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There is no need to use drugs. Realizations, Truth, enlightenment and the state of bliss can all be attained the drug free way by working hard on yourself and staying on the spiritual path, being aware and meditating, sharing love with others and loving yourself. Don't let anyone pressure you into stuff that you geniunly do not want to do. There may be a good reason for your feelings.

@Marinus As you must be already knowing, an animal (or human) when faced with danger (any threat to survival) has two choices - fight with whatever is threatening it or run away. It puts heavy demand on the body, it prepares for the danger, all system go on red. Its not a pleasant state for the body obviously. When the danger is over, it returns back to a more relaxed and happy state. Something similar happens to the mind. People in so called "modern societies" are constantly under this mode, because of survival pressures. Race to earn more money, competition, crime, negative people, abusive relatives, wars......the list is long. Their mind and bodies rarely relax. Eventually it becomes a habit, and the negative impressions become permanent in the mind. Mental chatter is mostly negative, it is trying to cope. Bodies are under stress. All you need to do is relax and heal, and it returns to natural state producing the blissful feelings. Initially its a big contrast, so feels ecstatic, but more you meditate, more habitual it gets and bliss becomes just peace.

The Top Ten Things You Want But Don't Know You Want I'm watching Leo's Top Ten Things You Want and I realized that I'm achieving a few of these things on the list but I realize that I could go farther 1. Reality feeling magical This happens to me whenever I'm walking outside on a beautiful sunny day and thoughts aren't disrupting me or disturbing me. It feels like my mind is clear and deeply relaxed and I'm focusing on the sunshine and I'm just enjoying it. It feels like all the mental fog and monkey chatter has lifted. It's like a baby blue sky that's sunny and all the fluffy white clouds are out. Reality also feels magical when i recapture that childhood feeling of being so deeply immersed in a movie or story that time flows by. Reality feels magical when i'm watching an AMAZING theater production and i'm speechless with awe. I also feel it when i feel deeply relaxed while meditating and it recaptures that feeling of sleeping like a baby. I've also been focusing on mindfully savoring tea and coffee and re-connecting with how delicious it is. 2. Things to be completely effortless I'm focusing on making my creativity, happiness, and bliss feel completely effortless where it just flows by and I don't feel blocked or exhausted at all. I'm focusing on achieving that peak experience state and flow state but i want to know how to achieve it where i get so immersed and hyperfocused that time just flows by and it doesn't feel like i'm rushing to beat the clock. 3. Authenticity At the theater and on the mic where I recite my poetry, this is where my authenticity SHINES!!! I'm starting to cut through the bullshit of the inner critic and the fear of humiliation by just getting up on stage and creating what I want when i want. I deeply desire having a devil may care attitude where I have the freedom and the power to do what i want and be intoxicated with life's joys and cut loose and be spontaneous. 4. Dispassionate Mind I realize that my mind tends to fall deeply in love with ideas, stories, and academic fields but what I'm focusing on is relaxing my mind and detaching from thoughts through meditation. My meditation is just sitting in a chair deeply relaxed and just focusing on the moment without the mind going into monkey mind. There's nothing wrong with the mind or ego or thoughts. The mind, ego, and thoughts can be beneficial but also deceptive. I want to focus on training my ego and mind and using it to my advantage rather than an enemy. 5. Full soberness/lucidity I want to wake up in the morning feeling completely motivated and ready for an awesome day rather than waking up feeling exhausted and dreading Monday. I want to wake up feeling like it's Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I want to feel completely awake and with no mental fog or feeling exhausted. 6. The desire to be nobody An alternative to that want is having a fluid sense of identity and self-image where identity is in a state of flux and that you can create and customize identity however you want to. You can program yourself with beliefs and mindsets and emotions and passions and skills and you can focus on experimenting with a wide variety of identities rather than settling on an identity or clinging to an identity. You can even choose to be a blank slate but it's one option out of many. Identity is the canvas and you are the painter who is free to do whatever you want to with the canvas. 7. Samahdi Samadi is a potential state that I can achieve during meditation but I'm just getting started on meditation as a daily habit and as a tool for self-actualization. Altered states of consciousness is a possibility that I'm far away from but in the coming months or a year, I could have a profound experience!!! 8. Truth I'm fascinated by discovering my authentic self and what my true passions are and what's my best life path. I'm focusing on balancing discovery with raw experience with researching rather than solely relying on rationality. For my self-actualization, i'm willing to use a wide variety of resources. 9. Benevolence For benevolence, I'm focusing on becoming a teacher for lower income students and struggling students in Las Vegas. However, my authentic benevolence would probably come from a place of comedy and desire to make people laugh, to fascinate and intrigue people, and to make them think. 10. Simple and natural lifestyle In Las Vegas, when i move, i will focus on living a rich and fulfilling life but by carving out large areas of free time and using the free time to take nature trips to Lake Meade, Red Rock, Grand Canyon or Zion National Park. I want to deeply immerse my life in passions and rich experiences but also focusing on relaxing so I have time to create, meditate, and contemplate. I want to focus on making my life feeling like those childhood vacations and 100% freedom and flexibility over my life. I strongly value freedom and flexibility over life! Here are my deepest desires 1. Being authentic and having a fluid and detached sense of identity and beliefs where my ego is completely flexible and open to new ideas. My vision for my authentic self is the lovable comedian with an aura of charisma that comes deeply from his passion and being uninhibited and free from all the internal and external restraints. I create and act based on intuition and merging my heart and my mind into one! My authentic self is effortlessly creativity! 2. Being free to create my life and my identity and my mind however I want to! My mind is detached from absolutes and shoulds and embraces new experiences and adventures, paradox, uncertainty, expanding consciousness but who also sees the benefit of comfort as a tool rather than rejecting the comfort zone. 3. Having the personal power of a billionaire and an artist who does what he wants whenever he wants and who has abundance and is anti-scarcity mindset. He is free to live life his own way with nobody controlling him. He has the impunity and the confidence to act on any vision like a Tim Burton or Quentin Tarnatino. 4. To live a richly fulfilling life where i was able to be truly limitless.

