Endangered-EGO

@iameternallife Yes I believe meditation will be more "letting awareness do it's thing" for now @Nahm I am sure it is not the absolute, it is not even the nothingness. By 'catch it', do you mean "be mindful and equanimous with it"? I don't know what's going to happen, the only thing I can do is observe, before letting new thought patterns create themselves.

@IAmReallyImportant If you want to know for sure, do exactly that: Ask her on what topic she can find out something you ALREADY know, and only you can know. So nothing on the internet, no previous conversations, no help from outside possible. If you can, you should chose different environment than usual. As soon as she sees something and is sure: She can tell you the subject, or the question she asked to your soul/aura whatever. She can choose the specific subject, anything she is sure about of course. now you write everything down that is true to you from that question. If she says something, about: "Oh I feel resistance", or if she is wrong, she just might tell you, that she read things about you that you didn't know about yourself. Do this experiment, if she passes, she either is a real psychic or an incredible mentalist/magician.

@IAmReallyImportant What i meant was way more radical. Your mind makes EVERYTHING UP. There are just more dense things like in the material world, and less dense things like dreams. What people mean with real or not, is substance in the material world. But how the mind sees the world is a made up story, that the mind created to learn, adapt etc. You imagine the Body while feeling it most of the time, which is of no substance. The imagination of body part pictures is of no substance, the feeling is a outside perception. Distance and depht are of no substance, it is ENTIRELY created by the mind in order to function. Those constructs of the mind are most of the time useful for survival in the broadest term possible. When you see things, those could be either "hidden" and you have a 6ths paranormal sense, OR constructs of the mind that could be a bug or a feature. If you find someone who perceives the same things without communication, it has substance, is provable, and proves a hidden dimension of objective reality. However you know there could be an infinite amount of realms and every one has an access to a different realm, that would make it difficult. Is psychotherapy true? How is this any different than tarot card readings. In my opinion they are the same, just different methods that can help. How can you know something is true? rationality alone doesn't make it. But you can make some guesses to stay sceptic. Does you girlfriend get money from you, or any comfort-stuff that isn't emotional, she could stay for? Does a psychic makes money from people? Does a psychic strongly believe she/he helps people with some superstitious believes? Does a psychic maybe keep people who suffer from schizophrenia from going to see a psychiatrist? Is this not dangerous? Would you rather have the real be true, or willing to accept that those hallucinations are neither from a realm nor useful, an being seen as a crazy person who needs to go to a psychiatry? I just described the current society, I have no intention to insult you, but if you suffer from those hallucinations (or whatever you call the access to the paranormal realm), in a non-metaphysical sense, it is psychosis/schizophrenia. It might be more comfortable to believe a psychic than a psychologist, psychiatrist, but I wouldn't replace the psychologist with a psychic .

@Harikrishnan There is a difference between knowing the unlimited possibilities of the universe it's infinite dimensions, mystery of consciousness, and not allowing frauds an con artists to scam naive people. Again, not saying there is no-paranormal, but what A LOT of psychics do is at best misleading or at worst exploitation.

That's the power of your mind, that actually works. If you believe in it it works best, but even if you don't believe in it, the suggestion still has an effect on you. Have you ever had sleeping pills? Just buy sleeping pills and if you know you can take them, you worry less about sleep and don't even need to take them to fall asleep. That's not even placebo, that's psychology. I have done soul travel countless times, you can view it as "materially true" or as a "mind-true". The mind is it's own thing. It tells stories about everything, how the mind perceives the physical world is a story. the story is true for the mind. However the story created by the mind of it's soul, is like a translation of it's fears, ambitions, desires etc. In that sense it is true for the mind. But there is an objective difference between the objective reality. If you see a demon in front of you, it is true for your mind, if you cannot touch it it is only true for what you see and the story behind it. If other people don't sense it it isn't true for their mind. The mind tells stories, some stories are more adapted for the objective world, and others are not so adapted. The same is with dreams, they are true for the mind in that sense. But not true in the objective material medium of perception.

It is funny, I was just about to make a post about psychics, that I don't believe anything enlightened people say about the "objective" world. And That I needed proof for the paranormal, especially things about psychics. Things I don't consider paranormal anymore is synchronicity, even though I have absolutely no idea how that works or how this can be possible, aliens, and the healing power of the self. I'm gonna play the sceptic to show you the possible scam: Do you know that your crown chakra is wide open? Or do you believe it after she told you? That's not something provable. You know that everyone who even thinks about going to a psychic doesn't do it out of rationality, but out of curiosity and intuition. Everyone who goes to the psychic will say that what she mentioned about intuition/insight/downloading information/reading people's emotions. Would say that it is 100percent accurate to them. People who don't believe in the paranormal don't go to psychics, and even those who don't believe in the paranormal them have some kind of "paranormal" experience, they just forget it or think they were tricked by their own mind. Having visions is synchronicity, again I don't know what that is, but a lot of people experience it, it is weird, but it saying that there is synchronicity in your life, doesn't make me a psychic, and it doesn't make her a psychic either. If she had specifically mentioned that you had seen UFO's I would not have made that point. But I guess she didn't, or didn't directly read it out of you. Psychics also use a sequence of things, how you react to previous answers, to guess the next thing they can read out of you. For example (I of course don't know if that is the case) you told her that you have seen UFOS, and she tells you that your soul came from some kind of alien race, that was saved. If you agreed that you had visions of the past, she would have told you that you were a magician in Atlantis or some small deviation of that. Reading someone's personality, is a skill, but not a paranormal one. Some people are really good at it, she read you, not your soul. Or did she tell you something so specific like : your attachement anxiety comes from the fact that your grandmother left you 10 years ago after being diagnosed with lung cancer, and she chose to stay in hospice. I have made countless "soul travel" in a mild hypnotic state. It's just the mind creating them. However an enlightened woman I know claimed you can travel through dimensions when you let go of the nothingness, which is real. I doubt that, honestly. She once spoke russian while being asleep without having learned it. Not sure about if that's the case or just an illusion. Siddhis are also not proven to work by outside observers. I don't say real psychics are not a thing, I have just not seen anything that I would consider proof. Things that I would consider proof are specific things, you write down before on a sheet that are most important to you, and then you see if the psychic tells you those things specifically. If not then it's too general. Self proclaimed psychics all do their research before, those that do that, are scam artists and deserve to be fined for misleading people and scamming them. If someone here claims to be a psychic, then tell me what topic you would like to read from me, I'll write down a lot about the topic, and then compare it after the reading. And I am not paying any money for this experiment, if it works, we might find a way to make it provable and measurable in a quantified way.

Hello, I have a questions about some self inquiry methods that work for you. I have had a lot of awakenings and semi-awakenings (how I call them) I define the semi-awakenings by the thinning out of reality. The sense of detachements and unsubstantiateness of the objects of perception. I find myself most of the time IN the illusion of the ego, and still trapped by it. I have had a lot of sober awakenings, some of them were so beautiful, others were maybe even more incredible but not necessarily beautiful. Unfortunately the awakening always comes down, and I am trapped into the ego elusion again. So I am asking what methods do you guys find very useful to make the ego/reality "thinner". Its kind of frustrating to remembering that the suffering that comes with the ego is illusion, but it feels real. In some sense I am an awakening-junkie, because awakening is the only thing that is really satisfying me deeply. I'm sure I am not the only one who struggles with this, and struggling with not-being free of the ego makes it even worse. How do I deal with the ego desperately trying to awakening, while simoultaneaously trying not to try to awaken? What methods/habits do you guys use to make reality thinner that can work 24/7. It doesn't even need to be very noticeable. For now I don't really want to use psychedelics, because I don't want to break through with violence to avoid the dark night of the soul. I'm sure there will be a time for that though.

@Moksha I just tried to focus on the gaps, however they happen mostly when I attain effortless concentration in meditation. It's also kind of tricky, because I tend to want to have a goal in meditation but during meditation I always have to give that up to have a good meditation. I'm curious, have you ever tried shinzen youngs meditation on expansion and contraction? It's like meditation on the entire "flow of perception" the gap-the appearing of the object-the expansion of the object-the contraction of the object- the disappearing of the object. Its just makes you observe the relationship between the awareness and the object within. Apparently after a lot of practice you can realise the expansion and contraction of an object simoultaneously. I'm not there yet, but I believe this is the most awareness-stimulating (for the lack of a better word) meditation I have tried. Do you perceive objects like that too? or just the discontinuity?

