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I just wanted to post the same thing but decided to go with more simple stuff like dreams. During my neti neti meditation I somehow entered some "realm" cuz I dont have words to describe it (maybe state of consciousness) and it indeed felt like a childhood dream that I had but it got completely deleted from my memory. And for some reason I felt extreme fear throughout the whole process. It all went away the moment I tried to put it into words. After this I thought why the hell would someone or something put a child mind through such thing

The answer is pretty much what many have already said. The phrase I use which is the foundation for all issues or problems in life is everything starts with you. 1. You must first accept yourself in the present moment. Love is acceptance, and hatred is denial. Accept everything about yourself, your physical appearance, your personality, your past, your quirks, EVERYTHING. 2. Recognize (experientially) that you are the creator. You ARE THE APLHA AND OMEGA. 3. If you have trouble recognizing this go look up Leo's Neti Neti Guided Meditation Video as a good start. 4. Once you start to love yourself you will be able to love others in a HEALTHY WAY. As someone mentioned earlier stay away from co-dependent behavior. Seeking medical professional help is always a healthy choice. 5. Choose to act in a way that YOU believe is noble, and if you make mistakes lovingly accept those mistakes and their consequences and move on. Your lack of love for yourself is ALSO an illusion. Had you met yourself in another form you might very well pedestalize the form you are in now. But when you are inside looking out the form doesn't seem so great. Recognize that you may be thinking more highly of others than you aught to.

One of my greatest experiences of “infinity” was in the split second before my first two cessations. Experiences people associate with Infinity are far different than cessation though. I’m sure some people have reached cessation through neti neti, but I wouldn’t consider it the most likely option. As far as psychedelics go, 90% of the times I’ve reached cessation, it has been on THC which is kind of ironic seeing how people often see the substance as not having value in serious spiritual pursuits. Specifically, it was a delta-10/delta-8 THC mixture. Daniel Ingram says that it’s incredibly rare to reach cessation through psychedelics however. I think he said maybe a rate of 1 in 1000 people he’s talked to who claimed cessation in a way that was convincing got there from psychedelics as opposed to meditation. It’s probably rather unlikely that these forms of THC would help you reach cessation unless the use of other psychedelics has significantly increased the potency of THC and you’re able to use it consistently without seeing the typical negative effects people see with frequent THC use. It also would probably require a certain synergy with your unique neurochemistry which makes things even less probable. I have heard one other person claim that they have reached cessation on THC, but I’m not sure if he actually did or not due to some ambiguity in his description of the event. I wouldn’t count on a substance to get you to cessation even though it was beneficial for me. Vipassana meditation is probably the best thing from what I’ve seen to increase your chances. Daniel Ingram’s forum https://www.dharmaoverground.org/ has a lot of people who have reached cessation and plenty of people aiming for it there. It might be a good thing to check out if you are quite interested in it. Leo’s comment that cessation is imaginary is correct. Regardless, a 9.5/10 woman riding your dick is also imaginary, but there are certainly valid reasons to enjoy that and things to be gained in a relative sense from such an experience. Cessation is no different other than it has the potential to be exponentially better than the example given of sex with a 9.5/10 woman, and it also has the potential to change your perception permanently to make life far better than it would’ve likely been without reaching cessation. A personal theory of mine is that reaching cessation has a lot to do with how much time you spend in radical states of consciousness while also doing active investigation of such states. I think the main issue with serotonergic psychedelics aiding toward reaching cessation is that people typically cannot spend nearly the amount of hours in psychedelic trips in a sustainable way as much as they could do with meditation. In the couple months leading up to my first cessations, I had almost lost my big toe in a lawn mowing accident. I was off from work due to the injury and was using THC for pain relief as well as some consciousness work since I had nothing better I could do being rather incapacitated on the couch unable to move without assistance. I was also running into reverse tolerance with THC at this time where every week or two I would hit a new threshold on roughly the same relatively low dose of THC which made the trips more and more intense. It was rather common for me to reach states while on THC similar in strength, intensity, and profundity to what I experienced on very high doses of serotonergic psychedelics. Once this became a weekly or even daily thing to be in such states, I think this increased the chance of reaching cessation quite a bit. Whatever practice or substance you use, if you want cessation, I think it all comes down to how regularly you can reach high states of consciousness, and most of the rest is just up to luck. Many have practiced spirituality diligently for an entire lifetime and not reached cessation. I was not trying to reach cessation when it happened. I think I would’ve likely never gotten there without Leo’s teachings. I had hardly any in-depth understanding of Buddhism or Buddhist forms of meditation prior to cessation, so I certainly can’t credit it for getting me there although it does appear to be the system which is most focused on cessation and produces that “state” in more practitioners than other forms of spirituality.

LSD Trip 005 February 12th 2022 Imagine taking your most potent hit of acid and then when you're at your peak the world starts going into chaos and there's riots and shit outside. That's what I experienced. Like I was going for it hard in this trip. My Intentions were: So those were the intentions, basically self inquiry. Dosage: 100mcg Rectal administration. Definitely my favorite ROA because I don't get much body load. Putting one whole tab in rectally that's not cut up is A LOT easier to do because it's a nice big piece. Dropped at 10:28am 26 min. Nothing noticeable yet 30 minutes Very awkward and vibratory come-up. Very hungry, tired and a hint of nausea. 34 mins Visuals inbound. 1 hour in, feeling very conscious. Time to start doing the work. Seriously What if I'm God? What if I'm just a field of awareness that needed to create a body and an environment to fool that it is not itself? >So I just sat on the couch and tried to do some self inquiry, the best I could. YOOOOO Your mind is going to come with every excuse in the book to distract you from looking at truth, especially the absolute. If I was just a field of awareness in the room with nobody it wouldn't make any sense. Which is why I created the body. The body grounds my field of awareness in a context so I can fool myself that I am a "perceiver". And as long as "I perceive" I will have a body to back it up. What can I put my Awareness on to prove that I exist? I have no face. I created eyes as an excuse to "see". I'm so stoned that when I close my eyes, I hallucinate like I'm a camera in a different part of the world. Like I'm over at an assembly line of people or I'm literally just a drone flying somewhere. I need 5meo lol. >At this point I am thinking that it's pointless to try to get to the truth using LSD when I can just use 5meo, because I have access to it. This is literally the best stage of consciousness I've had in weeks and I'm just fucking chillin here on the bed... I'm SO DISTRACTED. I don't think I've been this bored while high. There is nothing that my mind doesn't do that is outside of my control. >Yet at the same time I control nothing... What is the substance of substance? What is the substance of substance of substance of....... >So there I was, staring at my reflection in the mirror, doing self-inquiry. Closing one eye, poking the the other eyeball as I observe my vision shift. Also thinking about how ugly I appear to be in that moment, you know, in a loving way, just chilling really, loving the moment. >Then out of nowhere, the ringing from the silence that was in my ears got louder, it got really REALLY loud. I heard it coming from somewhere. I opened the window of the bathroom I was standing in, I realize that I'm hearing honking, SO much honking. I thought some building was on fire. It was complete chaos. I had NO IDEA what was going on. I step outside and I see these people speeding down the streets with their loud as fuck horns and honking the horns of the cars. I swear someone had a war horn or something. Shit was loud as FUCK. The entire neighbourhood was screaming loud. It was really distressing. Instantly, the whole world was chaos, and I was basically in fight or flight mode, WHILE peaking on a very potent dose of LSD. I was like “YOO WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?!” I was thinking like there's like a group of terrorists, extremists something. I was also laughing at the chaos. I asked people that were in the house what the fuck was that, and they didn't know! I felt like I was in the middle of WW3 or some shit lol. Like I was genuinely concerned if I needed to defend myself and the house. I only found out several hours later that it was this thing called “the freedom Convoy” that's been happening all across Canada. Dude what the fuck. I had ZERO idea of what this was. >So this basically threw my LSD trip off the rails. I eventually just gave up and used my LSD state to think about survival. This has basically been my fallback intentions anytime I can't focus on the more metaphysical stuff. >Side note, when you close one eye and poke your eye, (touching your eyelid, not the eyeball itself.) and your vision shifts that is literally changing reality as it absolutely is, isn't it? Using a perception to change a perception? It's like how a taking a psychedelic is a perception that changes reality, which is nothing but perceptions. So in this case instead of consuming a psychedelic, it is your finger poking your eyeball. Reality is the device that contains stories. The social matrix is a system to create a homeostasis around the loudest stories. Without the story of the freedom convoy, I would be very worried about what the fuck this group was up to. >Thinking about how I imagine everything in reality. I'm going to imagine the rest of my life. I'm going to imagine what it feels like to create myself. (Align with my life purpose) That is the gift I give myself. To be able for the first time, survive as this "being of consciousness" in this "given reality" to discover his place in the world that HE FUCKING IMAGINED. >We are the Director, the Producer, and the Viewer. We come into this world to create attachments, to grasp onto something, otherwise, it wouldn't mean anything if we realized we were just grasping sand. Here's a decent question: What would I have to do to fool myself that I am not GOD? Why you need to track your time: You need to sacrifice a bit of your time to keep track of the rest of it. If you can spend 10% of your time to make sure you're spending the other 90% really well, you're good. That's like 1-2 hours a day planning. That's plenty of time. >For many this is obvious, but for me this hit different. To construct a life purpose, you must know first how to deconstruct it. You must be the knower that you are the one that constructs all meaning, purpose and value. I really need to train my consciousness more. I need to set aside time to Meditate. My ability to focus is shit, and it's causing problems. Here's an interesting insight. States of consciousness. Creativity is a state of Consciousness. Inspiration is a state of consciousness. Motivation is a state of consciousness The mode when the ideas are flowing to you effortlessly IS a state of consciousness. Dude what the fuck! Success is LITERALLY just a state of consciousness. Feeling like you're going to be successful is a state of consciousness. Feeling like you're on the path is a state of consciousness. Being focused is a state of consciousness. Your state of consciousness determines your life. Having the motivation to turn your life around is a state of consciousness. And all of these states of consciousness can be induced manually. Being unfocused as I am is the gift I give myself. Because when I can figure out how to focus THIS DUDE, I'll know a lot about how I can train others. I want to write a really inspiring piece of poetry. Just like Prince EA. https://youtu.be/ja-n5qUNRi8 To have motivation, I need to put myself in the grip of life, I need to put myself in touch with death. I need to CAPTURE that state of consciousness. The one that doubts themselves the most can teach themselves to doubt themselves the least. How can I get myself into the state of consciousness so that I FEEL like I'm on the path. While knowing that I'm not fooling myself. A state of consciousness where you KNOW that you are giving it your all, where you are pushing yourself to constantly grow yourself. Stay in that state of consciousness long enough and you'll manifest the success you want. One of the greatest joys in life is to create something beautiful. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to make your life a work of art. At the end of the day I proceeded to have a 5 hour conversation with my good friend, making plans to move out, talking about a bunch of motivational shit. >The following morning... So I had mega broken sleep for the entire night. I was basically trying to sleep while half high. So THAT was interesting. I kept constantly thinking about the ramifications of the conversation I had, and I think because I was still on acid, I actually programmed in some of that drive because this morning I am realizing just how real it's going to get when we are living together. I laid in bed for a significantly shorter amount of time and I got up, made my bed and got myself dressed and ready to work. I'll need to practice self inquiry sober for awhile before I get into doing it again on psychedelics. Gotta crack open the neti neti book. I need to practice the Enlightenment guides a lot more as well. But I'm also just going to see what 5meo can do for me as well. Sometime this year...

Okay, so no amount of reading or mental masturbation gets me even an inch closer. That's kind of what I was afraid of, and also probably what i already knew when I asked. So it's literally waiting for the grace of god to strike you. A human is incapable of getting there on their own. Aside from DMT and psychedelics, is there anything else we can do to increase the probability of that lightning strike? It sounds like any form of meditation is about 0.00001% as effective and that seems like the second-best option. (For even an initial experience of enlightenment, not necessarily all the way.) Do you have any theory on how DMT gets a person there? Does the psychedelic state just make someone radically more open to the truth? I'm now thinking of it almost like some kind of "luck boost" potion in an RPG that increases your % chance of finding rare gear (or in this case, enlightenment) while it's active. Does anything besides DMT give even a measurable buff in this regard? Not even do nothing meditation, neti neti, etc?

As many know, nobody ever really comes back from a serious DMT breakthrough. Even though the memory of the heaviest breakthrough ever is so faded that I can only recall about 3 seconds of it, hazily, I still try to understand what happened. I remember the euphoric afterglow... I remember knowing I am not more important than a single grain of sand, but also not less important than an entire solar system. I remember understanding right aftef that spiritual practices are a waste of life, as everyone is equal and their entire lifetime of spirituality/good deeds erased when they die. I remember speaking to Shiva (I was VERY heavily materialistic, had zero spiritual leaning, and in fact Hindu characters have always looked frightening to me). I thought it was a woman. I know now it's a man... I remember Googling "monist religions" (yes the ego death was SO intense from the 5 tab acid DMT combo that I became religious) and then finding Advaita Vedanta for the first time. I remember reading a lot about it then. I remember the dissociation and awful derealization that began after further usage. ... But I remember it was very "we" are one. I have tripped so much, on LSD alone (rather than the acid DMT combos I became religious due to) I had similar abstract realizations of repetition, and of "slithers of being", like I am slither #1948127 in some infinite honeycomb. My own being split into various characters. All had their own personalities and spoke among themselves in the voice of the Friends characters. They were all distinct aspects of me... I had a programmable synth. You program a beat into each square and it plays them in order. I had an abstract acid thought that my entire existence is like that. Where I am programmed into squares like this and I in fact die every single moment. A clown jester PROVED my inherent emptiness to me. It did not just tell me. It pointed at the formless me in the foreground and I was pulled far back. Back behind even my ego. Back behind even the thought of "I", an experiential neti-neti process where I was left as literal nothing... But I also remember the ego deaths where the sense of any locale died and my consciousness became sizeless and all encompassing. ... But back to the main trips where I did heavy acid trips with the DMT smoked on the peak... I have forever been trying to understand those experiences since. There was certainly oneness and unity. But a "we". "We are existence itself, we are eternal" etc. Rather than "I" am. "We" are literally one... When sober I cannot comprehend that simultaneous separation ("we") and the absolute total unity ("are one" - literally) that accompanied. Maybe it's not comprehensible... Laughing with what was at the time stupendously obvious to the point it was hilarious: "I know, they (other living beings) don't even realize they're us!!!" Stifling fits of laughter...

I agree and I know what you mean. God is all that there is, so we can't point to anything he is not; therefore pantheism. It's a paradox because we can certainly know God by pointing to what he isn't such as the Neti Neti method, or Apophatic theology in Christian tradition. I guess, I am learning it is all a matter of preference of how we prefer to speak about it.

neti neti?

I think no-self is when you become nothingness, and understand that everything "you" is a changing appearance just like all appearances, with no static thing to actually grasp whatsoever. It's like an experiential form of neti-neti to literal nothingness. I think you described something like an out of body experience, lost boundary between self and other.

This is the result of getting high on DMT and experiencing the death of the self/other divide, right? I did not find that compelling in hindsight (can't think during the trip, only after in hindsight). What I found certain and compelling was "emptiness". The inherent literal nothingness of isolated awareness. Becoming nothingness was certainly no drug trip delusion... Either I became nothing observing me, or there was nothing where I'd have expected a little observer substance to reside. DMT induced neti-neti until I was literal nothingness... When the subject and object divide collapsed, it was more like a dream in that there was still observed objects but I understood keenly that all of it was mind. I wasn't separate from what I was seeing. That's not the same as what is often implied regarding no subject and object.

So far, I know you can get ego death by contemplating the following: What is death? What is a self? What is ego? I would pretty much just want a guided contemplation though these. @The0Self yeah upping the dose is for sure something I'll need. Definetly need more experience in the trenches. It's probably more straightforward than I think. Especially if I can do a full neti neti routine going off by heart.

