When you teach deep truths, egos will look for every way possible to demonize the messenger. To a big ego truth looks like evil.
You deal with it by grounding yourself in truth, love, and consciousness. You need a very strong sense of what you want to accomplish in the world and stick to it without allowing anyone to distract you. Once you find your LP, the whole world will conspire to distract you from actualizing it. And you must develop enough strength and focus to say NO to all the distractions. See, those 3 hrs you wasted reading YT comments you could have invested in doing the personal development work you know works.
Fundamentally, the reason you feel bad here is because you are not operating on internal truth but rather looking for external validation of truth. You want and even need others to tell you that you're on the right path and doing good. So you keep pinging them for validation and when they deny you that validation you feel bad. You have not yet learned to take fully ownership of the truth as a personal, internal compass that requires no external validation or approval.
See, you want to ping others for validation of truth and goodness, but what you don't yet grasp is that everyone you ping are devils. If you ping a devil for truth, he will, of course, tell you that it's false and evil. The only thing a devil can validate for you is falsehood and selfishness.
Find the Truth independently of all humans and ground yourself in it as deeply as possible. Then use that to shine light on the devils.
God does not ask a devil if God is good. God's goodness is self-evident to God. And if it isn't, he isn't God, he's a devil.

Don't wish for life to be easier. Wish yourself to get stronger.

That’s beautiful. 
Take a few deep breaths, and feel into that. It powerful enough for ten lifetimes. Scary powerful, I know. Visualize it going ideally, comfortably, divinely for you - life is a divine gift, just for you to live and enjoy. Visualize the network connections unfolding for you in good time, just as needed. Know that you will have the confidence, as needed. You will grow, perfectly as needed. One step presenting itself perfectly as you’re ready; not too soon, and not too late. The intention is for life to unfold for you in a timely fashion, such that you enjoy it. 
Tune into the now of it - that is the only place you’ll find the joy.  
Implying there is too much to do and not enough time to do it (overthinking), is depressive. In this, do fun things just for you to feel great. 
Too much time and not doing enough (laziness), is frustrating. In this, look to better align your eating, sleeping, and clean up your thinking. 
 
There is a “Goldilocks”, or a Middle Way, which is to be present and satisfied with where everything is, right now. 
If you were to flash forward at lightening speed and have everything you want immediately accomplished - then what would be the point of living?
Would you want every delicious meal you’ll ever eat sitting in front of you right now to scarf down like a barbarian? Of course not. You want to enjoy each one, in time. 
The point of living, is to live it. Not to have some thing, or to have accomplished it - but to live it.
To not know, and do it anyways, that’s as beautiful as life can be. That is real personal development. That is faith. 
You will need this deep, deep connection with your life, if you are to write about it. You will need to live it, if you are to show others how.
I’d meditate, calm it all down with stomach breathe focus, and simply, humbly, ask the infinite within you - what’s the next step, what’s today’s step for me. What is this gift of today you have so graciously given me? Whatever arises, Let that be enough. 
You will need to make every single other facet of your life, and all of your choices secondary to being able to wake up in the morning, and sit, and be in that place - to be in right now. No choice in eating, drinking, how you use your word with others, how you think of others, etc...no choice can infringe. Every choice must support this vision. 

Accept yourself as you are. Surrender to the whatever the actuality is. Forget about evolving (for a while).
This is simple advice, but hard to actually do because it will take your mind a lot of beating around the bush before it even starts to admit all the ways you don't accept yourself. "Evolution" is part of the ego's habitual agenda, believe it or not. The counter-intuitive move is to drop it.
See my video: How To Love Yourself
The deepest evolution comes from acceptance. But it has to be a radical, deep acceptance. A deep surrender. Which isn't something you just do by thinking about it for 5 minutes. You gotta really work at the acceptance.

@Max_V
It's great that you chose to take ownership of the situation.
Yeah, the truth is, your growth will not be liniar. It will be very rocky and you will backslide many times.
The thing is, as Tony Robbins says, we overestimate what we can do in a year, and we underestimate what we can do in a decade. So you gotta keep things in perspective. The backslides won't even matter in 5 years.
You should love yourself even more when you fail and backslide. But that can be very hard to wire in your brain.
It's hard because of peer pressure - as all the people around you will stop giving you attention and love if you don't have your life together, and that's CONDITIONAL love. They don't know what real love is yet. And that's why you gotta start with yourself.
If you cannot give yourself unconditional love, nobody will ever be able to fill that void for you. The same way in which you can have all the success and riches in the world, yet still feel empty inside.
It's also hard because society tells us that if we do not achieve material success or any other type of success that they put forward, we are automatic failures in life. But those are THEIR rules. You gotta set your own rules and standards, while not being attached to them. Only you know what will make you happy, so THEIR opinion does not matter. They have their own self agenda.
 
Challenge For You
Choose one of the following methods and do it dilligently for a month. Hit me up with a private message on the forum when that challenge is over and update me on your situation.
Do the exercise you choose once a day, every day, for a month.
1. Do Leo's visualization exercise from his video on the power of self-acceptance. 
2. Release feelings like guilt through the Sedona Method.
3. Unwire the self-defeating thoughts through "The Work" by Byron Katie, which will then change the self-defeating emotions you feel.
4. Do spoken or written affirmations for 5-10 minutes a day, related to self love, such as "I completely accept myself, the way I am right now"  or "I deeply love myself, no matter the circumstances that I find myself in."
 
I also had the same problem as you. I used to act like a perfectionist, crazy disciplined and crazy organized person, and usually when things slipped out of my control and I experienced backslide, I would freak out and start to beat myself up uncontrollably and punish myself back into taking action. But that's not a sustainable way to go.
That just causes a yo-yo effect where you are super effective one day, and super ineffective on another, and then you beat yourself up into being effective again, and the cycle repeats again and again and again.
We need to make our personal growth sustainable, and that starts with self-love, without attachment to outcome. When that sets in, you will see other people loving you more as well.
Good luck!

Here are things that I do that make my notes shorter and better
Focus on his main ideas and center your notes around these ideas. Look up the outline method of note-taking and use bulleted and numbered lists. As you start to do this more and more, the more you will start to notice that Leo's videos are centered around certain ideas. Remove the fluff. What you think isn't important and is self-explanatory, just don't write it down. In some way highlight some things that are important to you. It may be some food for thought, super-duper important points and insights. Go back and add new definitions of / points about a certain thing. Review your notes after taking them. Copy and paste the link to the video in case you need to watch/review it again Explain things using your own words. Quotes can be useful but only if you understand them and if they are important. Here are some of my notes so you can have a clear idea of what I am talking about:

 

These are notes I took while listening to Advice For High School & College Students - The Keys To Mastering Life:

5-MeO will help someone move from the unexperienced questioning of Yellow to the experienced understanding of Turquoise.
Absolute Truth goes beyond all philosophy, all description, and all conversation - and 5-MeO shows you that real quick. 
But the more important thing about 5-MeO was the disappointment I felt from realizing that it does jack shit for helping you get to the next level of life. That is, its most useful aspect was the feeling of 'okay, so I've gone to the ends of the Kosmos within and I still have all this bullshit to take care of -- let's stop fucking around with drugs and lets do something with our lives.' 
I kept denying the fact that no normal person understands the importance of 5-MeO because, to them, its just another kid taking drugs except now that kid has a huge spiritual ego who thinks it makes him a superhuman god and all he has to show for it is repeating the phrase "you don't understand -- it's infinite, you're infinite, we're infinite! It's all a Cosmic game!'
And look, I get that they're largely unawakened and don't understand the history of psychedelics in personal development, but they do have a point - if you're useless before 5-MeO, you're still useless after 5-MeO unless you take total responsibility 
Another way to put it is that, I realized that the difference between Turquoise and Coral is the difference between talking Truth (using one's voice as a way to inspire people at higher levels who already get it anyway) vs embodying Truth (using one's life to inspire people at all levels). As Frank Zane might put it, making one's outside as beautiful as one's inside and vice versa.
Again, 5-MeO will get someone to want to talk Truth -- but the only people who will understand what you're saying already understand what you are saying. 
Embodying Truth physically will inspire Truth in people at all levels. 
How many people on this forum need several years of study before they even begin to understand Eckhart Tolle? Mooji? Ramana Maharshi? It's not that what these guys are saying is wrong per se, but why is it that it takes so many people so many years to get it? They use the wrong medium, as talk is useless when it comes to Truth. 
How many people on this forum need several seconds to understand Bruce Lee? Ido Portal? Rickson Gracie? Laird Hamilton? For these guys living their life is itself a form of True Art - an expression of Truth meant to inspire others. Anyone who watches 5 seconds of these guys feels inspired in the same way that it might take the so-called spiritual masters 5 hours (if you buy their $600 DVD set). Thats the difference. 
The fact that first question you ask after reading the above list is the role of 5-meo, and not the role of any of the other things I did shows me you are asking the wrong damn questions. 
Ask about the role of discipline.
Ask about the role of accountability.
Ask about the role of quitting my addictions.
Ask about the role of finding a reality check mirror.
Ask about the importance of death as a physical practice. 
Psychedelics, NDEs, Holotropic Breathing - those forms of death are for babies.
If 5-MeO got me to where I'm at, then I would stop everything I'm doing, start selling 5-MeO and become the richest man to have ever lived in all times.
 
