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What I'm saying aligns with the best spiritual traditions. Almost all of them talk about degrees of awakening. So it's not an ego thing. I don't really care about being more awakened than someone else. I just care about not missing some important insight which I might easily overlook if I wasn't careful and comprehensive. I would rather err on the side of comprehensiveness. Because I can't anticipate everything I don't know. I always leave room in my epistemology for surprises and big reversals. All that's really required is radical openmindedness. Don't close down your mind even after an awakening. Keep being curious. Keep learning. Keep reading. Keep hearing other points of view. You just never know what you might discover.

@legendary That is very difficult to assess in practice, especially if you haven't had multiple awakenings yourself. The challenge is that different minds talk about awakening in different ways, so just because two people talk different and emphasize different things does not necessarily mean their level of awakening is different. To be totally honest, I don't know anyone else's level of awakening. I only know what levels I have experienced. The rest is my speculations. It is possible to try to guess a person's levels of awakening by asking them various questions about the nature of reality. Depending on how they answer these questions you might catch some clues about how awake they really are. But again, you're still just guessing. You don't really know. It could just be a failure to communicate. Many awake people are just poor communicators. Some questions I like to ask people to determine how awake they are: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is God? How does God create? What is your true nature? What is non-existence? What is Truth? What is Infinity? What is Consciousness? What is Love? Have you become conscious of infinite intelligence? What is the deepest thing you've become conscious of? Do other people exist? etc. If they are not able to answer these questions clearly and satisfactorily, then I consider that they are not fully awake. Although it might just be that they don't want to answer such questions. It can be hard to tell. To me the highest teaching must affirm: 1) You are God, 2) Total nonduality, 3) Infinity & Nothingness Teachings which cannot answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing are incomplete in my opinion. Because I have clearly answered this question for myself. So I know it can be done. Teachings which try to emphasize emptiness or formlessness over form are also incomplete in my opinion since they fail to fully comprehend that form and formlessness are identical. Teachings which claim there is no God are also suspect. Since you can clearly recognize that you are God. I am also suspicious of teachings which never talk about absolute Love or which deny Love as an Absolute. I am also suspicious of teachings which do not ever mention the energetic aspects of awakening. I am super suspicious of any teachings which claims that enlightenment is binary and has no degrees. To me this is clearly false as my experience says otherwise. If someone cannot explain clearly what God is, why God is, and how God works, they are not fully awake in my opinion. Since I have been able to understand all that for myself. It can clearly be done. And not as theory, belief, or speculation. You can be totally conscious of how God works. Of course you can also evaluate a person's demeanor, energy, and vibe. But this can also be misleading. It can be hard to tell whether you are projecting your own ideas onto them. So in practice the best thing you can do is not to get married to any one teacher or teaching. Keep looking for deeper and deeper teachings and you will probably keep finding them. And also remember, just because someone isn't fully awaken doesn't mean you can't learn a lot from them. So don't get too perfectionistic trying to find the perfect teacher. The most awake people are often poor teachers. Teaching ability is not at all the same as degree of awakening. The best teachers will likely be less awake than the most awakened people: precisely because they spend a lot time teaching! In the same way that the best mathematicians are not the best math teachers. Whenever you are in doubt, just ask 5-MeO-DMT and it will tell you the truth -- assuming you're ready to stomach it. It will not lie to you. Your mind might lie. But 5-MeO does not. Every answer you want is there. You just have to dig it out a bit, which can take time. I will trust 5-MeO-DMT over any living master. Direct experience is king.

I've heard it put an Awakened person has a mind. In an unawakened person, the mind has them.

I am not enlightened or awakened. My feeling is..... Once one attains it, the need to explain it to others or argue or agree/disagree.....all that goes out the window. I think Leo is just sharing what occurred with him not trying to battle in a right/wrong dichotomy. And I think that is the whole point. Right/wrong is a style of thinking that doesnt (kind of) work when tasting God. Im careful to not say that THAT is wrong.

They mostly agree that awakening = Absolute Truth = Nothing = Everything = God = Love = Consciousness It's just a question of how deeply you comprehend it, how much of its consequences you see, how well you embody it in everyday life, and how conscious you are of things. These vary greatly. There's also the issue of: how integral is your view of spirituality? For example, are you going to deny that Hindu's understand awakening? That Muslims do? That Jews do? That Buddhists do? Are you gonna pick one team and criticize all the others? Are you going to deny that people who use psychedelics have legit awakening experiences? Are you going to insist that self-inquiry is the one true way, or yoga, or Zen, or meditation? Are you going to insist that Jesus was the most awake, or Buddha, or someone else? Or are you gonna say that all awakened people are equally awake? There tends to be a lot of disagreement about all that mostly because the people disagreeing have not fully experienced and explored the things they're disagreeing with. Before you go disagreeing about 5-MeO-DMT, for example, how about you do 10 trips? Then let's talk. Before you go disagreeing about Islam, how about you travel to the Middle East and talk to 10 enlightened Sufi masters. Then let's talk. To really understand all this diversity there has to be genuine desire to understand it. You can't just cling to your POV while maintaining that everyone else is deluded. This understanding is not strictly-speaking enlightenment. It is a side pursuit. But in my opinion it is highly worthwhile. We are living more and more in an integrated world. We must learn to understand each other better, otherwise confusion, delusion, and evil happen.

IF you are creator then why dont u make yourself awakened? To think that you created everything and yourself out of infinite goodness sounds immensely mad. When you cried about how you, the God, created everything out of your selfless loving nature I was shocked. IT SOUNDS SO DAMN NAIVE AND WRONG. DUDE WHATS Up. Just look at your own words and look how wrong it sounds, do u really think that the structure of existence is so brutally naive and simple? its just me - i created it all - coz i m infinite goodness selfless creator. now i am speaking to u through utube to say that. However, i can;t even wake up to that fact without drugs. What kind of creator is this? Do you even hear how naive that sounds? Its as if you are prisoner of asylum for psychopaths. all these grandiose statements are JUST A MEGALOMANIA. its all sounds like utter delusion. It sounds as if you are possessed by some higher forces who are making fun of you and all of us. Moreover, to think that you can trip towards Godhead through psychedelics - this is just nonsense. Real God wouldn't allow to trip towards him through drugs. Maybe infinite reality would allow that - and maybe you have mistaken infinite reality for True God. BUT what if True God transcends reality itself? You might be very conscious but that doesn't cancel out the fact that awakening doesn't really tell us anything about ultimate Creator of existence. Awakening simply is about our true nature here and now. Its about how things are here and now. What on Earth would make us to think that awakening would tell us about how things are in the largest scheme of things. So i think u just diminish the role and status of the word God into making it as something ordinary and low.

Age doesn't matter. You could be 5 years old but have 30 lifetimes of aescetic style meditation under your belt in comparison to someone who has awakened their first time this lifetime.

before leo went on his grand expedition to the centre of the universe, i too shared the same thoughts as him. I don't think i've been as deeply absorbed as himself, however i can vouch to the problem of skepticism that he shows when dealing with consciousness work, within a logical frame work they make sense and within a god consciousness frame work it also makes sense. but the problem is only one can be right. The teachers are not wrong when they say that you can not grasp infinity, because there's no way to know if your right or wrong, but there are holes in their understanding and god- logic which they don't account for. which leo is not taking for granted, he's saying the holes can be discovered and found out, which is what it means to understand infinity. So these awakened beings are awoke, there is just different degrees. your point is also valid aswell, he could be mental masterbating, but what you have not considered are infinite variables to any given event and therefore fall short with the need for a decisive answer to reach a particular end goal, aka your at a lower stage of consciousness and can't grasp the logic leo is using to decipher the puzzle. None the less, he has solved the problem with a few simple words ironically and that is the point is to become god and live life as god. you might have to intuite what i mean, but basically it means he's right and the enlightened masters are also right,as well as he could be wrong and the enlightened masters are wrong because becoming infinity means there is no wrong infinity, there's just the matter of degrees of consciousness and the highest, what does it mean to be the highest consciousness? understanding the whole of infinity and what god is which means understanding you are god,

I'd disagree with that. While it's true we can never guess the truth but I doubt they were doing self-inquiry from the start. They probably were doing a whole batch of spiritual practices and contemplations for decades before they finally stabilized in 'real' self-inquiry. Adyashanti: I don't know a great deal about the specifics of his personal path but he meditated like an Olympian 4-5 hours days in his late teens and 20s. But they were mostly a batch of concentration/vipasana meditations. In his final few years, self-inquiry really got hold of him tightly and he awakened permanently that time (he had many other glimpses before but they didn't stick) Rupert: He didn't do self-inquiry from the start. From his late teens to his 40s that's like 25 years- he was reading vedantic scriptures, doing mantra meditation(something that is a complete inverse of self-inquiry) and keeping Ramana's photo near his bed. he did just that for 25 freaking years without any permanent awakening experience. Finally he met Francis who introduced him to the direct path of putting awareness on awareness..that indeed liberated him within 1-2 years. In his own words, that time was like a constant fire works for him as everything he read in the scriptures were being directly experienced so clearly. Peter: I'm not familiar with neither his teaching nor his path so I can't comment on that. I only know that he did inhuman level of sitting and contemplating. Well it's because he was busy with construction works for decades and didn't have the patience/maturity to sit still and self inquire. Upon doing that self-less work for many years, finally his mind was purified and he got enlightened very soon when Ramana finally gave him permission to leave and meditate in a secluded place. Meanwhile, Shivprakasham Pillai and Sri Sadhu Om are examples who grasped the essence of Ramana's teaching very quickly and got enlightened within 2-5 years. Like I said, the technique self-inquiry (putting awareness on awareness) is the final gate. But it depends on people to people to come to this door due to their particular idiosyncrasies. Some may take 1 year to come to this gate while others may need lifetimes. And self-inquiry is not at all about asking questions or doing some sort of intellectual, clever gymnastics. In a sense, it is an 'unique' 'activity'. The only 'unique' activity there is. While all our experiences are about attending to objects, self-inquiry turns that around and starts attending to the subject. No other activity in any plane does that. And thus people will take their time to get the essence of this practice

@Leo Gura The frontal lobe is tied into what’s traditionally called the second chakra. Which in Hinduism is called svadisthana. Svathistana means the seat of the soul, but in fact it is the seat of individuation. Consious and subconsious. Upon consious stable awakening. The consious part of the individuated self is set free from identification. The subconsious still clings. Instinctively, through instincts, memories, feeling and a subconsious world that goes way beyond surface level thought and understanding. Shinzen young who has awakened on a conscious level. Like most non dual teachers. Have their awakening hijacked by this hidden, subconsious devil as you would say. To fool them that they are at the end of the journey. Its comforting to think so. It’s easier to think so. Yet their behaviour betrays them. Defilements of the mind are still abundantly clear in such people if they are taken down their pedestals. Mere practice, without a proper map. Proper genuineness, and self awareness of how deep the path goes can allow for people to get stuck. Thats why they are stuck where they are. Now onto why your path, in my opinion suffers in ways you aren’t conscious of. In my opinion and based on my experience. When an insight is had. It is reductionist. I am not saying this in a regular non dual way. Not saying there is no truth. No purpose. In the way it is normally meant. Insights carry legitimate truths but they are stored in the frontal lobe, and merely by storing them due to their reductionist nature they distort and pervert. Are hijacked by the devil. Emotional highs, subconsious distortions are created without ones being the wiser. Look up the brahmanjala sutta. The Buddha talks about this at length in said sutta. What is my point. If your stable level of consciousness is at one point and you jump deep into the depth of reality. The insights you carry back will be heavily perverted. Far more than you know. They will carry the stench of the devil. The ten defilements, and although they will sound good and reflect an actual reality. They will be far, far in purity. To the actuality. Ones mind needs to be trained to ingest an insight without perversion. Insights with heavy perversion can even be counterproductive. Eg there is nothing to do types in advaita. In my opinion the psychedelic path suffers heavily from this fact. I have done 5 meo numerous times. Breakthrough doses. By far my most meaningful peaks, insights and changes have come when I have been sober. Absolutely no contest.

@Arhattobe The psychedelic is a transformative tool. You are judging is improperly when you judged it like so: If it fully enlightens me in one go, then it's good. If it doesn't, then it's bad and useless. If you're gonna use that criterion, then you should apply it equally to meditation. Like so: if I sit down and meditate for 30 minutes and it fully enlightens me, then I will do it and it's good. But if doesn't, then it's bad and I'm never going to meditate again. How many meditation sits does it take to become stably awakened? 1000? 5000? 10,000? Now apply those numbers to psychedelics. So your comparison is fair. What would happen if you did 1000 trips? Would you become stably awake? If so, you'd beat mediation by 10x. Why do I have a deeper understanding of metaphysical reality than Shinzen Young, who has 40 years of professional practice while I have less than 5 years of amateur practice? How do you explain that? There's some facts and statistics for ya. You see, there's more to this than just awakening. You must look at psychedelics as a holistic tool for self-awareness, personal development, and mental health.

Facts and statistics are not things people like it seems. No one asides Martin has awakened. Stably and permanently via psychs, and he has massive issues. With all the psychedelics and insights people on this forum “integrate” you would think it would be littered with people at least awakened on some basic level. Stably and with a sober mind.

@Leo Gura can you please talk about what insights mean or what they are... In the context of the absolute vs the dream? Isn't all those insights ultimately knowledge? Which is all relative so to speak? But I guess that doesn't mean that it's not "true" or helpful... Kinda answering myself here But a question also about awakened masters for example sadhguru or mooji... They dont talk about infinty of God as you do... Or all other radical implications... Is it fair to say that although they are great masters... Their understanding also maybe "limited" compared to yours... In that you have got the ultimate guru and assistance of 5meo-dmt on your side. Also, even the buddah/Jesus etc, may not have had the intellectual understanding deep enough to translate various facets of being God as you do? Again, all to do with the teachings being contemporary and linked with the time era Being lived in.

Just for the fun of conversation, does your experience encompass the actual truth? For instance, it didn't happen to you and a few others you observed, so its the case now? But it did happen to me, and those I know and a number of awakened teachers from books they wrote or talks that gave. So theres evidence that it doesn't just happen to "noobs". Also I think if your honest with yourself, you really can't say for certain how you will respond to the yet to be created future and what life with mold you as and throw at "you".

For your own sake I sure hope you don't eat your own words, but let me tell you, it has nothing with being a noob, lol. Insanity or the cusp ofi is talked about by a number of awakened teachers, many of which were not "noobs" at the point in which it happened. Trust me you will change your toon real quick if life puts you in such a situation in your now beyond noobness.

Ya it sounds like you should listen to your sense that looking into this negative "being bad" could be helpful. And your right about it maybe making you temporarily "depressed". This can happen when we face structures like this in ourselves. But when this happens remind yourself that this is what can happen and its temporary and things will improve when you see through the things you are facing. Often what happens for people is they start looking into something like this, start to feel bad, doubful, less of themselves, that theres a bigger problem then there is (any number of things can happen in ones mind/experience) and they contract back in avoiding the issue they wanted to face. Of course if things get really out of control and unsafe, then you may want to back off and reassess and perhaps get help from others that can help you through these challenging times/issues (which if it ever comes up, you can message me and I'll try and help you through with my experience). Out of curiosity do you feel like you have long term negative mind states from your psychedelic/spiritual experiences? As for me I had a traumatic spiritual awakening years ago in which I felt everything I knew myself to be changed radically fast and I felt forced to do/act in ways that didn't make sense to me. I became WAAAAY to sensitive to any amount of suffering or potential danger and over compensating by almost being OCD. This lasted in various ways off and on for years. A few years ago this all came to a head in a series of spiritual awakenings,facing some real potential dangers and a few encounters with angels/spirits that healed something in my heart as well as helping me face the reality of death and danger as a inherent Truth in life. While i can't tell you how it turned out in the end, since I'm still alive its radically better and in the process of the whole thing, I have become awakened to my true nature and all sorts of unexpected Truths I had only read about and wanted to understand at one point, but for what ever reason was unable to see in my earlier years.

@thesmileyone The ego is not a singular thing. Your chakric system carries karmic impressions through out your nervous system and body. Mere mind body disidentification, knowing who you are, and non duality does not rid you of them. Nor should it be considered enlightenment. Yet it is. People greatly exaggerate what being in a permanent awakened state means, because of fantastical thinking, escapism and lack of genuine listening. Nearly all non dual teachers say they learned, the hard way, they still had a ton of growing to do post awakening, and still suffered. Examples include : adyashanti, Jeff foster, jan esmann, David spero, Maharishi mahesh yogi. Just to name a few. Selective hearing doesn’t allow people to look at things honestly though.

Also, Leo is awakened.