@Moksha I get what you are saying with spaceousness, Adyashanti talk about that, and shinzen young teaches to notice the "gone" and the objects expanding and contracting within the space of awareness. The problem, I believe, is identification with the "spiritual thoughts". Realising that those were just thoughts made meditation effortless yesterday. The gaps between thoughts were way longer than usual even though there was no effort in meditation yesterday. About continuity, I noticed that when I focus on the discontunuity of thoughts I tend sometimes to realise that the awareness of the external word is waaayy less continuous I once found myself cooking asking myself "How the fuck did my hands take the pan out of the shelf put olive oil and meat into it without anyone controling it." That was probably the longest discontinuity I noticed, I also feared I had lost memory, but I was just very much in the now, and could remember when trying. I do that practice noticing the gaps sometimes, but it is often fuelen by the desire to get somewhere I am not, by thoughts I identify with, so I am a bit lost with the though things, I just started contemplating and experimenting with thoughts. If I happen to notice the gaps during meditation that's okay. I'll contemplate the thought-gaps though. I might be at a turning point now, and I don't know where it will lead me. So I don't know, I don't know who decides what to do. haha. @Nahm Thank you for your help, I'll let you know what your help did to me, once I know it myself.

This is absurd, there is always one more layer looking for identification. And sometimes it switches language, depending on what story the thoughts are telling. Or what language the people I intend to talk about it talk. I have thoughts in 4 languages, and it switches the more I go up into the layers of thoughts, trying to trick itself. This makes me laugh, "I wonder where this is leading me", which is also a thought that seeks identification. I'm really curious about that stuff.

@Nahm "The identification is a self nourishing thought-loop" is what an insight I got from reading faceless posts. I think I am going to raise thought awareness without interfering. As I mentioned, the identification will probably switch from the second thoughts to the next, or to the changing awareness thoughts. Yesterday I just laid in bed with a very calm mind doing nothing, not even meditating and it was calm. There is definitely something to it. "Now what should I do, how can I do contemplative work and neti neti and self inquiry if I just obsverve the seeker" is a thought and a mystery to me. It is a strange loop of deciding to do stuff, but who decides? hahaha. I'm just going with the flow now I guess. "Oh, I want to be in the mystery, how do I get there? What can I do?" hahahahahaha. "I wonder if the spiritual part of me will work without identification"... man that's also just a thought. I risk to identify as the referee of thoughts to decide what to do or what not to do hahahaha. Oh damn that is tricky. Just more thoughts always want to become identified with, in a very sneaky way, it's like the alan watts story of the police chasing thieves up a building. Everytime the police goes up one floor, the thieves go up one, and so they never catch up (until they arrive at the roof). That is happening with my thoughts right now. Maybe I'll inquiry every "level of thought", I don't know what the roof will look like or if it's an infinite loop. Really weird.

@Blackhawk Spirituality is a very tricky business. You cannot prove enlightenment. And if someone makes money with it, it's easy to be a sceptic and say: "oh he just wants to make money with naive people". What they don't know is Leo is bad at marketing and he is doing it intentionally as he mentioned. I work in eCommerce, and I can tell you Leo would sell at least 2-3x as many courses if he just used retargeting ads for people who perform certain actions on his website ( I won't go into details, but it is pretty simple to make retargeting funnels), he could sell more products and have a lot of costumers for life, by making events, selling new stuff etc. I don't see any downsides doing this in the short term, but he could use that for exponential growth, which is sometimes chaotic and stressfull. However I think the devil in me would want to just pump as much money out of it as possible, because growth is really satisfying.

