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Joke of the day So the other day I saw my friend had a black eye, so to make small talk. I asked my friend where'd he get his black eye from. He said "I got beat up, then they stole everything". He looked quite sad because I didn't laugh at his joke.Maybe i'll do a fake laugh next time. Like this "ehhehahehahhahahahhahahahahaha." Lower self vs higher self part 1 I watched leos video on this topic yesterday. I thought i'd contemplate on it a little. So apparently the lower self comes out when I feel threatened in some way. I'd have to agree. My lower self comes when I just walk on campus. I see these people with friends and this reminds me that I don't have any. This causes me to feel stress; and a bunch of shit. So I obviously find a way to alleviate it. Which is not good for my goals. If I try to avoid school; well then I skip class. If I go to school; I have a hard time doing other things after. The solutions I can come up with is.( NOT IMPLEMENTING IT YET BECAUSE I'M STILL WORKING ON OTHER TASKS) Meditate for like an hour a day( this gives me much more awareness of my thoughts) Make sure your higher self comes out using a morning routine or something. Reframe the situation. As a child I had reframed this situation as like; I am focusing on important things while they are wasting time with friends. This is the wrong approach. View it as like working out. Just suffering. Just something you need to power through Make friends I need to implement all of them. I need to work on myself while making friends. I forgot to upload my yesterdays post but it was about suicide. PS THIS IS JUST A THOUGHT. IT COULD BE A VERY BAD WAY OF APPROACHING THIS. Basically if I wanna die; then go ahead and die. Actively try to kill yourself from facing these fears or chasing your dreams .That is the correct way to die. If you want to fly with wings. Go jump off a cliff; see if you'll grow wings. If you survive after that jump. Jump again until you die. Choose to die; then to be half dead. For example making friends. I'm afraid of rejection. So; this is what you do. You go to class say hi to the person next to you and get rejected. Your goal is to die. So; the more painful it is; the better. You get rejected in front of 300 people. The higher the hope you have. The more painful the fall will be. If you die; then you die. Now here's the problem. My lower self wants friends. My higher self doesn't give a fuck. So my motivation isn't aligned between these 2 peeps and therefore am not willing to die just because I don't have friends currently. But I do sense that I have that sort of motivation to really face this hard hard fear of mine due to the depression sometimes. MY MIND KINDA WENT OFF TOPIC HERE Objectively, friends don't provide too much value. It's the loneliness that kills you. It's the lack of connection. So what my higher self has come up with is making an app/working on projects. My higher self wants to help lots of people. It doesn't care about me. But my higher self somewhat understands that in order to help others. I must be healthy. So what i'm saying here is that theoretically we don't need to deal with making friends. This is why i'm having a hard time getting motivated by school. I am having a hard time connecting the higher self with school. I do understand in that it would be helpful to have all this knowledge. But why not just go straight to helping people? Then to learn knowledge that I may need. Why higher self should be valued over the lower self? It shouldn't be. I'm so confused. The idea is to make sure that the lower-self and the higher self is happy. Make sure what the lower self is doing isn't hurting the higher self. These 2 need to be integrated. In leos video it sounds like he just cares about the higher-self because idk. When these 2 cohesively live together. We get a happy hoomon.

You're assuming you are not already there, and that suicide will get you there.. why? But God wouldn't discourage you from anything, perhaps you can say some greater energy being exists that for us would be God that would not like that energy, but that's still duality and you ultimately.. I think it would be fair to say you take your mind and all the resistance and attachment with you after death, and at some point reincarnate (it already happened this time, probably 'after' as well), , and most importantly, suicide is a really negative impact for the people around you... But most importantly it's not a problem as meditation is literally there for you to kill yourself without murdering your birth.

@Gili Trawangan No I meant if you are not awake, instead of spending 10000 hours meditating a quicker route is suicide

Has it occurred to you that Leo is enjoying life? What stupidity, to suggest suicide just because one realizes their true nature...

Life is already God. You don't need to die. Suicide is an act against the work of God, so to speak. Imagine the complexity and the energy required to come to be as a human. Being a human is a rare event in the Universe. And then all of a sudden you destroy it by killing yourself. Such a waste! It's usually easy for us to see that we shouldn't destroy forests and oceans. Why destroy a human life? God is HERE. Enlightenment is NOW.

Srsly lol, why spend all this time doing meditation and self-inquiry, when you can just get the ultimate enlightenment with commiting physical suicide?

I was a little passive aggressive with my post (sorry) but I find such discourse to be a bit frightening and a bit out of touch when addressing something as serious to human condition like suicide. First off because it's frightening to think about when someone is in such a state and even not. I'd say the best way to address this question, especially for people thinking of doing it, is that life is a mystery and that all this is here and those emotions are there and the will to live is incredibly strong, we will die one day so why not let nature take us and see what we can learn while here.

When you have an enlightenment experience, you will understand why this whole sentence is only a question for seekers. Committing physical suicide is a tragic death that befalls spiritual seekers who don't have the intent of finding enlightenment for the truth itself. Normally the case for 98% of seekers trying to remove their suffering. So suicide is an option. When you seek for truth itself, you can't commit suicide because you'll never know the truth. so its not even an option. However, if conceptual death is the price to pay then that's an acceptable notion. After enlightenment you come to realise that it's pointless killing yourself because you will arrive right back in absolute infinity as another avatar, so that "ultimate enlightenment" your talking about, will be sort lived. Still there's no evidence to say what happens after death. I've heard story that you make pacts with your spirit guides about what you want to do in the next life.. to learn a certain life lesson. Still this is all superstition depending on where you hear it from.

If you "die" conceptually, you can live the rest of this life knowing what the Truth is. There is no guarantee that you will stay lucid if you commit physical suicide. You may just reincarnate into an ignorant chimp like most of us, and ask again this question

@SFRL Both to isolate the plague, relieving cities of the burden of homeless invasion, and to put them in a place where they can be monitored and rehabilitated. You might feel differently if you encounter hundreds or thousands of homeless every day, who've migrated to your city to leech off the public services and beg for money. Most of these people obviously can't take care of themselves, and the problem won't be stopped by throwing money at it. Needs to be contained and dealt with systematically. People don't want them pissing, shitting, begging and sleeping on the streets where they live and work. Here in LA county residents and business owners are taking it upon themselves to construct barriers around buildings and sidewalks to keep the filth away. But the homeless themselves may not have anywhere to go or means of getting there, hence the need for 'domestic refugee' centers the funnel them off the streets and give them sleeping accommodation, mental evaluation and other needed services. Two other perspectives I will acknowledge though: -The people living on the street may see it as the least worst option for them. After all, if any help they receive from the government would require them to become sober and all they'd have to look forward to is wage slavery, sleeping outside, begging, doing drugs and alcohol feels about as good as it gets. This is why I'd support unconditional aid for homeless people, but still want such aid to be provided in ways that discourage homeless migration and clean up the streets formerly colonized by hobo tents, piles of trash and human waste. -If I were to become homeless myself, or more immediately in danger of becoming so, I would want to be able to use local services offered to get me a place to sleep and them find me place to live, income opportunities and other means provided to me. At present though, all such systems here are completely overwhelmed, most the homeless who came to my locality from elsewhere, and priority is given based on how long someone had been homeless, not having been a resident of the city the service is based, or ability to be self-sufficient once provided basic necessities. From this self-concerned perspective, I see homeless as invaders creating public nuisance and unjustly taking up resources. In a worst case scenario, if I ever found myself about to be broke and homeless, rather than find some shelter full of people I can't stand the sight and smell of, I'd call a suicide helpline and threaten to kms unless they can arrange for me to be directly provided with a safe and comfortable place to live. So while I can empathize impersonally with street bums I see, personally I'd rather die than be in their shoes, and couldn't being myself to hold out a cup and beg random passers-by for money. Not to mention, it's been revealed that some needy and desperate looking beggars found in upscale touristy areas are actually faking it, and end up making more money than if they worked.

July 10th, 2:26 PM My Current Psychiatrist I am about to go to my psychiatrist. I think it will be the last time that I go to him. He was important for me, and I am pretty sure my cycle with him will end today. It's okay to go to just 2 sessions with a psychiatrist. I was thinking of not going to this second one, but my psychologist convinced me to do otherwise. He is very open and honest about the medication. However, I don't feel that much of affinity with him. He forces his voice to sound more "professional", and I really don't like that. I want a psychiatrist that has a natural tone of voice, who listens to me non-judgmentally, and who can see which medication will work and which dosage should i use. I will ask the psychiatrist today if I can double my morning dosage. i have been feeling some aggressive urges, some irritability and some depression. Nothing big, but I think increasing the dosage might be helpful. I will see what he thinks about it. There is a psychiatrist who is an authority on Ayahuasca. he lives in the amazon, but he offers Skype sessions. I will try to convince my dad to go to him. At least for one session. I want to hear his feedback about my life and my mental health. Strategies for Socializing Without Getting Drained I just came back from my friend's house. Two of his friends came over. They will stay there for 1-2 weeks. If it was at another time, I would have felt very anxious as if I needed to "entertain" them. But now I see that this is not my responsibility. If someone's bored, it is because of them, not me. And one thing I have been trying to develop is strategies for socializing for a specific amount of time, and then coming up with a good and natural excuse to go away. I am a High Sensitive Person, so I get easily drained from social interactions. And for a very long time, I didn't know how to deal with that. But after reading the book "Quiet", by Susan Cain, now I see that I am not alone on this. A lot of people force themselves to interact and act "happy", then they commit suicide. People will judge me regardless of what I do. I am not saying that I shouldn't give a fuck about what others think of me. Instead, I need to find that sweet spot between maintaining my individuality, and at the same time being able to live as a community. Making Money & Anxiety & Patience I have been feeling like I need to make some money. I am trying to find a way that will not make me feel too exhausted or drained. But I should also remember to be patient. My birthday is on September, and until then, I will focus on going to doctors (speech erapist, pain doctor, psychiatrist, and psychologist) to make sure I am ready to face challenges in a "safe" way. For too long, I tried to deal with the worldly challenges by myself, as if I knew everything and didn't need help. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Not only do I need people, I also can benefit a lot from good professionals. As I mentioned in the last post, I love so much science but when it comes to applying it to me ( by going to doctors, for example), I dismiss it as if it wouldn't work or something like that. Buffonnery! Doctors are scientist. And science is what is going to really heal me. Thanks for reading.

