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A good read for the ones interested. "Follow the obvious" - Suzanne Segal. This is an interview with, Suzanne Segal, an American psychologist, who wrote an amazing book (one of my favorites!) ~ "Collision with the Infinite". In her book, she describes how she was miserable and frightened for twelve years after losing her "sense of self". Eventually she discovered what had happened to her, some called it "enlightenment". In this interview, she describes her journey from total bewilderment to clarity and peace. An Interview with Suzanne Segal~ Shortly before her death, in this long interview, Suzanne Segal said the purpose of her life had been to suffer fear for ten years without a sense of a personal self so she could tell people that such a thing is possible. “The presence of the fear never for a minute brought back a personal reference point. It never for a minute obstructed the view of the Vastness for Itself.” The following interview comes from The Awakening West by Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins. Interviewers’ Introduction Suzanne referred to the body-mind as “circuitry” that has been created so that the Vastness can experience the ecstasy of Itself in a way it could not without it. Suzanne exuded this ecstasy with a child-like delight and wonder, full of exclamations such as, “It’s so Awesome!” The 'circuitry' called Suzanne Segal shined radiant with the love and beauty of the Vastness we all are. As she could only see others as That, and nothing else, this Vastness was often brought foreground in the awareness of those who were fortunate enough to be in her presence. We are two of those fortunate few who were able to be with Suzanne during the six months of her life that she was such a powerful expression of this Vastness. She was like a blazing comet that shone so brightly for this short period of time, then was gone. This interview was done in 1996 and Suzanne left her body on April 1, 1997, April Fools Day. It was important to her that the messages her powerful life experience was meant to convey become known. We are happy to share her message further here. Suzanne referred to herself as a “describer” rather than a teacher, and related to others as her buddies. Calling us her “buddies in the Vastness,” she emphasized that we are all in this together as “co-describers” of the incredible miracle of life and its unfolding awakening. Suzanne offered no teaching, no practice, only descriptions of her remarkable seeing of the Truth of what is. Suzanne’s life is an example of how an awakening can occur spontaneously, and without even understanding what had happened for as long as ten years. She often told us that she wanted her experience to give the Western world an important message that the mind can have an extremely strong reaction to that which it cannot understand. And that those reactions, such as fear, do not mean for an instant that we are not the Vastness. She wanted her life to convey that everything is here in this Vastness, nothing is excluded, and that everything is as it is. We will always fondly remember the blissful walks on the beach we had with Suzanne, and weekly group meetings where she shared her experience. Lynn Marie shared several paragraphs of this introduction at her memorial, which took place at Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, where her ashes were returned to the ocean she loved so much. Conversation with Suzanne Segal~ John Lumiere-Wins: Suzanne, we’d like to begin by asking how you see yourself; who are you? Suzanne: I’ll give you the straight answer here. There is only one answer that I can give you. I am the Infinite — no personal reference point — the substance of everything; I am the Vastness that is everyone and everything. And, I must add here, never for a moment does the awareness of that Infinite substance that is everything ever move out of the foreground of awareness whether there is waking, dreaming or sleeping states of consciousness occurring in the circuitry. There is no where for it to go. Where could it go? It is constant, every moment experience. JLW: That is a powerful answer… How did this experience come about for you? Suzanne: Fourteen years ago, when I was four months pregnant with my daughter, I was standing at a bus stop in Paris, France. In one moment, everything that I had ever taken to be my personal self completely disappeared. It was just gone. As I waited for the bus to approach, something in consciousness was loosening somehow. And when it got there — I am sure it had nothing to do with the bus driving up — this reference point of an “I,” a someone that everything was about and that everything that occurred in life was structured around, was gone. It was like a switch had been turned off. And it was never to turn on again. The first response that the mind had to this completely ungraspable experience was absolute terror; but that terror never changed the experience for a moment. In other words that terror never got the reference point back again. There was no personal self, but nothing stopped; the functions continued to function just as before. In fact, better than before. Speaking was still speaking and walking was still walking. I even went to graduate school and got a Ph.D. I experienced this fear for ten years. During this time, I consulted a lot of psychotherapists because it seemed like something I needed to be cured of. Every single one of these therapists considered this to be a problem. And they all had a diagnosis for it. They couldn’t quite understand how it could be that there was such great functioning occurring, but they took the fact that there was a lot of fear to be a sign that this was a problem. Towards the end of the ten years, there was a clear awareness that this was not something that was going to go away. It was time to start investigating other possible descriptions of what this was. It was time to investigate it with people who maybe knew more about it than Western psychotherapists. I started reading spiritual books and I came across a description of something that was exactly what I had been experiencing. It was an interview with Jean Klein, an Advaita teacher, and he was saying that there is no personal I, that it doesn’t exist. He was saying that there is nothing wrong with this; it is the naturally occurring human state. I also found a Zen teacher up in Northern California who told me that I was seeing with the eyes of the ancients; his assurances that the fear reaction was just a season and that spring would come were very helpful. In talking to him, it became very clear that everything is there, too. I saw that the presence of fear meant only one thing — it meant that fear was present. And that was it. Shortly after realizing this, I had the experience while driving that I was driving through myself to get to someplace that I already was, because in fact I was everywhere. I wasn’t going any place because I was already everywhere. There was a shift from no personal self, no “me,” to seeing that this experience of no personal self was actually the substance of everything. That is when the springtime began with the quality of joyfulness to it. What I can describe about what is being experienced currently, is residing in the Infinite within which the Infinite resides. There is no end point in all this. We are talking about the Vastness. It is very large. It continues to show Itself and show Itself. JLW: Initially, you thought something was wrong and now you have discovered that what you are experiencing could be called enlightenment or awakening. Is this how you see it now? Suzanne: I have tended not to call this enlightenment and to call it only the “naturally occurring human state,” because this is who everyone is. The most obvious thing to this view of the Vastness is that it is who everyone is. And so to call IT something like “enlightenment” or “awakening”… well, maybe. The Infinite does become something that is forefront in the awareness, so I guess you could call it a “waking up” to That. But it is not like you become something else once you see That. It is who you are. It is always who you have been. So, it is the seeing of what you have always been. JLW: Could you say then that awakening is a shift from not seeing who we have always been to recognizing That? Suzanne: Okay, but that recognition doesn’t change who you really are, ever. You have always been That. And yes, there is a way that the Vastness Itself can perceive Itself so directly, without any fogging or shading or taking anything else to be who you are. I guess you could call it a waking up, but what seems most important to convey is that this is who everyone is all the time, whether the direct awareness of it is there or not. JLW: Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for others who are experiencing the desire for this recognition? What can one do in order to have this experience? Suzanne: These “doing” questions are the ones that I have wanted to address the most, particularly in this Western culture which is so strongly based on doing in order to accomplish something. From the point of view of the Vastness, doing something is slightly absurd. First of all, who would be doing the doing? And secondly, That which is doing has always been doing, and will spontaneously continue to do. The only answer the Vastness has been able to come up with in terms of anything resembling an answer to this question would be to see things for what they are. JLW: Could you please elaborate what that means? Suzanne: Seeing things for what they are means purely that. The Vastness that we all are is like an ocean that exists in relation to everything — as the Infinite noticing of everything being just what it is — Itself included. It sees thoughts for thoughts and feelings for feelings and sensations for sensations. There is never a desire or request that anything be anything but what it is. The Vastness knows that everything is there just as it is, so the desire for something to go away, or be something different doesn’t occur. Let me get real specific in terms of what we were talking about. A few minutes before we started taping, we spoke about the “I” construct that passes itself off as who you are, as your reference point. From the view of the Infinite, of the Vastness, that construct is seen for what it is — a construct, an idea. And an idea can only be what it is; it can only be an idea. When an idea is seen for what it is, there is a way that it empties itself of what it appeared to be full of — some defining determinant of who you are. And when the perception is emptied and seen as what it is — just a concept, a construct, an idea — it ceases to act as any sort of compelling screening of this Infinite Presence which you actually are. This seeing things for what they are is occurring all the time. That’s another thing that doesn’t just start at some point. JLW: There is a shift in identity though, or a dropping of this “I” construct… Something happened for you. Suzanne: Something happens. It seems like most of this occurs within the mind. In the Western culture, which I am most familiar with, the mind is trained to adopt a personal construct as the reference point. It just believes that there is a personal doer. It’s made to believe that you have to “make something of yourself.” The Western mind believes that you have to be a certain way and you have to figure out how your life is going to go in order for it to be successful, in order for it to happen the way you want it to. Everything that you hear in the culture, in Western psychology in particular, is all based on the assumption that there is a personal doer that has to be the best one it could possibly be. So there is all this work that is brought to bear on it. It is like the work on the mind that is asked to happen within the mind. The mind has to go in and look at itself and try to see how it needs to be changed around, how the furniture needs to be moved around in the house of itself. JLW: And instead of trying to change the mind, your recommendation is to just notice, “Oh, it’s the mind.” Something like this? Suzanne: That is what the mind says, “Oh, it’s the mind.” The view of the eyes of the Vastness is hard to describe as it is brought to bear on anything because it isn’t perceived through the mind. And it isn’t perceived through the perceptual apparatus of the circuitry. The view of the Vastness, the eyes of the Vastness, exist within the Vastness Itself. It has its own sense organ that permeates it and exists at every point in it that is always seeing things for being what they are and seeing Itself for what it is. And yet, it does seem that what happened when I was standing at that bus stop included the mind, and its circuitry became a participating portion of that sense organ of the Vastness. It’s like the mind and circuitry joined into the sphere of the Vastness. Another way to describe this is that the way the mind and circuitry are always permeated with the sense organ of the Vastness must have come foreground and then that took over as the main perceptual stance or position, a position of placeless origin. JLW: Suzanne, does it seem to you that more human beings are awakening to this Vastness at this time in the Western world? Suzanne: Yes. Isn’t it great! It seems that a large amount of folks now are opening to this. You have to remember though that wevre talking about the San Francisco Bay Area here, which seems to have a higher concentration of folks who have this interest. The Vastness does carry a very strong, non-personal desire to know Itself. It does appear to be the real purpose of human life, for the human circuitry to participate in the sense organ of the Vastness. And that does seem to be happening. There are people who have come to talk with me who have spoken about their lives joining into that sense organ of the Vastness in a conscious way. ? Lynn Marie Lumiere Lynne Marie Lumiere: It does seem like there is more interest in this. I know that in the seventies when I first studied transpersonal psychology and meditation, enlightenment was something that wasn’t even being considered. Now, people are seeking and experiencing this. Suzanne: Yeah, it’s really wonderful. I can’t possibly convey how totally, ecstatically, joyful it is for the Vastness to move in Itself like this, when awareness of Itself is carried through the human circuitry. It is just amazing! LML: Are you saying there is a joy in it moving unobstructed, consciously? Suzanne: Well, it is always moving unobstructed. The joy is when this is expressed and received in the foreground of the Vastness. It really is amazing. And, sometimes people say to me, “I don’t want to give up the personal because I really feel attached to the personal. It really seems that that is where I feel the most feeling, and depth and falling in love, etc. How could I give that up?” The folks that are very involved in studying with Hamid Almaass are very big on deepening and developing the personal. They are the ones that have said to me most directly, “I don’t want to give up the personal. I don’t know what you are talking about. Why would I want to give it up?” What I tell them is that it was never there to begin with. And anything that feels like a personal kind of joy pales in comparison to the joy that is experienced when the eyes of the Vastness are the only thing that is being seen through all the time. These eyes exist in the Infinite, at every point in it. There is a joy that is not personal — you almost have to find another word for it because it transcends the category of personal joy — it is so constant and so extreme. It is in everything, everything; it doesn’t have to be just certain things that reveal this joy, it’s everything. JLW: It’s just the innate delight of being. LML: And outside of that awareness there is suffering. Identification with the personal always involves suffering, even with what people call happiness. Suzanne: Identification and taking something to be other than what it is — seeing it as something that is not the Vastness, or as something that is not good, or not desirable. There is one way to end suffering and that is for everything to be seen for what it is, because then we don’t ask that something be different in order for suffering to stop. JLW: So, seeing