No-Thing

Triggered by Adyashanti's "End of Your World" (shoutout to Leo's booklist, I can recommend. Leo if you read this can you add dates of addition or batch numbers to your books, so that people know which are new/old?), I had realization yesterday. Over the years I have gathered many self-help/spiritual techniques that help you to let go, be in the now, question your beliefs, release energetic blockages, yadda yadda yadda. I don't want to dismiss those because they helped me quite a bit, but I feel there is a time where they can hold you back for reasons I am going to explain in a moment. So, instead of using all those different techniques for different circumstances I now experiment with using just this one. Oh how ironic, another technique. Well, it is actually a non-technique. The trap of some techniques is that they imply a hidden should on which the ego likes to latch onto. Letting go implies, you should let go. Being in the now implies, you should be in the now and so on. Of course teachers are well aware of that and disclaim this trap in their book but a while after reading, your ego tends to not give a fuck about this disclaimer anymore. So let's imagine in a given situation you feel a slight sense of superiority. You become aware of it and think, "oh cool something to let go of". You do your favorite technique and it works or it doesn't. Problem 1 is, the trigger for your technique was a slight energy movement of not accepting the sensation for what it is. Problem 2 is they often work on a level of thoughts or at least trigger thoughts in the beginning. I claim that the following non-techniques can bypass said shortcomings. Subtle Surrendering Non-Technique The following non-technique is probably best suited if your awareness power is over 9000 and your day to day functioning is quite peaceful but from time to time your ego kicks in and makes you go out of sync. It is a technique that is to be practiced throughout your day, though it can also be applied while on the cushion. This technique is nothing new, it was described by many teachers but sometimes the 1349th time of hearing something makes you go click. I sometimes see our true nature as this ever present, non-judging, non-moving, non-changing no-thing. To get in touch with that, you can practice to become aware of the stillness underneath the noise, the peace underneath war, the love underneath hate and violence or the space within objects. To become enlightened means to fully align our humanness with all aspects of our true nature and become an expression of that in our world. A flower of consciousness, how Eckhart likes to put it. This technique can help you to align with your true nature as it is non-judging and still. Okey, same situation. You feel a slight sense of superiority creeping up. Now you do absolutely nothing, you just watch it. It's a sense of letting go of the steering wheel. There is no reaction to your reaction. Just watch it. If your reaction triggers a thought or the want to let go of it then that is absolutely fine just that now you watch your want to let go of superiority. Here is a comprehensive list of what don't do when your ego kicks in. You don't try to accept it You don't try to let go of it You don't try to love it You don't try to transcend it You don't try to overcome it You don't try to become present You don't try to do anything You just watch it. Just put your awareness on the sensation that normally triggers you to come up with the idea that you need to apply a technique to make it go away or transcend it or accept it in order to become "enlightened". Do you see where I am coming from? This non-technique is the unconditioning process of your spiritual (or any other) reaction to sensations you think need changing. Here some ways to put it. Letting go of the steering wheel (I want you to physically go through that movement. Raise your arms with open palms and open eyes and be still for a moment. Image search surrender on google if you don't know what I mean. Notice how this movement feels like. That is it.) No touchy, only looky

@Dan Arnautu :-) In the end it is really really simple. Our mind is just not ready for that amount of simplicity so we come up with all these techniques and stuff to figure out. But there is nothing to figure out. My gym routine crumbled on this path. That was really hard for me (initially). I lost a lot of weight. How does it effect you? How do you deal with that? Sometimes I went to the gym and I just had the feeling, "I don't want to resist anything". But I also came to the conclusion that I resist resisting :-)

@Dan Arnautu I know the place you are at. It's a madhouse. But maybe, you can do nothing to make it go away. Maybe it is not in your power to stop it. You are on the right track though. The next step is going to be scary. When I was there, I was done with it all. Done with life, done with spirituality, done with everything. Thoughts that were running through my head were, "I am done with it. You (whoever that is) can have it all. I don't care if I die, I don't care if I live. I surrender" I lay in bed for hours on end at night time and the next morning back to work. I dropped everything that wasn't absolutely necessary to do and just lay in bed and surrendered. A couple of days later it got better. I felt like part of my personal will had broken. I still mean it. Whatever the universe wants me to do, I do. I don't have any goals anymore. I don't have anything I strive for. I just stay present and wait for the universe to show me my next step. I have some ideas and preferences but I am okay with whatever. ( I feel really good though, still a bit scared of the unknown but slowly getting the hang of it.) Here is a tip. Whenever this madness starts just focus on your heart or focus on the space around you or be in the now. Is there any confusion in the now? Is there anything unclear right here and right now? Is there a paradox right before your eyes? No, only in your mind. When you are in doubt always go with your direct experience right here right now. This also really helped me. Someone from this forum sent it to me:

I just watched the latest video of Leo's interview with Peter Ralston. Therein he talks about distinctions. Everything is a distinction. You are a distinction. The moment the process of distinction stops everything is gone and what's left is only the pure potential of the infinite nothingness we call God. You are a distinction machine collapsing potential into experience. Not all distinctions are conscious thought. The fact that you perceive a thought is a distinction but not a conscious thought. Maybe we can see distinctions that are beyond thought as the unconscious mind. With every distinction we create (e.g. concepts, ideas, thoughts ..) we expand the manifoldness of the universe. Awakening is the work of looking beyond distinctions. Any further thoughts?

If your wish for self-help points to one direction and spirituality points into another direction than a conflict will arise. If they point into the same direction then self-help can help. If you wish to become a bigger and better self than that is the other direction. If you wish to change aspects of your self to for example become a better teacher than that can be in alignment with spirituality. If you are heavily on the path I think it is advisable to drop self-help for a while if a conflict arises. Inquire on why you want self-help. From which place does your need for self-help come from?

Hi I am a self and I guess my fraud has been exposed. I nested in this human body for many years pretending to be it. For a long while I've lived this mirage fully but evermore a creeping feeling dawned upon me that something is wrong here, that somehow I am wrong. That realization sparked a fire in me. "I am a quite motivated self so when there is something wrong with me than I can fix it!", I thought at the time. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many other selfs out there seemed to have had a similar realization. Some of these selfs call themselves experts so I guessed, "well, they must know it." The search began. At first I thought, "A break-up caused the greatest suffering in my life, let's start there". A couple of years and many experiences later I came to realize, "well, that's not it, the feeling of wrongness is still there". My second guess was, "Well if I become the best version of myself and create rich abundance in my life I can finally, finally feel right for once and settle down". I overcame many fears, reprogrammed my thinking and created enough abundance to stop worrying about money, but still there it was, the daunting sensation comfortably nesting in my stomach. At this time I already read a bunch of spiritual books and incorporated their techniques as part of my "self development". I never really bought into it fully because so many voices around me described it as "woo woo". "I am an atheistic, scientific, down to earth self I don't need no woo woo", is what I played at the time out of fear of rejection but I was so frustrated with it all and saw no other option so I was finally willing to give it a serious shot. "Okey so let's the meditation thing on a daily basis. They tell me to shut up, so I shut up. But what about the laundry? Am I doing this right? This is nonsense! But it kinda feels good". "Okey so now let's try the contemplation thing. I am not a self? What do they mean by that? What? I have to ask me a question and then not give an answer? That makes no sense." "Okey so now they tell me to embrace not knowing and be in the now. Well, let's try. Wait a minute! I kinda get the feeling that all this is making me obsolete. Thinking is superior! No no no, that can't be it! I probably haven't tried this self development thing hard enough!" Rinse and repeat. I started to feel a little lighter at times and the feeling of wrongness showed up less and less but I still couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Then this psychedelic thing started showing up in my life. I was a little scared at first but also really curious. I tried it once, "Wow this feels nice. I kinda feel like I remembered something from my past and it makes me laugh hysterically". I tried it a second time, "What everything is just a perspective and everybody just chooses their perspective and there is no difference between how I see the world now and my normal experience. The trip is life and life is the trip?" I tried it a third time, "I kinda feel like I am dying. WOAAHH. What is that? That can't be it. That is not what I expected. Is this real? Was my life just a dream? Who am I? I am all?". The next day, "Okey maybe this whole psychedelic thing is a little twisted. How can I know if that was real or just my imagination?". My life went back to normal but this creeping realization left a mark. A couple of weeks later things started changing. The pressure behind the forehead this human body started to grow and spread out. Not unpleasant but a little odd. Emotional baggage I carried around for years started dropping away. Then in a lucid dream a voice said, "We need to find him" and there it was again! This realization. It's all me, but why then am I so scared to fully look into it? Well if it happens in a dream, it can't be the drugs so it must be real. Oh fuck, what does that mean to me? Then it slowly dawned upon me. The thing I have been avoiding to look at for my whole life. I am not real. There is no substance to me. That can't be real. That means I have to go? Am I really a fraud? The human body (at least I call it that) I am living in feels better and better. It has more energy and things in life are flowing nicely but I am feeling weaker and weaker. There is less and less to talk about. I thought I could figure it all out and make it work, you know? But I feel anything I try to do just causes this system harm. Maybe I am the problem. Maybe everything works fine just on it's own. Maybe I just need to rest and let things be as they are. And then I can live in harmony with this body and reality and every once in a while I come to life and say, "Here I am, look at me. I am the great self!" That would be nice. That would be nice.