Never, and I ignore anyone trying to talk to me because 99% of the time it's just someone begging for money or cigarettes. Hobos will keep flooding into Los Angeles, because by tolerating their presence and trying to help them, it only attracts more of them. The poor, hungry and homeless of America and the world could fill the entirety of LA, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, and they would if they could. And they're treated like cows in India, given free rain to go wherever they want and you can't get rid of them. The media misrepresents this phenomenon as a "homelessness crisis" rather than areas being invaded and colonized by homeless people form elsewhere. My problem isn't because they're homeless, but because they create unsanitary and unsafe conditions, are constantly begging, make many public places unusable because of their rancid odor, and filthy baggage blocking walkways. So many libraries, parks, convenience stores, coffee shops and bus routes I avoid now because of this. A theoretical solution would be to round up the homeless people found sleeping on the street or creating a public nuisance, and subject them to internal deportations to contained settlements in remote areas of the country, as they did in the Soviet Union. This would purge the plague from West coast urban centers and discourage more homeless form migrating. Realistically though, to resolve this problem there has to be both a disincentive for homeless migration to a city, but ways of taking bums off the streets. There would need to be a public agency specifically for this, responsible for physically removing and processing them. And the local services like homeless shelters and supplemented housing need to be reserved for people becoming homeless locally, not anyone who hops on a bus or rides a bike into your neighborhood. So basically I don't care about homeless (except in terms of getting rid of them) and ignore their begging because they are eyesores and nose-sores, I live in and frequent places which do not produce homeless people so they are like invasive parasites, not my neighbors. There are so many of them everywhere and they don't stop coming, they don't care about me, only want me to give them money, and if I was in their shoes I couldn't bring myself to beg, I'd use public services available or resort to suicide rather than live as a street bum and begging every passer-by to please care about me and help me. If there is a homeless person digging through trash, I'll hand them my empty bottle or leftovers, cause I'm trowing it away anyways and then it doesn't go to waste, it gets eaten or recycled.

I just got word my step mom died from suicide. I've never had to deal with a family member death that I knew. Hasn't sunk in yet but any advice for this process would be appreciated.

@XYZ Lots of food for thought and points I found triggering. You have hit on a very sad but crucial concern of our times, the epic rise in male suicide. I think your points about how men process emotion leading to social expectation and isolation are key. I lost a good friend to suicide last year, he was such a top bloke, one the best, little did we know he was suffering. Trying to understand and contemplate why he chose to do this is still difficult process. I agree that some women struggle to feel positively about themselves and perhaps that is also to do with role models, cultural context and social conditioning. Question is, how to we address this imbalance?

This seems like a good place to share my recent thoughts on why women have more emotional challenges, but why men kill themselves more often. These are speculative generalizations of course, but useful and open to feedback. Raw uncut and open to constructive criticism: 1. Woman are made to be mothers. For most of human history, and all life on earth, reproduction was the primary goal of life, and our brains are still wired this way even if we don't want to have children at all ever in the current year. The more I learn about female psychology, it seems like every typical female personality traits serves the specific purpose of reproduction and child rearing, as well as procuring resources from men to endure her and her offsprings' survival. All the ways in which women can seem so irrational, impulsive, deluded, manipulative and just batshit crazy (from the male perspective) served evolutionary purposes that enabled them to bear and raise the next generations of humans through the harshest conditions they faced. Every aspect of the female body is also specifically designed for giving birth, comfort and nourishment, and this becomes very evident when I watched videos of women having unassisted births at home or outdoors. That's apparent why women are so limber and flexible compared to men, because they have to be in order to grow a human being inside of them and then squeeze it out. So since the female psychology and physiology is designed for attracting mates, giving birth and raising children, and this is a base desire most women have whether they realize it or not, women often suffer emotionally because they aren't in like with their true nature. Not saying all women secretly want to be baby making machines, I know there is lots of variation, being non-gender-typical myself. Nevertheless I'm assuming it is a common phenomenon, and even most fertile age women who consciously do not want kids subconsciously do and have cognitive dissonance between their lifestyle and deepest desires. Meanwhile the male desire is primarily for having sex regardless if it's for reproduction or recreation. Despite the tendency for preoccupation with sex though, male minds and bodies are designed more for direct personal survival, task completion and abstract reasoning. While the goal of it all was the same end of procreation, since men do not have an active role in the process other than that of inseminator, men have a much much easier time adapting to a world in which they can't or don't want to have children for practical reasons. I consider myself a compassionate antinatalist because almost everyone born after today will probably end up suffering greatly from climate change and resource scarcity. Men seem to agree with me that it makes sense not to have kids unless you're both wealthy and psychologically well suited to be a father. I don't think I could convince women not to want to have children though, because that instinct is such a deeply ingrained part of who they are, and environmental or economic conditions wouldn't dissuade them from wanting to fulfill that drive. 2. Double-feeling and emotional bubbles. While women have the capacity for rational thinking, our evolutionary history as well as present conditions make it so that they never learn to develop this ability, because they never needed to. The nature of the feminine is to react emotionally to their environment, something most useful for caring for helpless infants and young children. But this mode of reacting emotionally can allow women to fall into psychological traps created by their own feelings. Furthermore when a women has a strong emotional reaction, she may perceive the way she reacted as an objective reality, and then ascribe additional feelings to what she believes happened. This is what I call double-feel, emotionally reacting to an emotional reaction, and is also why women don't cope well with trauma, because they are burdened by layers of emotional reaction which continue to build up long after physically healing and mentally coming to terms with past events. Also, because a woman's psyche is constructed out of emotional meanings, it is more difficult for her to overcome emotional problems, because they are embedded in the fabric of her reality. Men can work through their emotional issues by thinking about them and deconstructing their value systems, shedding meanings and abstractions until they get down to the root causes. But since the layers of abstraction women see their world through are based on her feelings, she needs to be empathized with where she is at emotionally, and gradually become aware of herself and work through those layers in order to heal. This explains why men will talk about how to fix things, while women will generally talk about their feelings; men want to be helpful and understood, women want to feel emotionally validated and supported. However, women empathizing with each other can also make them all worse off when they adopt a low-consciousness hivemind in an emotional bubble. Women who get off on sharing their negative feelings with one another, lamenting their shortcomings, complaining, self-deprecating, etc. can fall into a downward spiral of negativity. But it can work the same way with positive feelings, sharing self-praises to the point it forms a bubble of overconfident delusional narcissism. 3. Men have more drug problems and suicide rates because they receive little support. Women may be a lot more vulnerbale to things like depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, body dysmorphic disorder, PTSD, loneliness etc, but they are able to talk about their feelings with each other and men also. Both men and women, as well as the education, mental health system and culture at large place high value on womens' feelings and overall well-being. In contrast men receive little empathy from others, and their emotional suffering is not taken seriously. Men generally see each other as individuals and competition, not part of a collective as women tend to, so they don't concern themselves with each others' feelings, that is a type of intimate conversation reserved for female lovers, therapists, close friends and family. And if they don't have any such connections to people they can feel emotionally vulnerable with, men just repress their feeling and carry around lots of emotional baggage. Except if they have a very close friends or other close relationships, men are generally alone in the world, both emotionally and physically. To illustrate, women often complain about how their peers will constantly criticize theirs and each others' appearances and behavior, which is seen as being mean or bullying. On the other hand, if a man is doing something weird, annoying or creepy, no one is going to tell him about it because they just avoid him, and he can be very unaware of himself in this regard. I remember once in high school I asked a friend why people don't like me, he pointed out many annoying and creepy things I was doing for years that I was unaware of, and then was able to finally recognize and change them. Men having empathy for other men would help a lot with reducing everyday suffering of fellow man, but because male psychology works differently, the female approach to talking about feelings would not work well. This is true for me, when asked to talk about feelings, it feels like a contrived effort to slap labels onto things I had experienced more directly, and this just creates more abstractions and mental clutter that's counterproductive to "sorting myself out." While men talking about their feelings together or with a woman can offer temporary comfort, men need to experience genuine solitude to really figure themselves out, to work through mental and emotional baggage. The problem is that most men never have to face true alone-ness, or when they do, they can't surrender it, instead coloring it with the feeling of loneliness. By alone I mean physically and mentally by one's self, and lots of men don't even have the luxury of being away from people, despite lacking any meaningful relationships. And those who are completely by themselves often can't peel themselves away from media long enough to go deeply inward. So because men have much less support in their lives from people and institutions, and are faced with the contradictory habit of desperately trying to avoid feeling alone while being alone holds the key to their emotional healing, they often turn to substance or behavior addictions to distract themselves, or resort to suicide because they don't see any other way to overcome their suffering. Another factor for suicide being higher for men is simply material or financial, because government agencies, family and friends tend to be more supportive of women who can't support themselves. While men are not given the same opportunities, told to simply man up and figure it out, and they feel guilty and ashamed of being a burden on others when they can't provide for themselves, so suicide seems like a logical choice for many. These were just sorting out my thoughts, not intended as any advice. But now 2 points I could conclude with are that: Men should stop being afraid to ask for help in life, and not pretend their needs are any less important because they have a dick and balls. Men also need to take time regularly to be in solitude, completely by themselves, and learn to understand and master their own thoughts and feelings. Women can take agency over their feelings, consciously choose to feel positively of themselves, and not blame other people for their own emotional states.

**If you yourself haven’t actually surrendered to your own death, died and experienced God/Truth/Infinity, I request you not comment, as you’re in the same boat as me, all conceptional and non-experience based opinion.** --------------------------------------------------------------------- Leo, If everything in life is imaginary and I (God, whom I’ve yet to realize in actuality) am creating this eternal moment, then that should mean that everything I heard about death is false and just as illusionary as everything else. So if I am immortal and eternal, then my (the Identity Ego) death is as inconsequential as waking from a dream. But everything the Ego is about is survival, staying alive, so how do I commit to my death, when everything I am doesn’t want to die? Is it a leap of faith? You have to have the will to die, commit suicide, commit fully to the end of your existence, standing strong in the faith that enlightenment is on the other side of that committed choice? I was an Atheist all my life, up until I discovered Nonduality, so death being the end of existence is still deeply ingrained (all a story I created, I know), even if I now know that I cannot die, at least in theory via stories from other people. The key is I need to experience myself as Nonduality, to finally ‘know’ Truth/God/Infinity/Omnipotence. But to do that I need to fully commit to my death. Otherwise I’ll just fight death with everything I’ve got to fight it off, to stay alive at all costs (including my Awakening and liberation). Which is what happened last time I did 5-MeO. Now I’m trying it again, and want to not fight it to stay alive, but to fully surrender to experience Truth. But how can I if everything in my Identity is trying to stay alive? Catch 22 is it not? How does one commit and surrender to their death if everything they are does not want to die? How does one commit suicide (Ego death thru psychedelics like 5-MeO or DPT), if they desperately want to live? I know you and others say it’s not real death, that you’ll come back after, but I don’t know that for 100% sure. I mean from everything I’ve studied over that past 2 years tell me I will come back, but I won’t know for sure until I experience it for myself. Even if I was 95% sure, that 5% would prevent me from committing to surrender of my life to death. In Nonduality, everyone says the goal is to actually not come back. The goal IS my death. So again, how do I surrender to death, without just saying ‘you just do it”, how do I have the will to commit suicide (again, talking Identity Ego death, which is apparently the same thing as conceptual death)? I’m 44 and have spent decades doing every drug I could get my hands on. I’ve done LSD and mushrooms hundreds of times, I’ve done hash, Ketamine, Nitrous, 5-MeO-DIPT, Ayahuasca. I’ve even done 5-Meo a few times, to little affect. About half of these experiences lead to me having a panic attack, thinking I’m dying and trying to fight to not die. But these drug experiences were all to enhance my reality. And 5-Meo is about ending it. So all those past drug experiences are not relevant to this equation. Is surrendering to death on 5-MeO the same as surrendering to a drug? Letting the drug take you wherever it wants. Is this surrender the same as surrendering to death? I know conceptually that all those past experiences never really happened, as my past experiences are imaginary (apparently), but I won’t know that for sure, until I Awaken. But those hundreds of instances of panic attacks and fighting to not die, are real to me, as I’m an Ego, thinks his past is real. So you see the catch-22 / vicious circle? How do I trust, when the request is my very death and the end of my life? I don’t know if I have that much trust in me, to gamble with my life. So what advice is there to be able to choose that trust, to take that leap of faith, to chose to chose to end my life? How do I trust that if I kill myself, I’ll Awaken to Truth/Liberation/Enlightenment, and not just be ending my consciousness, potentially robbing myself of maybe another 40 years of a decent, it not flawed life? Now I’ve learned that the only way to Awakening/ Truth is to be in that same space of feeling like I’m dying, panicking again, but this time I have to choose to die, instead of trying to save myself. But how can I do that, willfully commit, surrender to my death? How can I choose to die, when I can’t, cause my very survival and life is all that matters to me? Could really use some advice on this.

