I found that when you start this journey it tends to be quite neurotic and not very effective. But at the same time, you can only start where you're at, so neurotic practice is better than no practice at all.
You problems could be answered with a couple of deep psychedelic trips, where you would face the real existential root of your dysfunctions and let them go. Then you could proceed with a more organic spiritual practice.
The value of the psychedelic is not so much in that it enlightens you, but that it clearly shows you what is preventing you from awakening, what is holding you back. Otherwise you could waste years chasing your tail in circles.
One of the biggest challenges of the spiritual path is what we get in our own way. We all have unique ways of getting in our own way. Psychedelics help you understand your unique ways of getting in your own way so you can stop doing it. It tends to not be enough to just intellectually know how you get in your own way. You need a deep mystical experience of it to learn the lesson and change your ways.
Intellectual efforting here just tends to be very slow and needlessly ineffective compared to a few psychedelic trips which will just bombard you with all the answers in a way that no book, therapist, or guru could.
Really, once you learn how to properly use psychedelics, you will never need a teacher or book. The most powerful answers are in your trips. Everything else is weak sauce that literally wastes years of time and thousands of dollars in money.

@Ampresus I used to read books like that. I never gained anything until I started actively contemplate what I read. I think because we were taught in school that's important to remember everything you read we start reading PD books like that. Somehow remembering what you read in a book is supposed to change you.
You need a vision and life experience so you automatically start picking the right books and everything you read starts looking relevant to your life. I don't know how to explain contemplation, try watching Leo's video on it. Metaphorically speaking it's like chewing on information in order to absorb the knowledge nutrients. I'm not even joking, you can feel yourself soaking up that precious wisdom juice. 
On topic, most important books I ever read:
Most of 5 star books on Leo's book list Other than that:
The Alabaster Girl - Zan Perrion Letting Go - David R. Hawkins  Everything by Neville Goddard (I mean literally every single book he wrote)  Reality Transurfing - Vadim Zeland The Mind Illuminated - Culadasa

Wow, Leo was absolutely right. Scientists really do not see the flaws in their reasoning. They think this is true science! In this article, the higher self-actualization needs from Maslow's pyramid were "examined" to come from base biological needs like attention seeking, thus de-mystifying and dumbing it down. But what the scientists didn't see, is that their whole game was rigged from the start. They only looked through the lens of dumb evolutionary biology (survival of the fittest) in their assessment, and furthermore, exhibited a complete lack of understanding of self-actualization itself. 
Read it for yourself:
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/self-actualization-gene?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3

It's when things start to get frustrating that real growth begins.

So what this tells me is you got A LOT of work to do before anything like enlightenment will dawn. Probably years of work.
That's okay, but what I mean is, you don't have to worry too much about enlightenment right now. Focus building up your meditation skills, psychoanalysis, yoga, etc. All of that will build up your foundation. At some point you should begin to slowly ween yourself off the medication and pursue the Truth full-bore.
Enlightenment is about facing your own death. So you need to build yourself up to the point where you're not having panic attacks and you a ready to face ego dissolution. You are not going to be able to avoid facing death. That is the whole aim of enlightenment work. Enlightenment is all about facing your deepest fears and seeing through them with extraordinary levels of consciousness and concentration.
Weening yourself off SSRI's will also allow you to play around with psychedelics -- which are one of the most effective tools for facing death and fear.

@Meditationdude When you sit, what is your intention? What are you trying to understand or get?
Sits are usually not nearly as effective without a clear intention. It's very important to become clear about what you want out of this work. And there are many things you could be working on / developing / realizing.
If you want to just sit and done nothing, without any objective or goal. Fine. But then make that your intention and be clear about it: "I will just sit here like a cat and be in the present moment."
Sometimes that's effective.
Other times it's more effective to have some existential question you're working on, like "What am I?" or "What is reality?" or "What is Love?" or "What is Truth?", etc.
But understand this: there is way more to this work than merely sitting like a cat. Nothing wrong with sitting like a cat. But if you really want to understand reality, life, and self -- that won't be enough. You need to probe various aspects of life to crack its secrets.
Or you could be working on building concentration skill.

@EvilAngel You could start by working/volunteering for an established charity, to learn how it works.
You cannot successfully start something which you have not studied from the inside.
Without first-hand experience of charities you do not even know whether it's the right thing for you.

I've said before that different people need different paths, so respect their differences because not everyone is like you.
There are not just two paths, there are more.

I'd like to know who has heard of this?
This is a hawaiian prayer, that is used there by the shamans.
It basically says, that everything that happens in the world, every problem, every war, every illness is because of you, and you should take 100% responsibility over everything. First I did not understand what it meant and could not imagine how a war in another country is because of me, but having read more about oneness it does make sense now, that everything is you. 
The prayer consists of saying to yourself 4 simple things, which are:
I love you 
I am sorry (for having created these erroneous thoughts that lead to the problem),
Forgive me (for the state and the problem that is), 
Thank you (for existing)
There was a hawaiian psychologist that managed to heal a whole ward of mentally ill criminals with repeatedly meditating on this prayer and just by looking at the documents of the individuals, he has not even seen them personally.
 