The MINDBODYSOUL will unlock its true potential only when pushed to its fucking limit in a real life situation that requires complex action for a simple solution, from one's own volition. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, as animals only have to put in as much energy as necessary.
Of course you don't know enlightenment or ultimate power because you of course don't need it. you don't need enlightenment to sit around answering forum questions. you don't need enlightenment to make videos. you don't need enlightenment to fill out forms at a desk all day. So why the fuck unlock that power? 
What makes Ralston different from other teachers is not his ability to pontificate about nothing, but the fact that he participated in bloodsport of his own volition.
I'm talking about pushing yourself to the type of death that no one can question, from all angles, from one's own volition.
Most people can easily question psychedelic death. Most people can question holotropic breathe death. And most NDEs come as a result of an accident or someone making a mistake.
No one can question a rear-naked choke. No one can question drowning in a 50-ft wave. No one can question climbing Mt. Everest Shirtless - you chose that shit.
I am one of the few people who've tried both forms of death approach and I can tell you that there is a huge difference that goes beyond all philosophy, all argument, and all discussion - just fucking do it and you will see.
But as long as one sits there searching for an answer by isolating oneself or sitting around staring at a wall or imbibing yet another psychedelic, there's really no reason for the body to unlock itself. 
I will know you got unstuck the moment you start showing your self outside, moving, interacting, doing, and not just talking in your videos. I will know you got unstuck the moment we see you physically tackling your fears and getting yourself into the shape of a warrior. I will know you got unstuck the moment you stop treating physical play like just another thing and you start emphasizing it as one of the ultimate foundations of human development. 
Until then, you shall remain stuck. Worse, your life purpose will be capped off at level turquoise, which sucks because the world really doesn't need yet another turquoise mouth-yapper. And I say that in the most loving way because I feel genuinely helped by you and now I genuinely want to help you. There's literally no one else who is going to tell you that because no one else is aware enough and cares enough. 
So, for Everyone reading this, here's the shit that I did with my life that is way more important than 5-meo ever will be:
Quitting the PMO cycle Quitting Sugar Quitting all drugs, all alcohol, all junk entertainment Exploring new exercise regimens, culminating in the following schedule Monday - Powerlifting  Tuesday - Jiu Jitsu Wednesday - Acroyoga Thursday - Capoeira  Friday - Calisthenics & Sprints Saturday - Hiking Committing to wake up before 9 AM every morning like an adult Writing quality works. Not just journaling. Not just sketching ideas. Not just writing stream-of-conscisouness articles.  Making something that might become a perennial hit every time you sit down to write. Notice that my upvotes per post on this forum is the highest out of anyone with more than 100 posts - even Leo himself. That's not a coincidence. Quality writing is quality thinking - the process of editing for good and bad sentences is itself editing for good and bad ideas.  Put it this way, I wouldn't tackle a difficult mathematics problem without writing down the variables on paper. So, why would contemplating a life problem be any different? Life's problems have far more variables than mathematics problems. Write down your best ideas on the nature of love, the nature of life, the nature of consciousness. Edit them so that no one can touch your arguments when it comes to communication - then you will see that no one can touch you when it comes to dominating life.  Reading quality material, not random listicles Cultivating quality relationships, excising any and all people who hold me back from higher potential. Making sure my top 5 people will leave legacies - anyone that you know will not leave a legacy must be excised, no exceptions if you don't have 5 people like this in your life, find them. Your lack of people to trust is not a sign that you're an enlightened genius, but a sign that you're a boring asshole. Only you can stop you from being an asshole. So stop letting yourself be so lonely - start being the type of person who provides so much value, others come along. For real, the isolation I see around here is unacceptable bullshit. Wake up and provide value. Period. Getting a reality-check mirror - someone interested in self-actualization at my same level who could help me iron out self-derived principles Refusing to date anyone who does not meet the Trinity rule  If I see myself as badass as Neo, then I will only date someone as badass as Trinity. If I am not as badass as Neo, then I will make sure I am so that I am ready for my trinity.  Taking 100% responsibility for my life Writing down a vision for what could go right in my life as well as a vision for the chaos and misery that will ensue if I don't take action. Do this stuff before taking 5-MeO and you will be ready to take 5-MeO. Do this stuff after 5-MeO and you will unlock the most amazing life imaginable. 
5-MeO is an excuse to say you've gone as far as possible with psychedelics so you can move on with your life. Because if that couldn't save you, then life really is all about taking ownership. But it will be the direct proof of this fact that will help you. 
So, to be clear, I highly highly recommend people take 5-MeO. Just don't think it will ever replace the other stuff.