I strongly disagree. Yes, there's only one consciousness, and each of our minds are appearances within that. Yes, infinite consciousness is totally alone, but you as a person are not. This solipsistic preaching needs to stop as it is downright dangerous and causes people lots of suffering which puts them off spirituality and, in extreme cases, drives them to suicide. I've discussed this point on here until I am blue in the face and then people will try to tell me that there are other perspectives, the very same people who keep spouting that you are all alone and you've dreamt up your whole family just to feel connected. They will also tell you to do things like selfless service and love others. If your solipsistic worldview was true, there would be totally no point helping another person, the only actions worth performing would be those necessary to ensure your own survival in your miserable lonely life.

Yea, it's the same problem with me , and I think with many people who watch his videos. We can't do much by knowing that the universe is our imagination. If the universe is our imagination, then why can't we stop the universe dead on it's tracks. Like I can imagine stories, I can imagine me flying over the hills and mountains, or fighting dragons and trolls, I can play out a story in my head, and then I can stop the entire imagination at once. So something similar should happen. Likewise, another 'property' of imagination is that everything should be popped out at will. I can imagine a forest coming out of nowhere, or there is a Lion in my room. It pops out in my imagination whenever I want to. But in reality that is not happening. Nothing is popping out at all. And likewise, if we are imagining, then why would we create immense suffering on ourselves? Why do many people die of terrorism, commit suicide due to abuse, cause extreeeeeeeme amount of suffering on themselves if it was all their imagination. The problem doesn't stop there , Leo says- "All of human history, is your imagination, if you don't think about it , it doesn't exist" Well, I am quite certain that I exist as I am typing this up lying on my bed, in my dell laptop, and I am also certain, that many people in the future will not be thinking about me, because I am no Caesar or Napoleon, so does that I mean I do not exist at all because the people in the future will not be thinking about me? Again it's absurd. I think Leo should use a different word instead of the word 'imagination', there should be a different terminology. May be 'dreaming unconsciously' ? May be we (the god) are unconsciously dreaming stuffs into existence, such that we (the living organism) suffers by ourselves? So I think, even if Leo says that we, or he is imagining stuffs, I don't think there is much he can do. He still doesn't have the power like law of attraction, he cannot become a billionaire by imagining he has a billion dollars and suddenly it manifests into existence. He can say 'the universe is our imagination' hundred times, but I don't think any thing even slightly new will happen. He still has to earn money, run actualized.org, eat food etc. He is exactly at the same spot he started from. All we can do is do the spiritual work, experience the spirit, and that's it, nothing more nothing less. Everything else remains the same. Exactly the same.

@Leo Gura This is exactly the feeling I get to. I get to the point where I realize that even suicide would be thought that would have never even existed or mattered so its beyond that. It terrifies me. I don't see a way for me to totally accept this type of death without maybe more deeper contemplation or examining this fear more. I am too content and happy with my current reality to surrender into what feels like it will be an actual total death. Is the only way to go deeper to allow this what feels like a total real death to occur or can I somehow learn to dismantle the fear of death to sort of get past the fear itself?

@Leo Gura Phycedelics damage the body and make it unsuitable for life, thus leaving the physical body. If you "bite the forbidden apple" you go straight to hell because you have no ability to discern reality and you believe your hallucinations and fantasy as being actual. If you really know that omnipresence is the non-dual conciousness, you can begin to explore this through the anahata path, unless you want to commit suicide by drugs...

I dont recommend or discourage enlightenment. Its not a cutting edge diet plan. Those who are meant to get it, those with necessary dispassion and introspective samskaras(latent tendencies) as opposed to extroverted samskaras, will get it when the time is right. Enlightenment doesn't harvest a goodie nor does it solve the human problem. It simply dissolves that human and the whole 'chabang' that goes with it (as the inlightened nonduality warlord likes to use that word ?) But unfortunately most "spiritual teachers" wouldn't spill all the beans due to marketing issues. I mean who in the world would sign up for a teaching for suicide. Virtually none. Many would definitely romanticize about it, but not the real deal. I merely try not to spread misconception and maybe show a signpost here and there for those with doubts.

People losing touch with their center and thus the circumference of their lives will collapse. More neorosis, depression, meaninglessness, anxiety, worldwide suicide, fake masks over fake masks, chaos and finally subsequent reconciliation ?☺??

You might as well have substituted the word "assume" for "imagine", for linguistic efficiency. While on some level what Leo says is correct, it lacks a notion of utility in a restricted existence such as humans are compelled to live within. I wonder if I could get Leo to consider a medical condition called Dejerine-Roussy syndrome, a condition which occurs on occasion after a stroke affecting the thalamus and results in unremitting pain which can be unresponsive to treatment and often results in the sufferer if capable committing suicide. Is their suffering real, egoic or based on an attachment to a pain-free existence? I have used psychedelics for 30+ years and what I have learned is that these tools do not provide gnosis of an end-point, and whilst novel and revelatory, they are better regarded as akin to a chisel which allows you to "sculpt" your life as the intrinsic part of "the process" that it is. I also wonder how Leo will regard much of what he now says in 5 years time. Humour me, because I do recognise that "time doesn't exist".

Hello everyone, my name is M4sti for you, and i am coming from Greece. i am 27 years old. The past two years of my life, i am trying as hard as i can to find a path for me. And i decided this is the best site to make a shot at, after long time of investigation and thinking. I lived all the other years of my life being the ultimate impersonation of nihilism while not being conscious about it the whole time, all resulting from a period of my 15-17 where i had severe depression , panic attacks and extreme psyschosomatic symptoms, resulting from??(Ego blames narcissistic parenting). Some symptoms nature was so physical and real that still to this day i can not believe how the mind had created them without a pathological problem in the backround, i remember one day , after every 3-4 heartbeats, and so with the third or fourth heartbeat i was feeling the blood going through my necks veins with so much density and bulkiness that someone could see the veins are throbbing from 30 metres with naked eye, i put my hand to my chest and no surprise, this was happening because the heart , again, every 3-4 heartbeats, was stopping for maybe even up to 1.2-1.3 seconds and then it was giving a beat so hard that would throw my hand away from it. When this happened i had already visited any doctor possible i already knew the response of me complaining about this stuff is gonna be mockery and anger from my enviroment. I gave up everything, i gave up life completely and my ego was constructed in such a way were nothing was a goal anymore, it was just day in day out, eat, sleep, movies, porn, video games a tone, you get the notion. I remember this stories every time my Ego's current situation gets cornered , same thing happened when i dropped the university were somehow i endend up with no real intentions , after spending years doing nothing the time had come , and the truth was gonna be revealed, i was not doing anything there , absolutely anything else than satisfying this sick Ego, and letting the familly know would lead to qonsequences that it would not like. Then the insanity unfolded, i created a story, a story to blame everyone else instead of myself, to keep this as short as possible, 1) I concluded that mother is the ultimate narcissist and is ressponsible for me being this way and for my earlier psychosis. 2) As if this was not even enough i started making insane thoughts that all the symptoms were physically imposed by her to me , this is called Mynchausen by Proxy when a caregive intentionally causes harm to the one he is responsible for in order to gain sympathy attention etc. from now on i will speak for both of this thoughts that i have and why they make appeal to me(2nd) and absolutely certainty for first. 1)Before it all spontaneously happened i was actually fearless, the roles were reversed, mother was worrying about my health, and i was making fun of her, the thought that something can happen to me never ever crossed my mind. 2)This syndrome is way more common among narcissists.And people who were neglected by their own parents, for the first, no i am not clinical psychologist and this test needs two years, but i bet everything, if the best doctor came out and said she is not, he does not have aproxximately an infinite amount of information i do have on her through my life. For the second part , she told me the story of my grandies neglecting (exact word ) her... she failed suicide 2 times by extremely luck , for some reasons she only trusted that to me and nobody else knows. 3) First day of the events, look now some insane coinsidences, i was not allowed for no reason to sleep at the bottom house(and repeatedly) (every other time it was no problem). Started feeling unease, tried to communicate her from my bed to the other room where she was in, it was 30 past midnight,she was awake, i did not know what was happening to me i was feeling very weird, my heart was beating very fast, a bit of sweat, and an alteration of aweress which is hard to describe presicely. She guessed it, tachycardia, said yes, she told my father, after a while i started having spasms in my whole body and i went to the hospital, did all the checks and everything was fine. 4) Meets the bahaviour of the incentive. All the time, every time she got first talk to the doctors, sided the doctors, spoke for my symptoms for me instead of me, "nah he is prolly feeling this and not describing it well" "he is just a bit tired and nervous", by changing the tone of the voice down 5 notch softer(PSYCHOPATH)(does this all the time even now when she has to change from personal (to us,familly) to social(everybody else). Was on the phone with every single friend of her for hours, talking about how poor little thing is having a mental break down, and how hard it is to care for him and what she was going through, in front of me, who was supposed to be going through nothing.. , to me it looked like she was looking for this, for everyone to tell her how hard this is, she was chasing it, no way was focusing on the problem itself. 5) Physicality of symptoms as i explained before, after all of this i had tachykardia for the rest of my life, but wait a minute, there is a huge difference, there was something extremely mechanical in the first few times, specially the second and the third, it was looking purely mechanical, i was litterally not feeling bad or anything, i would feel my heart beating like crazy without feeling anxious, and i would change position in the bed to maybe make it stop as it was something trivial( was told was fine after first time in hospital). 6) History of early childhood, poor boy , seeing it from my point of view now i can see more clearly ,i was under a 22 year old woman who tried to kill herself just 5 years ago.Guess she was in no position to raise a child,not to talk about emotional stability. 1) So what do i have here that makes my mind go wild, i remember having nightmares with my own mother, i dont know if i was even 3-4 years old, this dream felt like reality, it had a vivid feeling it was lucid , some guys broke into our house, and they came to kill her, and they did, then her spirit came over the place i was normally sleeping but feeling awake, and told me that this happened because of me, that it is my fault. And i felt like shit. 2) This one is beyond crazy , beyond, what i know for sure is that my mother was sitting in the living room discussing with her friend and i entered the place, and i said something , i said the word that means slut , i am very young there still, 4 years maybe, but i have another vivid memory, this all came to me when i was trying meditation for first time and self-hypnosis, i originally had forgotten about this incident at all , something told me that she set it up, as a memory, her spelling in my ears while i was playing with some toys, that when *** comes to the house, come and say "slut". It ended up with me getting a slap so hard its impossible to forget, the other woman was stunished, she said are you fucking crazy how you hit the child like that, my mother said, well you dont know what he said, he called me a slut, i left the room, but if i am not sure of the memory of her putting the words to me, i remember super clearly that i had no clue of what happened and why, as if i did absolutely nothing to deserve that , and not knowing the value of the word. 3) I was sleeping in the same bed with her, i was having a bad dream that i do not remember, and what i did was, i grabbed her hair and started pulling her violently (not conscious of reason) , she woke up in shock and asked what the fuck i was doing, i said i thought it was brother, 3 years younger, which for some reason i thought until my adolescense it was perfectly fine to hit him at every chanse until we grew a lot older , you see i was already a devil. 4) 3 incidents of hallucinations that are extremely hard to explain their causes. 2 of them when i was 7-8. It was all starting with a fever , then my head was in pain, mother did put me in bed, i was not conscious that i was human by that time , i was hearing airplanes and bombs , radio playing some weird incoherent speech, but all this sounds were not normal the sound field was altered heavily, making it look impossible to distinguish sources of sounds with sound itself, it was like sound as a sensation was covering the 90% of the awerness, the visual field was messed up as well, the ceiling was half ceiling half sky sometimes random objects will fly trhough that space , there where black colors like objects constantly changing their position and size by vibrating violently all over the place, covering the whole 3d visual field, meaning that i could see 15 of them between me and what it seemed to be ceiling.Yes of course mother was aware of that, and when i told her if there was war on the Tv i just remember a small laugh and asking me why i ask that then nothing. The other one i dont remember when it was, maybe close days by, maybe same day even. I was again at the bed , consiousness was extremely altered than normal and than the previous incident, the state of this concsiousness is just undesrcibable, but i have an event , i tried to reach the door, i was feeling that i had to go for toilet, but something crazy happened, when i walked throuth the carpet, i got stuck, i was moving my feet to walk, but it seemed like there was no floor, or the carpet was slipping infinitely below my feet, like this joke you see in comics where somebody is staying in the same place because instead of him moving forward the carpet beneath his feet is taking the motion. and it lasted for one minute or so, i also noticed while i was stucked in the same place, with my altered consciousness and awerness that my movements were mental projections, and that my body was actually still the whole time like by purpose, so i was seeing 2 hands, and 2 other legs that were emerging from the body and were trying to move and one other body that was still, and i started to run, and the legs and hands were going faster and faster but they were not the hands and legs of the "real body i guess?" they had no control, the real body was staying there like it was frozen and nobody was inside it to do something., but there was no visual distinction between the extensions, they were looking exactly the same, even though everything was lookingextremely different than normal already. I fell down , i got up and finally opened the door and felt like i was inside the body and in control again, went back to sleep because...there is nothing else possible to do in this state i guess and then i cant remember what happened next. The last one i was older,like 10, i was at school and i had a crazy headache, i asked permission to leave but got denied, when i went for house after some hours i dropped to my bed feeling sick, i was dreaming about video games, i woke up and had double vission, and dizziness, my mother was on the floor, that stance where you use the wall to keep your back up and your legs straight on the floor, she told me where i was going, i said toilet but she got triggered imidiately, i was seeing everything double, when i tried to get back to the bed i lost consciousness completely, i woke up lying on the couch, and my mom was calling my father to rush home because i collapsed, and stayed this way for 5 minutes, she said my eyes rolled back and stayed open for a while , showing completely white, what is crazy here is that when i woke up, i was feeling like i could go for football just for fun or do anything , no scared, no bad mood, not anxious , nothing, i was saying to her to calm down and that i am fine. Everything just magically dissapeared somehow and i was completely healthy from not being able to speak coherently. 5) This woman has shown psychotic behaviour that if she was to be played by an actor the actor would suicide faster than Ledger. i guess you should have guessed by now that she was extremely physical when we were younger, i remember her stinging my brother with her hand while cringing her teeth like a total psycho and i got scared not for him but she could break her own teeth for real, like she was drawing energy from his pain, one time it felt like she became another self, a self that was 5 years old and for like 10 seconds the act was unconceivable to my mind, it was litterally what happened , what the hell was this there was no reaction possible to do, our familly is a madhouse in denial, we meet all the criteria for the narcissistic familly, the father is just her pawn, he is just absent and not enganging with anything ,unless she says something must happen, then he just bends to her will like he is not even a real person. + a tone but this already got huge. When i got interested, like 3 years ago to investigate this again , and snapped out of my filthy pleasure cycle. I just said, ok i can see, maybe all that happened is because of our relationship, and the way she treated me, all the dissonanse , the injustice, the feeling why the hell is this happening, this is not how familly is supposed to be, all the projection she does on me, blaming my character etc, i said ok i understand , i just need a plan to escape all of this now and do something for me, and forgive, but when i thought of the case of the intention, i lost my mind completely, everything came to surface, i had done nothing for myself, no studies no self investment no work not skills, ultimately nothing, and my mind started believing it , i believed that there was intention from her by medicince or what the hell, and i went blank, for first time i realized how suicide was possible, i thought there is no way someone can suicide in almost under any circumstanse, but my feet like they were seperate for me, they wanted to move for the balcony, i could not believe , it was the hardest urge to resists ever, i went out for a walk , the next days were horrible. No matter what is the truth of this story, no matter who is ressponsible. This is the place where i finally found some peace, channels like Leo's , Teal Swan, the term meditation and getting some knowledge around it by itself, Alan Watts, i would have been done for completely, because no matter what is truth after all, i would never see it like this, i would have lost the game completely, for me it is sure that my Ego is the devil, thats the last thing i would have thought by myself, basically i would never seperate myself from it, thats more important i think, because in the end i was already bashing my Ego but through the perspective of the Ego. It feels like my mission is to kill my potential in every way possible or even myself, even if "others" tried i only helped them. That is the best description of my reality at this moment, there is no better languange possible to use, a languange that atheists and most people do not use to describe reality very often. By the way the tone of this writting, has not big emotional invenstement in it even if it looks like so, i describe everything as if i am seeing it from third person perspective now. It is more a matter of wondering, contemplation, what does it all mean, so i can use it only for benefit in the future, it is just a story that i can get aware of its meaning , and if i get aware of it i will just move on, and live at now. But there is really nobody to discuss this with. There is this bitterness, the kid had potential, like real potential, i was writting sentences at 3 years old, i was reading , i trolled my father intentionally , i went in front of him and read the newspaper backwards without mumbling a bit and he started running like crazy screaming. They told me i was a genius, not smart, they said i was special, i was years ahead of my peers and i should skip classes. But the virus was already there, and it was growing and growing under my awerness. Now i feel like a low consciousness abomination in comparrison to what i should have been by now, i feel my IQ is 1/10 of what could have been , my life experiences my skills everything. I tried to make something happen, i had an idea , i started playing Poker with the dream of making it big, and doing the great escape, and maybe even a comeback later, that was it, if i can make this, i can use the money to study something i like, or live a life the way that i like by being independent, but through that mind state and psychology i was in , compined with how hard of a sport it is , the time and mental invenstment it needs for mastery, let alone the money that i do not have. It is a miracle how it did not destroy me even further, i was into it, it was another addiction, i stopped video games that made me tilt and go monkey and replaced it with Poker. All and all i made about 10.000$. Which i spend on survival needs and rent. So there is only one work to do, and that is self-invenstment, and it looks like this is what this forum is about.Even with my limited knowledge as a newbie i have experienced how the mind can change in a profound way , when i follow my simple meditation for a week or so, 1 hour per day, i am already something else and completely changed, i feel calmer, less neurotic,maybe it makes sense that if you are in the bottom it could be beginers gains. I have a programm and a plan, involving a lots of work. Fixing my sleep schedule, fitness, health, studying about spirituality, working on spirituality, studying poker, working on poker, pretty much same goes for everything and lot more. Any advice would be helpfull,ir you can ask anything you like. I would like to see what you think of all of this and what is your interpetantion

