Inspiring story man! Keep rocking it. You're doing great for your age.

Your desire and intention for awakening & love is the most important thing. As long as you keep that desire stoked in your heart, you will find your way. It just won't be a linear path. Life will have all sorts of twists and turns in store for you.
When you find something that's truly important to you in life, latch onto it like a python and don't let go until life relents and gives you what you most desire.
The beginning is the hardest part. It will get easier.

Actually, this is false!
Experience is not experience. The very notion of experience is dualistic and corrupted by ego.
There is truly no such thing as experience. What you consider experience is a conceptual fabrication. What's really there is not experience but Being. This is not just a semantic difference. On this hinges everything.
Right now you are confused, mistaking Absolute Truth for this thing you invented and call "experience." In this way you are maintaining the fantasy that you were born. Your very life depends on not properly understanding what experience is.
Your mind will not allow you understand what I am saying here. Because if you understood what I'm saying here your entire reality would collapse and you'd have a mental breakdown.
You assume you are a biological creature inside a physical space having experiences. This is false. You have imagined: biology, space, time, experience, and your self.
Enlightenment is NOT a subjective experience. Enlightenment is the realization of Absolute Truth. At the moment of enlightenment you literally stop being a biological creature in a physical space. Because in that moment you realize that all of that is imaginary.
You literally break out of "physical reality". For the first time you see reality as it truly is. You escape The Matrix.
Imagine that your whole life has been lived inside a cartoon. And then one day you realize: "OH MY GOD! I am just a cartoon character!!!!" This means that all of science was part of the cartoon. So you cannot use science at that point to ground yourself any more. You realize that science is a hallucination.
Don't underestimate how radical this is. It is as serious as getting shot in the head. You are going to perceive it as extremely threatening.

@RendHeaven Sure, if one is lost in thoughts then such a teaching is necessary.
But then the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme where the spiritual seeker turns anti-intellectual, rejecting the mind entirely without realizing that God can speak directly through one's mind using thoughts, images, language, and even as entire manuscripts.
Most people fail to appreciate that God knows all languages in the entire universe. God is using your mind to manifest itself. Since it is formless it needs a limited formed vehicle to express itself. Mind and speech is God.
The only question is: How pure is the vehicle through which God speaks?
How pure is your vehicle? How much is your ego getting in the way?

That's right.
This thread contains a lot of people talking past one another. We have to be careful in how we define our terms and how we use different mental schemes to explain the unexplainable.
I am not really contradicting Spira or Tolle. I'm just challenging folks here to see the other side of the coin: all thoughts happen now and only now.
The problem is that thoughts are so sneaky they mesmerize you into an illusory conceptual world. This is what is meant when people say that thoughts take you out of the now. They don't actually take you out of the now because now is all there is. But subjectively they entrance you. It's like getting lost in a day dream.
Also want to challenge people here to not dismiss thoughts or mind as bad. The Absolute Now can certainly contain thoughts. Otherwise how could thoughts exist???
Elimination of thought is not strictly necessary to be in the now. Newbies commonly get the wrong idea about thought and mind, as if it is an evil that must be eradicated. I wanted to challenge that.

Again, this is part true and part false.
There is no such thing as "the natural way of doing things". Technology is always advancing. Technology is part of nature. You cannot undo technological advance. Digital reality will only grow stronger and stronger. VR socialization will soon be a big thing. Through VR socialization you will be able to make friends across the whole global, not just your local neighborhood. Digital actually allows us to transcend the limits of physicality. Think about it. That's why digital is to valuable. It's God-like.
Socrates believed philosophy should not be written but only spoken because writing would corrupt the mind. Why did he believe this? Because writing was a new invention in his day and he was set in his ways.

@Consilience There basically is no serious meditation without serious concentration ability.

The whole point of true happiness is not to base it on mood.
Imagine being happy even when you're in a bad mood. That's real happiness. And it's not easy to develop because our ideas of happiness are so mood based and survival based. Those ideas require deep deconstruction. You have to deeply grok that attachments to physical things and even emotional states always create suffering -- sometimes gross suffering, but sometimes very subtle suffering.
This was a core teaching of the Buddha. And it's a very important point which people overlook. Outwitting suffering is something only a master can do. Suffering is extremely sneaky! Because it's central to your survival. You must literally transcend the entire survival drive to access true happiness.
Awakening allows for superhuman levels of happiness.

Careful.
I know extroverts who are awakened and do spiritual practice.
And obviously many extroverts make a killing in creativity, business, art.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
One should only be a lone wolf if that's what one is called to do. It's not necessary for success.
With that said, personally I love lone wolfing life. But that's just me. People here must find whatever kind of lifestyle resonates with them. This is a highly individualized thing.

@Mikael89 Hehe...
You must awaken to what Love is to understand these discussions. We are not talking about romantic love here.
This requires an epic enligthenment experience which will melt your cold heart.
Contemplate: What is Love?
Hint #1: it is not what you think it is.
Hint #2: psychedelics make this contemplation a lot easier.

Because you are in a contracted state of consciousness.
Also, since Love is all things, it doesn't necessarily have to be felt. You don't have to like all aspects of reality. Hatred too is a form of love.
Think about what "Everything is Love" entails. That means pain is love. It does not mean that you will never feel pain.

@RendHeaven Also, the Greeks had many gods, but one ultimate God: Zeus
Just like the Hindus have a bunch of different avatars, but one ultimate God: Shiva
When you understand this quote, you will be awake.
Consider it your Greek koan
The Greeks were no fools. They were some wise-ass motherfuckers.

I never wanted to.
It just happens to be Truth.
You have yet to realize the Buddha's central teaching of Annica or Impermanence.
Reality is designed in such a way that no from can be permanent.
The ultimate goal is to realize that there is no difference between form and formlessness.
But to realize this requires surrender of attachment to form.
So again, the entry fee of immortality is death.
Immortality cannot be attained through physical means, it must be attained through spiritual realization. The problem of death is not a physical one the way materialists assume, it is a metaphysical one. You must realize that material reality is imaginary. That your own birth is imaginary. Then you will be free.

@Ar_Senses Well, mystical experiences and samadhi states are a clear sign of results. I'm not saying that's the end, but the beginning.
If you don't what a mystical experience or a samadhi state is, take a psychedelic and they will quickly show you. Then try to get similar results via other methods.
If you have meditated for a few years but never had a mystical experience or samadhi, then you aren't doing it properly or you need to find a better method.
Take a psychedic to see how much you're meditation is missing.

Lol
The past is a thought happening in the now. Nothing can actually be in the past or the future since everything happens now.
Check your experience. Notice all thoughts happen only in the now. Don't believe me. Check!

No, that is not what groundless means.
Groundless means that you can never say what the material substance of anything is because anything you claim to be the substance will itself need a further substance to explain it, and so on, to infinity.
You can't claim the substance of any form to be another form, the way science tries to do. You cannot say that a table is made of atoms because the atoms themselves are just another form in an infinity of forms. You must grok that the substance of everything is nothing.
Another way to say it is: a table is not made out of atoms. A table is a table. This is tricky to grasp because it is too direct to be grapsed. It is raw Truth/Being. A nondual state of consciousness is required to understand it.

Precisely because a devil is merely God in disguise! Really, there are no devils. A devil is just what we call it when God isn't aware that it's God.
Also, devilry is inherently unstable and self-defeating. The suffering that devilry creates ultimately becomes so strong that the devil is forced to admit he is wrong. Either that or he doubles down and becomes an even bigger devil until finally physical death takes him.
So now you see why death is such an important part of the divine plan of Love. Death is the safety valve which ensures that devils never ultimately prevail. A devil can only prevail in the short-term. God always prevails in the long-term: by killing you and freeing you of all your limits! Death is like the reboot button on your computer, for when it bugs out
Could you imagine if devils lived forever? Now that would be a problem. Fortunately, all devils must die. Unfortunately, you are a devil. Fortunately, you are also God
Say... that's a good book title
The profoundly twisted irony is this: the devil only behaves like a devil in the first place because he can die! If the devil was immortal he would not act like a devil, he would act like God! If a devil should ever realize that he is actually immortal, he will stop acting like a devil and start acting like God. Ta-da!

