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@Tanz yeah that dude is pretty Effin enlightend though, he told one story of not moving for a week or something he was in some kinda state of bliss. Crazy. there are different levels of enlightenment they say, stream entry & then walking masters. I didn’t realize this for a long time but it like anything there are brand new professional Basketball players then there are the Michael Jordan’s of the world, apples & oranges.

@Tony 845 Thanks for sharing your experience and happy to read your story of bliss. Ive had multiple awakenings including through kundalini and various methods without the use of psychedelics. When you really tap into yourself you become the spirit molecule. To my knowledge permanent non-dual state is impossible to obtain. Even masters like Sadhguru arent full-blown there, however they have done enough training to be able to tap into it anytime they can focus in a short amount of time. On that note, getting there is one thing and finding a way to do something with what you know or become are two different things.

I'm gonna be talking from my experience of discovering repressed unconscious material. So I confronted, or more pessimistically put stumbled upon, contents of my mind I've suppressed from conscious awareness. There is an intense fear like no other. A fear at the absolute malevolence of the world. The malevolence which seeks to violate and rape everything innocent. And in my personal case, there are images of the ethereal tribe which demands conformity and crushes everything sacred and special. I just imagine shaded, detail-less humanoid figures with evil grins on their faces. Malevolence seeks to destroy goodness and innocence for the sake of it. I imagine the serial killer who ruthlessly tortures the infant to death. Is this feeling of violation the root of so much trauma I and others have, I wonder. The perception of pure evil, and the terrifying feeling of trying to run away from it but not succeeding. And worst of all is neither the fight or flight, but the freeze reaction. The despondency of being violated. There are traumas I imagine which can generalise beyond the specific form of human malevolence and violation. I can imagine the some ancient humans living in the jungle and a child has their dad eaten in front of them by a Lion. In which case the blame shifts to reality and nature itself quite directly. But nonetheless, you feel violated by nature. Well I frame it like that for now since inquiring and contemplating this word "violation" is extremely interesting and fascinating for me in this present moment. For some strange reason the contemplation/inquiry of the intense fear I felt has turned into bliss and amusement for now.

@Yonkon I recommend some of the Tantrik Yoga meditations on gaia.com by Christopher Wallis. There is one called Opening The Heart Center or Lotus of the Heart or something like that. Very powerful and simple and if you are willing to be open you will feel the base of the heart, actually located closer to the solar plexus. There is a firm point there where you can rest. You get better at accessing it with practice. When you find it is bliss. Also Matt Kahn's transmissions on youtube are very powerful if you allow yourself to be open.

@Red-White-Light Yeah when I had my awakening experiences I knew instantaneously that it was the same thing - i was like holy fuck this is Depersonalization! however i believe it is lacking the Bliss and the Love and the realizations that come with enlightenment and the elevated consciousness levels. Shinzen Young calls it enlightenment's evil twin because it's like only half the story.