If we injected snake venom into your veins, you'd also lose some control.
Physiology is more fundamental than your ego-mind.
More fundamentally, the whole notion of "control" is deeply dualistic and delusional.
If there exists only one thing in the universe: the universe itself, who controls it? Who controls the universe?

@Anirban657 Academic philosophy is extremely logical. It is not at odds with science at all. In science you are required to write lengthy research papers just like in philosophy.
Philosophy has nothing to do with lengthy answers. It's about discovering truth & wisdom through inquiry, and then embodying it in your life. How many words it takes is irrelevant.

That's totally predictable. Stage Orange is attracted to Trump's phony materialistic success, his phony business acumen, his phony masculinity, his vulgarity, and his giving an F.U. to stage Green.
Libertarian types are attracted to that like flies to shit.
I had a stage Orange coaching client about 3 years ago and he looked up to Trump as his role-model. When I asked him why, he said because Trump has a beautiful wife, the kind of trophy wife he'd like to have. This reveals the level of depth of stage Orange minds.
Stage Orange does not understand the shallowness and self-defeating nature of materialism and capitalism. Stage Orange has made materialism its God. Sports cars, luxury condos, hot women, and millions of dollars are their vision of heaven.

Generally speaking, if mood goes up, it must come down. And since its all relative, you will perceive any drop in mood from its peak as a terrible thing.
Your mind cannot evaluate absolute values of mood, only relative changes. So to jump from 50 to 100 and then back down to 50 is perceived the same as dropping from 50 to 0.

Because I'd have a hard time finding anyone who would understand or appreciate the depth of the things I want to say, so I just focus on buliding my body of work.
The stuff I want to say will only be understood by one in a million people. Who is gonna interview me? Who knows which questions to ask? How many hours would the interview need to be to convey the things I want conveyed?
It would largely be a waste of my time.
Rather than waiting for the right person to ask me things, I just say the right things straight to your face and cut out the middle man.

@Wekz
One is suggesting there is something wrong with the state of confusion, accepting, loving the ‘not knowing’ state is exactly where a raising in consciousness occurs. 

@ValiantSalvatore Like I said, it's not a function of time.
If you try to reduce meditation to numbers like that, you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot, as you will overlook the most important aspect: quality.
10 minutes of quality meditation is worth more than 10 hours of poor meditation.
Be very careful about pursuing consciousness mechanically or numerically.

There are no Yellow cities. Green is the best you'll find, and even that is asking for too much from a city in the 21st century.
1) You can teach those things in most major US or European cities with no problem and plenty of eager customers.
2) Remember, part of your job is to help uplift people who are not yet at Yellow. It's too easy to work with Yellow and above people. The real work is helping people get to Yellow.
Remember, Jesus did not say: "Let me see which city I can move to to find the most advanced people." He worked with whoever was around. The whole point of being Yellow is that you're able to work with Tier 1 people.
An angle doesn't say: "Let me find the richest, more elite, and most advanced people to help. Fuck the rest of em."
As Yellow and above, part of your burden to bear is that you will be misunderstood a lot.

That's all very natural. Students emulate teachers until they are finally ready to leave the nest and embark on their own. It might take 5 or 10 years for that to happen. But it will happen if you go deep enough into the work. You will become your own authority figure, grounded deeply in yourself as God.
Don't expect that to happen in your 20's. Maybe around your mid-30's that will start to happen. It takes a long time for a man to find his grounding in life. It's a slow maturation process, like a finely aged wine.

Inspiring story man! Keep rocking it. You're doing great for your age.

Your desire and intention for awakening & love is the most important thing. As long as you keep that desire stoked in your heart, you will find your way. It just won't be a linear path. Life will have all sorts of twists and turns in store for you.
When you find something that's truly important to you in life, latch onto it like a python and don't let go until life relents and gives you what you most desire.
The beginning is the hardest part. It will get easier.

And it feels unreal and amazing!
Feels like I am the luckiest man alive
What is it? Hard to frame in just one line or two and doesn't really mather, the important thing is that it is possible for all of you
AMAZING!!!
What made this possible? 
The Life Purpose Curse (best course ever and completely invaluable), Leo and all of his videos, all you guys on the forum.
THANKS!!!
 
 

@Ar_Senses Well, mystical experiences and samadhi states are a clear sign of results. I'm not saying that's the end, but the beginning.
If you don't what a mystical experience or a samadhi state is, take a psychedelic and they will quickly show you. Then try to get similar results via other methods.
If you have meditated for a few years but never had a mystical experience or samadhi, then you aren't doing it properly or you need to find a better method.
Take a psychedic to see how much you're meditation is missing.