I'm working on the Life Purpose course and have just finished watching the video about Finding my Bliss. This then got me watching videos from Joseph Campbell. In one video on Youtube, called "Becoming an adult", he talked about the different rites of passage and initiations in different cultures around the world (specifically simple cultures and societies). He talked about how these initiations were designed to kill the infantile ego (characterized by submissiveness and dependence on the society). Therefore bringing into consciousness the mature ego (characterized by authority, responsibility, and courage over one's own life). He goes on to express how many people in our culture live to be 30 or 40 still dependent and submissive in the infantile ego. An example he used for an initiation was of a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The initiation started by covering the boys eyes so they couldn't see. Then a man would come in waving a bullroarer around in the air. This would make a sound which would made the boy think it was a deity, while the man would say he was intent on eating the boy. Then the boy would think he was dead. This would then create the effect of breaking through death. Therefore, killing the infantile ego and making way for the mature ego. I'm wondering if you have any personal experiences with rites of passage, any knowledge or wisdom about how one could create these for themselves in a culture without them. Also, do you think we can create them ourselves, or does the knowledge of knowing what is happening make these initiations not work? I believe that our culture is deficient in initiations and that it is having a negative effect on many people's development. Causing men and women to grow older physically, but stay immature mentally. I believe that by creating a video on rites of passage and initiations would help many people, and that it's important for a healthy society. Thank, in advance, for you consideration. Here's the video

@PureExp I'm only just beginning to grasp the reality that becoming fully lucid during THIS dream, and learning (re-learning?) that with full awareness and realization of my true nature, this shared dream is a play that exists to be not only experienced from a place of pure peace, love and bliss of existence, but is also fully shape-able. I never knew I had the power (I, ha ha). Everything gets slowly better and better. The world slowly becomes more alive & 3D & high def. Each interaction with another human, each one becomes an opportunity to love and appreciate and share. I think I'm actually growing a fair bit in the last year, it's pretty crazy for this guy who thought he was something else! @cetus56 Mini marshmallows! How many beautiful women!? Oh ...it's up to me? There's a music video in there somewhere... and something else for the bucket list!

To most of us, ignorance is bliss.

Some people report only being transported in heaven and becoming one with God. WITHOUT FEAR! WITHOUT SUFFERING! Without anything but pure bliss. Are they just really experienced with 5-MeO and spirituality that they trust the experience that much? Could you tell us more about this?

I think we need to define what 'happiness' even is as I feel that these is a misconception amongst people in relation to the way Leo (and others) use the term and what we are all working towards. We tend to think of 'happiness' as some form of elevated mood. But that would describe things such as pleasure, excitement, stimulation, bliss or euphoria etc. In fact I think the more appropriate definition of 'happiness' is peace of mind. A stillness of the mind, a neutrality of mood and emotion. That is what we are all ultimately seeking. Enlightenment will probably not bring you eternal bliss, but it will almost certainly bring you peace of mind. I feel this subject of 'happiness' needs better defining as it makes a huge difference to people's expectations and concepts of what we are all trying to achieve through personal development and spirituality. Happiness is the absence of pain, not the presence of joy.

It is interesting, I just watched him. Pretty inspiring to hear that the very experienced meditators rated their constant state of stillness & non-dual joy as an experience that trumps orgasms & 'shroom trips. Holy crap. That's very motivating. Anyone who's enjoyed a few grams of good, dried magic mushrooms and sat in their space-chair having multicoloured horizontal mushroom-cloud orgasms out of the back of their head for a few hours might consider working pretty long & hard to attain a similar state of euphoric bliss permanently. Wow.

For me, intuition comes when my mind is still, and when it appear, it's like crystal clear, with no doubt. It's difficult to know what's authentic in us, because what we think as "authentic" may just be a layer, which resonate with inner motivations, which are unknown to the conscious mind. "Follow your bliss" it's a very personal thing, only you can know, and requires years of research/evolving. I hope to drill into the superficial levels, and find the true reasons for my passions. Leo said once "everything you do in life, is a quest for awareness" maybe it means that we need to experience things first, to step back and growth from that. Ra (in Ra's material) call it "polarization" which I think is interesting). Then, it would be possible to reach awareness without experiencing Samsara at it's peaks, and take the shortcut thought meditation, or experiencing stuff in full awareness, so that the pain dissolve as it is occurring... Back to topic : you have to try it, to know if that's authentic, and you'll figure out on the path (+meditation practice). Personally, I see 2 kinds of intuition, the psychological one (subconscious, neurons...) and the esoteric one (synchronicity, deep meaning, dreams...) I think it's 2 aspects of the same thing, but I don't understand yet the connection between neurons and "infinite" consciousness.

@Leo Gura You may have just described Absolute Truth to a T. There is none. No right, no wrong, no this, no that. The perfection of absolute emptiness makes the search for any truth seem like being lost in a self imposed wilderness. @username You see, this so called search for truth is named that for a very good reason. It gives the ego something to do until enlightenment happens. Can you find bliss in maybe never knowing what is Absolute Truth? That there may be none outside of mind? Not so easy is it.

Bliss is not happiness. Happiness is worthless; it depends on unhappiness. Bliss is transcendence: one moves beyond the duality of being happy and unhappy. One watches both; happiness comes, one watches and does not become identified with it. One does not say, ‘I am happy. Peace, it is wonderful.’ One simply watches, one says, ‘Yes, a white cloud passing. And then comes unhappiness, and one does not become unhappy either. One says, ‘A black cloud passing. I am the witness, the watcher. And that third dimension brings bliss. Bliss is without any opposite to it. It is serene, tranquil, cool. It is ecstasy without any excitement.