It’s been less than 24 hours and it’s already hard to remember all the intricate details of my mushroom experience yesterday, but I will try my best to recall as many details as I can Set: Calm mind for the most part, had tripped on 1g of Psilocybe Cubensis 2 days prior. Some background anxiety and fear (about life in general) going on but not pronounced. Was unsure of how 2g would affect me since of potential tolerance to my recent mild dose which only brought about subtle trip effects, mainly a body high with a slightly trippy headspace. Setting: Secluded beach north of San Francisco, near Point Reyes National Seashore. No crowds of people here, empty for the most part since it is so far off the main drag. Intention: -Be more present during the deep parts of the trip -Question the mushroom more, be more open to new answers -Become conscious of how reality is being constructed -Transcend my everyday thinking patterns that cause unwanted suffering *Times are rough estimates mostly: 3:00pm- Dosed the mushrooms in the car before arriving at the beach, 2 whole dried mushrooms weighing roughly 1g each, with a ginger tablet for digestion. The mushroom taste never bugs me like others report. It doesn’t taste good per say, but I have no problem chewing them thoroughly. Set up a towel with some snacks on the beach by some sand dunes. 3:30pm- Was walking near the ocean with my bare feet, I began to feel weird sensations in my body. The wind felt very strong blowing by the water, I began to feel uncomfortably cold, with a little background anxiety coming on. Really was focusing on deep nasal breathing which calmed me a bit. When I walked further inland to my towel, it was the opposite, no winds, just extreme silence, this transition was borderline overwhelming for my psyche knowing the mushrooms hadn’t really started to kick in fully yet. 4:00pm- Walked up on the sand dunes behind my towel, peed by some bushes, I remember I started having thoughts about what my “story” would be writing my trip report later. I would think how I would most accurately recall this experience into words to express it best I could. Then I started feeling guilty about this. I started feeling guilty thinking about the forum, like I was “confusing the map for the territory” I began thinking and saying outloud “fuck that shit” over and over and just desperately wanted to be present and forget everything else. Problem is I couldn’t do this. This was a prevailing theme for the trip, that my ego mind, identification with my thoughts, could not silence. 4:30pm- Laid down on my beach towel, and started becoming so thankful and appreciative about the emotional difficulty and background fears I had just faced during the come up phase. I was like “thank you so much” saying out loud, feeling like this was the mushrooms gift to me, making me stronger this way. So I layed back on my towel, put my arm over my eyes and started to watch the fractal patterns. Every time I eat mushrooms I see the SAME PATTERNS! Mechanical fractals, almost flower-like, spiraling and transforming in the blackness. Almost a faint gold color. The weird thing is, after my first time noticing these on mushrooms, I can see them in my day to day life with my eyes closed if I focus hard enough, although they are extremely elusive. When tripping, they just become extremely pronounced and even project on to surfaces, such as becoming tattoos all over my skin during previous trips. Anyway, back to the current experience. As I layed with my eyes closed watching, I felt no fear, and was thinking about how this beautiful psychedelic imagery is something I love so much and am intrigued so deeply by, but at the same time am usually fearful to be present with and observe. Why? I think my ego is always scared of getting sucked in too deeply. I suddenly open my eyes to look at the beach, and I become overwhelmed with the transition to the external scenery. I began to feel fear when I checked the time and realized it was only an hour and a half after dosing, and it had felt like so much longer. Again I return to my breath and my vision starts to slowly adjust to the bright sunlight. 5:00pm- I began contemplating a sea dollar I found. I was questioning how the flower-like pattern could be there, so symmetrically placed. It seemed so much like a human design, but yet it was completely untouched by man. I was thinking “what is this” over and over. 5:30pm- This is when I entered the deepest levels of consciousness. The sun started setting and began walking toward it on the beach, again barefoot, feeling the cold energy of the earth. I started questioning my life purpose. I wanted to communicate with the mushroom, like Terrence Mckenna had always talked about. In the background I knew this is just communication to my higher self. I began thinking questions in my mind, almost pleading for answers, “what is my life purpose”? I heard nothing. “Why can’t you tell me what my future holds?” And I just waited for a split second trying to be as open as I could to a higher answer. And boom, I got a sudden “download” along the lines of “If you knew your path already, there would be no point of life playing out. That's the whole point and beauty of life, not knowing what the future holds but having it play out organically as time goes on”. Then this is when words can’t describe what I was feeling, I didn’t feel like a human anymore, I was contemplating so deeply what reality was and how it was being constructed, and I got another download “You don’t know anything at all”. And I just accepted that. I just felt like such a limited, finite animal being. I felt so limited in my human body, almost like a primitive caveman. All the dualities of animal and human went out the window. From here the trip got less intense, but overall it left me with way more questions than answers. I couldn’t transcend my ego mind at all. I never entered a deep fear or state of panic, but it was like all my subtle background fears in life were pronounced and I couldn’t enter a state of peace or bliss. While I know I shouldn’t get down in the dumps about this, it's hard not to feel a little disappointed in myself that I was such a slave to my negative thoughts. I know the answer here is loving myself more, as much as an uphill battle as that seems at times. There was so much profundity in my deepest state staring at the sunset, but trying to capture what I was feeling in this report seems futile. So many details have left my mind already, but I feel it was the closest I ever came to transcending my human form. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for the next level of higher understanding. Heres some pictures of my scenery during the trip: Didn't take these, found them on the web. Was too busy in the trip to take pictures or work my phone. Up on the dunes, my towel was just below the hill on the beach side: Sunset (almost exactly how it looked yesterday) when I was standing by the shore looking at it and questioning deeply:

The Shocking Truth about Meditation:Most People Get This Wrong (eric ho, youtube video) video's main points = meditation is about nothingness your mind at that moment clears everything and thinks about nothing a lot of people use what they call meditation to get rid of stress today but when you're trying to think about nothing and you're stressed, it's virtually impossible to get into nothingness so it's your worst time to get into that meditative state the world looks at meditation as a process for an outcome but in actual fact meditation is the outcome not the process a lot of people use meditation as a process to try and de-stress but in fact meditation is the outcome if you get to that place of bliss and connection with the divine it's absolutely amazing how do we actually practice meditation and when should we practice it ? you practice it when your mind is most calm when you are most at peace once you've calmed the mind then you practice meditation keep your hands in receiving mode meaning palms facing up keep your spine comfortably erect this is your channel the spine starts from what we call the base chakra down on the bottom all the way up the spine to the top towards the crown chakra see this as your channel from the earth towards the rest of the universe so to connect to the divine this is your channel close your eyes, take a slow gentle deep breath in and out, in and out and when you're breathing make sure it's the deep abdominal breathing in and out in through your nose out through your mouth just breathe and while you're breathing what will naturally happen is your senses will connect to things and start a dialogue if I say close your eyes think about nothing it's likely that you're gonna think about something do not try to think about nothing because when you do you think about something it's like if I say don't think of the purple elephant you'll have the purple elephant going on in your head so don't try to not think about anything instead what you want to do is practice witnessing what does that mean? why does your mind become cluttered ? it only becomes cluttered when different dialogue starts and dialogue only starts from your sensory so for example you can close your eyes, yeah okay don't think about anything then you think oh the light maybe if I turned it off it would be better you're sensing light that's why you start dialogue the next thing is oh car door closes, maybe somebody's outside has somebody arrived? you sense you hear something you feel something you feel cold you feel warm you feel the sun rising all of these senses kicks off a dialogue so how do we practice meditation and getting into nothingness? very simple you practice witnessing witness sound, allow it to pass car door, allow it to pass movement, allow it to pass without asking what is the movement? who is the movement? because the moment we allow the sequence to kick off we're gonna go on forever our mind is very powerful like that, it keeps connecting so instead, just witness and as a rule of thumb for beginners getting into meditation what I recommend you it's just practice one minute two minutes a day don't go over the top trying to get into ten minute half an hour meditation why? because then it will counter it will do the opposite you will get so frustrated and annoyed that you're not doing it right and you're like oh I'm still thinking about something or I'm starting some dialog then you get frustrated and it does the opposite to meditation so start small work your way up from 30 seconds to a minute and you can practice it throughout the day it doesn't just have to be in the morning even if you're sitting on the train even if you're sitting at work whenever you're doing different things just practice just breathing and allow your sensory just to witness everything that's passing by what will happen is you will get through days and through months more and more things can pass by and then you'll be able to allow them to pass by one by one and actually witness and when you get into that part of peace which is the connectivity points to the divine to the universe what will actually happen is you will get to that point when you get to oneness with the divine that place of bliss where you see everything but do not hold that expectation to wanting to get there because if you do with that expectation you will keep getting disappointment so instead just focus on nothingness that's all just focus on witnessing practice and some of you it may even take months it may even take yours some of you may even take decades to actually finally get into that place of bliss but when you do you will start understanding and you start witnessing enlightenment and actually this whole out-of-body experience when you shift your consciousness once and for all

May you find child again, playful and simple, exactly crime to them, quite crime; they despise rhyme, and spit on soul; who control, who shouldn't like I should, because I wouldn't if I could. Take hold of your breath and then release it. Take hold and release. Take hold, release. What I know about th'available, Th'advance, the bliss, the trance, Is knowledge for th'assailable Who'd fall from their prance, Into that is stable, that is permanent, that lasts.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there duality? Why must everything have an opposite? What was (are? I wrote "was" instead of are, which is era spelled backwards, btw) we doing here, realizing the underlying transcending oneness of duality itself? The nondual and the dual can never be separate. The one is many, it's always many, it can never NOT BE MANY, just as it can never NOT BE ONE. Is this true, or am I bullshitting myself? Did I not choose to bullshit myself, am I not the magician putting on a show and the audience together for the purpose of entertainment? DOCTRINE says it's ONE. It's ONE MOTHER FUCKERS. (doctrine, the doctor's in, and it's been doctored. No illness, no doctor) Why the back and forth? Why the good and bad? Why when I got sick when I was a kid, really sick, all my desires and identifications disappeared and there was suffering. There was studying the patterns on the linoleum of the floor, and existential questioning, a desire for death over suffering. And when it lifted there was a bliss state. Or when I had my wisdom teeth out, 18 hours later, there was a bliss state. Is the bliss state just a "goody" as Preetom says? Is it something more or is that wishful thinking? Is it like the cork shooting back to the surface after it's been held down, far under the surface of the water? The further you hold the cork down, the higher it shoots out of the water from the pressure, it's like loading a gun. Fear is a tricky thing. It's afraid to be wrong. Where does wrong start and right begin? Fear is afraid to venture out for fear that it will suffer because of it. The desire to transcend conditions itself CANNOT come out of fear. It must come out of love. Fear is resistance, cutting itself off. It is afraid of itself, and yet it serves itself. This flip state seems to be the entire purpose of our existence. No fear, no courage. So then, what is the difference between fully accepting conditions and transcending them? Is not fear and depression a beautiful building up to their opposites, and then, where does the fear end and love start? Does not the view from a high cliff on a mountain stun and awe, where fear and beauty merge and are felt fully? Where does depression end and happiness start? Where do they meet in the middle? Do they cancel each other out? So then, how can there be opposites at all if one does not have a beginning or end, if they cancel themselves out in the middle, what is the middle called? What is the opposite of energy? Where does the question stop and the answer begin? So why is there something rather than nothing?

