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I noticed I'm becoming a lot happier these days thanks to meditation. Happy enough that I'd spend much of the day in bliss. But there's still some things that tend to get me down these days. Because of my efforts, I feel a deep acceptance and wider inner peace for these emotions well but they still pain me. I notice in casual conversations — people will step in with pretty average answers in questions about their life. But being in personal development for 5 years — I tend to give more overall optimistic answers while being humble enough to admit some flaws. And I get the sense that by being better — I lost some equal standing with others. That maybe people won't relate to me as a friend well the better I get. That if I continue my hard work now in bettering my life, I'd reach a point where I become a hero — the kind of hero people mistakenly believe know everything about life and are perfect —inhuman. I get more genuinely cheerful as the days go by. I'm more the relaxed and easygoing cheerful than the loud and excitable ones. Will I seem fake? Some kind of liar? Arrogant? Lacking self awareness? It might sound stupid — but one of the major issues I've went through was caring how much people thought of me. I have some insecurities of not being accepted and belonging somewhere. If I get even much better at life than I do now, will I inspire more or will cause more jealousy? I guess I'm concerned for these people. I clearly remember the memories of looking at people who are stars in society at life and work. And often felt that it was impossible to match them and even still feel these a bit these days. I don't want people to feel that way. And I don't want to be hated. Yes, it's not my fault. But I still feel these emotions. It's painfully ironic. I went through life fearing telling others my more flawed side. Now I fear showing any tidbit of achievement and great happiness. This also applies to when I teach or give advice — the act seems like a subtle message saying that "I know more than you," and I don't want to cause the above. Not that it stops me from doing so — but it saddens me. Scares me. What can I do?

This experience occurred after roughly 2 ½ years of meditating almost every day. I was driving home from work when it happened. All morning I was in a meditative and contemplative state of mind. I was about 3 or 4 miles from home. In my mind I was thinking of the incomprehensible number of universes and the incomprehensible number of different “me’s” in existence. I thought about what would happen if they all met. Many of them would be similar and many of them would be vastly different. Some of them would look identical and others would look vastly different. Then everything stopped. I had felt stillness before but this was infinitely deeper than anything I had felt before. The moment I realized that all of the different possibilities of the form which constitutes “me” could look the same and others would look completely different something profound in my mind snapped. In an instant and outside of space and time I was all life. My entire perception of reality was cleaned. I was all life on earth, in the universe and in all of existence. I did not feel connected to all life. Thomas Roger did not exist anymore. There was just awareness in a body and that’s it. There was only life and it’s happening. I watched in sheer amazement at all of the people who drove by me and each person I saw was also myself. It doesn’t even make any sense that something like this is even possible but it happened. My mind did not judge or comment on the people I saw. I was simply in utter amazement at the sheer beauty of the life that was happening. (All of this happened while I was at a red light.) When the red light turned green I had no idea how I was driving, how I was seeing or anything. I returned home in a state of utter amazement, bliss and gratitude. It felt like all existence felt this way too. I know that doesn’t make any sense but it did. When I entered the driveway and emerged from the car and saw the world from outside the windows I almost cried. The air was so crisp. It was an overcast day but it was so profoundly beautiful. I walked in front of my house and said this. “I had never really seen reality before. This is the first time I have truly seen life.” I began to be overwhelmed with happiness. Every tree, every person, every blade of grass, every insect all life was one. I completely disappeared and was all life. I was all life. I walked up to some flowers in front of my house and looked at a bee walking along one of them. This made me especially happy. I began to laugh. I smiled so hard. I was the bee and the bee was me. All life was one. I walked into my house and went into my brother’s room he was sleeping. When I saw him I became even happier as I was also one with him. I began to laugh even more. I realized that the same consciousness that he was experiencing was the same consciousness that I was experiencing. That I am experiencing. That we all are experiencing. All life is experiencing the same consciousness. The medium through which it is experienced may be vastly different but the consciousness, the awareness is the same. I needed to get something to take to my college so I picked that up and went back out to the car still in sheer amazement and happiness. As I drove the car I also realized that the same consciousness that mom experienced I too experienced at that very moment and my whole life. ( My mother passed away when I was 16 years old.) At this point my mind couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled over less than a mile from home and broke down and cried at the sheer incomprehensible, profound and breathtaking beauty of existence. After about five minutes of crying in sheer awe and gratitude I sat there for about another minute and continued my day. This lasted for about two hours then I slowly came back as a tiny individuated ego. However there was still a great residual after effect from what I just experienced. (to call this an experience is limiting, it is a state of being) This was by far the most magical day of my life as of august 1st 2016.

