askdfjnak

We're all going to die. What a relief.

Notes Our need to be significant traps us. I've been think a lot about how the rise of technology and social media has slowly evolved into a mirror of our internal states. One thing that has really blown my mind is that it's not really possible to have an ego without being surrounded by other egos. As Ze Frank described in the video I posted last week, most of us cant comprehend different facets of being without comparing ourselves to other people, and other people to us. What we've essentially developed is a complex interconnected structure that keeps all of us deluded. It's really quite beautiful in a way. We get to live out our entire lives interacting with other people without ever getting to know anyone, and never getting to know ourselves. Social media is just an externalised rendition of what we do basically 24 hours a day unconsciously. After considering how much time we might spend prepping the content that we want to share, I realised that we spend a tremendous amount of energy modelling other people ideas of us and then modelling how we are going to live into that image and model adaptive strategies to cope in a world that's constantly changing. Do you know how much brain power that must take up? Its no wonder people struggle to be creative or spend their days engaged in vacuous low quality relations, anything more would fry our brains. Entering higher consciousness states seems to happen when we are “alone” because our creative capacities aren't being so heavily exploited by a functioning ego. I disagree that we shouldn't try to make these sates permanent, they must absolutely become permanent! That's the goal of all spiritual work right? I think I've found the linchpin that will help undo this whole mess; our need to matter or be significant. If we can consciously undo our need to "be" somebody we can free up a lot of our own potential. As children we don't really give a shit about what other people are thinking of us or our relative position in society or the world at large, as a result we are usually far more relaxed and creative. Slowly as we age our need to define ourselves becomes greater and greater even to the point of wanting to impact the whole world. Hank alludes to the benefits of regressing this neurotic desire back to simply caring about the people who matter to you. I say go even further, become a nobody, so that not even the people who matter to you can influence your sense of self. The more you do it the more power you gain. You become more creative, more emotionally stable, you have fewer neurotic desires, your capacity to focus increases, you have more free time. The list goes on. That is the goal of spiritual work. To become extra-ordinary, as Sadhguru puts it. It really is the key to becoming extraordinary. What a fucking paradox.

Week 5 *** Hours Sat: 111 Hours sat this week: 6 Current daily average: 3.2 I only meditated on my knees in front of my wall for 1 hour per day this week. I then did a 5 hour sit in my chair every afternoon/night, I didn't record the hours in the chair. The paraesthesia in my lower legs has now completely gone so I will be continuing on my knees this week. I have found that if I rotate my legs outwards (duck feet) I can keep all of the muscle mass down the front of my leg off of the ground and rest on the bones of the inside of my knees and the top of my feet. i shouldn't have any more problems. To start making up lost time I'm going to try to do 2x4hr sits every day this week except Friday because I have to go to university. I wrote an apology letter to the dean of my university asking if I could be let back in to finish my degree after being expelled. This week I found myself strolling through campus ready to begin the new semester. The first class I attended was a 3 hour practical with about 150 other people. I had no idea what was about to hit me. I found myself standing totally alone in what felt like a blood bath of suffering. Amidst the taught backs, clenched jaws, tense shoulders, nervous laughter, vice grip handshakes, averted gazes, self deprecating humour, anxious small talk and apprehensive note taking I stood, horrified by how tense everyone was. After the first hour I left for the bathroom and locked the door. I couldn't believe how out of touch I'd become. I clenched the a basin and stared at my reflection. A terrifying question welled up in my eyes; am I going to have to live the rest of my life watching people starve under the weight of their identities? I left with the moral conviction of a saint, determined to find the ultimate map or method to enlightenment. I hardly slept at all this week (<2hrs per day). I paced up and down my passage, racking my brain through every teaching I've encountered trying to find “the teaching” On Thursday I thought I would listen to some music to help calm me down, before I knew it it was 12am and my phone bleeped, telling me that I had just reached a new daily step count. I walked over 20 kilometres just pacing up and down my passage trying to crack “teaching spirituality” I went to bed, feeling hopelessly lost. The next morning while I was meditating my dad slid a note under my door. I heard him walk out the house and drive away. When my timer finished I picked up the note which read “going to town to get some food” I smiled and wrote “OK” and then slid it back under my door into the empty passage. I chuckled to myself before a cold realisation sunk down into me. I am alone. Not just in a personal sense. I mean absolutely. Since I'm a fiction, everybody else is too. Our words and thoughts criss-cross the void, landing in empty spaces, soon to be blown away in the winds of time. There's nothing I can do to hold on to the people I love, or even hate. Talking to others is no different to talking to myself; in the same way that thoughts just “appear” in my mind, thought, gestures, sounds and words just “appear” out of others without any control or autonomous authorship. Meaning happens in the spaces between us, and then it leaves, quietly. I am alone, even in company. I broke down to tears when I realised my attempts to try to strategise and share spirituality are really just an attempt to run away from the truth that I am alone. It also struck me with crystal clarity that there is nothing that I can do about it. When I went to bed that last night I was crying tears of joy and laughing at the absurdity of it all. One of the most beautiful paradoxes I've ever realised is that even though I am absolutely alone, like absolutely, completely alone. I am also completely free to enjoy being “together” with everyone and everything as myself. I can be completely surrounded and yet absolutely alone, or completely alone yet absolutely surrounded; in the throws of a passionate love affair with the field of existence before me. I can “do” things without doing them. I can “say” things without saying them. I can “be” without being. I can “feel” without feeling. I feel so free and ethereal and at the same time completely completely absolute zero 0K grounded. Reality is a spectacle dancing its way through me and to me. I am unmoving, everything passes through me and yet everything is me and so move with it. IT IS SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL! Me typing this for you is also so absurd. It's exactly the same as if I were to type to my mirror reflection, and any response that arrives from the outside world would be exactly like if my mirror reflection started talking to me. ***

