Systematically giving up all of the ego's favorite toys.
No more bodily pleasure, i am undermining the ego's selfishness. (I am doing no fap, 30 days in/ Goal is 365 days)
Self Control is one of my top 5 strengths, I am a very disciplined person and would like some other advice on what to give up.
Here are some more things I am tackling:
1. Zero Junk Food. No sweets, no salts. 
2. No fap
3. No sleeping in (What I currently working on) 5:30am, no ego in the morning is the goal.
4. Being aware and staying alert as a hobby. Restful sitting. 
5. No Judgement on others (This one is a struggle)
6. Maintaining equanimity of mind, no matter the external environment)
7. Merging into the Now, without egoic reactions.  
Please drop some things I can do to torture myself. 
Thx

"Brains do not exist" and studying the brain scientifically are not in conflict at all. We are talking about two different levels of reality.
Brains exist as perceptions. Perceptions are empty and not happening inside yet more brains (yet more perceptions.)
What sense does it make to say that a brain (a perception) is happening within a brain (another perception)???
Perceptions do not happen inside other perceptions. That is the illusion that must be broken.
In truth, there is no perceptions happening at all. There is only BEING which is mistaken for perception.

The problem would be: a disconnect in values.
You can't be in an effective relationship with someone when your values are totally different.
And the deeper question is: Why would you want to be in a relationship with someone who's not into your values?
That would be sort of like wearing a shoe that doesn't fit. It might work for a while, but not in the long run.

I "won" a free night at a hotel in my city few days ago. Friday I'll go there. I'ts room for two. I have friends who want to join me, but to use the room for party and drinking, or play video games. But, I said no. It sure would be cool to hang out with friends, but I choose to use the room for meditation and self-inqure. That is, because I know i usually gain more from that.
Choosing to do the thing you know you need to do, often, is the most emotional difficult thing to do. If you know intuitively that meditating everyday is the thing you "should" do, but you're too lazy or whatever, that's the thing you ought to be doing.
Here's a motivational video on just that:
 

Just be a radically openminded scientist. Which means, you don't exclude any phenomena a priori. You are open to running any kind of experiment and you are willing to accept the results whatever they end up being, even it the result is paradoxical, unorthodox, radical, or undermines the very enterprise of conventional science.
The perfect scenario is to realize the Absolute for yourself, become fully enlightened, and then you will be able to do incredible science if you still desire to.
All scientists MUST study and seriously contemplate epistemology, metaphysics, transpersonal psychology, holism, and nonduality. Without that, you cannot be a good scientist. With that, you can be the next Einstein.
FYI, many of the fathers of quantum mechanics were mystics. They were no orthodox materialist fools. Which is why they were able to figure out quantum mechanics in the first place.
The best scientists think precisely along the lines I advocate. They are radically openminded and anti-traditionalist.
Don't get discouraged about science. It will reform itself in the next 100 years. We need good people leading the way. Science is quickly coming around on nonduality.

People really misunderstand my attitude towards science. I'm all for the scientific method. My criticism of science is essentially that it's not scientific enough. I criticize those areas where science holds dogmas and unquestioned metaphysical assumptions.
The scientific method behind quantum mechanics is valid. The problem there only arises when the discoveries of quantum mechanics are misunderstood by people who hold a materialist metaphysics. They don't understand the profundity of what quantum mechanics or something like Godel's incompleteness theorem is pointing to.
I don't disagree with scientific method. I merely point out how it is misapplied and the results of science are misinterpreted. I also point out the limits of the scientific method and suggest that there are alternative methods which can go beyond those limits.
I want science to be more pure, more openminded, more humble, less orthodox, less conservative, less of a religion.

Haha!
You are a tricky one!
You cannot wrap your head around it because the Absolute is prior to your head. It generates your head. So of course you cannot go there using your head.
Although, common sense should tell you that a picture of an apple is not an apple. An idea of NY city is not NY city. The map is not the territory because the map is itself part of the thing you're trying to understand. You can't use a map to get at the ultimate nature of reality because the map itself is but one subset of the reality you are trying to explain. And the subset cannot contain the superset. The map is entangled with the territory! There can be no map which sits outside the universe!
Of course the map is part of the actual territory, which is precisely why the map is not the whole territory. Get it?
You haven't really thought through what you are saying, otherwise you would realize that your model of reality makes no sense, collapsing into contradiction.
You assume that when I speak of the Absolute it is just an idea. Well, that is your projection. Of course you cannot know if I have actually experienced the Absolute. Only I can know that. From your perspective, I could be lying or deluded. But that is all just a distraction from your own inquiry.
If I told you I had been to a place called NY city and it is really cool, but your worldview is so limited that it must deny that NY city is even possible, you would say, "But Leo! That's just an idea! NY city is just something you read about in a book! It's just something you believe. How could you possibly know it exists? What if you're just deluded?"
Your line of reasoning would be right, but only if I hadn't actually visited NY city.
The bottom line here is: Empty you cup first, grasshopper. Your mind is not open enough yet for this work. You're underestimating just how radical reality is. Reality is non-Aristotelian and non-Newtonian. Even modern science has confirmed this. Your models are about 400 years out of date.
What you're misunderstanding about my work is that I am not telling you to believe what I say, but to investigate your direct experience of reality very deeply, so that you can discover some radical stuff. Your discoveries will mirror what I say if you actually do them. But if you just sit around playing an armchair skeptic, you will get nowhere. You will stay stuck in the labyrinth of your own mind.
Take your skepticism, and turn it inwards. Deconstruct your direct experience and see for yourself what is true and what is false.
My work is just a breadcrumb trail. It is useless if you refuse to contemplate reality for yourself.
P.S. The truth was NOT already formed and confirmed for me. I was a serious athiest my whole life. Then, in one moment, I died and found God. My entire worldview was so skullfucked that it physically scarred me. Nothing I can ever say can sufficently communicate to you how radical this was. So it is not how you think. It was not a validation of prior ideas. Nothing can prepare you for coming face-to-face with the Absolute. Because no idea is remotely close to it.

@StephenK As with most relationships, it's always more complicated than people like to make it.
Yes, they both affect each other to some degree, but it's difficult to quantify. The mind is an extremely complex system with thousands of variables at play.
Generally-speaking, enlightenment alone will not cure you of your neuroses. Those need to be worked on specifically. But with introversion/shyness, enlightenment can make a big difference. It may not cure you completely, but it really helps when you realize that there is no such thing as "inner" mental life. Enlightenment sort of kills your inner world, throwing you out into the "outer" world (which is sort of like extroversion). Although don't mistake that with gaining social skills or becoming a good conservationist or even liking to be social. If you're an introvert, you will still probably be that way after enlightenment. The difference might be, you're no longer crippled by social anxiety or shyness so much, and you're not as inhibited or self-conscious.
Generally speaking, you shouldn't wait for enlightenment to fix your mental problems. Start working on your mental problems now, alongside doing enlightenment work. The two will synergize.

@MM1988 She predicted I would win a major pending legal case.
There was no way she could have known I had a major pending legal case.
She told me, "Don't worry. You will win it." And so I did, a year later.
Real psychics do WAY more than cold-reading. They actually have paranormal powers. The nature of paranormal powers is that they are intuitive and therefore vague.
While there may be some scammers, the whole "scammers" thing is overstated. That's just an excuse the materialist paradigm must make because that model of reality cannot account for any paranormal phenomena.
After the levels of consciousness I've experienced, to me, anything paranormal looks quaint and quite normal. I have experienced things that are more radical than getting anally probed by an alien. So if an alien ever tries to anally probe me, at least I can think to myself, "Well, at least this is still not as radical as a 5-MeO-DMT breakthrough."

I got a psychic reading done in Austin about 6 years ago from a gypsy witch.
Didn't believe in them at the time. Just did it for fun.
It pretty much came true.

Enlightenment makes the personality more pronounced, not less, because stifling fears are eliminated and authenticity skyrockets.
Enlightenment is not a state. It is simply what is.
Personality != ego

@Courtney There is no magic pill. I have been meditating for nearly 5 years and I still get plenty of monkey mind. Much less than before, but still lots of it. When I first started, I literally couldn't sit still for 5 minutes. 5 minutes was hell.
It usually takes decades of serious practice to be able to totally silence your mind. And that doesn't include conquering your fears and inner demons. When those get triggered, of course the monkey mind will flare up big time and spoil your mood. That is your entire dynamic of staying alive we're talking about. You'd basic need to conqering death to be calm and collected in those situations.
Just start doing the practices and remember to set realistic expectations with a long term vision, otherwise you'll get discouraged and quit. See my video on Setting Proper Expectations.
Welcome to the work.

@WildeChilde
I'd obviously like to brain dump everything I know now into his head. But that would defeat the purpose of the journey.
So instead I'd just say, "everything you're worried about isn't true".

@Slade
Yes and no.
You never want to take one concept and run too far with it. And this is definitely one of them.
Suffering undoubtedly can produce growth in people. All my biggest personal leaps have occurred after periods of suffering and I definitely wouldn't be who I am without them.
There's different explanations for this. In a book called Anti-fragile Nassam Taleb presents an argument that we need a certain level of disorder, chaos and breakdown in order to come back stronger. In spiritual work, people talk about the purification of the subconscious mind or the raising of vibration.
So there's definitely something to the idea that suffering = growth. And it can be a powerful belief to help you cope in those hard times.
But here's why I say you don't want to run too far with it.
The point of suffering is ultimately so that you don't have to suffer anymore!
When you go through experiences like that, they force you to let go of attachment. By letting go of attachment, happiness becomes your default way of being in the world.
Life is meant to be light, joyful and easy. Not a constant bashing where you're in pain all the time.
But if you think you need pain, that is what you'll get.
So use suffering as a tool. But also be willing to let go of masochism and move up into the light.

Have you noticed that our current economic system has a couple of faults and blind spots?
Here is a high-level look at the past, present, and future of economics. The author, Daniel Schmachtemberger, is a brilliant guy. On this blog you will find a 4 articles-long series about the evolution of economics, and about the shift in paradigm which is required. My hope is that this big picture thinking will be able to guide us through the confusion and myopia of our current times.
https://civilizationemerging.com/

I have an enlightenment book on my book list which was written by a guy who pursued and achieved enlightenment while working as a full-time ER doctor.
Yes it is doable. The question is, are you willing to do the work?
It is definitely possible to build a great career AND achieve enlightenment.
You will want to plan that out very strategically. I wouldn't try to start both simultaeously. You'll probably need to do some staggering.

There could be a meta-self which persists across indvidual lifetimes. This meta-self might purposefully stay hidden during the present lifetime so as not to interfere with the lessons that this lifetime is supposed to teach.
Sorta like how you can go to a movie theater and watch several movies back to back. But each movie stands on its own as a self-consistent world. But you can still think about all 3 movies and draw lessons from all 3 of them combined in a sort of meta-analysis.
This meta-self could even be responsible for deciding which world/life it will inhabit next in order to gain the necessary lessons. For example, your meta-self might decide to become a crippled child or the next Hitler. So it could learn the joys and struggles of that.
Just a theory.
I suspect the universe might have a higher purpose of self-understanding which surpasses anything the human mind can conceive of. After all, if you were God, your #1 priority would probably be to understand yourself. But this is a tricky problem for God because God is infinite. So God is then in a sort of prepetual struggle of self-understanding.
I have become conscious of certain things which fit with that vein. For example, I've become conscious of why everything is happening as it is. Or why humans are as they are. But it is such a multi-parallel understanding that it cannot be articulated or even thought. I can't even think it to myself let alone explain it.
Imagine for example a mind which is 1 billion times more powerful than a human's, and what kinds of things it might understand. The possibilites are quite radical.
It helps if you start thinking of human understanding of the universe as ant-like.

@Edvard You won't understand until I spend an hour and a half explaining it. This is a highly technical topic which sits at the intersection of evolutionary theory and information theory.
You guys constantly keep falling into the trap of assuming that reality is simple and linear. When is it gonna dawn that every topic is enormously complex and counter-intuitive, requiring much research?
If you haven't read the latest research on evolution, then as Walter says in the Big Lebowski: "You're out of your element."
You can start by reading the books on my list.

