Azrael

How can you ride a roller coaster w/o shitting yourself because you think you'll die when it shoots up into the sky? You know that you sit in a roller coaster with a seat belt on. When you are flowing with life, having sex, fun, going out .. whatever you do .. become aware of the flow you are in. Feels great, huh? I love it. When you are in "observer" mode or you do stuff you have to do .. become aware of the non-flow you are in. Feels shitty, doesn't it? Now, another time when you are in flow become aware of the thing that is always there (that is always the same). It kinda feels that it allows flow to arise, doesn't it? On still another time when you are in non-flow become aware of the thing that is present there as well .. (can you taste it out?) Do that for some time and you'll get a notion, an intuition, a taste like with wine for that knowing that is always there. This is your seat belt. This is always there (even if you are in deep sleep - find out for yourself). It is your save spot, it is your home ... and if you come back to it it surely feels like home. It is you. Develop this taste, out of that will arise a world in front of you that was always there but hidden in the patterns of all the ups and downs of the roller coaster. Cheers to you!

Great analogy, cheers to you. The first time I got a glimpse was very cool. The first time I saw that my thoughts just arise and go as they please and I don't consciously bring them into being and let them die was fucking mind-blowing. The first time this "magician's trick" stayed and wasn't temporary I took a walk and I looked at the trees, the bottom, I breathed, I saw how this moment spontaneously creates itself and how my experience arises and goes every few moments ... it fucking brought me to tears. The first time I sat in a train and heard a baby cry and felt all of existence just in it - pouring out of it - well ... I just smiled. Keep on, don't push your ego/shadow/unconscious away but make peace with it. Then it'll allow this peace to transcend through you 'till there is nothing left.

That mindset - although I see your noble intentions with this - is the same exact reason why I guess most people are not enlightened (by that I mean being aware of their enlightenment) and end up on a way too long journey to even seeing the first glimpse of it. I can't and won't guess anything about Leo's situation - although I sometimes think I know this guy so deeply just from seeing and connecting to all of his stuff (it was the seed to change my whole fucking existence) I really have no fucking clue if I'm honest. All I know (from direct experience) is this: On my journey real progress started to happen after I tried for a good year "to just let go" and stopped it because I was being let in on the secret that it doesn't fucking matter what I do or not do about it. I think I can let go when I let go and I think I can't let go when I don't. At that point I still did my daily meditation (still do that of course) but I just didn't give a shit any more. I quit on an inner level with this because I saw it just doesn't matter. In the beginning of this phase this was honestly just a very very nuanced way to trying to get it, because I knew you get much closer if you surrender. So this then put me in a deadlock basically. All I wanted on some level was to get it but on another level I couldn't fight for it any more because I knew it doesn't matter. I knew that because I became aware that I don't think my thoughts but they arise like hiccups. When you experience this for some time ... your life drastically changes. My changed to the worse for a good 2-3 months. From day to day I would be more aware of not being in charge while all my emotions would kill me, my mind would go nuts and I barely could handle it (I knew that this was necessary to get all the shit out ... but it's more than hard). Then I fell in love and shortly after that I was being let down - not rejected but I saw how this would not play out the way I want it to be. At that point ... that was like 10 days ago I guess my brain just gave up because it saw that if that pain would add up to my normal pain at the time I couldn't live any longer. It was just too hard. So it gave up. I physically felt how like a rock in my brain collapsed on itself and that it just gave up. From then on, I had not a single moment of anxiety any more. I feel everything one can feel, good, bad, jealous, angry, but I'm not scared of being scared. I see something in everything that is the same. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. But I don't have to cling to it, because I can see it at every time I want to. I see how I don't do shit, but how shit just does itself. I see pure perfection in everything and I can not tell you any difference between my senses if I'm honest. From a deeper perspective it seems all the same to me - incarnating itself in so beautiful forms. I talk to my inner child a lot. I'm very sorry for what it had to face in our life until now. I integrate deeper on a daily basis. I take every emotion and surrender to its core until it just vanishes and massages me. And I just let my intuition do its thing. It's always right. Even if it's not. And lastly, I am aware of an intelligence, that incarnates this very only present moment. You can come in contact with it, it sometime likes to fuck you up and it sometime likes to pleases you. It's like a presence that is always there, I feel its warmth around me. I could tell you 1000 things about it but I don't, because maybe 1% of you who read this know this themselves and the rest thinks I'm crazy. Maybe at a later time, guys. But I give you one hint, do you think it's a coincidence that nature does something as beautiful as the Niagara Falls and creates a mean (us) to see it in the brightest colors? If you really think about it, this is as mystical and crazy as it gets. And by coincidence I mean I want you to think about the "no-thing" that brings this into being ... while creating humans to see it and find it beautiful. Think about that. So yeah, to sum it up. What helped me was that I gave up, the pain was too much and my brain had to give up to go on. I'm at the beginning of something new. Not even at the beginning, I opened a door and sometimes look what is on the other side. I'll take the rest of this life to go inside and look what's there. So maybe you need some more pain to let go? I did. Maybe you need to integrate you inner child to let go? I did. Maybe you need to stop doing whatever you are doing to get it and let it get you? I did. Cheers, hope this helps.