Notes

Week 4 *** Hours Sat: 105 Hours sat this week: 29 Current daily average: 3.75 Experiences: The opening sit of the week was one of the worst experience I've had in my entire life. My alarm went off at 4:00am but I only started at 4:30 because it was freezing and I was feeling lazy. The first few minutes were pretty normal but I lost track of time completely after that point. Gradually the resistance welled up inside of me like battery acid was leaking over my organs. My heart started pounding, I started shaking. It felt like my head was going to explode, both from the physical feeling of pressure and the barrage of thoughts that started hitting me from all sides. As the resistance deepened I started to feel physically ill all over my body, like my veins were filled with hot tar. I remember once I drank an entire bottle of vodka on a night out and ended up begging for death on the floor of a nightclub toilet. This was exactly like that, combined with strong negative emotions and negative thought. I started retching; physically trying to vomit, my stomach was empty though so nothing came up. My room couldn't have been more than 5 degrees but I was drenched in sweat. I just sat there and remembered Mooji talking about Sri Ramana Maharishi: I said to myself “there's nothing back there for you” The pain in my ass, knees, back and ankles intensified as time progressed. I literally felt like a resistor in a circuit would feel if it had a nervous system and gradually had more and more electric current pushed through it with increasing voltage. I have no idea how long this lasted but it felt like a thousand years. Then in the space of about 5 seconds I dropped into a new dimension. It felt like bomb diving into a swimming pool where the implosion of cool water hits your entire body at once. Every single muscle in my body relaxed and I went into deep REM. All of the activity of my mind ripped apart like an engine that had run past its max rpm and had run out of oil. All words lost their meaning and I separated out from the mind completely, I could "see" it just as a movement of energy in front of "me". The pain in my body/emotional centres felt like it was being sucked out of me. A bit like if you open all the windows of a house on a hot summers day and a cool breeze rushes in. The really painful parts of my body still felt the same but the relationship to the pain changed 100%. If you are holding your hands in a fire it's excruciating but if your hands are near a fire on a cold day its beautiful. In both cases the fire is the same. The pain was the same before and after “the drop” but now the pain was kind of beautiful. This is the best analogy I could come up with. I finished the sit, everything was completely the same as before; I felt “normal-ish" is what I mean, but I was still completely blown away by what had happened. I didn't know suffering could just stop so rapidly like that and I didn't know it was possible to go so far out of the mind. I've observed thoughts before but this was like a whole new layer of depth that was added, beyond description. I did 3 more 3 hour sits on Monday and then 4 3 hour sits on Tuesday. *** Every day when my alarm goes off my inner voice goes “I'm up, I'm up, I'm up” and then I reach over and turn it off. On Wednesday for some reason my alarm went off and I said to myself “I'm awake, I'm awake, I'm awake” and I turned it off. I sat for a few moments and then just burst out laughing. I'm awake. Of course! I'm awake! That's all I've ever been! I've experienced this fundamental shift many times but it's still just as surprising and relieving to realise it again. I instantly shifted from bear down to ease up meditation. I was beginning to get abiding paraesthesia down the front of my legs so I switched to sitting in a chair. It was just sitting, no effort or determination or willpower, I wasn't trying to sit still. I also wasn't just sitting physically, internally I was just sitting in “awake-ness” I prefer to say this instead of awareness because it's easier for me to understand and feel, but its consciousness/god/the witness/awareness that I'm talking about. I took my seat fundamentally as the awakened mind. This is where “choosing” enlightenment becomes possible. This guy articulates what I was trying to describe a few weeks ago with the term "willing": … And so I sat, like a king I consulting with his people I practised recognising my “awake-ness” in everything that happened to me. [sound] bird chirps (ok next) [feeling] peaceful sensations in thorax (ok next) [thought] You're not awake (ok next) [thought] (in response to previous