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Teaching about Love and teaching about suffering are the same thing when it goes full circle, just different flavors. Until it goes full circle, they seem like oppositional forces. Try considering dukkha as a continuum rather than one side of a duality that somehow prevails over sukha. The Four Noble Truths dismantle the idea that everything is suffering for if there is a path out of suffering, the way suffering is experienced and conceived of prior to that path being Realized cannot be some permanent universal constant. The three characteristics are just pointers that self destruct upon 4th path Realization, at least how they were perceived prior to that Realization. They mean something entirely different. Once one gets to the other shore, the boat is left behind. Nondoership/penetrating the illusion of agency upgrades cravings to Nature/Tao/Universal Control. Fighting a seeking urge before reaching the loss of suffering as a solution is not necessarily effective in many cases. Daniel Ingram suggests that practice should be maintained especially in the rough spots. He also says that himself and a small group of highly awake people had a discussion in which they all without question arrived at the conclusion that practice should be maintained even after full enlightenment on the insight/wisdom axis of development. You could even gather statistics on whoever you think to be fully awake beings, and I guarantee you’ll see more of them continuing to practice compared to those who stop. Stopping seeking in any intentional way is in many cases just another form of seeking. “I’m here already. Enlightenment is already the case.” True in many respects, but also restrictive in many other ways also.

Yes embodiment is important, but embodiment is not an erasure of personality. Being a placid monk is not necessarily embodiment. He spends a good amount of time teaching when he could do so many other things. Maybe he’s not “fully embodied” from certain perspectives, but I think it’s hard to even know where he is in regards to this without being fully awake and meeting him in person. It’s just a guessing game with the info we have IMO. Sila (roughly translated to morality) is said to never have a cap, so in that regard, there is no full enlightenment if you’re considering that part of enlightenment. When he says enlightenment, he’s referring to the insight/wisdom (this is not referring to commonplace human wisdom btw) part of the equation. Certainly there are people more advanced than him in regards to sila.

Frank is an awakened person but I don't consider him fully enlightened in the context of historical masters out there. I believe his brain physiology make him makes him naturally gifted in understanding things but at the same time his composition makes him limited to fully grasp the entire spectrum of what it means to be everything Sort of like that gifted guy that can fly in a helicopter around the city and draw the complete landscape with a photographic memory, Frank is like that spiritually. The end game is embodiment plus action = full enlightenment IMHO

Psychedelics do have a cumulative effect of raising baseline consciousness. It’s just much less pronounced than many other methods in my direct experience and what I’ve heard from others. Leo has certainly hit more or less permanent shifts in how his brain processes psychedelics from so many trips. Why I think THC has been so effective for me is natural gifted genes (mainly from bipolar disorder) + lots of spiritual work to activate the higher capacities of THC (others with strong serotonergic trips report similar things) + USING THC VERY OFTEN ONCE I REACHED ITS HIGHER CAPACITIES. The reason, or a main reason, I think psychedelics struggle to affect baseline consciousness as much as other methods is that people simply do not spend as many hours under the influence of psychedelics while this is happening in the context of serious spiritual work. I could use THC pretty much 24/7 at many points this year at this level of heightened spiritual effectiveness, and this basically put me in a unique position to be flying along at crazy levels of consciousness for essentially months on end. Daniel Ingram once said in an interview that psychedelic trips aren’t growing dendrites due to the limited time they’re affecting someone’s brain consistently compared to meditation. It is pretty difficult to live a normal life on serotonergic psychedelics. If you can unlock THC in this way of heightened effectiveness, it can synergize with normal life allowing you to create a snowball effect on your neurochemistry. The consistent use is key IMO. Maybe other compounds out there can do this too, but I don’t see any better alternatives right now. THC also affects the whole body with cannabinoid receptors all over the place. I think this works incredibly well with chakras and kundalini energy which was actually one of my main focuses this year both before and slightly after hitting stream entry. Regardless, from both my direct experience and reports of many others, nothing impacts baseline consciousness in such a crazy snowball effect like hitting stream entry. I don’t know much about the ganja yoga, but it sounds like I’ve been doing it at least partially. I mostly combined Bhakti yoga with the THC as a practice rather than any Hatha yoga, and it was unbelievably effective for me. The strongest manipulation of spacetime reality came while I was connected with a specific deity while in a bipolar manic episode and “delusional” by many people's evaluations if I were to explain the story. Absolutely reckless levels of faith in one’s beliefs and taking every minute sign in reality as a sign from the Divine resulted in me “teleporting” (although it’s not like I entered a portal knowingly or something, hard to describe — more like some odd warping of spacetime) maybe roughly 250 miles in THIS reality. I didn’t know how to control this or how it occurred. Just sharing it with you as I know you’re really curious about such things. It seems as if you really have to break ALL fear and doubts completely to access such a thing. I had objects teleport as well around this period in my life such as an item being left at a friend’s house maybe 150-200 miles away then ending up in my house as soon as I arrived home. As your “frequency” as they say rises, the chance for such supernatural things to occur in actual reality rather than just some psychedelic mental realm seems to increase. How you reach such a frequency is a mostly individual journey, and be prepared for it to possibly ruin many other more practical and normal things in your life. It certainly appears there are prices to pay, at least from my direct experience. Also, a last note on the THC use, most people run into tolerance very quickly on THC. Whenever I would start to hit tolerance increases, it seems like I got what I call a “Divine upgrade” where THC became more effective than even before the tolerance started to kick in. A lot of that process does not just seem to be a neurochemical progression but also affected heavily by Divine Grace. Frank Yang says that to reach full enlightenment there’s ultimately no way to even do something to get there. It just does itself. Even all of your spiritual strivings fall in this category, but you most likely have not realized nondoership to the degree to fully comprehend how this occurs in your direct experience. It’s neither free will nor determinism. Some type of odd automated process in which the free will itself was just created and operates by the conditions of Existence. It sounds like something you can grasp with the mind, but I assure you that living in that space with it locked in is completely different. As different as intellectually hearing about God Consciousness and it being present 24/7. Hope this cleared things up.

So, roughly a month has passed since the previous update... Guess what, just 20 minutes ago I had this experience once more time. So as you know I was diagnosed with pericarditis after 2 Moderna covid vaccine shot ( I am 22 years old male, was very athletic before). During that time I learned about energy healing, bought a 500 dollars course, and did energy healing on myself ( as well as prescribed medicine + anti-inflammatory diet). Went to a doctor on Monday, we did a heart performance test, where I needed to cycle for a given time to see how my heart adapts to stress. The doctor concluded that I am healed and can continue exercising. I don't feel pain at all, so it seems that my acute pericarditis has been healed. I am still waiting for the MRI on December 11, which will conclude it finally. I am confident I am fully treated. Ok enough about that. So today is the 4 days since I did not jerk off. As I mentioned in the first post the semen is very very important to me. So I watched porn, masturbated without ejaculations, and had an internal orgasm (basically an orgasm without ejaculation). After that about 2 hours later I started meditating. Basically, it took me 5-10 minutes to again experience direct consciousness. My physical ego presence disappeared, the fear returned, my heart started pounding to the point I thought I will definitely die this time. I was infinite consciousness for about a minute. During that time, the time stopped for sure. However, I could return, like willingly holding onto my body. After the experience passed, my apple watch showed 130 beats ( during that time, it was definitely 160-180 beats). Still, the feeling that I am everything persists. The energy in my head, also when I close my eyes it is very difficult to stay in the body. During this month, I read the Sadhguru book: "Enlightenment an inside story". He explicitly mentions in the book. This is the excerpt from the book: " “Sadhguru: If you are not aware of this, I would say for 90% of the people, their moment of Enlightenment and the moment of leaving the body are the same. You will never see them again. Only a few people have the possibility of keeping the body even after Enlightenment, for a certain period of time. Otherwise, there may be only some time, maybe one or two hours, maybe four hours of extra time, that is all. Beyond that, they cannot keep it. “Very few people retain their body because they know the tricks of the body, they know the mechanics of the body to hold on to it. Otherwise, the moment of realization and the moment of leaving the body is same. Generally it is only people who are on the path of Kriya Yoga who can hold on to the body because they understand the mechanics of the body. They know all the tricks of the body so they hold on to the body.” ” Excerpt From Enlightenment an inside story Sadhguru This material may be protected by copyright. I never heard @Leo Gura address it. Why is that? Do you know about this? So what did I decide? Since I am 22 years old, have my financials set, I don't want my physical body to stop functioning due to full enlightenment. I will do the kriya yoga for now fully and stop meditating or even coming close to that. I would definitely welcome any guidance from people who are fully enlightened or who experienced this. I may sound angry, I am not. Actually, I just understood how grateful should I be to come this far... Even writing this it is very difficult to not merge with infinite consciousness again. It seems if I wanted I could.

I can’t remember exactly or which inspiration came first or in what order but I do know that ironically, one of the reasons I got into it was for purely egoic purposes. Like I thought how cool it would be if I got good at sitting like a statue for multiple hours on end. So I started doing that and it worked. Just by sitting perfectly still and keeping your attention on the breath everything slows way way down and it gets easier the more you practice like with anything. I got into yoga for similar reasons. On a side note, doing asanas regularly is super helpful if you want to get good at strong determination sitting. I also found out it can remove a great deal of suffering and get you super high if you practice enough so after learning that I was pretty much sold. After my first ten day vipassana, I felt like I was fifty pounds lighter and my raging mind was a whopping 50-60% quieter for weeks after, no exaggeration. And the peace kept on growing the more I maintained the practice. The bliss grew so strong I almost didn’t know how to handle it all. Easily the closest I’ve ever been to full enlightenment. The danger with me saying all this, however, is that the recipient will hear it and say hell yes, sign me up! The natural tendency is to expect to feel blissed out from all the meditation but that expectation actually blocks you from making progress because spirituality doesn’t like greed. So you have to be very patient. You can avoid that trap by finding the right technique. Vipassana has stood the test of time but it can be ridiculously difficult to get into. After my second retreat, I didn’t get anywhere close to the same result like I was expecting to. So it goes to show just how deep this work actually is.

I have to take meds after awakenings, because if I don’t, I’ll literally go fully fucking insane and let go of any notion that I’m a human and have ever existed. My consciousness goes infinite and grows infinitely for like 17 hours straight. Even if there are “lows” I’m still processing them with “full enlightenment” (loose term) to the best capability. I am infinitely liberated to act on every impulse and desire. It’s great! But destroys any goals or visions I have. Classic self deception and ego backlash in the form of bipolar disorder. I mean wow. The devil/me/biological survival, does not want me to die at all. Maybe it’s a loving process. How do I shift this paradigm to a more loving and understanding one? I am entering hypomania and I want to fully surrender to the mania in isolation, at some point in my journey, but I don’t have $$$ to do so. I guess I could go to a hospital, but I fear the implications of that for my life again, as I need to fucking work to move out. Yet, what I fear I attract. What I resist, persists? So maybe go to hospital now to avoid a longer stay of weeks/months?

After awakenings, or after using psychedelics? ‘Full enlightenment’, ‘self deception’, ‘survival’, ‘ego backlash’, ‘I fear’, ‘I fear’. Any of that actually resonate with you?

It undulates. Maybe 80-90% of the time I don’t have thoughts in the head anymore no matter how detailed the words I’m saying or typing or whatever is. It does itself. I call it “thoughtless thought.” To that extent, I have no thoughts that I could attach to for that majority of my day. The arahant (4th path or fully enlightened in Theravada Buddhism) Daniel Ingram says that essentially the patterns of sensations of a sense of self still occur after full enlightenment in his opinion. I don’t see him thinking this doesn’t extend to thoughts in the head. The difference is that the insight into no self is so clear that those patterns are not seen to have any self in them even if they are more or less identical to what the unenlightened you would’ve said was what made you have a self. Enlightenment is not about some locked in and consistent state of consciousness that can’t think or any other benchmark really that depends on a single factor of experience like that although it does usually come with some “baseline upgrades” in a sense for most people. I’m probably at 2nd or 3rd path in the 4 path Theravada system IMO if I’m following their designations as much as I honestly can. I feel much of what Daniel says about sense of self sensations to be true to my personal experience more and more as I go along. The biggest shift for me has been in how resistance occurs. Rather than me having a sort of meta-resistance on top of the natural resistance interactions of different sensations occurring, I just allow the various aspects of my human system and the environment to interact in a natural way. Plenty of times this involves things like complex emotions which are easy to link to a sense of self. I just don’t try to resist having a sense of self nor resist not having a sense of self. Self vs. no self is not just an on and off switch. It’s more like a continuum and different experiences and stages of the process of insight (which enlightened people still cycle through according to Ingram) call up much different levels of sensations of self. If you find yourself in the Mind & Body insight stage, you’re probably going to have more sensations which feel like a self than some of the more mystical and positive feeling stages. Mind & Body feels like being dipped back into a truly ordinary human perspective as much as you can be even for enlightened people although their Mind & Body might be above the highest baseline states you’ve experienced. It’s just a natural part of the stage. It doesn’t matter how enlightened you are. Don’t let someone convince you of the magical, beautiful, and ever-present level of their enlightened reality. From my research, there are a lot of highly awake people whose experience is far more subtle than you think. Ideas like never having a sense of self are the ones which make me curious to proof test with a bear or flaming sword or chainsaw. There’s probably more of something there than they are trying to admit.