I wanted to experience a change in perception without too much of a mindfuck (which I had strongly during my first two shroom trips), so I decided to experiment with a low dose. I drank a hibiscus tea with ginger, since that’s supposed to prevent eventual nausea, with 2g of dried psilocybe cubensis. Although I expected the trip to be less intense than my first two, I was not quite prepared for it to be that different. My first two experiences where like a roller-coaster. It was a an emotional up and down from blank panic to profound bliss (at some points they even merged together). I had lost all my past and identity. I couldn’t remember who I was, but at the same time feeling very present and aware. This trip had nothing with me pacing around talking to myself like a complete psycho, as I knew it from my past experiences. I was lying on my bed meditating as I waited for the onset. I noticed exactly when the effects began. it was from one second to the other: suddenly I couldn’t do the labeling anymore. It was just impossible because ‚hearing‘ and ‚seeing‘ merged. I just wasn’t able to separate them from each other. Then ‚feeling‘ joined them. After some moments of very strong closed eye hallucinations (mostly fast moving geometrical patterns with neon colors), they stilled and I turned back to normal labeling. Then it became impossible again and the cycle began once more. That went on like this for like 10-20 times more, varying in duration. After a while I felt getting more and more lost in the patterns (like tunnels) and I had to give up the labeling. I tried focusing on my breath, but I had to give up that as well. So I decided to surrender and to follow my visual sense, focusing my awareness on the colorful patterns. Now, this is where it gets very difficult to put into words…but I’ll try it. After a while I felt like I was floating through concepts in my mind. like every thought that came up became plastic: the thoughts materialized in front of my eyes (they looked like grey, sharp stalagmites and stalagtites shooting out of every direction from an orange background. I just floated through that orange thing with sort grey rays coming towards me and I left them behind rapidly. Sometimes I would catch a more detailed glimpse on those thoughts and something inside of me would react like ‚wtf, this can’t be. what the heck is this? now, this can’t be real‘ (I can’t recall the exact content now, but I think most of them related to friends and people I know). Then this strange thing happened like 5-10 times: I suddenly identified with one of my friends (often from the past). I literally felt like I was him/her. and then I thought: ‚wait, no! this can’t be me. this is my friend, so I must be someone else‘ then an excited: ‚well, who am I then?‘ and I actually didn’t know. not figuratively, but quite literally: I couldn’t recall my name. I couldn’t recall my face or my personal history. But it didn’t terrify me. Neither did I feel euphoria or bliss. I was just generally curious. I continued asking myself ‚who am I?‘. shortly after that either my name, my personal history or the image of my face would return to my mind. I always felt a little disappointed afterwards. This trance eventually stopped and I felt hungry. I ate some fruits I had previously prepared for the trip. (eating whilst tripping I can only describe as a great delight: it tasted so sweet and fresh, I felt myself getting completely lost in that sweet moment) Then the trip became weaker and I tried to do some more meditation. I tried the ‚do nothing‘ technique and it felt amazing. sounds, but mostly visuals and feelings floated by and I just felt very distant from them, glossing over them with something I could only describe as curiosity and a mild amusement. I am not quite sure what to make out of this trip. It was just so different from what I expected (less emotional, less mindfuck and more of a calm state of flow) I hope I can elaborate this stuff the following days and integrate some of the experiences into my daily life. I still have to wrap my head around what the shrooms were trying to tell/show me. Thanks for bearing with me if you came so far. :-)

Don't change the world, change yourself, grow into a meditator. You are only 15. When you are young, it is the easiest thing possible. It looks very difficult because you have not tried it yet. Give it a try. Why are you worried about the rest of the world? Let the world worry about itself. And you are not worried about what will happen to the rest of the world if you remain ignorant.... If you are ignorant, what happens to the rest of the world? You create misery. Not that you knowingly do it, you are misery -- so whatsoever you do, you sow seeds of misery all around. Please leave the world to itself. You can do only one thing, and that is, you can achieve inner silence, inner bliss, inner light. If you achieve this, you have helped the world very much. Just by changing one ignorant spot into an enlightened flame, just by changing one person from darkness into light, you have changed a part of the world. And this changed part will have its own chain reactions. Buddha is not dead. Jesus is not dead. They cannot be dead because there is a chain reaction -- from one lamp, from one flame, another flame takes over. And a successor is created, and they go on living. But if your light is not there, if your lamp is without a flame, you cannot help anyone. The first basic thing is that you must attain your inner flame. Then others can share. Then you can kindle others' light also. Then it becomes a succession. If you become enlightened, whatsoever you do -- or you need not do anything -- just your being, your presence will help others to flower, to be happy, to be blissful. But that should not be your concern. The first thing is how to be enlightened.

One should do physical exercises which make him more aware, alert and alive throughout the day, not only after gym. Every technique that makes your mind silent is not meditation. You can avoid the complexity of spiritual transformation. You can chose a technique to force your mind to be still. It is a negative state; it makes mind only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. 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. Weight trainers tend to pull their chest out and belly in. There is a stupid idea popular in the whole world that belly should be pulled in and chest should look larger, it hinders natural breathing. Breath is literally the bridge connecting all of these aspects of our being and our existence. When you are relaxed ,as the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used – in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. There is a Japanese word for the initial source of breath. That word is "tanden". Right breathing is connected with tanden, which is located two inches below the navel. The further a man is away from existence, the further his breath moves away from tanden. The higher your centre of breathing is, the more tense you are; the lower the point of your breath, the more you are relaxed. If your breathing is from tanden, there will be no tensions in your life. This is the very reason why children are free from tension. Observe your breath in a moment of relaxation. You will find it coming from tanden. When you are filled with tension and anxiety, observe your breath. It will become short, and it will come from the chest. Short breath is an indication that you are far removed from your original nature. There is a reason why we breathe from the chest. A very wrong concept has pervaded in the world. According to this, the chest should be well developed and large, and the abdomen should be flat, almost against the back. This mad tendency has created a terrible disturbance within the human body. In order to inflate the chest, the breath has to fill the chest and not be allowed to go down further. Observe yourself sometimes as you sit quietly by yourself on a chair. Let yourself loose, - there should be no tension - and you will feel the breath rising from your navel. But we do not let ourselves relax even when we rest. Is the idea of having an expanded chest so ingrained in us.