This so called irrational fear comes from the "guy" inside of you that had to take up with all the pains you encountered in your life, all the anger, all the hate. That "guy" who is also responsible that you exist. You are a subset of him. He is the little kid inside of you that has to take all the shit and every time he asks for something you try to get rid of him. As you now have seen - you have no control whatsoever - over him. You can try to "let him go" with meditation or any other distraction you chose and maybe you need that time - but at one point you'll just see that your quest to get rid of him gets more nuanced and nuanced but never any further. He is still there and he gets pissed off more with everything you do. Because you think you are the higher self. The reason, the noble character. And he is just the deep passion, the urges. The fuck-up. So what do you do? You begin to talk to him and be sorry that you never let him speak out. You acknowledge his power over you and you begin to see that he is you, you are him, you both are one. You integrate. You let him do whatever he wants to do and whenever he so chooses. Why? Because you never let him do that ... and be prepared, he wants most of the time just be heard, just have the chance to speak. When you begin to go in that direction you'll save yourself a year of trying to get rid of him (I tried that ... everyone else does) and you begin to heal instantly. I'm mean fucking instantly. Your life will not be the same in one week from now if you give up today and surrender to him ... your unconscious, your shadow ... however you wanna call him. Look these videos (and yes I know Matt looks like a strange spiritual guy). 20 minutes in, you'll probably get to tears (I did) because you just didn't know what you did to yourself all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRNfTVVW7co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUzXQS3M-s Cheers to you,

I'm thrilled.

Find me the one who does, and I slap the shit outta him.

@Mary, I want you to do the following things over the next few days - if you want to - and see what happens: Lower your sitting time to 10-20 minutes sit with your eyes open and look down 3 feet in front of you keep a relatively straight posture, but don't be to clumsy about it While you keep theses essentials in line, do this: Just sit, let thoughts come and go as they please. Whenever monkey mind gets a little crazy or deep emotions come up, say to them (on the inside) that you are very sorry for them. Tell them, that you are sorry that they have to be so negative and feel right into them. Just let them float. Talk to your body and mind like it's a 5 year old in pain. Bring him to rest, say that you are sorry that life didn't treated him well and be sorry for what will happen in the future. Say to him that any time he wants to say something or express himself, he shall just ask and you let him do that. Reconnect with these feelings and thoughts. Soon enough you'll find out that this is actually the only thing you want to do. Reconnect with your body that cries out for help and is just treated as "lower self", "not worthy", "ego" but keeps the strings in in his hands how you feel. Change that. And then watch. This will end your suffering.

If you have identified all of this, you are doing pretty good with your awareness work. Now, leave this enlightenment stuff to the side, and see that there is an innocent child in you, that cries out for love and appreciation your whole fucking existence and you had nothing else to do then to use every acquired spiritual judo-trick to trying to get rid of this child in you. You do this: Say to whatever you feel that you are extremely sorry for what happened to it in the past, you are sorry for what will happen to it in the future, you acknowledge its power and whenever it wants to say something to you or express itself it shall just ask and you'll let it manifest in yourself with the deepest appreciation. Because to align your over-stimulated mind with this emotional child in you, is what you were trying all of the time. But you tried to cut off your heart that is pumping your blood. See that this doesn't work, and begin to let it express itself and love it. Then you'll find peace, bro.

I began seeing this 2-3 months ago. What changed right away was that everything I perceived stopped being the effect of something else, but more like the spontaneous occurrence of itself. Like, when I took a walk outside I saw and still see something in the trees, that is also in the ground. Also in the crying kid and also in my wandering thoughts. At this time I experienced extreme bliss for a week or two and then I fell in probably the deepest hole I every experienced on this journey. I came out of it yesterday in my daily meditation in which I was deeply in my unconscious, re-living childhood memories and crazy other stuff. At some point it just felt like a rock fell off me and I intuitively knew that I was through with this. Since then, the horrors went away. Thanks for your post, man. I appreciate it. While I was having these bad cycles, I still could see it in everything. It was just that my thoughts would go nuts and fuck me up day after day. Now it feels like a silenced city after a hurricane, a few people are still there, but there is this peace everywhere that underlies all the going ons.

@Anton Rogachevski, it's easier I guess to have one intention / direction in your mind: To experience your buddha nature now. If you have this, this will blur out after a few minutes and you just be. Don't run away from the things you don't want. Run to the things you want. (And see that the one running can't go there, but is there whatever he does or wherever the wants to go.) Because, while doing meditation or being on the journey you'll come to any of the points you mentioned, if you want or not. Meditation brings you to the point, where you acknowledge that, be that and let it go when it goes. So I wanna add one point to it: 14. Trying to change this moment.

He got a few in which he talks about the "I am" practice. This in combination with what Rupert Spira talks about brought to this way of approaching enlightenment. And I like it very much. Also, I'm a huge Alan Watts addict and he probably also inspired me not to seek it but to embody it. I meditate for about 15 months now I guess.

I actually think that in the next 100 years things like meditation, mindfulness work and through that also enlightenment work will get way more normal and things to do. Mainly because the whole health sector has understood in the last 10 years that meditation really works and can change the whole outlook of your health and life and so nowadays there are so many studies looking into this. Also, if you look at physics, they get more and more they notion that everything is interrelated with everything else and that this universe isn't so deterministic as one thought maybe 70 years ago. If you look deep enough into atoms and stuff, the fact that you are looking at it changes the thing itself. So, with that in mind and a western society that gets more individualistic and open, I think that these things don't need long any more to integrate fully in the western lifestyle. We'll see.

Hey @Anton, this is actually a very good meditation. I wouldn't even call it a meditation, but more a theme one can apply to. I do this a lot while meditating, throughout the day and especially when my mind goes bunkers. I also was inspired by Alan Watts and by Moiji to just embrace my own buddha nature and so to directly come in contact with it. And it works pretty good I have to say. When you start with this you probably still want to find the thing to connect to, to hold on to. But as you go further you'll come to a place at which you just remain, you stop going anywhere, you stop not going anywhere but just remain as the spontaneous you that manifests every few moments and then goes again. You completely merge with whatever your awareness does. By that you come in perfect harmony with what is and you'll find what you searches for. I find it very helpful - especially when I started with this and didn't really know where to go - to do something like this: I feel out what is it in my direct experience that gives me the notion that I exist. I try to make out the knowing of this very moment, of my real existence. For me that's mostly a feeling in my stomach, a feeling deep inside my head and a kind of underlying screen in my vision. But it can be anything that is the thing for you. Then I merge with that, meaning that when I breathe in and out I breathe into that notion or knowing and so deepen its experience. Be careful not do overdo, just slightly deepen this knowing that is always there that you exist, that makes out your reality. As you do that, the following thing will begin to happen: The symptoms that I described (the feeling in my stomach, in my head, the screen of the vision) will blur out and you'll get a sense of something brighter and bigger, something underlying everything that is, but also being everything that is at the same time. You can't really hold your finger on it, but you kind of intuitively know it is there. If this comes up, trust in this intuition and deepen it by breathing into it and by completely letting go. If you find yourself trying to grab it (what you will try in the beginning) do that to see that you can't. In the end you just completely let go and let it absorb you. It's beautiful. Also, when I do this I get carried away from my thoughts like every few seconds and I sometime find myself in a compulsive thought stream for some time. When that happens, it's totally fine. Don't try to stop it, don't even look out for it. When your awareness brings up merging with your buddha nature again, do that. When your awareness wants to follow along in a new compulsive thought stream, do that. After some time you'll find your buddha nature not only when you deepen it, but in everything you do and as everything you do. You are on a very good track with this, I find this to be one of my favourite and most intimate meditations. I've cried several times while doing this, because I felt so much joy and love. It's overwhelming. Cheers

I don't know but it seems to me that meditation is like a lot of other skills. You begin and want to be the rockstar of your field. You really wanna bring it home and master it. You have no idea what you are really into. After a few months you come a little bit off your whole excitement and you start to see how it changes the way you go about your business. At some point you really just learn not to interfere any more and just let it happen, because you see that this is really the thing what brought you all the suffering in the first place, you trying to change what is. But you can't teach someone not to interfere any more, because by teaching and trying to interfere you lose it. So, first you try hard. Then you try by not trying. Then you innerly give up at some point and then it finally comes to you. Basically, I'd say that somebody who meditated for 10 years has a complete other picture of all of this then I have with one year of experience. I guess that it deepens you forever. Advancement - if we wanna call it so - will come if you focus on doing it for it every single day. The you wake up someday and say: I'm pretty fucking good at this. I just found out a few days ago that I can now sit in half lotus for 30 minutes because I mastered to sit in the Burmese posture. For me this is an advancement and I love it, but there was no technique I used to get there. I just followed along and it came when it should've come.

Basically from what I have experienced so far enlightenment experiences can be very beautiful / frightening / opening to have and let you in on a view you never had. It's like there is whole dimension right now in front of you that you are not aware of and an enlightenment experience pops this into your awareness for a limited time - so it is overwhelming and astonishing. I always loved / love these kind of experiences. But the real difference starts to show up when it manifests in your life on a day to day basis. When you've untangled your thoughts and you are able to see how they are just triggered by events and not by yourself bringing them up, when you see that everything is just the current spontaneous manifestation and that it can't be any other way, when you see brighter colours and patterns and acknowledge that good and bad are the same thing separating itself just to play. When you slowly begin to see that, you come down from this horror trip of life you were so convinced to believe in. So both has it's effects. Let it come to you and carry you away.

You are not insane. Wait it out. It'll go.

Just go on a plane, fly around the world and wait for that 360 degree turn. Won't happen.

Interesting question! The higher and the lower self are basically a lot of games you play with yourself and the world around you that be categorized as good and bad. For example, you trying to get enlightened, doing all this meditation and introspection is automatically something you label good in contrast with you binging on pizza and watching porn - for what you might beat yourself up a little bit ... but it is just so nice. You can basically - and you do that - put your whole life in these two categories and you'll see that they fight with each other. White (your good side) always tries to win over black (your evil bad side). This is basically the story of your whole life - I'd say. And all the frustrations and worries and fears come up if white looses over black. You can also notice if you really put some attention and interest to this that even the voice and thought patterns are really like two different persons inside of you. The dark side mostly gives you these unconscious, deep urges to do something while your higher self has all the arguments, rationalizations and what not. The dark side has all the bad horror thought stories and fuck-up neurosis. So what happens to all of this once you are enlightened or even if you have built up enough awareness to grasp this? Well, from my personal experience of shining some awareness on this you see that it is first of all just a game that is playing inside of you. Secondly, you begin to feel sorry for your dark side because it really is just so dark because you always hated it, never gave it the love and appreciation you gave your higher self and it always protected you from this harsh life. It has to stand all these bad emotions for you. If you see that, you open up. You still do low consciousness stuff (but with way more fun and love as you did before) and you still do your higher self stuff. You see that it is basically the same - but it just plays different roles. You stop hanging yourself up for the stupid shit you do, because you see it is just the exact same shit as the highly intelligent things you do. You calm down from these fights.