something for what it is implies seeing with the eyes of the Vastness. Suzanne: That is correct. JLW: Thus, the way to end suffering is to… Suzanne:…see with the eyes of the Vastness. JLW: People are going to read this and out of their deep yearning, they may try to apply it and wonder… Suzanne: “How am I going to do this?” JLW: Yes, how does one shift from seeing through the personal eyes to seeing through the eyes of the Vastness? Suzanne: Your question is contrary to how the Vastness actually exists, which is that it is always perceiving things for what they are from within Itself. The implication that one should figure out what to do in order to see with the eyes of the Vastness implies that that isn’t already constantly occurring, and you have to do something to connect with that. I have always hesitated to say, “do this or do that.” I say only “see with the eyes of the Vastness,” which is already happening, because this leaves the mind confounded about what to do. JLW: When the mind is confounded, it is stopped, and there is an openness. Suzanne: I am not necessarily aiming for the mind to be stopped. I guess the aim would be for the mind to recognize that it doesn’t know. The mind needs to see that there is nothing for it to do. It is not the doer and it doesn’t have to find the correct position. It’s like, That which has been happening all the time and which has always been the doer, finally shows Itself to Itself for what it is. LML: So, that showing Itself to Itself just happens? Suzanne: It just happens and it is always happening. There is this wave of constancy of the Vastness perceiving Itself that is always going on and the mind can say, “How am I going to do that? How am I going to perceive that? How am I going to perceive that wave of perception that is always perceiving itself? How am I going to connect with it? What can I do in order to see with those eyes that are seeing all the time?” LML: All of those questions are just thoughts in the mind. Suzanne: Exactly! So there, you just saw it for what it is — just thoughts. In seeing things for what they are, the Vastness is doing the very thing that the mind tries to figure out how to do. LML: The mind didn’t see that? Something beyond the mind saw that? Suzanne: Yeah! The mind didn’t see that. So, how do you try to explain this in a practice, right? If I gave a practice, it would be colluding with that same construct that passes itself off as the doer. LML: Are you saying that spiritual practices can perpetuate the construct of a doer? Suzanne: Spiritual practices imply that something has to be done in order to become the Vastness or in order to see that the Vastness has always been the doer. That is part of what I think this life of Suzanne has just been arranged to convey — that this is always who everyone is, nothing changes. This is always who the doer has been. It is seeing itself all the time, in every moment. JLW: I am having a reaction to what you are saying. For myself, and for many others, life has been so difficult at times. There is a lot of suffering in this world. So, I’m thinking, “Yeah, so the Vastness is having a great time perceiving Itself as the Vastness, but what about the tumult of suffering that is occurring in the mind and is identified as me by the mind?” I look at the world and I see that so much of the suffering is a result of the ignorance, fear and greed that this confusion perpetuates. Suzanne: The truth of this life is interested in showing everyone that things are what they are and that is the relieving of suffering. You don’t have to make something look different in the world in order for suffering to be relieved. It is that which everyone is, seeing everything for what it is, that makes it impossible for anything to be seen as suffering. It is simply and completely what it is; it is going on all the time, John. JLW: It’s as if I get it and I don’t get it… maybe it is just the mind reacting in the face of something it can’t understand. Suzanne: As you have heard me say many times, the mind has a very strong reaction to this which it can’t grasp, and which is basically structured in a mystery that is so completely confounding. JLW: Yes, the mind exists within the Vastness, so how could the mind comprehend it? This, I understand. There is that understanding. All I can do is surrender and see that here I am actually knowing nothing. Suzanne: This culture is really not hot on knowing nothing. It wants everybody to know as much as possible. The highest accomplishment in this culture is knowing, “I know this, I know that.” You get tested on all of it too! I want to comment on what you said about both knowing and not knowing simultaneously. You know that you don’t know and you know that the Vastness is experiencing Itself. These two experiences are going on simultaneously, seeing the construct of the “I,” the personal reference point, and seeing that it is empty of what it was taken to be full of. Simultaneity is very much the experience of the Vastness perceiving Itself, by the way, because that is what is always occurring. JLW: There is the arising of appearances, which actually do appear, and there is also the recognition that there is nothing really there. The emptiness I am is what they are made of. Suzanne: Exactly. That’s it! That is a description of it. You come to know that this apparent duality doesn’t exist, but there is also the simultaneity of diverse things appearing which are all made of the same substance. This does not imply duality; everything is there too. JLW: Suzanne, we’d like to address one of the main fears people have about awakening to the Vastness they are, which is that they will not be able to function well in the world. Suzanne: Oh I know. That is the main fear. That was the main fear that I had for ten years. “How am I going to get anything done when there is no one here to do it?” “If there is no one here to do, how is anything going to get accomplished?” Then it became so clear that that which had always been doing had always been taking care of everything. So, nothing really changed. [laughter] There is the appearance of, “Oh, this is the next thing to do, and the next thing to do,” and it is not like somebody has to be brought to bear to accomplish any doing or any decision. There is never anything that looks like weighing pros and cons, or figuring out the best way to go because this all comes out of that which tries to imagine or construct how things should be. The real doer is so unimaginable, so completely mysterious. Everything that has been calculated as the next thing to happen is calculated in that mystery. If it waited for the mind to figure out what the next thing to do was, then, well, I don’t think we would have what is naturally occurring as the planet and its seasons. If everything waited for the mind, do you think that we would have all these trees and sky and planets and stars and human bodies? It would really be a bummer if it waited for the mind to imagine it, in order for it to be there. So, doing and accomplishing continues as before, and as a matter of fact, is even more fully accomplished, even more fully doing. There is not ever a screen or a question of how things are going to happen; they just happen. JLW: From the perspective of no personal “I,” how do you experience relationship with others. Suzanne: Relationship with others, of course, we have to talk about that, right? Everything that arises, arises for a completely non-personal purpose. So, relationship is no longer something that we can call “personal.” I don’t ever experience myself relating to another, and what I am always relating to is the Vastness that everybody is. It is just obvious for me that everyone is that Vastness. It is relating to Itself. Now, there happen to be different flavors of relationship with different people. I just have to say that it is calculated in the mystery to be whatever is necessary to serve that non-personal desire of the Vastness to know Itself. JLW: Is it true that relationships are always serving that non-personal desire of the Vastness to know Itself? Suzanne: Yes. Just as it is true that there has never been a personal doer, that has always been true. JLW: Well, this issue of a personal doer leads into the next question… Do spiritual practices assist in recognizing this natural state of every human being? Suzanne: I haven’t found one yet! There are people who have been pretty upset about my saying that I don’t see any techniques or practices to do. They believe that I am saying it is equal if somebody goes out and murders fifty people or they sit and meditate. I am not saying that at all. I know That which every one is, and the Vastness is completely trustworthy in what it does. I don’t know how this happened to me; I was standing at a bus stop. Yes, I did eight years of transcendental meditation, from the time I was seventeen. But I also did this practice when I was a child of sitting and saying my name until I saw that that name didn’t refer to anyone and the personal self disappeared. I would do that when I was five, six, seven years old. I don’t know if these practices did something or not. I don’t know if there is a technique to bring this about. The implication is that a technique is needed to bring about something that wouldn’t be brought about unless you did that technique. That is just not how I see things. I see this as always occurring, that no one changes when what is, is seen to be what it is. I also think that meditation is fine, but who is it that would stop the mind? And, stopping the mind is something that is not required, because the Vastness doesn’t use the mind to perceive itself. Also, the “I” that would be brought to bear to try to make the mind stop doesn’t really exist. If it is obvious to meditate, then that is what you are going to be doing. If it is obvious to not do that, then it is obvious to not do that. Again, I see how trustworthy the Vastness is, and it shows Itself in this obviousness all the time. You don’t need any reasons for living by what is obvious. This is just what you do. You meditate, you don’t meditate. If you are doing your personal growth work, you are doing that. Of course, seeing it for what it is would be kind of nice. LML: It seems that the non-personal desire for the Vastness to know Itself would just make it obvious to each person to do certain things that somehow are part of the unfolding — and it could be anything. Suzanne: That’s right. It can be anything, and it can be different for different people. LML: In the West, many people do psychotherapy when they are suffering. I am interested in your work as a therapist from this awakened perspective. Suzanne: I've actually started a couple of groups for psychotherapists to try to convey the view of the Vastness, and that freedom is what every person who comes in to see me is after. Psychotherapy has traditionally formed very rigid views about how people are supposed to be if they are healthy. People have been pathologized because certain things happen to arise, and the smallness of the acceptable range is so unhelpful that many people end up feeling worse about themselves after engaging in therapy than they did before they started. Therapy in the traditional sense is structured around an idea of an “I” that has to be presented in the best possible way. So, I do a lot of investigating with people about who they take themselves to be; how they got those ideas about themselves; which ideas end up passing themselves off the most compellingly for the Truth; recognizing fear for what it is; and really pulling the plug on this whole campaign to have people live by ideas and ending up with the belief that those ideas are who they are. What’s naturally occurring is helping people to see these ideas that have made up their identity for what they are — ideas. JLW: Are there any other questions you are frequently asked that should be included here? Suzanne: Well, there is one thing that I think people hesitate to ask. They want to ask, but they don’t. It was contained, perhaps in your question about relationships. There are many ideas about what relationships look like or are supposed to look like once the Vastness is constantly being seen for what it is in everything. Nothing goes according to any ideas about how anything is supposed to look. There are many spiritual systems and traditions that say you should only live like this, you should only eat these things, you should dress like this, you should be celibate, you should this and this and this. They’re saying that if you are seeing with the eyes of the Vastness this is what your life will look like. One of the most important things that I think my life has been put here to convey to the West is that it doesn’t look a certain way, that everything is there, too. Most of the spiritual traditions say, “If there is fear there, then she doesn’t have it or this is not the Vastness because fear is there.” The presence of the fear never for a minute brought back a personal reference point. It never for a minute obstructed the view of the Vastness for Itself. LML: What a statement that is making! Suzanne: That seems to be what this life is meant to convey. That everything is there too, and it is what it is. This means that looking for life to be a certain way comes completely out of the mind and its ideas of how things are supposed to be. That ten years of fear that I went through actually was the most important time for what this life is trying to convey to people in the West. LML: Because the fear didn’t change the recognition that there was no personal reference point. Suzanne: That’s right. From that bus stop time onward it was clear that there had never been a personal reference point — absolutely no personal reference point at any moment. LML: Could you say that you were believing the fear, and not seeing it for what it was? Suzanne: Yeah, okay, and that was the training in seeing the sphere of the mind and how things are taken for something else within the mind. It still didn’t create a reference point. When I say, everything is there, too, I mean everything is there, too. Mind is there doing its interpretations, doing its fear about what something means, and trying to understand what it all is. LML: So, you are saying that all of that was there, but still there was no “me,” no reference point. Suzanne: No reference point. And there were so many years of that. Who knows what would have happened if there had been more years without somebody saying, “Yes, I know what this experience is.” A big part of that change of season came from mind realizing that it couldn’t grasp what was occurring, it was too mysterious. LML: The mind just went to the end of its road where there was nowhere else for it to go. Suzanne: Yes. And the mind couldn’t actually gather any evidence for the fear being justified. Functioning was going on just fine, everything was happening, it was all unfolding, one thing would happen then the next thing would happen, then the next thing. The mind wasn’t required to make decisions about how things were going to be. LML: So, the mind wasn’t needed for what it previously thought it was necessary for. It was seen to not be the central doer. Suzanne: Yes. I think that is the most important thing that this life is conveying. There has never been a personal doer. The seeing that there is no personal doer is not when it starts that there is no personal doer. This gets into something that I actually want to convey. This is the kind of thing you want to mention, that seeing everything is being done by a non-personal doer is not the same as nothing being done. The obvious will still always be showing itself. It is really ultimately unavoidable to live by the obvious because it is always showing itself. JLW: I think we are complete; this has been wonderful. Suzanne: It was nice. JLW: It was fun being with you. Suzanne: That’s another one of those things that this life is to convey — this is fun! It’s not all serious and it doesn’t have to be a certain way. That is just not so. I’ll say it again and again; everything is there too. It always has been. You cannot say that because something is arising it means that the Vastness isn’t vast, or it means that it is not made of the Vastness. Copyright 2003 John Lumiere-Wins and Lynn Marie Lumiere Photo of Suzanne Segal by Sherry Burkart.

Hey Leo! Very interesting awakening experiences. I have something relevant to share with you about your void sucking you in experience. I was in a depressed, suicidal state in early 2019. It felt like I was going to die. That's when I got the bright idea of doing self-enquiry. As I did self-enquiry, I started to have instant awakening experiences, ego-death experiences. This was a 2-3 month period of my life when I was watching your enlightenment videos. I had a lot of experiences where I was called to completely surrender to immediate experiences of suffering and clinging to my body. There was a distinct set of experiences where I felt a void in my chest, that was sucking my soul in. I knew that jumping into that void could mean my death. I jumped anyway. Turns out, instead of dying I awakened some more! There was a deeper layer of jumping into the void. I did it again. Same thing. A good metaphor would be the movie Inception where they wake up from the layers of dreams, dying in their dream and waking up to a new layer. Then, after 3-4 layers of this, as I was preparing to make the next jump, suddenly I get called to stop doing that. The reason I get, is that self-enquiry ceased to be the most effective tool for my awakening! The intuitive message was 'You are connected to the universe. Universally speaking, following your intuition would be the surefire quickest most efficient way for you to awaken, even more than self-enquiry! You could be using self-enquiry to cope with the dysfunction of your life. The way for you to awaken further is to live your life.' That's when I decided to commit to life. If I were your guru, maybe I'd tell you to take your jump into the void (Now I'm not your guru so don't hold this against me!). Maybe you were called to surrender your body to Infinite Love. Now there's a big assumption our mind likes to make, is that if we surrender our body we will die. The reality is, you don't know this until you make the jump. Maybe you'll die, maybe you won't. But if this is what you're Universally called to do and you don't do it, my experience says that the void will continue to haunt you. You'll get another opportunity to jump. If you don't, you'll get another opportunity. This will keep happening until you do it! Curious to hear your perspective on this! Edit : I am NOT telling you to kill yourself. I am going by what you said in the video, that you felt called to surrender completely to Infinite Love.

