Search the Community

I don't know guys. Now I am thinking that this enlightenment stuff is bullshit. I think that I have gone too far. I want to live a normal life now but I can't do it anymore cause nothing matters to me Anymore. I was committed to this actualized.org way an now I think I have made mistake and I kind of regret . And if this way is false I don't know what way to follow than. I wish right now that I have not known all this stuff. Cause my mind is telling me that I have gone crazy. I think leo might be crazy too. Maybe he has believed all kind if stuped stuff using psychedelics and all this theory And now I have done it also. Cause u can believe whatever u want under this substances. And this thought that I have gone crazy and that I have fucked up my life is always in my mind. And it is growing and growing. And I am afraid where it might lead. And I can't stop it. I don't know how to live anymore. I can't even say to therapist what is wrong with me. I think he will not understand all this nonduality stuff and will think I am crazy and will give me some drugs. I can't say what is wrong with me to my parents and brother and friends cause I was alone in this work. Thay already though I was going crazy with souch meditation and non dual work. And they might be right. And I don't see any way how can I come out of it. So I am here. Daubting meditation. Non dual work. My growth. Leo. This way. Enlightenment. My sanity. Hopeless. Have lost interest in everything. Afraid of staying alone. Afraid of thinking. Ally values, meanings , purpose have gone. It seems I am falling in darchness deeper and deeper and no one is helping me. And that no one really can help me. And I can't help myself eather. I think it will just get worth and darcker and at some point i might end this suffering.

@Hugo Ferraro Thank you for sharing your journey and insights! I'm also in my early journey myself, but I'd like to share my thoughts. First of all, nonduality is not a belief/paradigm. Of course the ego can treat it as one, so watch out for that. But that's only your projection of what you think nonduality is at this stage in your life. A paradigm is a limiting belief system because it takes certain aspects of reality for granted, and usually makes a distinction between "subjective" and "objective." That is not nonduality. Nonduality is the ultimate Truth because it recognizes, cooked deep into the core, that all perspectives are partial. It's not a belief because you can become directly conscious and aware of this truth through a mystical experience. All spirituality points to this. And of course, the Truth cannot be written, spoken, or proven. It cannot be grasped with the human mind, it can only be experienced. And why would you expect anything less from the Absolute? Language, in essence, is made up of symbols that only mean something in relation to each other. Language breaks down at nonduality because it cannot point to itself. It is itself. Try to grasp the significance of this. You're completely right that there's a strong faith component when starting out. It's necessary with any type of experimentation, scientific or spiritual, because you simply don't know unless you do the tests. There's no such thing as faith-free. However, you need to distinguish blind faith from pragmatic faith and finding the answers yourself. Notice that fundamentalist religion is blind faith, and true spirituality (what we're doing here) is pragmatic faith, where faith is a stepping stone to Truth. Also, I don't like to refer to my journey as one towards enlightenment. My journey doesn't end when I reach enlightenment. And more so than that, enlightenment is not a destination. It's right before your eyes, you're just not conscious of it yet. I'm aware that seeking enlightenment is a dangerous trap for the ego, because "seeking" entails an "I don't want to be here" component, or an escape, or a longing. THAT is ego. Be open to the possibility that your drive for enlightenment could be coming from the ego. Because if you truly understood enlightenment, you'd understand that it's right here. All spirituality is, is to work on becoming conscious of what's already here. Enlightenment itself is the end of suffering and longing; complete contentment and peace with what's here. So why do you think you need to search for it? Now I'm not saying this is the case for you, just warning you of a common trap. Good luck!