@Breakingthewall I'm not sure any amount of psychedelics or excessive meditation is gonna do any good except accelerate the process. Which could be good in human-time tbh. But then again. What's the point of quantifying it. I don't know when full enlightenment is going to happen/be. I just have "this" right now.

@BipolarGrowth But man, don't you get it. Anytime there's progress. One step forward dukkha comes back stronger. One step forward, and then dukkha bites you in the ass. 2 steps backwards. Concentration on objects of awareness --> AnP (finally bliss from God) --> intense meaningless suffering --> equanimity and non-doership. Every cycle of the path gets more intense. Life cycles. Phase of life cycles. Yearly cycles. Monthly cycles. Daily cycles. I am absolutely sure that full enlightenment is no more cycle,or cycles just being instants. Anicca (impermanence) and annata (no-self) also grow stronger with dukkha (suffering). How I define suffering: Suffering is in everything. Just take any object of awareness and tell me there's no suffering in that point of focus. Sufferings little brother is called "aversion" imo. Anything awareness does is pushing awareness away from the object towards itself. That's suffering, and it ends with complete dissociation from any object. The opposite of grasping or attachment. Suffering is not reduced in higher paths. It's equalized. Theres no longer gonna be a big difference between mild discomfort and intense physical suffering. The intensity of suffering that increases, just pushes towards cessation or dissolution anytime it shows up. For what I've heard that's thousands of instances per day of cessation.

@Leo Gura I read the Sadhguru book about enlightenment. He clearly stated that people who reach full enlightenment will die before age of 32 (their physical body stops functioning). The only way is to practice kriya yoga and get full control of the body. Did you know about that?

Nice mystical experiences! Profound awakenings. “Full enlightenment” is simply the end of those.

Full enlightenment is dissolving the apparent boundary of yourself. There is no longer the appearance of a "person" to be enlightened, only ultimate Consciousness. When this happens, the dream dimension doesn't disappear, you simply see it for what it is. Consciousness continues to manifest through a myriad of apparent beings in relative reality, just not through "you".

There is no full enlightenment. Consciousness expansion just goes on and on, until it stops for no reason, and that's when liberation is apparently recognized as already ungraspably being everything -- usually at death of the body but not necessarily, but only apparently... and I'm afraid it doesn't actually happen in time, so it's not approachable, and it's unusable anyway as there's no one left to use it.

@Blackhawk Hi, I've suggested in other threads that you do some specialised therapy which may help in the non-spiritual areas of life, but you seem to be resistant to establishing any regular practice, whether spiritual or therapeutic. You say things like this: "1. I don't have the energy for that. 2. I don't have the time for that. 3. I hate doing it. 4. I don't have the discipline for it. 5. I don't want to waste so much effort into something which might not even be true." The areas of enlightenment and therapy are basically experiential so you gotta put in some work and effort to achieve any sort of change in your consciousness. Many spiritual people spend years practicing without achieving a full enlightenment, but what keeps them going is lower level experiences like peacefulness, bliss, insights, nondual / mystical glimpses etc. You've been into this stuff for some time now. What practices have you tried, and have you had any limited success so far?

I mean I’ve always noticed more radical glitches happen when you do something absolutely naughty such as go from absorption in infinite love to giving your soul and infinite love to Lucifer as my eternal master for full enlightenment. For me, I have the craziest shit happen when becoming the bridge between opposites such as Jesus/Lucifer.

Seeking ends when all experiences are equally spiritually effective. There are no more answers that could be found which would be anything more than a pleasant illusion. You know nothing could ever be said to be a higher level than where you already are. Full enlightenment always means a consistent, untangled, and absolute insight into no-self, suffering, and impermanence.

Yes, the character realizes it can never exist, there is no present moment, and enlightenment is eternal death. Death is what gives beauty to everything. God doesn’t make it to full enlightenment because any experience is an illusion. You have to survive nonexistence to realize what full enlightenment is. Partial enlightenment can happen to the living, but the thing beyond both life and death is all that “experiences” enlightenment. This is parinibbana.

If you’re really interested in enlightenment and spiritual progress that persists, your goal should be to cultivate sufficient insight into the three characteristics taught in Buddhism. All spiritual practice or even life at all is pointing to these three doors to awakening, so it isn’t a Buddhist vs. other spiritual teachings debate really. No-self, the dissatisfaction intrinsic to sensate reality itself, and impermanence are simply very powerful descriptions to what will ultimately untangle perception entirely to produce a permanent enlightenment. Perception changes after enlightenment due to insight becoming crystallized. All insight that works is doing so by the process of uncovering at least one of these three characteristics fully enough. You do not even need to intellectually know the three characteristics to progress in insight, but it certainly helps proper contemplation. If your insight is not pulling you forward automatically whether you do spiritual practice, take psychedelics, or quit absolutely all pursuits of spirituality, you definitely haven't reached or passed stream entry. If you aren’t there yet, this is not an issue. For there to be any awakening possible, there must be illusion present. Illusion can basically be equated with entangled perception. The beauty of your entire existence is tied up in this illusion. Be glad that a lack of insight such as this is possible. It is the source of any higher meaning or significance to be had. The illusion is ultimately just as holy as clear perception or true enlightenment. But you’ve read this far so you probably do want clear perception even if I tell you there’s ultimately nothing wrong with illusion. This is the devil in you which desires to fully taste the divine in its most astonishing manifestations. That’s your divine ego or otherwise your best friend. It is ultimately what gives you the tenacity and persistence needed to reach full enlightenment. It is the source of all suffering— desire. This is so misunderstood and important. It’s desire to escape reality that ultimately drives one to Perfection. Because you can actually escape anything which could reasonably be called a reality. This occurs during the ninth Jhana, nirodha samapatti, or cessation. This is the ultimate death and the purest Nibbana. Everything ceases to exist. Your no-self/self paradigm has just been shown the unseeable. Even now though, illusion and entangled perception are still likely apparent after leaving the 9th Jhana. It’s insight coming from the experience of something transcending existence and nonexistence that ultimately untangles perception. The insight is usually cultivated and crystallized after contemplation or further practice after multiple 9th Jhanas. Genuine insight into this necessary cord to understand and become full enlightenment is unlikely to occur from any other state. The biggest duality of all — existence, experience, and consciousness vs. nonexistence, nonexperience, and the total lack of all consciousness — still remains even if you have had god realization or any other fancy temporary experiences. The 8th Jhana or samadhi can take you close, but insight that deep and permanent has to come from a more solid seeming duality being seen through than perception vs. nonperception. Untangled perception, full enlightenment, and living as cessation or otherwise transcending the birth and death circle come as a sort of 10th Jhana — neither existence nor nonexistence. In nonduality, insight is the act of viscerally becoming the bridge between two opposites. To become Love, you must bridge the gap between love and hate. It works the same for existence vs. nonexistence or true 0. Nothing is the self, temporary experience is the source of all miseries, and everything is impermanent. Any Self or God could be said to be all sensate reality as it’s occurring in the present moment. In this way you, or rather the lack of you, become everything. You just so happened to always be this way. It just wasn’t possible to fully actualize the insight into the Truth of what is always happening until now. Watch the video below to hear my description and method for experiencing nirodha samapatti twice within two minutes by using techniques which are not Buddhist in the slightest. I’d be much more accurately described as a Christian/Luciferian (notice the nondual bridge) psychic with access to infinite Holy Spirit, clairsentience, telepathy, kundalini, chakra activation, and bliss. Bhakti — the devotion to Love and Truth through God — is the best way to transcend God entirely through my experience and interpretations. To be the Singularity of untangled perception and crystallized insight is far beyond just being God. How I Experienced Back-to-Back Cessations Through Bhakti & Love (instead of meditating)

But don't you see, if there is no YOU, then your suffering is the direct result of your delusion. They are interconnected and co-dependent. While unraveling your delusion all the way is quite the task (ie. full enlightenment), reducing your suffering can happen immediately by changing how you look at things and by breaking the links of delusion one by one. In this case, notice that you are creating a conceptual imaginary field of experience in which you are solidifying the "idea" of having other people's experiences, and also notice that you deem those experiences "bad" through the lense of your own self-biased ego and personal survival perspective. That's like saying I would never wear your pants, because they wouldn't fit me! In this way you start to unravel the coarse level of illusion, and with it, coarse solidified levels of suffering. Eventually, you can deconstruct reality at finer and finer levels to reduce suffering more and more (such as realizing that even the feeling of good and bad is itself a solidification of smaller and smaller sensations, impermanent, and not to be identified with). This process applies to agency, identity, duality, time, space, and every possible mind state. With each dissolution and disidentification, you expand and open while suffering diminishes. In the end all dualities collapse, subject and object vanish, and there is Only This