One thing that I am still strongly identified with is my self image. Its this dark, amorphous, subtly changing image of my physical self. My contour, my face, my head. It's always shadowy but there and it's as though it has a hook in my awareness. Even questions like 'who am I?' seem to unfold on top of it.. There is so much resistance. I did Leo's guided neti neti method and found myself grasping for some experience. Some massive bliss and relief.. of course that did not happen and I was left with anger and frustration and that stuck to me like glue....

If you find it too complicated, you can try OSHO KUNDALINI MEDITATION This “sister meditation” to the OSHO Dynamic is best done at sunset or in the late afternoon. Being fully immersed in the shaking and dancing of the first two stages helps to “melt” the rock-like being, wherever the energy flow has been repressed and blocked. Then that energy can flow, dance and be transformed into bliss and joy. The last two stages enable all this energy to flow vertically, to move upwards into silence. It is a highly effective way of unwinding and letting go at the end of the day. Osho on How to Shake: "If you are doing the Kundalini Meditation, allow the shaking – don't do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don't do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don't will it. "If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stonelike, rocklike within. You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question. "When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rocklike being should shake to the very foundations, so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rocklike being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not. "Enjoy it, but don't will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it you cannot will it." Osho Instructions: The meditation is one hour long, with four stages. First Stage: 15 minutes Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed. Second Stage: 15 minutes Dance ... any way you feel, and let the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed. Third Stage: 15 minutes Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out. Fourth Stage: 15 minutes Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still. http://www.osho.com/iosho/imeditate?mid=22

If they are real friends, they will let you be alone during this period, and they will rejoice your coming back once you do. It's a win-win situation you got there. Anyway, just follow your bliss ya kna

https://jacquelynmikus.com/2017/05/09/my-sedona-experience-the-journey-to-endless-bliss/

For centuries and centuries teachers have been teaching that you are the creator of your own suffering and no one else is responsible. You have heard these things, you have read these things. But this is not your feeling, this is not your realization. I know that if I put my hand in the fire it is going to be painful. If I know, I cannot put my hand in. But if somebody else has told me, if I have heard through the tradition, if I have read in the scriptures that fire burns, and I have not known fire, and I have not known any similar experience, only then can I put my hand into fire - and that too only once. Can you conceive it? That you have put your hand into fire and you have been burned and you have suffered, and again you go and ask, ′I know that fire burns, but in spite of it I go on putting my hand into the fire. What to do about it?′ Who will believe that you know? And what type of knowledge is this? If your own experience of suffering and burning cannot stop you, nothing is going to stop you. Now there is no possibility, because the last possibility has been missed. But no one can miss it; that is impossible. Once you know.... But remember - the knowledge must be yours. A borrowed knowledge won′t do; borrowed knowledge is useless. Unless it is your own experience, it is not going to change you. Others′ experiences are of no help. You have heard that you are the creator of your own suffering, but this is just in the mind. It has not entered your being, it is not your own knowledge. So when you are discussing, you can discuss about it cerebrally, but when the actual phenomenon happens, you will forget, and you will behave in the way you know, not in the way others know. When you are at ease, cool, collected, silently discussing anger, you can say it is poison, it is a disease, evil. But when someone makes you angry then a complete change occurs. Now it is not an intellectual discussion, now you are involved. And the moment you are involved, you become angry. Later on again, retrospectively, when you again get cool, the memory will come back, your mind will again start functioning, and you will say, ′That was wrong. It was not good of me to do that. I know anger is wrong.′ You have to make a clearcut distinction between what you know and what you have gathered as knowledge. Don′t rely on information. From the greatest source - even if you collect from the greatest source - information is information. Even if a Buddha says it to you, it is not your own, and it is not going to help you in any way. But you can remain thinking that it is your knowledge, and this misunderstanding will waste your energy, time and life. The basic thing is not to ask what to do so that suffering is not created. The basic thing is to know that you are the creator of your suffering. Next time whenever a real situation arises and you are in suffering, remember to find out whether you are the cause of it. And if you can find out that you are the cause of it, the suffering will disappear, and the same suffering will not appear again - impossible. When you are suffering you can say, ′Yes, I know I have created this suffering,′ but deep down you know that someone else has created it. Your wife has created it, your husband has created it, someone else has created it, and this is simply a consolation because you cannot do anything. You console yourself: ′No one has created it, I have created it myself, and by and by I will stop it.′ Only spirituality can lead humanity towards non-suffering. Nothing else can lead, because everyone else believes that the suffering is caused by others; only spirituality says that suffering is caused by you. So spirituality makes you the master of your destiny. You are the cause of your suffering, hence you can be the cause of your bliss.