So this idea of rectal Route of Administration was from this thread: One thing that I CAN confirm right off the bat is that the come up IS twice as fast. Anyways... LSD Trip 002 - My First Mega Download November 24th 2021 This is the first trip where I really let my self dial in focus on contemplating the nature of reality, and the rapid flow of insights kept me up till 6am. I think you'll find some very interesting things if you read this report in full. Also, I am letting you know that I am leaving many things in this report. Things such as stuff related to my life purpose that doesn't need to be shared for the purposes of posting it here. But to also distill it down to the most juicy bits. Also, the things that I find the most interesting, will be bolded, underlined, made bigger, highlighted, etc. >Lines that have ">" are written after the trip (A week later) Trip Report Intention: What is Context? So while tripping I listened to Guided exercise for realizing you are God. I need to take notes on this and identify each individual point that I have grounding my reality. >I know now that I need to further define things such as what does Leo really mean when he says Biology. >The reason why I need to further define these things is because when the idea is fully present, then that's what you know what you are letting go of. It's hard to let go of something that is vague. Which is why the ego must become more present in order to let it go. Woke up. Did an enema 3 -4 times. Dose: 50mcg LSD Taken @ 12:10PM, Rectally. ( Just put the raw tab in my butt, half a finger depth, nothing fancy, next time I might try to dissolve it in vinegar and then a couple drops of coconut milk [As Leo suggested in a thread] and see if it does anything differently. ) Proceeded to clean my room. I put my phone in Focus mode 18 mins Subtle energy shift in the chest? 24min Maybe some vibration in my chest? 34 min Kicking in Frosted glass is moving. Body feels different, Consciousness different The comeup is like a vibratory "anxiety". But it can totally just be interpreted as excitement. >The comeup is definitely twice as fast with rectal ROA, people have experienced the tripping time being cut in half as well, but that MAY or may not be the case. Because at least for my body I'm not sure how long LSD actually lasts for me, it could last 24 HOURS for me, rather than 12. I know that when I compare myself using THC edibles with my friend, 2 hours later after my friend has come down, I am still flying. 43 min Yawns Tired Pupils dilated 1h12min You can trip about contemplating the same thing over and over and go deeper and get more value. The mind is the net that holds reality in it. > I would now rephrase it as: You mind creates reality by interweaving a web of contexts. Without the network of the mind, reality doesn't hold. Without context, there's no reality. What you call "reality" is just a context. Consciousness is spawned in the moment. The moment feeling like forever is BECAUSE that is all there is. This moment can be whisked away thanos style, snap of fingers. Everything is being held together. In this moment. The eternal now. And at some point, it COULD just not exist. But yet it does atm... Opening your mind to the point of crazy is simply opening your mind enough... It's a double edged sword. It's that freedom of consciousness >When you open your mind this far, it gives you freedom to create any story about reality and it will be true for you. Which is why it opens you mind to levels of crazy, which is WHY you can EASILY believe that you are a prophet, because when your mind is open enough, it is simply the case when you make it so. When the mind is so open, you can write ANY story about it and call it truth. The amount of responsibility you take when you open your mind this much is insane. Enlightenment is simply just stripping all context. To the point that it deconstructs your ego, your self. All the ideas grounding you in this room, then all the ideas grounding you in the body. Then all the ideas grounding your consciousness in your head. >I think so. I have the freedom to imagine anything, yet the only thing that happens is this experience. Why is that the case? How do I get out of my head? >I still believe that "I" am in between my ears. I can see very clearly now that the ego is what gets in the way. It grounds reality stronger than an idea. 4hours in, still going hard Reality is just a tightly-knit context. So tightly knit that it feels real. It seems real. But it's a net of context. It's so tightly knit that the illusion is TOTAL. As you unwire each strand of the net you realize just how loose it is. Once you unwire enough strands then you realize that IT IS A NET. >You unravel the illusion. You becoming conscious is you becoming conscious of how Consciousness creates itself. Of how reality weaves itself into a net suspended up in the air with no ground. This full realization of all the contexts I create would reach a peak if my ego was dead. Which is why I see now the serious practicality of doing 5 MeO DMT. And I see how you need to be like there for a while to understand what the hell is that space. I need the neti neti method right now. >I listen to this right to hour 16, where I'm constantly pausing it and writing down more and more insights, keeping me up to 6am. I wonder how powerful it would be if Leo was sitting right here hammering me with questions about self. Like guided self-inquiry. I need to deeply understand what is Fear The search for the true self STARTS when you strip away all context. >This includes stripping away the contexts that you are attached to, which are the contexts that ground your ego. 4hours, 48 min Still going hard. Going deep as I can. Is the "I" present when this body dies? I feel like there's gotta be this big letting go moment. Like my ego is holding on. "I" cannot be sight because that is not ever present. Am "I" a constant? What is that? 5h Visuals in the wall still going hard The amount of concentration I have is unbelievable. I've built up an insane amount of momentum here. It seems like an ego death, an enlightenment is simply a momentum build up? I see how an enlightenment requires momentum. Which makes sense as to why Leo says that a retreat is what's necessary for an enlightenment. I can SEE now how much wage slavery can take away from this momentum. The things that you are alone with are where you're forced to be an expert on. To become awake, I feel like I just gotta do boatloads of self-inquiry for it to work. Patiently neti neti'ng myself over and over. Doing psyches to help during this process. The neti neti method is making you become conscious of certain things. What does it mean to open the mind? To get the courage to see the reality constructs that you create? Your enlightenment search is fueled by your curiosity in finding yourself. 6h 14 min I might actually be coming down now. "What is Context?" It's a perfect question to ask and trip about several times over. Why does the mind love patterns? Because of its ability to give your reality a construct. A context. A context is a pattern that is recognized. >A context is what grounds your reality, making your ego seem more real. The more contexts, the more TOTAL the illusion is. 6h 52 min Sobering up a bit? Still MEGA concentrated. What is Value? To create value is to create a suspended network. Value is a suspended network grounded in context, grounded in absolutely nothing. Why do I feel the need to be better than everybody else? Even if that means just me being better in my own very specific way? Is it because that way I will have a sense of mastery? A sense of accomplishment? At this point I was drawing and writing stuff down, trying to comprehend the magnitude of Leo's genius with his vision of Actualized.org. There is nothing to accomplish, yet reality pushes me in ways in order to evolve my consciousness. The way reality functions is it's evolution. There's nothing to accomplish, yet I'm stuck in a situation where I feel pain if I don't do stuff. An ego was created as a tool. In this tool is very useful because it gets things done. There's too much demonization of the ego. Rather it must be just understood of what it is and the role it plays. It plays a very important role. Without the ego it would be a lot worse in terms of getting stuff accomplished. ^^^but that is all ego justifications. Without ego it's okay if you die. >^The Ego is fighting Ego. I intuit that I must first build a massive lattice structure of understanding in order to get to that enlightenment point. 7h 30 mins Pretty much sober. But it's hard to tell because of the amount of momentum that I built up with my concentration over the past several hours. My head has been massively worked. After I am well versed in stripping away all of reality Constructs, that is when I will smoke 5meo, plug 5meo. At that point enlightenment will be easy to attain. "I" am a lattice structure. >The ego is a tightly weaved context weaved in itself. Creating the FULL and TOTAL illusion that it exists. Just like negative space art. >I am starting to understand how "you" are the triangle! >Each circle is the context that you ground yourself in. You can always deepen your understanding on every single idea, on every single word. You can deepen your understandings of every single thought. Is it possible for the eyeball to look at itself seeing? >Is it possible for consciousness to look at how it creates itself? >Is it possible for consciousness to be conscious of consciousness? 8h Still mega focused in thought. Deconstructing realities contexts. I need to patiently shake each assumption of reality loose. >Like how the brain doesn't exist. This here really helped me and I understand it a lot more now since I read it during my trip. And Even now I understand it more. >Also I think I now understand this more >Reality appears as it is, as itself. It it not grounded in anything. Whatever contexts that you project onto it is also reality because that is reality IS'ing as the context being projected through your rose coloured glasses of perception. Now I want to watch Leo's video, What is perception? [Checkpoint 1] >Reality IS ITSELF AT EVERY LEVEL. If you zoom in, it spawns as reality at that level, if you zoom out, it spawns at that level. But they're not grounded in eachother, they're not made up as eachother, but when you investigate, you can create a STORY that is the case. BECAUSE reality can be infinitely zoomed in, but it doesn't mean that lets say that your hand is made of atoms. Your hand is made out of itself, as itself, as it appears right now. >At least that seems to be the case... Your confidence is grounded in context. >SERIOUSLY! If you are not confident in a situation, change the context, and if you are able to open your mind enough to actually belive the stories you tell yourself, then that confidence will come effortlessly. [Checkpoint 2] >Which brings me to another point that I am starting to realize about the dangers of this work, and that is the dangers of deconstructing reality this much and opening your mind this much. If you are able to deconstruct reality to the point of throwing away all context to reach the absolute, then you literally lose your mind because your mind is a tightly knit web grounded in context, and when you start pulling the web apart, you lose you mind because your mind is a construct that is suspended in nothing. But also, more importantly, when you realize that reality is nothing but contexts and stories, you start to learn that you can easily write your own contexts and stories, and you can just as easily believe it as truth. Which is why it makes sense as to why enlightened people can see themselves as a prophet, simply because they lack ANY epistemological rigor in their understanding of reality. SO when your mind is that open, you can believe anything to your advantage, while at the same time forgetting that you did so. And because by DEFAULT you are epistemologically lazy, you default to believe the content that you have been fed by your culture, your experiences, your people around you, and most importantly, yourself. And in fact, that is exactly what you are doing RIGHT NOW sober, in your unenlightened, mind-not-lost state! But you are grounded in the collectively held social matrix that is your reality bubble. When you deconstruct your reality this much I see how it is so easy to write your own story. And how reality magically molds to your contexts. In which I realize that reality will bend to whatever context that you project upon it. Which is how you LITTERALLY CREATE reality. >Whereas Reality with a capital R is none of that, (Reality with a capital R )is an infinite shapeshifting infinite void of nothingness, and then your ego comes along and projects its contexts onto it, creating a reality (with a lowercase 'r' ) of it's own, as a TOTAL illusion, separate from the source, the absolute. The illusion being grounded in nothing but a massive web of contexts, suspended in the air. >I see now how everything in reality is simply a web of contexts, and relationships between these contexts, suspended in the air. A Network! >This idea explains the structure of Value, how value is a collectively held hallucination, think of how any inflation happens, that's only a result of the collectively held perception. Such as the dutch tulips. Value is nothing but a held perception. The "self", such as an artichoke, and you looking your self is like looking for a fruit in the center of an artichoke, peeling back every layer until you find nothing. Knowledge, how NOTHING IS KNOWN, and how knowledge is grounded in nothing, yet it exists, as a network, suspended in the air, in itself. Learning, where you realize that all learning is, is weaving an increasingly complex and interconnected web of knowledge, and how every idea leans against another. Culture, how it's a collectively reinforced massive hallucination. Paradigm, Construction (of reality), Perception. Language, such as how every word leans onto itself. Leo's YouTube channel. Why it is so valuable, because every concept leans on itself, creating a NETWORK EFFECT. This explains why every couple of months of studying Leo, my reality literally SHIFTS, simply because I have created a synergistic, network effect, connecting all these fundamental topics together, weaving them together into a strong net. This net of understanding start to take up a reality of its own. Everything, how all aspects of reality is just an infinite collection of interconnected networks. And how I am learning now that your life becomes better and better the more you understand this network because you are able to become conscious and appreciate the infinite beauty of GOD, Reality, Consciousness. I can intuit now how oneness can be so beautiful and powerful... >"reality=Network" - - (Notice how I use "reality" with a lowercase 'R') I could see myself surpassing Jordan Peterson easily. But Leo on the other hand... HAHAHAHA >How far I have come haha. I want to be able to teach as good, if not better than Leo does. You CAN'T have anything planned for your trips like this. Plans WILL fuck up your focus massively. The ENTIRE day has to be sanctioned off. Even if you were okay enough to go swimming later for example, your mind is still extremely sensitive and could be harmed with a negative experience and because of the sensitivity of your mind. It can sour the preciously aligned insights that the New Foundation was created upon. The only way I'll understand the massive amount of effort it takes to become a teacher as good as Leo is to go through the effort myself. The only way I'll understand how to make such a good teaching is by going through that process itself. That's WHERE I'm trying to understand what the process itself is! >I mean there's gotta be SOME practice routines involved in this process... >Zone of Genius work... >Anyways... To me it seems to be Learning a bunch of shit Interweaving and contemplating deeply about my understanding. Becoming conscious about a bunch of shit, such that I OWN the wisdom / teaching. Doing practice routines of how to teach it. Like just learning presentation and speaking skills in general. Teaching it. True spirituality is the most true "science". To invigorate spirit into your reality. True spirituality is truth seeking. Yo what the hell, I love truth seeking now! Realizing no self is like unwiring the Ultimate indoctrination. YOOO I fucking love religion class now. Leo's videos is religion class. I have to say that I'm becoming conscious of how your mind creates stories about everything. And how you just have to write your story to become the hero of your own story >I just noticed that I wrote down much more but it didn't save?? Fuck! > I had a lot of deep insights about manifestation itself, the structure of manifestation, and how it connects with this idea of a network. A self constructed, tightly weaved net, which is basically what all manifestation boils down to. Creating a net between your current net and the nodes you want your net to be a part of. Like the "Successful Youtube Channel" node, the "Great teacher" node. >At the end of the night at about 5AM, I start to think about pickup and how I would need to feel to be picked up, trying to get into the perspective of the hypothetical women in my mind. >My conclusion was that I needed to feel that I was everything. >I started to think about the people in my life, especially my mother, in how they make me feel like I'm everything. I cry at the love I feel. >I think of my Mom, and I text her how she is EVERYTHING I could ask for in being my mother. And how I love her very much. And that she makes ME feel like I'm everything! >I think of my best friends, and I tell them that they are everything I could ask for in a friend. > I think of my siblings, and I text them that they are everything I could ask for, and I love them very much. >I think of my dad, and how I want to say to him, that he is EVERYTHING that I need in a father, even though that is not the case at all, but I want to tell him that such that he feels love. So instead I text him that he is everything I could ask for in being my father, which is technically the case, rather than saying that he is everything >I think of Leo, and I think: LEO... YOU are EVERYTHING I could ask for in a teacher. I love you very much. >I realized that there is a deep connection with Intelligence and Beauty. Simple example, if your hair looks stupid, do it up, put more intelligence into it, then it all of a sudden becomes beautiful. >The difference between beautiful art and not beautiful art is the intelligence put into it. If you read all this, you are a real one. Trip Report Summary I'm learning about how your reality is an interconnected web of stories, ideas and contexts. I can see now that after building more foundation, I'll be soon ready for 5meo, as I see where it practically fits in gaining understanding. What's next? Creating a MASSIVE UNDERSTANDING of all these concepts The Many facets of awakening What is Love. Pt 1&2, Self Love What is Perception. What if reality was nothing but perspective? (The damn near opposite of Leo's video "What is Perception") Self Deception. What is Fear? Pt1&2 How To Discover What's True - A Deep Inquiry What is Truth? What does an awakening feel like Leo's videos on enlightement. Thanks Leo! Read books on what consciousness is. Study and create a network around the things I need to learn to actualize my life purpose. Contemplate What is Context? What is Relationship? That is my next thing to trip to? What is Beauty? What is Intelligence? What is Emptiness? What are the relationships between all of these? What is Love? What is Ego? What is Confidence? What is Value? What Makes a great Teacher? What is Learning? What is Teaching? What is Communication? Questions & Requested Feedback Can I get input on what I said in: (Ctrl+f) [Checkpoint 1] Where I talk about reality spawning as itself, not as an amalgamation of stories like atoms. I mention this a few times in the report. [Checkpoint 2] Where I talk about the dangers of unwiring reality this much. I mention this a few times in the report.