50g fresh Mushrooms boiled into tea. Drank it this morning on empty stomach. I wait for the effects to kick while monitoring my awareness increasing.
I noticed my awareness has increased when I found myself looking at a tree astonished how beautiful it was. I go past that tree every day for 4 years now and haven't noticed it..
Then I decided to meditate while the effects are at the highest peak. The meditation went beautiful. I became conscious of how my mind imagines boundaries. The Non-duality thing just popped. When I closed my eyes, insanely vivid colorful geometrical shapes appeared. I had to open my eyes to see what's going on; Just like taking of 3D glasses to see the illusion.
Sometimes stuff was not there until I look at it. I could see it being painted before my eyes before it appeared concrete and solid, as weird as that sounds.
I don't do mushrooms for visuals, I do it for awareness and healing. But these geometrical shapes made me more conscious that there is no outside world and I am not separate from the "outside".
During the meditation, I 3 times drifted off to a deep trance and snapped out of it, like when you have a nightmare and you wake up in shock. Each time these 3 snaps happened I could literally feel the energy of anxieties leaving my body. Then I just became tranquil and enjoyed the sound of rain and birds. I had glimpses here and there. Felt ingrained with everything. 

He's using a very loose definition, something along the lines of: anyone who's ever be in a non-symbolic state. But that's very short of what I'm talking about.
I don't consider Jeffery Martin enlightened. Not even close. He's still thoroughly materialistic in his explanations of reality & consciousness.
His research is good, but far short of where this rabbit hole ultimately goes.
To me, escaping suffering has never been the goal. The goal has always been understanding reality.
You are right, most people pursue spirituality rather selfishly & narrow-mindedly -- to escape pain or improve their life.
The deepest sages I think pursue it for understanding & Truth, not to escape something negative.
I generally agree. People are so different that they have different desires and needs.
But also, not all roads lead to the same place, and there are many partial ways to go about spirituality.
I don't get the sense that Shinzen actually knows what Truth is.
I don't know. Answering this is problematic because I don't have access to anyone's mind but my own.
Shinzen's techniques are good. Will they get you to the deepest levels of understanding? Probably not. But that's okay, they don't need to. A toolbox needs more than one tool in it.
Use Shinzen's techniques, but also don't stop there. Explore other things like psychedelics. I doubt you'll find a technique more powerful than 5-MeO-DMT. But that doesn't mean you should only use 5-MeO-DMT.
An army doesn't just use nuclear weapons. It has all sizes of weapons in its arsenal because a nuclear weapon is not always the right weapon for the job.
It's hard to say. We don't have good science on this yet.
Generally speaking good techniques to try are all the ones I've shared in the past:
Meditation Self-inquiry Strong determination sitting Contemplation Psychedelics Vipassana retreats Solo retreats Yoga Dark room retreats Shamanic breathing Etc. These are well-worn methods that work for many people.
And in the end, you gotta wonder, is there any other option? Those are the best techniques mankind has developed so far. So you might as well start tinkering around with them. With practice you should find whatever works best for you.
There will be future video about the many facets of awakening.
All of that is survival. You're still not appreciating what I mean by the notion of survival. It's a much deeper notion than most of you guys here yet realize.
Rest, play, and showing affection is all part of survival. Without them a mammal would be dead.
Animals don't meditate. You're projecting that onto them. They sit and do nothing sometimes. But I wouldn't call that meditation.
Don't get me wrong, I still like Shinzen as a teacher. Nothing I say here is meant to attack or undermine the work of Shinzen or Ralston or whoever. I'm just adding some extra wrinkles to it.
I don't know much about him. You'd have to ask him what he's become conscious of.

@Rodrigo SIlva You can do a lot of work with LSD and mushrooms even without 5-MeO. Don't underestimate them.
When you want to transition to 5-MeO is all up to you. There is no rush. But be careful with high doses of LSD and mushrooms. They can get really hairy. I would stick to medium doses at most.
It's very important that you don't spook yourself off with one bad trip. A lot of newbies get spooked off because their doses are too high and they are unable to deal with the truths which are shown them. So they end up sweeping the entire field of psychedelics away under the rug. It's a form of denial.
The wisest course of action is to proceed slowly, moderately, carefully, patiently, yet persistently and methodicly. Tortoise wins the race in the end. Aim for 50 to 100 trips before you start to get the hang of psychedelics. Anything less than that is noob-land.

I'm still telling you that brains are imaginary, as are neurotransmitters. The word "neurotransmitter" is being used here in a relative, imaginary sense.
It's not the neurotransmitters I trust, but the Truth which they help to unveil.
If you were stuck in jail cell inside a dream and I told you to use the key to unlock the door, the key is still imaginary. An imaginary door requires an imaginary key. It would be foolish to reply to me, "Haha, Leo! If this is all a dream like you said, why are you telling me to use this key? Why do you trust the key?"
When inside The Matrix, we speak in the relative truths of The Matrix world. One of those relative truths is brains and neurotransmitters. Once you've taken the neurotransmitters you'll realize neurotransmitters and brains are imaginary. But only AFTER you take them!