electroBeam

This is a diary semantically documenting major insights and discoveries. It's pretty clear to me what the difference between an insight and an awakening is. It's sort of like once you have an insight or awakening you instantly know it is one. But incase people have different definitions I will describe mine below: 1. An insight is becoming conscious of how a part of reality works, or becoming aware of the nature of something as being belief rather than truth. 2. An awakening is a discovery or becoming conscious of how reality works all at once. It's an insight which becomes conscious of all of reality. I'll start off with my 2nd awakening experience(just happened): was practicing self inquiry. I focused my awareness on the thing behind the eyes. The me, the ego. I asked myself "where is this thing in the present moment. How do I know it's real? Why do I think it's real". Something totally unexpected happened. Imagine a window. Imagine all your life you have been looking at the dust on the window. Then all of a sudden you see what's outside the window. The cars, houses, trees etc. The dust becomes insignificant. That's what happened with 'me the ego. I was focusing on becoming conscious of the ego. Then I saw past or through the ego, as if it was that dust, and saw myself as the present moment, as consciousness. It was like the ego transformed from being some soul or voice in my head, to being all of reality. Important stuff learnt from this awakening: 1. The ego is NOT a personality, soul, devil, demon, "ghost inside your head" as Leo called it in his survival video, an enemy, a distraction, who you are, a person, the body, your mind, etc. The ego IS misidentification(period). Fundamentally, essentially misidentification. Thats it. It's only function is to misidentify. 2. To get good results with self inquiry, practice placing awareness on purely your identification. who are you? What do you think you are? What ownership is going on in consciousness. What is it that is owning stuff? Focus real hard on identification itself.

Your videos are founded upon personal sniping? That's literally your technique. Even if it isn't, personal sniping is a great way to knock sense into someone. I welcome everyone to snipe me. So long as the person being sniped truly cares about changing and truth, it can really open them up to their delusion.

Had a sleepless night last night. - felt guilty for living at my parent's house, using up their money, not being mature enough to have my own place. - felt guilty for quitting my degree(against my parents' wishes.) - Feel bad for being so bad at uni. I did 2 yrs and failed 1 year of that before dropping out. I genuinely believe I studied more than the average student, yet due to factors out of my control failed uni. To save face I've told myself a story that I failed uni because I'm much better at practical, real life things than theoretical academic stuff... but this is just a story. What if I'm bad at real life as well? Why am I the only one with this problem? Why is it that I suck at uni? Why can't I be normal. How did all my peers study half the time as me, but get much better marks? - under heaps of stress because I've told my parents that the startup will succeed. If it doesn't I will need to go back to uni... which as far as I'm concerned is something I'm very bad at and am not interested in. It sucks my soul dry of life. - My part time job is another startup, doing engineering(something I hate) and supports the bills for both me and my girlfriend. Stressed about the possibility it fails, on top of that my lack of motivation for it might get me fired, which means going back to uni. - Its so hard pretending to investors that you're something youre not. I put on a show, and they start assuming Im smart, got high grades at uni, "born to be a software engineer","genius hacker". And they treat me like one, give me impossible deadlines, hard to solve tasks, tasks i hate. If only they knew what was happening inside, if only they knew the real reason I quit uni. The cost of being authentic is loosing this company. Even though these fears lurk me from time to time, I must remember to not take this life so seriously. This universe is a tiny spec compared to all of the universes out there. It may seem sometimes that this life is all there is, that your worldly affairs are life and death, eternal hell or heaven, but they arent. Try to enjoy it as much as you can.

