The purpose of any emotion is to create behaviors necessary for the ego's survival. Mind you, I said ego's survival, not the body's survival.
It's a preemptive defense mechanism, so that you end up getting what you want.

I mean look at it! What even is this? It's so WEIRD, everything is SO WEIRD! How are we just sitting here accepting everything as if it made any sense at all? It's completely absurd! It's so hilarious, everything about reality is so much more nonsensical than any conspiracy theory ever could be! Just look around you, what the hell is audio, or vision, or anything else, and how can it even exist? I mean just look at it, it's so insanely WEIRD.
Everything is, everything is so weird. It's weird beyond all description. Holy shit it's comedic! How can we be so blind to this absurdity. It's fucking magical, I don't even know what to say. Nothing you could ever come up with is so absurd and ridiculous as everything that already exists. It makes no sense and we all just accept it, as if it was completely reasonable. It's like we are all seeing ghosts and are just ignoring them, but it's so much worse! Just stop for a moment and look at what is happening right now, what the fuck is this? 
It's not just weird or abnormal, it's literally impossible! It is completely preposterous, it's just ludicrous! Oh my god this is the most hilarious thing ever. How could I be so blind to this? It's literally FUCKING MAGIC! It is so utterly obvious, nothing could be more obvious. It's a cosmic joke, and I am taking it so seriously!
Holy fucking shit is reality weird, all of it. It's actually mysterious, it LITERALLY IS MYSTERIOUS! I don't even know what to say, it's just so absurd and we don't even think about questioning it. Flat earth doesn't make sense? Literally nothing makes sense, it's all ABSURD! The fact that anything could possibly make sense is the most absurd thing ever!
 
It's actually a joke, the fucking scariest joke I have ever seen in my life. I am a joke, I literally am a joke.
 
 

When you fully realize what ego is, it will be like you were never even born. It will not even be possible in that moment to imagine that there could ever be a self or a human.
A human is 100% a total illusion, including birth, death, mind, body, and biographical life. None of it has any reality whatsoever. There is no such thing as biological creatures who are born, live, and die. All that is imagination.
But you can't understand this at all from your current state of consciousness. Your current state of consciousness IS the imagination at work, locking in "reality". Whatever it imagines is "real" for you right now.

@Angelo John Gage The desire to change the world is tricky. Yes, part of it is genuine but part of it is also ego.
On some level you still don't accept or love terrorism and war. Which is a self-hatred. You have to make sure that you're changing the world not as a reaction against some part of it which you refuse to accept.
Are you conscious of why war is necessary? Of what function it serves?
If what you seek is one half of a duality, like peace/war, then that will not work. What's necessary is to transcend both of those and discover Peace as an Absolute which unifies and embraces peace/war. That is how you get true Peace.
See, the problem is that the terrorist too is busy creating a good world, from his POV. Everything who tries to change the world for the better is in danger of falling into the trap of the lesser jihad.
The desire to do good cannot be taken on blind faith since a devil always frames what he does as good. Good intentions are not enough to create a good world. You also have to be aware of how goodness is relative.

@Ashlyn I see. Sounds like you're resisting something.
Have you tried contemplating what the root issue is? As in: why do you feel the need to do that?
Ultimately what you want to do here is to become conscious that all the above is something that YOU ARE DOING. Right now you're not conscious that you are doing it, in the sense that it feels like something that is happening to you. To change this, you must take ownership of it. So step 1 is: "Okay, I suspect I am doing this, but I'm not sure how or why", and step 2 is: "Okay, now let me get to the rock bottom of why I am doing this. What does it get me? How is it serving me? What is it protecting me from? What bad thing would happen if I stopped doing it?"
Sit down with a journal, set aside a couple hours, and really bore into this. You want to get to the rock bottom of it so that you're clear and conscious of what it is and why it is. It's clearly serving your survival in some fashion. As you investigate this, the goal is not to go back into your past and find justifications or causes. It doesn't really matter what happened in the past. What matters is why you still feel the need to keep doing it today.
If you are able to reach the rock bottom, you should feel some release. But you have to actually reach the true source of this, not just some ideas or opinions. You need the actual source. And the source may not be what you think it is. It is often something counter-intuitive like a belief such as: I am fundamentally unlovable, or, I am afraid I will die, or, I am worthless, or, I am afraid that if I give my love freely it will kill me, or, I need money to be happy, etc.
If I were you I'd contemplate this deeply sober. Then I would take some mushrooms or LSD and contemplate it again during the trip until the issue because very clear. Psychedelics are perfect for this kind of self-reflective work.
Fundamentally what's happening here is that the ego is sabotaging itself because it has a deeply flawed understanding of itself and life. The ego is stuck in some sort of unconscious survival pattern which it feels it needs.
You could also try to address this issue from a somatic perspective. See my video: Shamanic Breathing and use that technique every day for a week and see what comes up. That should open up various blockages in your body.
Practices like Hatha yoga might be helpful for you. Also see my video on Body Awareness. It sounds like you live too much in your head and are disconnected from your body. Body awareness practices can reconnect you with your body.