Hey guys. Hope you're all good. After my awakening and permanent self-realization in May, 2017 my spiritual interest died down a lot. My participation on this forum went down, my spiritual practices came to an end and my whole journey imploded. This happened because I found the answers and tranquillity I looked for when I started. The answer that awakening and permanent self-realization gives you is the vanishing of the question you posed in the beginning of your journey. Your whole conceptual world comes to an end (mostly) and you live, think and talk mostly spontaneously and not pre-mediated. That's quite nice.
In the beginning of this new phase I had to adjust my entire life to this situation, so I needed quite a bit of time for that. A lot of new experiences and perspectives opened up to me and I took my time to investigate those. Right now it's the end of 2017 and I am still stable in non-dual awareness and mostly not contracted in my body. I also start to deepen my self-realization and push it towards "God Awareness" to go on with my journey. So I figure it's time to let you in on the techniques I researched and developed shortly before I woke up and that helped me to wake up permanently.
+++ Enter Azrael's Awakening Anchor #1 | How To Solve Emotional Suffering +++
I'm a big proponent of meditation. It's a great practice and the basis of everything we do. If you cannot sit with yourself and enjoy it, how can you ever understand your self? However, as we meditate and go on with our journey it gets clear that regular meditation is too slow and mild of a practice to give us the transformation that we want. That's why we have to develop accelerators on top of this basis.
The process I'll describe in a second is such a accelerator. It was developed by myself in January - February of 2017 and is based on a few other practices I know. It's main purpose is to solve emotional suffering and contraction of energy in your body. One of the big reasons you are not enlightened and always go back to sleep after a temporary awakening is that your body and mind are full of contractions that keep your ego in place. It is the energetic anchor in the nervous system that makes your ego, persona and body feel quite real and connected. It also makes your suffering feel quite real.
The method was tested on myself, @Huz and a friend of mine. I used it maybe 5-10 times in a span of 3 weeks to get rid of a lot of emotional suffering and contraction in my body. I did it with @Huz and he did it on himself as well and it died down most of his social anxiety almost instantly. My other friend cured most of his anger and had weeks of temporary awakening experiences after we did the technique once.
In my opinion the technique works best when you do it on someone else. The shift that happens seems to be deeper and its good to have someone to lead the process. However, it is possible to do it on yourself and still have a lot of changes happening. I am thinking right now to give away 3 free skype sessions for you guys to do this process - led by me. If you are interested, let me know in the comments. Also, I'm thinking to make a product out of this and help people with this process over a couple of weeks + consultation (also via a series of skype sessions). So if you'd be interested in that, let me know as well.
+++ The Technique: An Interview With Your Inner Children +++
The process is rooted in the observation that all of the egoic and unintegrated roles that your ego plays arise from an contraction of your basic emotions
fear / sadness anger / rage happiness / inspiration love Every role that you play takes the raw energy of a subset of these emotions, contracts them in your body / mind and lets a thought story arise out of this contraction to express the energy. The problem is that these roles -> thought stories -> contracted emotions -> raw contraction of energy are anchored in your body / mind (aka nervous system) and get triggered all throughout your day. Because you have a lot these contracted roles and one role can trigger another role, you live in the illusion of a conceptual world of suffering.
if you were to experience a subset of these 4 basic emotions in their uncontracted normal form, you wouldn't suffer. You would only have an intense, emotional experience. That's why it sometimes feels good to be in anger / rage or to melt in fear / sadness. Although other times, it seems like it destroys you (-> contraction).
Based on this conceptualized observation, we need to find a way to unravel these contractions to let them out of your system. One very direct way to do this is to give a subconscious, uncontrolled emotion a conscious voice to express its situation and to understand its position.
+++ The Technique's Technicalities +++
The actual technique works in the following way (if you do it on yourself).
Sit down comfortably on a chair / cushion. Repeat the following steps for every basic emotion {fear / sadness, anger / rage,  happiness / inspiration, love} Close your eyes and visualize a moment in your life in which you experienced the current emotion very strongly. Let your whole body sink into the emotion. Let it arise where it typically arises in your body. Think the thoughts it triggers when it comes up. In other words: Let the damn thing come on. Interview the emotion. That means ask the emotion a question and then answer the question from the standpoint of the emotion. Your questions should aim to "get to know" the emotion, its purpose, goal, its relationships with people, other emotions, yourself and the work that it does for you. Find a way with the current emotion to work better together with it in the future. That means work out a solution so that it can flow freely and you can live with it uncontracted and free. Open your eyes, stretch, think about what the emotion said and how you can live with that and go on with the next one. When you start working with this technique you will have to "play" the emotion's role. That means that you ask a question and you have to answer it from the perspective of the emotion. After doing this for 2-3 minutes, the emotion will come on so strongly that it'll take over and it will feel very real. I had numerous psychedelic-like experiences doing this technique. You might also experience big shifts in consciousness / awareness + a big opening of your body.
+++ An Interviewer's Template For Each Emotion +++
To make the process even simpler, I'll share with you a template that I developed over time that works quite well. Use this in this order for every emotion you interview and add follow-up / deepening questions for your own usecase:
Question: Who are you? Possible Answer: I am fear. Question: How do you feel? Possible Answer: I feel quite ... Question: Where are you located in my body when you arise? Possible Answer: I typically arise in your ... Question: How and when do you arise? Possible Answer: I come up when ... Question: When was the first time you can remember that you came up? Possible Answer: When you were ... years old, I came up while you were ... Question: What is your job and main goal? Possible Answer: My job is to protect you from ... Question: Do you sometimes work together with other emotions? If yes, with which and how? Possible Answer: Yeah, I sometimes work together with ... Question: Do you have enemies? If so, which ones and why? Possible Answer: Yeah, I hate ...          [...]
Question: What could we do to live more integrated together in the future? Possible Answer: You'd have to ... I hope you get the idea. Your main goal here is to fully understand and characterize every basic emotion and through that integrate it. It's very important when you do the interview, that you speak as "I the interviewer" and "I the emotion" so that you fully identify with your current position. It'll be strange at first, an then it'll be awesome and deep. Trust me.
+++ Further Notes +++
So that's the basic technique. When you do it with someone else over a series of times there are more elements to it. But this is the main bullet that you need to do it with yourself. if you do it formally as I described it, close your eyes throughout the interview of each emotion an then open your eyes at the end of each interview and contemplate what just happened and what to with it. Then get out of your current state (as good as it might feel) and hop on to the next emotion.
Explore how they work together, where they come from, how they contract and how they are triggered. Get the most accurate characterisation of each emotion on the intellectual, emotional and energetic level that you can get. Especially the first few times you do it, get deep and take your time. You'll notice a big release of tension in each sitting and after it which will be permanent.
When you notice throughout the day that you feel contracted, you can also make a mini-interview and just ask yourself "Fear, are you that? Rage is it you? ..." and ask what is happening and why it is happening. That'll in most cases end your contraction pretty fast and bring you an even deeper understanding of your emotions.
--
Try it! Let me know how it works for you and ask any questions that you have. Are you interested in a one-on-one skype session with me leading this? Maybe I'll throw 3 free sessions out there, if you guys are interested and it works for you. Are you interested in me making a product out of this, where we'd have multiple skype sessions with consultations + this technique over a period of time to integrate your emotions completely? Let me know. I will think about that.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to make more of these Azrael's Awakening Anchors to share what helped me to wake up. Peace out and be good to yourself.
Cheers,
Az

