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Imagine life of a bum, what is it like? Every morning you get up dirty in some shithole. You have to beg for money and often you barely manage to get enough for even shitty food. Sometimes you starve. Everyone treats you like shit. You wash rarely in places like river or lake or if you are lucky probably under the cold water somewhere where people let you. You can't get to a warm place with a clean and soft bed and just lay down and relax. Just imagine yourself in this position, really imagine how you smell like shit and beg people for money every day because you have nothing in your life and this is the only way you can eat, at least for some time. Imagined? Do you think it's disgusting? Yes, because you are used to comfort. If you would be forced to live like that for a year and all your concerns are only about survival that will probably not shock you that much. Your smell wouldn't be such a problem when you managed to get some food after a day of starvation. You would probably get used to beg for money because you have to and won't be so ashamed anymore, this emotion will just forcefully atrophy, same shit with your smell and look. Now imagine Chester Bennington, a singer of the band called Linkin Park. What would it be like for you in his place? You probably have a great house, a great car, a dream career that you are passionate about, millions of people around the world would fucking shine if they get to meet you, your wife is a former Playboy model and you have three kids. I mean really, just imagine that many people around the world are obsessed with your character, cool, huh? Probably not that cool since he committed suicide about a year ago. What about Kurt Cobain? Merilin Monroe? Robin Williams? Now imagine one more time that a crowd of people are obsessed with you. You meet them, they want to take a picture with you, they are shining and utterly happy to talk to you. What if you have a 100 concerts a year and you meet these people every time it ends? Do you think it would be as pleasing to you as it first seemed in your imagination? Probably not. Same shit with house, car, dream creer, Playboy model. And usually if people commit suicide and don't even leave a note it means they suffer because of the devastating depression for several years. What is it like? Probably you cry almost every day, you are hopeless, you feel like shit all the time, your suicidal self-talk accompanied by total, utter emotional devastation can barely stop for a brief periods of time, you are totally used to and even sick of all the wealth that you have, it has zero positive effect on you. Is that too different from life of a bum? If you think yes than you have never been depressed as much as all those people that I listed, they fucking killed themselves, see? Do you remember this feeling of anticipation when you wait to get something like a computer, a car, a girlfriend, money or something else? Then what happens next, say, in a month? You get used to it and it's like you have always had it. Yes, it's plausible. But not so speacial anymore. I don't know why did I write this. I just had an impulse. I guess the point that I want to make is that you have to be happy with your life purpose independently of success. You don't have to wait for fascination, curiosity, desire to create like for a shipment from an internet shop. Life purpose is not something you get, it's something you give and can't keep for yourself because it burns your pocket. And also that physiological and psychological health and enlightenment are way more important than everything else. Are you ready to live a life of happy bum?

The Medicine Woman/ Rumblings of Kundalini I’m hunching over a constellation of tarot cards, spread amongst slender crystals on a small table belonging to Nicky, a medicine woman. I came on a recommendation, perhaps out of desperation, dubious but prepared to lay my doubts aside. Now, with every new insight that spills into my thought stream as we discuss the enigma before us my skepticism crumbles away crumb by crumb, and I rub my chin in stunned wonderment mumbling ‘yes, that’s right’ and ‘wow’ and ‘that makes sense’. Fantastical characters and symbols seem to arrange themselves intelligently, casting a vision of my life more clearly than I could have articulated it myself: the magician, the moon, the reaper, the high priest. We dig deeper. A new constellation exposes more secrets; we uncover a hidden pain appearing disguised in unexpected corners of my life, and its relationship to my current dilemma seems suddenly crystal clear. Our time is up, we finish and I go to the bathroom. With cool water rolling off my hands, my inner currents begin to shift. I begin to feel a cascade within me, and suddenly a deluge of emotion tears through, flooding my being. Shaking, I return downstairs. Nicky says I can stay for a while to sit with the pain, so I spend twenty minutes or so sobbing and shuddering in her garden before she comes out and puts a soothing hand on my shoulder. She suggests I lie on the grass and invite the earth to assist in my healing. I do as she says and she begins to sprinkle over me what I later learn is water collected from a sacred well. The emotions continue to churn for a while, until they gradually begin to transform into an explosion of energy radiating out from my shoulders. Nicky has me stand up, and my body convulses as if possessed. I let go as deeply as I can and allow my body to do anything it needs to. I groan, shudder, whimper and writhe. This goes on for a long time. Eventually there is a pause, and we take the opportunity to finish. I thank Nicky profusely for her compassion and time and head to the nearby woods to continue the work alone. The emotional and energetic torrent doesn’t stop for over a week. In addition to the episodes of deep hurt and the involuntary movements, which evolve into flailing arms and whole body spasms, I experience feelings of electrical, magnetic charge in my hands and neck, nosebleeds, headaches, moments of expanded perception, feelings of unity and an afternoon of feeling quite spaced out. This is enormously challenging, not least due to juggling this with my job. My work week involves responding to a heroin overdose, listening to an audio recording of live domestic abuse, and the suicide of a well-known client. I get through the week, though, and the symptoms slow down until sporadic shuddering during meditation is all I’m left with. I spend hours researching, trying to work out what happened. It appears this is the first rumblings of kundalini. Most likely, the energy radiating out from my shoulders and arms was the current spilling out from my heart chakra as the freshly loosened pain was unblocking. This is new territory for me in so many ways, and I’m still adjusting to a growing array of concepts I would have regarded as quackery only weeks or months ago. I’m embracing the learning with an open mind and heart, and embracing the journey with excitement for whatever mystery next finds me.

In 1899 Sigmund Freud got a new telephone number: 14362. He was 43 at the time, and he was profoundly disturbed by the digits in the new number. He believed they signified that he would die at age 61 (note the one and six surrounding the 43) or, at best, at age 62 (the last two digits in the number). He clung, painfully, to this bizarre belief for many years. Presumably he was forced to revise his estimate on his 63rd birthday, but he was haunted by other superstitions until the day he died—by assisted suicide, no less—at the ripe old age of 83. That's just for starters. Freud also had frequent blackouts. He refused to quit smoking even after 30 operations to correct the extensive damage he suffered from cancer of the jaw. He was a self-proclaimed neurotic. He suffered from a mild form of agoraphobia. And, for a time, he had a serious cocaine problem. So much for the father of psychoanalysis. Mental health professionals are, in general, a fairly crazy lot, at least as troubled as the general population.

Suicide, quite common! You are the monkey mind, and you're not happy with it! Simple as that!

Do you really think so? I feel psychedelics are pointless when you are fully awakened. I feel they are more for people who are more in an emergency situation in life and need a glimpse of truth before suicide? Psychedelics only ever showed me what i already knew and experienced naturally just more in a short period of time and more intense. They do help you remember the Enlightened state or confirm what you know from within(shall we say) but if you apply and live it daily, there is no need IMO.

Great point. And I agree. You can take the information without liking the source. I like some actors work, even if I do not like them as a person. But, to use this same analogy, imagine being someone who is in Germany in 1933. You see a leader as potentially dangerous. All the warning signs are there. But 90% of the people love him and following him . You're baffled by this and concerned. He's obviously a pathological liar and severely mentally ill. But, no one cares and still follows him. That's what this feels like. Obviously no one's died here (oh wait, haven't 2 people so far committed suicide based on her teachings?). What worries me most, beyond the damage she can be doing to the overall Enlightenment movement, is the potential of a Jim Jones situation. When you have a mentally ill deranged psychotic that is held as a spiritual leader and has millions of followers (and Teal does have millions of followers), history has shown that never ever ends well. I see that potential in Teal. I can care less if some of her words are inspirational.

Hey everyone. I know this is a super old thread. But, someone on this Forum suggested a video by Teal Swan. I had never heard of her, so I watched some of her videos. I was immediately put off by her. Though it seemed like she was massively popular with people. One of her main videos was 2 hours of her countering claims that she is fraud. So I dug a little deeper, into what the controversy was about. I was shocked at what I found. This girl has serious issues. Watch this video. People have committed suicide based on her words. She claims to heal the sick, talk to the dead, talk to aliens. She claims to have been sewn up into a corpse (which is physically impossibly). She claims to have watched 6 children be murdered, yet no arrests. It's alarming that she has over 500,000 followers on youtube. And most of the comments here are favorable. Seems obvious to me she has psychotic traits, as well as narcissistic personality disorder. The lying, the delusions of grandeur. What scares me most, is this is becoming the norm for Spiritual leaders. For every Leo, there seems to be 10 nutjobs that are only getting into teaching spirituality for their own nefarious gains. There was the spiritual teacher that just got arrested for duping his female followers into sex slavery and branded them with his own initials. The real tragedy, is all these con artists are what the general pubic associates with the words 'Spirituality' or 'Enlightenment'. So when someone legit wants to teach, the majority of the public may avoid them, thinking that that teacher may be a con. It sets the whole evolution of humanity back. To me, that's the real harm of these can artists. Let alone, all the people they physically and emotionally harm in their strive for personal power over others. And for those of you here that are looking for more spiritual teachers, please do some research before investing emotionally in them. People like Teal Swan are dangerous for a multitude of reasons.

@Arman This song has saved my life numerous times especially the second verse ”Suicide? nah, I’m not a foolish guy, don’t even feel like drinking or even getting high, cuz all that’s gonna do real is accelerate the anxieties that I wish I could alleviate” man... thats from the heart...