There are helpful steps you can take to prepare for awakening, including those you are already doing (meditation, pondering spiritual writings, etc.). The eastern mystics used the Neti neti method. The path to awakening is unique for each of us. Do whatever brings spaciousness to your life, and frees you from your thoughts. What I meant was not to get so caught up in preparing that you clutter your mind with a long to do list, rather than learning to let go of the mind. Awakening is simply the direct realization of who you are, and it is entirely free from thoughts. Preparation is important, but awakening happens when Consciousness is ready to make it happen. Enjoy the journey ?

So Satan is the false self that believes itself into existence through believing in the impressions given by the sensate world, such as all forms, instead of seeking refuge in nothing (itSelf) where it is self-supporting and so may exit the survival simulation (matrix). Something comes from nothing because Satan seeks to escape God in form and so become a false version of Him to himself. This is why idol worship is a Satanic practice and a blasphemy against God. Synchronicities, correlations, coincidences, cause and effect relationships, materialistic and relative truths, and insights that come to us in form are messages left by God, and these can be noticed by opening our minds to the possibility that we may not know certain things even though they are obvious, that there might be more to be learned and discovered, which opens the door so to speak to the spirit (rest of the) world. Meditation instructions are reformed manifestations of formed insights, designed to correlate your mind with a more similar direction to the one that produced them in the teacher, a form of brainwashing. Things said to be worth opening our minds to the possibility of are the impermanence of self and form, which in time may lead to us developing openness to the possibility that self cannot be found in form, leading us to decreasingly seek ourselves in it (neti neti), leading us to a pointer that it is unsatisfactory. However, if here a seeker forgets their openness, which is felt as severance from God, they experience dark night phenomena aka dukkha nanas, feel trapped in a prison of forms they can't cling to and don't like enough anymore, and pine for lost innocence (ignorance), leading them to fall for the pretty constellations form may take (peak experiences) and so unconsciously reinvest hope in form. This creates an A&P dark night cycle, and they are now a stuck tape loop until enough insight into impermanence at last leads them to enough disillusionment with form that they give up enough hope in form (reasoned hope) while maintaining enough open-mindedness (reasonless hope (faith)), thereby allowing them to relax under all conditions, so that the repeated reobservations no longer send them escaping into A&P's but to a grounded equaminity. As the cycles repeat and increase in severity, so must their equanimity (and, assuming they remember what they've learned, it does). Once this equanimity is perfected for the duration of the cessation, it leads to true non-doing/non-grasping/non-surviving: that's fruition/path. All form is a thought and a lie, without a thought about any sensation, it does not exist. Form and formless will not be merged until the seeker becomes an Arahant, and as such, one must seek to discern forms, lest they wrongly assume their repression (ignorance) to be acceptance (equanimity), the root of most enlightenment delusions. A method I've been experimenting with is to cultivate unconditional faith in the possibility that I may discover something new and true (the correct application of this technique takes the form of perfected self-esteem, feeling of excitement like I'm a kid again, engagement with right action that is righter and more creative than the mechanical (fear driven) self can conceptualize of - let alone experience - as well as surprising myself with how much fun i'm having and how abnormally effective I am, essentially a powerful flowstate) and directionalize (concentrate) this openness at myself (NOT my "sense of self"/"the I"/"awareness"/"the ego"; myself). Leo says to stop treating philosophy as a pointless armchair game and instead open your mind to the possibility that existential questions do have answers. This is like that. Closed minded attitude --> relying on reasons --> limitations on whats possible --> lame vision --> hopelessness --> mechanical lazy unmagical meditations / mechanical lazy uninspired life --> lack of vigour/excitement/engagement --> weaker flow states or can't get into one often --> apathy and despair, or worse, being an atheist (?).

