caspex

Actually a lot of spiritually advanced people in India believe in deities or have experienced them. You can hear about siddhis achieved through worship of deities by certain people. Sure it doesn't necessarily mean awareness of the absolute truth but a lot of these people are aware that everything is one at least, and embody some level of this truth much better than most of us here on the forum. For examples, Neem Karoli Baba was a devotee of Hanumana and one look at his face tells you he was embodying love and oneness better than most of us. It's mostly western spirituality that separates itself from religion. Even a lot of yogis here who we might consider enlightened believe in such deities. Adishankracharya who basically birthed this whole advaita spirituality, was arguably a lot more intelligent and conscious than a lot of us here, yet he also believed in supernatural entities which is evident through the many poems and songs he wrote for various deities. It's confusing for many why someone who is so non-dual would also be into Bhakti(worshipping), and no, it was not simply because of cultural brainwashing. There is something more to all this deity jargon than simple belief.

If you are hoping for a spiritual encounter or adventure then I believe you must increase the number of visits to spiritual places in India, which are mostly Hindu Religious sites. The spiritual people here, the most accomplished ones are also usually religious. You won't really find anyone like Leo here who are advanced in spirituality but not so religious. I think you'll only be able to contact truly spiritually advanced people through talking to people and actually going searching for them. Most Indians have never seen such people and are only heard about through connections. If you want a spiritual adventure you'll have to make your whole trip about that. Your average aghori out on the streets might not be as advanced you expect him to be, but he might know gurus who certainly are. If you want to witness more occultish stuff where people with siddhis might gather you should search up Tantric temples and such. There are a bunch of places where a lot of Tantrics gather to worship certain deities, but tourists usually don't care to visit. But it's also very easy to get something done to yourself through "Black Magic". It's dangerous digging around this stuff but this is one of the way how you'll have a spiritual adventure. You can also sniff out places famous for yogis and tapasvis(intense meditators). Certain forests are packed with tapasvis especially in the north. IMHO visit places like slums or popular tourist attractions, or even the modern parts of India is a waste of time unless it's for the expansion of personal sense of culture. I can't really recommend you places but it's possible to look for them online, and then going further from there by asking locals. Being an Indian I think most places in India are overhyped while the real gems are left unseen. But I am used to this place so I am biased.

you didn't deny it ?

Month Long Break I decided to take a break for a few days which quickly turned into a month. It was only the beginning of last month when I continued. Due to MAJOR positive changes in my life situations I vastly changed my pooja routine and duration and have learned a lot more regarding upasana. While I mentioned in my previous post that 21 chalisas are way too weak, it seems it is not so simple. Even doing one chalisa properly, mentally and sung with devotion is better than doing a 100 verbally with little devotion. In fact, when one sings the chalisa with devotion even once with the meaning in mind, it's more enjoyable than doing a 100. Enjoyment aside, if you strictly want spiritual growth, then increasing the length of your pooja and the number of chants is crucial. Let me explain to you what I mean. My Current Practice Currently I do 1 chalisa in the morning and 1 in the evening followed by an aarti(a song for the deity sung at the end of poojas). I sing the chalisa with instruments in hand to make it for more fun for the rest of my family members. It's 10 times more fun than doing a 100 like I used to. However, it's clearly not as spiritually effective. Sure, the enjoyment can reach levels of bliss and it heals you which can be deemed as spiritual progress. But for progress relating to unlocking of new energies within you and witnessing new mystical experiences, doing proper sadhanas and sankalpas which are difficult in nature is crucial. I have taken a very easy sankalpa currently, which is that I'll fast every Tuesday for Hanumana for 21 Tuesdays. It should end on 13th of February next year. I cannot take any other sankalpas during this period. So I'll just be doing your basic 30 mins pooja twice everyday. Don't get me wrong, it's very enjoyable and makes life feel a lot more positive and generates favorable thoughts within my psyche. However, serious spiritual growth would only happen when I take up something like 40 chalisas a day or something more intense. Which I currently can't, due to my material life, however I'll make my best efforts to do so. This journal will not be updated as frequently as it was before simply because the rate of developments has slowed because of the lighter poojas. However, a good thing out of this light but long sankalpa would come out is that doing such sankalpas makes your relation favorable with the deity in question. So when you do indeed do difficult sankalpas, the results are that much more intense. Types of Japa There are three: Vachika, Upanshu and Mansik. Vachika is when you chant verbally. Upanshu is when you move your lips and tongue but produce little to no sound. Mansik means mental chanting. Each is more effective than the last. IMO one should not simply start chanting mentally but build up to it from Vachika. This is because if you chant mentally straight away, it may be harder to build up the practice and you may easily become demotivated. Even though my poojas are not as intense anymore, I still occasionally perform 3 - 4 hour long poojas where I chant a 100 Hanuman Chalisas. I have recently reached the level of Upanshu. It came naturally to me after a month or two of verbal chanting. What occurred was simple, I detached from my voice as it automatically ran the chalisa as if some background music. I did not need to consciously recite the chalisa as my mouth was accustomed to the movements and remembered everything. It felt as if I was hearing someone else chant. Eventually my breath slowed down and my voice went lower until it was inaudible, however my lips and tongue kept moving. This is Upanshu japa reached naturally. I sometimes perform single chalisas in my mind as a form of Mansik Japa and it's so more satisfactory and beautiful than even Upanshu as you think of the meaning of the chalisa in it's entirety and don't have space to think anything else. It's like watching a movie run before your eyes. I believe true Mansik Japa would be as if watching scenes unfold with the chanting in your mind describing these scenes, as you simply sit and witness the events of who you love (the deity). While this side is very enjoyable and blissful, I still keep an eye out for how this can aid in spiritual growth of the sort relating to insights and energies.

