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@Truth Addict Sounds to me like you're describing a mental state - one of only thinking about present things or just observing the present moment. Enlightenment is not a state of mind.

@pluto These things could conform to some notion you have of "growing" but all this stuff will never make you enlightened and will in fact harm your chances of getting enlightened. The experiences can be wonderful but you have to decide whether you want mystical and magical experiences or liberation. I dare say wanting the latter is alluring yet foolish, but to each their own.

Shattering one's life sounds like a dramatic way to put it. You get enlightened by destroying your blockages/karma, not reality. Your reality will change, sure, but nothing that sudden and dramatic necessarily.

@herghly Martin Ball is a very weird case. His heart is very open but his energies are quite fucked up. The state probably doesn't feel too bad but astral energies are operating in his body, hence his supposed god voice and barking and other weird things he does. If you read his autobiography you can get a sense of the weirdness. His state really doesn't correspond to anyone else's description of enlightenment, I'd say it's an anomaly, a quasi-enlightened state he is stuck in. And there is definitely karma, blockages, issues left. Doesn't seem like a good idea to end up being like him.

@Phrae If you've seen pictures of Ramana Maharshi, I wouldn't say he has excellent posture Yet if you can call anyone realized it is him. So, quite certainly body relaxation is a separate, relative thing. Sure, there are emotional causes for tension but also purely physical ones. You might be very interested in checking out Peter Ralston's "Zen Body-Being".

@AmarSG1 There's absolutely a component. Whether you say genetics or karma - point being, something you have no control over - it is a big factor. Some people have it a lot worse or better than others.

Energies from the astral plane can cause problems in the system. And channeling uses energies from there. Many channelers think they're using something divine, or something from ascended masters, etc. Channeling invites these energies into your body, where they shouldn't be. The energies are foreign to you, and it can literally feel like something outside of you is controlling your body-mind and behavior. That's why it can be referred to as "having entities". In a more benign case they may just make your energy feel weird to people who can sense energies, and inhibit the progress of purifying your system. In worse cases they can cause emotional instability and pain, make your body twitch, etc. David Spero has a rather benign case of entities. Martin Ball has a lot of them, and his energy feels awful to people who can pick it up, even though he may not himself feel too bad. If you read Martin's autobiography and some descriptions of his trips, you'll see he's had a lot of weird experiences. Also, the supposed "god voice" and barking like a dog, all the weird behaviors he has, etc, are in all likelihood caused by astral energies. The directive of enlightenment is removing all blockages, including the subtle/astral and causal blockages/karma you have, so messing with astral stuff will get in the way of that. Only when all karma is gone are you truly liberated. Also at that point it is said you won't reincarnate since the causal body has dissipated, and you don't dream at all.

I think it's great to use your spiritual growth and mix the fruits of it into your LP somehow. However, I find an interest in spirituality as a topic drops quite significantly as you progress. Before being in any state of non-duality, I wanted to think and talk and watch and read about enlightenment and all that. Now I really don't care, it's quite boring. The states get doper and doper but intellectually there's very little interest.

@egoless In what sense is spirituality a job? Leo runs this business and does a lot of research and makes these vids. Now that IS a job. But spirituality is not necessarily about all sorts of deep mindfucks and other flashy shit. From my understanding, Leo questions a lot of assumptions, beliefs, paradigms - looks at the mind, so of course challenging that is going to produce mindfucks. Strictly pursuing enlightenment though won't necessarily do it.

@LuigiTrapanese If that's the case then you're not fucked - you learned something sooner rather than later.

@lmfao I recommend studying Ramana Maharshi's teachings and namely the places where he talks about things other non-dual teachers don't mention or places that contradict them. He's the only truly enlightened teacher of recent history that I know of - all others have remaining blockages. Others closest are Master Sheng Yen and Anandamayi Ma.

@Sirius Leaving everything and looking for a yogi doesn't seem that great of an idea. It can be a big trap in my opinion. For one thing, a yogi is just a human. They can't magically take away your suffering. Secondly, they may have dogmas, blindspots, and false understandings. They may not be nearly as enlightened as they seem to be. What you want to look for is a method - and today's internet is uniquely remarkable when it comes to this. If something doesn't work, you can ditch it. If someone seems questionable, you can look at other perspectives. You aren't tied to anything.

@LuigiTrapanese And you wanna strive for clarity, not numbness

@KMB4222 It's an energetic change. Now yes, being is being, absolute is absolute, God is God, but that can't be realized without energetic changes in the system. If you study people at various states of non-duality, you can see mentions of energetic happenings. Nobody becomes abidingly enlightened without changes in the brain and energetic system. Doing self-enquiry or yoga or meditation can bring those changes about.

@Emre Channeling is sketchy. It is real. It's not only a distraction from enlightenment but runs the risk of you getting messed up by negative energies. People having done a lot of strong psychedelics and then channeled are an especially bad combo. Having talked to some people who are going/have gone through that, wouldn't wish that happening to my worst enemy.

Light and at times blissful. There's still physical discomfort and sometimes pain, from physical problems with my body. And when blockages are being released it can be mildly to severely nasty for that period.

@Applejuice Nobody knows why there's life (except God, I guess). What makes sense to me is a process of life emerging from God, evolving lifetime after lifetime, until it merges back into God, the latter being what enlightenment is.

@electroBeam I think that's quite true. One explanation is, intuition takes into account and processes more information than conscious thought ever could.

@Rilles As long as you are identified with the body, there can't really be complete peace with that, I think. Relative peace, I'm sure people can give you many tips.

@moon777light Because meditation and clean eating doesn't fix everything.

@Applejuice Don't. Both due to your age and the genetic risk. I'll give you a third reason: psychedelic use can give you experiences of ego death, this and that, and make you think you reach some deeper understanding when the trips are over, but, nobody has ever reached abiding enlightenment through psychedelics. Debatably, some people have reached a basic state of non-dual awareness, but that is very far from truly being liberated.

@Ether It can happen at certain stages on the path. Relatively advanced by the way, more so than any western non-dual teacher. I assume they either do it because their energies reach a state pushing them towards it and they don't know how to circumvent this, or they feel bound by the body and think mahasamadhi is a liberation they crave. What this points towards is they are not truly liberated, the way Ramana Maharshi was. If you're completely beyond life and death, existence and non-existence, mahasamadhi doesn't make any sense. If you feel constrained by life and the body you still have identifications left.

Don't do it. I've smoked weed. It numbs your perception and can lead to some sort of deluded, foggy sense of transcendence. It can seem great on the surface but if you become more sensitive, it really doesn't feel particularly good. It also messes with your energetic system, and of course there's the side effects regular people speak of such as escapism and addiction potential.

Some pain is quite likely unavoidable in the process. Could be little, could be a lot - depending on what you do and what your karma is.

Warning against turning non-duality into a philosophy/taking pointers literally/rationalizing away your humanity.