The new world order (in my humble opinion) is the forced exorcism of evil and executed by the tough love of God. God, as people intuitively feel is more than just our self, but our environment and the very field of existence. The devil, however, is what is being understood and coming to the light. The devil, and for that matter language or conceptual communication has never and does not exist beyond the human skull from our knowledge, but yet the devil just like God is immanent. Most simply, the devil is metaphysical blindness and numbness of before your birth and after your death, and the animation (dimming) of God's light. God is what exists that you know empirically and spend no time debating and the devil is the esoteric mystery beyond every concept. We can empirically say that nothing evil has ever occurred outside of a human brain because we do not attribute ability to control intention to rocks or any animals the way we personally know we are able to do. Deep down we all mysteriously and unknowingly judge ourselves when we do wrong and know better. Yet the fact that we know that we perceive the feeling of guilt and just like any other thought or feeling, is somehow not out own. This mysterious guilt within us all, the fundamental point of all religion, and the direction of the 'hand of God' as described in a somewhat abstruse term as the holy spirit. The holy spirit is simply the hive network of the collective consciousness of all humans. We all know we did not create language, the data algorithms we use, yet we can use them to build civilization. This is simply the power of standing on the shoulders of the real god, humans. Human supremacy is a goal of the new world order, but as creatures of our environment, we realize we are vortexes absorbing our environment and our mental and emotional non-physical body which every feels and cannot deny forms the toroidal ring of our consciousness. Our experience is compromised of our 360-degree metaphysical bubble however our memory is simply a highlight of the pleasureful and most traumatic events. In the 4th dimension timeline, we resonate with these extreme memories which inflate the pain body or ego to unrealistic levels. It is not possible that we are transitioning into the 5th dimension as some people claim, but rather that the 5th-dimensional field has always been the reality we have experienced. Even in tribes, humans used intelligent methods and planning to communicate the simple intuition to collaborating as a uniform entity to, as a team, resonate more of the abundance of the universe by collaborating instead of competing. We acknowledge that 3 dimensions of space and a linear dimension of time compose a raw data form of a human life in a movie with audio and video, however, we all experience an additional level of free will to move such as a video game character and an emotional and mental connection which we do not understand compromising our awareness. My theory is that the thing humans have always failed to realize but awakened people are realizing is that we are the static judge who simply knows or is not confident about our knowledge (not knowing) and not, in fact, our brain which we attribute as all of our cognition. While it does physically contain your entire perception of self, our physical brain is simply the receiver of other humans' opinions which we have adopted as our own opinion and is solidified in our mind view. This voice in your brain, as we all know Is not our self, however, since we are the ones perceiving it. We then come to the conclusion that your brains thought is literally the voice of the holy spirit, the incarnation of collective humanity crystalizing in the form of your opinion on reality. The devil is quite plainly the feeling that what is the I is the darkness within this bag of skin and behind these eyes. The feeling that you started and you will be terminated. And simply, living as we do, thinking we are in the 4th dimension. When we realize the 4th dimension is linear time, we cannot possibly understand what the 5th dimension is. My theory is the 5th dimension is the hive network of beings that connects all life and fundamentally all things from source, but instead of living through linear time, living through the collective organism is what we are doing that is so tough to swallow. We are not slaves to God or Allah but the 3-pound brain who came up with these arbitrary words that point to something mysterious. However, the dark conclusion that everyone is coming to is the collapse of all duality, and this is absolutely terrifying for the Devil in us. The devil is essentially the same as God in the sense that he does the dirty work of god and carries out the tough love of God through natural selection. All humans carrying out evil knowingly is God turning a blind eye and letting the devil's worst illusion of being trapped in a bag of skin destined to be born and die. When we think reasonably in a static mind, we find that we are not trying to conceive of dimensions of space and time, but simply experience the immanent experience of here and now but with a mysterious mental narrative and the metaphysical enigma of numbness enclosing around your (complete in its own right) slice of the experience of the absolute. But it is simply because god (the I of humans) does not want to continue living selfishly and in suffering and so the devil will blindly drive himself into extinction when the light of God comes to our personal eye. What Jesus said that was distinct from all other prophets was the useful tool of the trinity, the tool to collapse duality into a unity (spectrum of duality). The trinity is the son (the devil self,) the father (absolute infinity,) and the holy ghost (the ascending order of humanity's consciousness.) The trinity is simply explaining the father as the absolute static cloud of creation from which all concepts are being channelled but have eternally existed in essence and the relative concepts of past and future make sense to us because we keep thinking we live in 'linear' time. We come to realize however, there are no difference between memory and imagination because we know even our memory is a skewed view of the 360-degree experience and realize all notions outside of here and now are channelling of very real things despite being imaginary. This is the power of God, free will to explore any depths of imaginations, horrors, self-inflicted neurosis, because the tough love of God is simply that he lets the devil (the selfish sufferers) freely steer himself down the path of darkness and allows those who embody humanity to drown in the holy light of realizing you exist through humans moreso than yourself. The worst atrocities in the world done by humans was because of the darkness of the devil, the realization that your vessel will die and the organism that gave you knowledge lives on beyond your life. The devil wants to make any impact he can, good or bad to dim the light of God, but the light of God in us all speaks clearly: love each other and treat humans as the highest of god creation, treat the bodies of god well for it is the holy spirit of the higher self embodying all things.