All knowledge, culture and basically all language that mankind has created can be summed up as world mind. You are an integral part of world mind. You perpetuate it through every interaction and every thought you have. The you that you think you are is actually world mind working through you. There is no you other than that. Liberation means liberation from world mind. The purpose of the spiritual quest is to flush ever last bit of world mind out of your system. First you use the spiritual beliefs to get rid of common beliefs. In the end even spirituality has to go as it is also part of world mind. Spirituality is part of the dream. There is no such thing as spirituality. Without world mind everything functions perfectly, just as it is supposed to be. Everything is as it is and the is-ness perfectly accepts everything. In order to get rid of world mind, every last bit of you (person) has to go. You think you are a separate entity in this world but that is an illusion and causes the friction you experience in life. Existence is one unitary movement. Right now you function under the premise: perceiver - perceiving - perceived This duality is perpetuated by the world mind in you. As the world mind subsides this duality collapses into non-duality. How to get rid of world mind? World mind has a strong gravitational pull. You experience this gravitational pull as fear. Fear is the anchor of all beliefs. Spirituality offers many techniques to transcend fear and beliefs. You can work on a level of emotions (e.g. Sedona Method) or tackle the problem from the angle of thought (e.g. Byron Katie). The more you let go of fear and beliefs the weaker the gravitational pull will become. In the early stages your focus should lie on gaining momentum. Practice, reading, meditation, diet, yoga and so on are highly recommended. You know that you make progress when you see your personality transform. Things that bothered you start to bother you less. Past problems become non-issues that you don't even think about anymore. You slowly become more energetic and positive. You are able to hold paradoxes in your mind without the need to resolve them. You always see the two sides of the coin. The later stages are even trickier than the first stages. You overcame most of the gravitational pull of the world mind. You probably had an awakening or two. At this stage your practice starts to develop a life of it's own. Some techniques you use become automatic. This topic is on your mind almost 24/7. Now a different force starts pulling on you. We could call it "the void". This stage can be pretty scary and confusing. The world mind in you recognizes that it is about to be defeated. It starts to fight and wonder, "Maybe this whole spirituality thing wasn't such a good idea after all". The more you resist the fall of the world mind in you the more friction you will experience. The number one advice at this point is surrender. Surrender, surrender, surrender. A big trap at this stage is that the ego starts attaching itself to spirituality. Instead of worldly goals it yearns for divine moments, peace, bliss and all that jazz. If you recognize that movement in you realize that it's just another movement of the world mind that you need to treat just like everything else before. The last step you have to take is not a step you can take. Every movement you make is a movement away from it. Even the need to be free of this situation is standing in the way of liberation. There is nothing in your power that can do about it. All that is left to do is to surrender and to wait for the world mind to finally call defeat. What then? Of course we have many reports of people who went through this transformation but in the end you can't know if what they say is true. You have to fully accept and embrace the unknown. Everything could happen. You could die and that's why it's so scary. This text probably won't make you feel comfortable and that is the purpose of it. Spirituality is not an easy path. It takes everything from you, everything. This text is part of the world mind and should be discarded once it served it's purpose.

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

wow, love this. I think this was one of my bigger insights during the last shroom trip. It was kind of hard for me to formulate the insight. I had this deep struggle within, it kept choking me and I kept looking, seeking, doing, thinking and trying to grasp like crazy. then I suddenly realized That I need to let go and so I did. It felt lie such a release. Like struggling up an infinite mountain, reaching the top and then jump down in total bliss and freedom <3 thanks for putting this into words

Shin...It was more like this: He was excited because he saw nothingness and this: It's called Riding the Ox Backwards in Zen. (Well, the animation is supposed to be going backwards instead.) And, this massive light goes into the body with extreme bliss like this: It may have been different since it's done with 5meo. I dunno.

When you meditate and you experience bliss for the first time

pond jumping, part 1. I'm finally back to some semblance of sanity after three weeks of insanity. Ten days in Ireland, ten days in Peru. Seriously, I was beginning to go insane. It wasn't because I was away from home, nor was it because of the layovers and long travel times. It was due mainly to lack of alone time and dietary options. No offense to the Irish, but your food totally sucks, especially for vegetarians/vegans. Hardly any fresh produce; all deep fried processed potato-ey constipating foods. The group that I was with also provided too much food. My constipation was so bad that I looked pregnant; I'm surprised nobody asked me if I was. Being incredibly constipated reminded me of my hellishly miserable school years. I have no doubts now: an unhappy body is an unhappy psyche. Then there was the group I was with. The three other millenials I roomed with were so shallow that even the Irish puddles were saying, "Dayum son!" Is this really what it's come to? Snapchatting every single fucking moment of your life? Filling every waking moment with noise? Gossiping about the Kardashians and the people sitting next to you? I know I sound condescending. But my God, I'm concerned. More and more, I feel like a stranger in a strange land, and Leo's recent episode on loneliness really resonates. I also think of this scene from Wall-E. I went to Ireland for a songwriting workshop, hoping that it could give me some clarity on my relationship with music. It did, but not in the way I hoped. The workshop felt like a break-up. I've spent the past three years seriously building my music and songwriting skills, but now I realize that it's not what I want to do full-time. I hate traditional songwriting. I feel like a charlatan whenever I do it. This workshop reminded me of my social studies classes in primary school, which I always hated. I was a math/science guy in school. The insight I gleaned is this: I'm primarily a musician, not a songwriter. I'm an emotional engineer, not a storyteller. I listen to music less for the lyrics and more for the musicality. For the past three years, the universe has been beating me down, telling me not to be a performing artist. I don't feel built for it. I'm extremely introverted, don't resonate with most people, and most people don't resonate with me. I went into music for music's sake, not for a sense of impact on others. Now I'm craving that sense of impact, and music's not giving it to me. The next insight: music probably won't be my full-time job. I can see myself having an online following and doing busking/local gigs, but no more than that. The blog's also been an interesting experiment, but I feel it burning out as well. I figure I'll keep writing here and ditch the blog. Along with "Follow your bliss," I received some solid advice from one of the songwriters who led the group. "If it ain't 'Hell yeah!' then it's 'No'", she said. Well, songwriting and the blog are not a "hell yeah" anymore, and no amount of listening to music/reading has reignited the fire. I purposely paused on the Life Purpose Course because of how volatile I've been lately. To be expected as a clueless twenty-something...

@Azrael I believe there is a point where you realize that what majority of hoomans call falling in love and "bliss" is actually a bigass load of suffering. In my case several months ago romantic feelings started spontaneously appearing for girls I had not seen for ages, and then disappearing as the lovey-dovey romance was purged away. Funnily enough usually the bottom line emotion of the "love" was loneliness... talk about purity of romantic love FUCKING HOLYWOOD FUCKING HELL FUCK YOU XD.

