Leo Gura

@Emptystickfigure I dunno the details, but there are many examples of highly enlightened masters run amok. Like this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Da Who became so enlightened he told his followers that he was the only human avatar that would reach the highest level of enlightenment (EVER) and that the only hope they had was to worship him as God. He was genuinely very enlightened. But also sounds like a narcissistic prick. This is enlightenment gone awry. There are many similar cases.

@Whoami3 Visualization is an amazing technique. I highly recommend it. Again, it's ONE tool in your toolbox.

@Jonson Affirmations are still good, especially for basic success/achievement related goals. Just don't let them be your only tool. And realize that there are more powerful tools available, especially if your objective is very deep personal transformation. The nice thing about affirmations is that they're so easy and simple. You don't have to spend 100s of hours racking your mind the way you do with something like contemplation.

Good, keep up that mindfulness.

@Zane If you're a creative person, you should know intimately the joys of creative fervor, and sharing your labor of love with the world. It's hard to put into words.

@DimmedBulb Mastery needs to carefully and diligently cultivated over decades to become a successful creative. Creativity isn't something that just happens. You need to devote your entire life to it, and work on it from morning till night. Technical skills need to be honed with 1000s of hours of meticulous practice. That's why having a life purpose is absolutely essential. It's what I found I needed to be successful creatively. Not really possible otherwise. You cannot become a creative genius on a whim. You have to REALLY work at it. This is the case with any big-name creative genius you've heard of or admire. Most people fail at this because they cannot properly motivate themselves to conquer the mastery learning curve. Especially these days, with all the comforts and distractions of 21st century Western lifestyles. But being successful creatively feels AMAZING! Better than an orgasm.

@Reality Yes, familiar with his work. Haven't delved into his books though.

@Peak Welcome to the 21st century, human.

@Live Life Liam You probably couldn't handle that extreme. So no. But if you could, it would probably be the best life possible.

Dude... When you abandon your entire lifestyle and go live in the woods or a cave for 10 years, living off one coconut per day, meditating 12 hours per day for years on end, for 10s of thousands of hours, begging for food, and eating it out of a bowl made out of a human skull -- THEN you can talk to me about seriousness. No TV, no internet, no sex, no jerking off, no bed, no house, no fresh clothes, no money, no friends, no family, no A/C, no heating, no bed to sleep in, no sleeping bag, no tent, no health care. I don't hold enlightenment nearly as seriously as yogis, Buddhist monks, or Zen masters. You say such things not having done your research, and not having done any serious contemplation. Try contemplating for 100 hours straight, non-stop. Then let's see how you feel. (That would still be newbie-level spirituality.) And laughter or playfulness does not preclude seriousness. Those are actually by-products of it. AFTER you've contemplated for 20,000 hours, then its easy to laugh. At that point, ISIS could be chopping your head off, and you could be laughing. You, as you are now, have almost no capacity to laugh. As soon as you experience the slightest discomfort, insult, or even a minor calamity, you vent, cry, curse, get depressed, get agitated, etc. You can't even sit still on a comfortable couch for 60 minutes without serious suffering. An itch on your nose can send you into agony.

@Oneness Why would it assume there are souls? What we generally refer to as "soul" is from what I understand really the Atman -- individualized consciousness. You can have direct experience of this. It's quite magical. But paranormal phenomena could work through a million possible mechanisms. We just don't know the what the mechanisms are. And they are probably non-causal, non-local, non-material, beyond standard physics. Which would be a good explanation of why standard physics generally ignores them. It wasn't that long ago that standard physics dismissed magnetic fields and x-rays as hoaxes. "X-rays will prove to be a hoax" --Lord Kelvin "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin (circa 1900)

@cactus Well... try open-eye meditation for a while. It's good training. Yeah, the jaw is a HUGE factor people forget. It's almost always too tense. When you meditate, relax your entire face like that of a baby in sleep. Everything should go limp.

@cactus Are you meditating eyes open or closed?

@rush Get to work then. That will take you a good decade or two at least.

@cactus Firstly, make sure you FULLY relax the face and jaw during meditation. Keep reminding yourself of this over and over again until you finally program it into your mind. Secondly, try to keep your eyes pointing straight ahead, not up or down. And relax the eye brow region. You're probably straining to "focus" towards some imagined goal. This is not necessary. Just be loose and easy-going. Thirdly, you can try moving your awareness to the top of the skull or the back of the skull or the middle of the skull, away from the eyes/nose area. I found this helps me when I'm over-straining the eyes.

@dice Do the work and discover the answer for yourself. This is like a puzzle. You gotta sit down and spend 1000 hours figuring it out for yourself. Reality is a lot more mysterious and counter-intuitive than you ever imagined.

@dice No, it's not like that. Your understanding of what occurred "before birth" is coming from ego, not from nondual awareness. The whole problem here is that currently you're not conscious of what you were before you were born. You assume you know, but actually you don't! It's not what you imagine. If you ever do become conscious of that, it will blow your socks off! One way to define enlightenment is as you realizing what you were before you were born. It's only pointless to say from the ego's perspective because by definition the ego cannot see outside itself. Imagine that all your life you thought you were a human being, and then one day you realize that actually you were the vacuum of empty space the whole time. Now you feel great, because you cannot die. How does an empty vacuum die? It can't! The body can die just like your car can get stolen, but it's not a big deal since you aren't the car or the body. For someone who totally identified with the body, this doesn't make sense, because you REALLY think you're the body! You actually think that's a physical fact of reality, when in fact it's just an idea. If you succeed in dropping that one idea, death will literally become impossible. Of course dropping that one idea entails your entire understanding of reality getting flipped upside down. You have to stop being human and become Infinite.

@Telepresent There are really only 2 meanings for "I": 1) "I" in the conventional sense that most people use, which is the ego. The identification with body/mind. Identification with a physical being. This entity does not exist whatsoever, although it appears to. 2) "I" in the nondual or spiritual sense which almost nobody understands because they've never experienced it. This is the True Self, pure consciousness, God, Absolute Infinity, or Nothingness. This none-thing is beyond existence and non-existence. And it's the only Truth. There's nothing else but it. And it has no properties whatsoever. It's what you actually are.

@dice Feelings will of course stop. They stop every night in deep sleep. The issue here is that you're identified with feelings. So you're attaching significance to no-feeling. Also, Nothingness is NOT anything you think it is. It's not nothing. It's consciousness. You have to experience it for yourself to appreciate the significance of this. It's the most extraordinary thing! When you're conscious of Nothingness, the notion of death seems silly. Until that point, it's very hard for the mind to even imagine how that could be possible. You need some direct enlightenment experiences to resolve this.

@DimmedBulb Of course. Under-developed people always get addicted to one thing or another. Not just one thing, actually. Dozens of addictions simultaneously.

It's not because you missed a day. But it could be because meditation was doing its job and surfaced some garbage as part of the spiritual purification process, and you fucked up by letting that garbage distract you. Anyhow... just get back on track and it will pass. Keep your spiritual practices CONSISTENT, no matter how you feel. It will be hard the first year or two. But you'll be glad you did it. I haven't missed a day of meditation in close to 1000 days. It's not that hard.

@Vercingetorix No, it has to be more than a no-ego experience. It has to be permanent realization of what you are. And that's just the first step on the path. Full enlightenment we cannot even begin to fathom. Might as well forget about it for now. Even the first step you cannot yet fathom how mindblowing it is. Maybe after 40 years of constant work you can start to throw around a term like full enlightenment. This is very serious stuff.

@Alphard Watch me and see what happens. Ya'll be way too worried about my level of awareness, when instead you should be more worried about your own. I don't have a God complex, you just think I do.

True passion comes from a source beyond you. True passion IS already spiritual, although it might not seem like it until you do a few years of serious spiritual practice. It's a pure desire to create, to share, to delight others -- independent of any material reward.

@Alphard Amen! Social media is like consciousness' worst nightmare.