Sugarcoat

Probably heheheheh

@RMQualtrough if the egoic tendency is there it will take any word and make it egoic two people can talk about the same thing with completely different energy behind the words. So the words are sevondary, if the egoic tendency is there already, words don’t strengthen or weaken, just reflect sort of I think

Hi everyone. I just felt a sudden urge to share this. Some desire for self expression I guess because I´m feeling a bit disoriented. About three years ago I got introduced to spirituality. I loved to watch Eckhart Tolle, then I started to watch Actualized.org soooo much. One summer I seriously watched almost all videoss from the start. It resonated a LOT. A new dimension seemed to have opened up "wow I can feel into my inner body and anxiety can dissolve, there is something beyond thinking??". So I started meditating everyday, built up to an hour a day, practiced what Eckhart Tolle said, presence, practised acceptance, contemplation. This seemed to get me somewhere. I felt releases of tension, spontaneous shifts in perspective, what I at the time would have called "increase in awareness". I´m not talking about radical mystical experiences, I´ve never had those, but I hope you who is reading this doesn`t disqualify all i have to say after this becuase of it. Anyways. So I had this very subtle spiritual paradigm, I say subtle because I was still open minded to that I can be wrong and it´s not like I was super dogmatic or something. But there was still this sense of tension and certainty (tension and certainty seem to go hand in hand) about this spiritual paradigm. This paradigm/wordview included things like "My meditation is contributing to the increase in my awareness, which is improving my life/decreasing my suffering since awareness is foundational, so if I miss meditation I will suffer more and the increase in awareness will be slower" "If I feel into my body intensely enough like Eckhart says, I can dissolve negative feelings" "when I meditate or spend time alone, the stillness and lack of distraction creates space for intuitions, insights, repressed emotions and thoughts to arise, thus I can "purify" myself and peel off all the layers of ego" "If I accept this, then the anxiety will go away" These beliefs, the sense of certainty and tension about these things were more implicit than explicit. It´s not really that I explicitly thought these things, it was more implicit. So this winter break, as usual when I have breaks, I thought implicitly "I´ll do as much spiritual practise and meditation as possible so I can really increase my awareness" . So I meditated 3 hours a day. Then one night maybe a week ago, a thought came to my mind that said something like this "what if I let go off the need to control future suffering" then bam a release of tension, shift in perspective, release of certainty, what I wouldve called "increase in awareness" seemed to happen (once again not super radical wow wow mystical experience but something seemed to happen). Shortly after, other thoughts and insights came . "what if my meditation has absolutely nothing at all to do with my apparent increases in awareness". "what if feeling into my body has nothing to do with it either" "how could trying to accept my negative feelings get rid of them? If I´m hoping that acceptance will get rid of them, that´s not true acceptance, since acceptance is allowing, how could an act/effort in time lead to accepting what already is? " . "What does it even mean to "increase awareness"? There were attempts from my mind to associate these insights with my longer than usual meditation, but it is just obvious now how I don´t know at all if there is ANY CORRELATION. There used to be a sense of loss if I didn´t meditate, I had an idea that I was always moving towards higher states of awareness, and something is lost if I don´t get to those higher states, so I need to meditate to accelerate the increase in awareness. There was also this subtle tension and expectation during meditation that the meditation would "do something for me". But when the insights came, it´s just obvious now how I have no damn clue if meditation does anything at all for me. So this expecation dropped. Since then I have not meditated at all, yes I can meditate. But what is gained if I do? What is lost if I don´t? I don´t know, this sense of certainty fell away. Also, what is lost if I don´t reach some conceptual idea of "higher awareness". It became obvious how I had a concept in my mind of higher awareness and that I was attaching some happiness to this. So this sense of "I lose something if i dont increase my awareness" fell away. Less certainty= more not knowing. But not knowing is not a feeling, or a state, it just seems to be "less" now than previously, hard to describe. Even if I used to think "I can always be wrong" or "the map is not the terretory" I still had a sense of certainty about this spiritual paradigm, and certainty has a tension to it. What if the idea of "constantly increasing your awareness" is hindering you from doing so? If someone would have told me this two years ago, it probably wouldnt have "resonated". Maybe this resonates with someone, resonance seems to happen spontaneously, If it clicks it just does. If it falls away, it just does. This is also concept, and in the future this will probably also fall away from my mind, but right now this is what I resonate with. If I were to conceptualize my life, things seem to just slowly fall away idk , I wonder what the end is, why would it stop? I´m not saying I´m "above" spirituality like wow look at me ive transcended this you guys could never, I´m just sharing what seemed to have happened and what resonates with me right now. Yes perhaps a hint of ego somewhere but I can´t really feel it right now, maybe in the future idk. So far it sounds like it´s only felt good, no since then i´ve also had quite a bit of anxiety, the kind that just sits there in the background, felt a bit disoriented, cried several times. There is somewhat of this sense "there is nothing to do about it" so ive just kinda suffered through it. Maybe just concept in my mind but this sense of cause and effect between these spiritual practises and my state has fell away so idk im just "going through it". take care