You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss Atman, true self. You will look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that you have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. You have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. You have chosen meditation, you have forced your mind to be still. It is a negative state; your mind is only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. 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. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. 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. A meditator is not identified with his mind but he can use his mind whenever he needs. He will become more intelligent, but he is able to turn the mechanism of verbalization on and off. Unnecessary chattering of mind will not be there. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; but when you are alone with existence, you must be able to turn it off. If you can’t turn it off – if it goes on and on, and you are incapable of stopping it – then you have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. When you walk, you need to move your legs. But if they go on moving when you are sitting, then you are mad. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a technique to communicate. When you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this, you can grow into meditation.

I guess I could have phrased that more clearly...I just mean that this realization that "nobody exists" seems like it is rather earth shattering, the "collapsing of the dream". But it's not really a phenomenon you hear about for a typical person, for instance I don't personally know anybody that has experienced this, spiritual seeker or not. But I know plenty of people that have experienced the flow state or moments of bliss. So it could be that there are other elements involved in the collapsing of the dream, that guys like Tony Parsons are unaware of. From his vantage point now, it may seem like a spontaneous event that is not preceded by anything, but he may not be aware of everything that allowed him to finally awaken. Paraphrasing Nisargadatta Maharaj, the fruit falls instantly from the tree, but the ripening took time. Parsons may be unaware of the ripening process he himself went through. And the fact remains that the majority of these neo-advaita people did indeed spend much time seeking and meditating prior to their awakening. Perhaps that is the ripening process.

1. Start with the daytime. With the first ray of consciousness as you wake up in the morning, start the experiment. After a thousand attempts, perhaps one may succeed but even if one attempt is successful you will realize that the thousands of attempts were worthwhile. If even for a moment, you came to experience that he who walks is not you but he who is unmoving is you; he who is full of desires is not you, but that he who is forever desireless is you; that that which is perishable is not you, but the fountain of eternal nectar is you. Start with the daytime, and gradually you will succeed in carrying it through into your sleep. Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples to practice awareness during the daytime, and then he would tell them that just before going to bed they must remember: ”This is a dream.” You are still awake. There is no dream yet, but you have to keep repeating to yourself: ”Everything I see is a dream.” Touch the bed and intensify the feeling: ”Whatever I touch is a dream.” Touch one hand with the other, and experience: ”All that I touch is a dream.” You go to sleep sinking deep into this feeling. There will be a constant stream of feeling moving inside. After a few days you will find that in the middle of a dream you will suddenly become aware that it is a dream. As soon as you remember that it is a dream, the dream breaks, because the dream works only in the absence of consciousness. Then you will be filled with bliss such as you have never known before. 2.Shankara’s Vedanta propounds the concept that the universe is an illusion. This philosophy is an experiment of the same kind. The seeker has to remember constantly that whatever is happening is a dream. While getting up in the morning, walking on the road, in the midst of the marketplace, he has to remember: ”Everything is a dream.” Why? Because this is the method. It is a process. If you experiment constantly for eight hours, this remembrance will penetrate so deeply that you will remember it even in the middle of the dream; you will remember that it is a dream. At present you are unable to remember. Actually, you are doing it even now – but in the reverse order. All your waking hours you feel and understand that whatever you see is real. And that is why dreams seem real at night, because the feeling is very strong. What can be more false than dreams? How many times on waking up have you realized their falsity, their uselessness? Yet every night you make the same mistake. Why? There must be a very deep reason behind this folly. The reason is: in your waking state you take everything to be true. If you take everything you see to be real, then how can the dreams you see at night appear to be illusory? You take them to be real. The maya experiment is just the opposite. Whatever you see during the day, you remember that this is unreal. You forget again and again, but once again you pull yourself together. You remind yourself that everything you see is nothing but a huge drama in which you are only a spectator. You are not the actor, not the doer, but only a witness. If you nurture this feeling, it becomes a constant flow within. Finally the dream disappears in the night, and this is a great attainment. If the dream is shattered, you are ready to take the third step. If the dream is shattered, you can take the third step of retaining consciousness in deep sleep. But right now this is difficult for you. It is not possible to do it all at once; you must proceed step by step. 3. While walking along the road, stop! Become the observer: realize that it is the body walking and you are merely an observer. While eating, stop! Become the observer. The body eats. You are merely observing. While attending to the customers in your shop, stop! Become the observer. Do not get so engrossed as to forget the observer. Take hold of yourself time and again. It will require a continuous effort. You will find, by and by, that the effort becomes easier day by day; now and again you will get flashes of 'pure consciousness'. When 'pure consciousness' comes easily in the daytime you can gradually utilize it in your dreams. Then when you are about to fall asleep let the last thought in your mind be: ”I am the observer”. As sleep overcomes you let this thought reverberate in your mind: ”I am the witness, I am the witness...” And thus you fall asleep. You will not be able to catch the moment when sleep comes and the repetition stops. If you cultivate the feeling till you fall asleep the feeling will continue into sleep, for it is only the body that sleeps. As you cultivate this feeling more and more, one night you will suddenly become conscious of the observer in your sleep. And as soon as you become aware of the observer a rare thing happens – dreams vanish. Dreams occur only because of your unconsciousness. Now nothing and nobody can make you unaware, unconscious. He who awakens even for a moment in his sleep, his unawareness is gone forever. The day you awaken in your sleep you become a yogi. You cannot become a yogi by performing asanas. These are merely exercises. They are good and useful to keep the body healthy, but if you take them to be the true yoga then you are deluded. Yoga means: the art of awakening in sleep. Thus he who awakens is a yogi. Osho ~ The Great Path