@Truth Addict Yes, now you get it.
It's sort of like trying grab one part of a blanketing using another part of the same blanket because all you have to grasp with is blanket itself. The blanket is oneness. Oneness is trying to grasp itself but can't ever succeed in total. How can a blanket grasp itself totally? It can only grasp itself partially. To grasp itself totally is must simply be itself (without any grasping). And that is enlightenment.
The moment you realize that it's impossible to grasp yourself, you've grasped yourself
The Nongrasping Grasp. The Gateless Gate. The Groundless Ground. The Selfless Self.
The self-licking ice cream cone.

Actually, all symbols are just territory. There are maps proper. A map is what you get when you confuse part of the territory for another part of the territory.
To make this real clear: if you draw a map of Florida in the sand on a beach in Florida, your map is literally Florida. There isn't a map + Florida. There is only Florida, which includes within it a smaller version of itself drawn in the sand. So what it means for Florida to be Florida is that is has drawings of itself within itself.
Notice the fractal nature of how this works.
Now expand this out to reality itself. A thought/image/symbol of reality is itself a part of reality. Such that all you have in the end is reality. All you have is the territory. So in fact: the map is the territory!
Strange loops are not a bug here, they are a feature. They arise due to the self-reference problem: when you have only one thing in existence, how can it point to itself? There cannot be a duality between map/territory. Symbols cannot stand outside reality because they are within reality and because there is nothing outside reality. Inside and outside are of course one.

Yeah, I think that's possible to some extent.
5-MeO-DMT is already that technology in powdered form.
It still won't be that easy in practice because to deeply awaken your entire mind has restructure itself. It's not as simple as cutting a few wires. Your entire web of beliefs needs to be reconfigured too. Otherwise it will be a half-assed enlightenment leading to Zen devirly and pathology. And awakening alone is not enough, there is also the need for Spiral development which cannot happen simply through some surgery or even a chemical.
There are all sorts of rare and interesting abnormal brain case studies. For example some people can hallucinate monkeys or see the world as a cell-shaded cartoon. Some people convinced that other people are robots. The brain/mind is a very tricky thing. Enlightenment is far from the only interesting mystical thing that the brain can do.

To me awakening means a permanent disidentification with form. An ever-present state of nondual awareness. That's not something I have yet.

@Immortal peace You're sort of conflating two issues there, existential issues with mundane survival issues.
If you care about survival there's no escaping that you will have to handle those survival issues. For example if you're starving and you have no money or food, no amount of meditation will fix that issue. But what meditation can do is allow you to die in peace. How? Well, you'd need to become very good at meditation or you'd need to awaken to realize that death is an illusion. The body will die from lack of food, but you as God will not.
If you want the body to be alive there's no escaping finding food.
Which is why spirituality is not an escape from everyday obligations. That's a bad way to look at it. You want to get masterful at handling survival issues. Which in your case means: design a way to make a decent living. Don't try to offload this issue on meditation or enlightenment. Learning how to earn a decent living is a whole skillset. It's tempting to think that you can avoid developing such skillets through "finding peace" via spirituality. That's a bad approach.
As your practice spirituality though, even though you'll still have tricky survival issues to deal with, you will deal with them more calmly and effectively. They won't stress you out as much as they would otherwise because in the end you know that whatever happens will be okay. And you will have more emotional self-control.
A simple way to calm yourself is to breath slowly and deeply for a few minutes or hours.
Sedona Method is also really good for clearing out emotions.

There cannot be emotional mastery without enlightenment. Emotional mastery is even harder than enlightenment.
But if you just want to do some basic self-help stuff and work on emotional issues, yes, you can do that. You ain't gonna be anywhere near understanding the true nature of emotions. But it can be helpful.

@ardacigin I don't think that such medieval methods are healthy or lead to the highest understanding. Sure, those monks are badasses, but I doubt how much of reality they really understand or how Spirally developed and well-rounded they are. I would bet most of them are underdeveloped on the Spiral, which would be a great shame.
The thing is, running marathons has little to do with insight, development, or understanding. Don't automatically assume that doing brutal rigorous mechanical training methods will get you to the highest levels of understanding. I highly doubt it would. I am much more in favor of a thoughtful contemplative approach which incorporates study of psychology, sociology, semiotics, science, etc. I think some of the hardcore Eastern schools are not thoughtful and scientific enough. They can be too grounded in tradition for tradition's sake without evolving with technology and the times.

No, I think it's definitely possible, just very, very rare and difficult. Yogis and sages have definitely accessed the highest levels of awakening without any chemical assistance. I suspect though that they were exceptionally gifted, whether due to genetics, karma, past-lives, upbringing, the right brain chemistry, luck or a combination of all the above. I don't know exactly why some people are exceptionally spiritually gifted. That is still a deep mystery waiting for an answer.
5-MeO just makes it so much easier and more accessible to ordinary people.
I recommend a hybrid approach.

@ardacigin I know all that.
What I meant was, he's still missing a few deeper layers of awakening like Absolute Infinity and Absolute Truth.
Last time I spoke with him I asked him why reality exists and he was not able to give me an answer. Nor was he aware of Infinity.
Of course I still consider him enlightened. Just not at the highest level of understanding possible because I've clearly become conscious of why reality exists. So I know it can be done. Just probably not through mindfulness meditation and labeling.
Being aware of God is one thing. Being aware of the mechanics of God is another yet deeper thing. There is a lot of important stuff to discover about the mechanics of God. How does God actually materialize reality? And why? This can all be understood and it is worthwhile to understand it.
Don't take this to be anything negative against Shinzen. He's still great.

Hehe, that's mostly what self-help as a field/industry is. That's okay. It's mostly geared towards stage Orange/Green folks. There are still very important lessons there, just don't expect it to come anywhere near the depth of the stuff I teach.
Most self-help does not include a metaphysical, epistemological, or spiritual component. As a result, it cannot possibly be profound or an ultimate solution. But I'm still a big fan of even that type of basic stage Orange self-help. People really need it in our society. In fact, most people who follow me probably need it more than they need my metaphysical musings. Metaphysical stuff is quite advanced and assumes you've already handled other basic parts of life.
Of course Reddit is not a high-quality source of life advice. You should expect a lot of keyboard-jockeys there. For the best advice, read quality books.

@kieranperez I'm not clear what you wrote, but anyways...
Whatever thoughts arise in your human head/mind are of course God's doing. God does not think somewhere elsewhere from human minds. When God is thinking, it's using a human to do it because thinking requires form. So God as a formless entity technically cannot think unless it first materializes a human who then becomes a vehicle for thoughts.
So you might say that God as formlessness cannot do anything at all, but at the same time it can materialize all of physical reality and then whatever physical reality does, is equivalent to God doing stuff.
So formless God cannot eat a cheeseburger (because eating is form), but it can spawn a Big Bang, wait 14 billion years, spawn a cow, spawn a human, spawn a chef who cooks the cheeseburger, and then have the human eat the cheeseburger. That's how God eats cheeseburgers
God as formlessness lives vicariously through all form. Remember, form and formlessness are identical. So God literally is the taste of the cheeseburger. Ta-da!
Or think of it this way: when you're playing a video game you cannot directly enter the world of Mario as a human. But you can live through that world as the Mario character. To manipulate Mario's world requires that you use Mario as the interface. You become Mario while also being a human who's distinct from Mario. Mario can die but it does not harm you.

@Serotoninluv You can probably handle it.
Each trip will go deeper and deeper, and wider and wider. There will certainly be significant cumulative effects.
With this method you're cramming years of spiritual growth into a single week. So be prepared for some ego-backlash and unexpected stuff. In a sense it must disrupt your old life. This can be both great and problematic when you return.
I highly recommend it for very serious, seasoned spiritual aspirants with a very solid theoretical and practical foundation, and high emotional maturity. Not for newbies.
Don't be too surprised if this kind of work makes your depressive or even suicidal for a while. You need to be stable enough to weather such storms. The payoffs though are HUGE.
To handle a solid week of 5-MeO requires pushing yourself. The ego will want to stop somewhere half-way through as it gets overwhelmed with Truth.

Hi everyone. Here is my current practice method. I wanted to share with you one of the most useful mindfulness manuals I've ever read. 'The Mind Illuminated' by Culadasa.
For me, his training method was so effective that I've experienced a lot of exponential growth in a relatively short amount of time. More people need to know about this guy.
For anyone who has read his book, I'm currently working on stages 7-8-9 holistically. After stabilizing the attention to the breath, I start an investigation towards the sense of being an individual self and awareness practices in no-mind.
I do this not only in sitting sessions but also in daily life. For instance, today my awareness of external sensations were so acute that when I was meditating in the subway train, the sound of the door closing (+ the engine of the train) was so loud that if I hadn't cultivated equanimity so much, I definitely would have gotten startled. It was so intense.
I'm currently trying to master effortless stability of attention to the breath sensations at the nostrils in stage 7 and once I do access such levels of concentration, I expand my awareness of external sounds and bodily sensations while maintaining stable, bright and continuous attention to the breath. Making sure to have introspective awareness (aka. inner awareness of thought and feel space) for potential distractions and dullness.
From this foundation of samadhi, I start the self-inquiry process where I try to pinpoint and investigate the sense of being a self. I separate the three fundamental aspects of being a self: see, hear and feel modalities. 
Then I inquire if there is anything more. A locus of consciousness. The experiencer/doer addition to these 3 modalities. Once I do this inquiry, my mind slows even more. Thoughts go away. Emotions cool out. And sensations of external sound, visual and touch modalities get amplified and I start to feel like my sense of self starts to melt away merging and blurring out because of the awareness of external sensations.
I continue from here and try to access deeper and deeper aspects of no mind while maintaining the stability of attention to the breath.
This is my current practice and I get TONS of growth out of it on a daily basis.
Also, I'm doing 90 to 120 mins of SDS sits in the cross-legged posture with these techniques on a daily basis as well. So that also adds a lot of spiritual weights and stable foundation as I start my day.
I hope this gives you guys some motivation and an idea of how to move forward in your practice if you feel stuck. 
For more information, read Culadasa's fantastic book 'The Mind Illuminated'. Here is the special Reddit forum of the book if you are interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/
Let me know your thoughts on Culadasa and his methods. Have you tried them? If so, what are your experiences? What do you struggle with? 
I'd love to hear your thoughts and give guidance as much as I can

That's not good enough. It doesn't count unless it's direct experience.
Also, you ARE the one moving the fingers. Who else is there but YOU? You are all there is! You are the entire universe moving those fingers. The only problem is that you've confused yourself with being limited to a human body/mind. Start thinking of yourself as the entire universe. That will help a bit to give you proper perspective. But merely thinking you are the universe is still not enough. You must directly experience that it is so. This requires awakening. The boundary between self and word must collapse.
Be careful not to just believe me. Belief is the enemy here, even if it's positive belief or belief in nonduality. True nonduality is not a belief.

Firstly, scientific models are NOT based on formal logic. Again, "formal logic" is a loaded word. There are an infinite number of different formal logics. So which one are you gonna base your scientific model on? They all contradict each other. You must do empirical research to determine whether your logic squares with reality. Often times it won't!
In quantum mechanics particles do not follow Aristotelian binary logic. So physics has long ago debunked the naive notion that reality follows binary logic.
The question of What is science? and How come science works? is a very tricky one. It takes decades of study and contemplation to understand it.
In short, scientific models contain very partial and limited relative truths. They are true only under very very narrow circumstances and contexts. Just because some aspects of reality are predictable does not mean that reality is logical. In fact it tends to work the other way around: Whatever humans call "logical" is however reality happens to behave in contexts which are relevant to humans. For example, if chairs had a habit of turning spontaneously into cats whenever you sat on them, your mind would grow accustomed to that behavior and call it "logical".
In practice, what you call "logical" is just whatever reality happens to do around you. If everyone you knew walked around naked on the street, you'd eventually start calling that logical. Because in fact it is impossible to distinguish between logical and illogical things. That is a matter of relative perspective. What's logical to me is not logical to you, and vice versa. Or to put it another way, YOU are the sole arbiter of what counts as logical. Whatever you insist is logical, becomes logical (for you). Whatever you insist is illogical becomes illogical (for you). Logic has no normative power. So if someone wants to be "illogical", they are free to do so and no amount of reasoning, argumentation, or evidence will convince them otherwise. Because they are only "illogical" relative to your judgment of them. They are not illogical in any absolute sense.
There actually exists no standard to determine what counts as logical. It must be this way because reality is nondual and empty/groundless. Anyone who tries to ground reality in logic will fail. This was rigorously demonstrated back in the early 20th century. Logical positivism and the attempt to formalize reality with a finite system of symbols failed spectacularly. As it should have. Reality is not quantifiable or formalizable.