I have already left my college. And started online business for earning and moved towards enlightenment with my own choice. Experiencing bliss.

This is completely normal. As you go on with the practice you'll encounter times in which you cannot concentrate more then 5 seconds on your breath. But always remember: If you take an stimulation-addicted being and sit it in an empty room, it'll take years of decades to fully come off the addiction and be in total bliss. It's all just the process.

Scrambling on my LP Habit Streak (3): 5 o'clock dayz Morning routine: (( Meditation (30 min) Programming Subconscious deep-work session (60min) )) Am I still doing my business?: YES?/NO? - I'm really fucking doubting this. Just watched a video from leo, he said if your not 100% you will fail. The thing is I'm not 100% convinced this is my path. I think it is making video's but those are showing no promise. I'm scrambling well atleast I have my morning routine but now I can't fill it in with activity's. Shit I know I should make video's because that is my bliss but it's so hard to fully tell everyone like fuck it I'm putting myself on your screen. If you don't like it well too bad my friend. SDFlkjSDhij hmmmmm. I think I will dedicate tomorrow on deep thinking. Also how can I make video's if I myself don't even have a lot of tangable results in my life. I experienced inner change because I meditated I think but I don't have anything to show off and convince people like HEY LOOK YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME! - Consciousness is the key

Learning to swim through life has enough terror for me to turn into bliss

@Dodoster Did you ever consider skydiving ? I hear the fist time you jump is terror that turns to bliss.

@John Flores It would make sense that humanity's purpose is to move into more bliss and less suffering. Everyone is trying to achieve this in one way or another. Me and you just have "superrior" knowledge on this matter. Btw yo dude where do you ger all your info on angels n stuff? Im kinda curios about those since I am from a halfassed spiritual background.