Hello, I have been only reading the forum so far and noticed that there are plenty of knowledgeable people on here so maybe someone will be able to give good advice! My self-development has been going well(ish) with a relatively clear path of education, fixing life parts that need to be fixed, introducing good habits, higher-level consciousness activities etc. I even started getting into more spiritual areas like meditation, retreats, learning about enlightenment etc. The problem I find is that I am sitting on the fence. I can't reconcile this self-development world view with a nihilistic and pragmatic/physical approach to life that I've had more or less since forever. Best summary would be any of Benjamin Smythe's videos saying that essentially "Spiritual people die every day; we just move things around trying to get what we want, most of the time we don't. Nothing and no one will be remembered. Chill out and do what you like". I mean, I really cannot disagree with practical statements like these as I have been thinking this for most of my life (haven't been into religion and spirituality apart from Buddhism). Even though I want to believe in things like Improvement, Life Purpose, Sagehood that we can strive to achieve I very easily get all the way back to "this-is-all-bs and not real, screw the hope-selling industry; I need to chill out and enjoy my life and the things I do". The problem is that this would lead me straight to hedonism and low-consciousness activities like watching tv, partying, chasing material things like health/physique, status and money etc. If I do that I am back to where everyone in modern society is (with the consensus on here that we can do better), maybe with some ability to see it for what it really is. So how do you convince yourself that these ambitious self-development goals are what will actually bring you happiness, bliss and fulfillment?

To repeat your question: What will actually bring you happiness, bliss and fulfillment? Answer: Loving. To be free from fear. Which is manifested in such things as greed, want, validation, etc. These are all forms of tension. To be loving, unconditionally, requires total release of tension. No fear. So one can open their heart like a blossom of radiance. A self-development goal, in this regard, would be to be fearless. Which is manifested as being soft, open, allowing, accepting, forgiving, tolerant, patient, and listening, because all these traits is what truth is. And it's full expression is unconditional love.

I don't really believe that it will get more boring as we experience more of life. All that time would allow more time for the pursuit of enlightenment. I bet I could reach some kind of level no one had with enlightenment if I could live forever. Imagine the bliss. Also, the world is getting more complex as the days go on. Advancements in knowledge are improving. In Leonardo da Vinci's time, there could be renaissance people — people who are masters of several subjects. But as the years go by — people need to specialize more as it's harder and harder to master fields where information is growing rapidly. The most intelligent people in the world don't seem to have a problem of being bored from their speed in learning — there's always something interesting added to. With all that time — I can help out with solutions to world problems. As each generation comes, each generation has to learn the knowledge of its predecessors as they die off.. But if I live forever — I can just master knowledge and wisdom continuously. How awesome would that be?

