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You just exactly described something Peter Ralston talks about in 'Zen Body-Being'.

Took the test. Am a four apparently. Though not sold on it enough for the twenty $ yet. I have been interested in these personality type things (MBTI, Big Five, etc...) for some time, and they revealed solid insights to me, but even though they were helpful vessels for understanding myself, understanding myself always happens beyond any such labels. They function as observations that can only capture still lifes of something very lively and changing. From there I proceed in my true, intimate and direct investigations. I have recently come to a point from where seeking just no longer seems viable. The end of exclusive identification (not entirely solidified) and the understanding that I am nothing in particular has produced a great sense of freedom and peace. My behavior and daily conduct however has not changed that much, which was expected because the separate self's conditioning runs deeper in the body. I will now give my body the time it needs to catch up and heal on it's own term out of a desire to conduct my behaviour with love, and peace at it's source rather than the goal. This desire feels so warm and deeply affectionate I just teared up a little. Anyway, I started putting closer attention to personality and what it is made of. Different people who have gained mastery in this path report different results. Adyashanti says that at the end a very basic personality structure will remain. Matt Kahn says that once one has completely transcended the world she comes back into the body and back into the personality under the realization that there is absolutely no separation between the Absolute and Relative. Peter Ralston however seems to imply that at the end of what he calls transformation there are no attachments left whatsoever. I am curious to see how all this will unfold in my life, thus far it a mystery I am excited to uncover. I would like to hear your opinion on personality. Have a good day, my friend

I'm sorry you are going through a rough patch right now. However, those can be most helpful in my experience. Whenever I sense I am in one I like to step out of the understanding of discipline vs. acceptance. It's just not effective. That allows me to align myself with whatever it is that I am going through. Really to join with and intimately feel the experience I have right now. Turns out it always has something to teach me and I always come out more understanding. Just step out of the thought-story of what you should and shouldn't do, and where that will and will not get you. There is so much beauty to every experience you could possibly have. You will come out of it stronger, I promise PS: here's a blog entry by Matt Kahn, quite short and I think very fitting to your situation: https://mattkahn.org/you-are-not-your-urges/

The most important thing about chewing gum is to dispose of it considerately. I hate stepping into or even touching gum under chairs or wherever people put it. Yuck!

Contact Shinzen Young: https://www.shinzen.org/contact/ Sorry to hear that. On the bright side: it will get better. If you truly forgive yourself for it, you will see it was a necessary step in your evolution. You will learn to love yourself and eventually figure out how to utilize your unique hardships and struggles for something good. But that is not your main concern now, I believe. Is that your experience in any way whatsoever? Ask yourself that seriously and don't bullshit yourself. Don't let advanced spirituality get in the way of meeting your most basic psychological and physiological needs. Yes, believing consciousness is a product of the brain is a belief, but so is thinking brains do not exist, if that is not grounded in authentic, direct experience. You can never believe your way into truth. Learn to discern between hearsay and authentic experience. To counteract the destructive force that adopting spiritual beliefs can have on your life I want to offer you a different paradigm that you can adopt until you are truly ready to transcend it: I am a human being I need shelter, food and water secured presently and in the foreseeable future I require healthy and caring relationships with people I can trust and rely on I entertain the idea of a positive future, things will get better for me You can modify this as it suits your situation. I hope you get the general idea. I don't think any drug will be the solution to your problem. But you gotta know what's best for you here. I would recommend psychotherapy. I tried to exercise some tougher love than I would usually do because I feel that would be better suited here. You are obviously in a tough spot right now. I truly hope you find the healing that you need. If you have any further questions feel free to ask.

If you got there via meditation, which as I have been told is rare but can happen, you might find Shinzen Youngs videos on that topic helpful. Maybe even contact him directly. If I remember correctly he said it is not too hard to steer people in which he senses it in the right direction during his retreats. Otherwise or even if go seek out a medical professional who you deem trustworthy. Depersonalization disorder is not a spiritual acquisition or phase you have to go through. A real spiritual leap leaves everything the way it was before, only changing the context by becoming conscious of false assumptions ideas and beliefs. I hope you find the help you need, all the best

Look into Peter Ralston, he holds many 3 day Intensives and other consciousness workshops at his ChengHsin center in Texas. Definitely worth the buck.