In hopes of inspiring people trying to discover their life purpose, I wanted to share my story. This is the story of someone who went into college for the money. He tried, under pressure, to turn his major into a passion, instead of turning his passions into a career. My situation: I'm finishing up college at a computer science major. I went into the field because I thought there'd be a lot of money in it, and that from going to school, I'd get my ass kicked into high gear and be able to get a good job. I was into PC gaming, like a lot of other CS majors, and chose the career because of that. I didn't think about being a creator, or the huge impact I could have or anything like that. From at least 5 years back, I started really getting into anime and Japanese culture. I started studying the language 2 years ago, and I started to actually see the potential of what I can do with it. I enjoy reading and writing, and I enjoy a well translated manga or visual novel. I think that in a way, translation can be a form of art. A good translation of a translated manga can literally make or break the impact of the work. In this sense, as a translator, you're interpreting the original story and conveying it to an English (or whatever 2nd language) audience. It's a tireless and meticulous career, working on translation, but I also mastering the language will be viable long-term. I worry a bit for betting it all on mastering a language, but I don't believe that prose in Asian languages can be translated into English prose by AI in my lifetime. The written language is so contextual and requires a real brain to determine what's going on in context. Mastery: Whenever Leo talks about the mastery process and coming to enjoy the work itself, it just rung so true with my casual study of Japanese over the past 2 years. I started to actually enjoy looking up individual Japanese words just for the sake of knowing them well, and for the sake of mastery. The reason is fluency, but Japanese is something that I didn't angrily dread pouring hours of frustrating and dread into. I started to enjoy the process itself, and when I have the time, I would slow down to be more thorough studying. Through the law of attraction, I started to get more interested in the culture, in cooking, I started meeting people at college who are into Japanese culture, and I started to look for mentors. All the sort of things that you're supposed to do when you enjoy something and want to master it, I was beginning to do with Japanese before I knew anything about self-actualization. Struggles, details (you can skip to the next section, but it has some specific details on my thoughts about the different career/life purpose prospects: My main difficulty now are some conflicting ideas about how to use the language to become a creator, outside of doing translation. I trust in the mastery process to eventually take care of my needs years down the road, so that I can become so skilled that I can translate, because my literal purpose for living is Japanese, but I've discovered my values and strengths, and I'm reviewing them daily. My life purpose statement I previously made was about programming, because I didn't even consider that I could turn my main hobby, the study of this language, into a career. I thought it was too impractical, and that programming was the logical, safe choice to quickly get that $40-70k job as a coder, as I let my years spent on interests just die completely, in hopes of discovering passion for programming. Some other fundamental issues I have with Japanese - it is largely escapist fantasy. For any Redpill readers here, a lot of this content is pretty much "The Ultimate Blue Pill Fantasy." But I think that by focusing on the creative aspects on the medium, and by translating material that inspires people is ultimately a good thing. Movies and TV shows are also escapist fantasies, but not everyone takes the same thing out of a movie. From Leo, I learned that you can watch a movie with the goal of being inspired from it, like with Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a bit complicated, because I got into Japanese content through escapism, but I feel like studying the language and changing the mediums I consume (more visual novels now than anime) has reduced the dopamine spiking and raised my consciousness a bit. There's plenty of depraved Japanese content that gets associated with anime, and this parallels all the addicting software and social media that's out there with programming. There's pretty much no creative medium I enjoy that doesn't have cons to it. You can even use classical music and fine art as distractions from doing work. Some interesting aspects of Japanese - I find the mediums of manga and visual novels to be especially moving. They're not the same sort of quick, instant gratification experiences that you could get in video games. You'll often a dozen hours on a single story arc before any major climax happens in a visual novel. My highest emotional peaks and peak interests were hit when I was reading visual novels. I think that by spreading this medium to the West, gamers and people who enjoy anime will learn to enjoy the calmer, slower paced aspects of entertainment, and of life itself. Some issues I have with programming and technology: The impact that technology has had on our society, lowering our attention spans, lowering people's consciousness, and all these little quick apps, I feel have actually fucked over my generation in a lot of ways, and now people are dealing with heavy procrastination with all the free dopamine everywhere. Men don't have enough positive male figures in their life, and porn and entertainment is so easily accessible that technology leads to escapism. Of course, technology is a tool and this is a huge negative generalization of it. Mark Zuckerberg might've had a positive creative vision with Facebook and creating his company, and a lot of these companies might actually have great intentions. Being connected with tons of your friends online sounds great in theory, but the anxiety, the fake posts, the instant gratification and dopamine, the distraction element, the attention span and motivation reduction, and all these other side effects are just killers for me. Rather than working with social media or making some game apps, I would want to create some meaningful software, and to spread self-actualization ideals through the software, but I spent years trying to program and never came to really enjoy the process. I'm annoyed that I was so unconscious when building up all this resistance, and didn't understand how I could ever possibly come to WANT to program. I spent every day of my life for years comparing myself to others, thinking about the money, programming under pressure, all before I grasped these self-actualization fundamentals, that made me really believe that I could catch up to and even surpass these friends of mine who are going off to work at Google. Career counselors at my college told me "Not everyone can be like him, but you can still get a good job programming." I think now that if could even make some productivity-related software, it would be really beneficial for people, and it would convey things like discipline through usage and support of my software. I also think that programming will become really chaotic, and in order to gauge the marketplace, I have to really stay plugged in. I would end up being a problem solving sort of career rather than a creative one, at least for some years until I become good enough to gain career capital and creative control. My entry into a programming career could be be too rigid for too long before I can create anything that I feel is meaningful. They say programming is just problem solving, but I don't want to be some reactive problem solver for a company. The solution to this that I came up with was working with Startup companies, and focusing on the creative aspect of programming. I'm definitely capable of becoming an excellent programmer, I believe, but with my conflicting passion with Japanese, and my low consciousness resistance towards programming that I built up from coding under pressure for my classes, it's not right. 10 years down the road, I think programming could be the better option, and I think in the near future I'll start doing it as a side hobby, so I can enjoy it and burn through my resistance. 10 years from now, it could become a new life purpose, or be combined with Japanese once I've become a master and have some economic security. There are other aspects of my life like health, fitness, and relationships that I need to work on, and having two exhausting mental hobbies, Programming and Japanese, isn't going to work out if I want to achieve those goals. My Big Fuckups: (choosing what was possible as a career) I didn't TRULY consider using my years spent on hobbies AS my career. I didn't believe I could do it. I didn't pitch the idea to my parents, even though I knew that I have a good 3-4 years of financial saving saved up. How was I going to tell them that this language I study for fun could actually become a career? Until last summer, I didn't have the confidence to speak up to my mom much at all, until I found TheRedPill and read No More Mr. Nice Guy and started building up my confidence. With learning Japanese, I sometimes guilted myself for spending too much time on it, instead of on college and my career. (NEVER GUILT YOURSELF). I went through Leo's Life Purpose Course and partially preselected Programming as the medium, though I had 3 or 4 other big ideas based on other interests and skills. I had Japanese as an idea on that list, along with writing, but I thought my parents wouldn't allow it and I don't have the financial freedom right now. There are a lot of other psychological investments I've made with Japanese that my ego won't let go of. I have friends of over 10 years that share the same interests as me. Trying to cut my ties with Japanese is equivalent to mental suicide at this point. At the end of my semester in college, I started having so much fun with people of similar interests, and I suddenly felt like "holy shit, I belong with these people." and was doing a lot of meta-analysis of the experience. I felt really overly attached to these people, because I felt like I would have to give up Japanese and sever connections with them next semester to transition into a programming regimen and career. When the semester ended, I felt extremely awful, worse than when my best friend died. I didn't even know that I could ever feel that level of emotional despair. I spent years repressing my hobbies and avoiding people with similar interests, investing into shallow one-sided friendships. At this point, I truly understood the inherent bias of having friends with similar interests - they actually care. Yes, it's a biased, neurotic, cliquey sort of caring that Leo talks about, because they value you because of your shared interests, but this leads to a real tight friendship. It's hard to find people who will be as egalitarian as you try to be, and will appreciate your interests the way you appreciate theirs. Sever attachments from people who don't love and support you, because life is too short to maintain so many shallow friendships. Investment is probably why Leo chose to combine his Sage advice with Actualized.org, rather than leave and become a sage himself, because he's become really invested in helping us, and he'd be abandoning the life purpose he adopted. On the other end of my own ego investment, I have a ton of negative ego investments against programming. I projected all my pain and anxiety towards it, by feeling like it's taking away time from my hobbies, and is creating all of my anxiety and unhappiness. I'd overeat just to be able to program more and get past the pain. I exhibited pretty much every neurotic behavior in the book to many extremes, when it came to programming. I would talk shit behind people's back because they were successful at programming and I wasn't. I thought that since these guys didn't do anything besides programming, they "didn't have a life," because they didn't have other hobbies. In reality, these programmers who enjoy their work and understand the mastery process are actually the happiest people I've ever met. Understanding the mastery process and my own potential to master anything, I feel that my biggest regret was pouring so much negative emotion into something that I actually always wanted to become good at. I felt like I wasn't talented, that it didn't come natural, or that I would lose myself and my hobbies if I dedicated all my time to programming. I realized that these beliefs are something your mind has built, especially with things you've attempted over and over again before learning about self-actualization, and so even with newfound objective information on the hours it takes to master something, and a path to doing it, it will still feel like we sometimes inherently can't do it. tldr; Basically, I see the beauty in Japanese culture, spreading it, focusing on lower dopamine mediums in Japanese, using translation and the written word as a medium, and I've got some intrinsic motivation for mastering the language. Hour for hour, the money will probably come later with Japanese for me, and I might be working slave wages until I'm truly excellent. I'd rather master Japanese and translate, starting at slave wages, than go into programming for the money like everyone wants me to. I'd rather "waste my degree" and follow my bliss, because it lights my fire. I recognize my own bias towards people who share the same interests as me and the connection I feel with those people, and my bias towards anything Japanese. I enjoy plenty of things outside of Japanese, even moreso thanks to self-actualization, and I enjoy talking with people who don't share my interests at all, thanks to mindfulness. I'm utilizing this subjective and biased reality of mine in order to master Japanese. I can't realistically do both programming and Japanese to a high degree, and Leo explained this. The mind subconsciously homes in on ways to optimize learning and retention when you have a singular purpose. It's like a heat-seaking missile, as he says. You start finding the most optimal methods, and because your purpose is so important to you, you see the longterm payoff and invest in those better methods, because of the long-term payoff for the effort in advance. Your time becomes precious. Being married to your life purpose and being disciplined to it gives you the freedom to relent to it. I have to redo part of Leo's Life Purpose Course with Japanese in mind, as I work towards mastery. My recommendations for those seeking their life purpose: Look for what you've done the most in life, something where you feel like you've gone through steps of the mastery process, and have begun to enjoy. Truly forget the money. Get a part-time job or some financial security (refer to Maslow's Hierarchy and what Leo says about supporting yourself first, and then going on to be a creator). Don't go to college until you're ABSOLUTELY sure about what you want to do, and I recommend dedicating hundreds of hours on your own into working on your skill you plan to Master before majoring in that field in college, so that you don't fall into the traps of working for the money. See what other people are doing with your productive hobbies - look at the creators on YouTube. Look at the people who teach your hobby, if it's something like that. Ideally it should be a hobby that's somewhat productive. You can even combine 2 things you enjoy, like watching movies and writing reddit replies --> into doing some sort of meta-analysis of movies as a video career or something. I think that if you've taken one of your hobbies so far that you find yourself saying "I can't live without this," you may find that you have already selected your life purpose. Tap into that, and go all in and see how much energy you can summon into working towards that hobby every day. See how confident you feel when you imagine "I can just utilize this one main hobby of mine, increase the priority to the top, and I can let the other ones go." Also, as a general thing: Watch Leo's Foundational videos on YouTube. They helped give me a clear picture of self-actualization. Also, don't fall into the trap of settling for a shitty life purpose or career simply because of having the goal of Enlightenment and enjoying the Now. The whole point of Actualized.org is to become the best that you can be, not become some enlightened guy at 7-Eleven. The Maslow's Hierarchy video was also really helpful in this regard, since I was actually debating between mediocrity + enlightenment. Also, not to sound like a shill, but the Life Purpose Course helps a lot of things click together. I think I learned to some extent like 50-70% of the theory from Leo's videos. I think a key to taking the course is to do it when you feel you're financially stable, or if you're in high school or college. The confidence you get from having a more complete picture, though, is worth the $250. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, just like the food you eat, the house you live in, the books and video games and coffee mugs and crap you buy. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, especially for the long-term. You only get one life. I can finally proudly share this video from Alan Watts, because I feel that I'm living it now - And if you still want to convince me how easy it is to become a programmer, I'll check some resources you send to try and do it on the side, but my life purpose is to master Japanese and become a creator with it.