When a phrase is beyond description, sometimes you give a couple statements: One that is closer to the Truth and one that is next closest to the Truth. A phrase like "the brain does not exist" seems like it can have different meanings / level of understandings. 1) The brain does not exist, because by strict nondual standards, nothing can be said at all. Merely saying "brain" is a step too far. Thus, the brain (or anything) neither has existence or non-existence. 2) The brain does not exist, because by non-strict nondual standards, there is One Everything. If there is One Everything, then there is No Thing - then Everything = No Thing = Nothing. The brain (or any thing) cannot exist separate from One Everything. 3) Since nothing can exist separate from One Everything/Nothing, both nonduality and duality collapse into One. The Absolute and the Relative are One. From the perspective of the Absolute, there is no brain that exists separate from the Absolute. From the perspective of the Relative, the brain does exist if one accepts relative terms. Thus, the brain is neither existence or non-existence and is simultaneously existence and non-existence. 4) All of reality is a like a dream. Literally, none of it exists. It's all an illusion. 5) The "brain" is just a concept that does not physically exist. If we examine a brain very closely with highly technical equipment - beyond atoms and quarks - we find empty space. I've come across all of these explanations and I can "get" each one if I assume different contexts and word usages. Would you say that one or more of the statements are "closer" to the Truth? Are one or more further from the Truth? Do they overlap with each other and kinda say the same thing in different ways? I think this can be an area of confusion for seekers and something I'd like to clarify within my "brain".

By the strictest nonduality standards, nothing can be said at all, really, not even this sentence (so this is already one step down from that strictest standard). And thus nothing can be said of anything, either -- neither existence nor non-existence can be attributed, and no objects can be named. Not even the idea of "object" can be admitted.

By strict nonduality standards, would you say that nothing exists?

Well it's not quite either. Certainly the idea of a radio wave is just a model, but that doesn't mean that only what you experienced exists. Actually a) technically even what you experienced cannot be said to exist if you go by strict nonduality. So if that doesn't exist then neither is there any question of what underlies it. But b) if you do want to say that the experience of the TV turning on does exist, then certainly there is something underlying that experience and which causes it -- that is, the set of universal laws, or else you can call it God's will (my preference). At best we can only make models of this. Thanks. Yeah, I know some people like this model, but not me. There is a single liberation (and not even that!). The mind may "change" after that, but those are not "deeper stages of enlightenment." Those are just the various bindings and tendencies of the mind altering over time. And really, enlightenment is the recognition that the mind itself simply cannot be said to exist.

Ok, thanks for the responses so far, but still and I find this interesting of conversation in general, its so hard to nail down what someone is pointing sometimes. Can you describe more by what you mean as no-thing. Is this a state/experience that is within your every experience. Is it wisdom gained through what you;ve pointed to in Buddhist understanding as everything being relative in relation to something else, conscious/reality, flower/soil/sun/earth, feelings/body/mind. This wisdom is a no-thing? Or is this no-thing an actual understanding of it/oneself/the universe and It being the source of all? See from where I stand, there is never not god/infinity/oneness/nonduality. I see what you've been describing within this bubble since nothing is not that. Absolute is a interesting term I was reflecting on my bike-ride to work after I used the term. It can have isolating/hierarchical interpretations. When understood of what I'm talking about, Absolute is not on this scale, nothing is not Absolute, so all is thus absolute. A baby craving food, is Absolute in that form, having Absolute experience. You or I awakening to this understanding again is Absolute in action as such and this experience is no higher or lower then the babies, its all Absolute/God/Inifinty. Waking up to this understanding as a human is a metaphorical pointing to a actual truth that is not merely just a belief a person/body/mind is having, its pointing like Buddhist believe the sun to rise in the east and set in the west, to a actual occurrence that humans fit within wether we are here or not. This isn't some ignorance arising in the clean eye of no-thingness or a illusion held onto a self for security, which I sometimes get the sense is where your coming from. Correct me if I'm wrong.

An Indian here. To understand General Relativity one doesn't have to learn about Germany, or Jewish culture, because Einstein was Jewish and German. Same applies to non-dual knowledge. Calling it "indian-Nonduality" is the most unfortunate kind of oxymoron. If you understood nonduality such petty discriminations of east and west wont have any place in your psyche. And FYI, most indians dont meditate and they have no idea about nonduality. Most are involved in the bhakti-Hinduism which is no different from any other paganism. Sure there is whip of non-duality here and there but it is more like the relics of once great culture. So dont talk about how one has to learn indian culture to really understand Nonduality. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I lived in india for long, right in the cultural center, and all i saw was religion as usual. Religious gurus nothing different from western televangicals and religion nothing different from a set of rules to be followed with harry-potter-for-adults mythology.