This is exactly why Christians identify deeply with Jesus as the character of God and say that He is the truth, the way, and the life. That is the value is saying I am Christian because it clarifies what God means to an individual. And that is an important distinction you need to make for yourself. What is God? How does a person act and do when he is aligned with Truth? There is a need for that message to be communicated to someone who does not know God or may know someone who believes in God, but does weird crap like start a suicide cult. God is also identified and distinguished by what He is NOT. like the Neti-Neti method. This is probably why humans can't get away from Good and Evil, even if it is tied to Ego. For example, I could discuss with someone on the street what God is. We both may have an experience of what we perceive as "God" and yet receive two different messages. To Mark Chapman, 'God' spoke to him to kill John Lennon. To me, 'God' says to love someone is to love myself. Which message is 'right'? or another way to put it 'whole' The problem is that the word 'God' can mean different things to people and can create a lot of confusion. The only way to know what is true is to connect to direct experience because Truth is self-evident and deeper than what is captured through the scientific method. I believe Jesus to be the Son of God because his words and actions speaks to the deep humanity in me. But I only came to this conclusion by having personal revelations of God's Love and noticing that Jesus embodied these characteristics to the highest degree. You can still connect to Truth without all of the religions, but it is certainly a great pointer or fast track to Truth within yourself, which I do agree with others is in the Present Moment.

Although I am more of a Buddhist slant than Hindu/Advaita (emptiness vs fullness, you know the drill Same thing anyway), I agree wholeheartedly with your stance here, and with the general push against solipsism. People are quick to take individual perception as belonging to God, who then becomes centered as themselves. Ergo, everyone is their imagination except themselves, since they are God. But God (or Self, or consciousness, or reality, or whatever term we want) is not bound by this stupid duality of One Real vs the Imagined, or One vs Many viewpoints. The Absolute transcends self and other, here and there, this or that. Neti neti. Believing that our body/perception alone is real is one step along the path for some, but definitely not the end.

That is not at all the true representation of the most famous religions. GOD is totally transcendent and above being as we creatures are beings. But man is made in gods image, or a microcosm of the macrocosm as a more "spiritual" term. Christianity does not believe in a God that is the universe, "he" created the universe. But he did not use "material" outside of him self, but he didnt become the universe either. "He" is above mind, life, being, non being, intellect. You can't say what "he" is, but not can you neti neti him either. He is both and neither. It completely transcends all the notions of finite concepts that we want to label ultimate reality with. But as in Christianity, God incarnated as man in the form of Jesus, and how Jesus was is then attributed to GOD but infinitely more. Infinite love. Christianity is all above Love. The purpose is to feel and experience God's love. So God is not a being among other beings, no matter how supreme the being might be.

Many spiritual teachers such as Rupert Spira talk about being aware of being aware. Or being aware of Awareness itself. I have been meditating for years now. And my mind becomes really still. I feel that i am aware of awareness itself. But sometimes i even doubt that Awareness exists by itself. Maybe i am just aware of the absence of sounds.. I am definitely aware but not aware of something in particular. Leo has said in this video that there is not even Consciousness. There is only being. But on another video about Neti Neti he kinda has different positions... Does pure awareness/consciousness without objects exist? I have considered the possibility that only whatever we experience exist (sights, sounds etc) and maybe we don't need any awareness to be aware of these things. Also the problem is that you can never be aware of awareness because it is non-objective.

Rather than asking, "What am I?", consider asking, "What am I not?". Neti neti means "Not this, not that". It as an ancient process of Self-inquiry, where you gradually peel away the layers of the onion until you arrive at your ultimate nature. Is the essence of what you are your physical body? Is it your thoughts? Is it even the idea of "you" as a separate entity? Meditate, and find out for yourself. ?‍♀️

