Justin Evans

Absolutely powerful, I agree! I wanted to add an extra mindfulness trick. As you are brushing your flossing your teeth, try to watch yourself really closely and try to identify as the person in the mirror instead of yourself. So instead of thinking of "your arm" flossing, associate the muscles of your hands flossing as the one in the mirror and not with your real hands. Eventually, you will realize how easy it is to begin to identify with something that actually isn't you. It starts to make you question if you identify with yourself the same way you would fool yourself with a mirror, like watching a first person movie, which you eventually believe you are that person.

@starsofclay Thanks for sharing your experience. I have had so many new unbelievable experiences in the last couple of months and they have became so common that I have at least 2 a week, and hopefully from these experiences I can answer your question. So, lucid dream, regular dreaming, OBEs? They really begin to blur together, because you start question if "reality" is as temporary and shifting as your dreams. The common pattern I have discovered is that meditation experiences in dreams are like lucid dreams, but take it up about 10 notches. So instead of realizing you are in a dream. You learn insights in your dream that apply exactly the same as it would in "reality." When you learn that insight, you instantly get in an extreme meditation state, you can feel vibrations, reality crumbles, feels like your going through a wormhole, or you cease to exist. Here are a couple of other factors that I noticed have resulted in such experiences: Going out of my way to help a friend for a whole day, maybe its something about letting things go that effects your dream later. Being out in the sun for a long time. Talking about it a lot, forcing yourself to articulate it, getting excited about it, etc. The most important: Questioning reality via self inquiry when you are awake and especially doing it an hour or two before bed. Learning to self inquiry and be mindful will create a habit, which eventually will bring that same habit to your dreams. Here is an example of one that happened last night: Basically, I had a dream I was hanging out with all of my friends, we where chattering, talking about drama, etc. Instead of realizing I was in a dream, I had a realization (intuitive) that every voice that I heard was actually being created by me, and that every argument I was hearing or interacting with was all me. From that insight, I instantly shifted into a meditative like state, which it feels like you are going through a wormhole. Until eventually I woke up after a while. Lastly, I agree with you that dreams makes you open minded. I would love to hear what ends up arising for you in the future.

This topic came to me by accident, because I accidently had two profound experiences (a taste of enlightenment) within three weeks! I have to give the credit to the dreams. There is something powerful about dreams that allows your mind to be more open and sensitive to meditative exercises. However, there is always the posibility of dillusion. What do you think? Do you think that it's legitimate or is this an easy trap to believe that dreams could be a catalyst for meditation and for experiencing samples of enlightment? I want to share two of those profound experiences to you and would love to hear your opinions or your own dream experiences. 1. (The first and most profound one) I had a dream about a classroom exercise. It sounds pretty lame haha. Basically it was like a game of tag, but when you get tagged, you had to label your sensations and surroundings, and you have to speak whatever comes to your mind. Basically it was like accidently doing Leo's mindfulness labeling. I got tagged, I started yelling things like, soft, tree, my teacher's cute, grass, warm, then I spontaneously said out of nowhere "I created everything." As soon as that happened. My body felt like it was moving at the speed of light, I "woke up" (probably was still in my dream state), and all of my sensory was amplified to a level I couldn't handle. I usually sleep with my head under the covers, but I could see through the covers, I KNEW through the covers. I felt like something other than me was making me sit up, with the covers over my head in shock, all I could do was stare down my living room hallway. I could see the end of the hallway, but it felt like between me and the end, there was an endless degree of distance. Our white noise fan sounded equivalent to a jet engine, but take that contrast and apply it to every sense in my body and senses I didn't even know I had. I felt like I had an intuitive feeling of knowing everything without explanation. I also had some strange visual effects like what you would think of like a "line box reality" in the matrix, except it was like particles flying past me. It was amazing, but also horrifying, it felt like I was choking on the sensations of reality and because of that I woke up. It was a dream, but felt more real than reality has ever felt for me in my life. As soon as I woke up, I grabbed my phone to record sound of the fan in my living room and edited it with garage band to the best match I could to the amplification of my dream. I listened to it and cried for half an hour. Interpretation: it is possible that I watch so many of Leo's videos that it was just manifested into to some dream. However, I believe this is my first possible "sample" of experiencing the absolute infinite, totally has taken my meditation to the next level of seriousness and motivation, and finally getting that tangible subjective evidence of turning the theory of enlightenment into practice. 2. (Less profound and happened today) I was in a dream that was trying to achieve/solve some insanely difficult and imposible problem or task (which I unfortunately can't remember specifically). It caused me a lot of emotional suffering and frustration in the process, I couldn't solve it. A man told me basically to "let go" in order to solve the problem. I took it with a grain of salt at first, but finally entertained the suggestion and totally let go of the problem. As soon as this happened, my body began to feel like I was traveling the speed of light again, however this time it was in the context of traveling through a wormhole. This experience was much more visual than the first dream. The wormhole was made up of daily objects that you would usually see, however there was millions of the same thing. Pretty strange! The biggest example of this was that I saw my own face, but there was trillions of my own face. I was in shock, the only thing I could say was "walk into the light," over and over and over. I was in this state for a long time, just observing and repeating walk into the light. I eventually thought to myself, remember this is only phenomena, as soon as I said that, that feeling of the "speed of light" travel slowed down to an eventual complete stop and stillness, which I then woke up. Interpretation: although the visuals of this dream appears to be very odd and limited in meaning, there was an indescribable intuitive feeling that this wormhole must of had something to do with different realities. The trillions of my own face as an example I think had to do with the fact that there are trillions of different possible versions of me that exist or could exist at this very moment. I didn't feel like God, I didn't feel like I created all of those possibilities, but it felt like another taste of the infinite regarding all possible realities in a more visual manner. Conclusion: I am definitely going to try consciously meditating in my dreams by setting an intention every night before I go to sleep to experiment with this new arsenal of tools. And I will share my results with y'all in the future What do y'all think? Is it legit or dillusion when it has to do with your dreams? Have you had any experiences with this?

