jjer94

Story of my life! I originally wanted to be a researcher because I thought you could arrive at Truth through science...but I was sadly mistaken. That didn't stop me from taking my analytics and skepticism into spirituality. It was Peter Ralston's "Book of Not Knowing" that opened me up to enlightenment work because of how wordy and analytical his writing is. While intellect is not required at all to seek Truth, it can actually be quite useful at times. You can be more surgical with dissecting your own beliefs and spotting hidden assumptions. If you're the analytical type, this may help you with some of your ideas regarding an external world. I had an awakening after reading his book and examining my own experience. Of course, there's a downside to intellect too, as you stated. Sometimes we get into mental masturbation mode as a way to spin our wheels. Truth itself is incredibly paradoxical and not logical at all. Bottom line is, you can use intellect to help destroy your own illusions and beliefs which in turn leads you to Truth, but then you have to leave intellect at the doorstep. Once you acquire a grounded consciousness of Truth, your mind will stop spinning its wheels.

Yes. You are the only authority there could ever be. It's 'your' Consciousness. Who could possibly have the authority to tell you what you can and cannot experience?

Several, actually, leading up to a final non-experience a couple days ago, which I think will end the seeking for good. But it's not like the oneness ever leaves. It's always been there. It's just a matter of seeing through illusions. Just take a look-see.

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned The Truman Show.... "Mike Michaelson: Christof, let me ask you, why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now? Christof: We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that." Or how about American Beauty? "That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in." But I think my favorite has to be Joe Vs. The Volcano: "My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?" -Waking Life

Who says there is a 'you' that can do whatever it wants, that is capable of anything? You may want to re-examine that assumption. If you're wondering though, the Truth of you has no limits; it's Infinity itself. But the body and phenomenal experience are very much limited to the confines of phenomenal reality (the realm of sense perceptions).

So you discovered the underlying consciousness, and it's amazing and mind-blowing and all that for a while. That's the honeymoon period. Then, what starts to happen is that you begin to get groggy and fall back asleep; your old egoic conditioning rises to the surface. You may feel inclined to resist all of this conditioning, to bury it again, to try to control the situation by attempting to detach, to try to 'stay awake'. But instead of asking, "How do I stay awake?" You may want to ask yourself, "What is it that makes me fall back asleep?" My advice: let all of the conditioning rise to the surface. Let the ego go on a crazy selfish rampage. Don't fight it. To fight it is to continue to operate in the egoic paradigm. Let it all come up, and instead of trying to control the ego, learn to understand it. Learn to see why it does the thing it does. Understand all of the agendas it puts itself through and all of the struggles it makes itself go through in order to fulfill those agendas. Once you see the struggling for what it is, you will find less utility in doing it, and letting go will start to happen spontaneously. Also, I hope you notice that the ego doesn't actually exist.

It's been about a year since I watched Leo's enlightenment video and took the plunge, and it was six months later that I first saw through the veil of self. Then, a string of awakenings led me to a final one a couple days ago. I've been deprogramming in between. You're probably looking for some sense of certainty, some projected estimate to give you hope for the future... but for this journey, you need to destroy your hope. Sure, you can get a sense of the task at hand from other's hearsay, but it's really about taking the plunge and not giving a damn how long it takes or how long it took others. As Walt Whitman wrote, "Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your hair."

Yes, very much so. Imagine that your whole life, you've had your foot on the accelerator of a car. Then, you realize that somehow having your foot there made you suffer immensely, and from seeing that, you put your foot off the accelerator. Even after you do that, the car will still have some momentum. That's kind of what post-awakening is like. You destroy your worldview in the blink of an eye, but your body still has boatloads of psychological conditioning from that worldview. There are still psychological hang-ups, but they're much easier to deal with now that you see that your worldview is illusory.