I use it sometimes, edibles are great, otherwise the experience is always so short. Had my first semi-bliss like experience the other day through self inquiry (or another good label for it, the feel 'I' mantra), where i could feel the field of consciousness all around resonating with parts of my body, it was wonderful and it has deepened my every day consciousness and practice permanently. drugs ftw

When you truly grasp that there is only you here, that we are all simply one consciousness experiencing itself through separation, in that moment you will feel true love, unconditional love/bliss because you've just realized that there is no one else here thus nothing to fear since you are everything within itself. This feeling will ultimately lead to self love and usually for a very long time if you follow the wisdom and stay in the light. I feel like I've been there and back multiple times, this "in a sense" proves you can lose yourself so if you find yourself, go deep and embrace and surrender to it with every part of your being, because the more you lose yourself, the more you will find yourself.

@electroBeam Sup My dude! =D Surrender. Surrender to your experience. It is not random. Nothing that ever happens to you is random. It is the beautiful expression of life, as you are. Life will guide itself through you. You cannot control it. You will not control it. But life cannot lay on you anything you wouldn't handle. Give it up. Life has its own ideas of what it wants to do with you. You will not do anything in this process, unless you wanna stop the process. Life will flower by itself, you only need to allow it. Allow life, allow release, allow experience, allow the present moment. Your inner demons are life, just like bliss. It will get balanced out, as soon as you allow, the magic will happen.

