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Because that one is not working. I am a hardcore addict because I cannot control myself and I give in not because I fear death as you said. Would you remake that video or at least give us some strategies that would work? I think that you would disagree if you see that video now,because you talk about after death and you describe it as doing nothing and being nothing as it would be something boring and we need to get use to this state in order to get rid of our addiction.(by doing all kinds of meditation like do nothing tehnique and whatnot). The bottom question: Do you consider that the root cause of an addiction is still the fear of nothingness? Thank you Leo

It might not be fear of nothingness. It might be limiting enjoyment to only a few experiences instead of enjoying all experiences. If u enjoyed all experiences fully how could any one experience be your fav? What helps this human enjoy every moment more is no mind/no imagination. Then it can fully focus on whatever it is sensing while also sensing peace. Also knowing you are not anything that u can sense/imagine allows the human form to enjoy every moment knowing it is a miracle to experience being human so vividly. So then what is boring can be enjoyed, what is hell can be enjoyed, and what is heaven can be enjoyed even more than before. There are a bunch of diff ways/paths that work diff for each person for solving any one “problem” tho since every human is unique.

Thanks for the notes @LfcCharlie4 From my experience the ego tries to subsume the awakened state. When I know of my nothingness, the "I" might've gained a new identity. It is "my" nothingess, "I" am Pure Awareness. The ego just wants a name. There aren't any names.

Hi love, I am permanently awakened after a two-day ayahuasca retreat. Here is the report of the retreat. Before the ceremony, I had no intentions, desires, or expectations, just beingness. First ceremony: I became an absolute infinity. The entire existence. All the experiences, all the dimensions. The infinite consciousness. All is one. All is love. All the pleasure and pain, all the senses and emotions. Infinity of infinity. Total surrendering and beingness. The entire existence is just the imaginary manifestation of our infinite love. Time is love's infinite awareness of itself. I am all of you, and all of it is a song that's sang by the entire existence, and it is infinite love and beauty. The knowing of the true self is permanently present. Second ceremony: I became so infinite that I became absolute nothingness and god. The consciousness expands infinitely and beyond. All is one, all is whole, all is love. I am. I love. Just love, and nothing else. Just being, and the entire existence. I purged my entire existence into infinite love and merged into one. The infinite love radiance from everything and everywhere. Life is absolutely clear, it is absolute love. The total surrendering of existence. Enlightenment. The beingness of the absolute is permanent. No more questions or seeking, just absolute beingness. Nirvana. I love you all! Just love, just live, just be.

The nothing I think you are referring to is also something. Some people are confused and think there is only this physical reality and on the other side of the coin there is nothingness. There is more somethingness well beyond or minuscule physical reality. The somethingness beyond our physicalness is infinite. The real you and me is in the somethingness that lives in formlessness( non- physical) (Having no material existence as we understand it) beyond time and space. There are infinite beings with distinct consciousness that live in this somethingness beyond our physical reality. Your psychic, entity, higher self, soul, or whatever you relate to, lives in this somethingness that is also non- physical and beyond our time and space. The somethingness that is in the non- physical can manifest its self with light, sound, electromagnetic energy and infinite other somethings that we here in the physical can never imagine or understand. We are just physical personalities that are extensions from this somethingness that is in the non- physical, which some relate to as our souls. Our souls are distinct beings, which God create to explore what life is and can be in infinite possible directions. Yes, we are God consciousness, but we are so removed from full God consciousness that our physical conscious minds will never fully grasp the full meaning of it. We are Ants living in an Ant community somewhere in a desert, the Ant hill representing our earth, thinking there is only Us and Nothingness. Yet the Earth contains billions of Ant hills, plants, animals, rocks, grians of sand, clouds, weather humans, etc., that us Ants are not aware of. When one of Us goes into nothingness they think they have reached God consciousness and everything there Is, thinking it's just God and just Us.. Don’t get caught up thinking it’s just you/me and God consciousness. There are infinite layers between us in this physical reality, your soul and God. Look beyond the tree and see the forest. Touching nothingness through meditation, psychedelics, or by other means is just the tip of the iceberg. Most people think they have reached God consciousness when they reach the nothingness. You have no idea how far away you still are from touching full God consciousness, meaning, being God. Once you have gotten a taste of nothingness, the real work begins. It begins here in the physical Mastering your Emotions, your Physical reality and body, your conscious physical mind, your sexual life force energy (Chi etc.,) your connection to the real you that lives in the somethingness of non-physical beyond time and space Just thoughts and beliefs.

So I am pretty good at astral projection and have never taken a psychedelic as I am 19. However I have become pure awareness/void in the astral before. Recently this character/ego has had many insights and actually started to realize them for what they are. That all is imaginary, all is because I want it to be, I am, and I am imagining myself experiencing all imagined angles. Etc This morning after laying in bed for a while I realized I was “out of body” / in a parallel reality. So I got up and the first thing that came to mind is to say “zen guru” over and over. In the book of Thoth he said it is apparently a powerful word to say when in “astral”. I then saw my surroundings fade to nothingness/void and then I was looking directly at the nothingness yet I did not become it this time. When I looked directly at this void it made a loud screeching noise and I could sense its intelligence, awareness and power. It gave me the feeling that it was all powerful and could do whatever it wanted with this ego. In the tao Te Ching it says the Tao is radiant. That’s what this experience made me feel even though I was looking at void. I am not sure if this was an imaginary “Self” within the higher “Self” but it does show me a glimpse into myself/my nature. It was like being a dream character looking at the dreamer, a piece of art looking at the artist, an instrument looking at the musician, a thought looking at the thinker.

@Leo Gura well I was very scared it was like my consciousness was trapped It's not the same void as lsd, I've had lsd void where everything shattered and return to the one and I was nothing in nothingness. Not same as the dmt void.

I believe the original question was, can Leo claim no other teacher has reached the depths of consciousness and knowledge that he has? I have had many teachers in the last 20 years, read books, immersed myself 6 years into Shamanism and other spiritual teachings, worked with aboriginal healers, and done several Ayahuasca ceremonies. What I have come to learn is that the right teacher, book, spiritual paths, people, plants, animals, and psychedelics will gravitate towards you when you are ready to explore the next level of consciousness and awakening. Every teacher, book, path, person and psychedelic etc. has it’s pros and cons. They can only provide you with the knowledge that resonates with your belief system. The limited conscious physical mind, combined with magnetic-attracting-thoughts and electromagnetic energy field, shape and mold our beliefs. Our beliefs shape our reality. Our reality is then strengthened with our imagination, which then stimulates our emotions. Our emotions further shape and solidifies our beliefs and energy field in the physical. It’s an intemperate circle. Every author, teacher, healer person, etc.. is caught in this circle and can only share with us what they are awakened and conscious of through their belief system. Our concentrated thoughts and beliefs are basically what create our physical reality. Our Physical reality is a very narrow banned width of conscious sound, light and electromagnetic frequencies and waves of energy. When I break through the veil of physical consciousness into nothingness, the void or miniscule aspects of God consciousness using a psychedelic or through meditation, I return to this limited reality struggling to translate my experience into symbols, such as words and images that my physical conscious mind can grasp and retain. These symbols are interpreted and integrated by my human conscious mind and by my belief system, which then further create my conscious physical reality. So, to answer your question, can Leo claim no other teacher has reached the depths of consciousness and knowledge that he has? Yes and no. His physical conscious mind, thoughts and beliefs are his. They maybe similar to other humans, but they are unique and distinctly his. That’s the beauty and gift that God has created. It’s neither right or wrong, more or less. It just is. We all have our distinct beliefs, thoughts, and conscious levels, which others may or may not have similarly accessed or reached. There are many conscious beings that have touched great depts of awareness that have decided not to share their wisdom with the masses. They tend to share only with select beings that are open and can resonate with the knowledge. Leo, like a few others, has decided to take a chance and courageously shares his wisdom and knowledge to the masses, knowing full well that he will be opening himself to all levels of consciousness on the Spiral Dynamic hierarchy, which may, or may not resonate with the knowledge. Having said that, he does have a profound amount of knowledge and consciousness that can and will resonate with many students. We are all students! Even the great masters were students in physical reality, until some of them were able to direct there magnetic-attracting-thoughts, from the physical conscious mind, towards other physical and non-physical states of beingness. Not to confuses anyone, what I have learned over the years is that the Ego is more or less your belief system. It is a narrow-focused form of physical mind consciousness (for lack of better words) that allow us to create this physical reality. The Ego (a misguided label we have given it) is a segment of confined focused consciousness that has been created by God for Beings to penetrate and explore physical reality, experience distinctness, objects and other limited forms of consciousness in physical form. The more you focus your attention to one belief, or field of thought, the narrower your world becomes and the more inclined you are to suffering and dwelling in the lower stages of Spiral Dynamics. The more consciousness you bring into your field of thoughts, Ego, physical conscious mind, the more you become aware of how your deep seeded beliefs affect and create your reality. Just a few thoughts and beliefs!

@seeking_brilliance Never. I have no sleep related problems. Only experiences during sleep were 2 non-dual/nothingness dissolution a few months ago, though they were nice and simple. No energy stuff. This one had a strong alien/inhuman/freaky vibe to it.

Yes of course Hegel is no easy, but the person I gave links to lived in house with library (his grandpa was philosopher) and so he has read Hegel and Marx at age 12. Coz he started his spiritual path so early, he was awakened at 20. Then in mature age he read Hegel in German, Rene Guenon (who combined feuerbach hegel kant fichte plus all traditionalistic doctrines together) in French and Quran in Arabic. He is himself Anti-Hegelian, Anti-Guenon, Anti-Plato, Anti-Advaitian. He is the first one (at least as far as I researched) who has actually explained difference between path of Abrahamic prophets (from Adam to Muhammad) and path of traditional spirituality (no-self enlightenment oneness dissolving in god etc etc). Before that i couldn't get this difference, I thought they all speaking about same truth and that these paths lead to same enlightenment. But there is radical difference! All human history is about war between these two doctrines, two spiritual paths. War between priests (traditionalistic path) and warriors (prophets' path). Everything else is stemming from this war, everything else is show, but in the core of all is the war between two radically different understanding of consciousness. Abrahamic doctrine states that consciousness exists as opposition to Being=Everything-ness, and Traditionalistic doctrines states that consciousness is equal to Being and consciousness is everything. Abrahamic doctrine states that God is hidden and He is opposite to absolutely everything, while Traditionalistic doctrine states that God is equal to everything, to Total All. I 'experienced' both kind of awakenings, and difference exists, and Abrahamic path is True, while Traditionalistic path is tricky lie, it is how Being tries to suppress Consciousness. Simple example: why some gurus are nuts even thought they are awakened? Why are they saying stupid things or acting weirdly? We think that they are so wise that they act in transcendent wise way. But actually its simply because their awareness is still suppressed by Being, they are awakened but in twisted way, in traditionalistic way. It didn't emancipate their awareness but suppressed it, made it even more 'cloudy', because they dissappeared. If you disappear then awareness can't emancipate from Being, because your physical individuality is that tool that makes consciousness to be emancipated from dictatorship of being. Of course Being through priests will tell you: it is ego, its avidya, it is ignorance, you should destroy it, you should merge with reality etc. LIE! Absolute Lie. So the main evil of traditionalistic doctrine is that you should disappear, to become nothingness, to dissolve in reality, to lose yourself. Thats the main evil! Never do it, its not truth. Its lie. Idea of disappearing, idea of becoming nothingness and losing your ego, is the main evil that exists. Because if you only taste what is disappearing is really like, you will absolutely hate that, its absolutely wrong. Not your 'ego' or ignorance hates that, not your selfishness but consciousness hates that. Devil wants that, but not God.

Some of you may have read my "hospital trip report". It was my very first post here. I don't think I gave it justice back then. I still had a few steps to make in order to see the picture clearly. Still, to this day I have no explanation of what went down that night. I cannot rationalize the experience. It was way too much. Way over the top. It left a mark, for sure. I was and still am traumatized by the event. Can't deny. I did trip on acid and shrooms a handful of times afterwards. But this strange sensation would not allow me to surrender fully and explore the magic freely. Somewhere deep down I was always afraid. Now the tricky part is explaining what it is that I am afraid of exactly. I struggle pointing at it. Precisely because I struggle explaining what I went through on that terrifying night. But I know when I "go there". I know how it feels. I know where it leads. It is not just death. It is beyond death. Yet there still seems to be annihilation. Destruction. Dematerialization. Reality falls apart. Quite literally. It is torn apart, to be precise. Parallel realities start merging. I become aware of all of them. To the point where I am literally there, in all of them. Imagine having your TV screen split to a million parts; each playing a different movie. It's kinda like that. The mind starts freezing. Time is long gone. No sense of linearity or a continuum, whatsoever. Then...Everything is pulled to the center and it burns...it burns so bad. I cannot imagine anything more painful. All there is left is pure light. No individual. No being. No reality. No issness and no amness. No breath, even. Only light; crossing its own path. Swirling. Until it stops. And then there is nothing. No light. No sound. No sensation. Absolutely nothing. And I have no idea how it is that I know about it. It should be impossible. At that point, there is no more awareness to be aware of anything - including nothing. It's just infinite, black nonexistence. Unknown and unseen. It's Source. Why the heck does this happen? Why can't I trip normally, like everyone else? Simply explore magical realms, dimensions and all the wonders of existence? Even very low doses can trigger me into that shit...whatever it is. I went through it once completely sober, as well. It often feels like I'm tripping even without taking any substances. Why? It has crossed my mind that perhaps I'm "too conscious" as I am. And consuming psychedelics catapults me stright into nothingness; destroying everything. Maybe psychedelics are not relevant to me. Maybe I should just explore life and its magic naturally; sober. Or is this paralyzing fear all that's "in my way" ? Something in me wants to trip. But it would be nice to have something...Anything...That is...Not being torn apart. A reality. An experience. An experiencer. The biggest paradox is that in that precise moment of terror I seem to be left with no choice. If I surrender - I surrender myself to fire. If I don't - I still burn. Suffering and destruction seems to be inevitable. Choice is only born once I am one with nothing; Stay eternally still and silent or reconstruct everything from scratch and give birth to existence once again? I chose to be here. Help?

