BipolarGrowth

Glad to hear things are unfolding in a beautiful and positive way man ❤️

I love swami sarvapriyananda, but his opinion on psychedelics is ignorant in the same way that a materialist’s view on spirituality is ignorant due to lack of direct experience. You can read theories then encompass them in your own worldview all you want. It won’t give you much knowledge of the thing itself. It mainly just reinforces bias which is essentially the path to plateauing insight. If you don’t have experience with the thing itself, you can’t really see the full picture. From my experience, the best action is to combine the methods if you feel drawn to psychedelics. Do all of the typical serious spiritual practice as well as psychs. If you don’t feel drawn to psychedelics, don’t do them. If you don’t like how they affect your life, stop.

Keep moving forward man. If you haven’t felt discouraged or like things aren’t working as they were advertised, it’s a sign of progress. Becoming disenchanted with the idea of moving on has a way of just moving you forward anyway. Lean into it. I’m in a really similar territory where I’m most likely 2nd or 3rd path if I had to guess. Less than a month ago I had a huge awakening which was more Love/Divinity than anything before which quickly lead me into three days of depersonalization and a huge dark night which lasted a little over two weeks. The stormy waters have passed though and lead to some pretty nice views and skillful reduction in suffering.

It has triggered many manic episodes and some deep depressive episodes. My bipolar disorder basically flipped on hardcore after I started meditating, doing psychedelics, and studying spirituality. I already had been diagnosed and had multiple episodes, but the episodes became stronger and more frequent once I was spiritually focused.

Go with what resonates. This exact video gave me some good progress 1-2 years ago.

Yeah, that’s the process in my eyes in a nutshell too. Would you rather be a chimpanzee or a human?

Well that’s good. How do you define suffering personally? I’ve noticed a huge shift for myself in how suffering is. It’s reduced heavily. I imagine by even higher paths it will be even less. “What's bringing non-doership and enlightenment to the next level has something to do with suffering outside of formal practice.” I agree with this totally. Maybe try using Krishna’s advice on devotional service with the added ability to practice it more effectively with your added vipassana and mindfulness skills.

Have you reached stream entry yet to be even remotely qualified to speak on how Buddhist practice may or may not be a path out of suffering? If not, you’re shooting in the dark and likely don’t know what you’re talking about.

Do you have some examples of illnesses you think are not as genetic as people think? In my experience with bipolar disorder, it’s known to have a large genetic component. Spiritual progress has both helped it and made it worse in many cases for me. Overall, spiritual practice has made it mostly worse from the eyes of others who do not understand spirituality and even for some who do, and from my perspective spiritual practice has made it much better although my life is more unstable in a sense than when I started.

The second video is a bit better IMO, so I recommend watching it first. Navigating Attainments & The Complexity of Awakening – Teachings From The Psych Ward #4 Suffering, The Ananda Method and Comparing Models of Enlightenment –Teachings From The Psych Ward #5 This is a great book which can be accessed for free if you’d like to learn about things I mention such as stream entry, nirodha samapatti, cessation, and other Buddhist terms. It has helped me tremendously in understanding the process of insight and awakening in Buddhism. https://www.mctb.org/ These videos do get a bit heavy on Theravada Buddhist jargon and maps, but they also discuss other enlightenment map systems. I also talk about some of my unique methods. I’ve found that a great way to put your ego on the chopping block after a deep spiritual experience is to make an honest (as much as you can be while likely still on a spiritual high to an extent) assessment of yourself. If it really does feel like an enlightenment realization, God realization, or something else, make the claim confidently to yourself and consciously watch how that changes over time. I found myself having many emotional responses based on the ego trying to defend its new level of specialness that it wants to feel. The process for me was to feel these as fully and consciously as possible and research maps from other spiritual traditions and go back to the maps I was using for more clear understanding. These videos were recorded 1-2 months ago. A lot more mature progress has been made since. My enlightenment realizations have been put in new context. I understand how enlightenment realizations relate to suffering and normal life in a more nuanced way. In the end, I’m incredibly confident that I’ve at the minimum reached stream entry according to the Theravada maps. Reaching cessation several times has made spiritual progress come much more quickly, and I would encourage people truly motivated to awaken to learn about it and potentially pursue it as a goal if it feels right for you. Please keep in mind that maps are only a very small part of spirituality. There are many drawbacks and advantages to using them. Lastly, these recordings were done while I was still in a semi-manic state related to my bipolar disorder diagnosis, so keep that in mind. There’s some added goofiness, immaturity, and enhanced idiosyncrasies among other odd things due to this. The “enlightened being” designation you see on the screen was put there by my friend and editor. It was also egged on by my enhanced ego at the time. If you want to discuss Buddhist techniques or have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM.

I discovered several years ago that for me as soon as you reach them the dream ends. I used to have nightmares with grays in them all the time before that. I can clearly remember I was trapped in my childhood house with one, and I had no options other than to confront it. That’s how I discovered the way to end the dream. Now they are no longer nightmares. The last time this dream happened I just got pissed off rather than scared lol.

Focus on what you really desire most and become that.

If I saw a gray alien in physical reality in waking life, I’d have a large fear response at least in the first few moments. When I see them in dreams, I immediately go to beat their ass with no fear. It’s interesting that I always act this way in dreams. There is an intuitive knowledge kept in the dream that I can’t be harmed by them. There’s no difference between real and imaginary for the most part. There are different tiers of experience with maybe many more beyond just dreaming and this reality. Dreams are more open to mental control in practice if we look into lucid dreaming. Being more mentally flexible doesn’t make them fake or unimportant.

