Endangered-EGO

@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.

That's actually true... I already punch myself with less intensity than a few months before. Let's call it progress.

My new chore now is to enjoy the spiritual chore. That's how I end up at the same place over and over again. Call me pessimistic, but I believe that If I can quit, life's going to bring me back to spirituality again.

Shinzen young - I don't know where this conversation would lead, but this would be very interesting. He was the only reliable source (I found) for explaining states of consciousness I experienced, and how to continue. "Theories of everything with Curt Jaimungal" - he goes very deep. Bernardo kastrup Sam Harris. I'm following sam harris longer than I am following you, which means that his audience might be more agnostic and/or open minded than you would think.

I disagree. The answer is turtles all the way down. You can split it indefinately. Then you reach the plank length. Then you go into energy. What is energy. Well energy is fueled by 5th dimension waves of patterns. which is fueled by 6th dimension stuff and it goes on forever. It doesn't end with nothingness. Ken wilber said it. It's holons. If you go a trillion orders of magnitide deeper or smaller, you don't get closer to nothing, you just go deeper into the smallness or in causality. At least that's what I believe.

This work unfortunately reaches deeply fucked up people because of all the suffering they went through. I get that you cannot help them or take responsibility for it, and that's pretty bad. Suffering leads to spirituality, and if you don't want to take the responsibility for it (which you shouldn't), I would recommend you advise them/us regularly to use conventional methods for mental health. This of course isn't the perfect solution, but at least it's not a gamble. Anyway, this is a tricky territory, it can be bad, let's not make it worse. The only reason I don't teach is because I'm not sure I would cause more good than harm.

@Leo Gura I really loved your guest appearance. It gives publicity and it opens up the bubble of this community too. And teachers absolutely NEED to communicate with each other. For the sake of everyone. Just so you know what podcast I would absolutely love to see you in in case you are interested in: -Sam Harris: This would be really entertaining and you might actually be able to make him shift from his materialism agnosticism towards deeper understanding. He knows about epistemology and philosophy, and you do too. You will probably "lose the debate" by playing by his rules, but he had a pretty interesting conversation with rupert spira about conciousness, and rupert didn't even go deeply into it. He says that consciousness is an emergent property to matter, like flow is to water. This is not more logical than the alternative Idealism. If you were able to pinpoint the exact things he should question, this would help me (and him, and you) enormously. -Bernardo kastrup: Well Idealism vs god. He does a lot of podcasts recently. - Theories of everything with Curt Jaimungal: He asks the RIGHT questions, he asks all of them, and he will probably ask questions none of us would think about. Very underrated podcast. - Joe rogan of course: The world wants to know. Let's talk about aliens and DMT. -Shinzen Young: THIS. Probably the most underrated teacher today. He has an algorithmic solution to every step of the path. If I had to chose one podcast you do, this one is it. What do you think about potential conversations with them?

In case you guys missed it: Finally! I'm so happy to see you on podcasts now! I'm really curious. What are your next podcasts? Are you going to go on joe rogan too?

I just had this insight, no awakening prior to it. But it's obvious. The nothingness is just too much of a single nothing. Infinite singularity of ITself. Why would it stay like that? Why, wouldn't it take the form of a human/creature to escape it's boring meaningless void of eternity. As Leo said: It limits/forgets itself to be able to experience itself. Being dead/God isn't fun, this life is made for not wallowing as the nothingness all the "time". This gives my life an entirely different perspective. Damn this is the thing god wants. God loves my life including it's drama. I don't need to take refuge into no-self, because I "escaped" the nothingness for this particular illusion! Oh damn stupid me thought I wouldn't choose to reincarnate again, guess I was wrong. One thing still bothers me. The bad stuff. Suffering is terrifying.

I thought about that. I don't get how such a choice can be made. I'm aware it doesn't take a decision like the ego self, but it "made it happen". I have been all the way into the nothingness (without love though) I get that, but I didn't feel the need to explain eternity. @m0hsen Yes I meant what you wrote in human language. Because it wants egoic projection, impermanence and meaning. There's absolutely nothing in the singularity. We dream this as a sandbox, to play. @Rajneeshpuram I don't know... People would have taken care of me I guess even if I couldn't function. It's the absence of it, not the opposite. Damn words haha. It's "empty" of fun.

@CultivateLove made me laugh out loud ^^ Why didn't I see this coming

@BipolarGrowth Well maybe not intensively on the 3D world, but I know that I believe the material world to exist just because of sight. and 3D is just the representation of the image-world I am in. Could you please list a bunch of questions to ask about the spacial dimensions? I did a lot of thought experiments with infinite dimensions, like the 2D flat earth starts again once you reach the end (which is the 3D globe earth), and the 3D globe earth starts again once you reach the end (time happens and ever time you go round the earth it is a new earth because of change/time, which led me to the assumption of 4D time just starting again differently in 5D whatever this 5D is supposed to be.

Well, 1. Merging with the objects doing focused self inquiry. (hard for me though) 2. Noting the vanishings of experience. (easy) This leads awareness back to the source.

I can recommend it too, I ran a few times, unfortunately I don't have a lot of endurance but as soon as I found my pace I tend to enter the effortless autopilot where the body runs on it's own and it feels so great. However, I believe that the work is done during normal meditation, and that the Body naturally drops in that state while running, due to practice. Sometimes I am in that state for entire days, and what also can put you in such a state is a sauna. Sometimes when I am in the sauna, for a while, I stay with the pain(s) just sitting, and then suddenly there's a shift, and I don't mind the pain(s) anymore. There's no suffering at all. I always thought this was because I was about to pass out, but no that's just equanimity. I would love to just be able to stay in that state all the time, it feels like paradise lol.

I know someone who is permanently in a dissociative no-ego state, he said that he is easily convinced or manipulated because his ego is not vigilant most of the time. Some teachers who enter a relationship with people who are not interested in spiritual practice, tend to change for the worse, because the other persons ego has a strong influence on how they act. At least that's what I heard.