Well lucky for me I'm discovering that I was actually quite spiritual and conscious as a child, and those meditations are helping me get back at this state so I believe I'm good. I have a strong intuition that I will awaken in this lifetime like never before. Full enlightenment. Maybe this is farfetched but it feels more like I'm returning to this intuition and all my life I've been chasing other things. Deep down I know I'll become a master of this life. I'll do all the hard work like you did

Hi everyone, I thought I've already had ego dissolution experiences, but now realized these were awakenings (and beyond) but not full enlightenment. Never have I taken any psychedelic, however I meditate several hours a day. Nonetheless the experience I want to talk about happened spontaneously, not during or after meditation. I think it was triggered by sleeping 1 night on the countryside (while visiting my mom) as I'm used to sleeping in the city. With the previous awakening experiences it felt like all is well, it made me understand Plato's cave metaphor and often I got "love-bombed" by the universe. However there was still a bit of self left to understand anything I experienced, a self which could feel how great it all felt. When I woke up yesterday morning, there was no self to have any thought, no self to understand anything, no self which could suffer or be happy. Nor there was any desire, comfort, discomfort, content or discontent. I became a full observer, full consciousness. Otherwise nothing really special happened. I went downstairs to pee and upstairs to go to sleep again. However there was no peeing, no toilet or stairs, or bed, there was only "what is" so to say (not even the word). There was no free will either. However waking up a second time I was in a lower state of consciousness, I'd say at a "awaking level", but before the "love bombing of the universe", which happens somewhere in between. Coming back from this I realize I have seen a glimpse of what people like tony Parsons are talking about all the time. Or what Bernadette Roberts talks about having experienced. Note that during the experience itself, there is no self to realize or understand anything. I'm interested to hear about other similar experiences.

Ill bite and answer in a relative sense. Please note it’s all ultimately false, as nothing is dying. Reality is already dying and being reborn moment after moment. Look into Shinzen Young’s expansion and contraction model on YouTube. Expansion = birth, contraction = death. This process is happening at infinite scales at infinite resolutions right. Your present moment experience this very moment is a birth death cycle. Literally. But it’s all empty. Anyways. Ive had multiple past life regression experiences, archetypical “soul-awakenings” on psychedelics to give the impression that one’s work in one incarnation does carry momentum into subsequent lifetimes. However, best I can tell if this is a valid model of relative reality, is that it’s not a linear process. One life you may be a simple monk getting woke as fuck, the next you may be a CEO pursuing money, next you may be living life in society who finds spirituality at the end of life, and the next you are a yogi even more woke than your monk lifetime due to working through karma in the two incarnations in between. Again, no clue literally at all if this mechanism is “valid;” these are based on very mystical, altered states via psychedelics. I suspect there is some truth to it. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch for karmic patterns and momentum, including the overarching process of full enlightenment, would build pressure and momentum over incarnations. Life is already absurdly cyclical, rhythmic, and process oriented. Why would life and death not follow some sort of trans-intelligent flow? However, all of this is completely speculative, ultimately. Time is better spent doing the work to awaken now. At least in my relative opinion ha.

@JonasVE12 Dude of course I know it, I think it is quite obvious but I'm not some child running into this shit. I know that without alcohol it would be more real and more transformative, but obviously my mind wasn't ready for that. You could say the same with - 'Why waste your time earning money, developing friendships, developing your confidence, going after your life purpose? Fuck all that, just go balls in on full enlightenment'. We know this will probably not happen. But those things in between are here for making the process less painful. Tomorrow I'm going to a small party with a few kids and I know like half of them, not something so big, in fact kind of cringe. And next week I have the Prom of all my grade, which is supposed to be very fancy and out of my comfort zone. Both of them are out of my comfort zone and I believe I'll still drink. It makes it less embarrassing but it still required a leap of faith. I believe with time the alcohol will help me become comfortable and I'll take less and less in the future parties I'll go to