@WelcometoReality btw hello from Sweden! Stockholm

In contrast to before, yes in a sense. even my 3 hour meditations didn’t get me to my normal “state” now. Becoming noticeable maybe a year ago, I keep having these releases of tension. And that tension is in my entire reality, it’s not emotional or about the amount of thoughts in my head I literally feel less separate than before. and I’m not afraid to conceptualize it because it doesn’t really change anything about it. I can sit and think about some narrative in my mind and then some thought resonates and the narrative can sort of dissolve and suddenly reality is more “zoomed in” and this subtle release of tension, one time it was slightly visual like something dissolved in my visual field. it’s fun to conceptualize honestly. I can’t go back to my previous beliefs about spiritual stuff even if I tried. I didn’t have to argue against them, they stopped making sense. It’s like thoughts say less and less than they used to, they have less pull to them. I like talking about this becuase i never do, what am I gonna say? “Hey guys I feel my sense of separation is decreasing” it doesnt bother me that I think people wouldn’t care, the desire to identify as a person going through something profound is not strong anymore yet there is still some desire to express this. I guess what that is , is the desire for a sense of self to arise to be able to identify as a person who is going through something special, the sense of self always makes conclusions about what’s going on and wants to identify with it. I don’t fight against that anymore.

Yea I don’t have much to say, I just don’t feel like doing any spiritual practice it’s not so complaicated haha

So you’re absolutely sure that meditation gets to that? Of course I still seek. I sought even more in the past when I meditated. the meditation didn’t remove any desires really. How do you know meditation transcends the mind and that it’s impossible without it? Do all people who have “transcended the mind “ meditated? Sounds like a belief to me. I don’t seek the idea of transcending the mind, so even if meditation does that, I don’t mind. I seek other things . Why? Some part of me thinks I’ll be happy when I have them. Why do I think that? Conditioning perhaps, I don’t know. what is there to do about it really. for like a year I tried to “get rid of attachments” through meditation, through playing around with my mind to manipulate my perspective, contemplation, to practicing acceptance, to removing the things I’m “attached to” with the hope that they would accelerate some process of letting go. the desires still remained. Now they’re less intense but they still remain so now I just go all in on them, what else is there to do honestly? I don’t try to remove seeking, that’s just another layer of seeking i don’t play video games but I do eat potato chips sometimes lol. That’s not really seeking but more a bodily desire It’s not like I expect it to fulfill me

The point is?

These increases in baseline, what I like to call “releases of tension” I experience too if I’m gonna conceptualize my life. With this falling away of seeking from spiritual practice, there was this release of tension, and more after that. Now I just don’t associate these releases of tension with any spiritual practice, but I did in the past. If these is no expectation or attachment, there is no reason to do something simply other than just wanting to do it. So now there is no reason for me to meditate unless I feel like it, and so far I haven’t felt like it. So if you meditate for simple wanting to, then good for you. About one week later, (after this first post) I had my first awareness glimpse. Never in my life have I experienced anything like that. When I was younger I used to sometimes ask myself “who am I” during meditation , expecting something to happen, nothing changed. But this time I just spontaneously thought “what is this” “who is doing this” *nothing happened* then “where is the sense of self” and for like a couple of minutes, I couldn’t locate the center there was nothing behind the eyes . Never ever experienced anything like that before. The sense of something behind the eyes returned though quickly. it’s only loss if you believe meditation gets closer to enlightenment, and if you desire enlightenment as an idea. Btw I don’t seek enlightenment as an idea, I seek other things so it’s not loss from my perspective, not that it’s better, I cant control what I desire.

This resonates ☺️

Yea i don’t expect that it will do anything so there is no reason to do it anymore but I can if I want. letting go seems to be not something I can do, it just happens

Yea nice idea but I don’t find any pull or reason to do any sort of spiritual practice anymore, not a rule that I won’t but so far I haven’t felt like it. No more seeking there. I do sometimes still focus on sense perception/the feeling in the body, take deep breaths from time to time but I don’t view it as a practice or expect anything from it, it’s just pleasant sometimes to quiet the mind.