Be careful. The mind has no free will in itself. True. Just like the body in itself thus has no free will. The mind can be more than just a machinebox for pleasure and pain, though. It can be a 'box' for knowledge/wisdom. For Awareness to find itself. A box of attaining higher and higher degree of Awareness (coming closer and closer with one's True Self (= can never be fully reached)). Awareness in it's purest form (which is what you ultimately are, and which is that which you are trying to attain/become one again with (if you are spiritual in any sense)) naturally has pure, free will. Can you ever become 100% one with your true self (Awareness) during a human life? Nah. But just to throw some random numbers out, one could say Leo is somewhere around 5% while most others on this forum are at like 0,5% , and the average population is around 0,001%. (im just joking around here fun here, but to illustrate a point). Jesus or Buddah were maybe at 50ish% (:DD) Anyway. Permanent Enligtenment as something that just BOOM!-happens in an instant while meditating/doing drugs, -- now you are free -- is one big hoax/trap within true spirituality. Enlightenment is a never-ending path. No discussion here. Enlightenment is "basically" just about attaining more and more Awareness/True Knowledge/Wisdom of reality (= your true self)... which is the same as saying that it is about self-realization (because the more awareness you get, the more understanding you get get of the nature of Awareness (= your true self). " trying to become what you already are. " ... Well, you are currently not Awareness. You are governed by Awareness (God). And ultimately, yes your true self is Awareness... but currently no human beings on Earth can claim to be Awareness during their life, and none will ever could claim to be so. None can claim to be God during a human life. As long as you are governed by Awareness without understanding how it governs you, you will continue to have absolutely no free will at all, yes. The more understanding you can get of how the govering of your true self (Awareness), the less "no free will" you attain (:D) . What is the first rule one must learn of how Awareness works? The law of casuality. Every action/effect/happening has a cause/chain of causes. By then applying this rule (= pure logic) while observing your mind carefully, one begins to attain awareness. Nah, I disagree. Suffering stems from ignorance ... and ignorance only. Ignorance = not being aware of how casuality plays out, or even worse, maybe not even realizing that there is a law of cause and effect (every effect has a looooooooooooong (basically infinite) chain of causes, and our goal here is to a get a glimpse of this infinite chain.. yes then it will be a finite chain (not complete), but the longer the apprant "finite chain" is, the closer you are to being God, which you of course can never become fully). So ignorance is the root to all suffering. It's true that from ignorance often (almost all the time) comes false desire. False in the sense that you won't be happy by eventually getting what you desire (only momentarily, this is the great game of the the ignorant-lived life :D). What can only make you happy in the long-term is by attaining greater and greater understanding of the mentioned law (= higher, and higher degree of Awarenesss). Another law that is good to know is the law of change. Nothing is permanent. But you can sort of derive this law from the other law by just observing reality. It's true that the first step to attain true Awareness is by first acknowleding that one is indeed ignorant (=no free will=not in control of what has happened in the past=yes it's "God's"/Awareness' will that has happened). How does one get past this step as quickly as possible? My ego wants to say that one should read The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston. Many times maybe. Then one realizes that one knows nothing by reading and applying what's taught in that book. Great fucking book. If one cannot first acknowledge that one knows nothing (like Aware in the science-forum currently can't acknowledge that he knows absolutely nothing about physics), then one will be forever stuck on the spiritual path to self-realization (of attaining true Awareness/knowledge). The next step is then to trust that the Universe and Mind/Ego functions in according to the law of casuality (to trust logic basically, as in fucking pure, pure, pure logic). That is to say, all experience is based on the law of casuality. The third step might be then to all see that nothing is permenant. Change is law. Fourth step? Now it's just an "easy" ride from here. Because one has now attained radical open-mindeness (by getting past step 1). One has attained knowledge of the law of reality functions. So now it's just to combine the two (--- I know nothing about this -- -> Let's observe without filter/ego --> And apply the law of casuality (logic) to what one sees). And in a sense, yes, one is really enlightened now, but now the REAL enlightenment-game has just begun. So basically fourth step is now just to combine Law of Casuality with knowning of being ignorant, and then true wisdom will come (higher and higher degree of Awareness will slowly but steady be attained, yet one can never reach it fully, only partly ... one has just shifted game from "The Game of Ignorance (stuck in social loops)" (or "Power games" as Aware calls it) to "The Game of Knowing one is Ignorant" (=true self-realization game) Shifting from the I'm-not-Ignorant-Game to the I-Am-Ignorant-Game can be described with this parable: You were born an eagle. But the eagle-egg was by God placed in a hen-nest. You are then born and believe that you are a chicken/hen.. So because you believe that, your whole life you act like you are a fucking chicken/hen. The first step to Enlightenment for the eagle-who-believes-he-is-a-hen would happen if the eagle one day questioned his own mind: "Am I really a hen..?" ... Next step the hen would then realize "hey, I don't know who I am" ... (there's difference in saying it without seriousness (Nah I don't know who I am) without meaning it really (one still thinks he's a body/mind)) and then with 100% seriousness saying "I truly don't know who I am fucking am, let's try to find out by using the law of casuality and self-observation). The hen would then maybe one day find out that he can fly. Then he will be viewed as the Jesus Christ-hen by the other hens ("LOOK IT CAN FLY!"), and the hens themselves will then continue to believe that only that hen was truly a son of God (= an eagle), while they themselves are just "human bodies/souls" walking around This is what is happening on this planet (Just believe and have faith in Christ, and you will come to heaven when you die, rofl-fucking-mao:D). While truly, all the other hens were also born from an eagle egg!! Most (99,99%) will just never realize it - SADLY! :< Now ... How come we as humans have the ability to even have knowledge of the the Law of Awareness (law of casuality) ??? No other animal has the ability to think in terms of logic (in terms of casuality)... Now, most people use this ability to think in terms of logic on the outside, physical world. "Rationalism" ... They never thought about the possibility that logic could also be applied to the self-study of one self ... This is where the magic happens Then one might also realize, that the physical world is not really physical, but just a fun little creation of Awareness to distract itself from seeing itself.:D But science is still fun. Awareness decided to create this big physical world (= apparant reality) just so it could get lost in it for the fun/love of it. Getting lost is fun. Realizing that you are lost = wisdom. Awareness is playing a game of hide and seek, really. It pretends it's a physical thing, while that physical thing in fact is something the Awareness created it self (it just forgot that it did, lol). So in that sense .. all human beings are sons/creations of Awareness/God. Eating the apple from the garden was like Awareness was running around in the garden (heaven/bliss/nothingness) like a child and just then decided to eat the apple. The apple is viewed as the apple os wisdom in the Bible... Well truth is, the apple was the apple of ignorance. Eating the apple, Awareness instantly forgot that it was Awareness, and instead it became ignorant and begin to believe it's a physical thingxD Guys and girls and friends... Life is one big game without any meaning... We are all running around confused and pretending we know stuff... while