486. Summary: Satisfaction Meditation - How To Make Meditation Enjoyable! This episode gives you a practice you can use to apply the insights from The Root Solution To People Pleasing & Loneliness. (Summary is here.) It’s a very simple, but effective meditation technique that’s somewhat counter-intuitive. It helps answer… “But Leo, how do I practice becoming satisfied by myself? How do I embody not needing any kind of external validation? How do I apply the wisdom that chasing dopamine hits is a bad strategy for happiness?” The point of the Satisfaction Meditation is to take back control of your reward mechanism. Currently, your happiness usually depends on rewards from someone else (love, praise, attention, etc) or some external event (a promotion, lots of money, a hot date, no lineups at the DMV.) With the Satisfaction Meditation, we want to develop a practice of just sitting, being and not doing anything. Just basking in satisfaction. It’s the idea of just basking in the present moment and being deeply satisfied with it. That’s it. It’s literally that simple. There are two potential traps. First, you have to practice it. Second, your mind doesn't like feeling satisfied with “just existing and being, duuuude.” Your mind wants to do things and fantasize about stuff. It has ambitions, fears, problems that it wants to fixate on endlessly. All of that robs you of your natural joy. The Satisfaction Meditation Meditation starts at 3:22. It will take 10 minutes. Set aside all distractions and take a comfy seat. Sit with your eyes open. Relax your muscles. Now, you’re just going to sit there. Don’t try to manipulate or control anything in your experience. Don’t try to stop your thoughts or achieve a mystical experience. Just sit there and be fully satisfied. Allow yourself to be satisfied with the present. Keep gently nudging yourself to be satisfied with the Now, with just this moment. Notice if there's a positive, joyful feeling in your body. Maybe it’s a feeling of comfort. Enjoy the feeling, but don’t hinge your satisfaction on it. If you sit long enough you might start feeling uncomfortable and you still want to be fundamentally satisfied. That’s It! Think you can you do that? Normally your mind wants to fixate on the future or the past because that’s where your problems exist. You then lose touch with the beauty, calm and peace that’s present, in the moment, because it's not relevant to your survival plans. We usually take the present moment for granted. So, you might notice a subtle shift as you bring your awareness into the now. Proactively start to appreciate and enjoy your direct experience. Keep nudging yourself to feel satisfied with it. (The present is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present ??) Enjoyable Meditation?? The enjoyment from the Satisfaction Meditation doesn’t feel like ecstatic, dopamine-fuelled pleasure. It feels like relaxing into the moment. “Ahhh ?, it’s nice to just sit here and be peaceful. It’s nice not needing to chase an outcome or solve some problem. Ahhhhhh ⛱️.” So basically, you’re going to find satisfaction with being and existing. During this period of 10, 20 (or 60, 90 ?) minutes you’re just going to focus on being satisfied. If you practice this frequently you’ll notice a subtle shift. Before when you meditated you didn't really enjoy it, but now when you meditate you actually enjoy it! It’s not a chore, or a grind! The Satisfaction Meditation can create a positive feedback loop, because the satisfaction will start to build on itself. ⁍ Focusing on feeling satisfied in the present moment…helps you… ⁍ Realize you actually are satisfied…which creates a… ⁍ Feeling of satisfaction about being satisfied and your ability to recognize it. (“Wow! Leo’s weird meditation actually works!!”)…which causes an… ⁍ Increase in satisfaction that builds up that feeling even more…which helps with… ⁍ Focusing on feeling satisfied in the present moment… …So just continue to sit there, and become ever more deeply satisfied… -After that, it’s a matter of staying in the sweet spot of satisfaction for as long as you can. Try to keep your awareness there. -The Satisfaction Meditation shows you that being satisfied and happy is something you get to do right now. Happiness is not something you have to chase after! If you really practice it intensely, it can turn into deep joy, bliss and love. You can become so satisfied with just sitting in the present moment, not needing anything, that it brings tears to your eyes. -You can make this a formal sit down practice that you do everyday or a few times a week. Or, you can turn this into an entire week-long meditation retreat, where you’re just sitting, being satisfied and not doing anything else. The Sneaky Ego-Mind -Warning: your ego-mind will start to get sneaky… “Psssst…hey you…sitting there doing nothing…your to-do list ain’t getting any shorter…" “Wouldn't this moment be better if you had some drugs, or sex, or chocolate? Or friends? Or a mystical experience? Or a mystical, drug fuelled, sexperience with friends? Or at least a yummmy nummmy cookie…?” -You have to let go of those fantasies and just savour what’s right here in the present moment. Stop trying to chase for a better experience. Your mind is going to imagine all sorts of “better” scenarios. For now, focus on the present. You can spend the rest of your non-meditation time chasing goals and doing stuff. “But Leo, what if I can't be satisfied in the moment? That hottie ghosted me! I got a parking ticket! I have a project due tomorrow! I’ve got bills to pay, kids to feed, a hottie to resent and stalk on instagram. I needs me some enlightenment, pronto!” -Well, the challenge is to try. Your mind might resist and come up with excuses, at first. You have to notice that those are tricks of your mind. You have to just let those go. (ep: The Power of Letting Go) Let go of needing things to be different. Allow yourself to be satisfied with what's here right now. Focus on that satisfaction. Enjoy it. -This meditation is powerful because the whole point is to be happy right now. Other meditations are such a chore that they become difficult to practice consistently. They’re a frustrating means to some future happiness or enlightenment, which becomes counterproductive. Instead of dreading meditation, you’ll look forward to it because you get to just sit and be happy for 30-60 mins! It’s the same reason you sit down to play ?Ghost of Tsushima? isn’t it? Spirituality Is Not Supposed To Be A Grind -If you're just grinding through meditation, that's a signal you're doing it wrong. It’s hard to reach mystical states through meditation when you don't enjoy the process. It takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours of just sitting and being present in order to reach that. How do you plan on keeping that up if you don’t enjoy it? Reframe how you think about your meditation practice so that you can bask in the enjoyment. Whether it’s the Do Nothing technique or Neti Neti or just counting your breaths, enjoy the process. That’s crucial. -Making spirituality all about productivity and attaining some idealized future to avoid the present is a corruption of what spirituality is truly about. If your spiritual practice isn't aligned with joy and a satisfaction with existence, then there's something deeply askew. You could also broaden that lesson out to the entire process of self-actualization and personal development and even your career or life purpose as well. People Pleasing and Loneliness “But Leo, how does being satisfied with nothing connect to people pleasing and loneliness?” -People pleasing happens because you need others to fill you with love. You're not satisfied with things the way they are, so you do a lot of work to get praise and approval from others. It becomes an addiction. On top of that, you’re never fully satisfied even when you do get their validation. The afterglow of praise doesn’t last very long and it doesn't deeply fulfill you. If you're not fundamentally happy, you'll probably doubt or criticize their praise. “She didn’t really have a good time. She was just being polite.” “Okay, he complimented my hair, but what about my outfit? He probably just wants to get laid.” And so forth. -Loneliness happens when you imagine that the present moment could be improved by having more people around you, or people to talk to, be intimate with, share experiences with and so forth. It’s similar to people pleasing in that way. The solution is to ground yourself in being satisfied with existence, by strengthening your Satisfaction Muscle. That why you do the Satisfaction Meditation! You'll notice that you don’t feel lonely while you're doing the Satisfaction Meditation, because you're satisfied with existence itself. You don't need anyone else or anything more. You’re alone, but you're not lonely. Developing the deep capacity for satisfaction helps you to be non-needy and detached. It will augment the joy you do get from relationships. -This isn’t a license to become a recluse. This doesn’t mean you never socialize or be intimate with other people. That would be a mistake. You should cultivate relationships, just not while you’re meditating. Your Satisfaction Muscle -The Satisfaction Meditation will help you build your Satisfaction Muscle, which is your ability to appreciate and be happy with the moment just as it is. The effect of building your Satisfaction Muscle will spillover into other areas of your life. You will become happier, because you’ll be the source of happiness itself. It’s the kind of joy that most people overlook, because it's not a sharp peak in pleasure. It's not like a drug high or an orgasm. It's a very steady, even keeled contentment. It’s mild at first, but you can train it to levels of deep pleasure. The satisfaction can even turn into ecstatic levels of joy and bliss. Ultimately it can even turn into love. Why love? Because, you’ll start to fall in love with existence itself. That’s the rock bottom of this practice. Just a love of being conscious of being conscious of the eternal Now. With enough practice, you’ll start experiencing mystical states and even some satoris. Awakenings will happen as you sit there. You’ve stopped chasing them, but they’ll start happening because you've fully surrendered to the present moment. -As you build up your Satisfaction Muscle , you can go out into the world and apply the Satisfaction Meditation to everyday situations, like filing paperwork, grocery shopping, waiting in line at the DMV, etc. Usually you’d be irritated while sitting in traffic, but instead you can let go of your impatience and turn that into a Satisfaction Meditation. Also, when you go for a walk in the park, you can really be there and enjoy the beauty that’s all around you instead of being stuck in your head. Spirituality & Embracing The Now -Spirituality is the ability to cultivate your love for existence itself and be satisfied with whatever IS. It’s about developing an appreciation and satisfaction with the present that will carry over into every moment of your life. -Ordinarily we ignore the present moment as we go about surviving in the world. We get distracted trying to solve some problem or chase some goal, just to improve how existence feels. That can lead to anxiety and worry. Instead, practice being happy right now, for no good reason. Isn't that how you imagine you’d be if you were awakened? Think of it like this: If you can just sit and allow yourself to be content, do you even need enlightenment? Do you really need mystical experiences? What more do you want, but satisfaction? Why not short circuit all of that and go straight to the satisfaction? -You’re chasing these experiences because you believe they will satisfy you. What if you don't need to jump through all these hoops? The present moment is Absolute Truth. It’s God. Love. Spirit. Consciousness. Nirvana. Shunyata. Teotl. Fana. Shiva. The Groundless Ground. Mu. The Tao. The Force. It’s right here, right now. It’s just a matter of developing the ability to become conscious of it. The Trap of Chasing Enlightenment "But Leo, if I'm just sitting here satisfied and that’s the bulk of my meditation, will I ever reach enlightenment? Where's my awakening? I wanna be wise goddamn it!!” -No meditation can guarantee you will become enlightened. If you’ve been doing a lot of pushing during meditation for months and years, and you’re still not enlightened, maybe you need to try something new? Don’t fixate on achieving some mystical state or becoming enlightened while you meditate. If you have that attitude, even at the back of your mind, you're not doing it right. It’s important you let that attachment go. Just be satisfied with the present moment. You’re chasing some future fantasy, which is not what awakening is about. The anxiety of pushing for a result is sabotaging your ability to be present. -You might do this especially if you’ve attained crazy high peaks of consciousness through psychedelics. You can override that impatience by focusing on being satisfied with what is. Meditation is its own end, and in this case, meditation is about savouring satisfaction. ⦿ What you really want is to be more present. If you’re constantly trying to achieve a mystical experience, you’re distracted by anticipating some future result. That takes you out of the present moment. Worrying and anticipating are future oriented fantasies. It distracts you from your practice and becomes counter-productive. ⦿ Chasing becomes frustrating. With a chasing mindset, meditation can feel like a waste if you don’t “achieve enlightenment in 30 minutes.” You might even shame yourself, which creates a negative association to your meditation practice. The meditation becomes another means to an end, when it should be the end itself. If you're chasing some fantasy state with meditation, that ensures you're never going to be satisfied with most of your meditations. ⦿ Chasing happiness makes you unhappy. Unhappiness is imagining there’s something you should have, but don’t have, and that having it is the only way to become happy. This ensures you'll be unhappy until you get that thing, and even if you do get it you’ll only be happy for a moment. -True happiness is nothing more than being satisfied with exactly what is happening right here, right now, whatever that might be. That's the root of happiness. So, the counter-intuitive move here is to short circuit that whole process. To say, “why can't I be satisfied right now?” and then actually practice that. -Turn this into a quasi-challenge for yourself. How satisfied can I be with nothing special? How satisfied can I be with raw existence as it is, without needing to change anything? Satisfaction and Productivity The Satisfaction Meditation is harder than it sounds, because we often don't allow ourselves to be “happy for no reason.” “But Leo, being happy is going to rob me of my motivation! If I can be happy doing nothing, then why would I keep working on Wall Street or on my business or chasing millions of babes and dollars…?” One could argue that being satisfied is counterproductive to survival. Counterintuitively, that’s a good thing that you actually want. First, being happy makes you smarter, more resilient, more observant and more capable in a multitude of ways, which makes it easier to achieve goals. Happiness actually fuels success. It’s not the other way around. (Shawn Achor has a lot of good books and lectures about this subject. ) Second, if you’re honest, has any of that activity ever made you truly satisfied? No. It's just put you on an endless treadmill of chasing chasing chasing. If you keep that up you’re going to waste your whole life chasing stuff and never being satisfied. Dopamine tricks your mind into the fantasy that attaining some goal will complete you. It’s common to fixate on the chase and overestimate how fulfilling money, sex, and approval will be. It happens to everyone, even the most logical among us ?. -Focusing on satisfaction doesn’t mean you’re going to sit on your ass and do nothing for the rest of your life. You should develop a strong work ethic, a life purpose and meaningful relationships. You most likely need them to feel deeply satisfied with life. So don't be a slouch. You can do all those things, but that needs to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The cake is the Satisfaction Meditation and other practices that develop that muscle. A stronger Satisfaction