Leo Gura

@Monkey-man There ain't no external world. That's just an idea. You're assuming it exists, when it does not, which makes your line of reasoning misguided.

@Zippie Don't you wanna know what reality is? Don't make this journey about yourself.

@zenjen It's only the beginning. You can be pretty sure your high will burst, and new lows will come. So watch out and pace yourself. Just keep doing the work. Things will improve over time. Sell your stupid gun before you hurt somebody with it.

@Alexo45 Just do it. That is the only way.

It's best not to conflate enlightenment with any material phenomena. Enlightenment, strictly-speaking, is an insight. It need not have any physical or emotional ramifications, although it might as an after-effect. As for consciousness work (which is a more general notion), yes, that includes energetic shifts.

@B Clear The mind gets stuck on this whole game of looking for "reasons". Don't forget that reasons are the mind's BS apparatus. You can't trust any "reasons" for anything. Reality doesn't depend on reasons for its functioning. Reasons are secondary, not primary. It's an activity of the monkey mind to justify itself to itself. If all reason were wiped out tomorrow, reality would continue to run as it has for billions of years. Human beings are the only creatures which seek reasons for existing. No other creature needs them. And they survive just fine. Look at the lions on safari. They are just happy basking in the sun. They don't need reasons.

@Serazer I'll have a video about this soon. But no, we do not agree that rapists are evil. Contemplate why you feel rapists are evil. Notice, it's only because they do things which thwart your self-agenda. If you weren't in the process of self-survival, nothing would be evil to you. And of course rapists obviously don't consider themselves evil. They are doing what they need to do to survive, just like any other organism, including you. Evil just boils down to selfishness. That's all it is. When you break the illusion of having a self, all the selfish actions of others will stop bothering you. Notice that selfishness only bothers you because it gets in the way of your own selfishness! Hating selfishness, is ironically, selfish! Evil isn't in you. Evil is the story you make up in order to justify your own selfishness.

@Ryan_047 Step #1: Create a compelling vision for your life. Step #2: Discipline yourself to start acting on it every day. You haven't taught yourself the basics of self-survival yet. So get that taken care of before you get too existential. Don't get stuck in mental-masturbation and self-pity. Go out and take lots of action. At your age, you have tons of energy and health, you need to be working your ass off every day. Build your foundation.

No! There is no point. And no value to anything. Your ego is still looking for a point. Hoping to salvage this. It cannot fathom what it would be like to live otherwise. That's why a leap of faith is required here. You are surrendering everything for nothing. Do not try to do a cost-benefit analysis on that.

Yes, good connecting of the dots here. That's what happens when you build something based on illusion. The illusion tends to collapse at some point. A lot of energy must go into maintaining the appearance of solidity despite the obvious fact that its an illusion. This is as true of our economy as it is our sense of reality. Both are illusions which we must keep denying are illusions. The ego, the economy, "reality", science, culture, religion, etc are all houses of cards. For a thing to exist, is for it to be a house of cards. That's how anything gets built. The mind sort of fantasizes it into existence through sleight of hand. If you insist on no houses of cards, you're left with absolutely nothing. Which isn't conducive to life because life is a commitment to somethingness.

@Akshay Try a few weeks of both and you tell us which worked better for you.

That was a whiff of Truth. A few plumes of its smoke entered your nostrils, and you didn't like the smell. It's the pungent aroma of self-annihilation. Like I've said before, Truth is an acquired taste

How can you know that you die, if you don't know what you are? Careful about putting the cart before the horse. The fact is, you don't know what death is. The other problem you're stuck on is that you're still looking for a point, a purpose, a meaning to existence. There isn't any. Nothing makes any difference. The notion of "difference" is itself an illusion. Everything is ONE. There can be no differences. There is absolutely no difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment. That's enlightenment! The ego is not going to get anything out of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some grand purpose, it is the realization that nothing exists and everything is pointless. Yes, of course you will face an existential crises. Because all beliefs are a lie, and you do not exist. Existential crisis isn't a problem, it's the proper reaction to discovering that you're living a lie. It's not going to feel good at first. It's like discovering that Santa Claus isn't real. It rains on the ego's parade.