Although self help is the ultimate direction to go. Doing both a therapist and personal-development is the best route. The reason I say this is because you know yourself better than anyone else, and growing yourself is a great habit of responsibility, action, and flexibility. A therapist is good because they have a professional third-person perspective who can give you feedback on a different angle, and possibly catch any bullshit that you can't see yourself. Of course they aren't always right and may misinterpret your intentions. I personally do both and it works pretty well.

@Amit You absolutely can experience the nature of God without psychedelics. Around every 2-3 weeks, I have an intense mystical experience, which has only became more and more intense. Last night for example, I had so many experiences by accident that I stopped counting. One of those experiences included an enlightenment-like experience of ever expanding awarenesss, which I actually tried to break out of because I wasn't mentally prepared for the power that I felt during the moment. I may write a post about. It later in detail. The point is, follow your intuition, because it knows you best and can guide you. I personally thrive in the night when I am dreaming and then wake up from dreams, I get hit hard with experiences then I surrender the best I can to it. Find your strengths, don't get too worried about "how your supposed to do it" and follow your intuition that tells you "how you really want to do it."

@Electron If you don't authentically feel the desire to get in a relationship, then don't do it in my opinion. Relationships are a huge time investment, complicates things, and effects the other partner. If you are forcing yourself to get involved into a relationship, it won't work, and she will be a casualty. Thats just me though, you know you better than ANYONE. You'll know when you meet a girl that your crazy about, that's when I would go in.

@Ilya be patient with yourself, give it time and dont give yourself a hard time if you don't "experience" the non physical. Do it with love for yourself. If you continue your techniques and continue onwards, you will have the experience . Im not sure how you feel about psychedelics, but I am not going to do them yet because I'm too young, I won't even consider it until I clear up all of my addictions first, because why risk it if I'm still a slave to things with lower consequences? I haven't used psychedelics yet, I've been meditating seriously for about a year now, and I am starting to break down the physical. What I encourage is that you do this in dark lighting or almost pitch black. You see less, so you create more subtle imagery to make up for the lack of contrast in dark lighting. Pixelation gets larger, the room starts moving subtly, and you can feel/see the room breathing, you may see entities, warm/cold sensations in your body like if you had a toasty campfire burning in front of you, etc.

We focused heavily on law of attraction in a workshop called WorldWorks. For me it was effective, I kind of left it after a while and went internal with meditation. However, one of my recent theories is that there may not be a difference between the internal and external, which makes miracles, spiritual experiences, and law of attraction feel more metaphysically possible. Another theory for law of attraction is that you think it, your intention is there, it happens, right? What if your thoughts, intention, and the result are happening to you, instead of you creating it? Just theory, but try it out for yourself

@Ilya I'm literally doing the exact same thing before my college semester starts. At my dorm I'm doing a home made retreat. I have a small meditation journal, try to go big with your time and really try to live the simple spartan life. Little phone, no computer, no messaging. Eat lots of fruit and veggies. I'm four days in so far, eating a consistent diet of baby carrots and blueberries for breakfast, Leo's soup for lunch, and brócoli pasta for dinner. My meditation ranges from 4-7 hours. Here is the key: you know yourself best, don't be afraid to experiment and make your own forms of meditations that work best for you. If you are trying to become enlightened, try to not get too caught up in the answers your learned online and try to stay in a state of "not-knowing" which is always the state your in before your greatest insights. Don't be afraid to act a little insane when your alone, laugh out loud, cry, pray, face your fears, do what gets you in that state of uncertainty. I'll post a few photos of my notes as an example of my current progress. 分 = minutes 时 = hour 总数 = total (time) 心得 = insights Basically from the photos, you'll see a theme. I'll write in dark ink the practice and for how long AFTER I do it, not before. Then I'll write little important quick insights from that practice, then I write my whole "how my day went" at the end of the day, and also clarify the insights in more detail that I wrote earlier. The first day was figuring out how to get started with my momentum, was mostly contemplation. The second day was pure ego backlash and surrendering to reality (doing the dirty painful work), the third day was focusing on concentration and labeling, getting in touch with my senses, the forth day so far had been mostly contemplation and self inquiry. Some strange ones you might see are experimental: 1. Praying in tongue: my father is a passionate Christian, I wanted to try his prayer technique for the pursuit of attaining enlightenment. Basically how you do it is let your auditory thoughts talk, like a stream of speaking, it might sound very alien. it isn't limited to the speed, vowels, pitch, or volume. Mine tends to turn into a type of singing and eventually screaming, I literally feel like a dragon shooting a beam of light and words out of my mouth. Totally shocked me how powerful it was when done in the mind. Basically it feels like my intuition, my true self is helping me put me in a state where I can see an obvious shift in physical reality and question it , leading to self inquiry. This is not to be underestimated 2. Contemplate blessings: basically you contemplate how awesome and lucky your life is, how proud of you you are, etc. So far this has worked and put me in a state of mind for the rest of the day in my retreat. 3. Cold shower SDS (strong determination sitting): a more intense and quick version of normal SDS. Pretty powerful, but also very painful. Gives you a clear mind and peaceful mind at the end. Only do in short bursts! One more thing, sometimes if I don't know what to do next, I'll set the timer for an hour, organically let my mind figure out what it wants to do, then note down what it turns out to be. So the end result might become labeling, self inquiry, SDS, or praying in tongues, etc. Basically, really make the day formal and spartan like, super mindful, and experiment what works best for you. We would love to hear how it works for you at the end of your home made retreat