in Truth that which we know of (the physical world) is just one big hoax created by the True Self to distract itself (LOL) from finding itself again (LOL). But Awareness also decided to put some signs out there for itself.. Some signs that would lead its children (human beings) to MAYBE become aware of the fact that they are ignorant ... apparantly most people are not, though. Socrates... what a fucking wise motherfucker.. I'm gonna read something of him instead of just pretending I know who he was based on quotes from goodread.com LOL But let me repeat... Life is one big game without any meaning.. The physical world is one big distraction.. Why did Awareness create this game of hide-and-seek for itself to get lost in? Well, flip the question around: Why the fuck wouldn't it? Existence is all about ENJOYMENT, LOVE and HAVING FUN. That's ALL it is fucking about lol... Quit your fucking silly boring 8-17 jobs (the fact that some people have some jobs shows just how fucking ignorant they are: they actually believe it is important whether or whether not they will have food enough to survive the next day... Hey, why so scared about death? Death my just be the fucking greatest blessing of all for all you ignorant motherfuckers:D So again, why the fuck wouldn't Awareness create a big infinite physical world to get lost in? Imagine you were Awareness? WHAT THE FUCK ELSE COULD YOU DO THAN CREATING SOMETHING FUN? How can you NOT-CREATE anything? LOL So let me throw in a 4th thing... existence is also all about CREATION... That's why are all fucking programmed to fall in "love" with the opposite sex so we can reproduce these physical bodies, LOL. So CREATE SOMETHING my friends. Become artists. Write books about this fun life joke. Create music (FUCK I LOVE MUSIC LOL, as long as it doesn't have artifical vocals singing about the false life which I know is a joke), create paintings, create computer games. Fall unconsciously in love. Overdose on some fun drugs. Maybe die, so what? Yeah Computer games!! That is the best thing ever man...LOL .. Awareness already being lost as a human body-mind, a mind which is already COMPLETELY ignorant of Awareness, and that mind then proceeds to get lost inside a computer game (World of Warcraft for example) .. Now what the fuck do we have? We Super-Lost x2 .. YAY MORE FUN!! haha Actually just for the lulz guys, I may have more respect for a big, fat virgin nerd who devoutes his whole life to live inside a fantasy game (world of warcraft) than a workalcoholic dude that spends his whole life working 9 hours a day in a job he hates.. HAHA, at least the nerd is having fucking FUN within the game... Having internet sex with female gnomes and stuff.. killing big bosses and getting some fancy gear. No work, just fun!! YAY Guys, read my siganture. Alan Watts knew what's up. Combine Socrates, Watts, Buddah and Jesus into one big fat AI-robot, and maybe we have a physical thing that is actual 99,99% God. Actually -- just buy observing the nature of awareness (that it apparantly has created this physical hoax-game to get lost) one must conclude that this is also what we human beings like to do: TO GET LOST.. And that's also what one can observe everyone are.. Everyone are fucking lost, like beyond help of ever not getting lost. The fact that I'm sitting here and rambling about how it's all a big meaningless game... that might be a glitch of some kind... Like Awareness forgot something when he created the game.. Or maybe it was just a sign I talked about, so Awareness had a "lifeline", if things got too crazy (=too much suffering/pain inside the physical non-existing world-game) (like it is now: DONALD TRUMP is the world's president, HAHA WHAT A BIG FAT COSMIC JOKE :DD) ... Guys, I think I am a pessimist in regards to human life... This game has gone too far, just look around the world.. I don't expect the human race to sustain itself for more than a few hundred years. (or maybe I do, maybe I will do something about it, I might decide to use my "ACTUAL FREE WILL" to CHANGE something... maybe... haven't decided yet guys (because I'm a fucking ignorant fool lol).. So guys,, if you crave more money$$$$$$$$ invest all your money in virtual reality comapanies and live on the street for 5-10 years and become a billionaire in a few years Virtual Reality is gonna be huge man.. Lost humans not knowing they are lost then deciding for themselves to get lost inside a world inside a world , haha it is really funny man. okay guys, this whole post has just been a stream of thought, it started as a serious reply to dodoster and then i can see it turned out to a lot of not-serious ramblings (don't take me too seriously please, I'm just having fun). so in all seriousness... I've said that life is all about CREATION, FUN, LOVE, ENJOYMENT (FOR EVERYONE! NOT JUST FOR "ME" BECAUE TRULY I AM YOU). ... now the question is, how do one become content 24/7 ? how is one never NOT-filled with love/humour/happiness/desire to create/help ... and why is there deeply within all a feeling of joy when seeing joy/happiness in those close to us? To the second question, it's because Awareness inside know that It Is All. So when I see my mother being happy when she seems me and hugs me, the Awareness within me knows that that equals me being happy. When I see a picture in the TV of a sick, underfed African baby in pain, I feel pain, because Awareness knows it is the fucking baby just as much as it is the current bodymind that tries to trick it into believing Awarenss is that (lol). To the first question (to the how is one never NOT filled).. the answer begins where this comment starts... getting rid of TRUE Ignorance by acknowleding one is really ignorant (= false ignorance/true wisdom) , and then building from there. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” “To find yourself, think for yourself.” “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (so fucking true lol) “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” !!!!!! The Book of not Knowing guys by Peter Ralston. Read it and then leave this forum and start living your life fully. hehe. (im lost guys, but im having fun while being lost). But basically life is all about understanding, communication, being in service for others (=Self), and then also having a lot of fun, creating more meaningless stuff (like this random post), loving and enjoying, and maybe reproducing some more bodies, which because you believe you are wise, you can then program a new body to be just as wise as you, which feels nice for the little awareness stuck in bodymind. ;D But Real Love, Real Creation, Real Fun (xD) can only happen when one first has began the journey of self-realization which starts by realizing one has been an ignorant fool all live (remember to also love yourself though)... So to sum it up.. Awareness/God has created this physical game for itself to get lost in only because of love (throw in some curiousity, infinity, infinite matrixes/games/realities, why-not-feeling, fun, too maybe also). Love (positive feelings) is the only feeling with any logical value, any other feeling (hatred, fear etc) have no logic behind them, if you become truly aware. Meaning of life is polarized: For some "incarnations of Awareness" it is to get as lost as possible and never realize one is lost (most of humanity). For other "incarnations of Awareness" it it so get as not-lost-as-possible by first acknowleding one is infinitely lost. One could say both are equally valid. Yet, one could also say that because love is the only logical feeling in the universe, then the meaning of life should be to get all beings to only feel love... and therefore one could say that true spirituality is a more meaningful game than the other games. And for most actually it is a constant mix of these two I guess, but very screwed towards the first, at least in regards to finding one's true self. Why is it so? Only God (True Complete Awareness) knows:p For both of these ultimate polarized games, there are smaller games of: power, attachments to the physical world, detachments, understanding (most important one, as long as it is purely based on first realziing one's own ignorance + law of casuality + law of change = True Understanding/attainment of awareness), service, communication, having fun, creating random meaningless stuff, enjoying what life has to offer and becoming unconsciously deeply attached to such things (drugs, food, sex, money, sleep, playing computer games, watching tv, reading, whatever man). Sooooooooo “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

