Jannes

Hi, I had an interesting dream last night and I don’t really know what to make out of it. Maybe you have some thought on it. I dreamed that I am at my parents home in my old room in my bed. I can hear my parents loudly arguing over something and I get the notion that they don’t really want to be together but that’s all when it comes to my surroundings. I notice that without really trying I can very easily separate myself from my thoughts. So I do that and let my thought chatter in the background continue. Now I also start with the question „who am I?“ because I figure its a good opportunity to start a self inquiry. I also want to become conscious of the fact that I am not my body. It’s a bit more difficult and I loose my focus more easily. I improve my focus and while I become better at that I forget my thoughts in the background. Then I have some kind of mystical experience. I needed a few attempts for it where I could really hold my focus at being conscious that I am aware of my body and the question „who am I“ which was penetrating simutaniously (while my thoughts are easily ignored as sth outside of me.) On second or third try I had some kind of experience and it went like this. I am completely focused. I hear some kind of strong cave wind with a powerful feel to it. Then I can of get an “infinity feeling“ mixed with fast changing images (picture below) or sth like that (I can’t describe it in more detail. This dream is fresh and I remember all the details but I lost this as soon as I woke up). I also get a feeling of “this is going to be intense and I won’t be able to stop it“ and I said to myself f*ck it and surrendered to it. After that infinity feeling I immediately changed my point of view to my parents garden. I didn’t have any kind of form and I slowly moved in the air through through a tree and everything was just so beautiful. I just went through the leaves of the tree without interacting with them as if I was an physical object going through light or vice versa. Then I slowly moved down (you could describe the movement with a drone in slow video mode) and went through the grass and the grass also was extremely beautiful. It didn’t change but it just was so different. (I took a low dose of m.mushrooms a few days before in nature and I have to say in my dream it even looked a lot more beautiful even though I really enjoyed the mushroom trip) I could still think in this experience and I thought. „I do enjoy this experience but I am here to have some spiritual insight and to become enlightened and so I asked myself again who am I and my experience faded away pretty quick and I woke up first out of my experience in my dream but then I also woke up pretty fast out of my dream. I didn’t had any strong emotions when I woke up nor in my dream which I find interesting because you would guess you have strong emotions in an experience like this.

I recently started self inquiry for spiritual awakening. Leo said that awakening can take roughly 1000 hours maybe even more. I recently started to increase my self inquiry session from 1 to 3 hours daily and I feel strange headaches and confusion. I can kind of guess what I have to go through and I already feel how my ego is really good at talking me out of this path especially because I still have doubts that this path will really get me enlightened etc. I already talked to some of the people on the forum who say they got enlightened or had enlightened experiences and that really motivated me. If you are also on the journey of spiritual awakening I would love to hear your experience because I really want to get my ego excited: Have you ever had an enlightenment experience ? If so how long did it take you ? How does your self inquiry routine looks like ? Are you enlightened ? If so how long did it take you ?

I am not doing enlightenment work to win a trophy. I honestly just want to be happy, love authentically, help others and want to free myself from worry and suffering. But still there are of course parts of me that chase enlightenment for social status or something else. But I think there is nothing wrong with that if that’s second priority. Why not pump a lot of incentives into ones ego of how great enlightenment is while one hasn’t dissolved it yet ? I mean if you think about it before enlightenment you can only be selfish, even trying to be unselfish is selfish. Also why is renunciation important or what do you mean with renunciation exactly ?

@SamC 22

Yeah you are right. There actually is a zen dojo close to me that I just found. Hopefully they have an enlightened master.

I watched maybe about 40 hours about Enlightenment Theorie. A lot from Leo but also from different sources. My thought process was that this is enough to not fall into traps when doing self inquiry for enlightenment and anything extra doesn’t give you much because theorie is always false anyway so why should I waste my time with extra theorie when the actual insights can only come from direct experience so from exercises. But then in a recent video Leo said that any spiritual seeker should read at least 16 books about nonduality. So what now ? Is this really necessary ? If it’s needed I would do it but self inquiry sucks and the Theorie also isn’t that interesting to me so when I could leave this out I would have more time and motivation for self inquiry.