@Illusory Self What you wrote reminds me a lot of my mindset a while back. For years I resisted and tried to get rid of desire. Never worked, at least for me. What do you think the meditation will do to you? Do you think the desires will go away if you meditate long enough? What if you could do meditation, and also simultaneously pursue those "egoic desires"? If you desire to pick up girls, and it lingers in your mind, why not go and do that, pursue it, fully embrace the desire as you do it. What else is there to do with ones time? Is the desire just gonna go away on its own? Instead of trying to find the perfect meditation technique to get rid of the desire, perhaps isn´t the most direct approach to pursue and fully embrace the desire? The distinction between "high consciousness" and "low consciousness" desires is questionable too. What is it based on? What if there aren´t specific things that are inherently high or low conscious. What is the most highest conscious thing for one person to do might be totally different from someone else. You don´t want those desires, so another desire is added - the desire to get rid of those desires. And resistance to those desires. Who has said desires are wrong and cause suffering? If so, how could the desire to get rid of them be the solution? this resonates with me, just sharing in case it will resonate with you

@Mosess Nice post, glad it happened to you. It´s fascinating how quickly and spontaneously certain desires/beliefs/tensions can fall away.

Yea! I used to believe that if I remove something I´m "attached to", that will accelerate the process of detachment. But no, even when I have done that, I would walk around with desire of that thing. So letting go seems to be more spontaneous, you can´t force it. And there´s nothing wrong with desire, Yeah now I´m just going through it, time will tell.

I resonate so much with what you write!!!!!!! This attachment view of reality, just as the other spiritual stuff, was very set in me, but it also got shaken up a bit recently. The certainty there also fell away a bit my mind has been absolutely wild lately it´s kind of funny, it can sound like this: "Eventually I will have to let that *insert thing I think I´m attached to* go, but I don´t want to!" "who has said you have to let go?" "But if I don´t let go and instead give in to the desire by letting myself enjoy the thing I´m attached to then I will suffer because desire means favoring of one thing over the other. So if I desire something then I will have to try to maintan that thing because I´m resisting the opposite of that thing which is the death of that thing I´m attached to. So I will suffer from this tension of trying to maintain something and resisting the opposite. So I have to remove the thing I´m attached to so I can let go of the attachment and learn to love both opposites equally so I can gain peace" "But don´t you remember the time when you did just that, you removed a thing you desired/where attached to for a while, and you still went around craving it and daydreaming about it, so obviously the attachment/desire was still there. So doesn´t this point to that letting go of attachments is not something you can force by removing the thing you desire. It´s more spontaneous, one can let go of something even while having it, just as one can desire something even when one doesnt have it currently. And now youre attached to the idea of detachment and think it will allieviate you of suffering, so that´s just more resistance." "but I´m afraid that if I let myself have things I desire, then something bad will happen and mess it up becuause it seems like reality is designed to make me realize truth, reality doesnt care about my pleasure, so since desire is untruthful and delusion something will go wrong if I give in to it" "wtf bruh that´s some idea in your head you have no clue if that´s true about reality. Who has said that reality won´t allow you to enjoy some pleasure? That´s just more fear and concept. Just do what you want and resonate with, doesn´t have to be so complicated. " and so it goesssss.... I used to ground myself and feel more sane by focusing on sense perception to quiet my mind or to meditate, but now it´s like I don´t know if that is more sane or truthful so I´m just all over the place. When school starts again I´ll probably feel more grounded and normal again hopefully lol Okay this might sound like I´m miserable no I´m doing fine, sometimes anxious sometimes more peaceful

I´m not saying meditation is to be avoided, or that I will never meditate again. I´m saying that I used to believe and feel certainly that meditation was doing something special, one of them being alleviating me from suffering, so something was lost if I didn´t meditate, that´s how I felt. Sometimes my family could ask "wanna follow us we will go and buy some things" and I´d say "no I have to meditate", as if meditation is inherently a more valuable way of spending my time. There was a tension "will I get home in time to meditate". Not intense tension and fear, but still a little bit. This was felt and seen through. Now it´s like "okay I can meditate if I want, but I don´t know what it will do, will it make me more peaceful? Perhaps, will it induce some special experience? Perhaps, but I don´t feel like I know that anymore". When it comes to pleasure, most of the time I´m at home studying so there is not much in my life that would compete with meditation so that I would have to rationalize it away in order to pursue pleasure. Wouldn´t rationalization of not doing meditation only be necessary if I felt like meditation threatens something, if I felt like something was lost, some pleasure perhaps, if I meditated? But it was the opposite, I felt something was lost if I DIDNT meditate, so I had to rationalize why I should meditate. I´m not claiming to be in some enlightened state of not knowing, I have no idea about enlightenement. I´m not gonna sit here and say "I dont know if time is real", why? Because it wouldnt be congruent with my feelings/sense. It certanly feels like time is very real. But the certainty about meditation doing something special for me doesn´t feel real anymore, there I don´t feel like I know. You seem to genuinely want to help me see through potential self deception, I appreciate that , hopefully I´m more clear now

"most certainly", do you know that for sure though? I am not claiming that it´s not true, just that I don´t know if it is true, the sense/feeling of certainty about it is not there anymore for me about those things. What do you mean by seeking from a position of infinite detachment? from my perspective you seem very openminded judging by the tone in your post, but there seems to be some fear that this is a dangerous way of thinking, as if something valuable is lost if one applies what I wrote, but why is that?

I laughed out loud when reading this. Lovely energy in your words It feels a bit freeing yes to not constantly be bound to some future idea of increased awareness that I´m always looking forward to that will allieviate my suffering and that everything I do has to be contributing to this otherwise I´m losing something lol But I still have other attachents so I´m still in my seeking energy lol, one thing at a time I guess

Currently I don´t feel like meditating no, but I will if I desire to. Currently I´m all over the place lol I feel some attachemnts I have but I can´t force myself to let them go so I´m just doing whatever

I´m not saying it´s not real. I´m saying I don´t know if it is, and I didn´t know it even when I thought it was real, so from my perspective it was concept at the time.

Anxiety and thoughts seem to go hand in hand still from my perspective. If I am around people I will hold tears back usually but when I am alone I let myself cry. Just let yourself cry, I don´t do anything specific, if the crying comes it comes Yes, i´ll let my emotions guide. Where there is tension there is something to work on

This falling away of certainty seems to happen spontaneously. I´m starting to think how it seems completely independent of any action I take in my life. Thanks darling, Yes! It seems very spontaneous.

@Godishere Let´s say it´s true that we are god and infinite. But do YOU know that for 100%? Do you truly know that? ask yourself honestly. If you are honest you might find no, you probably don´t, and I don´t either. So why ruminate about it? If you are so awake, what is the problem in your life? If there is tension, negative feelings, maybe a sign that you`re doing something "wrong".

A little rant I get a sense that many people in the spiritual community are lost when it comes to what this journey is really about. I’m not enlightened or anything but this is still some insights I wanted to share as I think some people can benefit from it. As a newbie when you get into spiritual work/self-actualization you have ideas about what it is about. So you install these habits. “I’m gonna meditate everyday” “I’ll eat healthy” “I’ll contemplate x hours every week about these topics Leo talks about in his videos” “I’ll say this mantra” etc this is good of course. But as you get going on this journey, what I’ve found is that you realize that these things are not really what it’s about. this journey is more about identity level change, letting go of attachments, such as identities you are attached to, following your intuition. You see, let’s say you have social anxiety, your highest priority shouldn’t be contemplating non duality, but instead to overcome your social anxiety. Sure some exceptional people might be called by their intuition to jump into enlightenment work before doing the basics , but most people are not like this. If you are a person who is attached to the identity of yourself as a successful person and you are attached to acquiring money. No amount of meditation and contemplation in the world will give you the growth in consciousness as long as you don’t let go of these attachment. Once again, identity level change. Why do we see these people who have built entire carriers on spirituality, they do yoga meditate etc but you can still tell that they’re neurotic and not high conscious ? Because they’ve gotten their priorities messed up. They’re not letting go of attachments and getting identity level change. if the spiritual journey is pleasing to your ego, are you really doing the true work? For example, my intuition has been telling me to stop enhancing my physical appearance, not that it is inherently non-spiritual, but because I have to in order to let go of my attachment to it as a woman. This is painful to my ego, I don’t want to do this and I’ve resisted it, because I’m deeply attached to being pretty. But it’s these things that your subconscious/intuition is telling you to do that will give you the true growth if you do them. View meditation as a practice that creates the stillness/space necessary for your intuitions and visions to arise. Then your task is to bring them explicitly to your conscious awareness and act in alignment to them in the physical world. Dont think “Leo gave me the assignment to contemplate science for a week so I will do that”. Is that TRULY what you need right now? Perhaps not. You see, you probably have something lingering in the back of your mind that you subconsciously know that you should focus on, but that you are avoiding and instead trying to satisfy your need for growth in consciousness by doing less important things in other areas of your life. That thing lingering in the back of your mind is your intuition trying to get you to change. So ask yourself , and answer BRUTALLY honestly In what area in my life am I struggling the most? What do I fear the most? What am I the most afraid of letting go of? What identity/self image am I holding on to? What am I afraid of admitting to myself explicitly? What is lingering in the back of my mind but that I am repressing? What are my biggest attachment? you might think “well I’m mostly attached to my body” and yea of course if someone puts a gun to your head you won’t care about money in your bank but most of us in here are not at the level of consciousness where we can give up attachment to our physical body, so leave that to the side and focus on other aspects for now. Let your intuition answer these questions, and align with that in the physical world. This is where true growth comes. Leos video about burning through karma talks about this. Very foundational video.