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there duality? Why must everything have an opposite? What was (are? I wrote "was" instead of are, era spelled backwards) we doing here, realizing the underlying transcending oneness of duality itself? The nondual and the dual can never be separate. The one is many, it's always many, it can never NOT BE MANY, just as it can never NOT BE ONE. Is this true, or am I bullshitting myself? Did I not choose to bullshit myself, am I not the magician putting on a show and the audience together for the purpose of entertainment? DOCTRINE says it's ONE. It's ONE MOTHER FUCKERS. (doctrine, the doctor's in, and it's been doctored. No illness, no doctor) Why the back and forth? Why the good and bad? Why when I got sick when I was a kid, really sick, all my desires and identifications disappeared and there was suffering. There was studying the patterns on the linoleum of the floor, and existential questioning, a desire for death over suffering. And when it lifted there was a bliss state. Or when I had my wisdom teeth out, 18 hours later, there was a bliss state. Is the bliss state just a "goody" as Preetom says? Is it something more or is that wishful thinking? Is it like the cork shooting back to the surface after it's been held down, far under the surface of the water? The further you hold the cork down, the higher it shoots out of the water from the pressure, it's like loading a gun. Fear is a tricky thing. It's afraid to be wrong. Where does wrong start and right begin? Fear is afraid to venture out for fear that it will suffer because of it. The desire to transcend conditions itself CANNOT come out of fear. It must come out of love. Fear is resistance, cutting itself off. It is afraid of itself, and yet it serves itself. This flip state seems to be the entire purpose of our existence. No fear, no courage. So then, what is the difference between fully accepting conditions and transcending them? Is not fear and depression a beautiful building up to their opposites, and then, where does the fear end and love start? Does not the view from a high cliff on a mountain stun and awe, where fear and beauty merge and are felt fully? Where does depression end and happiness start? Where do they meet in the middle? Do they cancel each other out? So then, how can there be opposites at all if one does not have a beginning or end, if they cancel themselves out in the middle, what is the middle called? What is the opposite of energy? Where does the question stop and the answer begin? So why is there something rather than nothing?

OK, this enlightenment business is REAL. I am not creating this thread in an attempt to prove what I have experienced, or indeed to boast (that would obviously be egotistical), but in all honesty I am in such a state of bliss right now (and have been for the past two weeks) that it seems almost too good to be true. I have been meditating EVERY SINGLE DAY for an average time of about 5 hours a day, for the past 2 YEARS. The first few months it felt like torture and I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, then at the 7 month mark I had an awakening of no-self. I was in a state of peace for 10 days. Alas, I had a very strong ego backlash, which sent me spiralling into depression and alcoholism. I never really recovered the sense of bliss I had found for that short period....Until two weeks ago. I re-watched a bunch of Leo's videos on enlightenment (which I would highly recommend) as well as some other masters such as Peter Ralston and Rupert Spira. My self inquiry became very intense, and just before my awakening two weeks ago, I was meditating and practicing self-inquiry solidly for 10 hours a day (no breaks). Pretty intense eh? My first awakening two weeks ago felt like a full body orgasm, culminating in hysterical laughter which lasted for minutes. Then hours later, it happened again. Then, keeping up my practice, the next morning it happened AGAIN. I lost count of all the awakenings that happened, but during them, all I could say to myself was "OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD". It was a mixture of joy, awe, bliss, and just pure simple laughter. It's like getting the joke. Laughing at nothing like you did when you were a kid. So this is my reward for putting in the hours. I don't feel a sense of pride, and I didn't even feel like sharing my experience with anyone...until now. I didn't at first think it was necessary, and I figured my actions would speak louder than words. But here I am. Am I enlightened? It won't put me up nor down if people think I am enlightened or not, but I decided to create this thread in order to possibly help others. So if you have any questions, then fire away.