@bubbaman Sorry for the late reply, I've been off my phone for the whole month, which actually kind of answers your question. So basically everyone has their own addictions, each person is different. When you are alone, your addictions really show up like a sore thumb. Your addictions are the source of the problem from allowing you to be lonely and be at peace. Maybe if I share my story it could possibly help you. Almost my whole life, I have been involved in social events, clubs, and small groups of friends either in person or online. Some examples included wrestling since 4th grade to senior year of high school, Spanish national honors society, being a youth leader for my church. Then in college, I've been an officer for two clubs called Model United Nations, which we go to academic conferences across the U.S., across the world, all throughout the school year, then having my own personal group of friends. Basically, I did things all he freaking time. As I did more self actualización work, the more I realized what I truly wanted to do in life. I realized that it didn't matter what I did, at the end of the night, I was sad, borderline depression (even if we won competitions, and we would have our giant team victory dinners, I would be sad in the end.) My overarching goal became to be blissful with existence, as close to unconditional happiness as possible so I could be flexible for the rest of my life after college. This included being ok with being alone. So I started dealing with my addictions: For me, I had an addiction to internet, junk food, and debating, oh my especially debating. The tricky part is you'll learn from shadow work is that these addictions are interconnected and stop you from being ok with loneliness. First off, your BODY and MIND are not in alignment with what what you want to do. For example, logically you might think "I don't want to eat at Taco Bell because it's unhealthy." But, your body is screaming and whining for a delicious sip of frozen Mountain Dew baja blast. What are you supposed to do? Observation! Whatever addiction you have, really learn to be fully focused and mindful with what is happening. So for example, notice as your scrolling through Facebook, notice the positive sensations, but also notice the negative ones. Are you getting sad as you see other people's pictures or videos? Is the Facebook effecting your sleep and energy level? Does it feel like you can't stop scrolling down? Notice these results over time, it's like an experiment. Eventually, your body will realize, "Holy crap, this makes me feel horrible! I finally understand and refuse to use Facebook." It will give you sort of a sick feeling when you mindfully let your addictions occur over time. Keep note though it rarely works the first time. You need to do it over and over again. Just like having more sample sizes in a science experiment, your body, logic, and emotions will begin to align and authentically want to stop whatever makes you unhappy. I highly recommend actualices.org's video "awareness alone is curative" for more information. This awareness/observation is KEY. Dealing with your addiction takes TIME, you have to be patient, you need baby steps. Focusing on one thing at a time helps tremendously because you can observe, contemplate and change your life foundations to fix that single problem, as focused as a laser beam. I began minimalizing my life, which meant materialistic clutter, stimulation such as Internet, music, and accessible scheduling such as clubs. I started off with turning off music in the car, so I could contemplate, cry, so whatever I needed to do. Then I turned off music everywhere I was by myself. I now only hear music when I'm with friends or family. Freeing this allowed me to ultimately think for myself and be ok with peace and quiet. The next addiction I tackled was my schedule. This was by far the hardest one because you not only have to deal with attachments to social stimulation, but you also have little to no support from friends because they don't understand your ultimate intentions behind it. You just have to do your best to explain your goal and trust yourself. If they don't understand, you have to be ok with that, because it's ultimately your life and crucial for your foundation happiness! The next addiction I tackled was junk food. As mentioned above the Taco Bell was something I was a slave too. I let my desires happen, I observed the grease on the burrito, I heard and felt every chew. I concentrated on how my stomach felt and the headache that came afterwards. Also, cool note: I realized that eating the junk food and sugar caused my mental "to-do list" to turn off and became a catalyst for all of my other addictions to get worse. My body got sick of it! I fixed this addiction by automating my meals with things like blue berries and baby carrots for breakfast, Leo's vegetable soup for lunch, and brócoli pasta for dinner. After dealing with the first couple of addictions, things got tremendously better. I could start to be alone by myself. I realized that when you cut out your addictions, you become more attuned to the subtle and you actually start to like being lonely over being with people and partying. You start seeing life at a completely different angle. You no longer care about drama, you feel better about leaving your hair messy, you realize bars are mostly for sad people, and you become more honest. You realize that the most growth actually comes when your alone! Since you first posted this question to me, I was traveling in Germany with my family (a commitment I made prior to all of the life minimalization), I turned off all of my electronics, meditated every day during the trip, and soaked it all up. Now im back home, from that trip I am no longer bothered with internet (including Facebook), I started my homade meditation cycle, so I can meditate 4-7 hours every day before the next school semester starts. I rarely text anyone unless out of necessity.There are no regrets about cutting out my busy clubs (even though they offered me vice captain position). Now, I am still working on myself in this field, one of my newest discoveries was finding my addiction to debating. My technique was that I ask into it. When I have an argument in my mind (started about a month ago) and I can still feel angry about it, I stop, I observe it. "Haha, look at me being angry about this. No worries, I wonder where it's coming from? Is it because I feel like I need acknowledgement about my hard work? Is it because I feel like I need self worth from others? Interesting. Is this causing me to stay attached to toxic people around me?" And continue down the rabbit hole. This will happen over and over. This is called shadow work. Do it out of love, don't moralize it, don't say "oh that's bad don't do that!" I know this is a big post, I wrote a lot and I probably missed something. Here is the core theme. Everyone is different, everyone has different addictions, insecurities, and attachments that keep them from being ok with being alone in peace. The best tool is observation. Observe the things you are attached to at every angle and sensation. Ask your self if it is really making you happy, what are the side effects, and is it forever unsatisfying? When you finally feel aligned enough to authentically get rid of a certain attachment, cut it off it full force, leave no room for alternatives! If it's your computer, turn it off and pull the plug. Laptop? Hide it in your bag under the bed. Facebook on your phone? Delete the app. Taco Bell? Screw down the consistent breakfast schedule. Work on specific things one at a time. Do it in baby steps and don't be surprised if you feel pain along the way. Get through the pain, you are purging your inner demons! It will burn sometimes, embrace the burn and see it as growth . You'll realize that your addictions and insecurities go WAY deeper than you ever imagined, and connect to one another like webs upon webs. Do it out of love for yourself, don't forget to love yourself! Stick to the steps, then you can get to the point where you "sit for hours." It is totally tangible. If you dont want to become a yogi, then no sweat, your life will still be much more free and authentic! Thats about it. Basic summary: keep growing yourself, and you will become less attached to the gross materialistic stimulation and socialization. You will become more authentic and joyful from the process in the long run. If you have any questions that I missed, feel free to ask.