@ivankiss it is your choice to not touch the splinters. it reminds me of the story of the snow queen. for nothingness experienced in a state of soberness nothingness is the state you are in when you cut through or see through what people call maya and mara - if you arrive there with the help of a psychedelic it`s clear why there seems no pointer towards it, as all pointers point outside.

It feels like some kind of unknowable Smart Energy with no limitations. Pure potential with no beginning and no end, it's what IS. Some kind of pregnant nothingness. It's an everything and a nothing. There is nothing that it's not, it's the all encompassing. It's absolute perfection. It's infinite. It's meaningless and means everything. Its THIS ❤

Leo's meditation videos already watched: 1. Meditation for Beginners - the "no manipulation technique" (see Dec 20 in this Journal for notes) 2. The Dark Side of Meditation (see Dec 23 & 26 in this Journal for tapescript) 3. Benefits Of Meditation Meditation is nothing but just sitting down and clearing your mind of thoughts. Why do it? * Reduces stress, better focus, peace and tranquility and less negative, distracting thoughts. * Builds up your pre-frontal cortex (controlling impulses, self-discipline, less procrastination, sharper thinking) * Improves your performance, calms you down, makes you grounded. * Makes you more mindful, happy to be right here in the moment realaxed (better decision-making, less influenced/distracted/tempted) * Makes the brain healthier, stronger and reduces the effects of brain degeneration with age (memory loss, Alzheimer’s). * Makes you feel fulfilled without external stimulation, without worrying about the past or the future. * Cleans up Your subconscious (ego evolves, things seen as more unified, childhood/early adult baggage let go, self freer, no longer held back by past) * Helps shed limiting beliefs and resolve a lot of stuff that is bothering you, triggering you, holding you back (stuff bubbles up from subconscious, you deal with it consciously and resolve those conflicts, then get tranquility from that, no longer triggered by it). * Helps towards enlightenment. Enlightenment is something I’m a little bit hesitant to cover, especially in a newbie, introductory, quick segment like this, because enlightenment is a very deep topic. It takes serious commitment to reach. If you’re not willing to spend years, maybe a decade or more, in serious contemplation and meditation, then you’re never going to reach it. I think a state of enlightenment is something you can really shoot for. It can be a long-term vision of yours. It’s really awesome, because what happens when you reach a state of enlightenment is literally your ego melts away. The petty distinctions that you make right now, the judgements, the criticisms, all the emotional baggage that you have, all that melts away. You become one with the source. You become one with the universe. You see everything interconnected. You feel like everything is love. You drop all the fears that you have. You drop all the anger and the pettiness. Life just becomes a joy. Just a joy, right now, in the moment. Leo's personal development blueprint n°55: Meditation calms the monkey chatter in your head, puts you in flow, raises your consciousness, and unhooks you from stimulation. ************************************* 4. Meditation Techniques: Do Nothing (for all stages, Newbies and advanced) I sit down and center myself, then in my mind I say "okay now I am doing nothing" and then I let go of control over my attention, over the need to stop the monkey mind, I let the mind literally do whatever it wants to do. It is basically a complete acceptance of the present moment. You sit motionless, as still as possible, don't scratch your itches, and keep your eyes wide open so you don't fall asleep. The only way you can do this technique wrong is by trying to do something with your mind like trying to get somewhere, trying to become enlightened, trying to reach some goal. What you're training yourself to do is to accept both the monkey mind and the calmness. What's beautiful about this technique is that it's really hard to do wrong because all you have to do is just let go of of any need to control and then you know you're doing it right. The second beautiful thing about this technique is that it's really effortless, it requires virtually zero skill, zero energy so you could do this technique when you're dead tired. Even though you're letting go of control of your mind and you're not trying to direct your focus or thoughts, you are still maintaining control of your body. So if you're sitting there very still that's actually going to be difficult to do, you might want to scratch your face or move around in your seat, or lean back because your back is aching or something, so here you exercise control and you maintain your posture and you keep your eyes wide open. If you're getting sleepy, your eyes will want to close and you're going to force them open so there's a lot of control being exerted physically on the body but no control is being exerted over the thoughts. You only need to let go of control of your intention to control your mind and only if you can. Monkey mind is still meditation if you're using this technique. The only thing you're doing is watching for those moments where you're trying to take control and you're releasing control. I recommend that you accept the present moment whenever you sit down to meditate. Always remind yourself "Why am I resisting the present moment? Why can't I just accept it?" and then just accept it. Also relax your jaw, keep it a little bit loosely open and keep reminding yourself of that as you're meditating. Also let your breathing be deep and natural. You don't need to try to control your breathing, just stop restricting it. You need to have faith that the "do-nothing technique" is very powerful. Give it at least a whole month before you judge it. The way meditation works, and this is what most people do not understand about meditation, is that it's like a purging of your unconscious and subconscious mind. You have shit in your mind that's decades old that your mind is kind of dealing with and struggling with. When you force your mind to actually sit down and be still, fully in the present moment, your mind can't be still, it's moving around like that,so in order to stabilize itself what it has to do is it has to purge crap that's making it anxious so when you first force this kind of process you kind of clamp it down, you try to force it. What happens is that it even creates more resistance and so this creates this kind of friction in your body and also in your mind and to reduce this friction, purging has to happen and so that's what happens if you're doing meditation effectively, you'll get these moments of monkey mind and craziness and anxiety and then a week later there's a release, it's finally purged, and then you're calm, you've reached a new level of calm and then you keep practicing and what happens is again that tension and that friction starts to build up and then again there has to be a release. It's almost like tectonic plates in the Earth's crust which rub against each other and they're kind of stuck next to each other and then there's more and more pressure being put on them and then finally they release and there's an earthquake. Those earthquakes when they happen in your mind, those are the true signs of progress on this journey so don't worry about too much monkey mind here. Have faith that it will all just automatically work out for you. ********************************* So far, we've seen the "No Manipulation Technique" (see 1. above), neither manipulating the mind nor the body. Then, the "Do Nothing Technique" (see 4. above), not manipulating the mind but keeping the body still. Here, on this next video, we have the "Clear Mind Technique", trying to keep the mind AND the body still. 5. How To Meditate: The no-bullshit guide to meditation This is a very foundational video that gets you to actually practically start meditating in your life (the benefits-see video above for these, the how to, the common pitfalls) Do you want an exceptional, extraordinary, successful, fulfilling, happy, peaceful type of life? Or is it going to be a frantic, neurotic, chaotic, overstressed, overwhelmed, making-stupid-decisions, self-sabotaging kind of life? You can even ultimately reach enlightenment, you can literally reach this very blissful, peaceful state which is your natural state, but which is obstructed by all the crazy monkey chatter that’s going on. This is just the truth that you are one with the world, you are one with everybody else. When you can attain this state then the amazing thing about it is that you feel very peaceful, totally content, totally fulfilled without needing anything else in your life. This is the ultimate state you can shoot for with your personal development. Meditation is basically just sitting down and quieting your mind. Just being aware of exactly what’s happening in the present moment. It’s the ability to just focus your mind on basically nothingness, nothing in particular, and not getting caught up in thought stories. What’s going on in your head is that all the time you’ve got these stories that come up. What can happen is either you go along for the ride with this story or you don’t, you just observe the story just kind of wearing itself out, fizzling and bubbling away. That’s what thoughts are in your mind. There are different techniques: some of them have you focusing on a mantra or an affirmation that you say to yourself, some of them have you do particular breathing exercises, some of them have you counting your breaths in a specific way, some of them just have you trying to clear your mind constantly…there’s a lot of different stuff. Actually meditation is very, very simple. I want to keep things very simple here. Here’s the technique I’m going to give you. You can use this technique to get to the highest levels of meditation you can. All you’ve got to do is use it consistently. Step one: Set twenty minutes on the timer. Step two: Sit in a comfortable position in some sort of quiet area, preferably alone with your back very, very straight and erect. You don’t need to sit in any lotus position, that’s usually difficult. You can literally just take a chair and sit on it. You could do it on the couch. You could do it on the side of your bed. Don’t lie down. Keep your back straight to avoid sleepiness. You’re comfortable, give yourself a minute just to adjust, scratch anything that needs scratching so that you’re comfortable there, you’re going to try and sit still and not move for those twenty minutes. Step three: Close your eyes. You’re going to relax, you’re not going to do anything special with your breath, you’re just going to let your breath go automatically nice and calm and steady. Step four: Try and clear your mind of any particular thoughts, let them go. Like I said before, you’ve going to try and not get caught up in the thought stories. What immediately is going to happen is that for the first five or ten seconds maybe your mind will be clear, but then some thought will come up, some sort of story. You Can Either Let It Go Or Get Carried Away with it. Maybe I’m sitting there and the first thing that comes into my mind is, “Oh shoot, I’ve got that email I’ve got to answer for a client of mine.” When you get that thought, you have a choice. You can either continue on that train of thought and start thinking about it like, “I need to go and research, I need to compile this report then I’ve got to send that to my clients.” You can kind of get carried away with a story, or you can notice it in your mind like, “Wait a minute, that’s just a thought. I don’t necessarily need to go along for the ride.” Let the thought go on its own way but don’t go with it. You just let that thought go. You continue like this, you just let thoughts come and go without ever moving from where you are. Not physically, I mean in your head. Be very still. Be the atmosphere. Don’t be the clouds. Let the clouds pass through you.That’s it. Your brain is going to get caught off track. You’re not going to be able to do this perfectly. It’s very difficult to do this perfectly. In practice what you’re going to do is get carried away by these thoughts. Sometimes, you’ll get carried away a little bit and you’ll start to refocus, sometimes you get carried away very, very far. You might find yourself caught up in some sort of thought story and you’ll be caught up in it for five minutes. For five minutes you’ll be totally unconscious of the fact that you’ve caught up in this thought story but then five minutes later you’re going to go, “Wait, I’m supposed to be meditating. Where did I go? I got lost in fantasy land. Let me bring myself back and center myself, become the atmosphere again.” That’s the technique. Very simple. There’s no new age nonsense here, there’s no ritual, there’s no theory behind it, there are no gods to it, there are no religions behind it, there are no principles, there are no holy books. It’s very, very simple. You just sit and clear your mind. Even though this is simple, it’s extremely difficult. If you’ve never meditated before then one of the things you’re going to discover is how shocking it is, how difficult it is to sit still for twenty minutes without thinking about anything, without getting carried away to fantasy land with your stories. It’s very, very difficult. You’re going to tend to want to get distracted. Meditation is meant to be very simple. It’s meant to fundamentally make you totally accepting of the present moment as you are right now without needing anything. It’s like the most simple activity that you can do. It’s the essence of minimalism. Don’t let somebody confuse you into thinking that you need more information, more theory, more equipment, this kind of stuff. You don’t need it. In fact that stuff will just distract you. Notice your mind trying to complicate meditation, try to make it too complicated. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be very simple. What I find is that whenever you’re trying to complicate meditation, that’s you trying to procrastinate from doing it. Your mind is very tricky. It will try to procrastinate this especially at the beginning where you haven’t built up a habit yet just because it doesn’t want to sit still. Your mind wants to be running around. It doesn’t want to be sitting still. The scariest thing you can do is force your mind to sit still. How Do You Go About Making It A Habit? At this point let’s actually talk about how to make a successful meditation habit. The trick is that this must be done daily. This twenty minutes? Every single day; weekday, weekend, holidays, birthdays, on Christmas, on New Year’s, on Valentine’s Day… every single day. On vacation days, it doesn’t matter. On your worst days, when you have a break up, when your business collapses, when you lose a hundred thousand dollars, you’ve still got to do it. When you’re sitting sick in the hospital, you’ve still got to do it. That’s the point. If you’re not going to do meditation every single day of your life, there’s not even any point in watching this video and continuing further. Don’t even try it. It’s pointless. It won’t get you anywhere. Meditation needs to be done daily not just for a month or year, but you need to make a commitment to do it for the rest of your life. That’s what I find is necessary. It’s just like going to the gym. If you’re only going to go to the gym for a week, why even go? If you’re only going to go for a month, why even go? It makes no sense. You’re just going to waste a lot of your time and get very frustrated. The thing with meditation is that it takes work to start to get benefits of it. Yes, you’ll get a little bit of a benefit even within just a few weeks, but the true benefits come months and years later. This is a subtle thing, meditation. It’s not this big, huge, supercharging boost to your life, at least when you start. To start to get that giant, supercharging boost, that will take you months and years. It’s not going to happen immediately. You need to prepare your mind with those expectations otherwise I find that you’re going to fail. Here are some of the common doubts and pitfalls that I see people having with meditation. One, is they tell me, “Leo, I can’t focus. I’m ADD, my mind can’t focus.” No, everyone’s mind can focus. There’s nothing wrong with your mind it’s just that you haven’t trained it. Meditation will help train that. If you can’t focus that means you need to be meditating extra hard. It’s not an excuse. Two, is that people tell me, “Leo, I keep trying to meditate but my mind isn’t calm in the middle of the meditation. I can’t calm down.” Again, that’s not something fundamental that’s wrong with you, that’s just how the mind works. That’s exactly why meditation needs to be done. That’s kind of like telling me, “Leo, I’m fat so I shouldn’t be going to the gym.” No, if you’re fat that means you’re fat because you haven’t been going to the gym and you need to be going to the gym even more than the regular person does. Same thing here. Your mind will learn to calm down through the repetitive practice of meditation. It Takes Years Of Practice To Perfect Just because you can’t always focus during a meditation session, doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. This is where people get caught up the most, I think. This is the biggest failure point right here. People think that, “I sat here for twenty minutes and even though I sat through twenty minutes of it I couldn’t get my mind to be calm and peaceful.” They imagine this picture in their head of a Zen master sitting there with a perfectly calm mind for twenty minutes or a whole hour and they think that that’s meditation. If they’re not doing that then I’m not meditating. No! Meditation is the entire process, not just the calm part. When you start what’s going to happen is you’re going to have little windows of calmness, maybe five seconds here, and then in five minutes you’ll have another five seconds, then maybe you’ll hit ten seconds somewhere in your twenty minute meditation session. Don’t expect to do this for twenty whole minutes. You might not reach that state for a decade. Maybe with ten years of meditation practice you’ll be able to do twenty minutes perfectly calm, but right now you’re not going to be anywhere near that so don’t set that expectation. Don’t think that because you’re having five seconds of peace here and five seconds of peace there but the rest of it is mental chatter that somehow you’re failing. No, that’s a full twenty minute session as long as you sit down and you try to focus you’re meditating, even if your mind is going crazy. Especially if your mind is going crazy, that’s where the muscle is being trained. Imagine that I sent you to the gym. You go to the gym for a couple of weeks and then you tell me, “My muscles are so sore. I’m straining my muscles every time I’m doing a bicep curl.” Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Your muscles are sore for good reason; because you’re working them out, they’re training. You’re literally breaking down the muscle tissue and those last couple of reps that are really tough, those are actually building up your muscles the most. Keep doing that, your muscles will get really big. Same thing with meditation. When your mind is chattering away and it’s having difficulty focusing and you bring it back and you focus it, that’s when you’re getting the most benefit. You’ve got to refrain that and say, “I’m doing good. That means I’m doing it properly.” Another expectation people have is that meditation is somehow going to be exciting and stimulation. No. If you feel like meditation is boring at first, that’s totally normal. You’re going to have a wide range of feelings while you’re meditating. Everything That Happens Is Normal Sometimes you’re going to feel agitated, frustrated, stressed, bored, sleepy, tired, anxious… all of those are normal emotions, especially the one about being frustrated and agitated. Sometimes people will do a twenty minute meditation session and at the end of it they’ll actually get agitated not calm. They’ll tell themselves, “What’s the point? I thought meditation was supposed to make me calmer. I must be doing it wrong.” No, you’re doing it just right. Meditation doesn’t always make you calm. That’s the end state after many, many years of meditation. Initially in fact you can be very agitated doing meditation. That’s okay. Remember, you're flexing your muscle. Some people say, “I don’t see the point of meditation. Why should I keep doing this?” I’ll cover that at the very end of the video. Some people have this belief that, “I’m not a good meditator. Somehow meditation isn’t right for me. It might work for other people but for me it doesn’t work.” No that’s total nonsense. Meditation literally works for everybody. All human beings can meditate, and anyone can become a professional meditator, you’ve just got to practice it consistently which is what you’re not doing. Here’s the principle that I want you to carry with you for the rest of your life as you’re meditating: everything that happens in meditation as long as you’re sitting there, you’re focusing and you’re trying to be mindful, as long as you’re doing that everything else that happens is perfectly normal and exciting, and it’s good. Sleepiness, tiredness, feeling boring, feeling anxious… all that stuff? Good. You’re doing it properly. This is a really huge principle to accept. Once you accept this principle you can use it to reground yourself. You are going to have days when you’re going to be like, “It’s not working. I must be doing something wrong.” You’re going to doubt yourself, especially when something turbulent happens in your life. One of the most difficult times to meditate is when you have a big breakup with your girlfriend or boyfriend. Meditating on that day or the next morning, that’s like hell because your mind is all over the place. It’s thinking all these negative thoughts. You just sit down, you try to focus, you do the best you can. There’s no way you can have the perfect meditation session on that day. You’re going to have a very rocky, very turbulent and agitated meditation session, but when you finish that you tell yourself, “You know what? I sat here, I did it. I followed through on my commitment.” That’s exactly what matters. Everything else is okay. Don’t judge yourself while you’re meditating. In fact try to turn off your logical mind. Don’t be thinking too much about the thoughts you’re thinking. Don’t be doing any meta-analysis. Just sit and be peaceful. It’s kind of like you trying to find an off switch to your mind. You’re never ever going to find that off switch because there is no off switch. Thoughts just come. One thing you’re going to learn through meditation is that you don’t really have as much control over your thoughts as you think you do. That’s fine. You Become More Mindful What you’re going to learn is mindfulness. You’re going to observe the thoughts. What that’s going to do, it’s not going to shut them off, it’s just going to get you distance and separation from them. It’s going to misidentify you with them. You don’t even realize how powerful that is right now until you’ve actually experienced it. I want to set the expectation that the first two years of meditation, even if you do it consistently every single day, are going to be hell because your mind is not good at bringing your focus back from these wandering thoughts. It’s going to be difficult. You have to tell yourself that that’s normal. It’s not going to be smooth sailing. Which brings us to the final reason which is why should you meditate at all when there are all these difficulties, frustration and agitation, feeling bored, tired and sleepy, and all this stuff? Why are we meditating? We already talked about some of the benefits, but the reason that you fail if you’ve tried it in the past to set up a successful meditation practice, is because you’ve lacked the vision of what meditation can do for your life. The reason that now I’m very consistent with my meditation is because after lots of research, lots of trial and error, I’ve finally been able to create a vision that I’ve really bought into, heart and soul convinced myself that meditation is something that I should do for the rest of my life. Here’s what I picture for myself. I picture that through years of meditation I’m going to develop really strong emotional control. I also picture to myself that I’m going to be able to be happy no matter what the circumstances. How cool is that? If something goes wrong in my life, I’m still going to be happy. If something goes great in my life, I’m still going to be happy. I’m going to be in control of my life, I’m going to be in control of my emotions. It’s going to help me in my relationships, it’s going to help me overcome any negative habits and addictions that I have, it’s going to build strong mental willpower that I’ll be able to apply in my business – I’m very business oriented. I’m also going to be able to apply this to become more productive – I’m very productivity oriented. I’m also big on creativity. I love being creative in my work, it’s going to help me with that. I also realize that without meditation I’m never going to actually attain fulfillment in life. It’s not going to be possible because I’m just going to be chasing and running around like that monkey looking for sources of stimulation. I want to unhook myself from all that. I see myself five or ten years from now being much more unhooked from stimulation than I am right now and I can see that having huge positive repercussions throughout my life. Ultimately the thing that has me really excited is the potential of using meditation to attain enlightenment. The sense of oneness with the whole world, the loss of ego, the loss of all the pettiness that we as human beings strive for every day, the need to protect yourself, all the insecurities you have, all the negative emotions… all that ultimately stems from ego. I’ll shoot more videos talking about that but for me that’s a really exciting prospect, is to attain that kind of state. That’s how I was able to convince myself. You have to build a case in your own mind. Pick and choose from this laundry list of benefits whatever is most important to you, latch on to it and try to make this vision then go and start with a thirty day meditation habit. Start with just thirty days. Do a thirty day challenge and see if you can last for thirty days staright. Every single day, like clockwork, twenty minutes, and see how far you get. If you’re still not convinced, that’s fine. Try it more. The first time I did a thirty day challenge I wasn’t convinced and I fell off track. Get back on until eventually you see that this is something that you really, as a human being, must do if you want to attain fulfillment, happiness and full potential in your own life. This doesn’t just apply for hippies but for every single human being. If you aren’t meditating and you’re saying it’s too difficult or whatever excuse you’re coming up with, in the end it’s just because you’re lazy and undisciplined, and you don’t want to become disciplined. It takes a lot of practice to discipline your mind because your mind is the most unruly part of you. It’s that drunken monkey. So bust through the laziness, bust through the lack of discipline, start the habit and we’ll talk when you become a good consistent meditator and I’ll shoot a lot of cool videos that will help you to take that meditation and channel it into even more advanced things with enlightenment, which is really exciting. ************************************* Meditation videos still to watch (at a later date because more advanced) = Guided Meditation (The Next Level Of Meditation) How To Meditate Deeper (3 techniques to transition from newbie to intermediate meditator) Mindfulness Meditation (A Complete Guide With Techniques & Examples) Meditation On Steroids (How To Get The FASTEST Meditation Gains)