This was written by Ram Dass and speaks for itself. Enlightenment is a looong way away for this one. It never occurred to me before actualized.org that there are somethings special for me to open things up here and now. I still need to clarify Awakened vs. Enlightened. I still need to study and prepare for using psychedelics to move toward Enlightenment. I want more clarity as to why I would be seeking Enlightenment. Basically I have been living this life with a, "The buck stops here" attitude. The issues have been so painful, I just don't wish the hard feelings on anybody and I know that somebody that I won't recognize as myself is going to have to suffer the consequences of my avoiding whatever I choose not to recognize as myself now. So here's an article that came across my wall earlier. How do we get trapped within psychedelic experiences? Posted February 18, 2019 “Paradise is the prison of the sage as the world is the prisoner of the believer.” – Yahja b. Mu’adh al-Razi "For many of us who have come into meditation through psychedelics, the model we had for changing consciousness has been of “getting high”. We pushed away our normal waking state in order to embrace a state of euphoria, harmony, bliss, peace, or ecstasy. Many of us spent long periods of time getting high and coming down. My guru, in speaking about psychedelics, said: “These medicines will allow you to come and visit Christ, but you can only stay two hours. Then you have to leave again. This is not the true samadhi. It’s better to become Christ than to visit him – but even the visit of a saint for a moment is useful.” Then he added, “But love is the most powerful medicine.” For love slowly transforms you into what the psychedelics only let you glimpse. In view of his words, when I reflected on my trips with LSD and other psychedelics, I saw that after a glimpse of the possibility of transcendence, I continued tripping only to reassure myself that the possibility was still there. Seeing the possibility is indeed different from being the possibility. Sooner or later you must purify and alter your mind, heart, and body so that the things which bring you down from your experiences lose their power over you. Psychedelics could chemically override the thought patterns in your brain so that you are open to the moment, but once the chemical loses its power the old habit patterns take over again. With them comes a subtle despair that without chemicals you are a prisoner of your thoughts. The trap of high experiences, however they occur, is that you become attached to their memory and so you try to recreate them. These memories compel you to try to reproduce the high. Ultimately they trap you, because they interfere with your experience of the present moment. In meditation you must be in the moment, letting go of comparisons and memories. If the high was too powerful in comparison to the rest of your life, it overrides the present and keeps you focused on the past. The paradox, of course, is that were you to let go of the past, you would find in the present moment the same quality that you once had. But because you’re trying to repeat the past, you lose the moment. How many times have you felt a moment of perfection – only to have it torn away the next moment by the awareness that it will pass? How many times will you try to get high hoping that this time you won’t come down – until you already know as you start to go up that you will come down? The down is part of the high. When in meditation you are tempted by another taste of honey, your memory of the finiteness of those moments tempers your desire. More bliss, more rapture, more ecstasy – just part of the passing show. The moment in its fullness includes both high and low and yet it is beyond both." – Ram Dass

So far i've had positive results with micro dosing. I felt a vividness and clarity to my experience today that is unusual, but makes me feel very good. I am loving Abraham Hicks and her teachings about emotional regulation are excellent. I am going to spend more time mastering her teachings over the coming weeks so I can effectively get myself to high tier emotions like love, bliss, joy etc through my own conscious thinking and intention. No more relying on the outside world to make me feel good. I'm going to make myself feel good then go out into the world with that good feeling already in place.

So in a way we all experience awakening experiences, yet when it is at a point of you not quite being sure if you have entered into enlightenment, the question is asked "which of the traditions' archetypes of awakeneings does this experience align with?" So, a description. Working hard at mental mastery (not mental masrurbation) and then, the mind cracks and the peace that was there sometimes, turns into bliss and true love is discovered. The emotions are the body, you can see through your body and you see the reality of what non dual is, that is, there is no inside and outside. There is one smooth experience, and the only difference is the manifestation of form that provides the space-time individuality. Along with this numerous insights, happiness, pure contentment, complete concentration the ability to put thought aside, and a really really strong sense of "this is fucking hillarious". So, from this description can you reader, relate? Do you feel this? If so, would you say it is Samadhi, satori, non dual awakening. Hmm. What do you think?

