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Much of academic psychology is pretty crude. It certainly won't incorporate spiritual or mystical insights. But there's some value in it. What you really want is transpersonal psychology, humanistic psychology, positive psychology. Or just straight up spirituality, mysticism, and nonduality.

You need to contemplate\do some self-inquiry, it's not a nonduality nonsense, It's just questioning all your beliefs you hold about reality and Self

The difficulty speaking about nonduality is that language is dual. Every statement you make about nonduality, you would need to also say it's the opposite (at the very least). Every word you use is dual (it is not another word). Balancing every statement out becomes tiresome and nonsensical. In your example: "Non-duality only exists without thought" AND "Non-duality only exists with thought" One way to balance this out is to turn each statement back on itself: "The idea nonduality only exists without thought IS the idea nonduality only exists without thought." This is only a half-step, yet it can highlight that each of your statements is saying X is Y. By turning the statement back on itself we are saying X is X. At best, we can only point to nonduality with partial truths. That is why zen monks often have nonsensical answers to students' questions. To break the mind's obsession with language, reason and images. When asked "What is nonduality?" a zen monk might drop an apple to the floor, he might ask the student "what was your face before you were born?", he may slap the student across the face or he may fart and giggle. The words and actions are just pointers. Yet, the mind can still become attached and analyze. . . "Hmmm, was nonduality the fart or the giggle? Maybe nonduality is the integration of fart and giggle. No, perhaps nonduality is the transcendence of the fart to humor. Yet, what if the giggle came before the fart? Could nonduality be the transcendence of the giggle? . . . And on and on and on for months, years, decades. . . Don't get attached and bogged down with the words. Don't waste months or years of your time chasing farts and giggles. Direct experience of nonduality is 1 million times more powerful than any words.

Is describing the experience of fear with language the same as the experience itself of fear? Clearly not. Language is just symbols to represent something. It comes in handy as we navigate through life. From a nondualistic perspective, every word is NOT another word and is thus dualistic. That's why it's so hard to speak about nonduality. It's like the words are an arm pointing to "IT". Yet, the arm appears to be pointing at nothing. The arm are the words. People get sooo caught up on the arm (words). They dissect and analyze the arm (words). They argue over what the arm is made of. They can spend their whole life obsessed with the arm and never awaken to what the arm is pointing to.

Hello, I had a similar experience that led to psychosis and hospitalization, you can read about it here: I hope there are some insights here that you can relate to, one of the primary motifs being doubt, and how it turned psychosis into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The doubt that sets in when everyone around you convinces you that what you experienced is not real, even though it felt more real than anything you've experienced in your life. The medication reinforces this, as if a reality of eating and sleeping all day were acceptable. Everyone here is giving great advice, and it does sound likely that there is some trauma that needs to be faced head on slowly but without yield. There certainly was for me, and my psychosis was the quick and violent way of resolving this trauma completely. If I have to give any advice, its to educate yourself on nonduality/spirituality/etc until you see that the label of mental illness can only do harm and needs to be dropped completely. You are doing hard work that needs to be done, but we also can't succumb to delusion and think that the answer lies within a certain ideology, religion, or science. Realize that this is all different language to explain the same thing, and the only one who can give proscriptions on how to live is you. Question everything that gives you an easy answer. When you are ready, I recommend tapering off medication SLOWLY, and only tell others afterwards when they can see that this is good for you and you are doing better. I halved my 20mg of olanzapine every 2 or so weeks, and in the end I realized that life was so much better than it was pre-psychosis. I have induced the "psychosis" several times since then, and each time I become more comfortable with the idea that this can only bring good to myself and others. I have learned to adapt my language to other's understanding, and if you meet others where they are they will not fear you. Everyone has an idea of God and spirituality, but literally saying "I am God" triggers the red flags of mental illness in their minds. Despite the Christian-dominated culture we live in, we still crucify Jesus every time he shows his face. You need support though in order to get through the doubts and fear of relapse, and we're here for you.