Anyone who uses toilet paper is automatically barbaric

This is why it's important to study religions and traditions in the morals they preach, sort out the ones you rationalize to be best and open your mind to other morals that you simply might discard. It's very probable that humanity in it's long history would have realized that certain actions have far reaching consequences and implemented morals that curb these. Hinduism, in this regard, has the largest most informative knowledge through the concept of karma in my honest opinion.

These synchronicity are more a sign that your life has entered a certain phase than anything trying to give you signs. Universe won't bother to give you signs, most of the times it's you who'd recognize it's patterns and predict an outcome. If there are any signs being given it'd be from another entity not necessarily at the highest level. If this is the case, since you are open, you'd easily get the message. Otherwise, you're just finding meaning in synchronicity, or manifesting these synchronicity according to your current mindset or experience.

Never thought of it that way. The reason I don't call it my baseline is because I believe it's possible to keep up a higher degree of this understanding constantly, than I am already doing. For sure that the highest states impair movement even, but I want to make constant the highest state that can still function. I also intuit that if I practice enough, I'd be able to function even in the higher states.

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I have had the same experience lying in my bed one afternoon. However instead of being gently sucked backwards, I suddenly fell backwards and got submerged in this thick veil. I was aware of my physical body but all my senses had been retracted to some purely auditory realm. There I could feel the presence of two entities, and one of them introduced itself as 'Smith', a very common human name. It was surreal and felt VERY real. It was not a dream or my imagination. I was too shocked at the moment so I didn't actually talk to them about anything, after a while of not saying anything, I gently floated back up into my body and gained control and the heavy veil was lifted. At the time I didn't think of it as aliens but after reading your post it could very well be.

That's nice. More time for spirituality. I am not quite sure how it'd work considering I'd have to regularly take the anti-aging medicine, but I'd like to continue a spiritual practice for at least 100 years, considering I'll be living indefinitely. With time not being an issue anymore, I'd meditate to my hearts content.

If you keep a journal about it I'd greatly appreciate it.

It took me some time but I achieved it sober so it was a gradual process for me. I don't have access to psychedelics, if I did I'd probably have experienced it that way. My experience has been very gradual as stated above. The first time I simply placed attention over my 'self', it only lasted a fraction of a second. It was hard to keep but I kept trying until I was able to sustain it. It was only half a minute of sustained attention but I felt something crack, as if glass breaking or cracks appearing in stone, right where the pineal gland sits. It was a very physical sensation and sound. This got me hooked and I started meditating frequently on 'I AM'. One night I decided to say fuck it all and sat down around 11 PM or 12 AM on my bed and started mediating. I told myself that I am not getting up until I deconstruct my ego. My experience at that point was that I had an idea that the self is layered, but not to what extent. It was around 5 AM when the kernal finally broke off. Everything I thought, the shock, the novelty of experience, all felt amazing, and it didn't feel like it was happening to a 'me'. It was just happening, like a rock sitting on grass. I almost panicked thinking I had finally lost it, the articles on the internet didn't help telling me I was disassociating. This experience has only gotten deeper since and I have been able to understand many more breakthrough nuanced and degrees to that simple experience. At some point I went beyond the whole "I am a witness" phase. It doesn't look like it but the witness is also ego. Very sneaky. People get this false idea that just because they detached from their life, personality and behaviors, they have achieved ego death. If you still feel like you are observing it all, there's still a you. It was in a similar fashion in one meditation where I broke through the witness and it was the most freeing. The best way to describe it is that it went from a cone of perception to a 360 Sphere of perception in which every point is the center. There's also cool variations where you can experience headlessness, or whole bodylessness for that matter, but I don't really consider that ego death. But it is indeed disidentification with the body. It feels genuinely like you are floating. Not in air, but that you are air itself. Even while looking at your body, you wouldn't think it's yours. It gets really powerful if you combine it all together. You disappear and forget everything. Time doesn't exist, people don't exist. What's occurring is simply occurring. But it's not 'occurring', it's more like an 'occur' is that makes any sense. There's no sense of continuity. I can produce these states at will but it depends on my mood and motivation how fast I can do it. Goes from a few seconds to a few minutes. Still hard to make it my baseline.

We already feel in multiple dimensions. Why not just mix that up with thinking. Maybe that's what intuition is.

If you want, you should go all the way with your deconstruction. Why even say that God will imagine being everything? Just deconstruct that as well and say "this here is it, and nothing else." What you're saying seems almost as bad as believing in time and a self.

I have had some crazy ones, but not anything recently. I had one where I talked to a being, like literally voice to voice. Another where my ceiling turned into a tree with humans legs. There was a period where I used to see eyes and faces, very clearly, when I closed my eyes, even to blink. I don't know if this counts as a mystical experience but for a week or two now, my life has had a lot of synchronous phenomenon. Just now I was watching a Phineas and Ferb episode. When I finished it I glanced randomly over to a nearby house lizard. After observing it for a while, when I glanced back to the episode list, the next episode was titled "The Lizard Whisperer". I can't remember them specifically but yesterday two of such things happened in succession. It makes me curious why. It has been happening everyday at least once. If it gets any more connected than this then I might also be able to predict if something good or bad's gonna happen, y'know, like reading omens.

I think waiting is closely related to boredom and when one actively waits, that is without distracting themself, boredom arises. And boredom has the unique property of bringing out from within your psyche all the things you have been avoiding or suppressing. You can then work on these things and more unresolved conflicts would come up. It's like God gave you the easiest tool to integrate yourself, just be bored. You can also easily entertain yourself through thought experiments and stuff like that but I guess just don't do that. Waiting is 'almost' being present. Because it's mixed with anticipation.

If you purify yourself you won't hate others for their bullshit

I think if you are doing it once every few days it's fine, it depends on your body. I am a guy so I can only relate to you in terms of the dopamine peeks a human gets during orgasm. The way masturbation had taken away from my life was because of my addiction to that dopamine hit. So when my sexual urge was too low, I'd seek some other source of dopamine and this cycle would continue until I waste my whole day. So masturbation would simply make me an NPC since I did it too much. Obviously this wasn't a problem once I stopped doing it everyday, for me the right frequency was once every 5 days or more.

my bad. This post does have value

Loads of people educate themselves later in life, you shouldn't worry about that. Besides, 27 is still young. Sure there's a difference in ability to learn compared to your early 20s, but so what? You're not suddenly dumb, you are still very smart and capable of learning. In fact, if you really want to learn then there's not much that can stop you. What you should focus on is whether you really want to educate yourself or not, especially through academia. Once you enroll, be sure you'll complete it.

What works ime is changing who you are. Your emotions get triggered in social situations based on who you think you are. Developing habits and character that makes you gain trust and faith in yourself and your capabilities usually always helps with anxiety.

Why are we talking about someone behind their backs, especially when it doesn't provide any value? What's the point of this thread? To seek validation? A mega-thread for inauthenticity examples also seems wildly unproductive, considering that if you want to develop authenticity then you should make an Authenticity Examples Mega-Thread. A thread like this invites rants and gossiping.

It's like she's a doll or a Disney princess. The size of her hands and head in proportion to her body and each other is just perfect. The dress is great as well.

It's almost like you tune into a frequency and leave it on until you receive a message