I will shoot a video about evolution in the future. It's a tricky and mindblowing topic. I have 2 books about evolution on my book list which point in the right direction, but still don't go far enough. Start by reading them with an open mind.
The mistake about intelligence that people make is they think that humans are intelligent while the universe is dumb. But it's actually the other way around. The intelligence you possess as a human is just a tiny sliver of the universe's infinite intelligence. Intelligence isn't yours, you're borrowing it from the universe. Sort of like how you siphon electricity for your house from a power plant. The power plant has way more of it than your house does.
Yes, it is the same intelligence which gives rise to thoughts, creativity, and insight.
What I'm claiming is that the actual process by which genes get rearranged is not accidental but intelligent.
It is actually impossible to design anything worthwhile through a random process, because a random process is just noise, not information. DNA is complex information. It cannot arise out of noise. It has to be intelligently combined. And natural selection is incapable of doing that.
Evolution through random mutation and natural selection violates the laws of information theory, which says that you cannot get information from noise.
You can experience the universe's infinite intelligence for yourself, at higher states of consciousness.
I'm still not sure WHY the universe is intelligent. I just know that it is. I'm still trying to figure out WHY. When I trip, I try to ask it "Why are you intelligent?"

It's much worse than that.
When I say "non-random" I don't mean some tricky notion of random. I mean that mutations are intelligent. Imagine, if you will, that the mutations are more intelligent than any human mind. After all, they did invent your mind.
Now try to get your scientist friends to consider that possibility seriously.
Good luck
P.S. The universe possesses infinite intelligence.

@Stinkyundead
You: They need to be more accepting of me, my wishes, and of reality as it is!!!
Solution: I (meaning you) need to accept people and reality as it is.
Eat your own medicine, that is all. You've externalized the problem, see? Everything you accuse them of, you yourself are guilty of. Hence the anger.
You to your gf: Let's not limit each other.
And then you go and set limits. See?
How do you deal with adults acting like kids? By becoming an adult yourself, which means you stop judging adults for acting like kids. See? You have an expectation that adults shouldn't act like kids. But the reality is, most of them do. Most adults are kids, including you. Notice how you get angry like a kid.
This work is all about taking ownership of your own shit. And it's all your own shit. If you're suffering, you can be sure it's due to your own shit.
Everything is the opposite of what it seems. Welcome of spirituality
P.S. Getting angry and blaming others is the psycho way

@jpablos16 If you feel your spiritual journey is talking on a dark, sinister quality, then what you're missing is the self-love component of this path.
Only you can decide whether you should be pursing success vs spirituality.
It definitely is possible to do both. But it's not necessarily a smart idea to begin both endeavors simultaneously. You can make a plan to work on shoring up your career for 3 years, and then moving your time and energy into more serious spiritual pursuit. Or vice versa.
If you choose to focus on your success/career, you can still keep a small meditation habit going and read books, etc.
You gotta have a larger strategic plan. Draft up a plan for the next 10 years of your life. So you're not living month to month. In 10 years you can accomplish A LOT of stuff if you plan it out well. Within 10 years you can: attain enlightenment, build up a solid career, buy a house, get a nice girlfriend, have a child, and more! You can have all of that by the time you're 31! Just think about that.

You should definitely be willing to just kick back and watch a football game and drink a few beers.
When an enlightened bud comes to town, we go to the strip club. Enlightenment isn't about being ultra spiritual. Ultra spiritual is how you should be on your hardcore meditation retreats. But in everyday life you want to kick back.
There's really no reason to talk about spirituality with your friends.
As long as the person is positive and gives off a good vibe, you should be friends with them. Definitely don't judge people based on how high they score on your consciousness scale. LOL.
"Sorry bro, your consciousness is at level 495, and I only hang out with 500+"

I can relate with that. There's always conflicting desires in us, even for stuff we supposedly want most.
You can try contemplating your fears.
You can try creating a new compelling vision of why you're meditating in the first place.

@NJM50
I'm always running Audible when I'm driving so that usually gets me about 20 minutes per day. Then I like to sit down with an actual book for around 15-30 minutes per day.
Consistency is more important for me at this point than reading hours upon hours. It's amazing how many books you can get through just by doing what I outlined aboved.