He's using a very loose definition, something along the lines of: anyone who's ever be in a non-symbolic state. But that's very short of what I'm talking about.
I don't consider Jeffery Martin enlightened. Not even close. He's still thoroughly materialistic in his explanations of reality & consciousness.
His research is good, but far short of where this rabbit hole ultimately goes.
To me, escaping suffering has never been the goal. The goal has always been understanding reality.
You are right, most people pursue spirituality rather selfishly & narrow-mindedly -- to escape pain or improve their life.
The deepest sages I think pursue it for understanding & Truth, not to escape something negative.
I generally agree. People are so different that they have different desires and needs.
But also, not all roads lead to the same place, and there are many partial ways to go about spirituality.
I don't get the sense that Shinzen actually knows what Truth is.
I don't know. Answering this is problematic because I don't have access to anyone's mind but my own.
Shinzen's techniques are good. Will they get you to the deepest levels of understanding? Probably not. But that's okay, they don't need to. A toolbox needs more than one tool in it.
Use Shinzen's techniques, but also don't stop there. Explore other things like psychedelics. I doubt you'll find a technique more powerful than 5-MeO-DMT. But that doesn't mean you should only use 5-MeO-DMT.
An army doesn't just use nuclear weapons. It has all sizes of weapons in its arsenal because a nuclear weapon is not always the right weapon for the job.
It's hard to say. We don't have good science on this yet.
Generally speaking good techniques to try are all the ones I've shared in the past:
Meditation Self-inquiry Strong determination sitting Contemplation Psychedelics Vipassana retreats Solo retreats Yoga Dark room retreats Shamanic breathing Etc. These are well-worn methods that work for many people.
And in the end, you gotta wonder, is there any other option? Those are the best techniques mankind has developed so far. So you might as well start tinkering around with them. With practice you should find whatever works best for you.
There will be future video about the many facets of awakening.
All of that is survival. You're still not appreciating what I mean by the notion of survival. It's a much deeper notion than most of you guys here yet realize.
Rest, play, and showing affection is all part of survival. Without them a mammal would be dead.
Animals don't meditate. You're projecting that onto them. They sit and do nothing sometimes. But I wouldn't call that meditation.
Don't get me wrong, I still like Shinzen as a teacher. Nothing I say here is meant to attack or undermine the work of Shinzen or Ralston or whoever. I'm just adding some extra wrinkles to it.
I don't know much about him. You'd have to ask him what he's become conscious of.

That's the mindfuck of it: even the worst hell realm is still Absolute Love. The person just isn't aware of it in that moment.
In a sense, it's a catch-22: the person is in the hell realm because their consciousness is in a limited state. That's what a hell realm is: a limited state of consciousness. A limited state is not wide enough to see the big picture. Seeing the big picture is necessary to understand that all states & realms are part of the flowering of Infinite Love. So from inside a hell realm it will seem like there is no love at all. But from outside the hell realm it is realized that that hell realm is indistinguishable from Love. If a person in the hell realm realized that it is Love, the hell realm would instantly transform into Paradise. But of course this is hard to do in practice because the hell realm so mesmerizes one's consciousness. It's like a bad dream. It's hard to break out when you're in it. But nor is it necessary to break out. What's more important is to realize that it isn't real.
God's Love wouldn't be unlimited if it excluded hell realms. But the ego's POV is too limited to appreciate that. Luckily God has no such limitation.
The duality or boundary between heaven & hell is itself made of Nothing/Love! Heaven is the realization that there is no difference between being in heaven or hell. The moment you realize the difference between the two is an imaginary duality, you will find yourself in Heaven. Heaven being an absolute -- has no opposite.
Hell is the idea that there is a heaven separate from where you currently are -- and wishing to be there. The desire to be in heaven ironically produces hell because it is a denial and resistance of the present moment -- a denial of truth in favor of falsehood. So hell is falsehood or delusion. And Heaven is Truth.
Neat, huh?

@Beginner Mind See my last vlog.
The universe is structured in precisely such a way as to maximize Love. Every movement of every molecule and all the way up the chain of being is working towards this purpose. Including every pixel on this screen you're looking at and every character written on this forum.
It's quite something to behold.

Replace alcohol with psychdelics.
The original cure for alcoholism via AA used LSD.
Everyone forgot the LSD! Now it's all talk and no mysticism.
The founder of AA used LSD to heal himself.
P.S. Nothing wrong with AA. But understand that your problems go deeper than talk can fix.

Reality is too massive to have it make sense all at once. You gotta eat the elephant one bit at a time until you realize, "Oh, that was leg, that was an ear, that was a tail."
The perfect place to begin eating it is anywhere. Just trust that over the months and years you'll see patterns emerge.
If Actualized.org is not comprehensive enough for ya, nothing will be. It's so comprehensive it will take you a decade to realize how comprehensive it is. That's not a mistake.
One day you will realize: "Holy fuck this is HUGE! How is this even possible?"

Of course they are very present, because they got no higher mind.
They are pre-ego. Enlightened humans are post-ego. It's not the same thing. Your cat may be very present and pure, but he is not conscious that he is God. Whereas as a human can be. It is not enough to just be present. One must realize that he is God.
An imbecile can be very present. That doesn't equate to metaphysical insight.
You can do a frontal lobotomy on a human and he will become very passive and mindless like a cow. But that isn't God-realization.
The point of all this work is not be present, it's to understand what reality is. If you're not crystal clear about what reality is and why reality is, then you've got more work to do.

Of course technically I don't. I can't crawl inside their heads.
But one can still make educated deductions.
When an enlightened person is not able to properly answer questions about the nature of Love or Truth, that's a red flag. If Love or Truth are denied, something in their understanding is missing.
To me the highest teaching is very simple:
You are God. Infinite Consciousness is the only thing that exists. Everything is imaginary. Everything is designed for the sake of Absolute Love. Truth & Love are totally identical. Any teaching which does not state the above in clear & explicit terms, I am suspicious of. There are further nuances, but that's the core of spirituality/awakening.

I'm still telling you that brains are imaginary, as are neurotransmitters. The word "neurotransmitter" is being used here in a relative, imaginary sense.
It's not the neurotransmitters I trust, but the Truth which they help to unveil.
If you were stuck in jail cell inside a dream and I told you to use the key to unlock the door, the key is still imaginary. An imaginary door requires an imaginary key. It would be foolish to reply to me, "Haha, Leo! If this is all a dream like you said, why are you telling me to use this key? Why do you trust the key?"
When inside The Matrix, we speak in the relative truths of The Matrix world. One of those relative truths is brains and neurotransmitters. Once you've taken the neurotransmitters you'll realize neurotransmitters and brains are imaginary. But only AFTER you take them!