A Secret Intelligence of the body It was discovered that the ego claims an intelligence of the body which does not belong to it. How it was discovered Was doing Shambhavi, the part where you block the left and right nostrils repetitively. Asked the question "who is the one blocking the nostrils?". Was noticed/observed that the nostrils were not being blocked by 'me'. I.E. I(the ego) was not controlling my fingers and hands, I was not 'doing' the meditation. The meditation was occurring through an intelligence not associated with the ego. I was not in control of the intelligence(which is counter intuitive to what I thought before, before I thought I was the one doing the meditation. That is incorrect). Technical Notes I'm not sure if 'free will doesn't exist'. Or if free will is an illusion. From my POV, while I am not the one controlling the body, my consciousness clearly does affect how my body is controlled. I can certainly influence my body's movements consciously, I just am not the one controlling it. I can also clearly sense negative and positive sensations and how these sensations will affect what my body chooses to do. Implications of this discovery In the past I have struggled to keep up my meditation, figure out how to make my meditation my effective, etc. If however, I stop trying to control my meditation (instead of me do the meditation, I let the meditation do me) I can observe objectively how the meditation goes and become aware of the blockers and things that make my meditation ineffective, or make me want to quit my meditation prematurely. I can then put myself into positions which remove these blockers, or simply allow the awareness of these blockers cure them, I.E. let 'God' handle it.

Theoretically true, but not always true in practice. Alternatively(like in my case) your love for your startup comes from the desire to retire on millions of dollars to seek all day. If cleaning horse shit in a paddock may one day give you a life to retire and seek, cleaning horeshit all of a sudden becomes the most exciting thing one could do. It becomes an opportunity to revolutionise your consciousness, and the world's consciousness. And just having that sincere intention makes you far more efficient and intelligent at cleaning horse shit.

try Sadhguru shambhavi if books aren't your thing

But if you can't find any work you love, you're next best bet is to make a million dollar startup, retire then seek all day.

a certification's function is to keep the certified seeking approval from others. meditation is beyond seeking approval. therefore meditation certifications are an oxymoron.

yep this is why radical honesty in the way.

it is psychologically dangerous. No reports of physical danger yet.

harmalas are completely safe and are not lethal. Check your sources and research before posting. its dangerous to take NN-DMT without harmalas. NN-DMT have been repetitively shown to cause bad trips and in some cases PTSD if taken without harmalas. Of course I'm talking about NN-DMT.

Are there any paths out there, mystical or psychic ones which focus on developing intuition, being exposed to relative insights, and creativity? For example, your life purpose is to be an inventor. So you want to invent highly extraordinary things like dmt machine elf technology. You want to be exposed to highly altered states of consciousness and wisdom. You want to bring back your learnings from these altered states of consciousness and make use of them by inventing new and innovative technology. There are some occult traditions in ancient Egypt which have tid bits about this sort of stuff but nothing substantial. I would assume the kybalion has some useful stuff for this but haven't ventured that area yet.

inquire deeper into what's wrong with your current state of mind. Inquire deeper into where the suffering is coming from.

You also need to ask yourself what enlightenment means to you, because IT DEFINITELY DOES mean very different things to different people. What is it that you really want? What is it that you're looking for? And does what you're looking for even exist in the first place? Maybe inquiring into WHY you want enlightenment would be valuable. What is it about this concept/idea of enlightenment that's got you so rattled? What is that source that is making you want to be enlightened? Where is that source coming from? What does it feel like? Is it a thought? Who created it? You may find that some of your intentions are grounded on things which either aren't real, are not genuine or grounded on insecurities or some other egoic drive. When you go this direction, i.e. going really meta on what you're doing, what your motivations are, etc this tends to be the right way. Look at the direction you're taking now. Instead its coming up with a hypothesis developed through analysing the history of a renowned spiritual being, and then trying to validate that hypothesis. Seriously contemplate why you even need to be enlightened to be happy? Its no good saying its because Leo told you for example. Why isn't it? Can you verify why for yourself Knowingly/through being?