@How to be wise See my Practice Guide To Enlightenment. That is the way. You have to start deeply wondering about what you are, what reality is. You have to start to doubt everything you've ever been told by science or culture, and questioning all your most basic assumptions. As you do that, you will slowly start to realize that you don't know. And then eventually that will blossom into full not-knowing. It is a fact that don't know what you are, or what reality is. How can that? Can you start to see which assumptions you hold might be wrong? Start doubting EVERYTHING you know. Sit down and make a list of the most certain things you know. And then doubt all of them out of existence. How do you know you're not in a virtual reality matrix right now? How do you know you were born? How do you know your mother is actually your mother? How do you know she's even human? Maybe she's an android. How do you know what you were taught in school wasn't indoctrination? How do you know science is valid? How do you know the Earth is round? How do you know you exist? How do you know reality exists? How do you know you will die? How do you know that logic is valid? How do you know your country isn't as deluded as North Korea? How do you know religion isn't right? Maybe it is, and maybe you're going straight to hell. How do you know that every thought you have isn't a lie? How do you know anything I say is true? You can't take anything of these questions for granted. You must take out all the stops. Doubt EVERYTHING. Then see what remains. As you do that, not-knowing will slowly dawn.

@Max_V Make sure you're not just asking the question robotically, but actually paying attention to what you're asking and why you're asking it. This is a very profound question. You must ask it genuinely, with enormous focus and dedication. Do you know what you are? If not, how can you even go on living? Supposedly you're alive, yet you don't know what is alive.

@MiracleMan There is a tiny part of you which wants the Truth. This part must be diligently cultivated until it finally blossoms and over takes the ego. In the same way that within Darth Vader, there was a tiny part which could still be redeemed. You are 99% evil. 1% good.

@The Monk Sounds like you're still stuck at the level of intellect. You've got a million miles to go. Real enlightenment will be like coming back from the grave. It will stun you into silence. Not all this monkey-mind. You will not need to come here asking what happened. You will understand the origin of all of reality. Newbies commonly get tiny glimpses, but they are piddles compared to the real deal. Back to the self-inquiry salt mines for you!

@MarinM Sounds like you've got a lot of repressed emotions in your body. Just continue with the work and they should slowly work themselves out. You might benefit a lot from getting some deep-tissue massage work and/or Reiki. Yoga asanas and Reichian therapy might also work well for you.

@Sagatarius It works pretty well, if you actually do it daily for months with skipping any days. Emotional upheaval will happen. Your job it to deal with it and stay on track. The #1 mistake people make with Holosync is that just as soon as the emotional upheaval starts happening, they freak out and quit. Expect a lot of emotional baggage to surface: anger, suicidal thoughts, depression, traumatic memories, etc. Basically all the stuff I talked about in my Dark Side Of Meditation video. That's how you know it works.

@Anakin Your life is long enough to do both. Shoot for both, although not necessarily at the same time. If you are ready for serious self-inquiry, start doing it. If not, work on your life purpose. That process will set the stage for eventually getting into self-inquiry. It's individualized in the sense that you might be at a different stage in Maslow's Hierarchy, simply unable to motivate yourself to do serious consciousness work. Just don't make a limiting belief out of what I'm saying. See my vid about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs where this issue is discussed in some length.

@Alexo45 It's progress. Keep inquiring.

Casting pearls before swine

Nothing is inherently a distraction. It all boils down to whether you use it towards the purpose of distracting yourself from what should be your highest priority in life: consciousness work. You can distract yourself with anything from a dildo to a grilled cheese sandwich.

The most accurate description of Truth is silence. The problem is, people don't understand silence. So we are forced to fight illusion with illusion.

Of course you can't. And you never will. Because what you're looking for doesn't exist. THAT'S THE POINT! That's what you're looking for. Like I said before, you are looking for a needle in a haystack, and finding the needle means realizing there is no needle. It doesn't exist. That's right. Out of NOWHERE. That's it. There's literally nothing behind it. It's nothing, so it cannot be seen. It's the "space" within which all your experience is happening. The problem here is that's you're looking for a weird mystical awareness (an idea) rather than entering a state of not-knowing and just being aware of the present moment. You cannot think or see your way to awareness. Awareness is utterly empty. It's basically non-existent. You need to stop thinking about it, stop trying to work towards some idea of it, and just be conscious of what ACTUALLY is. Be conscious right now. Put your awareness on awareness itself. Drop all your ideas of what it is and just be conscious of what is.