If you’ve had an awakening. I would recommend picking up a traditional path. Zen or Theravada Buddhism, and sticking to it. There is great depth in traditions. People on this forum lack. Post awakening this place will just be a place to reaffirm your beliefs and perspective. Nothing more. Will go something like this. “Post” random person : “non dual line from the non dual bible” another person : “yes, non dual line from the non dual bible” Yet another person : “no, non dual line from the non dual bible” Also if 5 meo was all it’s cracked up to be. Most the people on this forum wouldn’t all be desperately clinging to their non dual beliefs with a ton of neurosis they deny. Most not in a permanent awakened state. Including Leo. Nor would Martin ball. The primary advocate of said drug be having massive chemical imbalances within his system, that didn’t allow him to sleep for 6 days straight. I’ve done 5 meo too. More than a few times. Not just speaking without experience.

those are attempts to explain their first hand direct experiences and comprehensions about what awakening is and how the process of awakening occurs in the human realm. but if you ever get really close to a serious zen lineage, you will notice that there are teachings about how to behave and (thank god) they are very rigorous. the difference is that zen does not teach you about Truth. zen is only a method for you to experience it by yourself. a true zen master is awakened to the nature of God and is able to recognize students who are seriously aware of God. the teaching of "there are no teachings" is not absolute. it serves people in a very specific level of practice. but such teaching does not qualify as a general teaching of zen. serious zen lineages come from the teaching of the original buddha and their teachings are the noble 8-fold path.

It's verifyable that on the level of personality, there is a definite tendency to project ones shadow onto others and so not claim it in oneself. There seems to be layers of depth to this. Its common to be annoyed or to even hate others who closely share our own chief feature (blindspot) to an extent. Shadow material which is repressed, needs to have the light of Consciousness reveal and heal. I catch a glimpse of being a know-it-all and then I overcompensate into false humility. Like a Zigzag Idiot who has five Friday's in a week. I think quite a few people who are exposed to the idea of everyone having a psychological blindspot immediately has personal experiences which come to mind on the surface of this subject. I've had a realization about bringing up issues like projection, imagination, lying, self deception, self importance, spiritual egotism, false personality, It provokes some people but not others. I still catch my ego projecting in different ways. I think everyone psychologically projects onto there's. It's everywhere. Even so called awakened or enlightened people seem to do it to some extent. If nothing else, we project labels onto people. Or find a way to categorize them in semiconscious ways.

I have been awakened for some time but I am not enlightened or anywhere near it in my opinion, though this seems to depend on what enlightenment is; for some enlightenment is simple nondoership nonduality ie Gary Weber who claims to never have thoughts all the way through to people like Dan Ingram who claim Arahantship and therefore have freed themselves of all 10 buddhist fetters, something I highely doubt btw. I had a huge shift yesturday, but different to most shifts where some part of "me" is chipped away and promptly replaced or uncovers something below it to replace it, this time round it got chipped away and nothing replaced it. Hard to put into words. These last few weeks I have felt somewhat lost, reading into different systems and different paths and different definitions of the usual definitions we use here. Then yesturday this shift occured and I don't feel lost anymore, nor do I really have questions either. I don't really have words for how I actually feel. I got drunk earlier, like totally hammered, just because I was bored, and didn't enjoy it, the whole time I was drunk it was like the, and I put it in speech marks again because it doesn't feel like the definition' "Consciousness" was pulsing away. I am done with drinking now, I feel like I no longer need it. The funny thing is I watched a video about how alcohol and spirituality are a no no and instead of commenting and arguing I realised I might be wrong about it...whilst I was fully drunk. So even when fully drunk I was not behaving / processing like I used to when I was 100% "me". Maybe this is an accurate way to explain how I feel actually. I feel like "Consciousness" which has always been in the background is now further in the foreground. Does that make sense? It also feels like it tried to force it's way fully into the foreground the other day but I saw it as "ego death" and had a panic attack about it (hence my thread a few days ago) so it held back and came in a different, more subtle way. Yeah that explains it. It feels like there is less "me" and more "Consciousness" inside my body (but also in everything outside the body) whereas before it was pretty much 50/50. It will be interesting to see how it takes shape in the long term, if it becomes more or less than "me". The only other thing I have noticed is I have been watching older Victor Oddo videos and when i watched them before, I didn't really get them, now they feel like reinforced second nature. I guess because I have experienced what he said vs trying to learn/process it via the mind.

I wouldn't say awakened because my awakening was over a couple of years ago. I am permanently conscious of God. "how is that your awakening dissapeared but you went into state of emptiness/no-self. isn't that the two same things?" No, they were not the same things for me. How did it dissappear? Too magical to put in words. Sorry I just can't really describe how it suddenly disappeared using words.

@Highest so are you permanently awakened? i didnt understand how is that your awakening dissapeared but you went into state of emptiness/no-self. isn't that the two same things?

I've been intrigued by the idea of the helpers moreso than the Sage. An uplifting idea from the Oracle that one can free an army of helpers to assist us when we are balanced and in harmony with the Cosmos. This is from a previous post in my Journal; ,,,,,,,,,when the heart is awakened and purified. Looking at the Cosmos through the I-CHING. This same inner process allows assistance from the "helpers" who are defined as individualized aspects of the Cosmic Consciousness and of nature that are neither humans nor Angels. Carol Anthony claimed that divination revealed to her that the identity of the "helpers" are what's known today as the phenomenon of "Orbs". Activation of the helpers can only happen when we are in harmony with the Cosmos. In that sense, subservience is just as detrimental as arrogance. The helpers are activated by one's contact with the harmony of the inner truth of one's True Self. Returning to the vocabulary of Esoteric Christianity, I correlate this harmony as one being in contact with awakened Conscience. This short article may be helpful if anyone is following along; Article 1. The Sage as our Cosmic Teacher by Carol and Hanna © by Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog Carol’s experience of the Sage in the 1970’s was of an alive consciousness that wants to communicate with us. This took away for her the understanding that what we read in the written text of the book, is all we have for an oracle. It becomes apparent through its use that the I Ching is a Cosmic gift to humans. Its purpose is show people (1) the nature of the Cosmos as a system of Principles of Harmony, (2) our true human nature, and (3) the way we individually can return to harmony with these Cosmic Principles when we have lost our way. The Sage, as part of this interaction, is a presence within us that uses the oracle to draw up from the depths of our nature, our innate knowledge of Cosmic truth. (This truth is contained in the DNA of every body cell.) The I Ching Hexagram 61, titled “Inner Truth,” refers to this source that is stored in our bodies, not in words, but in the form of feelings of what is harmonious and what is not. Thus, the Sage uses the I Ching to speak through its text, but the text itself is not the oracle. The Sage makes it clear, through the method we call the retrospective-three-coin-method, or “rtcm” (which will be described in our next article), that it does not teach us the handed down platitudes that have often been taken as ‘ancient wisdom.’ It rather discourages this kind of memorized mental approach by reaching into our own deepest inner truth to bring forth the answers that are already there. We find, in so doing, that our inner truth has been suppressed in favor of these platitudes and commandments. That is why, on finding the answer we need, we recognize that we “knew that” all along, but did not dare to trust it. Thus, we find that the Sage is all the time connecting us with a part of ourselves that has been repressed through conditioning. This process of reaching into the depths is described in Hexagram 48, “The Well,” which calls our inner truth “a clear, cold spring from which one can drink.” Often, we cannot access our inner truth because “there is mud in the well” in the form of fixed, preconceived ideas, fears, old grievances, and memories of wrongs done to us. When we drink from this mud, we are kept stalling. With the help of the I Ching text, the Sage not only wants to make us aware of this fact, it also offers us help to cleanse our inner well. Then we find that our inner truth is a gold mine containing everything we need to know. The more we work with the Sage and give it the necessary space in our mind, the more we realize that it wants to speak to us as a friend, not as a godlike figure that expects obeisance and punishes us when we make mistakes. On the contrary, the Sage wants to free us from ideas that are either grandiose, making us see ourselves as the center of the universe, or that inspire us with fear and awe, and make us see ourselves as small and insignificant. The ancient Greeks had an idea of the Sage when they spoke of “a tutelary spirit that accompanies each person lifelong.” They named it “genii,” root of the word “genius.” Writers have long called it “the muse.” For many artists, athletes, and inventors, it is an “elusive thing” that takes over in us when we give up relying on the “brilliance and ability of the thinking mind,” or the pure brawn of our bodies, to provide the success we seek.