I am sorry for what you have gone through. I can't imagine what it is like to be in your shoes right now and I hope your situation will get better soon. As for my advice: forgiveness, understanding and letting go are states of minds and ways of relating to yourself and others. They are not specific sets of action. I say we toss out our ideas of what they look like in action. You can 'let it go' by moving on and not getting over it for decades. You can get back at him by becoming a happy, healthy, self-sufficient and loving person. I'm trying to receive the advice I want to give to you. I guess it is that the action you choose does not imply a single one motivation by which to get there. So investigate your assumptions. To make this advice a little more concrete: if you choose from a place of forgiveness and understanding you are free to look at this situation from a higher wisdom and free to act by however it dictates. You likely won't want to intentionally hurt him, but you also will not undermine your own need for closure. Revenge is such a bizarre concept to me. I hope you will choose with love and find healing. PS: I hesitate in making this statement because I really don't know enough about your situation and feel my above advice can be much more helpful, but personally, I think I'd turn him in.

Perhaps Matt Kahn will be your guy. He always makes the point that once one has completely transcended the world and abides as pure consciousness, you come back into your body, your personality and start to embrace and include everything rather than needing to discard and transcend. Perhaps start with this one: I think what you feel is not a desire for less truth but a desire for more love in your life. More embraciveness and humanness. Perhaps you are just outgrowing outdated assumptions about what this path is all about.

Congrats on the trip, I really resonated with your report. As someone who has never done psychedelics before but is going to try them I would like to hear your and @Leo Gura 's opinion on a short paragraph from Peter Ralston's "Pursuing Consciousness": An Acid trip is not Enlightenment While we're on this subject, don't confuse enlightenment with the use of mind-altering drugs. Such an experience might challenge your habits of perception for a while, but that's not the same thing as an increased consciousness. It is possible to have an enlightenment no matter what the circumstance, but drugs only provide an altered mind-state, and certainly not enlightenment. I would like to hear your opinion on this, good luck with the integration

Lovely For some reason this came up, think you might enjoy it. Curb is brilliant in outlining the ridiculousness of human interaction. Hope you like it

@Chumbimba he will conduct a workshop in the Netherlands this summer. Check out chengshin.nl for more.

Glad you found my reply helpful. The approach to understanding self-image has to be very counterintuitive, because how you get to your self-image is not rational at all. And not grounded in reality. Perhaps the part of you that you don't allow to be is not that of the victim- afterall you are the victim in your self-image- but that which you react against in the thief. Somewhere maybe you have come to believe that you must be a good person, a selfless person, a pushover or whatever and this has become part of your identity. And now the thief displays all those things that you don't allow yourself to be, takes from others without consideration, puts his own needs first, does not care about the consequences of his actions for others, etc... and you react against that because you have those same tendencies suppressed within you. The solution here is not to become more like the thief but to question your inhibiting beliefs about your self and how you should be. Remember that your self-image need not be and probably is not rational or logical at all. Self-image also is nothing imposed upon you, something external, but rather something you uphold moment by moment. You 'be' your self-image on a momentary basis and there is nothing stopping you from dropping false or ineffective beliefs once you have seen through them. These beliefs are entirely conceptual and not grounded in what is actually going on. All the best on that journey

There is a gap between your understanding and mine that I feel I can't bridge. Eckhart's quote is not intended to shame you. What are you so defensive about? It seems to me that this has struck some core, something within you that you disapprove of and would rather not have illuminated. Perhaps the solution is to love that part a little more, to be thankful of the thief, for presenting you with this opportunity to better know yourself, and come to a more intimate and lovingly feeling understanding of yourself. Just know that there is no truth to your judgements of the thief and yourself that holds its ground in the face of loving understanding. By remaining open-minded you can be more embracive of your experience and perhaps will come to see the loveliness of those parts that are judged right now. 'Till then they will be loved beyond comprehension regardless. I hope this wasn't all too woowoo, I tried to tone it down a little. Have a lovely day

When being stolen from you resent being stolen from, obviously. But what do you resent in the thief? There's countless possibility. You can resent how he cares only for himself, does not have empathy for the victim, takes without consideration, does not strive for goodness, is not perfect, etc... Whatever is unresolved within you you will project onto the thief whom you likely don't know anything about. What if he steals because he can't pay for his child's cancer treatment. You don't know that. It's easy to see how your judgements are merely projections and indications of something off within you, in the case of the thief who you don't know, but very hard to see with people who are emotionally charged for you. All judgement is essentially futile and only telling of the one who judges. Perhaps it would be helpful if you shared some of the ways in which you judge others, or at least consider for yourself what that judgement reveals within you that might need some light shone on.