Okay Nahm, I will take your word that the way I presented my topic may be considered trolling. If that’s the way it came across than I apologize. That was not my intent. Looking back at my thoughts and feelings while watching Leo’s video I was a little disappointed with the content. It seems he is dancing around the same topics from different angles, but also from the same physical perspective using different words. I guess that is the shadow I have to accept for having expectations! My expectations were hoping Leo would really get into the textures, sensations and intricacies of conscious reality at the microscopic levels. Also looking back on my thoughts and feelings, I was triggered by some of Leo’s use of words that he had reached these great depths of awareness and consciousness about God and Love that maybe no one else has! When I hear such expressions of knowingness I get annoyed and triggered because I have listened and studied way to many gurus over the years, and it has been my experience that most of them “Don’t Know, that they Don’t Know”, when they make such similar, direct or indirect statements. Hence, the topic I wrote. I take ownership that I allowed some of my feelings and emotions to get into the message I was trying to convey. Having said that, from my POV, Leo “may” not have reached the levels of consciousness and awareness that is profoundly Earth shattering and beyond anything already spoken or awakened on Earth. I am only saying that from a place of Love. IMHO, he needs to perceive reality from different POVs that may help him to awaken to other probable realities, consciousness, awareness, and Love. Agian, IMHO. I could be completely wrong, but that is my POV, and I am only saying this from all the different experiences, perspectives I have had, done, read and observed. I am in no way better, or more advanced than anyone else here. I humbly see things differently than many of the POVs expressed here, and only offer and share my POVs to help others explore and broaden the mind. Resonate, or not resonate, it’s all part of the human conscious mind experience! DLH