FUCK NO. Dude, if you honestly don't have the urge to do drugs, NEVER and I fucking repeat NEVER EVER do drugs. Not because they are bad, they are not, and not because you would get instantly addicted and your life is over, that's also not the case in most cases I've personally seen, but don't talk yourself into doing dangerous stuff. If you have at some time the urge, an intuition or just pure lust to try some shit and have some fun and you think that you can handle it - yeah give it a try. Personally, from knowing SWIM for some time, I saw that there are certain drugs you can have a lot of fun with for some time in your life. But it's very dependent on who you are, what you like and what kind of fun you enjoy. In the long run some drugs will have very bad side effects on your body and psyche and it's probably healthy to level them down to a few. But that's all a question of what kind of like you'd like to have and I can't give you an answer to that. I could give you enough reasons to fuck yourself up with drugs and have fun or to go to a monastery and get enlightened. There really isn't a right choice to pick here, pick the one (or whatever other) that feels naturally for you. For me it's definitely enlightenment for now and SWIM likes to pepper this up with some good-ass fun . But be wise here, don't talk yourself into drugs.

@Emerald Wilkins, interesting answer! In the last year I had some periods - mostly a set of 3-5 days every few months - in which I felt completely enlightened. It then always went away and brought cycles of horrors and transformation after it. What I found so astonishing while I had theses enlightenment experiences is that I felt like somebody just pulled a cork outta me and I just felt like after all this time I am home. It kinda expressed itself in every little part: I moved a little bit slower, I acted and breathed very rhythmically just out of intuition and it felt a bit like flying - like you are weightless. If you meditate, focus on that one sensation of feeling unwell. There is this one feeling that nearly all of the time is inside of you. For me it is a lot in my upper body and brain. It's like a tension. This is your experiential guess that you are separate (in my experience). You feel this a lot if you sit for 90 minutes or longer. It is like the centre out of all the urges to stand up, to worry, to fuck your mind up comes from - it feels like that. When you have an enlightenment experience this tension just loosens up and by default you feel to be everything you can possible perceive. And out of this release of tension I felt that all calmness, all understanding, flow, tears of joy and knowing just came by. If you have this a few times and you see it then tighten up again - loosing tightness and you have this in cycles - you begin to notice how you are mainly talked into the illusion of yourself by your thoughts that come up and everything you come in contact with in the normal society. I just had to think about how as children you tighten up yourself if your mom and dad found out you had a little bit too much fun. This sensation probably manifests at some point in life because you feel it again and again and because this is so unpleasant you begin to play all kind of games to not feel this. And by that you let a seed of separation grow inside you.

Yeah, I guess it's some form of cold reading or something along the lines? Read about this some time ago. I gotta give them some props though. My description was fucking accurate, I can't believe it. It is even in the exact words and interpretations how I see myself. Pretty good job!

I fucking love this guy! All of his material is pure gold.

