Matt8800

Sometimes anxiety and depression is caused by our interpretation and ruminations of the "objective" world and sometimes it is caused by neurochemistry. If they are caused by interpretations and ruminations, enlightenment will be the end of those. If by neurochemistry, the brain still creates the sensations but "you" realize it doesnt matter.

Sounds like you had an insight about time. There is no movement without time. When you realize the past and the future are just concepts, and the present is the only thing real, do you feel "frozen" in the present moment?

Suffering is caused by thoughts. There is no suffering without thoughts. This is why we train our minds with meditation.....to live in the present moment without self referential thoughts. When a painful thought arises, a trained mind will simply let it float away without any pain. I used to suffer immensely. Now I dont. When I started I meditated only 20 minutes a day and it helped a lot. I should also say that I combined psychedelics with meditation often and it was critical to my growth.

@Ampresus There is only one place you can practice your integration - in the present moment. When people have a hard time integrating, its usually because they are not living in the present moment.

There is no correlation between spiritual growth and psychological growth. Leo also covered this in one of his videos. An enlightened person could be blue and a turquoise person might not be enlightened.

Green women tend to have not want to date orange. This is like saying since many people are addicted to opioids, everybody is.

In case you havent noticed, nobody is trying to talk you out of leaving the forum and not watching another video

1. Leo has never stated he has mastered everything he talks about. Sometimes the inspiration to teach others to transcend the struggle comes from your own struggle. 2. Leo has stated not to put him on a pedestal. If you do, thats on you. 3. Leo just provides things to think about but you are responsible for thinking for yourself. Nobody can think for you. 4. When you say "are we living above and beyond others...", who is "we" and what does "above" mean? Many people around the world are awake but do not follow Actualized.org. I woke up before I encountered A.org and A.org is one of many tools I use for me to drive my own evolution. As far as "living above..", I much prefer my awakened life over my previous unawakened life.

Go see a bankruptcy attorney and start over.

Sounds like you are going through what some people refer to as the "dark night of the soul". It is not specific to Actualized.org. This is a known phenomenon in all the contemplative traditions. Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha does a great job of explaining this and what to do to get to the other side. Remember, worth and goodness are subjective concepts. Put some serious thought into what these mean to you and live your life accordingly. Suffering is the fuel for evolution. Evolution leads to transcending suffering. Keep going. Its worth it. My life is radically better.

I agree that the world is more indebted to India than it could ever possibly imagine. I would be interested in learning more about ancient India. With that said, I dont know if Actualized is the right platform solely to show appreciation to a culture or give a history lesson.

Leave Islam completely to get rid of those attachments to a dogma. There are other mystics to study. When Islam is out of your system, go back and study Rumi if you want.

If that is true, Papaji could have just chanted "truth" for 20 years

I cant find the exact source of that but its easy to find information to show that early Buddhism was misogynistic and this idea was supported by early Buddhists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Buddhism Anyway, my point is that just because someone is enlightened doesnt mean that everything they believe is true.

Ive read the Gita but didnt see anything about chanting to Krishna

Actually, even Leo has said on his videos that someone that is enlightened can be in the early stages of Spiral Dynamics and vulnerable to dogma and superstition of the culture they have been exposed to. I agree. The Buddha originally said that women should not be taught how to meditate. He only changed his mind after one of his followers convinced him otherwise. There are many other examples of enlightened people with erroneous beliefs.

I stand by my statements until someone can explain how practicing Mormonism, Christianity, Islam, etc can lead to realization of the True Self. I was heavily indoctrinated by Christianity the first half of my life. Ive read the Bible, front to back, at least 7 times. Ive read almost every book by CS Lewis looking for a reason to think that Christianity was a valid belief. Not once, in 20 years, did I ever read about or hear anyone mention anything about the concept of the true self, awareness or non-duality. How is following a belief system that does not teach the true self, awareness, mindfulness, meditation or non-duality helpful? Can explain how a Mormon's beliefs lead to the true nature of reality and the Self?

That is not what Papaji was taught regarding Krishna, which is why he said it was a waste of time chanting to Krishna. Im just repeating what Papaji's autobiographer, David Goodman, has said. Papaji did not think that chanting to Krishna was helpful, which is why he didnt teach it.

@Anirban657I disagree with many of the people on this site that seem to have the idea that all religions are "good". Usually, that idea comes from people that have been mostly non-religious their whole life and dont know first hand what indoctrination is and what the consequences are. They cherry-pick words in the respective "holy" books and interpret the way they want to try to show some truth when nobody actually in the religion would see it that way. This delusion is fueled by the mistaken good intention of being inclusive and tolerant. Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, etc, etc are all brainwashing and delusion. Stating that religion has some truth is like saying a schizophrenic that thinks hes an alien with super powers has truth because he knows what day of the week it is.

@Anirban657 I was just listing to Papaji's autobiographer talk about this yesterday. Actually, Papaji said he wasted all that time chanting krishna when he should have looked for the true self within.

@Zakee hinnant Work on your attachments, including getting results from meditation. Let go and accept everything and anything. Just commit yourself to what the Buddhists call "right action" and let happen whatever the universe brings to happen. Keep untangling attachments, let go and accept. You will make progress.

@eduardoe Attraction matters.

@evolvelovelive Cannabis has been extremely valuable in my spiritual evolution. As the Christians say, you can judge a tree by the fruit on it. If it produces good results in your life, than it is good for you. If you start overdoing it and it produces bad results, stop or slow your consumption. Ive been consuming for years. I smoke 1 joint after dinner and another one before bed. I never smoke during the day. Dont let other people tell you what is good or bad for you when it contradicts your own direct experience.

Climate change is inevitable. Billions of humans, along with a lot of other species, are going to suffer and die. There is nothing we can do so we should accept it. This is not the first time a species has radically altered the planet to the point it could no longer survive in its environment. There was a massive die-off and a small fraction adapted to its new environment (evolution). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event. Of couse if that species wouldnt have lived and died off, we wouldnt have any oxygen in our atmosphere. The reason why the extinction event occurred is because it was so successful with reproduction and survival, it eventually ran out of environment to expand into. People talk about how we shouldnt eat certain foods because it will alter the planet. Nobody is talking about what chimpanzees are eating and the reason why is because there populations are too small to have any effect. The root problem is over-population. If we enact everything within our power to hold back climate change, that will just allow humans to keep reproducing. We all have the noble goal of ending hunger, homelessness, violence and guaranteeing health care to everyone so they can live longer and reproduce more. That just delays the inevitable because when species flourish, they reproduce quickly. Eventually, there will be nothing that can be done except mandatory sterilization and that would be hugely unpopular for obvious reasons. I believe many will die and some will go on to adapt to their new environment. Evolution will continue as it has always done because that is the nature of the universe. There was a lot of suffering with survival of the fittest to get us where we are today. Suffering is the necessary fuel for evolution. In hindsight, we can always see how it had to be the way it was and couldnt have been any other way. I agree with Advaita Vedanta that says that the True Self/Atman continues to evolve to infinity.

I thought I did provide a graph but in case not, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth Yes, CO2 causes heat retention in the atmosphere. It is caused by burning carbon fuels. Humans have been burning carbon fuel since fire was first discovered. It wasnt previously a problem because there wasnt enough humans to create a problem. We will eventually move away from carbon fuels but many scientists agree it is too late to avoid catastrophic changes. Regardless, how would we feed a population that grows indefinitely? I am not being a pessimist. I just see it as the process of evolution doing its thing and will lead to something that grows in beauty and complexity. People get attached to the idea of humans existing forever as a species but humans will eventually become the new Homo Erectus. There is nothing wrong with that.