Vittorio

I know! That's what make me excited about

I understood there are two forces inside of me. One, who wants to accept the current situation and realize that he has to ground itself in the present moment. One, who is not satisfied because I still did not complete Leo's checklist, is eager to "unlock" the achievement badge, refuse to accept what's happening and has fear to lose all progresses. I realized there is no one right way to get enlightened. There are people who snaps and have everything at once. There are people who experiences it gradually and slow. And then there are people who experiences it fast. There are many different awakening to experience inside of enlightenment. Awakening to love for example is one side. Awakening to meaninglessness is another side. Awakening to infinity is another side. This does not mean I am not enlightened. I experience the "basic" signs of an enlightened person and my state is permanent, so I can admit (without using it as an achievement badge) that enlightement occoured, but I still have to experience bigger awakenings yet (e. g. opening myself more to infinite or to the illusion) and to permanent shift my state toward them. I have to let go more my ego and its fear, proudness and result oriented attitude and focus on Being and living a good life in the present moment. Still I am happy of my progresses. Every day I discover something new. This is all new to me but it's wonderful.

<3

This is the tree under where I cried. I realized that what I needed was Love, appreciation and Being in the present moment and then I cried out of Joy. I think this is the right direction. I went into this park as if it were the first time I went there. It seemed to me that nature was smiling at me. I noticed the magnificient of the nature. Every single leaf, tree, branches etc. I observed single leaves, branches and such. I smiled at the sun and it glowed stronger almost blinding me (coincidence)? I still don't feel any major shift but hey, at least I am a bit happier

Nahm, I went under a tree in the Park and listened to your song and I cried out of Joy. Joy to be alive. Thank you.

Hi Vegan I read your suggestion in another thread and implemented your observation in my self-inquiry practice <3 I will have to sort it all out, before moving on. This day gave me many things to reflect about.

Thank you for your opinion! I will shift more through being, feeling passion and focusing myself less on the tasks and on the results to enjoy presence. I will go for a walk in the woods later and enjoy nature in silence. I have a good feeling about that

I got it. I have a different self-esteem and believes than yours at the time you got your enlightenment. I got depression and had many setbacks in my life. I felt myself caged a lots of time and I suffered a lot, but I never had suicidal thoughts and I always strived to break free at all costs and found my way out one way or another. Many times I paid a high price for that. I have already experienced in real life and in psychedelic trips following feelings and things: - Meaningslessness - Feeling of isolation and don't being understood anymore after what I discovered - I am God - I am infinite - Reality is magic and a bliss - Everything is illusory and only a perception - Oneness - Being - Perception is "glued in" to reality - Freed myself from some kind of entity which stalked me for more than 10 years in my dreams after a paranormal activity happened in my childhood (it was a kind of self-made exorcism I did on myself) - Channeling and possession from entities and much more. So I am not a complete newbie with that. Still, I am following your suggestions and reading a new earth again (not everything, because I have most of the foundation handled, but reading the chapters I feel will help me most).

Thank you for your quote. If I am reading good among the lines, your quote suggest to don't be obsessed on doing but on being and, on the other side, still keep a balance between "doing" (spiritual practices) and resting in being. Is that so?

I think you're right. This leave me confused a bit. How can you have a desire to reach enlightenment, if you cannot have any desire of reaching it (desires are ego driven)?

I really hope so. This is totally new to me and I still have to understand what's happening lolz. Thank you!

Thank you I think I will have much to reflect about.

Hi @BlackMaze thank you for your reply! I will re-read a new earth (I have it in my library). By reading my quote about my reasons: I get your point. Let me explain what I have in mind with reaching enlightenment. I am at a point in my life where I handled all my basic needs. I have a well paid job, a good apartment, I had my experiences, I did many trips, I meditate, daily do much self-reflection and I feel myself solid enough. I don't have any addictions, I rarely eat junk food, drink alcohol or do "stupid" activities. I don't collect material shiny things and I almost don't use any social media. What I want to do now is doing the "next step". This means practically working on my vision and on my LP and obtaining it. I want then to "aim high" and not having my mind limiting myself. I still have limiting believes, self-deception and I am shifting my life from frequenting people because of the value I give them to compatiblity. To me enlightenment means to clean up all the unauthentic stuff (lies, manipulation, self-deceptions, limiting believes, attachment, needyness etc. which I still have in some part) in my life with a single sweep and as a mean to create and reach a much bigger vision to help mankind than the one I can create with my current awareness. I am open to lose motivation for a while, having to "rediscover myself", change life and lose all the progresses I made in finding my LP and my vision until now IF this cleans up all the "bad stuff" I have. I am fluid and not particularly attached to my identity and to my ego. I want to live authentically, happy and in the best possible way and do the best to serve the others.