I thought about the exact same phrase today :-) I popped into my head from the song "waiting for love" by avicii. In my situation it was rather, "Where there's no will, there is the way"

@Martin123 He naturally appeared on my radar yesterday. Thank you I love you. But I also don't want to avoid the darkness. I am ready to face everything.

Guys, I think I am hitting the dark night of the soul. I have a couple more weeks to work and then a vipassana retreat is coming up. I am happy for that but do you guys have some suggestions on how to keep together for this time? Do you have general tips on how to deal with the DNOTS?

Will a major shift in human consciousness happen in our Lifetime? Is the battle of the ego already lost? Did we reach the peak of limitation on a global scale and from here it's all downhill into infinity? I see more and more teacher popping up. Leo is blasting the truth out into the world. Youtube and the internets multiplies the potential reach of each teach by the million. Awakening experiences on this forum seem to become quite common. Each person that wakes up will drag along multiple others which leads to an exponential increase. Staying egoic costs energy, waking up releases energy. It seems to be a natural law that the end of egoic consciousness is inevitable. What do you guys think?

All knowledge, culture and basically all language that mankind has created can be summed up as world mind. You are an integral part of world mind. You perpetuate it through every interaction and every thought you have. The you that you think you are is actually world mind working through you. There is no you other than that. Liberation means liberation from world mind. The purpose of the spiritual quest is to flush ever last bit of world mind out of your system. First you use the spiritual beliefs to get rid of common beliefs. In the end even spirituality has to go as it is also part of world mind. Spirituality is part of the dream. There is no such thing as spirituality. Without world mind everything functions perfectly, just as it is supposed to be. Everything is as it is and the is-ness perfectly accepts everything. In order to get rid of world mind, every last bit of you (person) has to go. You think you are a separate entity in this world but that is an illusion and causes the friction you experience in life. Existence is one unitary movement. Right now you function under the premise: perceiver - perceiving - perceived This duality is perpetuated by the world mind in you. As the world mind subsides this duality collapses into non-duality. How to get rid of world mind? World mind has a strong gravitational pull. You experience this gravitational pull as fear. Fear is the anchor of all beliefs. Spirituality offers many techniques to transcend fear and beliefs. You can work on a level of emotions (e.g. Sedona Method) or tackle the problem from the angle of thought (e.g. Byron Katie). The more you let go of fear and beliefs the weaker the gravitational pull will become. In the early stages your focus should lie on gaining momentum. Practice, reading, meditation, diet, yoga and so on are highly recommended. You know that you make progress when you see your personality transform. Things that bothered you start to bother you less. Past problems become non-issues that you don't even think about anymore. You slowly become more energetic and positive. You are able to hold paradoxes in your mind without the need to resolve them. You always see the two sides of the coin. The later stages are even trickier than the first stages. You overcame most of the gravitational pull of the world mind. You probably had an awakening or two. At this stage your practice starts to develop a life of it's own. Some techniques you use become automatic. This topic is on your mind almost 24/7. Now a different force starts pulling on you. We could call it "the void". This stage can be pretty scary and confusing. The world mind in you recognizes that it is about to be defeated. It starts to fight and wonder, "Maybe this whole spirituality thing wasn't such a good idea after all". The more you resist the fall of the world mind in you the more friction you will experience. The number one advice at this point is surrender. Surrender, surrender, surrender. A big trap at this stage is that the ego starts attaching itself to spirituality. Instead of worldly goals it yearns for divine moments, peace, bliss and all that jazz. If you recognize that movement in you realize that it's just another movement of the world mind that you need to treat just like everything else before. The last step you have to take is not a step you can take. Every movement you make is a movement away from it. Even the need to be free of this situation is standing in the way of liberation. There is nothing in your power that can do about it. All that is left to do is to surrender and to wait for the world mind to finally call defeat. What then? Of course we have many reports of people who went through this transformation but in the end you can't know if what they say is true. You have to fully accept and embrace the unknown. Everything could happen. You could die and that's why it's so scary. This text probably won't make you feel comfortable and that is the purpose of it. Spirituality is not an easy path. It takes everything from you, everything. This text is part of the world mind and should be discarded once it served it's purpose.

@Parki Hey Parky. It's good that you ask those questions. Most people try to stay so busy or blurry so that they avoid those questions. You are trying to understand an existential question with your mind which is not the right tool to ask those questions. It's like asking a hammer, "what is the meaning of life?"; "I don't know, but you can use me to build a house!" On the path it is helpful though to have a working model until you don't need it anymore. One I found useful was the one described in the book: http://www.butterfliesfree.com/ . It's free. Check it out!