That's the trap with reading Eckhart Tolle right off the bat. He tells you to "Be Present", but you only know how to do that in your current egoic paradigm, which is totally bogus! I fell into that trap too, where I thought that I had to stop my thinking completely and meditate for hours on end. I even got the 'pain in the brain' that you described. The key assumption you have to examine here is whether you can even try to be present. To try is to attempt to exert control over a situation. If there's no ego, who can control anything? If you're gung-ho about enlightenment work, you need to realize that you have no control over anything. Don't believe that statement; you have to see it for yourself in your direct experience. Leo's video on free will has some good exercises for acquiring a direct experience of this. It's not a matter of trying to be present, or be aware. It's a matter of un-trying to un-be present, and for that, you simply need to see through your own illusions. Seeing through the illusion of control is your first step.

I think you may be referring to the Clare Graves Spiral Dynamics thing, which you can look up in Leo's video library. If not, then I think you may be referring to the natural progression we take towards enlightenment. Yes, there can be certain stages, certain milestones, you hit on the pathless path, but I wouldn't take them too seriously if I were you. If you're interested in learning more about that, check out the book No Boundary by Ken Wilber. He goes into depth about all of the arbitrary stages.

As Jed said in his books, once you use the sword of intellect to cut through everything that needs cutting, you don't feel the need to do SA anymore; you're just Done. Done, as in, all of your assumptions about what reality is are destroyed, and what's left is something you can discover in something like sitting contemplation. Yes, the process of seeing through your own worldview can be emotionally disturbing at times, but it's not like that worldview ever had any existence to begin with. And of course it's okay to still have that worldview when operating in everyday life. It's just that you see it as illusory. What I've found is that, yes, you can be absolutely Done with figuring out Truth, but you're hardly ever Done with seeing through the character you play. I've found that SA in the form of uncovering my own psychological hang-ups has been very useful alongside contemplation. That form of SA operates more like journal entries. Just examine any emotions that cause you suffering during the day, and try to get to the bottom-line assumption(s) that fuels it. You can do that before and after becoming conscious of your True nature. I've actually found it to be more useful after the fact.

"Is meditating an hour a day enough to make as much gains as Buddhist munks get?" Just by the way you worded your question by using 'should,' stacked on top with this quote, I get the impression that you expect to get somewhere with meditation. That's a trap you may need to see through. Meditation is not about should's, it's about releasing control. Meditation is not about making gains, it's about making losses, returning to ground zero to what you really are. That's my take on it, at least. Your question becomes invalid when you really examine the assumptions you have about meditation. Meditate for however long you want. Meditation becomes very pleasurable when you put the least amount of effort in trying to focus and let yourself naturally focus. There's no need to do math as to how long you should meditate; there's no rules to it. Eventually, life itself will become your meditation when you relinquish your illusions of control, should's, and gains.

Yes, SA helped me boatloads with destroying several hidden beliefs I normally didn't find during sitting contemplation work. Because nothing you write is true, you expose all of your bull---- by writing what you think is true. Then, you can dissect why you think it is true, and you'll end up with a baseline assumption. The answers you're looking for are not the answers to any questions you have about reality; they are what's left after you destroy the question. A spin-off of SA that helped me was playing my own invented game called 'Spot the Assumption!' Here's how it works: -Write down any question you have about reality, or any statement you think is true. -Look within the question/statement for the assumption. There is always at least one. -Examine that assumption, and see if it sits on top of any other assumptions. -Eventually, you'll hit a baseline assumption. Examine it enough, and it will disappear as if it never was. Here's a classic example: Question: What is the meaning of life? Assumption: Life has meaning. What is meaning? It's an interpretation we place onto what's actually there. What is an interpretation? It's a concept. What's a concept? A mental construct. Where is the reality of the mental construct? In the mind. What is the mind? Thought sensations. What's actually there are thought sensations. The gravitational pull of certain thought sensations over others is meaning. But thoughts are just thoughts; they're just there. The meaning itself is non-existent. Meaning is an illusion. Like the content of a movie, when there's only just light on a screen. You can go on and on with these inquiries. Just ask any deep question you have about life and figure out why the question has no validity, or write a statement you think is true, and figure out why it's not. Hope that helps!