thought) LOL! what the fuck are you talking about, of course he's awake it wouldn't be possible for you to exist if he wasn't awake. (ok next) [sound] dog barks (ok next) [physical sensation] PAIN (ok next) [thought] mental image of me writing about this (ok next) [thought] you should stop updating your journal, enlightened people are quiet (ok next) [feeling] feeling of shame (ok next) … and so on. There's no attempt at manipulation, just allowing everything to be as it is when it arrives, when its present and when it leaves. It's tricky to talk about because I've heard the same things over and over again, but now I actually get it. Its so obvious and at the same time paradoxically impossible, there isn't anyone to do non-manipulation, awake-ness is already the substrate in which everything happens, like fish swimming in the water. Everything that happens is only possible because I'm awake, of course I'm not awake, I'm in that which is awake. I just continued sitting in a chair. A chair is much easier because there's not as much pain and you don't have to concentrate so much on your body sensations/posture. I didn't record these hours, so all of my recorded hours are those that I spent meditating on my knees in front of a wall. *** On Friday it happened, what I've been trying to get to. I sat down and just kept watching and allowing, letting my resistance gradually erode away and at one point I was just awake. I heard the sound of the birds chirping but it was just the bird chirping. Not like bird over there, I'm here, oh there's the beginning of the bird chirping and now its done, no: JUST THE BIRD CHIRPING. I looked at the wall and all there was just the wall, tears were streaming down, laughter happening, dog barking, pain happening. This is literally impossible to describe because its so present there isn't even anyone there to collect details to write about, storing memories, thinking up analogies, shit just happens. I've only experienced this for a few brief moments in my life but only under extraordinary circumstances, never as result of meditation. I suspect that as I continue practising and eroding away my ego structures through the process of purification these states will become more frequent/permanent. I now really, really get what Adyashanti was talking about in the first video I linked to in my first post, its a state of willingly allowing yourself to fall away by taking your seat as consciousness - a ritual suicide ha ha. I thought I got it before, and I kinda did but now its become a fully realised teaching in me, purification has become conscious; I've developed the taste for it. I don't have to motivate myself into sitting anymore. I want to sit for 6 hours a day now. The process is quite terrifying, even outside of meditation. As I'm typing this I'm feeling the joints of my fingers scattering randomly around some keys, stringing together words out of nowhere to create something that has meaning. It's all happening on it's own and I have no control over any of it. I don't even have control over the fear that comes up as a result of realising that I have no control. All I can do is watch. All I shall do is watch with equanimity, and allow that aspect of me to gradually subside, and I know it's going to take as long as it takes. *** I'm going to add notes to my journal because there are so many things I want to document. I don't intend to try and teach or explain anything for its own sake. I just want to document how I'm thinking/feeling/rationalising through this process so that I can see any traps that I fall into and in the event of something bad happening, my notes will serve as an example of what not to do. I've found journaling to be a really useful tool to gaining insight into myself. DO NOT take anything I add here as gospel, or right, or wrong for that matter. Its just a journal and I'm still very immature spiritually so I don't really know what I'm talking about. These are some videos/speeches/songs that I used to watch to help G-up emotionally and psychologically in addition to my vision video. i don't need them anymore, but they were useful for me so I'll share them: Videos: An Invocation for Beginnings Meet the Hero Go all the way Lil dicky album trailer Olan rogers apparel adverts; good balance of hilariousness : seriousness because that's what the spiritual journey is. Spring Fall Songs: Extrodanary machine Yellow Flicker Beat

I thought we could share videos of people who have mastered various things here for inspiration. Here are some I like: Pianist Kendama Jugglers Blade smith. He handcrafts chefs knives from meteorites, super cool.