I don't understand this part.... does this mean that all those awakened monks and yogis we see are just imagination? Does this mean that the only entity that has to awaken is myself? But isn't Consciousness divided into infinite probes who have to awaken on their own? As you said in the "meaning of life" video.

There is also the Gaia hypothesis: That's a bit different than what I have in mind. I'm thinking of the whole planet earth as a collective conscious being. I will call it the Awakening of Gaia! The Great Awakening. Then it can be made consistent with the Gaia hypothesis which then describes the unawakened earth, while the awakened Gaia is where we humans become one with the whole earth as a living planetary organism. Gaia is also the "victorious one" in the Bible: Jesus Christ will also give the victorious one the morning star, which means some kind of planetary relationship between Earth and Venus.

Something to contemplate Why couldn't I accept enlightenment? I had the opportunity to embody the truth itself, being completely untangled and remaining in nonduality. Why did I imagine my life again? The truth was too great to accept in one go. I wasn't prepared. I felt so powerful that I became fearful. I couldn't let it sink in. What happened? I died. All of a sudden time was dead still, and there was no self reference whatsoever. Ego death didn't happen, it already was. There wasn't a problem of letting go or surrendering, no.. it was already so. But as I came to that self realisation, feeling like I'm being born for the very first time, eternity dawned and I panicked. I got scared. All that power, all that freedom, all that wholeness without a strand of lack, scared the little sense that was left in me. And so, out of desperation as if grasping for air, I started imagining. I remembered life and who i am. By the time everything was back to normal after I had woken up from that enlightening dream, I felt a fading pressure at the middle of my eyebrows. Something was happening in my deep sleep. And I suspect that if I had simply accepted the truth I would have woken up fully awakened. How will I be ready? I don't know how one can prepare to, not only die, but live forever as God. I guess the trick is.. to realize that I'm already doing it. And so I'll just have to see it now, realize how already alone I am and how this has all been self love. There's nothing to fear but yourself.

it is a zero sum game but from the limited and identified human pov it does not seem so. try expanding ur perspective. it is definitely a zero sum game from the ultimate perspective. every thing is changing all the time yet its all still the same b cuz its one. form is ever changing yet formlessness is always the same and it cant be otherwise. if u think life is not a zero sum game then u havent truly awakened to oneness and ur still operating from ego

Except there are many different levels of consciousness. There is an extraordinary range. Has nothing to do with specialness. There are some markers, although they can only be really understood once one has awakened pretty deeply. Even that is tricky because people understand love in different ways. But I generally agree that Love is a very distinctive level of awakening which many lack. It's also possible they don't talk about it so that you can discover it on your own because love can be a very misleading notion for the ego-mind. Talking about love makes people think love is a personal feeling or something like that.

@Leo Gura Very true, although I feel there's obvious markers. The easiest one is those teachers who clearly haven't awakened to love. Even then it is a guess. But, I think you'll agree in regards to Love, many teachers either don't talk about it/ neglect it, usually as they haven't awakened to it themselves.

@apparentlynoself Personally, I feel you don't lose your spiritual progress if you become truly awake, but ultimately is there a way to know? If there is I'd love to check out some resources on this! I know people who have claimed to contact/ channel awakened beings like Ramana, Nisgardatta etc, but could of course be BS so who knows!

@traveler Not at all, some people are genuinely awakened more deeply, and know their being more clearly. Watch a Tony Parsons video, and then go and watch a Francis Lucille/ Ramana Maharishi video you’ll notice subtle differences. @Jahmaine I think Leo has certainly had many many awakenings on his trips and what not, but I’m not at all convinced he abides there in his sober/ natural state, could be wrong. im not sure “why”, I would include Dalai Lama, hut again like Sadhguru, he has to dumb most the teachings down as he’s such a mainstream figure. I also imagine being a monk for that long can create several shadow issues, such as sex. In regards to Eckhart I love him, I used to watch him everyday a couple of years ago and read all his books time after time, power of now was like my bible ? However, I do not feel hes as deeply awakened as say Francis and Rupert from what he says and what not. Those 2 go way deeper than Eckhart and kind of go beyond his message. Although I think he’s the perfect bridge into this work for the mainstream.

I'm glad he's closing down conspiracy threads because they are everywhere, and more contagious than COVID 19. I went down the conspiracy rabbit hole at one point a few years ago, until I realised that there are about as much critical thinking and actual evidence based claims as evangelical Christianity or Scientology. I have watched dear green friends become Trump supporters as COVID 19 has disrupted society, usually because they are anti-vaxxers and he's doing things like freezing funding to WHO. They are posting rubbish youtube conspiracy video's all over facebook and other platforms and all critical thinking or looking at alternative evidence has disappeared. In discussion with other green/yellow friends, we see it as a dark cult that has taken the minds of so many into an endless rabbit hole where helplessness and hopelessness pervade. It is certainly NOT a healthy place to be, or an awakened place to be, as so many of them claim. So thank you Leo for helping this become a place where this nonsense is not tolerated.

@Leo Gura You generally (and zen masters too) talk about awakening as the liberation from the illusion of the "videogame character". In this discussion you say that you are still trapped in a body, and that's absolutely true, but.... Doesn't an enlightened person perceive its ego and body as just a videogame character that they are playing? I'm not saying that an awakened being has no bodily desires. I'm sure zen masters have desires. What I'm saying is.... does the zen master recognize that he is just a videogame character and that he is actually the videogame creator? This should create some sort of separation from the egoic desires and his own awareness. Of course he feels the needs, but... aren't those needs perceived as a videogame roleplaying? So what's the point of awakening then?

@electroBeam You do you man. Awakening and embodiment is the end of so called “suffering” at least in my experience. Of course painful sensations and what not exist, however, with complete acceptance and appreciation of each and every moment these are no longer seen as a problem whatsoever. “I” am already completely happy and at peace. In regards to Sex Scandals, this is due to not being fully awakened/ no awakening to love/ The Self being all, you don’t see the likes of Ramana, Rupert, Francis etc participating in sex scandals. Awakening has depths, it isn’t black and white. If you wish to pursue the life you are after go for it, but in my view spirituality has transmuted to the west for a reason. It’s time to embody the teachings in daily life and in all areas of life, and actually begin to create a “world” based on this understanding, and not based on fear, lack and greed. Of course absolutely speaking it doesn’t matter either way. But, relatively speaking living life based on this will have huge implications, and gradually we will see these structures and societies fall and be replaced. Society changes one individual at a time. As more people “wake up” they aren’t going to accept what we have going on right now (relatively speaking) I also understand why monks and yogis practice celibacy in the seeking stage, however, after true awakening it isn’t really necessary, unless it happens naturally, same as with what you are talking about. I wish you luck on your journey

Some say that they have been around on the planet since the beginning. But it's not like UFO or that they abduct people. Many shamans from Siberia (and possibly many others from around the globe) think that human life emerged from aliens. They say that aliens can communicate only with those evolved enough, like shamans or awakened beings. But it could be just another BS. Who knows.. It might be true, too.