I have similar experiences with the feeling of entities around me at night, which oftentimes at its worst moments feels like they go inside of me. I use "worst" as more of a self inflicted wound type of way. I noticed that how I put my emotions prior to the experience totally determines the outome of how scary or rewarding it is. Heres a few tips that significantly helped me: 1. If you have the fear of "aliens" purposely conjure them in your mind, if something begins to manifest, observe it. Surrender to it! Literally let it come up to you and even come inside of you. Your ego has a deep rooted fear to this specific situation, facing it will help you permenantly be at peace with it in the future (after a couple days of possible ego backlash.) 2. If you get scared, remember that the self doesn't exist, there is nothing to defend or lose if you never existed in the first place 3. I did Leo's self acceptance exercise once where I completely and unconditionally love myself prior to the entity experience and it actually made the entity positive (a radical change in perspective like a demon into an angel) This worked for me, hopefully it works for you just as well! *edit* because of these tips which I applied to myself, I no longer have these fears and can meditate in the dark

From someone who just got out of high school and played the social game. I understand your position, I went through that unsatisfaction as well even when I was involved in the wrestling team, SNHS, and many other groups out of school. I highly encourage that you face the problem of loneliness head on. I guarantee that even if you get awesome friends and get chicks, you will be lonely and unsatisfied at the end of the night. Learn to embrace solitude, because in the end we will be lonely in our hardest struggles. By by the way, if you can learn accept and even embrace loneliness, your confidence will go through the roof because there is this "nothing to lose" mentality and allows you to take more risks and be more honest to new people around you, aka easier to be your authentic self and attract people. I think that this is an ultimate solution. However, something that is a little quicker would simply to be honest around people. That is an easy way to find and cut out any possible friendship without having exhausting courtship or mental gymnastics. They either like your personality or hobbies or don't. When I started to be truly honest around people my senior year, everything fundamentally changed. I no longer wanted to wrestle, I cut out a ton of bad influences, and created a romantic relationship with a girl who actually liked self actualización too. This was not even intended when I started being honest but just happened to be the result.

I see religions holding legitimacy where the experiences aim towards truth. However it is taken in their own flavor and slices portions of the big picture and rejects the rest out of faith in their customs and morals or limit their perspective of what is possible in reality. The reason I believe this happens is because the truth is so subjective that it takes unique physical and emotional labor to discover the truth. Most of society is not going to do this. Instead, they find an easy set of rules and imitate the standards that enlightened people would live by, but lack the understanding of WHY these standards are important, therefore morals have to be used to follow them, which creates a culture and religion.

Hey y'all, I had a hard time dealing with Leo's insight regarding the personal inquiry about your image in the mirror. I understand the concept that everything we see is just a sensation created in our mind, but I still have a hard time wrapping myself around it with this specific situation. One big rationalization that occurs in my mind is that I can see the reflection of under individuals and they appear to be accurate with one another (besides of course reflections are inverse), so why wouldn't the self? I understand the notion that we believe the illusion feels so real because it's consistent, so why would this reflection conistency be the exception? Thanks and I look forward to hearing your perspective

Hello, I am a college student who has worked on personal growth for a couple of years now. My over all happiness has slowly accumulated in nearly all aspects. My relationships have improved as well. However, as I become more aware of the ego and the insecurities that come with it, i notice how many girls that I originally saw as "dating potential" are no longer meaningful or I can tell it would be an unhealthy relationship. I don't think it's a bad thing, because it saves me years of wasted time being in a relationship with someone who isn't developing themselves or working to grow at a level like mine. It is kind of that burden of being unable to share all of the amazing experiences of actualización and enlightenment because only their will to experience it themselves would work. This has basically led to my dilemma: more self actualización = lonelier. I would love to find girls who share these same passionate qualities of actualization, spirituality, and meditation. However, I have failed to find one person like that at my college. Does anyone have any advice for me on where I could go or which community to explore to help me connect with more ladies that share my same passions? Thank you!

As a son of two parents who got divorced during my sophomore year. It took me about 2-3 years in high-school to become more emotionally mature and aware of it. In the long run, I love my parents to death and completely respect their decisions. I'm so glad it happened in a matter of fact. Keeping in mind I did a lot of self-actualización work and personal development, it made the process much easier. I understand when kids are younger they may take it personally or irrationally, as they are still learning so much! The kids might have a lot of sadness or anger from the divorce, it's not a smooth transition. However, I can't emphasize enough how the majority of kids in the long run will be much happier with a family divorce then have two unhappy parents arguing all the time, which brings them that misery. You do have to think about your happiness. I promise you that if you aren't happy, your kids won't be either. The best thing you can do in my opinion is follow your true desire and leave, but always be there for your kids whenever they do need you.

Thank y'all so much (all of you) for the feedback. It is true I do ruthlessly filter people relationship wise, so I will keep that into consideration. And I'll definitely try to find some meditation courses or something.