Here I am. I read all your replies and did a bit of self-reflection and this is what I found out (please give me your takes). What I am living right now is a state of high presence and despersonalization/detachment from myself, my feelings and reality as a whole. This is a gift, because I now have a real ground to work about to reach enlightenment. But I won't get enlightened IF I don't understand what's happening right now and change my attitude towards it and toward life in general. I am actually stuck because of these reasons: 1) I have a practical and result oriented attitude that will do and sacrifice everything it takes to reach my goals (remaining in the "good" side). This has many negative sides. It causes neglecting my body, my needs and myself as a whole just for the result sake. By doing that, I rapidly lose touch with emotions and passion involved. This is not something I can reach without feeling any emotions like a mindless robot 2) I approach enlightenment with my mind only and not with being. I have a intuitive attitude and I channel insights random even in real life while doing groceries and such, so I am used to "understand" things through mind. Enlightenment is too big to be grasped with mind only. This is not some "mechanical stuff", this is much much bigger than what I can grasp with my mind. I have to ground myself into being 3) I have a fixation on reaching the goal and reaching it ASAP. This means practically I have a obstinacy to reach enlightenment (e. g. doing 3-4 hours straight self-inquiry, waking up during night and meditating and doing self-inquiry and the readyiness to give up all my identity and everything it takes to reach enlightenment). This causes frustration and obsession for the result. Maybe I must cease to be so stubborn 4) I don't clearly understanding the sacrality of enlightenment. To me enlightenment is something "cool" (almost like a simple achievement) and I still don't appreciate what it actually means to become enlightened. I will reflect on that and watch some documentaries on youtube 5) I don't fully appreciate the gift I have. I now have a much increased presence in the reality, almost 0 monkey mind, heightened perceptions and a state of depersonalization/detachment. This allows me to feel reality in a way that wasn't possible before. Instead of feeling reality with this new state and feeling compassion, appreciation and love for this, I keep my fixation on reaching the result. I will ground myself more into being and try to appreciate existence through looking at it with new eyes 6) Purpose of enlightenment is not the doing, but the being. As I said in the point 2, I am trying to grasp enlightenment principally with mind based methods. The feature of enlightenment is being grounded in being. Being means less doing and more presence. This means I have to cease doing all this brute force self-inquiry and enjoy existence 7) This is a test. It's not a case that I got stuck. This must happen. I got stuck for the purpose of self-reflecting and to understand what I am doing and what's enlightenment about (writing this topic too).

I wanted to understand, what's happening to me first (am I awakening or not? What's all that) and, if I am really awakening (I think so), how to "move on". I will write my takes on the matter in a couple minutes.

I am not suggesting anything. Just wanted more clarification about your words Thank you for your advice.

Hi! Sadly I don't get your point. What is your take on the matter and what are you suggesting to do exactly?

@Visionary Thank you again for your insights. Much appreciated With "imagination" I mean there is no material solid reality, but a perception of it. If you jump in front of the train, you will die. But your death is imaginary, exactly as you and the train. With dissociation I mean that I feel myself detached from my identity and generally from the rest (I don't know if dissociation or disidentification is the best word here). I will reasearch more about grounding. Thank you again

@Visionary I still don't get what you mean by "awakening the body" and with "grounding" but I will reasearch that. I am still confused about your assumptions about the nature of self-enquiry. You wrote: "Most folk here use it as a way to form new conclusions by dissecting reality. Self-enquiry is not about reaching conclusions at all." Leo told that self-inquiry is about finding your true self and disidentifying yourself with the idea you are a body/inside a body and that there is a solid material external reality and to understand, this is all imagination. What's self-inquiry about then?

I understood through direct experience what being is. Still, I cannot understand your words fully. Is it so that I am attaching myself too much on the outcome, I am saying it a bit materialistically and I should let go of techniques and labels and just bbe? If yes, how can I "let it go"? And what should I search for, if I am not doing self inquiry, but just be?

Thank you @Visionary for your reply and for your tips. I want to state, that I am not trying to do intentionally insight hunting, but to reach enlightenment. I don't know what's happening to me. One day I just woke up and I found myself being despersonalized just like that. I quoted everything I felt/I am feeling to give you a proper picture of what's happening to me, not to boast myself or such. I want to explain what's I noticed about my mindset too: I am trying to understand through constant brute force meditation/self inquiry what's happening and I am trying to search for that single thing that will "unlock" it. Still, even if I understood what I am and what's all about, I cannot "unlock" it. I get thrown there and here some nondual insights, but nothing more happens. My depersonalization is still in force. What do you mean "grounding myself"? What do you mean by "You cannot be the insight without doing body work. Body work is absolutely crucial. Don't be a slave to your mental insights/intellect or what you're able to achieve during meditations. This will all become very silly once you understand what it's truly about. The state of non-attachment can only come through involvement. Not through dissecting. Thats dissociation."?

@Leo Gura @Nahm Can you please help me somehow and give me your personal opinions on the matter? I would really appreciate it. Thank you

I don't get it, sorry @DreamScape? Can you please elaborate more? I still don't know what's happening

Nowhere. Memories are forms and are generated in real time in the present moment. There is no container where you save your memories. It's just a conceptualization you make because you take for granted that memories are somehow physical objects and they are saved in another container called identity. But where does identity occur? Nowhere.