Muscle will improve all those other domains of life. -Something fundamentally different needs to happen. So when are you going to wise up and realize that's not going to work? When you truly “get it” you’ll actually start practicing the Satisfaction Meditation consistently. Instant Gratification Culture -For most people, their Satisfaction Muscle is feeble because we live in a culture of instant gratification. It’s filled with social media, viral content, video games, loot boxes, tv & movies, fast food, porn and engineers in Silicon Valley using the most seductive bait to trigger those dopamine hits as fast and as frequently as possible. It’s a trick of your mind to think that chasing instant gratification and excitement is a wise and sustainable lifestyle. That’s what you realize after wasting years partying, drinking, masturbating, sexing people, taking drugs, having caviar in fancy cars. You end up crashing into dissatisfaction. -Those dopamine peaks never last no matter how enjoyable. That’s why you can finish one video game and still go searching for the next one, because no single video game has ever satisfied you. There's not enough money you can get on Wall Street or the casino to make those dopamine peaks sustainable. That’s why you need a root solution to the problem of unhappiness, otherwise you're always going to be unhappy. Two Different Reward Systems (Harvard trained physician Dr. K has an excellent explanation of dopamine at Healthy Gamer. Some of the following details about dopamine come from him.) -Dopamine chasing is ultimately unfulfilling because it has to do with wanting pleasure, not experiencing pleasure. When you do something rewarding the brain releases dopamine to reinforce that behavior by motivating you to want more of it. Dopamine does not cause the feeling or receiving of pleasure. Basically, wanting and enjoying happen in different parts of the brain. -Also, Dopamine isn’t “bad.” If you have too little dopamine you’ll be totally unmotivated. It just has to be properly balanced and not constantly chased as a lifestyle. -Your brain has two different reward circuits: the Dopamine Circuit and the Satisfaction Circuit. The Dopamine Circuit rewards you for sharp, positive changes in your survival situation, like stumbling on a hundred dollar bill, eating candy or playing a video game. It’s a very short lasting reward. When you get a dopamine spike you feel very happy for a few minutes, an hour, maybe even a day, then you drop back down to your default state. High Dopamine Activities: People pleasing. Partying. Winning the lottery. Watching TV. Eating a greasy cheeseburger. A promotion at work. Finding a new romantic partner. Taking drugs. Chris Evans musical tribute videos, etc. Because it triggers wanting instead of pleasure, you can get hit after hit and still feel compelled to chase more dopamine delivery systems (food, Netflix, video games, etc.) After all, if dopamine caused pleasure directly, you wouldn’t need to keep chasing more pleasure because you’d already be experiencing pleasure. The Satisfaction Circuit is rooted in the prefrontal cortex instead of dopamine spikes. The Prefrontal Cortex is the part of the brain that’s in charge of discipline, wisdom and all the qualities of the higher self. When you practice the Satisfaction Meditation, you’re strengthening the reward circuit of your Higher Self. (ep: Low vs High Quality Consciousness). It raises your baseline for happiness and consciousness. The Prefrontal Cortex also contains the pineal gland and/or third eye and receives dopamine through the mesocortical pathway. People with a strong Mesocortical Pathway have excellent willpower, vision, motivation and long term planning (among other positive qualities). One of the ways to develop that is through meditation. -No wonder most people are dissatisfied with life! Nobody taught them the difference between the dopamine circuit and satisfaction circuit. If you're not convinced of the benefits of strengthening the Satisfaction circuit, try spending the next 5 or 10 years desperately chasing those dopamine peaks. You'll realize it doesn't work. Some More Info on Dopamine • Dopamine release is about reinforcing a behavior through wanting. It’s a carrot on a stick. Trainers will hold up a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey and the donkey will keep chasing it forever and ever, never reaching the carrot. • Dopamine problems hurt your ability to delay gratification because it inhibits the part of the brain that’s involved in cost-benefit analysis. It makes instant gratification much more tempting, so you end up constantly making choices that are low reward for low effort. • Dopamine Exhaustion makes activities that promote your health and well-being a lot less enjoyable ?. Dopamine Tolerance eventually leads to Dopamine Exhaustion, where you have a vastly diminished ability to enjoy simple things. Reading a book or going for a walk becomes boring, because your body’s used to much higher amounts of dopamine than a book or walk provide. • If you do it long enough, you’ll end up creating a war between what you should do versus what you’re tempted to do to get that quick, easy dopamine hit. Thing is, you don’t actually want the donut or video game. It’s not as pleasurable as you imagine. Your dopamine is just throwing up false flares. • Dopamine chasing reinforces behaviors that aren’t even fun! You keep indulging in something even though it’s more numbing than enjoyable. (That’s a sign you really need a dopamine detox to reset your levels.) • It can take anywhere between three weeks to three months to go through a full dopamine detox. • Having said that, dopamine is necessary. You just need to regulate it properly. If you have too little you’ll be totally unmotivated, but you also shouldn't turn dopamine chasing into a lifestyle. • Most of us have gotten addicted to dopamine hits, even if we're not doing drugs. What’s worse, your brain builds a tolerance to dopamine, so the more hits you chase the bigger amount you need to get the same effect. Double Unhappiness If you don't cultivate your Satisfaction Muscle your mindset can get so bad that you’ll still be unhappy in beautiful, extraordinary situations. Maybe you’ve experienced that first hand. You’re sitting on a mountaintop with the love of your life, watching the sunset, admiring the scatter of twilight across the horizon. You’ve spent all day hiking up the mountain just to arrive at the perfect time and it's only going to last a few minutes. The weather is perfect, the location is perfect, the sunset is perfect, the person you’re with is perfect, but you're still not happy ?. You know the situation is perfect and that you should be happy, but you're not. That’s a double dose of unhappiness, because you’re unhappy, and you’re unhappy that you're unhappy. You may even start wondering, “If I can't be happy when the stars are aligned, what chance do I have of being happy at all, ever, period? What if nothing makes me happy? What if I’m doomed to be sad forever?” That’s when a lot of people get depressed or even suicidal. That’s because nothing can make you truly happy other than yourself. The only long term solution is to train your Satisfaction Muscle to the point where you're satisfied with existence itself. Stop Living Life By the Numbers Stop living your life for some arbitrary numerical metric, like dollars in your bank account, or cars in your garage, or the number on your bathroom scale, or even number of books you've read. That can get very dysfunctional. Numbers on a spreadsheet won't satisfy you in the ultimate scheme of things (even if you’re a mathematician!) Leo used to have a demanding, results obsessed mindset where he quantified everything. His attitude was to just grind through work, suck up any suffering and achieve the result. It was a very left-brained, unhealthy, dysfunctional, stage orange approach to life. It was toxic, unsustainable, and it didn’t lead to satisfaction. The Problems with Grinding 1) It’s based in being “not good enough.” “But Leo, I’ve got so many things to do and I’m already behind in life. I’ve got to become spiritual, confident, fearless, more loving, nicer to people who secretly irritate me, or just better all around. Do you know how hard it is to navigate reality when you’re not perfect, like those people on Instagram…” You have an idealized image that you feel you must live up to in order to be “good enough.” Problem is, if you feel bad about failing to live up to that, you’ll be too demoralized to take consistent, long-term action. 2) It’s unsustainable. You might be below your ideal target for years because it takes time to build skill. It’s unsustainable to spend all that time feeling demoralized and not enough. 3) It makes you cut corners in practice. When you don’t enjoy practicing, you can get sloppy. If you’re just grinding through, you’ll cut corners so you can get it over with and do something that you truly enjoy. 4) It stops you from entering a flow state. A flow state happens when you lose all sense of yourself in an activity. It becomes effortless, like you have the creative force of the universe backing up your actions. The thing is, flow comes from freeing yourself up, not from trying to finish things quickly. 5) Grinding changes “I want to” into “I have to.” If your practice is demoralizing, unsustainable, toxic and unenjoyable, it’ll feel like such a drag that you have to force yourself to do it. You might forget why you wanted to accomplish the goal in the first place. (Teal Swan has an excellent episode about this: “Have to…The Philosophy that Will Ruin Your Life”) 6) The most effective motivation “moves towards” something inspiring, not just “away from” something negative. Leo has an excellent episode about this: Positive vs Negative Motivation. It’s one of his best about life purpose and motivation. It’s based on the excellent book “The Path of Least Resistance” by Robert Fritz. Leo’s Reading Example When Leo first got into personal development 10 years ago, he wanted to develop himself as quickly as possible: “Let me achieve as much as I can, as fast as I can, to hell with how it feels!” Leo had a mountain of books to read. He figured if he could master speed reading he could read ten times as many books. So he got a speed reading book and started going through the exercises everyday. After a month of tedious grinding, his practice became so unpleasant it was actually counterproductive. He realized he would rather read at a normal, enjoyable pace than speed read through books, worrying about whether he understood or remembered the material correctly. His boredom, worry and attachment to the outcome of speed-reading was stopping him from entering a good flow of absorbing the book’s information. Nowadays, Leo reads pretty slowly but enjoys himself and focuses on absorbing the contents of the book. (Considering how long and dense his book list is he can’t be that slow at reading.) So, it doesn't matter how fast you read, because the point is not to read X number of books. The point is to enjoy yourself. If you end up reading half as many books, but enjoy them twice as much, it’s even more of a win. So, you can read a book in an enjoyable way, or in a grinding, unpleasant way. The better way is to enjoy the process so that you keep doing it without burning out. Enjoy your career or business. Enjoy your relationships and enjoy watching yourself grow mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Watching Actualized.org Episodes Another example of slowing down to be more effective is watching Actualized.org episodes. There’s at least two different ways to watch them: 1) You can binge a ton of episodes. “But Leo, I’ve stumbled upon this gold mine of information! I need to get through these big, meaty, complicated episodes as fast as possible. I’ll just binge watch 500 episodes with a pot of coffee, some modafinil, a stack of legal pads for notes, an even bigger stack of armodafinil, and that eyeball machine from A Clockwork Orange…then I’ll be wise!!” 2) Or you can slow down and enjoy the process. When you watch Leo’s videos, find a sustainable pace that you can enjoy, instead of binging so many they become a blur. Maybe you only watch one video a week instead of one a day. In the long run you’ll watch a lot more episodes if you enjoy the process. Also, if you take time to pause and contemplate what’s being said, you'll get more benefit by concentrating on fewer episodes in a deeper way. When you slow down and get into the rhythm of an activity, you enter a flow state and lose all sense of yourself. Whatever you're doing becomes effortless when you're in flow, because you’re not putting stressful demands and distracting expectations on yourself. Flow comes from trying to do things freely, instead of trying to do things well. Deeply Contemplate Happiness -You need to deeply contemplate happiness. If you can't clearly articulate what happiness is, how can you ever be happy? Happiness is not a belief or an ideology. It's not enough for you to just believe what Leo says about happiness. You have to actually derive, for yourself, what happiness is. -You figure it out through contemplation and direct experience. This will help you to distinguish between authentic happiness and dopamine peaks of pleasure. When you’re happy, notice what’s causing it. When you’re unhappy, also notice what’s causing it. Another way to frame the question is: What if there's a form of happiness that doesn’t create a downward shift into dissatisfaction after it ends? -If you do the Satisfaction Meditation enough, maybe you'll discover it’s pointing you towards authentic happiness, to a type of pleasure that doesn’t create suffering. Don’t mistake dopamine peaks for authentic happiness. They're not. Those dopamine peaks actually create suffering. This distinction is crucial. Life Purpose and Happiness -The happiness you get from your Life Purpose is different than the dopamine spikes of a video game. When you find your life purpose and align with it, it triggers a different reward mechanism, similar to the Satisfaction Meditation. Instead of dopamine swings, it leads to a deep contentment with life. Bliss and joy can be reached this way. “But Leo, the contentment from LP won’t be permanent either!” Of course it won't. But there’s a difference between getting attached to satisfaction and enjoying satisfaction while it’s here. This does not mean you cannot meditate on the feeling of satisfaction itself. In fact, doing so is how you escape suffering. eg: People misunderstand Buddhism’s non-attachment and impermanence as “life is suffering, nihilistic and empty” or “this is why Buddhists can’t have nice things.” However, the Buddhist notion of suffering and impermanence basically means that chasing material conditions and positive states is dissatisfying because it never lasts. So you’re guaranteed to suffer. clip: Lose Attachments to Gain Infinite Love (9 mins) -Appreciating bliss and satisfaction in the here and now is a far better way to live than chasing dopamine hits, which is what most people are doing. Think of it this way: In every moment you can either be satisfied or dissatisfied. Which will you be? Applying Insights: From Abstract to Concrete -You need to develop practical techniques for implementing all the high level, big picture, abstract ideas that Leo talks about. In this episode you got a very tangible practice. A lot of episodes don’t and won’t provide that. -You need to take ownership of your own personal development. You won’t build muscle by trying to get Leo to lift the weights for you. That goes for all self-help teachers, books, courses and insights. -To get the most value out of Actualized.org watch out for two traps: listening idly and not taking action. You can’t just listen distractedly as you cook or do laundry, unless you’re totally new to this content and have trouble focusing. You could start there, but to get results you need to focus. -No matter what level you’re at in your spiritual journey, you must take effective action to get results. You need to develop the ability to take any insight and ask: “How do I turn this abstract idea into something I can implement in my life?” “How can I practice this wisdom and embody it?” -For every profound insight you get, brainstorm different methods to apply it. See which ones work and which ones don’t. That’s where your results will come from!