Life isn't hard, you are just making it hard. Notice the word "you". There is no "you", it isn't like suicide since there was no "you" to suicide with in the first place. Your ego/identity (the you) is making life to be this extremely hardship, harsh and even happy place, when it isn't. Life is neutral. Life isn't the ego. If you feel like you want to belong or be something, be the universe, because that is what you are. You're not your ego, you are infinite and everything.

Hello, person who is reading this! As you may have already noticed, the title of this journal is named after Bo Burnham’s comedy special “Make Happy”. I watched it for the first time a few weeks ago and was oddly inspired by it. I really want to try to get happy, and that is primarily what my journey to self-actualization has been about. I started getting serious with self-help after a severe panic attack in February. For me, it was a personal record of hitting rock bottom. Since then, I have been spending more and more time seeking truth, learning about/trying to challenge my ego, and trying to love/forgive myself. Since childhood, I have been battling clinical, chronic depression. I often feel hopeless, lonely, and struggle with thoughts of suicide. I also have some social anxiety and issues with perfectionism. I have a long way to go. Still, I think I have been making (very) slow but steady progress with my inner work. I’m here for the same reasons as probably most of the others on this forum. Self-help and enlightenment are hard topics to seriously talk about with the people in my life. Many of the ideas that go along with these topics aren’t yet understood or even acceptable in the mainstream. Though I realize this life is mine alone to fight for, it is nice to have a support network and some guidance along the way. Maybe I’ll even be able to help others. This will be an all-purpose journal, but I will primarily try to post entries on the self-improvement and awareness exercises I’m doing. In documenting my ups and downs, I will be as brutally honest as possible. I, like most others, usually filter out the bad parts of my life online by omitting certain information. However, I will try to include the good, bad, ugly, tragic, and comedic in my own writing here as I try to “make happy” for myself. So, here we go. – zenjen

@Ether The problem is not thinking. The problem is your conception of "reality" and what value you give it. Actually, everything is neutral. Your experience or the collectives agreed values of it may not be. Example: It is agreed that holding black slaves in US is bad. That is slavery. It is agreed that paying close to nothing for Asian products are ok and not slavery. Funfact: I heard that "suicide-nets" are now being installed on tall buildings...in order for non african-non-usslaves to jump of the factory to kill them nonslave selfs. Most things are point of view. Most people do not want to have a view.

How is awakening not suicide? It is suicide just that you have to keep on living 'cause your body's still there. Tbh, no one can tell me deep inside, that they don't feel like "what am I still doing here" after awakening, it feels like "yeah then lets help other people to understand their suffering, only because I know I am not me and I am lost and life is meaningless." That is how I feel. You can prolly sense that I've been a lifetime pessimist

It is like it doesnt even matter, so suicide doesnt even matter either. I dont feel comfortable with being lost.

Seekers call it dark night of the soul. But I did a research on internet and saw that dozens have committed suicide after meditation (especially retreat) and hundreds became mentally disabled (depression, psychosis, panic attacks and etc). I saw people on psychology forums who have been suffering from depersonalization for years after doing several months meditation.

Meditation once a day (20 minutes) brought me to the edge of suicide.

I think I am not strong enough for this awakening. It is literally a psychological death, it feels like it. Please tell me I am not crazy, I feel like I am not exisiting in this concept of time anymore or I cant. I awakened myself by overthinking to a point where my mind automatically made me awake. Trust me. I FEEL LIKE SUICIDE WOULDNT BE MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THE STATE OF MIND IM IN FOR MONTHS NOW. Unfortunately I havent noticed any of the good yet. Just pure suffering. If that is awakening, I woudve for sure renounced it. Day by day I realize that "I" cant exist anymore due to circumstances in my mind. When will the moment come, when I feel one with myself, not feeling like regretting that I havent killed myself? I am literally not amused with the word "awakening", since it is such a life threatening issue in my case. I feel my ego is just nothing, very vague, about to break, protecting itself by telling me I have to kill it phsically. So when I am just not what I thought I am, my mind tells me everything of me is vague, why should it be so different to killing myself. It is somehow the easier way than carrying around the burden of this issue. It is the same as suicide, every enlightened person says that suicide is the ultimate enlightenment. It is a valid feeling of death. Just psychologically, so, how can this ever be a bliss? I am not suicidal. It just gets more serious in that matter, that everything in my mind I identify with is so existential, so deeply rooted.

@mohdanas Why does reality exist? Where did you come from? What are you? What are other people? What happens when you die? Why is there evil in the world? Is there a heaven & hell? Do paranormal things exist or not? Is suicide ok? Are there really aliens? Are they spiritual, hostile? How does atom and quantum make sense together? Is intuition real? Are there psychic powers? Is infinity self aware? Do you have free will?