@Annetta All hopes are false. To hope is to be false. So it is not a question of creating false hopes: whatsoever you can hope will be false. Hope comes out of your falsity of being. If you are real there is no need for any hope. Then you never think about the future, about what is going to happen. You are so real, so authentic that the future disappears. When you are unreal then the future becomes very significant, then you live in the future. Then your reality is not here and now, your reality is somewhere in your dreams. And you make those dreams look real because through those dreams you gain your reality. As you are, you are unreal. That's why so much hoping goes on. All hopes are false; you are real. My whole effort is how to throw you to yourself. And the ego is all false hopes combined together. Ego is not a reality, it is the collectivity of all your dreams, of all that is unreal, of all that is false. The ego cannot exist in the present. Look at this phenomenon. The ego exists either in the past or in the future, never here and now - never, never. That is impossible. Whenever you think of the past, the ego comes, the I comes. Whenever you think of the future, the I comes. But when you are here, not thinking of past and future, where is your I? Sitting under a tree, not thinking of past and future, just being there, where are you? Where is the I? You cannot feel it. It is not there. The ego has never existed in the present. Past is no more, future is yet to be. Both are not. Past has disappeared, the future has not yet appeared. Both are not. Only the present is and in the present nothing like the ego has ever been found. So when I say drop the ego, what do I mean? I am not giving you a new hope, I am taking all your hopes away. And that is the difficulty; you live through the hope, so you feel that if all hopes are taken away you will be dead. Then the question will arise: Why live? For what? Why move from one moment to another? For what? The goal has disappeared with the disappearance of the hope. So why go on and on if there is nowhere to reach? You cannot live without hope. That's why it is so difficult to drop the ego. Hope has become synonymous with life. So whenever a man is hoping he appears to be more vital, appears to be more alive, appears to be very strong. When he is not hoping he appears to be weak, depressed, thrown back to himself, not knowing what to do, where to go. And whenever there is no hope you feel meaninglessness come into you. Immediately you create another hope; a substitute is created. If one hope is frustrated, immediately another is substituted - because you cannot live in the gap. You cannot live hopelessly .And I tell you that that is the only way to live. Without any hope, life is real, for the first time life is authentic. So the second thing to be understood is: when I say it is easy to drop the ego, I don't mean that it will be easy for you to drop it; I mean it is easy to drop it because the very phenomenon of ego is so unreal. If the ego is false, how can it be difficult to drop it? If the dream is just a dream, how can it be difficult to come out of it? If it was real, then there would have been difficulty .If a dream is just a dream, where is the problem to come out of it? You can come out! The dream cannot catch hold of you. The dream cannot prevent you. The dream cannot become a barrier. The dream has no force - that's why we call it a dream. It is easy to come out of a dream. That's what I mean when I say it is easy to drop the ego. But I don't mean that it will be easy for you, because the dream is still a reality for you, it is not a dream. The ego is not false to you, it is the only reality. Everything else is false. We are living around the ego. We are seeking more and more egotistical journeys - somebody through wealth, somebody through status, power, prestige, somebody through politics, somebody through religion, priesthood. There are millions of ways. But the end, the result, the goal, is the same: seeking more and more the I, seeking more and more the ego. To you it is a reality, to you I say it is the only reality. The false has become the real. The shadow has become the substance. That's why it is difficult - not difficult because ego is very powerful, no; it is difficult because you still believe in it, in its power. If you believe in it, it is going to be difficult, because on the one hand you want to drop it, and on the other hand you go on clinging to it. It is going to be difficult .When I say to you it is a dream, you want to believe it because you have suffered so much through it, because you feel the truth of what I am saying. If you feel the truth of what I am saying you will drop it immediately. You will not ask how. There is no how to it. You see the point and you drop it. You don't see the truth of what I am saying. When I say it is not realized that the ego is false and can be dropped, when I say that the ego can be dropped, you create a hope out of it. Because you have been suffering so much through it, you create a hope that if the ego can be dropped then all suffering will be dropped. You become happy with this hope. I am not creating the hope, you are creating the hope. I am simply stating a fact that this is the construction of the ego. This is how an ego is structured, this is how an ego is created and this is how it can be dropped! And because it is false, no effort is needed. Just seeing the point it disappears. A man is running, scared, afraid to death, and running because of his own shadow. You stop him and tell him: You are foolish! This is your own shadow - nobody is following you and nobody is going to murder you. There is nobody except you. You have become scared of your own shadow. But once you start running the shadow also runs faster. The faster you run, the faster the shadow follows. Then the logical mind can say that you are in danger. And the logical mind will say: If you want to escape run faster and faster. But whatsoever you do the shadow will be following you. And if you cannot get rid of it, you will get more and more scared. You are creating the whole thing out of yourself. But if I say to you: This is just a shadow, nobody is following you, and you realize the point, you look at the shadow and you feel the point, will you ask me how to drop this shadow? Will you ask about some technique, method, some yoga, how to drop it? You will simply laugh. You have dropped it! In the moment you see that this is just a shadow and nobody is following you, it has been dropped already. There is no question of how. You will have a good laugh. The whole thing was nonsense. And the same happens with the ego. If you can see the truth of what I am saying, the thing has happened. In the very seeing of it the thing has happened. There is no more how to it .If you still ask how, the thing has not happened and you have not seen the point - but you have created a hope out of it. Because you have been suffering through this ego, you have always wanted to drop it, but this want has always been half of your mind. All your suffering has come through the ego, but all your pleasures have also come through the ego. A crowd applauds you, appreciates you - you feel good. That is the only bliss you have known. Your ego rises high, reaches to a peak, becomes an Everest. You enjoy it! And then the crowd condemns you and you feel hurt. The crowd becomes indifferent; you are crushed by it. You fall into a valley, a depression. You have been gaining pleasure through the ego, you have been suffering through it. Because of suffering you want to drop it, but because of pleasures you cannot drop it. So when I say that the ego can be dropped easily, hope is created in you. Not that I am creating it, your greed does that. It doesn't become a realization, it becomes a new greed, a new search for gratification. You feel that now there is a way, and there is a man who can help you to drop the ego and all the misery that ego creates. But are you ready to drop all the pleasures that the ego creates too? If you are ready it is such an easy thing - just like dropping a shadow. But you cannot half drop it, and you cannot half carry it. Either the whole will go or the whole will cling to you. This is the problem and this is the difficulty. All your pleasures and all your sufferings are related to only one phenomenon; you want to preserve the pleasures and you want to drop the sufferings. You are asking the impossible. Then it is difficult. Not only difficult, it is impossible. It is not going to happen to you. Whatsoever you do will be futile, no result will come of it. You create hope out of it, a heaven, the intense blissfulness of a Buddha. Listening to me or listening to a Jesus or a Buddha, hope is created. But I am not creating