Endangered-EGO

The answer to the biggest question might be realising the absurdity that occurs right after questioning the question. What is the why?

@Natasha China is going to take taiwan like by infiltrating their politics step by step. Russia just recently backed down from ukraine. Why would they do it now.

@Leo Gura Okay, I get what you're saying. What we are doing by funding it is just accelerating the process of progess in Qatar. So the deaths are necessary for progress and either it happens fast or slow, but the damage stays the same. However Qatar has the highest GDP per capita In the world and has the worst unequality of all. More infrastructure and progress isn't going to make progress in that region. Every western country gives a shit about labor workers, and they ALL have less money for security than Qatar. So why make the worldcup in a country that is clearly owned by regressive ideological oligarchy. Do it in france. Do it in the US, russia or even china. We just fund a small group of people that clearly don't have the same value as we do. Do we want the richest people that clearly don't give a shit to have even more power? No, and that's reason enough to boycott them.

@Leo Gura Yes I get it, but it's entertainment. The math doesn't add up, it's like 10 people a day are dying for 3 years, for the world cup to happen in rich middle eastern countries. We wilk have 3 months of entertainment for that. It's completely unnecessary. Fuck Qatar. China would protect it's slave labors better than Quatar. A lot of people don't buy nestle products because african workers have to live in poverty. Just compare it with annual US work related deaths per capita. The difference is insane. Fifa, the apparent non-profit has no reason to cause that much damage for the world cup to take place in Qatar. I guess some people got paid a good amount of untraceable money.

@Leo Gura well what about the 10 000 workers that died building infrastructure. That's 3 times the casualties of 9/11. Hidden under the rug. However there's no escaping the worldcup in EU. You should see what happens during public viewings... Beer is raining during goals. Incredible moments. I just hope some big players will boycott it. Conscience vs culture.

@RMQualtrough YES, cessation and dissolution comes with a partial or total loss of memory, but nothingness doesn't, you're literally awake in the dream. Its not like being asleep or under anesthesia, you're fully there in eternity. That's the peace you're missing. You remember it also, there's no loss in memory. The key thing is you can't differentiate the waking stste from the dream state. That's the experience needed to realise that reality is not distinguishable from a dream. Which is 100% nonduality. No edging. I have no experience with psychedelics, so I couldn't tell you, I also don't advise taking psychedelics. Just know that cessation and dissolution is TOTALLY different from nothingness. There's more to "IT"

@RMQualtrough have you experienced the nothingness? Dissolution or cessation is very different imo.

Ok, I get what you're saying. We are not the layers of the onion, whe are the dream/structure of the onion. If you think you can only edge nonduality but not enter it, then you haven't had a real full glimpse yet. Because once you are there there's just nothingness, the dream, divinity or oneness. You can be in 100% nonduality. I have had glimpses of it and I guarantee it. Ask enlightened people, they are going to tell you, you're all the way IT. Even the glimpses show you that it's no edge its IT. There no closeness or approximation to it. You can be full INTO it. It's absolute, I can't communicate it, it's absolute. Once you're close, merge with it, let it fill everything, surrender to it or whatever your spiritual practice tells you. I promise, ask enlightened people (I'm not I just had glimpses of a part of "IT")

@RMQualtrough That's why, confronted with questions that ask towards things in thst direction, zen masters just answer "Mu", because no words can describe it. Why use words to describe the meta-experience if words or communication is part of the dream. You see how senseless that is? A lot of people here, including me, get what you're saying because we have experienced IT. But that's like explaining color to people who have eyes and expecting blind people to have an idea. But the map is not the territory. It only makes sense if you have experienced it. Which means that only those who know it, get what you say. If you say you can't experience it,you only confuse those who havent awoken (had an experience of it) yet. In fact: something is happening, you transcend reality, and there's nothing wrong with calling it an "experience" or a change in perception, because from the dreaming self, that's what it is. Saying these things is going to confuse people who havent got it, and people who have been through it will translate it into concepts. So why bother

I'm an alcoholic. Take my word. I am kind of spiritually lucky. Experienced nothingness with 16 and remember infinity during feaver when I was a child. I drink 2-3 liters of beer every day. Even when you're sober you cannot meditate. You need abstinance to have your maximum level of concentration/consciousness. Alcohol makes you depressed. When you're drunk you can't be conscious, and thd day(s) after you're drunk you can't be conscious or meditate. Of course it depends on the quantity. But this only damages your "progress" tremendously. I have an EEG at home I can show you the difference in brainwaves when I am drunk, when I drank the day before and when I am sober for a few days. The difference is ENORMOUS. So take my advice alcohol will not bring you 1 millimeter further, in fact it will bring you miles away from consciousness. It's ridiculous how big of an impact it makes. If you need further proof I can document it with my EEG and my personal experience. But until I find the motivation to do it, you'll just have to trust me when I say that for enlightenment/awakening, alcohol is the biggest hindrance possible (unless you take other drugs I haven't tried)

Why make it so complicated. Just call it an experience even though there is no experienceR. Is a change in perception not an experience? I kind of get what you're pointing to, but it probably doesn't help those who haven't had a significant awakening yet. Nothingness transcends time. So there's no going in and out because the dream structure transcends the dream time and dream causality. However, from the subjective perspective the dream starts and the dream ends once you're back into the dream. Knowing that you're dreaming transcends the content of a dream but it still happens within a dream. You know that you know within a dream. So it's still something you go through within the dream. You can't lucid dream without a dream. Call it a meta experience then... I don't mean to attack your hypothesis of god, but this is more confusing than useful. It's describing the moon instead of pointing the finger towards the moon. I also don't like refering to awakening as God, because people have misconstrued God and have underlying ideas about her. (I say "her" deliberately misleading to confuse people so that they get that God doesn't have any attributes [like gender].)