@Ibn Sina Are you trying to figure out whether its possible to be enlightened and have a profession? Are you trying to figure whether the monastic lifestyle is a pre-requisite of enlightenment? The truth of the matter is, enlightenment doesn't come from doing one thing over the other thing. It doesn't come from meditating all day, or choosing a monastic lifestyle or whatever. It comes from the state of your psyche. It comes from how sincerely you want enlightenment, how much you admit your fault, what you don't know, exploring feelsings and emotions that are uncomfortable. The path to enlightenment is below your pre conceived ideas about what works for enlightenment or what doesn't. But the real question is, do you have the balls to inquire about your insecurity which is scared that its doing the wrong thing to get to enlightenment? Do you have the balls to look into that? Or are you going to use the concept of the monastic lifestyle, over thinking about the best strategy to enlightenment, to trick yourself into not contemplating this insecurity? Enlightenment doesn't come from a monastic lifestyle, it comes from you not having the balls to inquire on uncomfortable things.

There are some inconvenient truths about spiritual groups like this forum and face to face ones. Speaking purely objectively, a portion of people who get attracted to groups like this were not accepted in society for a multitude of reasons. For example they were weird, have outlandish beliefs or had outlandish values compared to common society. A large portion has been psychologically damaged from this experience: usually personality related disorders. For them to save face, they need a way to cover up these traumas, because just the thought of uncovering them brings them immeasurable pain. They need to find a way to feel what they lack: to feel like they belong, are not weird, don't have problems. One sneaky, clever lie is to tell themselves that they aren't accepted in society because they are 'special', above the rest. This one is especially rampant on this forum, observe and you will see. Forums like this, new age groups at large, are a way for them to cover up their traumas, and get what they lack or were rejected with in the past. They forget about society and fully immerse themselves into these little bubbles, putting these bubbles on a pedastool; telling themselves these bubbles are morally superior to their society, more intelligent. They must do this otherwise their egos would have to face the harsh facts that they are covering up psychological traumas. Having said that, there are genuine spiritual communities out there, and genuine people in spiritual communities, but you really need to distinguish the healthy from the unhealthy if you want to have a sober, good life. Using spiritual communities as a way of bypassing egoic problems is extremely rampant. Its generally moreso located in green stage, western new age communities, rather than traditional communities like Eastern ones(although they have different sets of problems to avoid). Just notice that structure of spiritual communities are generally designed to cover up egoic traumas that a group of people faced in the past, using new aged concepts, moralisation, superiority and other ideas to trick themselves into not building a healthy ego. EDIT: after reading Akash's comments I just remembered another sneaky ego trick. Having spiritual experiences, then projecting the idea that this spiritual experience is special, above the rest. Getting over excited about this spiritual experience, and then this leads to thinking that you are more special than the rest of society because you had this spiritual insight. Or maybe not thinking you are special, but thinking this community is more special than the rest of society, because you are having these spiritual experiences and all of your friends and family are not. Like if you want to be healthy, immerse yourself with ordinary society and enjoy it. Don't use this forum and its ideas to escape it. Connect with your parents, family, friends. Don't necessarily adopt their habits, but be the role model to them for how to live an extra-ordinary life. Be compassionate and love them. Be humble, don't show off your spiritual insights to anyone, understand their needs and problems and try to help them in any way you can. Much more boring this way? Can't think your some special spiritually gifted person this way? Good, then you know you're on track.

I heard a koan/saying that said "if you meditate for 2 hours a day you will achieve enlightenment in 20 years, if you meditate 4 hours a day you will achieve enlightenment in 40 years" Then I see Leo say meditation retreats, i.e. meditating for 8 hours a day for a month, is necessary. If you were dying for the truth, and you had the financial freedom to meditate non stop everyday, would you do it?

mix it with harmala and then you can take it orally.