@Nahm You speak some truth. Maybe seeing nonduality as a state delegitimizes the overarching truth of it all, as if nonduality was a subset of the unquestionable ego. I can not help but distinguish however, that there are moments when the ego is present, and when it is not. This is a distinction that needs to be deconstructed with time. You say there are no beliefs, and I agree that when the ego is absent there are no need for beliefs, but the ego needs belief in order to feel safe in the vast unknown without fear. I know I eventually need to be at a place where I can simply 'let go', but the ego is not ready to let go, and I shouldn't ignore that feeling. There are loose ends that need to be tied up for the ego to accept that it is no longer needed to protect me like a worried mother, and make sure I don't make the same mistakes as last time and end up in a mental hospital or homeless. It needs to know that if life were a dream of my own creation, I would love it and everything in it, never harm it. And if the time came that the ego took hold again, I need to know that everything will be okay and there is no need for depression; that I will make it back in time. I cannot simply cut off the ego cold turkey, instead respect it as if it were another person, love it, and accept it until it can let go consensually.

@zunnyman She did not have any proper theoretical foundation so she misinterpreted her awakening as something wrong. Seems to me that she did this for so long and so severely that she ended up causing her own brain cancer. If she had access to some of the videos on Actualized.org, she would have been fine I think. It took her many years to find some realized teachers to help straighten her out. Consider yourselves lucky that you're alive in the age of Youtube and a flood of free nonduality videos. Where you can literally go to Google and find the answer to any question or problem you might ever have in life. People take this ability so for granted. In a world full of insane people, when you become sane, but have no one to talk to about it, you might find yourself thinking you've gone insane.

@d0ornokey It's very challenging. Western philosophers are masters at weaving together genius and bullshit. Best to stick to modern nonduality teachers for the most of you. So you don't waste your time. The books on my book list are what you should be focused on reading and mastering. You'll notice, I don't put a lot of philosophy books on there.

@Serotoninluv so your saying the way to stop caring about what people think of me i have to remove me out of the equation? Listen man, I wanna be some sort of a CEO, someone who has the balls and carelessness about what others think of him to go out there and fuck the world, i dont wanna become a fucking monk or guru. I just want to know How to not give a shit about what others think, im sure theres a way to do just that without having to achieve nonduality.

Honestly, though, a lot of the experiences you describe when talking about nonduality and stuff are actually the same as some mental disorders that even have a name. These spiritual experiences have always been there for thousands of years but are still considered mental disorders today, why ???

There is such a stigma over 'mental health'. I mean Jesus how do you explain 'this' to a psychotherapist and doctors who are totally entranced and asleep, a total unquestioning alliance to materialism and an objective reality which doesn't even exist, if you QUESTION that fact, address anything metaphysical with a professional doctor or psychotherapist and they are liable to question your sanity. Why, OP, are we concerning ourselves with their opinions. What they call psychosis, and what qualifies you as a 'looney', would apply to nearly all of our conversations here in this place according to western psychology, this entire civilization is built on archaic and erroneous Roman catholic and protestant Christian principles. @Leo Gura Do you think your average psychotherapist or medical doctor/surgeon would accept your views on metaphysics? What about your view on pyschedelics, nonduality? What do they really think of meditation and spirituality I wonder? Edit: This experience also shows that guidance isnt a bad idea. It's like a bottle under intense pressure, my God OP I really can relate to your experience. Once its shaken lose a bit, it can have an explosive effect, the 'psychosis' is an important time of awakening for the shaman. He must purge large amounts of psychic debris from his field. It could be lifetimes of suppressed darkness, not allowed to rise to awareness, always being shoved back down. And also, @Leo Gura this might be more common than you think, read SN Goenkas book about vipassana, there are parts in there about situations like these, and it commonly happens towards the end of the retreat, which is why they put so much emphasis on completion. They claim it's very dangerous to leave in a bad mental state, you MUST go through it. I really am not surprised by this and really seems to be business as usual. Have you ever seen a faith healing or Christian mystics? This isn't a huge deal, but like I said it's because of the STIGMA with mental health 'disorder'.

@LaraGreenbridge I had never been interested in nonduality or enlightenment. I created my life just like you did. It sounds wonderful btw. ? I never had a teacher, but I can understand what you’re saying. That’s really great that you can see the beneficial aspect in things. Takes a lot of life to get there. ? From what I’ve seen, nonduality is not a tool for anything, or useful to any specific application of life. It’s the journey that matters, the joy & the pain. Life.

@Emanyalpsid The explanations on that website are very materialistic and dualistic. I don't see a proper explanation there of what the universe or reality is. There is no physical universe. That is just a concept. The universe did not originate from nothing, it is nothing. There is also no such thing as perception. There is also no such thing as consciousness inside a body. Consciousness is not dependent on reality. Reality and consciousness are identical. Seems like you may have realized no-self, but not the Absolute nature of reality. There are many depths of enlightenment and nonduality, so be careful.

Go into that. Reality is not cold & deterministic. There’s a denial of reality there, and a freedom revealed for facing it. Thought is sneaky. There are no discrepancies. There is thought being tricky. An a priori “ I “ is required first for there to then be decoherence and confusion. Deconstruct beliefs, they aren’t true, they’re belief. Freedom. Go into it, decipher the messages of sensations. Disregarding is the panic, disregarding fragments. Awareness can not by divided, thinking creates an appearance of this, then there’s more “work to do” in the fragmentation from having disregarded. The root of disregarding any of the logic and emotion, is fear. Any fear present and there is no nonduality. Nonduality is not a state. The importance of that is seeing the tendency of mind to separate and segregate “states”, which is a denial of the totality, the actuality, of nonduality. If “you” are “using the nondual state” then there is a segmented, separated “you” via thought. Then there is the apparent need to “conceptually reinforce reality” which is thinking, deeply tricky thinking. Reality can not be conceptually reinforced, because you can not actually be separated from it to begin with. You are doing some great introspection, some great work man. Thinking is very very tricky. Nonduality is without it. Monkey mind is thought always attempting to justify “I am separate from the toaster”. Awareness of just how deep and long thinking goes, in terms of falsity, this “ I “ is a facinating proccess. I way to put it is, the mind creates a separate “ I “ as the “holder of intelligence”, but you are everything and nothing, not a part which holds anything. You are intelligence itself, not a partitioned piece of it. Same with love, which is typically discovered after all thoughts and roots are inspected and rooted out in the light of awareness.

Hey guys, I've been meaning to write this for a while now. Some stats on me: 21 years old, male I work in a marketing agency (and I like it 90%) Meditating for 2.5 years (6 magic mushroom trips) This is mostly me reflecting and self assessing my progress and shortcomings on this journey. I've also included recent learnings. Hope you enjoy. In order of importance... Enlightenment Status: Definitely not enlightened (yet) I've worked with a coach on my Kundalini for about 3 months and I've seen a lot of improvements in my practice. Especially after reintroducing Kriya Yoga. I now do Leo's Kriya routine in the morning and a visualization + chakra meditation at night. Both take about 30 minutes each. Just yesterday I had a session at night where I felt the borders of my body dissolving combined with increased heart rate. I had this a couple times before. Sometimes with my heart nearly exploding (or so it felt). I think I'm on track here. Of course if you think "Yay, here comes my breakthrough" you loose it... nonduality you slippery bitch... Other than that I can definitely sense energy in my spine but nothing special to report. Things I've learned recently: Your day is preparation for practice! If you train distraction for 23 hours it doesn't do much if you meditate for one hour. So do one thing at a time. Finish what you start and stay mindful in every move you make. That's harder than it sounds. Especially when you own a laptop or phone lol. I've also had some really interesting experience/trip after smoking weed recently. Another thing: Meditation isn't just sitting still and closing your eyes. It's a prolonged and deep state of focus. That just made me realize how weak my focus really is. I cannot even concentrate on my third eye for 5 minutes. Screw you pornhub... Note to self: Place order for LSD and DMT asap. Life Purpose I've been working on my LP for the better part of two years now. And I believe I know what I want to do. My passions are: Health, nutrition, cooking, nonduality, yoga and art. My current approach lies in combining the health stuff and weaving in some nondual teachings. I'm working on getting some clients for online coaching on health and and nutrition. Gonna see if it's for me or not. But I can definitely see myself doing that and going deep... however my fingers are also itching to do some art. Gotta see how this pans out. Things I've learned: I basically work to make my boss rich. Man... I really like my coworkers and my boss. They're great humans. However I don't think that this is going to be my life forever. The job takes SO much time and energy that could be focussed on LP and meditation. I think it's gotta go in the long run... Dating So... yeah dating hasn't been happening for quite some time lol. At my age I should be getting drunk and high and fuck some hoes. Preferably at the same time... however this doesn't really appeal to me. Dating takes SO much energy it's not even funny. I am fucking spent after a week of work, progressing on my LP and doing all that meditating. That's my excuse at least. Sometimes I ask myself if all this dating stuff is even worth the trouble. Then again: Some female affection would be great and I believe that a deep relationship could be worth the hassle. #pleasehelp Health Health is great. I hit the gym 4 times per week. I take walks and do Yoga. I eat clean, cook my own food and I love it. I've experimented with some intuitive eating and it feels really good. However I've got a minor food addiction in the evening. As I see food as my go to way for comfort after a long day of work. Nothing drastic as I'm pretty lean and muscular and I just eat a little to much (of the healthy food). Gotta clean it up sometime but I don't have the mental band width right now. Other Learnings I basically know NOTHING. That just dawned on me after the "life is a maze" video. All I have are my direct experiences from trips and life. EVERYTHING else is just hearsay. All the knowledge I assumed was true my WHOLE life: Monkey see - monkey do. This shit is dangerous. I remember listening to Jordan Peterson half a year ago. I thought: "Man, this guy's kinda aggressive, but I see what he's saying." You don't question this knucklehead if he's on Joe Rogan cause he sounds smart. But then you listen closely to what he says and you ask yourself: "Wait what? Is he serious? Did he just say this!?" So thanks Leo for that. You/I just can't take anyone's word for anything. Gotta find out for yourself... as my statistics professor likes to say: "You can use graphs and numbers to prove any fucking thing you want." Then again: You gotta take hypotheses. But I'd rather rely on the Buddha than on the RSD guys or JP lol. --- If you made it this far: Thank you for your attention! If you got anything to point out: Blind spots or things that might benefit me/others on the same path please comment below. Much love! - Cheers

Yup! Which is why it's scary. Nonduality means that all distinctions are arbitrary, including the distinction between life and death, reality and fantasy. What's left is the Groundless Ground, The Void, The Infinite, The Absolute, The Godhead -- which is totally indistinct.

IME, ego death experiences have not brought ambition, purpose, energy or stuff to look forward to. Nonduality doesn’t care about that stuff at all. It doesn’t care about “me” at all. Ego death dissolves the self. It doesn’t empower it. If I was looking for ambition and purpose, I would do a workshop or course. I’d work on personal development, values, goal setting etc.

@Brittany @MikeB @gilded_honour @RabbitHole i think leo does an amazing job on his channel really, no need for any books on nonduality when i have leo explaining it perfectly.

In Zen, they just wack people like JP and Sam Harris across the face. You have to appreciate that most nondual teachers are preaching to the choir. They only teach that tiny percentage of the population which is already primed and ripe for the teaching. They make no effort to prime the rest of the population. You either come begging the Zen master for a teaching, or you have no chance to even enter the Zendo. It's one game to teach primed people nonduality. It's another game entirely to prime the vulgar masses to be receptive to nonduality. If you want to make your life easy as a teacher, you only teach students who are Spiral stages Green and above. The really hard work is teaching Orange and below, who are dense, arrogant, and numerous as fuck.

That is my natural inclination, but one of the problems with teaching self-actualization and nonduality is that people get so sucked into all sorts of twisted ideologies -- like that of JP, Sam Harris, Stefan Molyneux, SJW, capitalism, post-modernism, anti-post-modernism, etc. -- that it becomes impossible to teach them without some amount of deconstruction work. That is in fact the unconscious goal of people like JP, Sam Harris, Stefan Molyneux, etc. -- their job is to make the intellectual marketplace so muddied, confused, and polarized that it becomes impossible for people to find serious spiritual teachings. This is no accident. This is how the devil works: through muddying the water. The devil knows he can never win on merit because his position if fundamentally false, so all he can do is confuse people and stall out the clock. This is a classic tactic use by global warming deniers, for example. They just need to muddy the waters and sow enough doubt to stall out the clock to get their paycheck. So some of these devils need to be called out on their BS sometimes, to put them in their place. Otherwise the unwitting masses start to take them too seriously. An intelligent devil like JP or Sam Harris is a dangerous thing. It is not obvious how he is wrong and how best to rebut him. To a casual observer a lot of the things he says ring true and reasonable. Of course that's precisely how the devil works. He sprinkles nuggets of truth into his bullshit lasagna. The purpose of all ideologies is to distract from truth-seeking. Which is why ideologies have been so widespread throughout all of human history up to and including today. The devil's strategy is: flood the marketplace with so much bullshit that people cannot even tell that actual Truth is possible. If you want to safeguard a precious diamond, throw it into an ocean of liquid shit full of fake diamonds. Then no one will ever find it.

@Finland3286 Another thing you can do is research. Read 10 diverse books on nonduality and that will clear a lot of stuff up for you. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Mankind has understood nonduality for 5000 years at least. It's all been written down for those who care to read. It's sort of like you're struggling your way through mathematics when all you gotta do is pick up a math textbook. Nonduality is actually older and more solid than mathematics. They just don't teach it in school because it destroys all reality and society.

@Misagh Breath focused meditation.....then out of the blue, pop - oneness/no longer the body...then obe’s (only 2?)....then there was a ‘both’ period...then a hero’s dose....nonduality....no memory anymore of identifying as the body before all this.

Imagine that you, as an 'I' of some sort (doesn't matter how we draw the lines and if we even agree on what 'I' really is), is floating in an ocean that is 'the other'(universe, consciousness, energy, spirit etc.). Now, you were in the ocean before you learned to swim, and you have had to find out how to by yourself. Naturally you have ended up deeply entangled in the ocean, that is you are deep underwater going in loops. You cannot remember when you were above the water, and you have just invented a way of swimming/being in the ocean that feels sort of right by 'winging it' and comparing yourself to other swimmers doing their thing and copying those who seem to have it all figured out while avoiding those who seems like they are drowning. The further below the surface the higher the force of the waters above, so naturally you would want to be as close to the surface as possible. You might, at some point start realizing that 'I' and 'other', 'ocean' and 'not-ocean', are like to sides of the same thing, and that the more you struggle the more struggle you get. You may start to realize that the problems you try to solve are created mostly by yourself. The more problems you let go of the lighter you get, and start floating towards the surface. Every step along the way up is held back by the noise of the past, so that to reach total quietness and stillness that allows you to get to the surface, you'll have to go through a lifetime of misconceptions. All along the way you'll be pointed in the right direction, but the deeper you are the less light there'll naturally be, so the finger is often mistaken for that which is pointed to; the map gets mistaken for the territory. This is made much more difficult, as you have no idea which finger is the right one to follow, and everyone, those stuck in the same part of the whirlpool and those at higher levels, seem to think they know all there is to know. As you are in a sort of whirlpool, the way to the surface is like a spiral, where every step is a new loop that persists till it dissolves to make room for the next loop and so on until the surface is reached. The more movement of thought, the deeper down you'll be and the faster the whirlpool will spin. Every swimmer is stuck in their own kind of spiral, that is just a version of an 'arche-spiral' (the different colors of 'spiral dynamics'), that is a loop of thought. The closer to the surface the quieter the mind gets, and therefore the loops of thought gets harder to see through/spot. If every swimmer along the way, at every stage of the spiraling whirlpool, is basically holding himself there by attachment to a certain thought-loop that is founded by unresolved noise of the past, then someone at the surface, if he wishes, can dive down and step into that part of the whirlpool and attempt to dissolve the struggling swimmers thought-loop little by little. This is where the conceptual ideas of nonduality(nonduality is what we attempt to realize as it is essentially the surface we wish to reach) has their place. But one must recognize that different people needs to hear different things at different stages of their personal development. What is wise words to one may be foolish to another. Nonduality as an idea can be used to get people towards the surface, and show them the outlines of that nondual state on the other side, but it can never be reached as long as it is thought of. To reach it, to breach the surface and reach 'absolute truth', one must let go of thought about 'absolute truth'. You can never escape the whirlpool as long as you think, as the whirlpool is essentially thought.

@Serotoninluv Just think about it: nonduality means: not two. So any time you think of two parts to the world, you're not fully nondual yet. If there was a distinction between the formless state and your present formed perception state, that would be a duality. So you know that cannot be ultimately true. The final duality to eliminate is the duality between nonduality and duality! The snake must eat its own tail until nothing remains. Mu is the formless void state but ALSO the whole shebang: all of formed creation. Take a moment to look around the room you're sitting in right now. That is none other than Mu. To be fully nondual is to be conscious of Nothingness all the time, everywhere, no matter if you're in a formless state or eating breakfast. That is true awakening.

@Elisabeth No-self is a relatively weak version of enlightenment. There are deeper stages of which few people are aware. Martin's work is good (for an academic), but it's certainly not fathoming the full depth of nonduality. I posted about Martin on my blog some years ago. Martin's problem is that he's still not really understanding what science is and its limitations. He's still trying to demystify and rationalize everything -- as scientists are trained to do.