You will have to go through this fear sooner or later, so might as well go for it now.
It's not going to magically disappear, it's only going to get worse if you don't take care of it.
To the point you won't even consider doing the work because it is too painful to even think about it.

@Seed
Let me give you the options. 
1. Stop meditatinig and keep whatever is causing this in your subconscious, letting it having influence on you all troughout your life. Not that appealing, right?
2. Keep meditating and keep resisting whatever it is that wants to surface, making it stronger until you can't bare it anymore and it basically explodes out of you or you simply leave meditation for good because you can't bare it.
3. Or my favourite. Keep meditating, embrace that shadow that is waiting to be shined upon, let it surface and leave your subconscious, finally getting rid of the chains which held you back all of your life, it may cause you a hard time for a few hours, days or weeks, but it will be worth it in the end.
 

Yes
Spells of extreme low consciousness like that can happen after peaks of extreme high consciousness. The mind and body behaves like a natural oscillator.
Best solution is to maintain mindfulness ESPECIALLY after a major breakthrough or nondual experience.
The important thing is to not never doing anything unconscious, but to maintain mindfulness of while you do it.
Ex: if you're gonna pig out on a jumbo bag of potato chips, do it mindfully.

You stopped what you were mastering to free up time to work on yourself, but now you are looking for something else to master which is going to take up that time once again? 
I think you seek something more relevant to your growth right? 
All I can say is explore, explore, explore. All those things you thought about as a hobbie, do them. 
For a month at a time.
Keep taking notes and after about 6 months, choose one. 
Let me give you a big insight that will save you a lot of confusion though.
When you find it, you will still doubt it, you'll never find a 100% percent perfect fit. You'll be confused about whether or not it is it. No Angels will come from the heavens and congratulate you for finding it. You will still have resistance, you will be scared by the huge challenge you see ahead of you and you'll still have times when you want to quit.
Yeah it's exciting but nobody tells you that your mind will still be in doubt and try to keep changing it. So look out for that.

Bruce Lee was a holy human being. He was whole in the sense that his whole being was properly maintained. His body/mind/thought  were one. He was an inquirer of thought and a scientific investigater of the body.
When it comes down to it every part of your organism is effected by another. Body effects mind, mind/thought effects body. There really is no seperation. It’s one process of many processes. 
When you investigate into thought which is yourself, motive becomes clear on why you want to become physically fit. When the motive and intention is observed objectively you get your answer to that question. 
Your motive to that question is the answer. 
Blend psychological order with an order of physical fitness. Be aware of the reasons for doing things. Also try exercising or working out alone until this questioning yourself evaporates. Then go to a social fitness club or environment and test your motive and intention. Personaly I like to be alone I’m fitness. When I exercise usually I am enjoying myself and not being critical. Every moment should be enjoyed. Don’t do it just because it’s good for you, but because you also enjoy it. 
Life is to be enjoyed 
??
 