I know there's a lot of people on here who are advanced in this work... this post isn't for you, its for the noobs. I actually don't meditate daily(usually 2-3 times a week) as I'm focusing on my career, but every now and then I stumble upon something interesting, and this is the most interesting thing to date - which is not personal to me, but others could benefit from. Before when I do self inquiry, it usually goes along the lines of: ok there is something perceiving the world. That's 'me'. I know 'me' is an illusion because Leo told me its an illusion, so I'm going to focus my awareness on that thing behind my eyes, and through my awareness, become 'aware' that this is an illusion. Sort of a prove its wrong by focusing your awareness on it. Don't do this - its a total misunderstanding of the practice. Instead, accept that you believe that the thing behind the eyes is perceiving the world, and that it contradicts what Leo and other vedantic teachers tell you. Now just ask yourself, what is the thing that's aware of that thing behind the eyes. Focus your awareness on getting the 'big picture' of what's going on. Just try and become aware of everything all at once, including the thing behind the eyes, the stuff happening in front of the eyes, and everything in between. Now just focus your awareness on understanding who is aware of all of this. Like if you think you are something - a soul behind the eyes perceiving the world, that's fine. Just try to be aware of that sensation. Focus a lot of awareness on that(and every other) sensation happening in awareness, and simultaneously focus your awareness on, who is aware of all of this. Try to focus really sharply on who is aware of all of this, while diffusely focusing on being aware of everything at once. If you get this simultaneously, that's gonna make sparks. just as another line of defense, you could also inquire about the sensations in awareness - what are they? Where did they come from? What are they made of? Are they real? C'mon. Just you need to make sure that you can simultaneously do the other stuff aswell, otherwise there's no point doing this. Also asking too many questions can lead to mental masturbation. The focus needs to be on getting in touch with 'what's real'. So the questions(or answers you come up with) cannot be the focus, it needs to be lazer focus on awareness itself, the questions are there to ensure you aren't getting trapped into mental masturbation. And most importantly, don't try to engineer the experience. Don't try to manipulate it to get bliss, or to get the experience/sensation that its an illusion just so you can pat your back on the shoulder that you became aware of what Leo said and tell yourself you had a successful meditation. ok once I did this, I realized duality isn't an illusion, its simply just a creation of God. Its a manifestation of God, a shallow level below God, but its not 'unreal'. I had a massive surge of kundalini infiltrate the entire awareness field, eyes twitched like crazy, body started vibrating and twitching a lot, and the entire dualistic sphere exploded like a bunch of dominos collapsing one after the other. This wont be useful to most of you, but I'm sure some of you it would.

don't ask yourself any questions. Don't tell yourself to notice anything, don't tell yourself anything at all As soon as you do this, you are inviting thought and going down a downward spiral. practice focus. Get good at focus. Then before the practice, set your intention. What do you really want from this? Do you really sincerely want to find Yourself? Like really? Or you doing the practice just because Leo told you or to satisfy your spiritual ego... That's it! Enough bullshit! You want to realize yourself! Get excited, get appreciative, get grateful. Its it. Its finally it... Then observe the present moment with extreme intensity. Let go of the thoughts that come. Do not try to engineer the process or experience. Whatever comes up is perfect, its what's suppose to happen, its optimal for your growth. If thoughts keep coming up, then that's optimal and meant to happen, if you don't notice anything, then that's meant to happen and is optimal. With time, you will start to notice that you aren't perceiving reality, but reality is perceiving you. But if you don't notice this, that's perfect! The default experience is the best experience you could possibly have. Don't get angry, start thinking things aren't working or you're not doing the practice properly... all of these thoughts are extremely dangerous and will keep you stuck. Just some things I would have told my younger self. If you're like me then this will help immensely.

what? What am I BS myself about? How does reality work then? What is entire spiritual growth? How do you do entire spiritual growth without meditating all day? But why would Allah and the Buddha go meditate in a cave then? Why do gurus disappear into the Himalayas? In my experience the strength of that vague feeling of gratitude is proportional to the amount of sincere meditation that is done during or before the noticing/being. Are you saying there is no need to increase the amount of sincere meditation? I don't get it.

@zeroISinfinity yeah but there is much much much more than enlightenment. why dont You speed up the process to the max? What's stopping you? Are you (or You) ok with not speeding up the process? Do you feel guilty for not using your time as optimally as possible, for not unleashing your full potential, for wasting time by not putting in your best effort? Why aren't you positioning your life in a way where its entirely dedicated to understanding God in the deepest levels? Why aren't you putting in strategies for financial freedom(like investing in the stocks or making a startup) so that you can meditate all day? Why aren't you quitting your job and dedicating your whole life to an ashram? Is it all just fear and unconsciousness or is there more to it?

