Shaun

While listening to the most recent video where Leo was addressing some questions and listing a load of things that were an illusion, brains, family members etc, something inside me just broke and the past 24 hours I have been without sleep and have mostly been feeling a sadness so strong that it was also morphing back and forward between fear and anxiety. I got the impression that solipsism is true and there is nothing but me. There were a few short intervals where the depression would vanish and my appetite would come back but it has returned again. I have never felt so low in my life and depressive episodes are rare with me. I just feel that life has had its entire meaning destroyed. Have I got this wrong because it seems to contradict one of the metaphors Leo came up with where we are like the bubbles in a sponge, the sponge being consciousness and the empty spaces being us. It also seems to contradict what Rupert Spira said about love being the recognition of OUR shared being. Please can anyone offer some deeper insight as I am in a really dark place just now, feeling that I am close to going totally insane.

I have had a sub breakthrough DMT experience and that's it. I had been meditating non stop 20 minutes a day for two years but stopped June last year. I have reached the stage that I know myself as awareness but there is obviously far more to be done.

Leo, thanks for your response. This ego backlash has been huge. Today I was actually feeling very upbeat but then the dark feelings returned but just not as intensely. I won't forget about the video for a long time and I will take my time and be present with these emotions. I am planning a high dose mushroom trip followed by a breakthrough DMT experience a few months later but only if my mindset is right. It may be possible that I am suffering from depression too and if mushrooms don't help that, do you think it would be a good idea just to go the mainstream route of antidepressants and therapy?

Very wise advice. During these episodes I know that there is nothing in the present moment that is harming me, there is just this intense emotion that I'm aware of but ego and chemical imbalances in a non existent brain does not care about facts.

Absolutely, I wouldn't touch any psychedelic unless I was in a good frame of mind at the time. My mistake with DMT was that I was fearful as I was holding the pipe. I was lucky that the lighter broke and halved the dose as a result because had I taken the full amount I may be in a mental hospital now. For the dosage, are you referring to the standard cubensis mushrooms?

I mostly do but recently I became utterly convinced that nobody else was real. I was talking to friends at work today yet I felt extremely alone and have this idea that anything I experience is basically trying to convince me that solipsism is false. I seem to be stuck in this loop.

Thank you, that cheered me up a bit but no doubt the dark feelings will return. I have been practising spirituality for a few years now and I am at the stage where I witness everything as awareness including deep depressions and Rupert Spira is right, they can become so intense that they appear to obscure the screen of awareness. I am planning to try mushrooms in a moderate dose, maybe 3 grams as I have heard a lot of good things about psilocybin. I had a sub breakthrough dose of DMT a few months ago but that was an unpleasant and fearful experience with a moment of absolute stillness in it.

When Leo said in his most recent video that I will experience everything, is this just limited to Earth and all that happens there? He gave many examples of how I will be Hitler, how I will be the Jew being gassed or how I will experience the most amazingly perfect life possible. He never mentioned anything outwith a life on earth, for example, being a lifeform in another galaxy. Also, when this body dies, how is it determined what the next life will be? Is it totally random?

I have another question. Leo said that I will be Hitler, etc but Hitler has been and gone.

I kind of thought that and thanks for clarifying. I will be getting my hands on some magic mushrooms hopefully so I can delve deeper into this. Sadly it's the only psychedelic I can get and it's probably not the ideal one to use but better than nothing. 5 MEO would be ideal.

Part of a conversation I was having with a friend who is not into all this consciousness stuff.

A few weeks ago I had this dream where I was sitting on a beach at night looking over the water towards Edinburgh which is a city near where I live. Across the water, floating above the city, there were these enormous cube and cuboid shaped objects, a few miles to a side, with orange lights on them partially obscured by cloud. I'm not sure whether they were buildings or space ships. As I was sitting there, I became aware that I was dreaming, but not only that, I became aware of awareness itself and I just sat there for a while in what can only be described really as a very high state of consciousness much greater than anything I've experienced in a waking state. Would this count as an enlightenment experience?

Mostly, my meditations go well, but sometimes I start feeling like I am spinning around in both directions at once or I am rotating left and right around two times per second. It is sort of like a dizziness. When I open my eyes, it goes away but starts again when I close them. It is very strange and has anyone else felt like this?

There is no special pose you have to sit in, sit in a comfortable chair like you are watching a TV show. I took this advice from the guided meditation video and I can mostly meditate without moving. I only do 20 minutes a day.

Are you sure? It feels very nauseating.

I sometimes feel that I am using enlightenment work as a coping mechanism for my sexual ineptitude. I feel that starting this work has made me even less of a match to the women around me. I've never been in a relationship before, or had sex but to be honest, I would rather be enlightened than be in a relationship.

I'm from Scotland too, I started doing consciousness work around June this year. Keep at it and it will make a huge difference to your life. I try and share this kind of stuff with people and I just get dismissed or they don't understand. I'm glad I found this site.

I have now gone two weeks doing 20 minutes of meditation each day, not one day missed. It was very difficult to start with and still is at times. I have noticed that I am more relaxed and a situation at work which has bothered me greatly is hardly a problem anymore. One one of my meditations I fell asleep briefly. On another I felt an overpowering motivation to just get up and do my normal stuff. Now I find that my mind is quieter during it and briefly goes completely silent. I mostly do my meditation late at night around 10 to 12pm but sometimes do it during the day. What experiences has everyone else been having?

That's what I was thinking, I have taken Leo's advice seriously and I never want to miss a single day of meditation.

My friends say I need to stop going on about this self enlightenment stuff and that I won't find happiness this way. They seem to think that going out, getting drunk and having a relationship will make me happy, but I don't think that I can find happiness along that route. I fail completely with women and I suppose it was searching for a way to overcome this failure that lead me to actualized.org and ultimately enlightenment work.

I just watched the Neti Neti video and it was extremely helpful. So much so that I really felt something towards the end close to an enlightenment experience and it got me thinking. So what happens when I die? And what was before I was born? If nothingness has awareness, does that not make it a thing? How can it really be properly aware if it has no senses? If a robot was to be created capable of all the senses and thoughts a human can have, would it also be this empty nothingness existentially? And would that imply then that all things, rocks, cars, trees are also this empty nothingness? I kind of understand this truth of no self and empty nothing but I just couldn't help but ask these questions. Then again, if I have to ask these questions, maybe I don't understand it at all. Can this please be moved to the enlightenment section? I put it here by mistake.

Thanks for giving me a greater insight if you could call it that. Does anyone believe that this universal consciousness ultimately has a creator? Or is it just eternal and infinite and was never created?