AlwaysBeNice

Of course, that's your intelligence working. And spirituality won't make you distant from others in the long run, different yeah, but not incompatible with others. Your teacher referred you to a motherf*cking priest? Get another teacher

Most definitely, just observe little children and how they put such faith and attention on their parents, copying a great amount of not only mental ideas but through the empathic connection as well.

Some of these things might be good to get beginners into it I think, given they can see instant results. But still not that useful I think, the deeper state itself should be enough of a signal

Hard to find a master who doesn't have a great sense of humor isn't it

Or some grace, spontaneous awakening, usually related to a crisis in one's life seems to be somewhat common, maybe half of the time compared to consistent spiritual practice. Speculation: maybe even this is so, aside from compassion, because the ego can't make a trophy out of it.

I've had an experience sometime ago which was very clarifying on this. You can say there's (natural) fear, and there's (unnatural) worry. 99% of the time people feel fear, it's not even natural. - So what happened was, I was meditating on my cat (my hand on him, focusing on him), and a loud motor noise happened and every cell of his being got spooked, like: '!!!!' This flew over onto me, the feeling of fear, but because it was so raw (instead of it being so entangled with my chronic judgment on fear due to having that unresolved emotion in me), I could see natural fear was just shock, super alert, and it didn't felt bad, it actually was nice for what it was. About 0.5 seconde later it triggered my suppression and I had the reaction of: 'Oh shit, fear, no no no' (related to death and some fearful ideas of God) Then I knew: fear is not bad, but our human model around it of judgment, fantasy, suppression, attachment can make it feel terrible.

Staring at the inner sun is probably a quicker way to attain all those benefits and more ^^

Who says they aren't. Just through habit and fear we go away from it, it's not inherently hard however.

It just triggers feelings that are still suppressed in the subconscious, the sound/visual data is just shaping a neutral movie.

If you look right you can sometimes you can see kids, even babies, being completely aware of other people's ego's at such a deep level and mischievously playing with them, meanwhile the adults have no clue a master is playing with them

Allow the panic, that's when breakthroughs happen, that's when you can see all the fear and see it for the illusion it is, it's not uncommon for people to awaken that way.

Being reminded just of the fact that YOU and EXISTENCE exists can be immensely confrontational. Because you are not really happy, you don't live in the natural state, in unconditional love, but being completely used and identified with a normalized character burdened under it's own emotional suppression we almost all learned through our parents, friends etc. So congratulations, now do the workless work consistently and become infinitely more happy than you could have imagined.

Awakening can be described an instant recognition, a massive insight that shifts you permanently. Enlightenment in my view is when one has also cleared all his old baggage and embodies and radiates that light to a high degree (literally physically, electromagnetically, I've seen some teachers have amazing effects with this). They go hand in hand, when you have no baggage you can let go super easily and when you awaken you can let go of baggage more easily. Edit: As to why, you can't answer that.

There are soo many. But I like David Spero a lot. ('stuck' is not some fearful term used here btw)

Nice songs Maybe we can make this thread into one of with songs with lyrics only OP? (a mod can change the title also I think) Because there is already a huge thread of music but so many people have posted their favorite nice sounding ambient tune which I think made it not as good as it could be, because all music is spiritual already generally somewhat, but what tends to separate all music and music for this vibe are it's lyrics (though I must admit, some lyricless music can be super deep as well).

Because life is also fucking exciting, a thousand times more so when you can be your natural self

It's not so strange, the breath is the subtle bridge to the inner body and mind/emotion are always connected to it, so when you let go, it returns to it's natural rhythm which means purging out anything that's unnatural (suppressed emotions), so yeah held in fears and stuff will come up and you have to learn to welcome them again. Maybe just switch to self-inquiry or what ever and switch the practices when it becomes too frustrating, and of course set a timer for each practice and just do it for x amount of time so your mind doesn't weasel out so easily.

It's same mind. I know what you mean, altered states can be hard to remember sometimes but the more you open your mind sober the more higher states and memories thereof are accessible.

No deaths have been reported on 5-MeO aside from someone mixing it with maoi. It's not really dangerous for your breath to slow down to big degrees for a few sec, you can hold your breath for minutes. In my experience it's not an anesthetic at all by the way.

I've had 2 hellish kind of mushroom trips in the past, and while they were terrifying at the time for some time that you think might or will probably last forever, it's also in a sense not at all so bad as to how it sounds, because it was just a fictional story of your mind that didn't turn out to be true.

They both lead to being here and now.

Surprises are a part of life and enlightened beings still experience, same for excitement. But it's true that the neurotic needy will experience less magic, because they can't go with the flow.

Finally, after having been primarily known only unhappiness, lost-ness, unlovedness, unworthiness, most of my life a sense of profound discovery of my heart is has started, to discover that I am wonderful and sweet inside, and that life is actually a sweet wondrous place, that I am never alone but always held in divine playful loving intelligence, and I am just getting started.

Yeah, the established state should be one of perfection, which may be called 'bliss', Adyashanti also has a cool quote on this: 'Who cares if you have bliss when you have love'. David Spero also speaks about it nicely: