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Matt think about who is trying to become awakened... The character otherwise known as the false self cannot awaken. It doesn't have the ability to awaken because this character is a fictional entity created by the ego construct. Yes there is a real human body/mind but there is NOT a character named Matt which you are trying to awaken. Do you see the problem? You are trying to awaken an illusory sense of self. The person you described as inadequate and plagued by addictions and emotions is an illusion. Your true self is what does not change its what is always here it's the pure conscious awareness that you need to notice and realize as your true self. Here is a video called the illusion of "I" and I would also like you to watch the movie: Samadhi (Maya the illusion of self) on YouTube okay...... trust me on this one...❤ Good luck Oneness!! Become aware ? ❤

@VeganAwake funny how much attention we give to something that does not exist. I'd never even know there's such a thing as an ego if someone did not tell me in one of those spiritual videos. Perhaps awakened folks should spend less time on youtube and do more actual exploration.

@NormanN Because it has transformed my existential experience, like @Angelite says even being in the presence of Anada for 45 mins helped so much as she is an awakened being. You also get to ask questions related yo YOUR process, not some random guy at a retreats process, that's the biggest difference for me, your sticking points will be so different to mine etc, the presence helps but it's not the full picture ofc. And they don't control you're awakening you do, you finish when YOU say you do, you will know in your own direct experience when the seeking is over, and whether you have awakened and are living in non duality. Are they perfect? Of course not. Like you said they merely support the awakening. All I can say is try RASA for yourself I was skeptical and held off for 4 months or so before pulling the plug, and boy am I glad I did, life is very different now than it was in February.

Ok i'll give you a normal answer. To sit face to face with a sage for a moment, is better than other practices (done for a very long time). They can do anything, speaking, just sitting, teaching, or simply you visiting them for a short while. It doesn't really matter. The chance is, if you've come across a sage, it will likely be that you'll get slightly awakened. Just being in the same space will do.

Yes 100%, the whole teacher and the flower model really doesn't work that well imo, most teachers awakened spontaneously or through working closely with a teacher- Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille etc etc. I personally work with a teacher 1-1 ad have done since February and it has spearheaded my growth to depths I never believed possible, and without it honestly I think it still be stuck as a hardcore seeker. Think of it like this in Sporting terms, lts say for Football (Soccer wrong word but hey) if you have a coach try and teach the whole team each individual is going to get much less out of it, they'll of course get some value, however if the coach works 1-1 with specific players they can work on their individual weak spots and strengths. It's no different spiritually, even with Leo I feel for him he has 1000s of seekers here each with their own questions and problems, one man can only do so much, if he was to work 1-1 regularly with say 10 students at a time, he'd actually have much greater chance of these people awakening, the same with Rupert, Francis etc. Ramaji and Ananda Devi do just that and honestly they've helped to awaken so many people in a short period of time using 1-1 teaching and RASA, without it I wouldn't have awakened, maybe some experiences from Psyches, but nothing compared to what my existential experience is now!

Non-Duality when embodied will show you and you will live as the Self, as the Absolute and know yourself and everything to be that,it's pretty fucking awesome. Unless you wanna go live in a cave and meditate forever, you still have the Human realm to live through, after all, you're still a Human with a body and a mind until the day you die, so personally I also want the best human experience, it's as simple as that really. To me, there's no point being awakened if I'm living on the streets begging for food, extreme I know.

Sadhguru said in this video that if we have but a drop of the intelligence of the body in our lives, health isn't even an issue. You will live magically, he said. I think Sadhguru means that we already have fourth density intelligence inside the body waiting to become awakened.

@LfcCharlie4 I sense that you're missing my whole point and that you are an instructor of sorts explains much. Thank you none the less... I have no interest in psychics. Nor do I have a desire for money collectors. After I read "Awakened Empath" and "Old Souls" by Luna, Lonerwolf.com and realized that there are many out there who seemingly share information under the guise of being Enlightened in order to promote a business, though they don't necessarily start out this way, I became detoured. Maybe a person truly wants to help but then greed sneaks in and all is lost, literally. I can have one Spiritual Awakening and then run with and never have another though you couldn't tell me anything because ego has the ability to deceive.

@moon777light Everybody can become awakened if they choose to. We are all enlightened we are just not aware of it. Let go of doubts and be. Everything is the way they are due to infinite love, enlightened or not. Much love.

what you did was just referring to a dead meat not an awakened person. awakened person doesn't always in all cases take the middle point, he or she can take one side to defeat the other. there's a way big difference between realizing that all problems are imaginary versus taking approach to solve the problem. if you're damn enlightened and you see that blood gushing out of your vein, if you don't care to put a bandage on it, it's your own problem, not non-duality's

You can create many justifications or reasons for continuing to do what you are doing. Just remember the cost and the price. Consider this hypothetical - if enough people awakened and didn't need any of this, you + many others would be out of business. Truth is prior to life purpose. Yes certainly you can't give universal advice to everybody, hence why I suggested to create sub-categories of the "enlightenment/meditation" section.

@Matt23 Yeah no offence mate, to me that's like teaching someone to cook without ever cooking yourself, but you've read cookbooks. I don't mean to shoot you down and by all means, introduce people to this, but I don't think you should really begin teaching until you're at least enlightened yourself, also, 2 years is a long time to be at this with little results in my opinion. Psychedelics could give you insights but in my opinion, there's much more 'efficient' ways to help you grow spiritually and actually permanently embody awakenings. I've worked 1-1 with a teacher since February and my growth has been amazing, the Spiritual Transmissions have been amazing. Good luck on your journey, but please don't teach until you are actually awakened yourself.

When you awaken you're free to be who you truly are and do what you want so of course, however once people open the heart fully they are HIGHLY unlilely to engage in things that cause harm to other people etc, so won't round cheating or sexually assaulting people etc. Bentinho is certainly awakened, I wouldn't say he is fully awakened or finished though. Also, I'd recommend doing some research on these kind of guys: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjmxvm/the-controversial-guru-who-wants-to-upgrade-civilization-bentinho-massaro-video

Keep in mind that the Absolute is distinct from the structures of the mind/brain/self. Which means it's possible to awaken but still have addictions. Because addictions are baked into the structure of the mind/brain/self. Awakening itself does not necessarily change the mind/self. Which is why an awakened person can still smoke cigs, have a porn addiction, etc. You can think of it this way: awakening disidentifies you from your mind. But the mind still continues to fire according to its lifetime of karma. If you spent a lifetime watching porn, your mind has been programmed with that habit, and awakening will not automatically remove all that. You will have to retrain your mind. This is why many awakened people are still flawed and still have bad habits and cravings. The mistaken assumption is that awakening will perfect the mind. This is simply untrue in practice. What perfects the mind is deliberate training, which many people neglect to do, especially after an awakening or two. Perfecting the mind is harder than awakening. In practice you could get many awakened people hooked on heroin. Because in truth they ain't that awake.

What are examples or ways in which western science can be used to increase consciousness? How can western science actually help you awaken? Honestly, the more I delve into western science, the more I see it as a survival mechanism at heart - rather than something that increases consciousness. Of course science can be used to explain metaphysical phenomena like the entire universe is one big brain, but that only makes sense to people who are already awakened, defeating the purpose. The scientific method just seems to be a process of gas lighting what's actually going on, having profound insights, but then distorting them by projecting a false sense of logic and patterns for the sake of upholding the scientific method itself, rather than just being happy with actuality. I find the liberal arts - like post modernism to be a more effective academic stream for understanding and increasing consciousness then any of the science fields.