Hello I couldn't see any existing references to Dr. K on the forum and wondered if it might be beneficial to bring this individual to members' attention as he tends to teach coaching and a range of meditation techniques. He produces content through his organisation Healthy Gamer, on Twitch and YouTube. Dr. Alok Kanojia as he's more formally known, was at one point playing too many videogames, so his father sent him to India where he spent seven years training to become a monk. However, he met a girl, fell in love and decided to come back to the US again. Upon returning, he completed his degree and went on to become a qualified psychiatrist at Harvard medical school. Rather than pursuing a traditional career, Alok founded Healthy Gamer. We might say that he wants to help his former self, the loser who played too many videogames. Dr. K combines experience from both his psychiatry and his spiritual training to provide coaching sessions to individuals, some of which are streamed publically and shared as videos. He recently mentioned both Neti Neti and Siddhis, which made me think about Actualized.org. I've not heard him mention Spiral Dynamics but he managed to hold a room containing both David Pakman and a passionate Trump supporter recently as a demonstration of the power of empathetic listening and understanding. Admittedly Pakman didn't speak much.

I cant get past feeling that "I" (whatever that is) is located within my body. I realize how I am not actually my body. But I sure as hell feel located within it. Help me understand why that's wrong.

I want to share an experience I had during self enquiry. I have done self enquiry many times and I have a discernment by now of what pure consciousness is, and how to remove what is not through neti-neti. So I was seeking with questions like, what is that is aware of my experience? What is left if i remove every objective element from my experience? What is the nature of the knowing with which I know my experience? As I asked the last question of one very similar I sort of came to a memory of my experience and saw as if my existence was so because of the existence of the things I was experiencing. Like if my experience go flipped from something inside experiencing out, to outside experiencing inside. It's like i went from living in a position seeing the outside world to being the outside. Like things outside where eyeballs and I was empty, I'm sure this is what is meant by "the universe is experiencing itself". It's like if I told you looking at a wall, what is the nature of the knowing which knows the wall? That is the wall, in terms of the awareness of course is empty but is the wall and everything you can see around you, anything can know. From there of course you see that you're nothing. What do you think? Is this a genuine insight? It kind of feels apparent to me now but i want to get some external opinion.

Contemplate your own death. Imagine what it feels like when your about to die. Feel the five sense. Perhaps you're in a coffin. Or about to get eaten by a shark. Accept and relax into it. Sit out in nature for at least 40 minutes. When the 40 minutes is up, stay aware for 5 minutes as you get up and walk away. Do this frequently. Watch Leo's Neti Neti method video Read some Peter Ralston books

You cant capture infinity and Reality and say oh it is this way but no that way, in the beginning NETI NETI is a great thing but one should see that even if Frank and Leo talks about differences, it is still A MIND who is doing the interpreting, like Frank, he is doing metaphysical claims all the time and he pisses at Leo for doing it too, lol it is unavoidable.. Infinity includes and transcends it all, it is impermanent/permanent, it is everything and nothing. In his stages with GOD / NOTHINGNESS / CESSATIONS etc, that is pure MIND who puts its "experiences" on top of others, making a claim that this "experience" is more important then another, YEAH for him perhaps, likewise LEO has another, i dont doubt the wokeness of any of them, they certainly are.