I want to self-actualize myself yet in my house with my parents, I feel pressured to lie about my identity and hide my true opinions, feelings and lifestyle from them. I love 80's rock,try to practice spirituality sometimes and sometimes see the world through a non-dual lense Yet, through this progression, I'm always pulled back to egoism, lying, scheming, manipulation, anger, sweating, cursing, negativity, sometimes breaking things and/or punching myself out of anger, and extreme anxiety, boredom, unsatisfaction and fear. Because of the fact that my parents are so demanding that we live and breath strict right wing conservative Christian values, and act like dictators in that, Bags and rooms are sometimes searched for weed and threatened to be kicked out if found out. Never allowed to voice my own opinions, thaughts on things or voice disagreement. 1. Freedom of speech is banned 2. There is NO freedom of religion or freedom from discrimination based on religion 3. Protection from unwarranted search and seizure 4. Freedom of belief or world view 5. Right to Criticize or peacefully protest You are always pressed and searched before we go out anywhere, Where we're going, how long we'll be out, what time we'll be home, what in my pockets, what did I buy? It's just so frustrating! And I always feel suffocated and like I have to lie. And also, sometimes I do wonder if I am a bi-sexial guy and if I could experiment. That's obviously not something I can talk about either considering I'd probably be kicked out for just asking. And lastly, I feel too ashamed and guilty to even meditate or be spiritual because I sometimes feel like I'm just spitting on the face of spirituality through all my lying scheming manipulating swearing cursing and letting my anger get to me at times. The reason I put this in the self actualization column and not family situation is that I want advice for how I can effectively be me and self actualize while still not having to worry about my parents kick me out. Because I'm fairly sure if that happens, my entire life will be over as in, I may any hope for a good future, end up homeless not wanting to be taken in by my friends for too long or maybe, maybe... Be so devastated I'd commit physical suicide.