Well first off, I don't think enlightenment is something that is definitive that can be delineated. People often think there's some kind of 'finish line'. I don't think that's true. I think it's more of a spectrum than a light switch. I think awakening is an ongoing and possibly even neverending process. I don't think the expansion of consciousness will reach a final point on the earthly plane, at the very least. So I don't think there's even a duality of 'being enlightened' as opposed to 'not being enlightened'. If you think you or someone else is enlightened, how do you know this person can't even get more enlightened? So that's the first thing. Secondly, even if there was such a thing as definitive enlightenment, then the hallmark of someone who has reached it is the person for whom asking the question whether he or she is enlightened would be absolutely meaningless. Not that it can't be questioned, but it's just meaningless. Someone who has reached really high levels of consciousness has gone past the paradigm of introspection and reflection; Gone past the paradigm of thinking altogether, really. Not that the person can't think, but the need for existential contemplation has disappeared. The need has disappeared because the faculty of introspective thinking has been exhausted and thereby deflated. Post-yellow stages in Spiral Dynamics are not attached and usually not even interested in thinking anymore. Not to mention, the awakened person sees that the whole game of enlightenment is just a silly and possibly even stupid notion anyway. I'm not talking about the hardcore inner work, but I'm talking about the constant evaluation, judgement and comparison that goes like: "How close am I to enlightenment? Am I enlightened? Is that person enlightened? Will this or that make me enlightened? How do I recognize someone to be enlightened? Is this person more enlightened than that person?". All these questions seem just utterly meaningless and even silly to an ACTUAL enlightened person, were there to be such a thing as an 'enlightened person' to begin with, which I don't think there is as part of a duality of 'enlightened vs non-enlightened' In fact, I would encourage people here to just do the goddamn inner work and drop the whole enlightenment game they're playing with themselves. I see it here way too much. The enlightenment-game is just another game that the ego-mind likes to play. The game that gets played in the mind about the topic of enlightenment is way different than doing the actual inner work that will facilitate the growth of your consciousness. The game that the mind likes to play of evaluation, comparison and judgement is simply just a sheer wastage of energy and time.

@Matt23 firstly, are you enlightened before teaching? One of the biggest worries for me in the Non-Dual community is the blind leading the blind. Basically people who aren’t even awakened/ fully awakened teaching people which brings with it a lot of risks. also, a lot of teachers tend to then lose focus on their own development and “crystallise” where they’re at often, so that’s something to consider. Most people will need some sort of theoretical Non-Dual understanding etc Things that helped me most- 1) Working 1-1 with a “Fully” awakened teacher (I class this as LOC 1000) 2) Spiritual Transmissions/ RASA 3) Enneagram work to learn my biggest pitfalls in awakening 4) Foundational Meditation/ Self-Inquiry work of course 5) Guided presence meditations, hard to explain mind of like walking through your true nature as presence There’s a lot more that helps on the path, but this has helped the most in my own awakening process. Good luck!

Ultimately I don't know enough enlightened heroin addicts to give a reliable answer but thought I'd play with the question a bit. If the addict declined the heroin, would it prove that they weren't addicted in the first place? Similarly, if the enlightened person took it, would it prove that they weren't enlightened in the first place? Maybe it depends on our definitions. If we define addiction as "inability to avoid something" and enlightenment as "awakened but might still have some addictions", then maybe we get one answer. If we define addiction as "tendency not to avoid something but might still be able to avoid it if lucky/determined etc." and enlightenment as "grasps the true self to the extent that extreme desire and physical needs are largely mastered" then maybe we get another answer. A key part seems to be "in the room" as I assume most people who successfully cease heroin consumption aren't locked in a room with it. I thought it was a nice question by the way. I hope the mods don't get a hold of it and lock it because it's not directly relevant to the average person's immediate personal development. Half the fun of learning is getting to ponder the unusual and quirky things that most people don't normally consider or pay attention to. This is partly why I like Actualized.org.