So, I actually contemplated these too in a super nonduality rampage. Here are my replies 1) Where do thoughts happen? Why are you feeling them inside your head as sounds? Does it mean they are located in your head? If no, why am I hearing them inside my skull? Are thoughts created from within your identity, so after the perceiver percieve the avatar or are they coming directly from you (the perceiver)? First of all you have to define what a thought is (in a human comprensible way). A thought is a "container" that includes an energetic charge and a content. The content of the thought is added as soon as the energy is perceived and then processed in the form of perception inside of the ego. Each thought therefore contains not only a verbal content, but also a specific energy charge. The energy is exactly the energy coming from consciousness. That is why there are "positive" and "negative" thoughts. By positive and negative we mean the energy charge coming directly from the substrate under the forms (the consciousness). Memories and thoughts SEEM to be separated from the external word. It seems to you they are part of a container called identity (together with the image of your body and many other things). There is an identification with your identity, which has a specific form and specific boundaries. That's why you perceive yourself as separated from the rest of reality. Thoughts are connected to your identity, because for a specific thought to happen, there must be some kind of perceiver who percieves and then transforms the energy as a thought. Because you identify yourself to your identity, thentime you feel that they are "your" thoughts, but they are in reality are just thoughts floating in the void. Therefore, you perceive that sounds are generated by forms, in which you DO NOT identify yourself, because you identify yourself with your "human" ego. If you focus on perceiving from where sounds are coming from (just tip your finger on something), you will notice that those sounds are not really coming from the contact between forms. It SEEMS to you that touching a form with another form causes the sound to happen and that you perceive it, but if you are aware enough, you'll see that what it really happens is that a form is touching another form and then you hear a sound. You as ego add the meaning that touching a form with another form causes the sound to happen. In reality, you'll see that those sounds are perceived out of nothing. They are found in some underground texture layer which lies behind the reality of the forms: the nothingness/consciousness. This means that nothingness is practically creating energy within nothingness which in turn is perceived by identity and channeled under the form of a specific perception inside your ego and perceived in different ways (in the form of sound, smell, thoughts etc.). The thoughts come therefore in the same nothingness where the energy that is perceived as sound, movement, shape etc. is located. They are all generated in real time (in the present moment) and are just floating in the void. This means that there is no difference and separation between your thoughts and external sounds but they are only perceived different due to the degree of separation caused by identifiying yourself in a human ego. 2) Who is then really thinking? The perceiver or the avatar? Thoughts are then NOT created from within your identity, but rather channeled from consciousness INSIDE the ego. The ego interpretes then the energy and percieve it as a thought. So, who is really thinking is the perceiver and NOT the ego. This means you basically have no free will, because the one who is thinking it's not what you believe you are, but rather the perceiver (consciousness). 3) What is the difference between perceiver, perception (awareness) and perceptions (sounds, smells etc.)? Perceiver: the "true" self, the "true" I, the quantum field, consciousness, infinity. It is infinitely full of energy and empty at the same time Perception: Perceiving=being aware. Perception is infinite being. Being = Being aware of itself as a being without forms. Perception can be at the same time finite too, if there is a finite perspective from which is possible to perceive a reality Perceptions (sounds and smells etc): Perceptions are interpretations that take place under finite form (inside the ego) of consciousness energy. They all have precise channels (tactile, visual, auditory, etc.) Perception is something that happens not only in a infinite way, but in a finite form too. If there were no perspective (a form), there could be no perception of reality, because there would be nothing finite through which the infinite can perceive itself in another finite form. So perception is connected to a perspective. You are "the eye" behind your identity (your perspective) and see reality through the lens of your identity (a perspective). There must therefore exist a perspective for perceptions to occur inside a finite reality. Perception itself exist outside the ego and not inside, because it can perceive itself infinitely without limiting itself in a form. This means that perception is an infinite mechanism, but also finite at the same time, because as soon as it percieves reality through an identity, it becomes finite and cannot experience ALL reality, because it's constraining itself under a specific ego and finite form. That's why to experience ALL reality you must die. Because you don't have any finite form anymore. In fact you as a human being, being finite, cannot perceive ALL the infinite but only the finite in an infinite way (plus nondual insights, that are parts of infinity). This means that finite and infinite exist only conceptually and not really. Another thing I discovered is that infinite is infinite not only outside of finite, but inside of finite too. That's why reality is a fractal. A fractal is a finite picture with specific forms where you can zoom in infinitely and obtain the exact same forms from where you started zooming in. 4) Do perceptions (sounds, smells etc.) exist? If yes, where? Yes, they exist in a specific form as soon as they are channeled from Consciousness inside a ego and interpreted (see question 2). 5) Do thoughts exist? If not, why? Same as question 4. 6) Is there a conceptual difference between a thought and the content of a thought? If yes, which one(s)? Nope. The division is only done by you. Another important thing I discovered is that there is a misconception about what forms are. Forms are NOT ONLY things you can see. A form is something finite that's material or not material that can be percieved in ANY way. This means that a sound is a form, a thought is a form, a book is a form, a smell is a form, a picture is a form. They are all forms, because they are finite. Mind is then both the container of finite forms and the mechanism used by consciousness to create a finite reality. So all what's happening is happening within the realms of the mind. On a personale note: I feel I am reaching a breakthrough. Either I am suggesting myself and I made out all these insights or something is happening.