@Paul92 Paul as a biographical, biological, physical entity is constructed fiction. A narrative.
But there is a True You -- the True Self/No-Self/Nothingness/Void/God. Your true nature is not human but God. You are God thinking it is Paul. So when you realize that you are actually God, you will also realize that God has Will. God has infinite Will, in fact. Paul's will is a tiny splinter off God's infinite Will.
So in a sense you will discover Paul was never really in control.
But then you will also discover that since you are God, you control and create everything. As God, you have Will which you can use to create. So literally God allocates a tiny percentage of its infinite Will to this body of Paul's so that it could create a life. As a human your creative capacities are not infinite, they are limited so long as you are in a human form. If you exit the human form your creative power will be infinite, you can literally materialize physical objects out of thin air. But at this point you're not a human any more, you are the Godhead. You are that which you were before you were born.
In the end, everything is God's choice. But the kicker is, you're God! But simultaneously you're human
None of this is to be believed. You must discover if it is true through consciousness practices.
The more conscious you become the more of God's Will will be at your disposal. Eventually you and God will merge into one such there will be zero distance between your lifting a finger and God willing it so.
The definition of a devil is someone who thinks he is separate from God. The devil seeks to separate itself from God and rule using his own will. But the devil is always just a partition within God. So the devil is tricking itself into thinking that it is in control. Eventually the devil must surrender control and accept that it was God all along. This merges the devil back into God as if the separation never even happened. That's nonduality in a nutshell. Nonduality polarizes into duality and then depolarizes back into nonduality.
God is the doing non-doer

@Caitwin Not a fan. There are much better philosophies to read.
Try Nagarjuna or Plotinus instead.
Remember, there is A LOT of dualistic delusion within Western philosophy, so be careful not to waste your time wading through bullshit. Go straight for the highest nondual teachings.
You can easily spend 20 years reading Western philosophy and still not get any closer to Truth. With that said, there is the occasional gem and I still encourage everyone to think through philosophical questions for themselves. Philosophy is not meant to be read or believed, it must be DONE! -- as in: contemplate everything for yourself.
The power of philosophy lies more in the questions than in the answers. If you are not contemplating for yourself, you are not actually doing any philosophy.
 

@MM1988 There is skill and there are principles to dating, just like there is with golf, tennis, driving a car, or meditation.
You are framing what I said as "This is so inauthentic and artificial". But once you actually internalize the skill of proper texting, it will become authentic and natural.
Every skill you learned was at one point inauthentic and artificial, from mathematics to reading to writing to typing on the computer.
I am not saying you need to keep a file of canned text messages. Once you understand the principles of texting with a girl, you can generate an infinite number of spontaneous texts. Without learning this skill, your text messages will suck and you will lose girls by committing stupid mistakes which only years later will you understand why.
People expect to be good at sex and dating "naturally" without any deliberate practice. Because love is supposed to be "natural". This is a silly double-standard. Nowhere else in life do you adopt this attitude. If you want to be good at something you must train and recognize principles. Girls will appreciate it when you don't creep them out with your texts.

You are confused about who/what you are. This is how most normal people are. At the same time they identify with being the body, the mind, and also not that. They are unsure and confused. The mind plays these games where one minute it thinks its the body, another minute it thinks its a human, another minute it thinks its the voice heard in the head, another minute it thinks it was born, another minute it thinks its some kind of "soul", another minute it thinks its God, and so on.
The purpose of self-inquiry is to become very strict with yourself and force yourself to confront this shell game that the mind plays. What are you REALLY? Not as a belief, but what the fuck are you? If you claim that you are real, then you must be able to clearly specify what is it that's real. The body? The voice? The memories of childhood? The feelings of pain? If we put a gun to your head right now, what is it that you fear will die? << That is the false self.
Getting clear about the false self is just as important as discovering the True Self. You can't disidentify with something unless you first clearly realize that you're identified with it. You might be identified with your childhood memories and not even realize it. So you have to ask yourself very seriously, "Am I identified with my childhood memories? Is that what I actually am?" And so forth with any other possible identifications until you eliminate them all. What will remain is nothing, which is what you actually are.

It requires a change in state of consciousness.
The sense of I is more than just a feeling, thought, or belief. It's an entire state of being such that you know no other possibility.
Changing that state requires a lot of concentration practice, or kriya yoga, or psychedelics.