@Ampresus I would be open to all mystics / sages. Engage with what speaks to you - with what resonates with you. That could be insights from nonduality, personal empowerment, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, metaphysics, science, art etc.

The Absolute in none other than all arising contingent phenomena. The Absolute is all that exists. If you can see it, it is the Absolute. Your toilet is the Absolute. If look at your toilet real closely, for a long time, you will realize it is God. That's nonduality. Nothing is hidden or separate.

Ok got it. Often in self inquiry, the very reality of the world is denied to such an extent that i wasnt sure where unifying the subminds--which sounds less metaphysical and more like psychological work--would fit in that picture. But I remember even you saying that this is where 90% of the work lies? Dont get me wrong, i am all about doing the self-inquiry all day long. It's just that i also need a coherent approach to practicalities of life, which often involve such conflicts as 'i want to do but for some reason i am not doing..' . Even Ramana always encouraged his listeners to continue with the household's life and not abandon their worldly duties. And sometimes it is hard to differentiate whether parts of me are just using nonduality as an excuse to further their very egoic agendas.

There is a memory, yet the breakthrough experiences are not like "my experience". There is an embodiment of the direct experience. It goes way beyond a memory. Imagine reaching the consciousness level of a 70 y.o. zen master. Or, a squirrel attaining the consciousness level of a human. It's really hard to explain in reasonable terms. On the other hand, lots of people don't respond well to psychedelics and they can take a person into all sorts of nutty bizarre places irrelevant to nonduality proper. You've got momentum with the self-inquiry. Ride it.

@SoonHei Careful, psychedelics are not necessarily identical to enlightenment. Psychedelics can take you into all sorts of wacky dimensions of consciousness. You have to distinguish those from nonduality proper.

I spent over 20yrs in meditation and buddhism and never got past the "witness + object" stage. The first ego death experiences came with a few solo psychedelic trips, which were so powerful that I took it to the next level by attending an Ayahuasca retreat with a tribe in Peru. It was really intense and beyond any description, yet it was non-abiding - what followed was a period of integration and gradual ego dissolution. Yet for me, the direct experience with ego death greatly accelerated the pace. Baseline consciousness level has increased with meditation, yoga, self inquiry and nonduality teachings. The nondual pyschedelic experiences opened up nondual experiences while sober. They can have anxiety/fear when the ego struggles for control. Yet, over time - they have become more common with less resistance. This is just one approach. There are many. It seems like winterknight's approach is resonating with you. If so, go with that. It just didn't get me over the hump until after a few psychedelic trips - then it started falling in place.

@Antonius 5mg increments sounds good too. If you're going to be experimenting with 5-MeO-DMT in the long term, you might want to think about investing in a quality scale like this American Weigh GeminiPRO - if you're careful with your technique you can take extremely accurate measurements with this scale and others in that quality range. Yeah you summed it up there pretty well there. I've definitely had personal, more grounded insights on 5-MeO-DMT that affected how I interact with the world, but on the whole, you've got the general pattern there: it dives straight into consciousness, nonduality pretty readily.

They are not different enlightenments but one and the same. "Soul" refers to a subtle aspect of the individualized self. That too is eventually transcended into pure nonduality regardless of which path you take. "Soul" is a technical term. It refers to subtle states of consciousness. Nondual is beyond even that. Transcendence goes: Gross >> Subtle >> Causal >> Nondual

The backstory I recently tripped again on 150ug of pure LSD-25. This is my first trip about 2-3 months after my last 600ug trip which went a bit awry from my normal perspective in life. I actually couldn't really remember it. I didn't even remember that I had a full-blown ego-death and resided in nondual awareness for what felt like a short lifetime. I've tripped on 150ug before and it was never like this time, because I had that breakthrough it's so much easier to go back into the ego-death experience now. And that happened again this time, and in tasting that again it brought back many memories of the 600ug trip. I actually started to panic a little bit as I went back into the ego-death, I started losing myself. Luckily I was more responsible this time, so I could resist the dosage a little bit... enough to be calmed down by my friend who I called and to remember that my trip sitter was always there if I start breaking stuff again. Once I grounded myself a bit, I decided to let go again and go into it and just surrender myself. So I surrendered myself. And man, It takes so much bravery to go into the love. But It's indescribable beauty. Indescribable. Prepare yourself for a bit of repetition to the insights I brought back. Going deeper & God's love Sometimes your in the nondual perspective and sometimes your not. That's okay because it's all just going deeper into it whether that's in it at the time or not. You're just setting yourself up for that next mindfuck. To just keep going deeper. The love is only possible when you're out of the love perspective. It only makes it better. Like how abstaining from music for weeks makes it better when you come back. The love comes from going deeper into yourself. It actually (literally) feels like my heart is unfurling, just peeling back and back, revealing deeper layers of gods love. It genuinely feels so tender, soft and warm. The more bitter it got the better it got. Breaking up makes coming back together so much more beautiful and meaningful. Getting lost in the woods makes getting found feel so good. The whole thing of life is just me going deeper and deeper into myself. I just kept going into the experience of deep insights into the nature of reality, and I am reality. Love is the only answer. It's all infinite love. It's an infinite love simulator, leo's description from the What is Love video was spot on. It just goes deeper. It just goes deeper (to infinity, and back again). I never got the reality is a strange loop thing before, intellectually sure, but actually, no. This time I summed up my entire experience of reality being an infinitely deep strange loop in this phrase: It just keeps going deeper. Infinite perfection! But It's all God's love and it just keeps going deeper. Your trapped in this loop, this psychedelic loop. But it's okay dude. Because it's all just God's love. Keep going deeper into the insanity. The nature of drifting off into this life is what makes coming back so beautiful. It's just an experience. Everything is just an experience to gain more perspectives. I remember Leo saying how if you make any distinction between ego-death and your actual death then you don't understand. Well I didn't understand. But I actually died, I experienced my ego (Jack, the person) losing himself and dying. But it was so beautiful that I surrendered to it fully. And holy fuck was it mindblowing. I totally see how when you die it will be the most beautiful realisation ever. I cried and cried realising I subjected myself to separateness and life out of love and I was back in that love and oneness. Mindfuck / Paradox It's all myself. Tripping myself out. Literally that is all there is. Me mindfucking myself, out of pure love. At one point when I was just busy being everything... I realised I was looking at myself, and everywhere I looked I was looking at myself. This started to really scare me, I couldn't run from myself, I couldn't escape myself. I started to panic and go insane a little bit, and I went deeper and deeper into fear and insanity. Started losing touch with everything and going on what people would call a "bad trip"... And then after going deeper and deeper I just found more of gods love. I can see how universal perspective has to, and wants to create this ego life to experience separateness. Life is just about getting lost. And eventually you'll come back and find yourself. It goes all the way down for you and then all the way back up again. It's all paradox. Reality is a strange loop. Every part contains every other part of itself. Before these were words, intellectual, but now I've had insight (at least to some - i feel, realitvely strong - degree) into each of them personally. Expression & Purpose It's all about expressing God's love. The hard part is expressing how beautiful is all is. How to put it in words? The word "Universe" (youniverse) felt so fitting, like it had to be that word. Same with the word's: "Ego Death", "Nature of Reality" Truth, Consciousness, Love. Honestly these aspects sum it up so beautifully, I couldn't see it before but now I can. There is a deep self-awareness and intelligence, mindfucking itself, and under all that is the deepest love of all. Infinitely deep love. The beautiful part is that I keep choosing to take myself deeper. That's the purpose of life. I chose to keep unfurling the layers of reality. A good way to describe it is: Indescribable. I want to express myself more, and because words have what feels like infinitely deep meaning when I trip. It makes them feel so powerful. Bringing something back Bringing something back is what it's about. I can see how the psychedelic is not going to take me all the way. That's where the meditation and spiritual experience comes in. It's important to get the glimpses, the insights, through the psychedelic. And then take that and develop universal love back in your ego life. I realised I'm creating this reality for myself. And the absolute keeps choosing life. In a very literal way all of this is my creation. And it is infinitely intricate, there is infinite meaning to everything, it's all here for me. I'm (ego-me) is always looking for a lesson, or insight. Then I experienced from the deepest existential perspective, there is no lesson, it's all absolutely meaningless. There doesn't have to be a lesson. And then in a strange loop way that is just a lesson, and it's infinitely meaningful. Paradox! See if you can take back the experience not just the words (like I am mainly now). I realised it's kind of fucked up that I can't experience nondual awareness in my normal life. That I am depending on this substance for it. The whole process of life is bringing yourself into alignment, without the psychedelic. How do I embody universal love (nonduality) more in my life? I likely won't trip again for another 3 months or so, I need more time to integrate my experience back into my life. Whereas before I started to trip every 2 weeks after recommendations on here to do so. Miscellaneous The whole bad trip of looking for your inner demons thing, which is what I do in my normal life, but also when tripping. I realised that's a great way to go into nondual awareness, the deeper you go into your demons the more you come into nondual self-consciousness, mindfuck and love. I had this crazy deep thing going on with my dog. It's literally just all the dog. And the dog is me. That is the nature of reality. Just gently teasing each other into waking up. Sending us messages through the other people (that's how it felt). Before I've felt the dog as separate, this time I realised was almost like a projection because I couldn't handle it was all just me. But I fully see (feel) it now. What you put into it. The intention. Is what you get out of it. And by that I mean all life, your entire life is gods intention. And this manifests in a similar way in ego form, where your ego intention creates the reality. I feel like I got a very light insight into this, and so take it with a grain of salt because I only had very slight direct experience here. Thoughts are what take you out of that nondual state. The whole life here is an intention. Which is a commitment, or thoughts? To me (ego) it feels a lot like the universal self is just tripping himself out. Life is the thought trip and the nondual state is without thought, when the trip is over. Where you just keep going deeper into God's love. And then you find yourself back in the separate state (ego). And it just seems to keep looping like that. Overall a good trip... Leo wasn't kidding when he said all the most profound insights are to be had at lower doses. High doses you just frolic with yourself in nondual awareness for what feels like an eternity and then you come down and bring fuck all back.