@Mikael89 Just a note from my travels, but upon the first realization of nonduality, there was absolute clarity that thoughts are brain stuff (dream stuff) and the dream by and large is not a thought of the Being, but rather so far outside of what a brain could comprehend, because the brain is dream stuff. Direct experience from outside the brain is necessary, cause the Truth is incommunicable, and even if it wasn’t, it’s unbelievable - as in, no one could be expected to believe or fathom it. That, is death. Death is not a bad thing like society believes. But, you experience this, then try to tell people, and you just come off as arrogant, lying, ignorant, and someone starts talking about using it to justify suicide, etc. For one, crystal clear, for two - very messy.

I have been doing my damnedest to keep myself in a good healthy mindset, but I really just failed hard this week... Things have not been going to smoothly for me this week, (trying to support my husband for the suicide of his friend and now his dying grandfather, finding out my husband has been doing meth behind my back... and a fight between my sister and husband over stupidity) but I have been trying to just let it go and not let myself be run by it. It has been really hard keeping stuff in perspective with one thing after another just almost constantly knocking me down... Last night I decided to drink a little to just not think about any of it. (usually it works, I just get tipsy and pass out) But I couldn't get myself to stop thinking about all the bullshit... I felt like I was just sinking deeper and deeper into depression... I felt just hopeless and alone... So in a stupid drunken state, I grabbed a knife and sat in the bathroom just crying my eyes out... and I cut my wrist... I haven't done that stupid shit in 8 years... But I felt like I couldn't stop myself anymore... I feel so disgusted with myself.. I'm a mom now... I can't be doing shit like that... It's just selfish... My husband saw it and got really pissed at me.. but he hasn't said a word about it yet... I feel so stupid...

@Jamie Universe That's exactly what im saying lol And yeah I think I will adopt children. @zoey101 Haha it sounds harsh but I think it's true, it brings in people into the world who have a bad foundation and just like a building a lot of the time it collapses, this could be suicide, alcoholism, whatever or you can rebuild the foundation, but this is extremely hard to do. I think my parents shouldn't have made me. No offense to my parents but they aren't actualized human beings in the slightest, no direction, fatalistic, working class mindset, addiction, close minded. And then that has left me to figure my whole life out from scratch without any good real life role models. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I think all humans deserve a good start.

@Joseph Maynor@dharm4 This has to do with a post I just left on suicide shortcut. I’ve been pondering this today.

I dont know, I am just really confused of everything. Today I woke up and felt fine but still I had this damn crippling feeling (which felt very very real!) that killing myself wouldnt have been different from what I experienced last days. It is like I completely ignore the idea of suicide my mind wants me to act on. It feels like again I am continue living whilst my mind doesnt want me to live. Is this interpretation just another delusion?

God dam... That made me cry... But you're right..no matter how furious and hurt I am... I know it's not about me.. he's been going through a lot lately.... Found out a friend he knew since middle school committed suicide... And now his grandfather that he doesn't really like (because he asked if our daughter came out white) is dying... And he hasn't seen him yet... I don't know what to do...

@Mikael89 Well suicide involved the body dying as well, like the heart stops beating and all that. The death I experienced, I died as an ego and the body kept running its course. The best description I can come up with is, imagine being dead but being able to still see through your eyes and use the body. It kind of does not make sense, that is why experiencing it for yourself helps a ton. Whatever I say, won’t help too much. But I do get where you’re coming from. The psychadelic high is a hallucination inside the hallucination (life) itself. For example when you’re sober how do you know your brain is not hallucinating reality? How do we know for sure anything really exists? All we have is our human senses thats it, its never a DIRECT experience. I feel that I went beyond human perception with psychadelics. But thanks for the feedback it is true we should question everything! ☺️

Sometimes it's good to go back to the roots of personal development. I don't know how much you guys know about the famous, Swedish DJ by the name of Avicii, but he died two days ago (unknown cause so let us not speculate too much, but there might have been drugs/alcohol involved/perhaps even suicide)... Anyways. I was watching his documentary "True Stories" which is about his career and the reason to why he stopped touring. Now his career kicked off super fast when he was around 20 years old, so obviously he was not mature enough for the fame he received. He resorted to alcohol to cope with his extreme anxiety and stress he felt. All of this might led to diseases and maybe ultimately his death? What's even more convincing is that I've looked up old Swedish forum posts from him back in 2006 where he started to spread some of his early music, and he also made posts about his anxiety and stress. Now he did nothing really about this core issue for him, and along with the fame and the chase for stardom and all of those things – of course through massive passion and hard work – he wasn't able to handle it. So already here it's a fact that money/fame does not cure your problems. This shows the extreme importance of setting personal development and the mastering of one's own psychology as a standard in schools/society overall. Instead of the chase of fortune and fame. Not to say those things can't make you happy – anything can, but the core problem can never be solved by masking. This also lead me to a video from Leo where he talks about this: