Shaun

I've already explained here that there's no way for me to perform step 1, thus the need has to be understood or transcended somehow. Monks manage to do it.

I've discussed this with Leo and he has admitted that he doesn't make videos to help anyone or awaken the world, he only does it for personal entertainment and survival because he knows we are not actually here.

WE are god speaking to itself. The book titled The Nature of Consciousness by Rupert Spira may help you through this phase, it sure helped clear up some of my confusion. Leo offers a lot of good insights but he is only human and can't be right about everything.

Join the club, every day I feel nothing and don't know why I bother. Hopefully it is just a passing phase for us.

That's a type of cushion, isn't it? I was going to buy one as I just sit on a chair with lower back support which I understand is not ideal.

I suppose I've been doing it more or less right all along then.

Amen to that.

it is a tragic state of affairs. God knows all the lottery numbers which have and ever will be drawn, yet is totally incapable of winning the lottery. It would seem to me that god is so powerful that it can't even control itself or do what it wants.

I can't attend any satsangs as there are none near where I live. There is a plum village sangha close by but there are no spiritual teachers there, it is just a basic mindfulness group. And as for the selfless service, there are no others to serve, serving others directly conflicts self inquiry practice because the others are just hallucinations.

I'm coming up against an issue which kind of ties in with this. Since I'm hallucinating everything into being including all the spiritual teachers, how can I trust them and follow their advice? I could be making them talk bullshit and not even realise it.

I'm usually not too bad at that during the day but it's my dreams that are causing the most problems just now. Yesterday I was playing around with my car and plugging the laptop into it to do some checks, later I checked on one of our dogs who has a cancer tumour on her tummy. What do I dream of at night? Plugging the damn laptop into the dog to diagnose what's wrong with her, the dog splits into two dogs and I fall out with my mum because she got angry and destroyed my cable which I spent £8 on. It's so fucked up because the dreams are becoming increasingly lifelike and nonsensical. They may sound funny from the outside but for me it's scary stuff. I've never had an issue with dreams until I seriously started nondual practices six months ago. I wake up in the morning and it feels like I'm still dreaming which is true in a sense. This brings me to a new idea, maybe we could create a dreams mega thread where we can discuss our dreams and offer guidance?

I am currently working in a job which I hate, to put it lightly. I have substantial savings though and was wondering what the best trading platform is and who here lives completely on the stock market? I really want out of wage slavery because a life of that is not worth living.

I just don't know how to feel love or joy any more, all I feel is empty. The fear in the mornings come from the dreams I have every night because as I've discovered, they are no more or less real than what goes on in the waking state. I also still can't get over the possibility that I will experience everything without exception. I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to suffer in other lives far more than I am in this one. My memories are lies, my life never happened, it's all just a story that I make up and it has no truth to it.

The only thing that keeps me going just now is telling myself that I'm deluded.

Look Nahm, I really hope I am wrong and I've misunderstood the whole thing. The thought or fact that I am hallucinating you into existence deeply scares me and makes me feel alone and trapped. I don't want you to be just nothing more than a picture on my screen I want you to be as real as me, whatever real is.

I will look into the stronger stuff once my life on an external level has been de cluttered. I had a 2 gram mushroom trip and the cluttered nature of my life came into it and didn't help.

Yes, they are me in the sense that they are just an illusion that I'm creating. I don't think they have their own experience like I do.

That's also an option but it seems impossible at the moment given the way reality functions. How I'd love to create a world like what Bob Ross imagined, a world where there would be no people fighting and all would be good. I don't want a world where I can just love children being killed like what Leo goes on about. Then again, if those being killed are an illusion, they aren't suffering anyway so might as well just watch it like a movie and not give a shit.

I'm sorry but that made me laugh for the first time in ages. @winterknight There is a therapist of psychoanalysis not far from me and they are from the organisation you recommend. I really don't see how they can solve the problem of reality being an illusion though. The therapist is also an illusion so I don't really know what I should do. @Truth Addict Leo is not trying to make the world a better place, he is doing it for his own self entertainment and survival.

I would love nothing more than for reality just to stop completely and for experience to end forever. I'm god anyway so maybe I can figure out a way to destroy myself.

I just wanted my life to matter, I wanted to love and to be loved, to help others and see them happy and to work with renewable energy or electric cars to make the world a better place. I would be as well looking after a Tamagochi virtual pet or playing the sims as there is literally no difference between doing that and caring for others in real life. I will do spiritual practices and all I need to survive and nothing more as there is honestly no point in changing my career or making a difference in life. In summary, I am just hugely disappointed. I really wish things were as the materialists say because under that paradigm, life was truly precious, engaging and everything you did mattered hugely because there was other separate independently existing people with whom to enjoy life with. Sure, you only got one chance at it and if you fucked it up, your regret would be over and done with because you'd be dead anyway. I simply can not express in words the joy and love I used to feel when living under this old understanding. It was a pure love for existence and all things therein. Leo's paradigm, which is the true paradigm is blood curdlingly terrifying, tragic and there's no escape. You will suffer for eternity in ways you can't imagine. I better hold onto this life as best as I can because the next may be a lot worse.

I've tried listening to all the music I used to love but I still feel nothing, same with movies. All motivation for my hobbies is gone too.

I'm still continuing my meditation and have been for the last 3 years. Not sure where it's going to take me now but I still do it.

Yes, it probably will when I forget myself again in another life.

If there was no awareness in a dream, there would be no dream.