God doesn't exist, as an entity in existence. God is existence itself. Or Being, Reality etc, if you're an atheist and prefer a different name. What is prior to existence? Not Nothingness, emptiness, because those need existence to exist as well (that's a riddle ).

Main points (in bold) from Leo's video "The Dark Side Of Meditation" (... the rest) 16:28 Expect spiritual arrogance where you start to believe "oh yeah I've been meditating for a few years now, look at how unconscious everybody else is around me, look at all the unconscious stuff they do". And so you're going to develop that and you're going to probably go around and preach to those people and you're going to tell them "look you should do what I'm doing, meditate more and then you'll experience all this good stuff that I'm experiencing" but later you'll recognize that "oh, that's just me at an intermediate stage thinking that I'm at the highest stage but then later I realize that all that was just an intermediate stage, it wasn't nearly the highest stage". That spiritual arrogance was actually a function of my unconsciousness. 17:13 This whole list of stuff is all quite common stuff that you should definitely expect, don't be surprised at all if it happens to you, and not just once but repeatedly, in fact what you should start noticing is that it's a recurrent theme throughout long-term meditation, that this stuff starts coming up and some of it is very subtle, sometimes this stuff happens to you and you're not even making an immediate connection between you getting into a fight with your spouse and the fact that that stemmed from your meditation practice. Sometimes it's not an obvious connection, you only recognize it two days later after you've already gotten into a big argument because you went unconscious and you forgot about these warning signs that I gave you. 18:06 Now what's going on here? Why is there this negative stuff with meditation? Isn't meditation supposed to just make us spiritual and more conscious? Well it's a battle, it's a battle. Think about what's actually happening when you're meditating and when you're growing.To grow means you have to shed old patterns, old memories, old beliefs, old thought patterns. And how does that happen? Well your mind which is the entire collection of all that stuff, for it to grow, it needs to defragment itself and rearrange itself into a higher order smoother functioning system and how it does that is by purging and working through and defragmenting all the shit that's in your mind and if you're like the ordinary individual in mainstream society then your mind is filled with so much shit that you don't even know how much is in there. 19:25 It's everything you were taught since you were a kid, it's all the media that you ingested, it's all your religious scientific and political beliefs, it's everything your parents told you, it's everything your teachers told you, it's all the silly ideas that you thought were true when you were growing up, all the mistakes you've made, all the incorrect intuitions, all your fears, all that stuff and that's the deep core of your mind. You're not conscious of most of that stuff so when you're meditating you're actually forcing your mind not to consciously work through that but to unconsciously work through that, you are like literally defragmenting a hard drive. 20:08 But unlike therapy where you go to a therapist for years and you sit down on the couch and you talk and talk and talk about your problems that's logical, that's conscious. When you're meditating the exact same thing is happening as in therapy but it's happening automatically, unconsciously in your mind and the only signs of it that you're going to experience are these emotional swells, these mood swings, these reactions, this horniness, this depression, the sense of meaninglessness, that's how it's going to bubble up and you've got to be smart enough and vigilant enough and conscious enough to be aware that that's what's happening here in the bigger picture. 20:58 Always keep the bigger picture in mind, the best reframe you can have for this stuff is to see it as actually purging. This is actually called spiritual purification, you're purifying and purging all the toxic thoughts and emotions and that process isn't always pleasant but what's great about purification is that once the purification process completes itself then you're left with a relatively clean pure substance and then that is what is gonna be you 5, 10, 15 years from now, so you're not purified after a week of meditation, you're purified after a decade of meditation and the purification comes in waves. It's like you're purifying yourself for a few weeks, for a few months, and then some big obstacle comes in your way and you've got to really work through that and purge a lot of stuff and that's when you have your emotional freak-outs and mood swings. And then you purge that stuff after a few weeks and then you get back and things are going nice and smooth and now you're working at a higher level of consciousness until you hit the next obstacle, and then again there's going to be a few weeks of turmoil and then the next obstacle, and then the next obstacle, next obstacle. That's going to continue for years. 22:30 That's actually what you're aiming at with meditation. So the way that I reframe this in my mind is I tell myself when I'm experiencing something negative "oh this is actually a sign that I'm growing and that the process is working and I'm excited by that" and that is enough to mollify any kind of depression that I have or any kind of like self-doubt that I have about this whole process and that allows me to stay on track. Now you might think that that's bad enough, but actually I haven't gotten yet to the weirdest stuff. What I've talked about so far is I gave you a list of the common stuff. 23:14 Now let me give you a list of the really weird shit. Some of this stuff is incredible you won't believe it's possible until it happens to you so Here's some of the weird side-effects of meditation. 23:30 You can expect tingling, jerking, shaking and various pains throughout your body that feel very real. 23:39 You can expect to see lights and auras, bright lights of various kinds with your eyes open or with your eyes closed and they can be animated that can be very beautiful or very scary and menacing and they can look very lifelike. 24:01 You can also expect to see vivid sexual fantasies, you might even see fantasies of the opposite pole of your sexuality so if you're heterosexual you might start to see homosexual fantasies and they might be completely lifelike, not just a little daydream but like fully lifelike and of course those will tend to seduce you off the path. 24:34 You might start to behave like an animal like literally you might start to scratch yourself like an animal or crawl around on your knees or even howl howling like a wolf. Oh can you imagine that? You're sitting there meditating for weeks and then one day you just have this uncontrollable urge to start howling like a wolf and as you're doing that your spouse walks in the door. Yeah that's pretty awkward and now you've got some explaining to do and they look at you like you're going insane. "What is this meditation thing you're doing? It's turning you into an animal!" So expect that. I'm not saying that it'll necessarily happen to you but if it does don't be surprised by it. 25:22 Also expect paranormal phenomena to happen to you. What do I mean by this? That means reliving the past, having past-life experiences or seeing the future, having weird deja vu experiences, having full out-of-body experiences where you actually leave your body in a totally lifelike way and you travel to some sort of astral realm or different parts of the world and interact with various kinds of entities. 25:55 You might see spirits or hear spirits. 26:01 You might hear weird voices in your head and they can be totally lifelike, not imagined but totally lifelike. 26:12 You might actually see angels and demons, again not imagined but like standing before you completely real, as real as I look to you now, but it's going to be an angel or a fucking demon like out of a movie. 26:30 You might see gods, deities, giant crawling insects, praying mantis people, spirit animals that talk to you, try to tell you things or maybe that try to kill you, try to claw at you. 26:45 You might see entities, you might see aliens, you might feel like you're being channeled by some sort of extraterrestrial or that you're getting abducted or probed and all these experiences are not just like mere dreams, like a nightmare. It can be a lot more realistic feeling and looking than that. 27:09 So that's pretty weird and it's pretty far out but all this stuff is possible. And the reason it'll blindside you is because your present model of reality, if you haven't meditated for a long period of time, is that all this stuff is fiction and it's not possible. I mean how could this stuff be possible? But see you underestimate the power of your limited consciousness. When your consciousness rises, weird shit that you've never imagined all of a sudden starts to become possible. You start to become a lot more open-minded than you ever thought you would be. 27:47 And when this weird shit starts happening to you, well if you have this kind of dogmatic insistence that it's not possible, this is not supposed to happen, then you can imagine the sort of shock that you will be in. 28:01Also you might have Samadhi States. These are quite common, usually quite positive, but also they might shock you a little bit. A Samadhi state is when you actually stop existing as an individual body and you actually merge with objects like you might be looking at a lamp and you might actually merge and become that lamp, you might be looking at a car and merge and become that car, you might be looking at your spouse or your children and actually become your children literally, and that might freak you out. But generally this is something that's positive and you actually should be anticipating that if you're doing serious meditation. 28:44 You can even have a samadhi experience of emptiness or nothingness where you merge not with an object but with nothing, nothing at all. 28:55 You might also experience a Kundalini awakening which can be a freaky thing. A Kundalini awakening is when energy in your body gets concentrated then it sort of shoots up your spine into your head and then it explodes out of your head and that can be a very powerful experience. It can be beautiful but also it can be terrifying because it might feel like you're losing your mind and you actually have this weird energy moving through you and you start to behave as though your body is being controlled by a puppet master like you're not even in control of your body anymore. Your body is just moving on its own and you have no idea what the hell is controlling you. It's almost like you've been possessed. 29:44 Also you might experience a total blackout or "the Void". In Buddhism one way that they describe attainment on the path towards enlightenment is something called "neither perception nor not-perception", which is a state where you're sitting there and you're concentrating and meditating and then there's like a total erasure of reality. Physical reality stops existing for a while. Now in physical reality time that might be just a few seconds but in your time as you're sitting there and experiencing this it might feel like an eternity, like the entire world has vanished and disappeared, including your body and including yourself, and you're just sitting there as the void. That might be pretty freaky. 30:39 Also of course expect ego death. If you're serious about meditation, that's probably why you're doing it in the first place, to experience ego death. This would be something to look forward to but also ego death can be scary, can be freaky because it's probably not anything you imagined it to be. Your sense of reality will get shattered and it will expand in ways that are beyond your wildest imagination and the question is will you be open to that? Or are you not expecting it (and then that will really freak you out). 31:14 And probably the worst thing that can happen to you is "the dark night of the soul" which is basically when you start to see that everything you've ever believed and known about reality is false and completely delusional and you start to realize that reality is meaningless and purposeless, has no purpose and it has no meaning and that all your old creature comforts and everything that you've attached yourself to, all the meanings that you assigned to your family, to your career, to money, to your marriage, to your children, even to self-improvement, even to meditation, even to the pursuit of enlightenment, when you realize that all this is completely meaningless and you start to interpret that as a negative thing, you can get into the spiral of depression. That can get very dark and it's called "the dark night of the soul". 32:21 Now this isn't common but it can happen and in the worst situation it can lead to this depersonalization disorder where you actually start to feel like you don't exist as a person and you interpret that whole thing as negative but there are ways out of depersonalization disorder and there are ways out of the "dark soul". So again generally speaking, all this stuff that I'm talking about, you want to treat it as temporary phases, as just arisings or a bubbling up from your subconscious mind of stuff that you need to work through. so none of this is really ultimately negative. It's actually all very positive stuff but in the moment, for a few days, for a few weeks, it can feel very negative. 33:17 Alright so what do we do about all this stuff? What's the recommendation? Well if you talk to a serious meditation teacher or master or an enlightened master, their advice on this stuff is actually very simple. It's actually very easy to give good meditation advice. Here it is. Firstly just relax and realize that all this stuff is normal and that really it's no different than any other phenomenon that you're seeing around you. Seeing an alien is no different than seeing my face, it really doesn't matter, you're just attributing a different meaning to an alien because it's an alien, than to my face. And if you're seeing a demon or an angel, recognize that it's no different than seeing your car or seeing your mother or seeing a chipmunk at the park. It's really no different. The only difference is the meaning that you assigned to it and of course all your meanings are self constructed and a lot of them come from the ego. So as you start to unravel your ego this sort of weird shit will stop bothering you so much the way it does normal people. So just relax, that's step number one. 34:25 Step number two: remember, don't get distracted by this stuff. Remember what's going on here is that your ego is trying to maintain its sense of tyranny over your life. It's like you're trying to depose a dictator so when you're deposing a dictator what do you think happens? There's resistance, he fights back because he doesn't want to get deposed. Neither does your ego. Your ego and your mind and your brain are trying to maintain homeostasis so as you're pulling towards spiritual higher consciousness, it's pulling back in full force towards lower consciousness, towards egotism and the way that it does that is by sending these strong negative emotions at you, getting you to be afraid and by trying to distract you from your ultimate goal. And the only thing you got to do to stay on track, is just to keep meditating. That's really it, stay relaxed, keep your cool and just keep meditating. 35:31 If you start to break your meditation habits, that's when you know the ego has really won because that's all the ego wants. The ego wants to sabotage you, to get you to stop so that it can remain the tyrant in power. Remember that all this negative stuff is just a sign of real growth. Real growth doesn't always feel pretty the way you imagined. Newbies think of growth as positive stuff. Advanced practitioners know that growth is tough and that it requires emotional labor. That's what tells you that meditation is real and not just a fantasy because you are working through and it takes emotional labour to focus and to keep yourself on track and to not get distracted. 36:29 Remind yourself that this is a phase. Depression is a phase, seeing weird entities and aliens and demons and stuff, that's a phase, all this is stuff you will pass through. It's not going to last forever. Remember to trust yourself, trust your higher self, trust your original motivations for why you started doing meditation. If you have a thirst for enlightenment, trust in that. There's something there that will cut through all the bullshit, all the fear, all the egotism. 37:08 Also treat yourself with love and kindness on this journey. Meditation is not about disciplining yourself harshly and self-flagellation. It's supposed to be a process of self-love. You're doing this out of compassion and love for yourself so when you sit down to meditate, be kind be gentle on yourself, both mentally and physically. 37:34 It does no good for you to start to argue with yourself inside your mind, to start to create partitions in your mind where you say "oh this part of me is bad and this part of me is good, and the good part needs to discipline the bad part" No, all of that is just more ego games. 37:50 So a lot of times when I am very frustrated or I'm going through some sort of turbulent stuff during my meditation I just remember that "hey let me just calm down and relax, let me accept all this stuff, let me not resist any of it" because you know what, I know that in the bigger picture I have no control over it at all. All my negative emotions that come up I have zero control over them and when I'm meditating, well I have zero control over that. My only job is just to sit here and to be mindful, that's it, and the self love is so deep that if I feel like I need a short break, I will take a short break. I will meditate less. You could even stop meditating for a week if you really need to; like if you feel like this meditation is completely destroying your career, or your relationship, make a calculated strategic move to take a break for a short time, but then of course with always the intention to come back. Because the greatest failure you could experience is if you get fed up and disgusted with meditation that you never want to come back anymore. Then you've let the ego win. It's accomplished its job. 39:06 And the last thing I would suggest is to read spiritual books. Read books from people who have meditated for decades, who can give you some tips and pointers and they can keep you inspired, they can keep you connected with your original motivation for why you're meditating and they can point out the different traps to you and the different ways that you can deal with those traps so that if you do ever experience a "dark night of the soul" for example you know which book to go to, where there's going to be a bunch of advice that tells you how to deal with a "dark night of the soul". You don't want to get caught off guard by that. All right, that's it those are my tips. 39:40 Meditation does have a dark side but remember that actually the bigger the dark side the bigger the purer the spiritual purification that you will experience and the higher your consciousness will ultimately go so all this stuff is ultimately very positive so don't despair, stay on track and if you don't have a meditation yet, make sure you install it first thing starting today or starting tomorrow.