@Preetom thank you. a good post. made me want to find a certain quote again that I once read. this is the quote: "In our situation we only need an explanation of the realm of this world, which is the place of responsibility, trial, and works." "Know that since God created human beings and brought them out of nothingness into existence, they have not stopped being travelers. They have no resting place from their journey except in the Garden or the Fire, and each Garden and Fire is in accordance with the measure of its people. Every rational person must know that the journey is based upon toil and the hardships of life, on afflictions and tests and the acceptance of dangers and very great terrors. It is not possible for the traveler to find in this journey unimpaired comfort, security, or bliss. For waters are variously flavored and weather changes, and the character of the people at every place where one stops differs from the character at the next. The traveler needs to learn what is useful from each situation. He is the companion of the each one for night or an hour, and then departs. How could these be reasonably expected by someone in this condition?” "We have not mentioned this to answer the people fond of comfort in this world, who strive for it and are devoted to the collection of worldly rubble. We do not occupy ourselves with or turn our attention to those engaged in this petty and contemptible activity. But we mention it as counsel to whoever wishes to hasten the bliss of contemplation in other than its given realm, and to hasten the state of annihilation elsewhere than in its native place, and who desire absorption in the real by means of fana', obliteration from the worlds." "The masters among us are scornful of this ambition because it is a waste of time and a loss of true rank, and associates the realm with that which is unsuitable to it." -Ibn al Arabi

this is why your own self-realization is the most important... THE ONLY thing which truly ultimately matters... the "enlightened beings" which appear in your version of the reality with you, are co-created and share your world... but if it can be said this way... that in their own direct experience, the worlds that they create are never ending and total bliss... an example: the reality you and I share, Osho died in 1990... but in one of the infinitely many versions, he's still alive and kickin' today on earth in 2019 and has expanded the center he started in Oregon on a global scale. "Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world."

Deep down if you are in any sort of pain, be it physical, emotional or existential and overall feel tired and overwhelmed by this 'high maintenance' life we live nowadays; I invite you to ponder over this message below. For the sake of this contemplation, can you please let go of all ideas such as love, bliss, security, well being, happiness etc? Aka all the goodies you ever searched for. If you are hurt or dissatisfied now, you've already failed right? Or at least you think you or someone/somebody outside of you(including god) have failed or did something wrong. Have you started seeing the futility of this grand, bottomless project of trying to make yourself happy and secured? Has it worked? Are you completely at ease, bliss, secured, without fear and anxiety? If not, what's the percentage of progress you made in this grand project over your 10-20-30-40-50 years of lifetime? Do you see the impossibility of this game which is rigged against you? Why do you even try? Why do you still believe you can make yourself happy, secured, fulfilled permanently? Why not simply acknowledge and accept the utter fragility of yourself? Happiness and wellbeing is NOT your nature or something you deserve. When did you buy into this bullshit story? Have you lost your mind? Just look at you! If you were a Greek god with a lifetime of 10 billion years, who knows no physical or mental exhaustion, who possesses immense prowess and can survive even a planetary destruction; it would be rational to claim that such a being has legit high chance of deserving and claiming happiness, well being and permanent security. On the other hand look at you! How fragile and vulnerable you are! It takes a zillion things in proper place in your environment and psycholology to make a moment of respite for you while a minor little thing like a virus, temperature, gravity, accident, discomforting thought, tough emotion can legit screw you over. It takes like 15-20 years of healthy childhood, education and environment to have a decent, high esteemed self, while only one traumatic event or imagination can plant a deep imprint in you and screw you over badly for life! Can you simply let go and accept your vulnerability? Can you let go of this impossible project and assumption that you can actually secure yourself? Can you totally accept your fate for having pain, grief, fear, depression as your usual and natural condition and simply stop trying to make it otherwise? Just look at you trying so hard to build and maintain your sand castles in midst of a gigantic Tsunami. See how easy it is to disturb you and your fickle boundaries.. What happens if you simply give up on chasing this impossible dream? You are already bound to be screwed, right? How worse can it be? Maybe a new dimension will open up if you simply give up and accept your fate? I leave you with this message.

