Leo Gura

Nice topic, lots of 'em out there if you search.

@electroBeam Purify that desire, get to the bottom of it, and it will turn into being a Bodhisattva. An evangelist is just a corrupt, ignorant Bodhisattva.

Try breath. It works great.

Not worth plugging if it takes 70mgs. Waste of rare product.

Sweet

Only totally.

No! No! No! Stop playing this shit. Seriously. Get a life. You're one step shy of: "Look Ma! I'm meditating!"

Lol, you ain't gonna master shit in 1 year. Least of all nonduality.

@Splion You're welcome to work in a factory. Let's see how egoic that turns out.

I would listen to the guy with the most Rolls Royces

@Snick Well of course. You play with pigs, you're bound to get dirty Use it as in-field mindfulness training. As you get more experienced with meditation, you'll start to carry it into your everyday life more, not just the cushion. And you don't have to be an arrogant ass about your spirituality. A Buddha can get drunk with the villagers. Read some Ryokan poetry.

Your family happenings got nothing to do with advancing your spirituality. Why would you expect them to? Do your consciousness work all alone, and don't expect any social support, unless you are specifically in an ashram or workshop where such support is promised. Yes, enlightenment is simply awakening to What you are. Nothing more. What you do with it is another matter. The issue isn't time, but that you are conflating the realization of Truth with changing the self, which are two very different things.

I swear, rationalism is a worse disease of the mind than fundamentalism. So many good minds wasted.

Generally yes. Although you could, for example, join the Santo Daime church and drink DMT legally through them.

In the early and middle phases, you ask questions to focus your mind. At the advanced phases, you become so focused on the questions, and you've asked them thousands of times already, so they can drop away and you are just left in a sort of meditative state plus you are deeply wondering. When you pose the questions, make sure you actually get traction. Wonder very deeply. Observe your experience very closely.

@Martin123 Do it your way then. I'm not here to debate with you.

If that's how you define enlightenment, then it will take you 50 years to get enlightened. Good luck.

@Torkys Do a good solid month of daily inquiry before you start to get too worried about being stuck or asking questions. You need a solid base of experience, just like with anything in life, before you are even remotely capable.

@Afonso You should hit a groove where the concentration becomes effortless and joyful. Not totally effortless, but relatively effortless. It's stop being a boring grind.

@username Truth and changing yourself are really two unrelated things. They are related of course, but best not to muddle them up, because it will lead to all sorts of stupidity, as seen in some of the threads about morality, etc. The Absolute Truth is one thing. And then changing yourself, developing your human body and mind and life, is another thing. One of the biggest problems with religions is that they muddle up existential truths with lifestyle changes. And this confuses a lot of people into thinking that Absolute Truth mandates a certain kind of lifestyle. Strictly speaking it does not. Although as you become more conscious, you want to naturally act more consciously. For example, a lot of people will tell you that being enlightened means you gotta become a vegan. That's not the case at all. Whether you decide to become a vegan is irrelevant to the Truth. Truth is Truth no matter what you decide to do. You could decide to kill yourself, and the Truth would still be the Truth after your body is dead. Or you could decide to become a ballerina. And just because you're enlightened doesn't mean you'll be a great ballerina. That will take tons of work. Most importantly perhaps... mastering your emotions is WAY harder than enlightenment. If you want that, that will take decades of consciousness work. Relationships too. Physical health too. Business too.

@PretentiousHuman Just? Your body and your car are also illusions. Reality is also an illusion. So calling something "just an illusion" is tricky. For you, these illusions are very real. In the same way that a nightmare feels very real when you're in it. Negative emotions are exactly what they are. What's required is becoming fully conscious of what they really are vs what you think they are. These are two totally different things. And learning why negative emotions arise, and how they arise, takes a lot of inner work and contemplation. That's what's necessary to become free of them. It's not about fending them off. It's about understanding the root of what they are and why the arise in the first place. A good place to start is to sit down and ask yourself: What is anger? What is fear? What is sadness? Why do they arise? What functional role do they serve in me? What would it take to not feel them? What would it take to be free of them?

@username It's not going to be a one-shot deal. You're gonna have tons of various kinds of experiences and mystical states along the way, most likely. Concentration practice is very important. It's not the only important thing. But it's important. There are many different paths. Many of them contradict on the surface, or in their practical application. I've seen results from both inquiry and from meditation. I think they work great together. Most modern minds are very addicted, which is why I stress meditation so much. Most minds are in no position to do inquiry. Most minds need a few years of meditation practice just to calm down enough to do 20 minutes of inquiry. You have to understand that people like Jed are extremely rare and hardcore. Are you willing to do what he did? There are gradual paths, there are extreme paths. Obviously the extreme paths can take you deeper, faster. But most people cannot handle them. You always have to consider who the teaching is aimed at, and how well you fit the bill. A teaching is worthless to you if you cannot handle it. Meditation is not about experience. It's about training up your mind so you can more easily break through experience. And "Truth" is far from the only consideration.

What if they don't want it?

You seem to like dragging Leo into this. Leo's got nothing to do with it. Watch your projecting. You speak of things which are utterly beyond your present experience.

I said nothing about respawning. "The only sensible thing to do..." << that is just monkey mind coming up with justifications again. You can do whatever you want. "I always knew it made no sense to be good" << again, be careful of ego misappropriating these teachings. What was said was simply: "good" is a construction of your mind. This doesn't say anything about how you should behave.