                                                 

Well, yesterday night I got a message from @Leo Gura - while watching the 5th season of House of Cards - in which he asked me how much 5-MeO-DMT trips I needed to wake up. After answering his question I shared with him a short version of the story how it all happened -- how I woke up. He suggested then that I should share this with you guys to inspire and educate you. And although it's still strange for me to talk about it in detail, it's the right thing to do. Just a year ago I had one wish and one wish only: To know exactly how it is like. And I will give my best shot in trying to articulate it.
Before I start though, I will give you some perspective where I'm coming from at this. What my background is, because that's utterly important if you want to understand how my journey took place and how the dynamics of the awakening worked.
+++ My Background: How I Got Introduced To Self-Actualization / Enlightenment +++
So let's go back two years. I'm 19 years old, sitting in my old room in my parents house in the night watching Leo's first video on enlightenment. At that time, I moved to Berlin, began my studies and I felt completely fucked up. I mean, my life in general worked out. My studies were going great, I moved to the city that I wanted to live in, ... . But I was feeling just shitty and insecure. I got bullied when I was 12-14 years old for making crappy rap music and it seemed that all that fear and insecurity from that time started to bubble up. I had a chronic feeling of being overwhelmed with my life, being anxious because of that and I didn't have the courage to speak about it to someone because I was deeply convinced that it would make me seem weak and like a victim - and I could not allow that.
So, if you asked a friend of mine at that time, he would've described me as this charismatic, confident dude whose life is going pretty well. That's what I pretended to be on the outside. I am pretty charismatic and confident - so that's not a lie - but I used it as a shield so that people wouldn't notice what is going on with me. Coming back to the night in my parents house where I watched the first enlightenment video, I'm just like: "That's my last chance. I have to try this, if this works (and I just believed Leo at that time because I resonated with his style of teaching) I can live in peace." I hated myself at that time, hated who I was and how my life went, so it seemed like a good idea to kill this guy called Azrael. Also, I was fascinated by the idea that this could be possible. I had never heard about the concept of enlightenment before and although I was deeply interested in psychology / philosophy and naturally way too curious about this world, I had kind of given up on ever really knowing what is going on here. This seemed like a solution to that as well. So, I started to meditate the next day.
+++ My Journey: How I Made It Happen +++
I have one big advantage over other people and that is: I get fascinated with stuff pretty deeply. Like, when there is a topic that I'm interested in I melt into that. I will research everything that there is about it, look at all the experts in the field, fall platonically in love with them, mimic how they talk and think, what they are interested in. I will live in that dream of that fascination. I will think about it all the day, associate everything that I do with it and make it my thing. That's basically me. That's why I am so young and so old at the same time. Because I live that shit. 
And as you can guess, I did the same stuff with my journey. I meditated, self-enquired, contemplated and tried to wrap my head around it. In the first year I was just very motivated and tried to get it all in. I knew nothing about it and I wanted to "get in there". So what happened? I actually began to feel better. I had my first realizations, I had cool meditations, began to experience my first mystical experiences and started to do psychedelics - mostly LSD and DMT.
So, a year goes by and I'm sitting at home. I moved a few months before that to a new apartment and Leo just released his video on "Free Will". Still, one of my favourites of all time. After I watched the video I meditated on the question "What is going to happen next?" for an hour. In that meditation a very strange thing happened. It felt like something cracked in my head and a lot of thoughts came up. I finished the meditation, began to cook something and noticed for the first time that I am able to listen to my thoughts while knowing that I don't say them myself. Looking back at that, I think it was the point at which my unconscious opened a gateway to my conscious awareness and started to really process some shit.
After that, the most horrifying year of my entire life started. My anxiety increased to a top, my unconscious thoughts increased to a top and just hypnotized me all day long. I just couldn't stay mindful. I was scared to leave the house because I was hyper-sensitive about everything. I was a mess. I was so fucked up that I doubted that this is still purging and I sometimes assumed that I am just mentally ill. That I'm a schizophrenic, with PTSD, anxiety disorder and paranoid. That's basically a good description on how I felt for most of the days.
At that time, I had probably the deepest realizations. Funnily, if you are in such a bad state you grow a lot and pretty fast because you are meta-analysing yourself all the time (because you are so fucked up) and through that you naturally have a lot of realizations and crazy experiences. From time to time it would stop for 1-2 weeks and I would have deep moments of bliss and clarity. Then the roller-coaster would start all over again and it would get worse. Just a big fucking mess.
Needless to say that this was also the time in which I tried everything. Every kind of meditation you know, every kind of teaching that is out there, any psychedelic that I could get my hands on. I was on it. I tried it, analysed and tried to use it to get me out of that horrible state. As I will later state, this time was the time in which my mind began to awaken. I just wasn't really aware of that because simultaneously it was flooded by so many disturbing thoughts and my body was fucked up with so many tensions and bad emotions.
This cycle basically kept going for the whole year, intensified and lowered, intensified and lowered. In the summer I got tired of it. I got tired of feeling so bad. I even had suicidal thoughts sometimes (which then freaked me out even more). So I stopped seeking. I still committed to the practice, still did my thing but I just gave up that this would ever stop. I just couldn't see how.
In the autumn and winter of that year I started fucking around with 5-MeO-DMT and shrooms. I also started using HoloSync. At that time I had some interesting changes happening. After my first 5-MeO-DMT sessions the tensions in my head completely vanished. That was nice but I was still in pain, still in fear. I also didn't have the nice blissful phases any more, I just felt mostly tired and sick of this shit.
That was basically my journey. A big fucking mess. A lot of trial and error, a lot of dedication and fascination.
+++ The Awakening of The Mind +++
In the summer of this horrifying year my mind awakened. I had a few awakening experiences before that but non that lasted. In the summer I had one Kundalini awakening. I just sat on my couch, was pretty exhausted and tired that day and thought about a girl that had rejected me at that time. Suddenly this ball of energy came shooting up my spine and into my head where it exploded. The first thought I had was: "Fuck, am I going to die right now?" It was pretty intense. After that I took a walk and was just completely shocked and fascinated with what happened and how I felt. All the anxiety and attachment was gone for this evening. And I could recognize the source. I could recognize where everything is coming from and who I am. I went to a buddy later that evening and it felt like he was a creature - not a human. It was crazy. 
The days after that experience the state completely vanished and I went back into my fucked up mode. However, my sense of self was now completely rooted in source. I could - if I wanted to -  know who I truly was. It was clear. But at that time, I still thought that this cannot be it, because I still felt so damn bad. I didn't know that my body had to awaken as well to be completely rooted in it and to feel the peace and calmness of the awakening.
+++ The Awakening of The Body +++
The awakening of the mind is basically realizing who you really are. Being able to recognize source. That's great, but only half of the deal. You can be able to recognize that with your ego still intact raping you like nothing changed. And you won't be able to realize what really happened because your ego is still there. The daemon is still there. Now, here is the story of how my ego integrated and how it brought me into total balance.
Roughly two weeks ago, I'm laying in my bed waking up (normally). It's a regular morning in Berlin. I'm still a little bit tired and dreamy, thinking about my daily meditation. And I'm like: "Ah, I don't wanna meditate. I just wanna sleep today." I'm pretty grumpy in the mornings btw. This is not the first morning that I think that way and so I begin to think a little bit.
Why do I don't want to meditate any more? This is my favourite and most intimate thing I do every day. And then I'm thinking about the last couple of weeks. How do I feel? How do I feel? I feel pretty good. Wait a minute, I felt good for a pretty long time now. Why am I not thinking about spirituality any more? I used to think about this every day 24/7? Why am I not thinking that much any more in general? I'm pretty relaxed all the time. Where are my chronic tensions in my abdomen? I haven't felt them now for ... Wait a minute.
And it goes on like this. That morning I realised that I had awakened. It was the strangest thing. I wasn't able to tell for some days what really changed, I just knew that I didn't feel bad any more and that all my motivation to do my practice just disappeared. (I still did it of course - gotta be disciplined with this and not listen to your thoughts.) After some time I began to think about myself again because I wanted to know what changed.
A few nights ago I skyped with my good friend @Huz and I came up with a metaphor that describes it pretty well.
+++ The Metaphor: How It Feels to Wake Up +++
So, in the normal non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - wow that's a phrase that sounds pretty evil just writing it - it's like you have an invisible suit that you wear at all times. This suit has one property and one property only. It makes it hard for sensations, emotions and feelings to get out of your body.
So now with having this suit on, when you have a sensation or an emotion that goes through your body it will naturally be resisted by the suit and so ping back into your system. It's like there is a resistance through that invisible suit. So that sensation or emotion will go another time through your body and by that amplify the effect it has on you. Because it cannot get out easily. It might get out after some time, depending on how strong your suit is, but it's hard for the poor little thing. Through that you tend to "attach" to what is going on with you. Even more, you begin to identify with what is going on inside yourself because the effect is so strong and always repeats because of the resistance.
The same thing is happening with your thoughts. You have a thought and it cannot get out because of your suit. It gets back. Makes another round, triggers other thoughts that cannot get out that trigger even more thoughts. Through that a constant chatter of thoughts is made possible.
As you start your practice you begin to unconsciously work on your suit. As you purge more and more shit its resistance gets weaker and more thoughts can go out of your system at first. Then, as this happens a lot of the repressed thoughts are now able to release themselves and your system is flooded by them. Because your suit is weaker they can get out but because of the volume of the repressed thoughts that are now set free it seems like you are regressing - although you are not.
Through that process you might be able at some time to recognize who you really are because so much changes inside of yourself. That's great and that's what happened when my mind awakened - however the suit was still on - although weakened. When the body awakens what basically happens is that the suit looses its last resistance and falls off.
Through that your body is now able to think and process emotions naturally without unconscious resistance of the suit. This of course implicates that you loose most of your inner tensions and that the volume of your thoughts go down, because they are not amplified any more. It also implicates that you are able to recognize who you are much easier because the strong identification with your sensations, emotions and thoughts is released and really everything that you are aware of finds a perfect balance.
This also explains why I did not instantly recognize what happened to me. My meta-analysis, my pain, my tensions, my thought stories just left like a daemon that raped me and through that I just was and am in a state of peace that is not questioning itself all the time and is not trying to get away from itself.
I hope this makes sense.
+++ The Aftermath: What Now Then? +++
Well, I don't now, to be honest. Right now, I am pretty relaxed. I still do my normal day to day shit, I still have all my preferences, dreams and desires. I don't want to get away from myself any more and I know who I am. I am quite empty. I guess that's a phase in the beginning. I will see where it takes me. I will commit to my practice and see what comes next. I hope that I am able to find a lot of more metaphors in the future about this and I'd like to write more about it to help you guys and make me understand it on an intellectual level.
One thing that is very important to understand here is the following: In all my seeking, non-seeking and whatever I did I always made up this picture in my head of "how it would be if I'm there". And that's natural in the non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - oh I love this phrase. I think that this transition took place because when I chased this picture of "how it would be" I was at the same time doing all the work that unconsciously set up all the dynamics and mechanisms to transform my whole being. It took the time that it needed and it didn't give a fuck how I felt about it. When it was time it first awakened my mind and then later awakened the body and when that happened and both came into balance it was just like the picture dissolved and I was shot from my path into a big fucking ocean in which I have to now find out how to swim. It's like I just completed this level and am now at square one again - just in a different world.
Well let's find out what's going on in here, right? Because the levels never stop. That's the fun of the game, I guess.
I'm thankful to all the members on this forum that I had and have great conversations with. Especially I'm thankful for @Leo Gura who introduced me to all of this and is a constant inspiration, source of education and a fucking pain in the ass to be more committed, @jjer94, @Ayla and @cetus56 who made me realize so much with their beautiful writing and lastly @Huz my great good friend from the UK with whom I have the best conversations about all of this and who is always listening and responding to my crazy voice messages.
Cheers, Az
P.S. Feel free to ask me whatever is on your mind about all of this. I'm happy to help and to further clarify what I stated here. I will - in the future - post a lot more about the techniques that I used, about more of the dynamics of the process, new trip reports and all the other good shit that we all love to talk about.

@egoless Congratulations! You have unwittingly re-invented Vajrayana Buddhism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana
Yidam visualization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yidam
Diety yoga:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana#Deity_yoga

Don't cut out on everything. If you enjoy eating whole grain bread, then eat it. Maybe your body actually needs something from it. Just make sure you buy good quality bread and make sure to eat more fruit and vegetables  with you meals. 
Remember to eat enough! Plant foods are low in calories than meats. This is why you need to eat a little bit more than you used to.
From years of experimenting I realized that it's all about balance. Eat a balance of carbs, fats, and proteins. If it's whole foods, don't be afraid to eat them as much as you want.
With time, you will find what works for you, what you like, and what foods give you energy. It all depends on your lifestyle and your physical goals. Here are my examples:
I always start my day with a smoothie. My very simple and easy smoothie recipe: almond milk (Silk brand is the best), 1-2 bananas, blueberries or strawberries, a lot of greens (spinach, kale, or spring mix), hemp seeds, flax seeds (sometimes substitute for chia seeds). Sometimes I add chlorella or some green powder but now I bought chlorella capsules and take them with food.
Then, I usually like eating avocado on a rice cake with a bunch of greens or sprouts on top. Sometimes I make it into guacamole too.  
Soups. My favorites: curry lentil, creamy butternut squash, simple vegetable soup, borsh.  I make a big pot for a few days.  
I make curries with mostly ancient grains like buckwheat, millet, quinoa.
I really notice the difference in my energy and clear mind when I consume sea weeds or other greens in powder or liquid forms. Chlorella, E3-Live blue green algae, barley grass juice powder, moringa leaf. I recommend looking into that. 
Here is the good video to check out: 
 
 

@egoless Vegan is definitely healthier but only if you do it slow. Don't give up meat right away. Start slowly removing animal products from your diet and introducing more fruit and vegetables every day. If you do it very fast you might feel week and tired. It's because your body is still used to getting vitamins and minerals from meat so it needs some time to adjust to plant foods.
Many people feel very good for a few weeks after going vegan, but then, they feel weak. It's because the body hasn't learned how to absorb nutrients from plants yet and used all its storage.
The only thing I would advice is to ditch dairy right away. There is just nothing good about it except maybe super organic raw milk which is hard to find nowadays. There are many vegan milks on the market. It all depends on what you like, I personally like almond.

Yeah pretty much this.
It's all ego based, you just have to keep practising and being conscious of your insecurities, it will sort it out by itself.

Let yourself be so vulnerable that you become invulnerable, counter-intuitive as fuck but it works lol

@Max_V What you will eventually discover is that even "awareness" and "consciousness" are misleading terms.
The closest word is Nothing.
Reality simply "knows" being by being.
The problem with terms like awareness and consciousness is that imply a human agent or a mental process. But that is NOT how reality knows itself. It knows through being. To be true, is to be known.

@Ilya By stopping objectifying yourself