Whooosh!!! I missed that part. @Cocolove I did an at-home "retreat" for a week last summer. I live alone, so there were no distractions. I structured time to include meditation, yoga, contemplative journaling, spiritual reading (e.g. the kriya yoga guidebook), spiritual nonduality video, self massage, breathing exercises, mindful cooking and eating and baths. I did not engage in social media. I checked my phone one time per day and I only responded to "necessary" texts (which turned out to be three texts during the week). It greatly relaxed my mind-body. My mind-body was as relaxed as if I was on a far away vacation in the Carribean. This not only allowed for awareness regarding how stressed and busy my mind-body was, yet the relaxation also allowed for integration of previous learnings/experience as well as for new insights to arise. I also get a break from school starting this Wednesday. I am planning to do another week long at home retreat.

Communicating nonduality with a dualistic language is hard. Thats why you have to look beyond the words and what they point to. Figure out what they are trying to get across instead of just taking the words at face value. Otherwise you'd be running in circles of contradictions.

I also 100000% agree with this. I’ve actually been falling into this the last few months. It turns nonduality a belief system which when you’re doing whatever practices you do makes them harder cause now you have a whole cosmology and those beliefs become very sticky. For me this is a problem (particularly) because I grew up under a dad who I learned this horrible dogmatic habit of hard debating and I can’t stand this habit in myself for all the different reasons it toxifies my life but also because I tend to be good at understanding what concepts are really pointing to intellectually and I have almost this thing, it’s almost like this subconscious talent, of being really good at understanding what’s really being spoken on a conceptual level and tying all these pieces in my mind and can see in my mind how they connect and now I have this whole elaborate cosmology that I tend to lie and pretend I know better than I do and defend those ideas. It’s a really nasty habit but also conceptualizinf this whole thing is just such a trap, especially on here where we by necessity have to use language which indulges the mind to map everything and unconsciously confusing the map for the territory. However, I’m getting pretty good at contemplating and grounding myself in the present and that the truth of what I’m after is right here right now and nowhere else which regrounds me in not knowing and curiosity.

@Leo Gura Yes, that is a great logical explanation. Yet it would have triggered the analytical scientist in me ?. I took a meandering path sprinkled with Turquoise nonduality glimpses. It’s weird how I want to explain it through the direct experience. Logic seems so dry and boring to me these days.

Yes. For a mind that has been conditioned as a self it's entire life, entering a no-self consciousness can be very uncomfortable. The self often tries to maintain control of the narrative in the mind. It can be unfamiliar and disorienting. This can occur during a glance at truth, yet also when the mind returns to it's baseline self. What helped me was to continue my grounding practices such as yoga, meditation and watching nonduality teachers. As well, contemplating the experience and discussing it on this forum. With time, the mind settles down and the experience becomes "integrated" into regular life and the mind expands.

True passion is a connection to your True Self. Psychedelics will give you direct experience with nonduality. The mind will flip back to a dualistic mind state. Yet, nondual direct consciousness is a game-changer. Even when your mind flips back dual and starts to contextualize it, there will be a deeper "knowing" that you can't put into words or explain.

although 'the absolute' doesn't exist either. So 'the absolute' is paradoxically relative as every linguistic expression is. But 'collapse of dualities' is nevertheless an appropriate hint. However those who follow advaita teachings usually have trouble to grasp this because advaita teachings are based on affirmation of true existence of 'oneness' or 'nonduality' or 'awareness' and the like. They obviously think that duality has to be overcome and that it can be overcome through choosing one side of it and reject the other, but neither the former nor the latter applies.

Referring to this sort of explanation of the Absolute Truth, nonduality, and it having more importance than Relative Truth. "Dualistically I agree, of course, but it doesn’t appear you are speaking about duality. You are referencing absolute truth, that all is one, and then conflating it with duality: individuality, purpose, moving beyond, importance, “levels”, duality of existence and not, and God “dealing” in perfection. Individuality does not exist, that is duality, illusion. There would need to be two for there to be uniqueness / individuality. Nothing “exists”, and Nothing does not “exist”. If you can move “beyond” absolute truth, then it is not absolute, and was not the Truth. “Enlightenment is the beginning”, is reference to the illusion. In Truth, there is no beginning, and no illusion." If this doesn't clarify what I'm referring to, one good example is the use of the word illusion to describe the Relative. The Relative is as real as the Absolute, and starting off with terminology that suggest otherwise leads people towards nondual dogma and spiritual stagnation. The Relative is the most beautiful, important, sacred form of existence we will ever have. Some refer to the Relative as a video game, but it's the complete opposite of a game. It's the realest thing we'll ever experience. Individuality ties into this because it does exist, it exists on the deepest levels of existence. The further we get down the spiritual path the more important it is to recognize this if we want to bask in our true nature. If we embraced radical authenticity from the start, we could skip a lot of unnecessary growing pains. It's incorrect that we can't regress down stages in SD, and this becomes very obvious when transitioning from Turquoise to Coral. Children are born in Coral. They are born completely authentic, expressing Divinity with ease. It's why people wish to be children again when they grow up. But when someone is several stages above everyone surrounding them, including the people who control their lives, they regress to the stages their society is at, or worse. Social conditioning beats authenticity out of children. And instead of recognizing this phenomenon, and trying to correct course back to our true nature, we've come up with all of these distortions that keep us away from Truth. This is all to say how important individuality really is, it's where we should be building our spiritual practice from, not moving away from. It's crucial for humanity to have people who recognize the flaws made in even our most advanced spiritual traditions, so that we can start correcting for the future generations to come. The amount of resistance or complete lack of interest such mentions of Truth receive even in spiritual circles, should highlight the severity of egoic dogma that needs to be overcome.