@Leo Gura It's not about being not being humble enough or something. It's not about not being confident either. It's more like saying joking about myself to humiliate myself, not to show myself as a smart person, just to fit in, as I described in a post. I am 100% honest here - my problem is not being too cocky, I already got that covered. @Natasha @LastThursday What you are saying here is really interesting. I developed a huge spiritual ego and I right now I'm at the stage of my life, where my priorities and values turned upside down. I went through dark night of the soul process and I am basically an awakened being. That left me somehow empty, I could just sit all day, playing video games or become a monk in the mountains, but that is boring as fuck. I want to conquer the world now.

A glimpse of ego death Awakening Last night I awakened to a grand truth and that is.. I am consciousness. To know how I got there you can check out my journal, I want to keep this post short. This is so profound and just amazing to realize. And this is very true for me, I had gone from being aware of the fabric of reality to being the fabric of reality. Now, not only do I know that consciousness is the substance of reality, I know that that very fabric is me.. this field is my body. Everything happening within me, I am the canvas in which stories and expressions are told. Consciousness is my true body, not the physical! The Transition This awakening got so deep that at some point I was dead. Literally, I was gone. I can only describe the experience as being peaceful and powerful. But I tapped out. Oh My Soul ?‍♂️ The reason I say that it's a glimpse is because I couldn't let it settle, I couldn't let the transition of my state of consciousness reach equilibrium, I couldn't accept the truth. What you realise when you die is that you were never alive to begin with, life is a story. What you realise is that you've always been dead,.. ETERNITY Dawns! SELFLESSNESS Dawns! GOD Dawns. And it was too much. I couldn't accept it. It was too grand to let it settle in one fell swoop. I can't describe the transition as a sense of fading away, no. It started with me being gone, I had disappeared, I was already dead. It's the realising of the Truth that gets you. I was observing what was going on and when it started to make sense I tapped out. Didn't let it sink in. It was a glimpse of ego death. Know I know what ego is, and I don't mean conceptually, I mean I'm aware of what ego is. It's the self. Guys, there is no self in truth! I promise you there isn't a self, self is completely imagined. There is no self at all, no false self, no lower self or higher self, no true self, there's no self! There only thing there is unity, it's wholeness. And you feel it, I swear to God you feel that wholeness to the core. Typing this right now, I feel scarred.. that realisation left a mark on my ego. Sitting here, I know that it's a lie, I know that I'm a fat lie. I don't exist. And to top it off, you realise that nothing exists, existence is not real. Why because truth is nondual and therefore nothing must exist and can exist. Existence is imaginary, it's imagination. It's A Glimpse This realisation was just a taste of ego death, a taste of nonduality, a taste of freedom. And I'm utterly grateful for this experience because I now know what to expect from this work. I can now integrate and start forgetting myself. P.S. I'm not going to lie and say it was a beautiful experience, realising that you're God is not a beautiful experience. It's peaceful and meaningless and immensely powerful, that's it. Feel free to comment and leave any advice as to how I can go forward with this. For now, I'm just going to take time off and just appreciate this illusion. Peace ?

So I already had awakened that I'am everything, but yesterday this insight was so deep that I could actually "see" myself in everything. And that shit shook me so much. But that's Truth. The hardest thing is to accept it, but it's quite difficult since I have been living in this illusion quite a while now. It's hard to go back "home". The biggest thing led to realizing this was imagining some item in just outer space. Then I realized that the object and the place it is in is One. There is no separation. And to awaken to it and see it for the first time with you own eyes. Not just to get the insight of Oneness is absolutely radical. I guess this goes way way deeper.

Last night I had a glimpse of ego death or the transition of it. It left me speechless for a good 15 - 20 minutes. The transition was amazing but more terrifying than so. Being Mindful It was in the early evening when I decided I was going to spend the rest of the night meditating. As the night settled in it was already raining and I was on my bed, sitting cross legged and just being in the present. The rain got heavier, and I struggled to hear my breathing. Then, instead of focusing on my breath, I decided to close my eyes and focus on the sound of the rain. This gradually led me to focus my attention on the entire auditory field, and before I even knew it I was completely absorbed by the present moment. Grounded in the present, I was observing everything there was to observe of sound. I was completely immersed in June listening and listening alone. This was me for the next hours and hours. During this session I really became aware of the impermanence of reality, listening to every change, every end and every beginning of rhythm, melodies and what I imagined to be the voices of nature. And there more I deepened my awareness the broader my attentiveness became, I could hear things that I knew were coming from afar. Completely in the present, absorbed by the auditory field, with my attention feeling on max, I could feel my body expanding. All of a sudden I wasn't hearing the sounds anymore, I was making them. They were no longer happening out there anymore, I was observing them within me. My body was no longer localized, instead of listening to this field I became the field. My body became the consciousness in which everything appears/transpires. I didn't think this, I just know it, and I was in awe. But just when I thought things were starting to get weird, I wasn't thinking anymore, thoughts were happenings in me. The sound of my thoughts couldn't be differentiated from the sounds of the auditory field which was now my body. With my body being consciousness, I became hyper aware of reality, I began to notice the smog of illusion that filled existence, I became aware of infinity. There was no such thing as finite, finite was imaginary. There was no ending of things because there was no beginning of anything. Everything was unified, there was just existence and no existing thing other than that being imagined. All this just dawned on me during the session. But the more I realised stuff the more thoughts began to arise and fall, rise and fall, everything that occurred.. happenings, resembled a wave. And thoughts just kept on coming and I just observed, and before I even knew it - I could see. The Glimpse There was sight, a whole entire different view even, it was still the sight of my room. The scene had changed suddenly and things were gone, the rain was gone, sounds were gone, thoughts were gone, and sudden as the struck of thunder.. I was gone. The view was there, as it would normally be, with the sight of a body perspective. But I was not the body, I mean I was but not localized, the body was just a part of me. I was everything, I was all of it. Turning and looking around, I wasn't turning and looking around.. all of that was a happening inside of me. I was the canvas, the field, I was the nothingness of it - and I was dead. The moving picture was me, it was all just a unit, a unified happening. There was no self-orientated thought, no self-referent thought, no I. And it was amazing, it was peaceful because it all meant nothing.. it was meaningless. But as amazing as that was, it terrified me, the meaninglessness of it struck terror in the little peace of what was left of me in the scene. I started kicking in, I realized that I wasn't breathing, I realized the dead silence of existence and I panicked. I thought, I thought as much as I could, started imagining a me, a self in the scene. I imagined as hard as I could, making mental noise as much as possible, until I finally appeared. But it was still clear that my appearance was phantom. It didn't matter, I hung on desperately to that illusion and believed it was me.. I did that until it became real. I woke up. I opened my eyes and the first thing I noticed was me. I had fallen asleep, it was just a dream. My world was back, the sounds, the sight, the sensations and thoughts, they were all back. But that dream... What kind of a dream was it? It seemed like a casual dream but also felt like that one if a deep sleep, like it was dreamless. I looked at the time and it wasn't even 11pm yet, it was still around 22h00 and I had only slept for what I suspect to be a minute or two. I had had a dream that felt like it lasted for eternity only to wake up and find out I had drifted off from my meditation for a good minute or so. That dream... Although it was just a dream it felt like the truth. I had felt one with everything, like everything was my body. I couldn't even see a thing there, it was all just one thing, a unity.. it was whole and it was me. Like I said, it was amazing and beautiful, but too much to accept on one fell swoop. It was a glimpse. A transition that didn't reach it's end. Just thinking about what could have happened if I had just accepted the truth on one big go.. leaves me speechless. What if I had died in that dream? What if I had never woken up again? But what if I had woken up and I had woken up awakened? It was just too great to accept at one go, alright! That's all it was. You get terrified because there's nothing you can attach yourself to, and because of that.. it dawn's that your entire life was nothing but a story, a figment of your imagination. And just like that, it dawn's to you that you were never alive, ETERNITY Dawns. That's some heavy shit to accept on one go, you'll resist, and that's what happened.. I resisted. But I'm grateful for this experience because now, for the first time ever, I have an idea of what to expect from this work.

