout the life, you go through a lot of peaceful moments where you are ultimately content, all drives seem to be temporarily satisfied and you experience the ultimate peace and contentment. That peace is not really something that comes and goes. It is the subtle backdrop of all the noisy perceptions happening in the mind and never changes too. It is the base experience of all the experiences. An awakened person may often go through peak experiences (rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter – Abraham Maslow) when they touch the ultimate level of peace. During peak experiences, the boundaries of experiencer, experiencing and the experience dissolve and they all become one. The same happens with the knowledge as well. The knower, knowing and the known become one. Note that, when I say experiencing, I am talking about the ‘experiencing’ aspect of your existence; not about an independent experience. Any experience, including the peak experience com and go. But the ‘experiencing’ part of that which is consistent never changes. It would be better to use a different word than experiencing but I can’t think of anything that comes closer right now. So, whatever that is consistent which has the aspects of existence, consciousness and experiencing can be called with any name you want to use. You can call it XYZ if you want! Some words that have been used in eastern traditions are absolute, Om, brahman, Sat-Chit-Ananda etc… Some call it as your ‘true self’. The problem with all these labels is that you start to see this XYZ as some object, a thing; Something that can be either perceived, experienced or known. But it is actually like the space or the field in which everything is perceived, experienced or known. So, it is very important to not to get too attached to the word. Seeing the illusory self for what it is and completely removing the identification with it lets you to relax yourself in the truth of being alive and conscious. It will eventually let you free from hedonic treadmill and the pursuit of subjective self worth. You will feel liberated from the prison of this illusory self. This will give you a tremendous acceptance of what is; You will see life as a game with its own rules and challenges. But seeing that as just a game which will eventually end, makes you to play it with enjoyment and a great sense of peace. Many practises have been suggested which help you to go through this process of awakening; self-inquiry, contemplation of the truth and so on. The practise that I can suggest for you is the one which worked for me.. It is called Sati in buddhism, Shikantaza in Zen, Shakshi bhav in Upanishads and mindfulness by buddhists as well as modern psychologists. Mindfulness is used not only as a path to awakening, but also in modern therapies as a means to decrease depression and stress, increase well being, control addictions, slow down emotional reactivity etc. What is Mindfulness and How to Practice it? Mindfulness can be defined as focused nonjudgmental attention to experiences of thoughts, emotions, and body sensation in the present moment that is practiced by simply observing them as they arise and pass away. The paper ‘Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition’ which was published by University of Toronto in 2014 suggests a two-component model of mindfulness: 1) Regulation of attention in order to maintain it on the immediate experience 2) Approaching one’s experiences with an orientation of curiosity,openness, and acceptance, regardless of their valence and desirability. When you try to observe your thought process, you may lose your attention many times. Once you notice that the mind has wandered, you just bring it back to the awareness of thought process or body sensations again. No matter how many times the mind wanders away, you must take it easy and accept it. You can do this while doing whatever you are doing, like walking, eating, working out, waiting in a queue etc. Notice the flow of thoughts as if you are watching a stream flowing or traffic moving. Eventually you can extend the time that you practise mindfulness to most of the waking hours of the day. This may take years and years of practise. When practicing mindfulness, don’t approach it as if you are working towards a goal. That would simply mean that you are enhancing the self-concept and strengthening the identification with it .Awakening is not an achievement. It is getting rid of the craving for any achievement that increases your self-worth or enhances your self-concept. Seeing mindfulness as a means for something to be achieved itself is a trap which may slow down the process of awakening. In a couple of months of practise you may start noticing gaps in your thought process.You may also notice reduction in the number of thoughts. Also, a lot of unconscious patterns and repressed thoughts may start to come up and appear in the light of your conscious observation. It is quite normal. Just pay attention to whatever that comes up without reacting to it. But if you do react to it, that’s ok. Just notice that and wait to see what comes up next. As you do it more and more, the gaps will be more frequent and you may even start to wait for the next thought or feeling to arise. In a few months, you will start to feel more peaceful and relaxed. Your emotional regulation would also have improved. While practising, become aware of the defense mechanisms of the ego whenever you notice them. Notice the repeated thought patterns and your attempts to maintain and protect your self-esteem. Reading the authentic sources of Zen and Advaita can help you a lot in moving through the process. Personally for me, reading the transcribed talks of Osho and J.Krishnamurti were helpful in understanding how mindfulness works and how to go about practising it. Osho called it ‘witnessing’ and J.Krishnamurti called it as ‘Choiceless awareness’. The names are different but the meaning is exactly the same. Once you have practised mindfulness for long term for a year or two, you may go through a crisis at times, usually called ‘Spiritual Crisis,’ a form of identity crisis where you experience drastic changes to your meaning system (your unique purposes, goals, values, attitude and beliefs, identity, and focus). It may cause a lot of disturbance, but don’t be alarmed. It happens to everyone but it will pass. The fruits of mindfulness always outweighs the disturbances caused by spiritual crisis. Benefits of Mindfulness I came across an interesting paper ‘How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective’ published in 2011 by Association For Psychological Science. It lists 5 major benefits of mindfulness and also lists the details of studies which support them. Here are those five benefits: Attention regulation Body awareness Emotion regulation, including a. Reappraisal b. Exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation Change in perspective on the self. The fourth one, ‘Change in perspective on the self’ is very important, which explains in detail about a lot of what we discussed about ‘Self’ in this post. You can search for this paper in ‘Academia’ and download it for free. There have been many other studies done on mindfulness which show that mindfulness decreases suffering and increases subjective well being. Buddha prescribed mindfulness as the path to spiritual enlightenment. Whether you are looking for spiritual enlightenment or just improved well being, there is no doubt that mindfulness is the way to go. Also published in my blog: https://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/awakening-through-mindfulness-bridging-science-and-spirituality/

@Dodo Matt Kahn talks about ego integrating with spirit on TrueDivineNature. The direct approach is fine. A heart centered approach to spirituality is the way for me. I don't have to remember how to do 25 spiritual things each day and then feel like crap when I fail at them. If one is spiritually aligned you can experience bliss. He also talks about the end of the old paradigm and the beginning of the new paradigm. No more spiritual acrobatics to fail at. If you do fail, then love the one who fails more, not less!

Are all negative emotions, like anger, jealousy, sadness, just all illusions made by the ego? I think Leo once said that our default emotions are all the way of bliss, happiness etc. And to all the videos of Leo, what are the top 5 successful ways to fend off such negative emotions?

@Prabhaker Feel to sleep in your arms. Complete bliss.

Aside from him being an incredibly happy giddy alive guy, with a very penetrating but child like gaze, I can see he has zero conditioned response rate to any one, he is fully being himself and joyfully playing his character. But the thing that impressed deeply from the start was reading his story, he had been seeking seriously from when he was 14, he had gone through multiple times of thinking he had become enlightened. BELOW I'VE CONDENSED THE STORY: SPOILER!! It might be cooler to read the full story with google translate: www.adsang.nl/mijn-verhaal/ condensed: But even towards the end, decades into it, he didn't resolve his ego completely, and at some point it was about to be absorbed, but he still couldn't let go completely, causing intense panic and depressions, he even made himself believe all the spirituality was just fake, he even felt sorry for all the masters he'd seen and believed for they too were just fooling themselves. As deep states of peace and bliss that he had experienced came and go, and yet, he still had no freedom! But through the unfold mend of the path eventually grace dissolved all his attachment, it was a very intimate process, which eventually brought full awakening and he was 'Overflowing with gratitiude'. And the thing that also helped me have a lot of faith in him was the fact that I had the most consistent high amount of synchronicities when listening to his satsangs.

The ego is just thought, especially disturbing thoughts, that you think are your identity. thought or ego is just a part of you. like your hand, or your feet. If you cut of your feet, you don't cease to exist, so you are not your feet. For the ego it's the same, but you can't really physically cut of your ego thoughts, so it's harder to realize this. Thought fighting thought is what OP warned about. If you think yourself around your thoughts, like battling some negative thought with positive affirmations. Then you are reinforcing the ego, as OP said: If you do this, then you are creating a story within yourself, that your imagined self is an observer. There actually is an observer, but it will never think a single thought. So your ego tells a story, the story it is actually the observer. This may bring the illusion of spiritual bliss even, and can greatly boost confidence, but it is a lie that will sooner or later break. This is why thought should never battle with mind. Unwelcome thought is irrelevant, it requires no address, it just is.

If the person is really enlightened, then he knows the ego never existed to begin with. The ego is the illusion of thought cycles looping constantly, and so creating an imagined self. Realizing this fully, the enlightened man doesn't even register the praise. The enlightened man is enlightened, because that is the only thing he can be. He has no desire for enlightenment, no reason for it. It just is, as life just is. Being is being, it never had an ego to begin with. The illusion that is ego, are no more than the thoughts that make up an imagined self, and all unenlightened people self-identify with that "construct". What most people think of as "me", or "I", isn't real. It's a biological machine, constantly generating random thoughts and opinions, and we think this is what we are. And what we truly are, has no human identity. Most people actually want their ego to become enlightened, but it can never be, because its not a "self". It's not an enemy to battle either, these are just thoughts our true self is are aware of. For me, this is also the "dark night of the soul". It's not so much a battle, but it is the dreaded acceptance of the realization that what most people call I, does not exist as a person, that this identity we've come to love and defend, is not a real "I". Because what we think of as "me", ceases to exist as an "I", and the only thing left is pure enlightened being. What we truly are, never had a single thought in its life, not a single idea, never said a single word, and it never will. We can only be it. Realization does bring "human" bliss, because the "ego" quiets down a bit, when there is acceptance that it is not I.

And while I'm at it, here's another one called Devotion My eyes close to the world everyone knows tasting a small slice of death moments before my best nightmare touches me deep in my soul I'm craving for the fallen one to dwell in the depths of eternal lust for ever and ever more Along the streets we walk laugh, talk and kiss People passing by but they do not exist We're in our own world now filled with pleasure and bliss Phallic objects along the way I smile because I know he'll be my own personal priapus until the end of days Sacred heart The world lies to our feet Nothing matters as we fall deep into an abyss of timeless tenderness and rising to the highs of loving and lust where we inhale our kiss His touch reaches far beneath my skin, down in my core, finds its way into the depths of my soul devouring my very essence He stands before me with marks on his bare chest There, were once his feathers were are now the signs of innocence lost These scars, the visible signs of anguish and of pain, constant reminders of tormented days I'm asking you, my lover with broken wings, to set me free, I give myself to thee Now let me gaze into your eyes once more, melt and burn your image deep into my soul Kiss me deep to sleep before the moonlight fades and I have to begin another dreadful day

@Hero in progress You're still chasing experiences and positive states. Enlightenment is not that. Pursue what is TRUE, not bliss and love. Everything else is experience. And all experience is impermanent, and thus an illusion.

Enlightenment has occurred, without a shadow of a doubt. It is unmistakable. I have been going deeper & deeper for months. I am at the point where Infinity is getting very intense to deal with. Its happening right now and its not gona stop. There are waves of fear that keep coming, and I know that I am creating this, so do you have any words of advice please. I know I need to keep going forward, how can I make the love come & the fear go. I am having trouble sleeping at night time aswell because its very intense trying to go to sleep while the vibration of being is intense and I hear the humming of empty space in my ears. I know that this is a blessing and I have worked relentlessly for this, the seamless self image has almost stopped completely and I think that this is a permanent enlightenment this time. How can it not be! It is me. But its very intense. Is there a way I can bring forth the bliss & love more quickly?

@Huz The issue isn't the particular thing you're craving as it seems you'll always go round to some substance or another. The problem is in wanting to get stimulated and conditioning your brain to be satisfied with nothing else. It's a habit also known as the "bliss point" - the optimal amount of stimulus that causes happiness. The bliss point is subjective - an obese person can't get enough satisfaction from vegetables because of their taste buds are used to processed carbs, whereas a fitness enthusiast can love those same greens. This same principle applies to money, possessions, sex, comfort and so on. What's the solution? You have to just simply quit it coldly - that's the only way of liberating yourself from the attachment and cravings. Fasting is another great trick. That's what you essentially need to do to overcome any addiction - fast. @Joel3102 Damn, it's definitely a lot harder as an Aussie. They do love to drink with the mates if you know what I mean. @pluto Thanks! Yes, with increasing awareness you begin to do more of what's good for you effortlessly. Thanks!

@Key Elements I agree. Reverting to the ego self is fine. You start treating ego as a tool rather identifying with it. As you self-realize and become dis-illusioned about who/what you really are, that stays with you permanently after the shift. It doesn't mean you have to be in the state of bliss 24/7, but you abide as awareness, infinite being.

@Natasha When a person is in an 'enlightenment experience,' it's 'normal.' The person is it. The person is everything. The person has no doubts and doesn’t think it's 'abnormal.' It's just pure infinite peace. However, there is a revert back to the ego 'self,' and the person awakes from that infinite peace with a huge hint of 'bliss' and remembers it. Many times the person wishes to be back to that infinite nature, the true nature, because that's what we are. We are not the ego. It's all a fiction. So what happens when we wish we were back to our true nature? This: "Oh my god! It's absolutely infinite!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" "It's absolutely infinite!!!!!" -Leo We get too excited. But, that's ok. It'll pass. What we can do from that moment on is to realize that our true nature can be applied to real life, the illusional life. So, for example, the next time you feel lonely, or get an emotion other than peace, you could say to yourself that it's just an emotion (ego). It's not our infinite nature - which is peace. And, we could teach this to others in our own ways so that they will get a chance to become aware of it.

Or maybe its because people aren't allowed to express their true feelings about things, even if it is divisive, because the 'enlightened' left side of politics believes that demonizing and calling everyone who has a different opinion as them, as racist, and consequently forcing people to repress their true desires is somehow the best way to deal with the situation. That is synonymous. Levels of consciousness differ in the way you express your feelings and emotions. It can go something like this: Level 1: Repression Level 2: Unnecessarily vulgar expression Level 3: Less damaging expression (perhaps a little passive aggressive) Level 4: Controlled, inner expression and release Level 5: Acceptance and integration of all emotions, where expression has merged with nonexpression, and it becomes one beautiful flowing experience Level 6: Bliss (I Just made that up, please don´t teach this kids at school its not very well thought out =D)

Acceptance that doesn't mean bliss - remove shoulds for consciousness On my mind today: Accepting means not that you should feel really blissful when you're properly conscious and accepting. If you're pushing for that then you're not accepting how you are now. Properly accepting means that you are not latching on to any feeling (ie bliss) but that you are letting the change in emotion happen; you are letting change happen, you're allowing You to flow. If you feel depressed and you feel it then you are accepting and that's what you're after; bliss will be behind that, not replace it. It may replace it. But it doesn't matter what it becomes. All that matters is what it is and you letting it be what it wants to be, so letting it change. Change is the thing you have to be okay with. It's okay to feel those feelings that are "bad" and/or make you feel hurt because you're being "unconscious". The change into and out of these places are what you're being conscious of. You're not meant to be pushing yourself into what you think should be consciousness. Let go of holding onto feelings because naturally they're going to try to flow and you'll start suffering and trying to fight because you want to keep or resist a certain feeling or moment or piece of the manifested when really it's not the water of any of the sections of the river that really matters, but the constant turning of the mill. Let the constant fluctuation of feeling and experience happen. It's trying to buzz its life out of you and you can feel it but you keep resisting it and turning that energy into pain, so much pain. But it's your life. That fluctuation is the exact same place that creates the spontaneity that drives real humour. So to create that strong, amused, independent relationship with yourself (which is the main goal now) then working with this fluctuating, spontaneous, monkey mind* and making humour through it is (should be) actually your main focus. - I've been thinking of this relationship and basically: It's what your focus should mostly be on all the time, like in any situation your main goal is "how am I strengthening my relationship with myself here" (+how am I ruining it or disrespecting what it should be) ...this means it's the place to focus when in the face of external situations for your insecurities and (many) emotional triggers A way of looking at it is thinking of your life as a big adventure that you have no real proper goals in, externally, and you are having fun just going with the changing current, the change is your fun, not the making goals and achieving them, only the fun of the adventure, which means the pain in it is often gonna have to be the source of the fun than is the adventure of all the different experiences. The whole adventure is just about experiencing the change and flow from one experience to another, be it fear to bliss, or just fear to another fear. Never resist. (Basically Captain Jack Sparrow) Yeah like I said, no real external goal; they're just for fun. The real goal of focus is the inner goal of having that strong relationship with Self and feeling who you truly are and living and loving through it, even if that means feeling fear. - further, this is to also say that the mind shouldn't be made an enemy or that you resist feeling its despair- Feel its pain, feel its suffering. You really aren't allowing the change if you are properly suffering. When you let, then it's only 'suffering'; you still feel it. Yeah yeah like I said said: you don't actually want to get the cognitions of your mind to be the "perfection" that you imagine: a lOt of the humour and fun comes from watching its dysfunction. It would be boring if you were prefect. It's like the crazy girlfriend who's actually more fun than the sensible, sane one ?. Your relationship should have no shoulds... No forcing feelings. Like I said: if you feel bad then no trying to change the bad into good, but only dancing with the bad That's it for now ❤

If you can teach yourself (through meditation for example) to stop being a bliss junkie, that's when the magic happens: detached and loving/appreciating everything that arises in the present moment. Love reality in its totality