I never said it was trivial. It’s quite important.

I think grounding yourself in bodily sensations could help you in the short term. Wouldn’t the possibility that Jesus Christ is the one operating things be just as plausible as a demon btw? Maybe you’re an angel spiritually blessing all of existence with radiant love forever no matter what experience you’re having. Do you see where I’m going? What you don’t know is simply not known. Rely on direct experience to know what’s going on, and realize that even direct experience itself doesn’t explain itself fully or mean you 100% understand what’s going on. You’re going to have to make peace with the unknown at some point. Even a legit enlightened person has more unknown things in life than known things.

Directly helping people who are already interested to raise in consciousness will probably be more effective in the end IMO. The growth of more advanced and effective masculinity happens rather organically as consciousness goes up. It’s still not a bad project if you do your research. Good luck.

The new masculinity is to be confident enough in one’s masculinity to throw forced categories like masculinity out of the window and be what feels authentic to you.

There are definitely powerful and legit psychics. They choose to use the cards. I don’t think people with those abilities would use something ineffective so often. I’ve done a 20 or so card reading for someone when I was in a conducive state, and they were pretty sure I had really uncovered some good clarity and answers. I have to be in the right state for it to feel like I’m really connecting to give someone answers personally. You have to realize that even if tarot cards have zero spiritual legitimacy they can still be used quite effectively in a psychological sense. Just give it a try.

I can provide counter arguments, but I haven’t slept. I started typing it out and realized I am unlikely to change your personal opinion. I’ll give a quick answer. I qualified the first post a bit more to what I was meaning. My point was that your lack of results with psychedelics is the main thing causing your view. Go do some research on MDMA helping with PTSD done by the MAPS organization. Too many people thinking psychedelics are all bad is going to result in more harm than good. There are studies on cancer patients overcoming the fear of death so they can live out their lives in far more peace and acceptance. Serotonergic psychedelics clearly help depression in ways typical antidepressants can’t. Magic mushrooms help people quit smoking at higher success rates than traditional methods. It goes on and on if you’re willing to research it with an open mind. There are plenty of risks of psychedelics. There are plenty of people who probably shouldn’t use them. There are also miraculous benefits and people whose lives wouldn’t be nearly as meaningful without them.

Stop seeking enlightenment intentionally for now. Don’t repress old patterns to do practices which seem natural. It’ll just create unhelpful resistance. Mindfulness is your best friend right now if the insights are causing you distress. It will get you over the struggle if you’re able to rest into it.

This is deluded when expanded to the general population of people who want to use them for serious spiritual work. If they aren’t you’re favorite thing, don’t do them. There’s a reason they’ve been used for spirituality in many cultures for thousands of years.

I love taking spirituality to its limits in my own unique way. Teaching is also something I love. The bodhisattva vow is incredibly close to my heart. To impart something of tremendous value to people who desire it and are ready to work toward it is huge. My ultimate goal is to explore Divinity, teach the methods to reach it, and live in better and better accordance with what is discovered in those unfathomable realms.

This is the conclusion of what your contemplation/intuition is leading you to IMO. Fruition (phala in Pali) is the fruit of all the meditator’s hard work, the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness, nirvana, nibbana, ultimate potential, or whatever extrapolative and relatively inaccurate name you wish to call something utterly non-sensate. In this non-state, there is absolutely no time, no space, no reference point, no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no awareness, no background, no foreground, no nothingness, no somethingness, no body, no this, no that, no unity, no duality, and no anything else. “Reality” stops cold and then reappears. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/15-fruition/ Please also note that, like Fruition, there is no experience at all during NS. There is no time, no space, no something, no nothing, not anything at all. Just as a desktop computer shuts down totally when you press the power button, so too with anything to do with experience in NS. I have friends who have talked about something they got into where they could still feel time passing, and that is definitely not it. NS is like the ultimate rest for the mind, something far beyond even deep sleep, as even a few seconds in it leaves one with a massive feeling of having gone extremely deep in a way nothing else can match. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-v-awakening/37-models-of-the-stages-of-awakening/the-cessation-of-perception-and-feeling-nirodha-samapatti/

I see a lot of value in “….mystery….” as a pointer. Even “present moment experience” implodes on itself as soon as it’s examined. Why is present moment experience good or true? Well, let me “leave” it to tell you why it’s so great ? And yeah, I get that you can’t necessarily leave it, but you can only speak about it by pulling on past/future. Experience does run off distinctions as much as it runs off a lack of distinction. They’re both the same thing which is neither a thing nor a non-thing.

8 years. The most profound single insight is probably that enlightenment and liberation can never be lost — as far as the process which drives this to occur. You realize that if you are truly Liberated at the moment of Liberation, your child self was Liberated. All past or future selves are. The process of enlightenment is so ever-present and True that there is actually nothing to reference enlightenment against. And in that moment enlightenment itself falls away and is seen to have been one of the biggest illusions on the whole spiritual path. But this doesn’t mean an appearance of enlightenment won’t still persist and that those spiritual techniques won’t still lead to an overall better life. You have to walk through the mist of enlightenment according to the best of teachings and methods to see that the mist was empty. Once you cross the threshold of the mist, you see there’s no mist in front of you, and you can no longer see any mist behind you. The work was already done, but you had to seriously prepare yourself to walk through to actually realize that the work was done.