Your understanding of awakening is limited. Depending on how deeply craving is extinguished, an awakened person can not only say no to heroin but also deal with heroin withdrawal symptoms. I think people don't understand what the elimination of craving actually is. Also, remember that heroin addiction is overcome by people who have NEVER meditated. Just over time, with a lot of resistance, ordinary people do give up this substance. So we are not talking about a level of addiction so high that no ordinary person even has a chance of giving up. All 'addictive' substances (like heroin) has been overcome by ordinary people at some point in their lives. A deeply awakened person can give up any substance (including heroin) without suffering (or if unskilled with minimum suffering). This doesn't mean they wouldn't experience pain. They would. But they would momentarily ease into the experience of pain knowing that sensate reality is impermanent, occurring to no-self, and resistance to this sensation resulting in craving and suffering. If you couldn't deal with extreme cases like heroin addiction, then why even pursue awakening? The end of suffering is not a simple statement. It is a radical statement. A skilled meditator would also experience as much equanimity as possible with meditative joy as well depending on the severity of the pain. And again, depending on your skills, you can experience joy and happiness in spite of great physical and emotional pain. If I've done this with low levels of pain, then someone who is actually awake can do this with great pain. They would also have vastly improved skills in stable attention, mindful awareness, sensory clarity and equanimity than I do. Therefore, skillful practice even in heroin addiction (which has one of the most painful drug withdrawal symptoms out of all drugs) is possible for a deeply awake person.

It’s possible to become liberated anywhere. Some attain it through isolated circumstances while others attain it through interaction with others. From the Absolute “perspective”, circumstance is more of a correlation rather than a causation. This is why there’s no such thing as one objectively right way to become awakened.

@Red-White-Light By the sounds of it you haven't actually shattered your materialist paradigm. You may have had glimpses but to want to go back to duality as you describe, then somewhere along the way you have got confused. How did you shatter it, what practices did you do and/or are doing? You can't undo what you have seen. Perhaps you are oscillating between being awakened and being a human within the materialist paradigm. Keep going, dont give up, you'll see the light soon. ?

You are conflating *you and You* as well as *consciousness and Consciousness*. The term "conscious" is often used in the context of personal awareness. For example, "I am conscious of the pain in my shoulder, yet I am not conscious of what Vladimir Putin is thinking". This is the common usage we are all conditioned with. Consciousness is a term to point to the transcendent You that is Everything. So your question becomes "Why am i not conscious of Consciousness?". . . Because you have not awakened to You. . .

@mandyjw Yes, that is true. In reality we are not Christian and we are really nothing and everything. Sometimes I think about what Buddha said that if you meet the Buddha you have to kill the Buddha. I don't know if I can Kill Jesus really hehehe... because is always in the back on my mind. I think the indoctrination we get from church is crazy and in that sense is hard sometimes to not get attached to certain beliefs and dogmas. Yes, no problem. I will try to make it short, because I don’t want to hijack your thread. I will post in my diary a more detailed version of this experience, I will let you know if you want to read it. It was nuts hehehehe… But basically I asked in prayer to be “saved”. And I did it so intensely that something happened. I was not so sure about my beliefs so I wanted to know for once and all if I really was wrong or If there was any purpose to life, if Jesus was “the only way”, if Buddhism was wrong, etc. So, I read that Jesus said “Ask and it shall be given”, so I asked so much that one day it was given. I asked for salvation, I wasn’t sure if Salvation and Enlightenment was the same, so I did what it was safer for my beliefs at that moment, I asked for salvation, to be baptized with the holy spirit. And something happened, God listened to me hehehe... I was going to work and during my commute, I had an epiphany or as Jed Mc Kenna says I had T/R (“Truth Realization”). But it was partial. In the sense that I didn’t have any background about true spirituality, so I couldn’t understand what had happened. But anyway it was marvelous. And it was really Truth realization, the only problem is I didn’t know it at that moment. The first thing I had first of all Love for everyone that it was on the train. A super selfless love. And then I had a vision (or a shift in perception in reality) where I saw that everything is alive, and God was in everything. I saw energy all around me and I felt that all was connected. There was energy everywhere and it was running from one person to another, like if all of us were connected and one thing. I also felt like I was really alive, that before I was dead and now I was seeing really what is to be alive. But I still was in the old paradigm, that I was my thoughts, that I was separated from God, etc. In my arms I could see that energy running inside me, like if there was very brilliant water running through my veins. That made me remember what Jesus said that “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" So one day I began to suffer the ego backslash. Now I know what it is, but at this moment I didn’t have any idea. And even today I was thinking about it and in reality the ego backslash was created by me, because it was what it was. IMO it was an awakening that my ego interpreted as something bad, but I will explain that in a moment. I lost control of my ego, the ego acted any thought that appeared or arose in me. And I didn’t know what it was me, what it was thought. So, I did funny things, I said a lot of truth but mixed with crazy stuff, like exaggerating, like I love you (but in a way that it seemed devilish). It was a psychotic episode. I went to the hospital and I ended up staying there like one week trying to go back to normal. I couldn’t think well, my memory was super bad. I forgot everything. And I had terrible nightmares. The nightmares where me going to die (hehehehe). What happened was that I become conscious of being in nothing, in a void. It was completely black, like in a blackout and I was conscious but I didn’t know what I was, I didn’t have any identity. And that consciousness began to fall into that black hole, at that moment I was consciousness but the ego was still there, and I was still identified with the ego. Now I know because of all the experience of ego death that I read, I know what it was what happened. But when it happened I remember telling my wife that it was the worst nightmare that I ever had. Now I know it was a blessing in reality!!! I was going to be awakened but I chickened out due to lack of knowledge! What I was trying to tell you Mandy is that you are right, what one person sees as bliss or tranquility other like me can see it as the devil, as hell. So I believe that we create hell, but in my opinion you with the knowledge that you have now, you are safe, you will never be in that “hell” hehehe… because you know is you who creates it so your mind will go to another place. That’s what I think. I watch with my wife a TV serie called Criminal Minds, and they write from time to time some quotes from famous people and I remember that they put in one of the episodes a quote that I think it has to do with all these, it said this: “Hell is truth seen too late.” ― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