I view myself in 3rd Person for many years now. It’s so normal for me that I often forget that I do that. And yes I have a strong habit of observing and discerning. So maybe you are right, maybe I build a strong ego around being the observer only a false ego observer. That’s actually pretty funny. Thanks for the exercise I will try it out ??

@Nahm yeah it’s theorie to me because I don’t know it for myself.

@aurum I told myself in the beginning that enlightenment would come relatively “easy“ to me compared to other people because many parts of me had a strong intuition that enlightenment is the way and now it all came together. I also might had an enlightenment experience in kindergarden. It would explain why I was walking on clouds full of joy although I was a lonely kid and sometimes this feeling I had as a kid still hits me today especially in my deep nihilism phase for like 1/10 of a second and that feeling is so overwhelming that I would drop every attachment to live just to bath in that feeling. I just really want to know if this can be “archived“ and then I will be 100% on that path. And I also really want to drop all the doubt because I know if enlightenment isn’t real then “normal living“ is probably not worth living. So yeah it would be so cool to finally reconnect with that “source of joy“ and really see that there is fundamentally nothing wrong with existence itself. ? PS: I don’t know how to undo quoting

The problem that I have is that I always notice myself observing so I try to oberserve the observing and try to observe who observes the observing… and it’s kind of impossible to actually go meta it only feels like it for half a second when I “refresh“. So I often spent a lot of time during that instead of actually looking. Is that normal at the beginning ?

The more the better right ? I am studying right now and have long semester breaks so the time is good to commit. I just want to have a little taste of enlightenment so I know it is real. Did you have an enlightenment expercience? If so how long did it take you ?

And the first big checkpoint is becoming permanently aware that I am an illusion ? And after that comes god realization, infinity etc.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to make your process as comfortable as possible. This warrior spirit is ego too imo. But yeah I am like 80% commited because of 20% unintegrated stage orange stuff holding me back unconsciously. Is it necessary to be 100% commited though if I do my 1-2 hours of self inquiry with full 100% concentration and effort ?

I just do regular self inquiry and ask myself who is perceiving. When I feel very aware and my ego feels loose I switch to who am I. I also just started experimenting with Leo’s exercise list. The practice sucks, I always get extremely tired and I also felt confusion. So I think I am doing alright ?

That sounds very eye opening. I am definitely going to think about that.

So “you“ reached enlightenment ?

Yeah that’s a good idea. Have you found an enlightened teacher and if so how ? Or do you think in the forums are enough enlightened people ?

So would you say the purpose of this books is to crash the old theorie with a new theorie that is more loose. So then it becomes easier to crash that final theorie you read about because it is more loose ? Also isn’t it counter productive to read about theories if you are already invested in self inquiry or is it possible to not go a step backwards when I read with high awareness (not buy into it) ?

I am starting with self inquiry to realize god and the approach that I take is to ask myself who am I. On top of Leo’s content I watched this video and it’s very well made and he explains a lot of things very well and simple. But there is still a thing that seems unclear to me which really slows me down in my self inquiry. One of his top arguments for why I am not my body, mind and so forth is that I am aware of these things but these things are not aware of me (I am aware of a thought, 2+2=4 for example but the thought is not aware of me). One is seen and the other one sees so they can’t be the same thing. That doesn’t really make sense to me. If someone could explain that to me I would be really grateful.

I am starting with self inquiry to realize god and the approach that I take is to ask myself who am I. On top of Leo’s content I watched this video and it’s very well made and he explains a lot of things very well and simple. But there is still a thing that seems unclear to me which really slows me down in my self inquiry. One of his top arguments for why I am not my body, mind and so forth is that I am aware of these things but these things are not aware of me (I am aware of a thought, 2+2=4 for example but the thought is not aware of me). One is seen and the other one sees so they can’t be the same thing. That doesn’t really make sense to me. If someone could explain that to me I would be really grateful.