I've spent the last 4 years miserably and painfully searching for my life purpose. I've done Leo's course 4 times plus a few other ones. I have expertise knowledge of startups because I've made a successful one(which I naively like you thought could be high consciousness). And I've been through 2 accelerators and will probably be going through another one at the end of the year. Mine is a med tech startup, as altruistic of a startup as possible. I have spiritual friends who have attempted startups based off shamanism, vedantic teachings and 'conscious capitalism' values. I've implemented the ESG(environment, social, governance) + FDA processes into our startup. Our company have contacts in India, USA, Singapore. I've seen the macro and micro of startup life, and see the fundamental flaws with it which impede effective altruism. Especially in the United States and Singapore(especially Singapore!)

Science is much better at solving that problem than infinite intelligence. This is a common mistake people on this forum make. duality is like waves, and non duality is like discovering what's under the waves. Just because you know what's at the bottom of the sea doesn't mean you know anything about waves. If you want to know more about waves, you need to use science. If you want to know what those waves are made of, you need infinite intelligence. another analogy is, just because you are a chemist doesn't mean you know how to attract girls, even though woman are made of atoms and chemicals. infinite intelligence is not superior to science, it just pokes reality from a different dimension, which has limitations. @Key Elements hahahah... startups are the opposite to high consciousness. startups are companies, and by governmental design must be low consciousness to survive. If you want to make a high consciousness startup, you must first do some governmental reforms. This is another common mistake on this forum... people think you can make a high consciousness startup. You can't. If you want to do anything high consciousness with business you need to look into changing laws and policies not making a business.

I have not had what @Inliytened1 has described... feeling frozen in time. But an orange stage, computer science colleague of mine had that on weed and he freaked out! Its interesting how people on this forum describe experiences. They use the word 'one' a lot and 'i am everything' or I am 'blabla'. This isn't natural to my expression and don't know why. I have no natural urge to say I am the present moment. In my experience what 'I am' is irrelevant because the experience goes beyond identification itself. It may also mean I haven't experienced ego disidentification possibly. There have been 3 experiences of mine that are most interesting(the rest are not) 1. after first time doing holotropic breathe work there was something going on with the fucken trees around me... I could feel their 'liveness'. I don't know but they felt really really alive and intelligent. They felt like they had a very strong intelligence about them, a very strong presence, they glowed(not visibly but consciously) they were grand, impressive, they were alive! I was so close to identifying with a tree rather than a human, etc etc etc. I told me friend about my experience and this is what uttered out of my mouth "I could see the spirits in the trees". Now my experience was nothing like seeing spirits, but it was what my mouth uttered out... which makes me think maybe this is what shamans mean by spirits? 2. when I meditate I get a strong sense that... there is nothing outside of the present moment. This literally means the entire universe, galaxy etc are all in the present moment. All people on this forum are literally inside the present moment. This means a lot of stuff but it cannot be described. 3. Sensory deprivation. when I meditate sensory deprivation occurs and your consciousness zooms closer and closer into 'the source'. The best way you can describe this is 'the void'. I doubt anyone has experienced this before... but I have had the sensation of teleportation. Because of experience 2. it makes it possible to teleport. So you can bring different dualistic aspects of reality into your little self consciousness at will. Too hard to describe and no one has experienced it before though so no point discussing it too much. Another one that no one has experienced before... objects in duality have 'aliveness' a consciousness of their own. Rocks are alive, they feel just like us, there is no difference between us and a rock. They talk to you telepathically you're just not conscious of it... Its why your mood changes on a rainy day vs a sunny day... objects telepathically talk to you and during samadhi you can be a rock if you wanted too. @Jkris there are massive downsides to this way of life. It lacks love and creates too much masculinity which makes it hard to bring love into your life. If you are too the opposite way though you can start taking your experiences too seriously and get attached into crap.