Some of the dangers I've experienced. (They're a mix of positive and negative, and this isn't meant to be sarcastic or judgmental) -Being aware of how neurotic and unconscious you and others are. -Spending your time wisely and focusing on the long-term. -Being criticized by others who are bigger failures than you, who will try to suck you back into the matrix. You may be seen as a hippie, a workaholic, or a threat for not just "going with the flow of life." -People may call you religious or atheist if you align with. -Having a life purpose that "won't pay the bills" (immediately) will piss off your parents. -You might be seen as "not having a life" because you don't waste all your time dabbling in different time-wasting activities. -Your friends will try to deplete you and waste your time and bring you back into low consciousness, and you may to leave them if their ideas don't align with your purpose. -Emotions may actually become more intense as you consciously feel them and become aware of them. -Suicidal thoughts, depression, existential crisis - happens when you still have a very incomplete picture of self-actualization. I was going through this when beginning to dive into Leo's videos. You might start to feel like "everything's pointless" until you surrender to the now and start to realize your potential, that you can do anything because you're not so separate from others, etc. -Savior Complex - you might try to save your friends and family, but most of them won't listen to you, because they're highly unconscious. I wish I had friends that meditate and do self-actualization, but ultimately it's a journey you'll primarily tread alone as you refine yourself. -Dreaming big for the first time - I didn't realize how much I had suppressed my dreams of being able to accomplish anything significant. This was a huge shift for me, in terms of my long-term goals. -Awareness of other people's beliefs, your reaction to them, and how you may embody them as well. You'll quickly notice generalizations. I think I become triggered into consciousness by what people say, and have to be aware of my need to interject "The world isn't really that way" or "it's pretty negative to see our city this way." I try and look within and see how I make these same sweeping generalizations. (Leo made a cool video on how to exploit other people for your own personal development.) -By being aware of certain behaviors, they may become autocorrected, or become harder to justify. As you become aware of certain negativity loops, playing the victim, etc., and through meditation practice, your mind may dissolve the negativity as it pops up. And this is the biggest one: Presence, Bliss in the Now, and enjoyment of the mundane beyond what I could've ever imagined. You can just go outside and really look at a tree and relent to the present moment, and realize what a ridiculous fucking miracle it is to even be alive, in that moment. You can take it in without really thinking too much, and without having to much about it. Conversations also start to happen like this, and I find myself psyching out sometimes. It might lead to become overly attached to people, and being attached to the present moment, and then rejecting the next moment. (Say you're really present while going for a walk, but you come back and lose consciousness when you have to do work.) So, it can inadvertently lead to a clinging, but you'll be aware of it, and that's cool. I would say to watch a mix of Leo's videos. Leo's video on Maslow's Hierarchy helped me a lot in consolidating the different ideas, because I was like "Wait, can I just skip to enlightenment? Can I just be that guy who works at 7-Eleven and is enlightened?" I'd be listening to a bunch of his videos on my phone, walking through my college campus, altering my interpretation of the world and the people around me. Sometimes I'd just walk through campus with no music or audio and see reality "as it is" while being aware of neurotic tendencies to project certain beliefs, judgement. So, getting the big picture is important, so I'd recommend the Life Purpose Course and to watch a ton of his videos. On this topic, I think the whole point is that you can reconcile your life purpose with self-actualization and enlightenment, and through following the hierarchy and being a creator, you're making the best use of your experience. You could become a monk, but you'd lose a lot of potential impact you could have as a creator first.

I'm taking a vacation to the jungle. I'm taking Ekart Tolles book with me. I've only read half the book in 1 year. lol. (thinking about the guy who reads 300 books a day or whatever) lol But I work 9 hours a day 6 days a week and struggle to shave etc regularly, so busy. So... far from being enlightened, over this year I discovered how to find complete bliss, and while I can't actually "do it" unless I'm in the right frame of mind. I tend to know when this is. I still have no idea what bliss means, and Leo's videos don't even mention it. The question is, what happens if I get a break through while in my hotel or out with the spiders and snakes of central America? Anyway, this is just a light hearted question for your ego's entertainment.