shantaram

absolutely jjer94!.. i can relate to it too. recently i've been trusting my nature a lot more and I feel so much more flow in what i do.. things that would have once bothered me or i would have made into big personal problems i find myself laughing about.. its like there just not important anymore. I've begun to trust my body and deepest intuitions and as a result its also becoming effortless and enjoyable for me to eat healthy and exercise frequently and i feel a lot less fear in situations that i know i would have felt crippled over not long ago. i know i have a lot to learn of course but i feel as if i have broken one of the bars off the prison of my mind and it's opened a whole new realm of possibilities.

I'm interested to see what everyone thinks about this... Is it even possible to self actualise while stuck in the mind-identified state? Would we naturally self-actualise when we are aware of our true selves and see through the illusion? A year ago when i started following leo's stuff i got really excited about self-improvement and i got quite strict with myself, but soon i realised i didn't know what improvement really meant to me and why i wanted to improve. I think improvement flows naturally and effortlessly from a place of acceptance of what is.

i've been lucid dreaming recently. in the last month i've woken up in 3 dreams.. I noticed my lucid dreaming was happening the same time i was becoming more conscious in my waking state.. i think maybe something about practising awareness during the day allowed me to wake up in the dreams. anyway after waking up and consciously deciding to go flying in my dreams something occured to me... what if waking up in real life is a bit like waking up in a dream.. what if unconsciousness in waking life is just like the typical non-lucid dreams and we could go flying in real life now (metaphorically speaking). what if we can play with real life like we do with dreams when we have enough conscious awareness to so

ha, great insight! would you consider it rational to rationalise something for the sole purpose of being right even if it means maintaining delusion and limiting yourself from seeing another perspective?

I have had almost the exact same experience recently.. its amazing reading your post, it feels like i wrote it in a way. I've also read the power of now, reading it again now, 3 years later. Ive spent 100s of hours listening to alan watts and have been following leo's stuff on here for just over a year now. Now i know the depressed feeling because i got the same thing after watching that video about no free will.. but after a while something clicked.. and i realised that the video was only depressing for me because I conceptualised it and turned into into mind-stuff which fed my egoic sense of self. I feel as if Leo is has explained/designed that video in a way that forces us to discover something for ourselves.. its almost like hes planting seeds if you know what i mean.. i think that i dont exist as a seperate entity at all.. it is just an illusion, a mere focus of conscious attention, an idea.. as story. and when leo says you dont have free will i think hes onto something. because how could 'I' have free will. But knowing all this is a great freedom in that you keep discovering who you are by 'flipping the switch' and focusing your conscious attention on the present and not on the story that your mind tries to keep adding to. like watts says.. we are like the flame, ever-changing but seemingly recognisable.