It looks like you are reaching deep levels and developing mastery in this technique. It clearly has a lot of value - both spiritually and practically. I think it's super cool you are sharing your insights with the forum. Very few people have reached these "realms", partially because not everyone is willing or able to do the intense amount of practice required. Would you say that you have some predisposition abilities (genetics, childhood conditioning, ability to concentrate, mind structure) that may have allowed you to progress as efficiently as you have? Or do you think everyone has roughly the same ability/potential and it's just a matter of doing the work and having a good teacher? You are creating a construct of joy/happiness, neutrality and negativity. I'm totally into that. I find as much value in construction as deconstruction. Here, there are three categories: joy/happiness, neutrality and negativity. I like how you used this framework to describe aspects of attention, craving and awakening. It's a really nice framework. I'm referring to something different, yet I don't mean to suggest this idea is better, deeper or truer than what you offered above. And I don't want to distract from its value, so I'll be brief. We can use the categories of joy/happiness, neutrality and negativity as framework to construct - which you have done very nicely above. We can also deconstruct - which would take us to a different dimension. This dimension isn't better, worse or more awakened. It's just another form of ISness. . . The categories of joy/happiness, neutrality and negativity can be deconstructed down to one category : absolute Happiness. Here, there are no conditions or categories. So, the category of neutrality is absolute Happiness. The category of negativity is absolute Happiness. All conditions and mind states are absolute Happiness. This is just one of many "awakenings". As you have described, this absolute Happiness does not have much utility for spiritual awakenings, concentration, well-being, fulfillment in life etc. . . So it is equally valuable to construct. From absolute Happiness, we can create three relative categories: happiness, neutrality and negativity. With this framework, we can further create things that will bring spiritual awakening, meta awareness, well-being, attention, mindfulness and skills. It's beautiful. And I think what you are describing is beautiful. . . And quite advanced.

Funny... I just returned from a little stroll at the beach, and right before I got home, I was thinking about how the death of Jon Osterman / birth of Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen movie is actually a pretty cool symbolization of ego death / spiritual rebirth (or rather of how a not awakened person might imagine spiritual rebirth) and that I absolutely need to start a thread and share this divine insight with you guys ASAP. - Now if that aint synchronicity, I don't know what the heck is, heh! "The Superman exists, and he is American!" Haha, that line makes me crack up every. single. time. LOL