@Nahm Am I aware? What in this entire world is also aware? There is just awareness of things. I noticed I just caught myself thinking about the vicious circle again, somehow I get really identified with it. Even though there is just awareness of it like awareness of other "things" Wait I am going to try to observe the awareness doing it's thing... I think I am the meta-thinker, the thoughts that stop the thoughts or decide which thoughts I want or don't want. I am the thoughts fighting with the thoughts. Maybe that is what I am identified with. I'm observing it happening as I write this. 5 minutes later: Oh damn, all these years and I just identify with the second thoughts that fight the first thoughts as soon as awareness comes to the thoughts, but there are only thoughts... I'm going to continue your experiment and describe the perceiver : it's awareness. I imagine a Body and life without a perceiver being a robot in meat "without awareness". That's a thought about the material universe and souls... But there is just awareness. I know what I am doing, and just realised how stupid this is: I made the distinction between thoughts that happen, and thoughts that are controled and controling in nature. If I adopt the do-nothing meditation successfully, I don't identify with thoughts, because they are not controling thoughts, because I let them free. I bet I am going to identify with the 3rd thoughts that arise now haha. first random thought -second controling thought - followed by "aha that's a controling thought, that's not me, this thought is me"- thought. I don't believe that it's that simple, but the not-belief are also thoughts, just inside awareness. Dear God maybe you just triggered a chain reaction... I hope so. "That said, are you strongly identified with the seeker" @No Self put it in 3 words, but I needed it explained to me like you did. What do you believe I should do? I bet that If I am not identifying with the controling thoughts, I am going to identify with the 3rd thoughts or with the "stopping-thoughts-thought" or the "accepting-thought thought" or the "switching awareness process" that stops thoughts by focussing on something else. I am also going to let what you wrote sink in, reread it tommorow and see if that is still has the same effect on me. Any other advice? You just opened my eyes to the obvious fact that I identify with the seeker. @No Self Next time explain it to me as if I was a little child, or else I won't get it haha.

To be honest I have no Idea what-the-fuck I am doing and everything I do seems absurd in retrospect.

@Nahm On a subjective level: I am talking about the perceiver that is trapped in this Body/life. Ego is the thing that distorts reality, making things up, drawing conclusion, having beliefs, judging, filtering reality in a way that's useful for survival, avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure. Those awakenings are not there NOW, but occur once in a while before they dissapear. Right now reality is thinner than compared to other days, but not even close to a full or even partial awakening. Right Now, I'm trying a little bit to get somewhere I am not. Which I know is futile, but trying not to try is harder than trying ^^ I try to accomplish an end to suffering and starting 60 years of bliss. I'm trying to avoid the suffering of daily life (and the mind). I don't know if that is going to lead me somewhere, but that's just where I am at right now. What can I do? I'm lost and trapped into this spiritual vicious circle.

@Preety_India The illusion is the ego making physical reality seem thick, I guess. Usually when I am "falling" into an awakening reality gets thinner and thinner until there is only love or nothingness. But maybe that's just me not being grounded, could be a side effect though and not an indication, I don't really know for sure. I simply never had an awakening with reality seeming as "dense".

@73809 I let go of it and then it comes back, but then it goes away and I want it. It is very counter intuitive haha. @Preety_India Do you mean that reality becomes thicker if you awaken? That is not the experience I have made. For me personally its more like everything outside of perception doesn't exist or seems to be in a quantum superposition (metaphorically). I talk about the "material" reality, physical stuff seems to have no more substance than any other object of perception.

Very bad life advice and very bad awakening advice. "Just torture yourself so much it becomes unbearable and your mind won't have a choice but to awaken" The mind is way trickier than that, it will look for every way out of suffering or you might just get lost into it. You know there are a lot of traumatized people who are technically enlightened (in the dark night of the soul), but suffer more as they could have possibly imagined.

@No Self I wish I was only identified with the seeker, I am identified with the entire ego haha. No matter what I do I cannot stop being persistent in seeking, even "calling of the search" or that kind of giving up is kind of a seeking. I'm going to continue the practices then I guess haha.

I contemplated: So basically a spiritual hypothesis for sexual selection is that love and beauty are the driving forces behind everything in sexual selection. Now I tried to convince myself that the point was to experience love, but I'm not really convinced by that. You could argue that it's all about survival, that Love and beauty aren't fundamental in that process, but just mere forces that make sure survival of the genes continues. So sexual selection with beauty, could be a bug and not a feature. It could be that beauty/symmetry is a sign of health, and that for the purpose to survive, one sex deceives the other by pretending to have more health, by having more symmetry, but not really more "health". The fact that some male birds as a mating ritual perform a dance, and the female bird obviously loves it, could be simply for survivals purpose and not for the beauty itself. Because being able to move a lot and being agile is surely very helpful for the survival of a bird. So I didn't find a good enough conclusion to prove to myself that love is the deepest drive for nature. What was there before the chicken or the egg? Do we need to love as a means to survive, or do we survive to be able to love? If we go "before" animals, the material world is in some sense the "evolution" of the planets. and one aspect of the force behind that movement of creation and destruction is "entropy". It's a mystery to me how love is the most fundamental thing there is in terms of metaphysics. I can however see/imagine everything through the lens of love. Does anybody know an answer that could satisfy spiral dynamics stage orange, green, yellow and turquoise? I'm experiencing a lot with love, because I just had an awakening about it, that's why also contemplate about it with a few lenses. I need to do this for my future love awakenings, so I'm more like writing to myself here, just wanted to let you know and maybe hear your thoughts about it.