I don't like meditating straight before bedtime. If I meditate a second time during the day I prefer to take that meditation and create my evening from there. Overall it will take a while till you are able to do a one hour meditation effectively, and till then it might be better to do 30/30. An hour of meditation bears possibilities though that are hard to reach on 30 mins, once you can make good use of it.

Indeed it is, did you stumble over it by accident? That would be mad

Perhaps you would benefit from reading 'The Core Teachings of the Buddha' by Daniel Ingram. It has cleared many false assumptions I have held about meditation, how to do it and what to expect. The three trainings in Buddhism are concentration, insight and morality. You can train all those. So in meditation it is crucial to know that you should be training either concentration or insight. These are different techniques and very different in what they achieve.

Haha ^^ Thanks <3. I feel this forum does have a very masculine approach that I am currently shifting away from a little (just in time) in favour of a more balanced way of relating to myself and others and reality. A few months ago I would not have agreed with your statement the way I do now as I felt very at home in that environment. Now I kinda intuit how it could be if we were more life embracing and inclusive in this forum, and less intellectual, trying to fix others with our advice etc... though overall I am very grateful for this community of what seems to be very well-intended and insightful people, each struggling to make sense of this vast field Your thread about letting go in relationships is among my absolute favourites btw so much so that I am almost a little fanboying over here

Thank you for sharing. Though I kinda dislike the picture that it paints. I very much agree that you should not bombard people with non-dual insights they did not call for and that that can be harmful. But making people believe that after 'awakening' you will have no need for therapy can be just as harmful as it creates the idea that there was something wrong to be fixed before awakening, that is changed and so does not need fixing after. While in truth enlightenment does not change anything. Most people after awakening will remain to experience anger, sadness, loneliness and all the variety of human emotions. Seekers can easily be deluded into holding enlightenment as some kind of super-human ideal and thus dismiss their humanness. Use consciousness work to fully embrace your humanness, love your self rather than relentlessly try to go beyond it and see where that gets you. Shinzen Young went to a psychiatrist to sort out some problems he could not deal with after decades of being enlightened. It is very dangerous to think that being human ends with enlightenment. I enjoy your posts and shares and found you quite inspiring when I saw we are the same age mate,@LfcCharlie4 keep it up. Cheers.

Peter himeself learned the technique at Enlightenment-Intensives he attended in his early twenties, conducted and conceived by a man named Charles Berner.

Exactly my issue with Ralston. Though I resolved to postpone these doubts till I have seen much of what he has to teach. I don't nearly do but I already know that I don't resonate fully with him. He is awesome and inspiring and incredibly lucid though. 9.2/10. @Tonypop100 I have done one ChengHsin contemplation intensive and one entlightenment intensive. They are a great method. If you are working on 'Who am I' my advice will be this: make sure no to overlook the obvious. Don't go in there expecting to find god and truth and consciousness and no-self. The direct experience of Who you are is the most obvious thing in the world and the preliminary requirement to deeper consciousness work. Having that experience is so worth it. Try and get to the 'bus stop' or to the palace as quickly as possible, that is a state where everything that came up you are no longer truly invested in. From there you will be truly open, truly not-know and then just have faith that the experience will come. It is ultimately not in your hands. Don't beat yourself up when you loose the question just get back to it again. What you seek has always been true, always been there. Don't go into fantasy-land with your contemplation. Bring dedication and effort. Good luck on that Intensive, I hope your resolutions will be fulfilled. Ralston won't talk about this but to me it has been helpful to make a formal resolution to have that experience to the benefit of all beings/specific people in your life. I hope to be able to meet him when he comes to Europe this summer. Godspeed my friend.

Have done this 8 days and it was a great meditation-boost. The only advice I have is try and value consistency of practice over intensity. Don't go in at maximum effort right away that you then can't sustain. Take it easy in the beginning and try to get into the groove. Practice at the highest intensity that will allow you to virtually never break the technique ever during the day- that is the number one priority. Shinzen Young has some videos on this. He quotes the Buddha in one of those: "Consistency of practice will set you on fire." or something like that. Good luck and enjoy the retreat

That can happen and it is generally a good thing. Unless it makes you feel uncomfortable. I like to experiment around with that, take it to where the breath is virtually not noticeable, though I tend to get a little frightened there yet. Good luck on your further journey.