Self inquiry Who am I? The minds modus operandi is to find the answer in memory. Makes sense, because that’s the life I’ve been living. That’s the familiar story. Actually the question is “who was I”? But that’s not the question. The question is who am I, now? Again, silence. sight seems to be the most tricky. The world is full of sight and visual stimulation. Also, feeling. The feeling of my body, sensations. But what happens if I turn them inside out? There seem to be two world. The world of nothingness, and the place of objectivity, sights, sounds, everything. And I can switch between them. Habit is to have the objectivity switch on. Of course. All the mind can know is objectivity. There is a tendency to avoid the question Who am I. It’s so simple yet so complicated. From egos perspective the question is silly. But also unfamiliar. Like wtf are you doing? You crazy? Mind makes it complicated. Obviously. This question cannot be answered with thinking so I should stop writing. What is memory?

Yes, you exist. But existence is also a dream so existence is equal with nothingness

I had very severe social anxiety in the past. When I would cross people on the street, my energy would rush to my head, I would lose all connection with my body - my feeling. While the person on the street passes me, I would look down, I would compusilvely take my phone out, look at it without something on the screen and pretend I'm busy on it, just so I don't have to think about being judged at that moment. And a lot more of different compulsive behavior for escaping the feeling in my body. You have to practice grounding your energy into your body. If your anxiety is really severe, practice feeling into your body, feel into your legs, your arms, your chest, feel it. And relax into it. Relax all your muscles. Let the tension flow away into nothingness. Do this while walking down the street and passing strangers. Then go to shopping malls, busy streets, and stand there, still, completely still, while 100s of people pass you. Try to put all your feeling into your body, focus on breathing, and let your energy ground into the earth, like you're a tree and it roots go into the ground. Visualise your energy going down into these roots. After this, while previously if you would stand there in the middle of a street, completely still, you would think about what people are thinking about you, that you look stupid, standing there, or weird, or anything else. Now you find yourself standing there completely relaxed, with a still mind free of anxiety and worrying.. . you're just really present. Then practice this while walking in these busy places. After a while, your nervous system adapts, and being grounded will be your natural state. After that, you can practice talking to people. Your energy will most likely escape to your head again, and that's normal. You have to challenge yourself, and adapt the technique of feeling and relaxing into your body, and grounding your energy. Place yourself in new situations, ask directions, ask for stuff, ask for cigarettes, ask questions, talk, go into sales, go do improv theater, and relax into your body, always. After a while, you will notice that your anxiety is gone because your nervous system has adapted. This worked for me.

You do not focus on nothingness, you just do not focus on anything , to do it your body needs to be able to breath comfortable when you are relaxed and have as little interference as possible, if you are new to this you will have long way to get even close to being able to do it, but it will be good training to stop your mind jumping around.

@purerogue So I can meditate in any way as long as I am focusing on nothingness?

@Nahm So what I got from that video is experience is dependent upon the experiencer, and what we see is only "there" if we are here. Does this mean that I am my experience? If nothing is real, then doesn't that mean that real is real but it is nothing? And all of the things I've experienced are not real because they are all things and i have never experienced nothingness truly? How can I experience nothing if experience isn't real but nothingness is? Seems paradoxical

How about @Schahin crystallised out of god/nothingness/infinity? The medium the crystal grows in is consciousness. The nature of consciousness is to get more twisty and knotty and self referential as it becomes more and more aware of itself - the crystal expands and gains more and more structure. But the power of consciousness is unlimited and it can disolve that crystal whenever it wants to and poof! You're gone. God carries on.

The very fabric of reality is Love. Love , consciousness and nothingness are synonymous. Divinity is synonymous. That's why if you ever become consciousness itself (you already are, but by becoming directly conscious of it) you will become Bliss/Love/Divinity.

@Leo Gura Love. ? "To share itself with itself" is a way better description of my interpretation of "spark" and "interaction." How do you define illusion? Why did these specific illusions manifest as such? Towards love? Would you describe Love to be synonymous with Harmony, and Balance? Or an entity alone? Is Nothingness PURE Love? *Also, thank you for your time, collective thought, and input. I really enjoy the "illusion" this forum brings as I share, and everone else shares there parts (Basically God/Universe be Sharin' collectively). It helps me get a deeper understanding of Love and feel more connected to the whole. ❤?