That is one way of looking at it, which is partially true,. Yet, notice how there is a destination in the future (a place not Here or Now in which the work stops). Saying "the work continues within a timeline" and saying the "work ends within a timeline", both involve a timeline in a relative context. They are both partially true and partially false. The phrase "the work ends within a timeline" is misleading because in the relative context of a being within a timeline, growth is infinite. In Absolute Now, it makes no difference if there is work, no work, suffering, no suffering, bliss, anxiety, tuna fish sandwiches or bird chirps. . . Yet it would also be misleading to say "it's just Here and Now". In a sense this is true, yet it is misleading because it will be interpreted by a seeker as "I don't need to do any work. There is no destination. I have already arrived. I can sit around, play video games and be lazy. Nothing matters". The problem with that is it's an intellectual construct without the underlying awakening. It is still a contraction within a self construct. I AM Perfect Now and i am a work in progress. . . there is an infinite amount of work and growth in a relative context. It's also misleading to say that Absolute Freedom is a place of abiding bliss, because that means Absolute Freedom is not a place of discomfort. Absolute Freedom is eternally present unconditionally. It is present during bliss, pain, love, terror, boredom, self-centered thoughts, peace etc. There is a relative freedom of bliss (relative to non-bliss) and there is a relative peace (relative to non-peace). As a relative experience, I've been through extended periods of continuous freedom, joy, bliss, peace etc,. - those are wonderful states - it is not "bad" or "wrong". Yet they are relative states (relative to non-freedom, non-joy, non-bliss, non-peace). A human can see such states in others and it can trigger a seeking desire to attain those states. Who knows, perhaps it's possible to maintain a relative blissful state for years or decades. If so, there is nothing "wrong" with that, yet there is more. That is relativity within absolute infinity. Personally, I'm more interested in exploring Absolute Truth, than seeking/attaining a relative blissful state. Such a state is distraction to exploring more expansive Absolute Truth. Getting locked into any relative state is a limitation.

If you’re going to talk about nonduality, which is not what this post is about, then there are no children in Africa, there is no purpose, there is no meaning, there is no value, there is no Jesus, and there is no you. Jesus is a concept. There is no historical evidence to suggest such a person. Nonduality has no relationship to anything. As someone whose been around a lot of hippies having been raised in the bay and know more than enough hippies, burners, and new age people, they aren’t exactly genuinely loving people. A lot of it is victim culture and isn’t authentic in all of its talk about love and blah blah blah and is actually rather spiteful. Yes, they have more of a capacity for inclusiveness but you’re literally highlighting my point that all because you can have high capacity to love doesn’t mean you also don’t have both a high disowned capacity for hate, violence, etc. If you think that you’re trying to get far in this work by only trying to cling to love, light, and bliss then yeah... there’s nothing else to tell you than that you’re wrong. Any real authentic master worth their salt will tell you that all of the valuable growth has been going through the hideous aspects of themselves that they didn’t want to know about themselves. @Serotoninluv excellent story. Thanks for sharing. I can definitely attest to what you’re saying in my own life for sure. I personally would frame it differently but I get the spirit of what you’re saying. One of the things I think has served me is really when I commit to being both honest and being able to really take feedback from others and seeking that out.

@SOUL Dam sweet. I felt myself as god but now i'm disconnected. I could really go for some bliss right now lol

@Raptorsin7 There are many facets including peace, joy, fulfillment but if it could be said in a word......Bliss.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I also observe a lot of spirituality with a goal and destination of abiding warm fuzzy feelings. Maybe there is such a destination, yet that's not my experience and not something I am seeking. I resonate strongly with that which is unconditional. When I see spiritual retreats promoting transcendence into conditional states of love and bliss, part of me is turned off. Some of my lessons have been things like the absolute peace in relative terror. Yet these are hard lessons that don't sell well. I've never seen a retreat with themes like "Surrender to your deepest fears", "The peace of anxiety", "Embrace your inner rapist". . . A couple years ago, a doctor in my area got caught sexually abusing young teenage girls. He got away with it for a long time. He was able to quiet the girls and parents didn't suspect a well-renowned doctor could behave like this (he was also a doctor for an olympic team). . . When he got caught, people were outraged. Some people were extremely upset and wanted him to suffer. I met many people that wanted him to go to a filthy prison where he would repeatedly get raped. The gal I was dating at the time held this view. It was like a choice had to be made: you either had compassion for the children or compassion for the rapist. Having compassion for both was impossible. As soon as I wondered if he had been abused as a child, she flipped out and started yelling at me that I was supporting a child rapist. I asked her if it was possible to have compassion for both the abused and the abuser and she vehemently said no and wanted me to decide which side I was on. . . Yet all dualities collapse with enough scrutiny. . . I then asked her "You have compassion for a child that has been abused. Ok, when does your compassion for that child end? What does that child need to do to no longer be deserving of your compassion?". She paused like this was a trick question. . , She replied "Never. I would always have compassion for them". . . . This is a common dilemma, the mind likes the idea of "unconditional love" or "unconditional compassion" until they find out what "unconditional" really means. . . So I continued: "Children abuse is traumatizing and leaves an imprint of suffering and disorders into adulthood - this suffering can be expressed in many different ways through their life. Should our compassion for the abused child end on their 18th birthday, when they are no longer a 'child'?", "Of course not". . . "So what would a traumatized person need to become unworthy of your compassion". She replied "They can't hurt another person". . . And that turned out to be her non-negotiable condition for compassion. She would not budge off of it. Like you suggested, compassion to me is trying to imagine what it's like to be in another person's shoes. We could imagine what it would be like to be abused, suffer for years, harm others and hate ourselves for it - yet be unable to stop. This imagination is a big step for the vast majority of people. Yet as you also suggested, empathy goes much deeper into nondual areas in which there is no difference between me and that child rapist. Ime, this work is extremely difficult and makes compassion look like a cake-walk. It goes much deeper than "I have the capacity to do that" or "After that type of abuse I may have done the same". That's still relatively surface. The deeper levels are actually being it. The "I AM" everything is fun and games while it's a blissful state of juicy Nondual Oneness. Yet it's not so much fun when the "I AM" means another that I hate or fear. I AM does not only include chipmunks, trees, butterflies and healers. The I AM also includes racists, murderers and child abusers. And that aint easy to face. I've been on many psychedelic trips where the "I AM" was someone I did not sign up for. The I AM includes both abused and abuser. These are the deepest levels of I AM empathy. Judgement, hate and fear cancels itself out, since I AM both. . . . And one's relationship to reality changes because if I harm you, I am harming myself.

There are 3 perspectives we can look at this from: There are states like Nirrodha samadhi that would take training. This where you see videos like Ken Wilber stops his brain waves, Vietnam monks protest the war in the 60s and 70s where they sit like a rock while being set on fire and burn to the ground not moving an inch. There’s also where you recognize that pain is really just a thought. The very reaction is a thought. As said in The Book of Not Knowing, which you yourself can discover to be true in your own experience, “pain may be ‘so’ but it’s not ‘true’.”. What pain is is a thought that you’re doing. Pain itself is something you create. Realizing this doesn’t mean you walk around pain free or something like that. Your relationship to it would just transformed. You can also learn to experience pain as just a different kind of state of bliss.

There is a lot of fantasy not just on this forum but in particularly Western New Age conceptions and belief systems of spirituality that the path of Enlightenment/Liberation/Awakening and so forth (and there are many ways you can frame that as it’s not set in stone as some universal as to what it is and entails). One primary fantasy is that spirituality is only love, light, bliss, etc. and just being in states of bliss, samadhi, etc. There are many people who can get into such states and still be very deluded as to what they’re really doing and about both their own self and ego (those are not the same). The degree to which we truly integrate and transcend our self and ego is to the degree to which we can acknowledge our outright capacity for being a hellish being. For example: regardless of our race, heritage, skin color, ethnicity, etc. if you can’t see your text an inner racist, there’s a part of you you can’t see. People, particularly people who have been raised in post modern societies, have no clue about their own capacity to have ethnocentric tendencies because of course it’s denied, repressed, and suppressed which where you get the collective liberal shadow of arrogance and passive aggressive violence. Another example which I personally really like which was a real breakthrough insight: if you see a school shooter, notice how that makes you feel because you ARE capable of such an act. On a surface level, we can that individuals within societies like the US react which such hate and vitriol (which is often denied in the name of “goodness” and “justice”) because they lack higher compassion. Whats left out though is that the reason people lack that basic compassion for that school shooter is because they assume they themselves aren’t capable of such an act and therefore cannot feel any empathy for that shooter had they been put in a place in life where those life situations would’ve made that same act, at minimum, very tangibly possible for them. What I’m saying though is not a mere intellectual or visualization exercise to try and “put yourself in another’s shoes”. Rather what I’m saying is to recognize that you already are in their shoes but you don’t know. If we can’t see how we TOTALLY have our own egocentric Donald Trump, inner rapist, inner racist, shooter, and also all the Golden Shadows as well (which will still feel disgusting or hideous), you’re going to not only miss full enlightenment, you’re just going to potentiate more harm and likely make a mess (if you do start getting far in this work). We’re in age of great polarization where people are very deluded of just how destructive things are likely to get. The more developed you are, the more destructive you can be. The more destructive you can be, the greater the responsibility you need to take on if what you want is a more conscious, awake, responsible, effective, evolved, inclusive, compassionate, and truly loving world.

So even years of meditation will not bring this bliss, peace, feeling valuable? I know people who are not enlightened, awakened, but don't feel incomplete and easily accept whatever life throws at them.