So in the last few months I kind of purged through a transformation - I still am - which is completely new territory for me. I don't know if one can read and guess it through my posts on this forum but at some point you probably will. What happened is that after I watched Leo's "Free Will"-video I meditated on the question "What is my next thought?" and for the first time in my life I had the sensation of having a thought w/o having the sensation of originating it from myself. It's kind of like if you talk to yourself and then the sensation of "you talking" stops but the talking itself doesn't stop. I had this throughout the meditation a couple of times and I think I probably cried out of joy / fear / confusion - I don't recall. I proved the first time in my life - after meditating for like 8-10 months or so - that this enlightenment stuff is actually the real deal. Before all that, although I had some mystical experiences and what not a few times you could still write them off as something that's weird, not reproducible, mystical. But that meditation opened a whole other chapter and should introduce me to a few new things. And I cover them in detail in a sec. Basically from then on I had my typical meditation cycles of feeling good and bad but it deepened from week to week and a complete new dimension you could say came into picture - my awareness heightened (and still does). The following things happened and still happen to me and I connect them with the heightening of my awareness (basically through observation): 1.) You think you are mentally ill. One of the first reactions after and still in the meditation I mentioned is that I thought I'm schizophrenic, that I'm done. This really fucked me up for some time. You may have the intuition that this is your spiritual progress but at first it seems like you are getting worse then you ever were. Why is that? Basically, you are now - as a normal person - resting in your illusion that has been successfully built over the years. You have your problems - what is probably the reason you wanna get out of yourself - but it's mostly okay. When you start to break that shit down you will reach the moment where you are totally lost, you are trying to find yourself, thoughts come up, feelings come up and you just think you are ill. Maybe you have even moments in which you sincerely think you are dying - I had those. You will have to come to the point where this is okay for you. it's hard at first, trust me. 2.) You begin to see patterns in everything (you think you hallucinate). If you've ever done acid which SWIM has apparently done you know how it feels when you get out of your head and into your senses. It's not like you are seeing your dead grandma, it's more like you have now in your normal state a very clear hallucination of the separation of things that was implanted in you from the early days on. This vanishes when you are on acid and also when your awareness heightens. Of course not in such a dramatic way like when you are heigh on psychedelics, but you will have some very interesting moments. Like for example you take a walk and you feel a sudden recognition how the trees next to you represent the flow of nature, how the grass and the flowers are highly ordered in their flow and how even the most unnatural human-made thing is completely bound to nature. You can see that a lot in fancy hotels. They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it. I could bring up a whole lot of other examples, basically you will rest in your senses way more and feel a intuitive recognition how everything is descending from this natural flow. (When I first had this I got really fascinated with Taoism and I still am highly addicted to that stuff. It's a real good sum-up of what is happening if you ask me. Probably the closest you can get with words.) 3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay. At some point it becomes very apparent to you that you actually have no control at all. This comes and goes but over the time you can prove that for yourself. I did and still do that sometimes. I focus a lot on the arising and vanishing of my thoughts and actions and are now able to at least see that I do not create them. It's scary shit as I said. But also - when you are through feeling scary about it - you will begin to rest in it because there is nothing else to do. As you do that you will reconnect with your intuition and through that be able to push the boundaries in certain situations and be totally fucked up and okay with that in others. Basically you become aware of the dance of love and terror in your day to day life and see that it is a game and that you were and are completely fascinated with trying to let one side win - well this doesn't work. If you become aware of that, you will find rest. And guess what, then you kind of sudo-won. Because even though you might be shitty at some times, you don't feel connected to it any more. 4.) You completely let go of what you think and do. This again, is very scary at first. But you'll reach a stage in which you have the sensation of not being the source of your thoughts and actions in such clarity that it seems like you are the container in which they arise and you are acting them out. At this stage, there is still some separation left (the feeling of being pushed around) but it's totally surreal. 5.) You begin to not care about your ego so much any more. At some point I just found myself making fun of myself in front of a buddy of mine and I felt complete peace. I laughed myself silly. In that moment it completely strut me that I would never do that. I would feel completely shitty and would try to manipulate the situation in such an advanced way that I don't make a foul out of myself. This intuitively stopped (to some degree). This is completely freeing if you experience that. Also, pain seems not to harm you so much any more. Not in the sense of you can cut an arm off and be well but you hurl yourself somewhere, feel the pain very consciously but not be affected by it very much. It's very strange to experience that at first. Well, I could go on and on with similar points but I think you get the drill here. Also, I want to mention that all of these experiences came and come in phases in which they presented themselves very clearly and then lowered again. But it seems like your base-level of mindfulness slowly gets adjusted by this and you tap into a whole new world. So, if you see any of those think back to this post, lay back and smile. You are on the right track. Cheers to you,

Here are the stats, Miss : I meditate for about 14 months now, I currently sit for a hour since 12 months I guess (before that I sat for 20 minutes), I can sit 120 minutes in a strong determination sit (but still with pains - I'm not through yet) and I only have done a few private retreats, like sitting 3-4 hours a day when I have the time to do so. But I'd like to do formal retreats in the not so distant future. If you go to the east an meditate, send me a message in beforehand and I get on a plane if I have time.

I'm talking about how fancy hotels try to give you the illusion that everything is clean and fresh always. They put tremendous effort into keeping this illusion up so that they can be fancy. I used this as an analogy.