it, you are creating it. You are projecting hope on it. And this is the problem, the complexity: every hope is food for the ego again. Even this hope of reaching a paradise, a heaven, becoming enlightened, is a hope. And every hope is food for the ego. Who is trying to become enlightened? The one who is trying to become enlightened is the problem. Nobody ever becomes enlightened. Enlightenment happens, but nobody ever becomes enlightened. When the room is empty, enlightenment happens. When there is nobody to reach enlightenment, enlightenment is there. Because of our language, because of the duality of the language, whatsoever is said about such deep things becomes false. We say: Gautam Buddha became enlightened. This is false. Gautam Buddha never became enlightened. Gautam Buddha was the unenlightenment. When he was not there, when he became absent, enlightenment happened. When suddenly one day he realized that he was following an absurd pattern, when he realized: I am the problem, so whatsoever I do will create more problems.... It is not a question of doing right or wrong, this or that. WHATSOEVER you do will strengthen the ego. Once Buddha realized this - but this realization took many years of effort - when he realized that: Whatsoever I do will help my ego more and more, he simply dropped doing. In that moment of realization he simply became a non-doer, absolutely inactive. Remember, this is the problem: you can even create activity out of your inactivity, or you can create activity just to help inactivity come to you. But then you miss. You can stand still, you can sit silently, but if you are making an effort to stand still, your standing is false. You are not standing, you are moving. If you are sitting silently and there is effort, if you are trying to be silent, that silence is false. You are not silent. When Buddha realized that he was the problem, and that every activity of his gave more substance to the ego, he simply dropped. Then he was not making any effort to create a non-active state. He was not doing at all. Whatsoever was happening was happening. The wind was blowing, and the tree must have been dancing; then came the full moon, and the whole existence was celebrating. And the breathing coming in, going out, and the blood circulating in the veins, and the heart beating, and the pulse - and everything was happening! But he was not doing anything. In this non-doing Gautam Siddhartha disappeared. By the morning there was no one to receive enlightenment, but enlightenment was there. Under that bodhi tree a vacant vehicle was sitting - breathing of course, heart beating of course, better than ever. Everything functioning perfectly, but no doer there. Blood circulating, the whole existence around - alive, dancing. Every atom in Buddha's body dancing, alive. It had never been so alive, but now energy moving of its own accord - nobody pushing it, nobody manipulating it. Buddha became a white cloud. Enlightenment happened. It can happen to you also, but don't create any hope out of it. Rather, seeing the point, drop all hopes. Become hopeless, perfectly hopeless. It is difficult to become perfectly hopeless. Many times you reach hopelessness but it is never perfect. One hope drops, you feel hopelessness. But immediately, to cover it up, you create another hope. And hopelessness is gone. People go on moving from one master to another; that is movement from one hope to another. They go to one master with hopes that he will give through his grace, that through his energy the thing will happen. Then they try, then they wait, with a very strained mind, because a mind which hopes can never be at ease; with a very impatient mind, because a mind which is filled with hope cannot be patient. And then they start feeling uneasy because the thing is not happening. So this master is wrong, they must move to someone else. This is not movement from one master to another, this is movement from one hope to another. People move from one religion to another; there are conversions just because of hope. You can go on doing it for many, many lives. You have been doing that. Now, try to see the point! It is neither a question of a master nor a question of a right method. It is a question of a direct insight, an immediate penetration into the phenomenon of what is happening, of why you hope, of why you can't be without hope. And what have you gained out of all your hoping? See it. It drops by itself. You are not even required to drop it. That's why I say it is easy, and I know well it is very difficult. Difficult because of you, easy because of itself. The phenomenon is easy, you are difficult. And this can happen any moment. When I say this can happen any moment, I mean the phenomenon of enlightenment, of egolessness, is not caused by anything. No cause is needed. It is not an outcome of many causes, it is not a by-product. It is simple insight. It can happen to a sinner; it may not happen to a saint. So no necessary condition is needed really. If he can see, it can happen even to a sinner. If he becomes hopeless, if he feels that there is nothing to be gained and achieved, if he comes to see that the whole thing is just an absurd game, it can happen .It may not happen to a saint because the saint goes on trying to achieve. He is not yet hopeless. This world has become futile, but another world has become meaningful. He realizes that he has to leave this earth, but there are heavens beyond - he has to reach there. And even people near a Jesus or Buddha go on asking things like this. Just on the last night when Jesus was going to be caught and the next day killed, his disciples asked him: Master, tell us. In the Kingdom of God, when you are sitting on the right side of God's throne, what will our positions be there? Where will we be sitting, in what order? God sitting on his throne, Jesus on his right side, the only begotten Son, and then these twelve disciples: Where will we be sitting and what will be the order? People around Jesus asking such a foolish question! But this is how human mind is. They don't ask anything of this world - they have become beggars - but they ask of the other world. They are not really beggars, they are hoping. They have staked this world, but it is a bargain; where will we be there? Who will be sitting next to you? There must have been competition among those twelve disciples. There must have been politics, ambition, somebody up, somebody down, somebody becoming the chief. There must have been much conflict, inner politics, undercurrents of violence and aggression. Even with Jesus one starts hoping. Hope is deep-rooted in you. Whatsoever is said, you convert it into a hope. You are a hope-creating mechanism, and this hope-creating mechanism is the ego. So what is to be done? In fact, there is nothing to be done. You only need clearer eyes, more perceptive eyes, more penetrating eyes. All that is needed is to have a fresh look about you, your being, at whatsoever you have been doing, hoping - a fresh look. And I say to you, in that fresh look, in that innocent look, ego drops by itself, of its own accord. It is the easiest phenomenon, and at the same time the most difficult. But remember well, I am not creating any hope in you. Osho ~ My Way The Way of the White Clouds

Meditation is just a tool, albeit a very effective one! In the end it is not about meditation but about YOU! The greatest benefit that can occur from meditation is the realization that you don't need any benefits because everything is perfect just as it is. More shiny benefits I experienced: Clarity, peace of mind, states of flow (in day to day life, bliss states, tranquility, insights, awakening, concentration, relaxation, having a thing in my life that is independent from outer circumstances Tip 1: From the place you are at, I would say it is best to get motivated by those shiny benefits. Just keep in the back of your mind that in the end it is not about them. They come as a reward of your willingness to look at yourself very very very closely and be brutally honest with yourself. Once you experience those benefits and you cling to them, then what you should look at next is, "What is the root of you wanting to hold on to those benefits". Tip 2: As I said meditation is just a tool. In the end it is about what you do (or not do) with what you see while you meditate. Enlightenment can occur after 2 years of meditation or you can meditate for 40 years and still cling to ideas, concepts and beliefs. Tip 3: Start out with developing your concentration abilities. Which means choose an object to focus on (breath, candle, fingertips ...) and focus on it for a given time period. When your mind wanders and you realize it. Focus back on the object. Don't get angry with yourself, be gentle and practice daily