Reality is beginning to feel more and more like a dream. The impermanent and illusory nature of reality is becoming a lot more clear now. Any possible integrations I could be making with this? I've been practicing mindfulness meditation and been grounding myself in the present moment for quite some time now. And in these past months I've been noticing significant changes in my consciousness. It's been amazing, I've really come a long way. I'm more aware of myself and everything and everyone around me. It feels like most of my life I've been sleep walking... and it's only now that I'm becoming aware of what's been actually going on. Reality is so dreamlike and it's starting to feel ridiculous. When I wake up from sleep it feels like I'm waking into another dream, because during sleep I'm almost always aware that I'm dreaming because of how impermanent things are in there but now this experience is beginning to expand on to the real world.. or what I imagined to be the real world. Rather than living my life I've been doing that less and observing it more. It's weird because I can't help but sort of feel outraged by this. I feel outraged or cheated in a sense that if I was watching a dramatic performance but I'm not buying into the story because the acting isn't convincing then I can't help but feel robbed. But that's the feeling that I don't get because I wasn't expecting to feel like this knowing I'd become more conscious. I was expecting to feel something more.. I don't know, more uplifting. Like the kind of feeling you get when you watch a magic trick and then later on you realise by yourself how the magician tricked you. I thought I'd be feeling a more 'I'm winning' sort of feeling. Why is this happening? Why do I feel that feeling you would get when you feel like complaining? It's not like I didn't know that this is what I was to achieve. This is very strange ? Instead of feeling enlightened/awakened I feel something else which feels rather unsettling, it's as if I'm being constantly lied to and not only am I not buying it I'm also getting sick of it. This is very strange. Why is this happening? Should I be integrating somethings that I'm not and it's leading me to feel this way? Or should I be noticing something spiritual that I'm not noticing? Nowadays I don't even feel like sleeping. I just want to sit down and look, observe the unfolding of things, watch just how what I'd known to be true was nothing but an illusion. I'm even seeing just how the mind keeps trying to get me to fall asleep again but I keep catching this and redirecting my focus and beholding reality's greatest secret.. it's all imaginary. Any thoughts?

Yes, those symptoms are caused by the increased flow of energy and effects of increased electromagnetism in nerve clusters. Sometimes there are involuntary movements, spasms, kriyas (spontaneous yogic poses) as well as whatever effects an increased flow of energy may generate, such as heat and vibration. If you don't want to experience a Kundalini Awakening, you should probably stop meditating. If you continue, your Kundalini will eventually awaken and there will be serious side-effects, that much I can pretty much guarantee. However, if you can find an awakened Guru or Master to teach you, those effects can be lessened signficantly.

A Surreal Reality Reality is beginning to feel more and more like a dream. The impermanent and illusory nature of reality is becoming a lot more clear now. I've been practicing mindfulness meditation and been grounding myself in the present moment for quite some time now. And in these past months I've been noticing significant changes in my consciousness. It's been amazing, I've really come a long way. I'm more aware of myself and everything and everyone around me. It feels like most of my life I've been sleep walking... and it's only now that I'm becoming aware of what's been actually going on. Reality is so dreamlike and it's starting to feel ridiculous. When I wake up from sleep it feels like I'm waking into another dream, because during sleep I'm almost always aware that I'm dreaming because of how impermanent things are in there but now this experience is beginning to expand on to the real world.. or what I imagined to be the real world. Rather than living my life I've been doing that less and observing it more. It's weird because I can't help but sort of feel outraged by this. I feel outraged or cheated in a sense that if I was watching a dramatic performance but I'm not buying into the story because the acting isn't convincing then I can't help but feel robbed. But that's the feeling that I don't get because I wasn't expecting to feel like this knowing I'd become more conscious. I was expecting to feel something more.. I don't know, more uplifting. Like the kind of feeling you get when you watch a magic trick and then later on you realise by yourself how the magician tricked you. I thought I'd be feeling a more 'I'm winning' sort of feeling. Why is this happening? It's not like I didn't know that this is what I was to achieve. This is very strange ? Instead of feeling enlightened/awakened I feel something else which feels rather unsettling, it's as if I'm being constantly lied to and not only am I not buying it I'm also getting sick of it. This is very strange. Why is this happening? Should I be integrating somethings that I'm not and it's leading me to feel this way? Or should I be noticing something spiritual that I'm not noticing? Nowadays I don't even feel like sleeping. I just want to sit down and look, observe the unfolding of things, watch just how what I'd known to be true was nothing but an illusion. I'm even seeing just how the mind keeps trying to get me to fall asleep again but I keep catching this and redirecting my focus and beholding reality's greatest secret.. it's all imaginary.

Maybe you just activated or awakened a part of yourself that was a little asleep previously, and this unlocked some energy within you. I can't imagine you won't settle down automatically, maybe at a slightly higher baseline? idk

Total awakening would be what they call "enlightenment", I assume. But to answer one of your questions.. yes, there degrees in which you awaken, same as there are degrees in which you can become conscious. Total should mean that it's a complete realisation, and that you've grasped all there is to grasp about that truth. When you're pure consciousness, as in aware without any adjuncts in your awareness, then that's it.. you're already infinite consciousness aware of infinity itself - or should I say yourself. At least that's how I understand it. Awakening is waking up to a truth about reality, such as reality is imaginary or reality's substance is consciousness. There more conscious you become there more awakened you become. Total awakening can either mean a complete realisation of what is.. or can mean enlightenment.