@Giulio Bevilacqua Don't worry man, most of us go through that. First time is most terrifying until you realise that you're not gonna act different or do stupid things. Your natural self is perfect. The fear is there because you feel like you lose control. 1. You never had control, now you simply get it. 2. You're not going to do anything stupid or dangerous, because fear is there to protect you. If you feel ready for it, do the little thought experiment. "Why don't you insult one of your friends, if there's nobody controling, what keeps you from doing that?" Because your natural empathy that's always present doesn't want to hurt anyone. There doesn't need to be someone controling it. What keeps you from hurting yourself? FEAR! You're afraid because you don't trust yourself, but the fact that fear is present prooves the absurdity of needing to be afraid of "it" because it's only reason to exist is to protect you. So once you freak out, just feel into the fact that your higher self protects you with fear. It should cancel itself out. Moreover, ego will come back, probably tommorow, and then you'll integrate the experience, and then it will go back again, this time with no fear at all. Maybe just mild confusion, and then ego comes back again and again. I loved reading your post because it reminded me of my first wu wei terror haha. You're going to want wu wei back once you lose it. And once it comes back you're going to be in heaven (on earth) literally. There's no possibility of fear in heaven, because everything is simply perfect. Then ego comes back, but with knowledge.

Thanks to you guys,I managed to go through the nauseous cloudy feeling in my Body! Awakening? Okay, so I mentioned that sometimes when I am close to awakening this rotten feeling of discomfort comes through my Body, and I always used to stop when it occured and then felt bad about it. Today I went through with it. I just let it expand and noticed the fear and feeling of unease expecting an awakening or some kind of mystical experience, my heart started pounding and then: nothing happened. I expected some fireworks at the end of going through that thing I struggled with for months, but nothing at all, my heart calmed down and I just continued meditating. Then after my meditation app stopped I sat there for a while, eyes closed, and I don't entirely remember what happened (even though it was 10 minutes ago). But the darkness in front of my eyes became white and I was kind of absorbed into that "loud silence" After a few minutes I opened my eyes and was really confused looking around the room, I got a little bit nervous and then my normal sense of self returned. No bliss, no dream-awakening, no pleasure, no pain, no nothingness. What is that "experience" I went through? I did self-inquiry followed by 20 minutes breath-concentration practice. How am I supposed to classify it, if I cannot remember it correctly? Is that cessation? A jhana? A seizure (I hope not lol)?

@Godishere It's just like: it doesn't matter. You don't expect children to behave like adults, but you also shouldn't expect adults to always behave like adults. I also must say, I have a kind of superiority complex when it comes to anger, jealousy, blaming, complaining etc. I view it as immature childish egoic behavior.

@Godishere You use them to train your spirituality, or you get away from them. I stopped trying to fix people, that don't even know how fucked up they are and then they develop a hostility towards you. I sometimes enjoy training equanimity when I am confronted with unbearable people. It's funny what my mind does.

@The0Self This was the 4th jhana apparently, I am unfortunately not really able to enter the first one. Years ago, I was able to have Access concentration and had a lot of piti and could enter it briefly but now, I have barely any piti/pleasure, and my access concentration doesn't seem to be nearly as good as years ago.

@kinesin I just asked the same thing in a shinzen young forum, I was told that this could be the 4th jhana (equanimity). And apparently this purification of the rotten feeling is part of the purgatory in abrahamic religion. The first time i felt that was the fear of nothingness/dark night of the soul. This disgusting energy in my body. Yes you're right, now that I've been through it, I guess that I don't have to fear it anymore. I always backed off before. Now unfortunately I didn't have any change in perception or enlightenment, but I might have digested a part of my shadow. But damn why does that feel so bad. It's not an emotion or a bodily sensation, I honestly can only describe it as a rotten burning sensation.

I've heard that this dude sells overpriced boxes to vulnerable people that are desperate to talk to a deceased family member and then delete their reviews and comments. However I didn't research it properly. Just read it on a forum. So imo he's probably a sociopathic con artist.

I feel like Leo's video was too much for me. Especially the synchronicity, esoterik "you created your own path to wake up to yourself, but you also do everything to hide the truth from yourself." This is nonfalsifiable, hypnotising and strange loopey. It's clear where God would hides from me, if he wanted to stay hidden in plain sight. Behind the insanity of a psychedelic trip. However that might send me straight to the psychiatry. So let's be honest I'm not going to do it. If God realisation is as traumatising as the nothingness (without love), then I only want it to escape the suffering from daily life. Why would I even want to know? If the behind the scenes ruin the play, it's no guarantee that it'll be permanent. Or that it's the best case scenario. I already tried to stop meditating, stop asking questions, stop contemplating stop watching spiritual videos and stop doing self inquiry. It never worked. I also tried to convince myself that this forum is a very deceptive cult, but that's just me fighting with myself and I end up here again and again. I just don't know what to do, I don't even know what question I should ask. Tell me how to stop this neurotic chase for truth. Now I want to contemplate why I started the search, and why I want to stop it, and I'll end up right here again.

@The0Self I'm not sure if you are familiar with the nothingness, or in my situation DP/DR. But once you have it, nothing is real anymore. Nothing seems real... Keep in mind, I was 16yo at that time. And I have researched how people behave when they are confronted with nothingness. Basically, they do stupid shit as if it was a dream, because it is a dream. You basically just behave as usual, but sometimes you say: fuck it it's a dream. And it changed me. In ego terms, I make the correlation between this and behavioural changes, so the Now is still absolute, but still it happened. There is no doubt that such experiences change your personality, and fuck you up deeply if you aren't prepared. It's like thinking "I am definately crazy, but nobody would understand that, so why tell the dream people about it" Everything happening on it's own is an awakened state, but not comparable with nothingness. The ego always reacts to changes in consciousness. Euphoric highs, or fighting stuff, or going crazy. It often depends on the awakening. Furtunately, I am out of that state now.

Yes, that's actually one type of "meditation" I enjoy doing. Like sitting, or laying on my back and not caring about anything, once I reach that state of being, I actually feel what you could call contentment, without reaching profound meditative states. @Tim Ho The heaven awakening I had is not really a metaphysical truth, but more like a change in perspective + no-ego state. Not as incredible as Kundalini bliss or nothingness. Let's hope My head will show itself to me I also stopped torturing myself with SDS meditation, cold water showers etc, because I have a notion, that spirituality is a path made out of suffering, for it to be transcended, which is a very unhealthy perspective on life. I am aware, that once I let go of strong physical pain, I enter a state of equanimity, but that's harder for sneaky stuff, and I often don't see the point of that. @Gianna I don't only watch Leo's videos, I'm also in shinzen young's fb community, but I just love this forum too much. I am sorry you feel that way. It's really hard to remember the highs, when we are low.

I wished I had buddhist background or anything before I had a spontaneous nothingness a few years ago. I was just abusing the effect of the no self for egoic reasons, got really manipulative, provocative, outright deceptive, because, yeah this dream has no rules/limitations, why not do whatever I want. All this shit I did, actually backfired hard on me. Because once the dream feels real again, you have accumulated all that karma, all those lies and shame and guilt will come up. I'm so sorry for what I did to some people. But at least, now I know I will not do that again. (I hope though)

@Nahm Yes, I would call it peace though. I am not always able though unfortunately.

@Nahm oh damn I could sing a whole song about that. I've struggled with alcohol, social and general anxiety, burnout and depression a lot. I also failed things, wasted time. And it made me feel like every step forward I make puts me 2 steps back. Everything I want to accomplish seems insurmountable. I have this subconscious worldview of life being a losing battle, the further you go more suffering and struggling you'll encounter. So either give up or continue losing. I could phrase it like Allan Watts: "Life is a problem to be solved". In order to avoid as much of bad-outcome as possible. I am of course aware that this view of reality isn't going to fulfill me, or help me. But it's the subconscious deductions I have made from the traumatic things I have experienced in my life. This is neither "True" or even practical, because believing it causes more suffering than not thinking about it at all. I also tried to convince myself of the esoteric stories people tell me, that my soul has chosen this lifetime in order to make the experiences it wants to make, but I don't really buy into that.

@The0Self Maybe reading fewer books would be a good idea. The pandemic/lockdown has had a bad effect on my mental health. I would like to see other things than my appartment. @dflores321 That's reassuring. A big subconscious thought about spirituality is that there's a lot of suffering even though it doesn't have to be. @Husseinisdoingfine Me too, questioning reality and having insights led me to nihilism. Mostly because buddhism talks a lot about suffering and emptying the joys of life. @Nahm Some Meditations are really fun, especially when having awakenings/ego dissolution/ etc. But other kinds are more feeling like work/chores. For example when I am overwhelmed by negative emotions, I get really frustrated. @RedLine I'm going to do that once things start to open up again. @Mu_ I'm going to watch a few of his videos. I found Rupert Spira very helpful for my spiritual neurosis. @Eternity Thank you, it's those type of teachings and realisation that bring me down to earth again, and not take "it" too seriously. I've downloaded that book, I'll read it one day, but it's pretty difficult to understand everything in it's entirety. @Ry4n The thing is, it's not that I don't make progress, it's that it seems pointless, I had awakenings, but they pass. I've experienced days of equanimity but it passes away, and then I am here again. The highs and the lows. I hope I'll get used to it.