Some people's reality and consciousness is so radically different they might as well be another species. You guys are underestimating just how radically different consciousness can be for humans. This is a common oversight because humans looks similar from outside appearances. But as you've been told, don't judge a book by its cover. This is what's happening with humans. Most humans simply assume that all humans are like them. This is a bad assumption unsupported by science, evolution, medicine, genetics, or other facts.
It's as if you walk into a book store and treat all the books the same just because they are books. But there are huge differences between books even though they have a similar form. That similarity is superficial when you really dig into them.
Some humans are like that donkey, they will never attain enlightenment. The reasons for this are nuanced and complex. Motivation is part of the equation. Most people do not have the motivation to do it. You cannot dismiss motivation as part of the "talent". Motivation is a huge factor. You cannot just train someone to be motivated about Truth. Yes, training helps, but there's much more to it than training. And who you can train also depends on who they are. Many people are untrainable.
There is no reason whatsoever that all humans should be equally spiritually capable given how evolution works. The difference between a human and a donkey doesn't really exist. Brains evolve to become more and more capable of insight. There is no such thing as "a human brain" vs "a donkey brain". There is an infinite spectrum of brain structure -- from worms to aliens -- which allows for greater and greater insight capacity.
I don't downplay any of that. That's all good and important.
But my concern is not any of that. My concern is accessing the deepest level of consciousness and understanding. For that, training alone may not be enough for most people. That's all I'm saying.
Not as similar as you imagine.
Nowhere near 0.1% of the population is awake. It's way lower than that. And when it comes to truly understanding the deep structures of God, it's less than 0.0001%.
I would estimate that less than 0.1% of awake people truly understand how deep awakening goes and all of its many facets.
It's more important in spirituality than in getting women.
Obviously if you look like Quasimodo that affects your chances attracting women. Although still not impossible.
My biggest concern with the Red/Black Pill guys is that they use genetics as an excuse to not even try. They turn it into an egotistical ideology. Obviously I'm not saying that with spirituality. I'm not making some argument here about how you cannot realize God. I'm just saying your physiology plays an important role. So alter your physiology, alter your neurotransmitters! That is what spiritual technique is about.
Yes, you ARE still limited as long as you have a human body.
But, that doesn't mean you can't access the Absolute. You can. You can access it deeper and deeper levels and facets. Degrees of depth here do not contradict each other, rather they build on top of each other. It's like this: you can learn some math, it will be valid math, but that doesn't mean you've exhausted your understanding of math. Math goes very deep. As you go deeper into it, the old math is still valid. So in this way you are accessing Truth but you have not exhausted Truth, because Truth is infinite. Your understanding of math can deepen forever.
It's hard to articulate that here for you. I have had extensive hour-long conversations with Shinzen, asking him all sorts of nuanced metaphysical questions and his replies did not fully satisfy me. I see him as having gaps in his understanding. For example, he does not hold that enlightenment is Absolute Truth. He still hangs on to aspects of materialism, holding enlightenment as a subjective thing. I do not think he understands what Truth or Consciousness really is. I also don't think he understandings what Love really is.
Yes
Yes
If you think about it for a moment you should quickly realize that it must be possible to lose enlightenment because otherwise humans could not exist. To be human God MUST be able to lose awareness of itself as God. This is how you were born. And no matter how enlightened you get, you will eventually lose it in order to incarnate as a tree, worm, bird, human, alien, etc.
You already have direct experience of being unawakened. How did you get there? Only one way: by losing your awakening. Everyone has lost their awakening, even the most enlightened people including Buddha and Jesus. Otherwise they could not awaken.
Awakening is only possible because of unawakening.
Nothing I said contradicts that. I never said he denies siddhis. I'm not just talking about siddhis in this thread.
Trying some psychedelics doesn't mean much. It's a question of what one has become conscious of using them. Lots of people have tried psychedelics and have little understanding to show for it.
My claim is not merely that Shinzen doesn't have all the possible siddihis. My claim is that his understanding of Truth itself is incomplete. He's not wrong, but it's not the deepest level. I'm  not contradicting him, I'm just saying there's deeper understanding, deeper insight, deep consciousness.
How it will help is a question of survival. That's not my interest. My interest is understanding reality for its own sake. Whether it helps or hurts is irrelevant to me. The Truth is whatever it is regardless of how it effects you.
Any benefits that understanding of reality offers are secondary and beside the point (for me).
The deeper one goes, the clearer it becomes who has and who hasn't gone that deep.
The things I've realized cannot be put into words in any way whatsoever nor taught in any way whatsoever. And yet I can intuit that Shinzen Young and Ralston have not realized what I have realized. If that sounds arrogant to you, I understand. But it is what it is from my POV.
Shinzen doesn't understand Truth.
Ralston doesn't understand Love.
To me, those are important oversights. I would not be satisfied missing either of those understandings.
Obviously these are my understandings of their attainments. I could be wrong. I'm not saying you should believe me. I'm just stating my best understanding of the situation at this time. Certain things they have told me do not square up with my deepest realizations. And I will doubt all teachers before I doubt my own deepest realizations.
If the choice comes down to trusting 5-MeO-DMT and DPT vs trusting Shinzen and Ralston, I will trust the neurotransmitters. And no, that is not materialism. Direct consciousness is king, and that's what the right neurotransmitters facilitate. No human teacher can take you that deep. All human teachers and teachings are to be questioned and doubted. Including of course myself.
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P.S. Nothing I said here should be used to entrench a victim mentality. Keep two things distinct in your mind: 1) the actual mechanics of how humans awaken, 2) any stories you come up with for why you cannot awaken and why should give up or not even try. I am talking about #1 in this thread. #2 is self-deception you gotta be very careful with.
When it comes to genetics and physiology you gotta make the best of the hand you've been dealt. Playing a victim is not a smart move regardless of how bad your hand is.