You have no idea what enlightenment is and You never will. No one knows what it is. You will not become a better person. You will not have any insights. You will not grow your consciousness. There is nothing to gain. The search is over. The search for anything and everything is pointless. Everything is meaningless. There is nothing to understand. Stop. People will not like you more. You will not gain any mystic powers. The now does not exist. God does not exist. Meditation is a waste of time. Buddha was full of shit. Spirituality is a fairytale for confused children. Raising your awareness is masturbation. Nothing you will ever do will improve your life. Personal Development is stupid. Listening to Leo or any other teacher is as useful as reading Donald Trumps tweets. If for any weird reason you resonate with this message. Check out U.G. Krishnamurti

After the little turmoil my last post created by attacking your belief-boat on which you are trying to float to the non-existing other site I would like to give something back to restore balance. (I am probably overstating my impact here) Inspired by Leo and Daniel Ingram I created some click-tracks for the purpose of concentration practice. These audio tracks have the following advantages over using a metronome: They have a defined length so that you don't have to worry about the time They sound more pleasant I added a reverb to smear out the sound in order to create a better target for concentration The tempo of the click starts slow and slowly decreases over time as you get deeper and deeper into concentration states I also added a 4 hour track that can be used for strong determination sittings. After each hour I added a pleasant nature sound so that you have a rough idea where you are at (the sound of the second hour turned out to be a little soft so stay aware). I recommend getting up at 4:30 and sitting at dawn. That worked best for me and helped me to bring my meditation practice to the next level. I hope you enjoy the clicks. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3o1zq7LEtyQLVpnUDgweERZODg

@Paintballer Yes but you kinda need to not care to "meet" it. If you are in a lucid dream and you recognize it for the first time you wake up. If you meditate and something starts to happen and you get exited or afraid or anything, you tend to wake down.

@Azrael I met her (me/you/all) a couple of times but probably not as fully as on a 5-MeO-DMT trip. I accept your challenge. When the substance flows naturally into my life I will try. I try not to be attached to seeking the divine but when I am honest with myself I am still a little. I stand my ground though that the belief that God exist is wrong. All beliefs are and if you are attached to the thought that god exists than that stands between you and the natural state but I think I don't need to tell you.

@Leo Gura Yes it was definitely unskillful. As unskillful as a sledgehammer in a china shop. I felt the turmoil I created.

@jjer94 I might seem bit bitter but that is just the glass through which I am looking at my world right now. I read UG Krishnamurti and took over his perspective to evaluation my situation and this madness is the result. Read Leo's last post to understand what I mean by that. I am actually happier in life than I have ever been. I am free. I can be whoever I want (until I resign my I-ness forever). I am coming from a people-pleaser, introvert, spectator profile and now I can stir up some shit without any blockages and that feels goood. Meditation, healthy eating, exercise, contemplation and all that jazz is well worth it, so don't get me wrong. It's just that if you take this to the deepest level than there will be some really 'interesting' turn of events. I don't know where you want to go to with all your meditation, healthy eating, exercise, contemplation? What do you want to accomplish? The deeper I get the more I just sit on my bed and do nothing. I am happier than before but from an 'common wordly' perspective I slowly turn into a total failure.

I know where you are coming from. At a given point contemplation and all the techniques you are using run on auto pilot because you rewired your brain. Meditation will occur naturally so lying on your bed doing nothing relaxes you 10 times more watching netflix. So why would you go back to that? After eating a bag of ships you feel like shit and you are well aware of it. So where would the motivation come from to do that? At a given point all that is left is the seeker and the rest takes care of itself. But you need to decide for yourself when that is and you should definitely not listen to a random guy like me on a forum.

@abrakamowse Yes I totally agree with you. Thats why I love the analogy of cetus56 :-) All advise is relative to the stage of the path you are in. I burned so many things in my life that there is not much left of me. I read UG a while ago and I couldn't get where he was coming from. Now I get it and this thread helped me realize it more clearly. This thread is probably going to confuse some folks but hey they are probably already confused.

@Emre What you are saying are just stories in your head. Nothing of it has any relation to reality. You are looking for the point but there is no point. Just relax that is all you can do. Relax, surrender, accept. All else is swimming upstream.

@cetus56 It's a load of crap from the perspective of the my self as it is it's death sentence. If I am interested in enlightenment than that stands in the way of it's manifestation.

@Shin Look shin, let me burn my ship first before I come play with you in the open water.

Haha omg. Enlightenment is just this shiny object our ego gets hooked on and in the end it just a load of crap. @cetus56 I love your way of putting it.

Come on guys. Jump on the bandwagon and help me burn all our stupid beliefs to the ground. Give your mind nothing to hold on to!