I have 2 questions about observing objects (every percept/emotion/concept etc.) First, I feel like the state of equanimity where everything just flows is pretty rare and only occasionally lasts more than a few hours, when I am in this state of non-resistance I realise that it just happens and it is not the result of some kind of meditation or intention. However, when I am not in that state, I experiment with "identification vs suppression" of the objects. It seems like I cannot find the right balance when I notice that I either supress something or when I am identified with it. I just sometimes fall into it. Do you guys have any tips on how to bring yourself into equanimity and find the right balance? Second question, what is meta-equanimity? I intuitively think the biggest non-resistance there can be is not to resist the resistance, it seems a little bit counter productive because if that's the case you can just let equanimity out of the equation, and not train that at all. Or maybe I have to do both? Like alternate between consciously "trying" not to identify with objects and not supressing them, and afterwards just accept when it happens? For example: I have a pain in my shoulder, when I don't resist that it's okay, but when I do, I have thoughts about how it will get worse and worse and then I have some negative emotion associated to it." Should I cut the snake by it's head, practicing equanimity with the pain in the shoulder, or allow the snake do it's thing by leaving my resistance to the pain in my shoulder alone, making me resist the thoughts and resist the negative emotion that leads to suffering? I also regularly surrender to the deep suffering that occurs once a week, then it is so bad that I identify with it and just suffer, and allow it to "hurt" me. I'm not even sure this is doing more good than bad. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

@tsuki However I just tried just to train equanimity with the pain in the shoulder, it's not just the pain that leads to thoughts that leads to emotion that leads to suffering, it's all of them together at once, and just focusing on the shoulder is not equanimity, it is avoiding the thoughts and emotions that arise while trying to be equanimous with the physical pain. So i believe that I need to divide and conquer the 3 objects correlated to that experience, so that I learn that there is no need to focus on the equanimity towards the pain, but I need to have equanimity towards the pain, the thoughts and the emotion, so that I don't even fall into that suffering loop because eventually there is nothing to escape from, not the direct pain, not the thoughts and not the emotions. I need to radically accept everything, because I notice that I am in a vicious circle while doing the practice, and real equanimity probably comes when I give up that vicious circle I can't control.

I don't believe that there is something left that can distinguish heaven and hell "after" death. However, during death you can experience "eternity", the "eternal now". I also have experienced this with suffering. Eternal now + suffering shot me into the nothingness. Strangely "after eternity" ,eternity ironically stops and time just happens again. So probably during your dying process you can be in the eternal now + suffering, which I believe is technically Hell, until you give up and the ego dies before your Body. In the nothingness I don't remember being bothered by the "eternal suffering" that preceded. It's just a belief, but I think nothingness transcends heaven and hell. at least the nothingness transcended heaven- and hell-awakenings I had. Test it out in life, you might not have to literally die for that, let yourself be absorbed into heaven until there is no heaven, an let yourself be absorbed in hell until there is no hell. If that's also the case after death, nobody really knows, however it seems strange to me that you can transcend heaven and hell during life, why would we be stuck in those mildly-awakened states after death?

Perfect, perfect, perfect. Thank you. That was the missing thought. I shouldn't burn down the boat before crossing the river. Holy shit I told 2 people recently that awakening would just lead you to realise that you should live your life like there was nothing to reach, because in fact it will just show you that there is nothing you can do. What I miss is that someone needs to go that road to be able to realise that there is nothing "to do". I need to take tell them that i take that back (and that they should never trust anything I say).

@How to be wise thank you, wanted to read all the enlightenments books first, I might want to read those emotion books first.