Week 3 God floated down to his basement and pulled out an old box labelled “NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.” He opened it up and pulled out his ViewMaster, a clever device that made multidimensional images using lots of smaller images. In the box were many of gods favourite memories. He picked out a disk labelled “The last person on Earth”, it was a vlog made by the last person on the planet. He held the ViewMaster in front of his eyes and peered down the lens ... And God was thrashing about in water as images were developing around him. This is how the ViewMaster worked. It developed images in Gods eyes and then folded them into one another, mixing experience within experience and time within time, creating new dimensions for God to explore. And God began to lose memory of himself in the fog And God was alone And God was floating through the universe And the universe was floating through God And God was walking down an empty street And God was an Alien And God was the empty pages of history And God was in the woods And God was vlogging about his last days on earth And God was reading something strange on a forum And God was fighting a shadow to remember And God clicked the play button and was confused, but God kept watching and God watched past the credits (because God knew there were extra bits after the credits): Silently, God watched as words appeared in his mind and continued to read... *** Hours Sat: 76 Hours sat this week: 26 Current daily average: 3.6 start date now June 27, wtf? Experiences Hell on earth Glimpses of unity Insights I'm fucked. I reverse-engineered this bit of marketing psychology to help leverage my willpower. Step 1: Acknowledge that I have been triggered Step 2: Ask myself if I want the behaviour to occur (y/n) Step 3: Determine whether the the behaviour is difficult (ability) Step 4: Visualise the positive/negative sides of the activity until my motivation crosses the threshold and the behaviour does/doesn't occur eg. Alarm goes off for meditation (trigger set previously) Acknowledge I have been triggered to begin meditating Decide I want the behaviour to occur Determine that the behaviour is difficult Spend time visualising the positive effects of meditation until motivation increases to match ability. Next thing I know I'm meditating. It seems much easier to use my willpower in 4 small steps than in 1 big one, like I've put it through a pulley system. It could just be that the meditation is gathering its own momentum and I'm getting sucked out into space, the next most logical step the great unknown. 'cause I thought what I didn't know, I couldn't miss... and then I entered the atmosphere of a new planet... *** Next weeks post will be late because I'm simulating a retreat until Monday. I also want to write down everything I currently think I know about enlightenment. Yes it's pointless, i'm just meat, just making sounds, etching pixels into your computer screen Je me … ox … ox herding … kundalini Forget it, I'll just have the fish and chips Don't get involved. *** And God was a cam puss F.U.N.

Guys, guys, guys, huddle up. I had an idea. It's pretty clear that mass marketing, media consumption, forums, social media etc. are some of our biggest obsticals to mindfulness/awareness and self-actualization, right? No matter how positive or negative the intentions of the business owners are. It's also pretty obvious that there's no way to escape it, not unless you go live in a monastery. I watched a great video by Shinzen Young where he says: “the average person is used 24 hours of the day but a person of zen uses 24 hours of the day” So I asked myself: How could we stop being used by the massive in-flood of triggers, ads, carefully engineered social platforms etc. and start using them to develop our mindfulness. You could just say “oh yeah, every time I go onto site xyz, I will be mindful" or "every time someone does something to piss me off, I'll practice mindfulness” but that's being a bit naïve. Realistically, you might only practice 30 seconds of mindfulness in a week, unless you're already a zen jedi, in which case you probably wouldn't even bother reading petty threads like this one. We need to use tools to help us. http://webtimer.net/ This app allows you to keep a running track of the amount of time you spend on various websites. Use it for a few days and then identify the ones that are taking up most of your time. Enter the sites into this app. http://mindfulbrowsing.org/ Now every time you go onto one of them your screen will light up with a personal message every 10 minutes and you have to manually click out to continue browsing. You can use this to practice becoming fully present every 10 minutes before continuing your media consumption. But it's critical that you actually practice becoming present when your reminder pops up. Otherwise you will just click out unconsciously without gaining anything. http://www.nguyensan.me/bell-of-mindfulness This app sounds a bell in your browser at customised intervals, if you prefer. You can do the same thing. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.mindbell&hl=en This app sounds random bells on your phone for when you're just going about daily life. Theoretically, this would actually make you more mindful than if you turned your computer and phone off because you are constantly being prompted to check yourself before you wreck yourself. Do you guys know any other apps or tools or techniques that might be useful in this context?

This guy gets it.

Week 2 The devil grew tired of wrestling with the god he created. He set him aside and proceeded to indulge himself in life's pleasures. But by some miracle, the god stirred to life the devil gnashed his teeth and began the chase, the fight resumed. … and God watched the proceedings silently. *** Hours Sat: 50 Hours sat this week: 17 Current daily average: 3.6 Experiences: On Monday I overslept as a result of the fatigue I had sustained from the first week of practice. This was the beginning of a spiral of apathy that saw me completely miss 2 days of meditation. It was like my meditation stool had a force field around it. My diet tanked, my exercise stopped, I started binge watching Game of Thrones and I didn't go to work. Basically everything went to shit overnight. What amazed me was how much I actually enjoyed it. The meditation had definitely given my mindfulness a boost. Do you know how delicious processed food is when you taste every bite? Do you know how nice beer is when you can feel the effervescence falling into your body and the warm buzzing sensation drip down to your toes? Do you know how enjoyable Game of Thrones is when you're not emotionally invested in any of the characters? Do you know how relaxing it is to stay home from work when you feel as detached as a fart in the wind? My ego managed to trick itself into thinking it was enlightened because it was in such a deep state of pleasure and contentment with the present moment. It almost got me. When I sat down on Tuesday I immediately felt something was different. I had WAY more resistance than usual. It was like my entire body was screaming for oxygen. Thankfully I only set the timer for 1 hour because there was no way I would have made 3. I remembered a Mooji video that I watched immediately after the sit. It pretty much saved me from quitting altogether. I didn't meditate at all on Wednesday and I realised I needed to do something if I wanted to keep sitting. The stress felt in meditation was now creeping into my daily life outside of meditation. The feeling of suffocation in my chest was pretty much constant throughout this week. This video by Shinzen Young discussed the behaviour changes that meditation enables, I have the cart before the horse because I'm trying to induce behaviours changes that will lead to meditation. I found the information useful, though. In there he recommends setting up accountability to aid the process of changing behaviour if separating out sensations in the body and mind proves too much. This is why I started this journal on Wednesday. It worked. I didn't want to do this initially because journaling about a meditation habit and enlightenment journey has a lot of traps for the ego, but for now I think it's good. I stopped watching Game of Thrones; it's just people fighting and fucking each other. Like most fictional literature I guess. I'm still eating unhealthy but I'm not too concerned about it for now. All of my willpower is being sapped by my meditation. All of the negative experiences listed in week one returned during meditation, with the exception of shaking and convulsions; I am able to sit still now. In addition to these experiences I started to feel anxiety and stress in the hours before a meditation session. My body had spontaneous convulsions outside of meditation, I started pacing relentlessly with an enormous influx of energy. My emotions fluctuated between “depressed 50 year old fascist man with a terminal illness” and “vivacious teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert.” I started talking to myself out loud and laughing at my own statements like a schizophrenic. I am now coming down with the flu. I was supposed to go on a Vipassana retreat this week but I can't now. I'll just try to smash out as many hours as I can from home. Insights: If we consider the concept of flow, we can see that anxiety and apathy are the result of low skill level during periods of high and low challenge. At the moment 6 hours of SDS per day is above my skill level. I realised I would have to focus on improving my meditation skills to improve my results and consistency. I was just white knuckling my way through 3 hours of self-inquiry and SDS with no strategy whatsoever. I started to integrate some of Shinzen Young's mindfulness model into my sits. Separating out mental, emotional and physical sensations made it much easier to: a) Begin meditating. I was suffering before meditation and spending a few minutes separating out my negative thoughts and emotions made it possible for me to actually sit down b) Practice self-inquiry productively. Previously, I was just inquiring into whatever caught my attention whilst plenty slipped below my threshold of awareness. By systematically inquiring into physical sensations, emotional sensations and mental sensations (mental images, mental sounds, thoughts, memories, beliefs) my awareness deepened, because my concentration and clarity raised and I was able to be much more equanimous with the sit. I think I solved the paradox of wanting enlightenment. Wanting and pursuing actually get in the way of enlightenment, yet it's necessary to want and pursue enlightenment to get enlightened. It comes down to the differences between desire and pursuit compared with "will". I think there is a difference between wanting enlightenment and being willing to be enlightened. Desire is a product of the ego and pursuit is the movement of ego towards desire. "Will" however, is something much more primal, it is simultaneously a movement and an end. Since enlightenment is not a static destination, it cannot be achieved if it is a desire. It's not possible to become enlightened, It's only possible to un-become unenlightened. To un-become unenlightened, one must be willing to be enlightened rather than want to get enlightened. Maybe I'm just lost in philosophy. … I'm definitely lost in philosophy. It's the only place you can get lost. The only thing that can keep you from enlightenment is the thought you're about to have. Ultimately god is thinking these thoughts but he's pretending he isn't. fuck this shit.

Week 1 … and the devil wrestled with himself for a week and he put on a great show for god. *** Hours sat: 33 Current Daily Average: 4.7 Experiences: Extreme pain in knees and buttocks Lingering pain in shoulders/neck Pressure in skull Headaches/migraines Extreme negative emotions – Terror, Rage Extreme positive emotions – Joy/Bliss Love Anxiety attacks Sexual arousal Irregular pounding heart beat that could be felt throughout body Increased heart rates Adrenaline Spontaneous muscle spasms and locks esp. in core Violent Shaking Sweating Shivering Internal resistance – like a volcano was erupting below by navel, spewing hot lava up into my thorax Tight chest Laboured irregular breathing – I do long distance running and I experienced a shortness of breath/burning sensation in lungs that occurs when running above lactate threshold Crawling / tingling sensations (like insects were running over my body) Nausea Claustrophobia Suicidal thoughts Clenched jaw, grinding teeth General malaise Difficulty sleeping, vivid dreaming Fatigue / exhaustion Depression Feeling of impending death Insights: 1. There is suffering 2. This is quite abstract, but I want to explain how the insight happened. I was watching the music video below (Snakadaktal - Hung On Tight). I thought of his awakening at the beginning of the video to be symbolic of my first awakening. He then sits up and looks at his reflection in the mirror, symbolic of re-identification with ego. He then goes on to try and continue a dead party, pushing people aside and hurting himself, whilst singing “I hung on tight..” I realised that I have been clinging onto my previous experiences and that this has been a source of great pain. In other words I've been trying to keep a dead party going by living from the MEMORY of my past experiences rather than by embracing the experience that is unfolding before me NOW. I already understood this intellectually of course, but the insight sunk down into my bones when I watched this, it clicked into my being. I cannot grasp enlightenment, I cannot effort enlightenment, I cannot hold enlightenment. It changed from an insight I learned, to an insight I earned. I came to understand what Mooji is talking about when he talks about the “final ace up the sleeve of the mind” The meditation session immediately after was much easier. I was able to bathe all of the negative experiences in a much clearer awareness. Awareness that was not fragmented by the mind. Whilst the experience was still horrible, I was able to sit perfectly motionless for the full 3 hours. The edge had been taken off of the suffering because I was much more present with the sit. It's very relieving to know that the process is already delivering results.

I want to apologise for this thread, I was absolutely taking a victim mindset. I don't know what's happened but it's like my mind has gone absolutely bat shit crazy recently. I projected my anger and some of my own insecurities out here and twisted Leo into some kind of demon by pulling out some absolute bullshit theories, which is not ok. This place has turned into a bit of a distraction for me though, because it's the only place I can actually talk about things that matter to me. I've basically lost all of my friends to mediocrity, been shunned by my family for being a “failure” I got expelled from university for fighting with lecturers, I also tried walk across Australia, but quit after 2300km because I realised I was being egoistic. (try explain that to someone outside of this forum) I've decided to use my real name because bashing people behind a veil of anonymity is the definition of a coward, and I'm better than that. I am leaving for some time now though because I've had enough talk, now I need to walk the walk n' shit. Fuck, self-honesty is hard. I'm literally sweating and shaking as I type this.

@nbolt I'm not against actualized.org, I've learnt things here that have probably saved me decades of dicking around. I'm just pointing out that in order to disseminate this information Leo had to adopt a system, every system is going to be fundamentally flawed in some way. For whatever reason, Leo chose to use business. You can be sure that is going to colour the way he delivers his content and that the methods he adopts are going to be in direct conflict with some of his messages. For example, modern business is fundamentally about getting peoples attention right? I think he actually makes that explicit in one of his videos. So everything he does is going to be geared to gaining and holding your attention, from click-bait titles, to long videos, to a forum that is hard to leave. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, it's just that these can become obsticals when you're actually trying to become enlightened or raise your awareness or whatever because its passifying you. When you're lurking on a forum, you're not actively facing yourself, When you're watching “how to make a girl squirt p2” you're not actively facing yourself. He's also trying to mix enlightenment with personal development because its easier to sell western societies weird concepts from east that way. The problem with that is that enlightenment might become just another fad that nobody really gets. As he says in his his enlightenment video “you need to kill yourself” this takes balls and from this perspective “personal development” is just another neurosis geared towards self preservation. How can you be willing to kill yourself and be trying to reinforce yourself with health, money, relationships, success etc. at the same time? How can you be willing to kill yourself and be worried about how you're going to pay for your blueberries, or whatever the elitist super-foods are these days, or position yourself as some kind of urban hermit with comfy slippers and an armchair to dream up new philosophies. The paradox is that you do need some philosophy and ideas to help you, but the amount of info you need is tiny compared to the time you need to spend holding your feet to the fire, facing yourself and some of life's harsh truths. It's like baking a loaf of bread, you only need a tiny bit of yeast compared to the amount of flour you need to make a good loaf. I've got more than enough information now and its time to start building up awareness and undoing my own insecurities, neurosis, beliefs, desires and attitudes. Maybe I'm a bit of an extremist, maybe I'm completely off the mark, but this just seems right for me now. I'm leaving to go to beyond. If my account could be deleted that'd be great, but ... meh Cheers everyone, hope you all have great lives and even better deaths.

No, it's mostly just people repeating the same stuff over and over. I wanted to leave to stop wasting time. I'm being manipulated into staying by not being able to delete my account. This was an intentional update. True, no one tradition will work for all illusions. I think a side effect of Leo's "tradition/enlightenment culture" is that people might "pretend" to be open minded and actually turn being "open minded" into a dogma. Also re-branding enlightenment into "advanced personal development" could create some serious inner conflicts. I mean, how are you supposed to "actualize" a self that doesn't exist? It could perpetuate delusions of control, success/failure, regret, purpose, and cause people to objectify enlightenment as a goal to progress through.

Wow this blew up, this is how a forum "should" be. No point. We'll all be dead soon. I want fuller conversations and emptier silences. That's my point. Next question(s) I have: Leo offers plenty of great free content that could help many people who are having problems in their lives, no question. The way he delivers it also makes it very attractive to said people, he's very comforting and authenticity is woven into is work. Now he's beginning to delve into content that could be very dangerous if misinterpreted. Like free will, morality and other aspects of "enlightenment". Do you think it's wise to teach enlightenment before becoming enlightened? ... to an unseen audience who may be unstable and impressionable. What are the benefits of doing it that way? What if he's ... "WRONG"! *dun, dun dahhhhhh!*

You're assuming I'm unconscious. You could even say that you are ... judging me.

So why are you here?

The Buddha walked out of a palace to become a beggar 2500 years ago and his shit's all over the web.

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Into mantras? Join Leo's new band!

I think there is some truth to this, but... There is a difference between authentic passion and the artificial passions that we adopt from society. A person may believe that they are passionate about something that they really have no business pursuing; simply because they have been brainwashed by their peers, elders and society at large into believing that something is meaningful. In this case, definitely don't follow your passion. There is such a thing as authentic passion though. It's usually much more quirky and nuanced than "mainstream dreams". In this case, definitely follow your passion.

"Mu"

@ChimpBrain I'm also really interested in spiral dynamics and I've been reading up on it. I'm specifically interested in green-yellow, world 6-7 transition on the graves model. This guys gets into some of the physical/emotional changes that occur in this transition and I find it really fascinating. Coherence Part 1 Coherence Part 2 I'm also studying hypnosis//self-hypnosis and it's standard procedure to speak to the subconscious as if you are speaking to a 10 year old child, which is interesting. I wonder if future hypnotists are going to have to speak to adult subconscious minds (getting my strategy sorted )

@Extreme Z7 I enjoyed it, it had some interesting perspectives. It doesn't have much to do with enlightenment as Leo has defines it, though. The reference to Anima Mundi and Gaia theory reminded me of this documentary. It has a similar tone and some cool ideas too.

I've seen a lot of people posting about social anxiety as one of their challenges. This video is about communicating effectively but it has really good techniques to overcome social anxiety and speaking spontaneously. Some are great for getting the mind out of the way which might be useful if you're pursuing enlightenment.