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@Shin You are free to mock me all you want. I won't judge you for that. I just thought to enlightened, you never judge or make fun of anyone, no matter what. That is your ego. Your 'devil' brain, if you will. @TheAvatarState Why would I want commit suicide after reading the PON? Because nothing is real. Everything is an illusion. There is no point to anything. Everything is a construct. You can just say accept it, and fighting it is your ego, but I think, rather selfishly, Id rather feel a painful death than feel nothing. @pointessa Well, my relationships are in tatters now regardless. I haven't spoken to anyone for days. Sure, people are sending me messages. But they're not real are they? So why engage with something that is false? Or why engage with an illusion... isn't that just madness? Why create a role? Seriously!! Why do anything?! Isn't creating a role just your ego? You are giving yourself a false identity. You are not being you. I don't want to be possessed. Nor do I want to be a in world of fiction, surrounded by these human bodies that are possessed.

Hi @Paul92 , Let me tell you that everything will be OK. There is no need to jump off a bridge and commit suicide. Let me explain: What you are experiencing is a very common set of feelings that come up when you first come to see how everything is an illusion. It happens to nearly everyone when they start to learn about these things because it shatters their previous belief system. You will likely feel depressed and nihilistic for the next couple of weeks but that is OK. Everything will be OK and there is no need to start loading yourself up with worry. You will be in existential pain but just know that it will ease and things will normalise with time. You've taken the first step in a wonderful journey, but at this point you cannot appreciate what is in store for you. Console yourself. And give yourself time. These thoughts that you are having will subside with time, and then you will be able to take steps in a more positive direction, and you will end up in a better place than now. Everything is OK and we are here for you on the forum if you need us.

@Paul92 this is fantastic news my friend! No, really. This means you're questioning everything and you're on the path. What you're going through is pretty common; I went through that too and I feel your pain. You're close to flipping all these realizations on their heads (with the proper context), and about to burst into the most wonderful and liberating experience of your life. Hopefully I can try to explain this in a way that makes sense to you now... You're correct that this is potentially dangerous knowledge, because if interpreted from the ego, with your ego still identifying with feelings and emotions and meaning (like you're doing now), then yeah, this shit leads down a dark spiral of Nihilism. You're living proof of that. This is normal, don't be afraid. But try to notice something. Why are you afraid? Why does this feel like the end of the world? Why would you possibly want to commit suicide after reading The Power of Now? Really think about this. When you're in the present moment, do you die? You might be inclined to say yes, but be careful here. WHICH part of you dies? Please don't conceptualize this, you'll have to go into your direct experience. When you've identified the part of you that dies when living through present awareness (because YOU certainly don't), then ask yourself an important question. Is it right that I die when I'm present? When I'm being? Isn't that the opposite of what it should be? You've been identifying with a toxic illusion your whole life. You still do. That illusion is not you. This illusion is precisely illuminated as an illusion by the fact it ceases to exist in the light of being. Try to understand the gravity of this. You're insisting on answering to an illusory being whose sole purpose is to trap you in psychological time to control you. Now all of this should start making sense. One of the tricks your ego uses to control you is to make you believe in absolute meaning. When that gets stripped away, your ego will rightfully feel like it's dying, and will go into overdrive to make excuses and rationalize. Understand that ALL meaning ever was, was a conceptualizion of your own mind. It never existed out there. Nothing has "changed" with this new knowledge, you're only awakening to what has always been the case. Look back on all the times you used your sense of meaning in your life. If you are truly honest with yourself, you'll start to see that it was used as an enslavement tool more often than not. Love existed prior to meaning, and never required such a thing. You've never required meaning to be happy. On the other hand, you required a lot of artificial meaning to get stressed out and anxious. Another trick your mind plays on you is the "logical rationalization" that if none of this is "real" then the only thing to do is to stop doing anything. Classic! But think about this: picture someone just becoming lucid in a dream... Why is everyone's first instinct to fly, along with a whole slew of crazy things? If none of it "mattered" then why doesn't everyone who lucid dreams immediately frown and wake up, saying, "oof glad that's over, that could have been a huge waste?" What is "real?" How do you define "real?" Why would you get so protective of this notion of real, like your very life depended on it? Oh yes, because the existence of your parasitic, illusory self hinges on you believing that's the real you! Your direct experience, your consciousness, your love, your happiness, your purpose, and your friends and family do not hinge on the notion of real. The only thing that's threatened by it is the thing that created the illusion of real in the first place. Be aware of whose life is really on the line here.

The choosing between Suicide and no Suicide seems simply reactionary. Mind has concluded upon some construction of mind and acts on that image based on the minds preference(the past). Its essentially all positive/negative resistance of desire. This desire limits itself by jumping from one contradiction to another, one condition to another, one conflict to another.

Having a good time, enjoying my life, dont really see how suicide would benefit me. I'm excited about my future, however irrelevant it may be

Anna Akana is an entertaining and vulnerable Stage Green youtuber. She talks about compassion, empathy, vulnerability and other feminine values, mental health, depression, anxiety, suicide, LGBT, feminist stuff like rape culture, etc. Her videos are well made and easy to digest for Orange people. I consider most of her videos to be "healthy Green".

Some buddhist monks calmly burn themselves alive to protest bad government policies. In other words, they calmly commit suicide in public spaces. 99.999% of people would dance crazily if they are being burned alive. Is that what enlightened people are capable of? Awesome. I think they would make excellent warriors. They are warrior sages because they are sages and they are fit to be warriors. I want to become a warrior sage for my life purpose, too.

Why did she commit suicide?

Hahaha damn, collective cult suicide is coming

Is as stupid as a waste of time and suicide is not a virtue, is not true courage. What I see on these monks is just cultural harakiri mentality, nothing much, another form of belief that is virtuous in their society. So don't confuse an enlightened master with an ascetic that does not feel anymore and castrated himself.

So it’s the planning ahead aspect... Contemplate what planning actually is then. It’s not necessarily living as though there is a future. It could also be processing a possibility, one possibility out of infinity. Afterall, life/form is impermanent. Thinking about the future is really just the conceptualization of form that hasn’t actually manifested outside of the mind. “Planning” is like witnessing just another form of reality within the domain of mind and need not have anything to do with seperating from now. In fact, the concept of future is literally only available right now. The future does not exist because all is happening now but form is impermanent and may take an infinite number of forms. “Planning” too is one such form reality can take but it happens now. So basically, I disagree that planning necessarily means you are living in the illusion of a future. You have to first understand the existential nature of “planning” and then the illusion will begin to crack. Planning is witnessing potential form manifest inside of the mind RIGHT NOW. It is egoic, but all acts of survival and really any action at all is egoic. But watching the ego unfold and survive does not necessarily mean one is caught in the illusion of a seperate self just as planning does not necessarily mean one is caught in the illusion of time. This magy be difficult to understand but maybe try. Life purpose and enlightenment dont contradict anymore than actively surviving as a body/not committing suicide and enlightenment. Nor does planning. Enligtenment is understanding the absolute nature of what a “plan” is or what the “future” is or what “survival” is. Just because these concepts play out, it does not mean one is caught in their illusory nature. Not really how else to describe it. Just watch the act of planning, the act of life purpose, the act of survival from a metta perspective. Any form could potentiate into direct experience and none of it need to seperate one from the truth.

Alright. Imagine that voice/force directing someone towards a life purpose and enlightenment both. It's not an egoic thing, it's an effortlessly flowing through life without resistance thing, just as it takes zero effort to not commit suicide.

Wait until you watch one of your parents get sick and slowly die and then come tell me reality is Heaven. No, actually reality is a mixture of Heaven and Hell and everything in between. That’s where we got those concepts from to begin with — from reality. We know certain times in reality can be Hell. Talk to a war veteran and ask them if reality is Heaven. Talk to somebody whose 24 year old son just committed suicide whether reality is Heaven.

It hasn’t come to me to commit suicide. I follow the Voice within myself without resistance.

@How to be wise a pretty direct question here, but oh well - what’s stopping you from committing suicide? I hope this isn’t taken to be offensive or anything; it’s a very genuine question.

For a while now I thought for a fact that suicide was as logical as it gets. Ends all self-suffering and you won't have to deal with problems. But suicide isn't as logical as it seems since it also negates your possibility for happiness. I personally think that you should continue living as long as a possibility for happiness exists. While you're depressed your problems seem big. But maybe in a couple months you'll completely forget about what was causing the depression in the first place. Let's say that a suicidal thought comes up. You think "I want to kill myself". Now replace that with "I want to fix myself" or "I want to fix (or cope) with my problems".

The idea that suicide is logical has a massive flaw. it relies on the assumption that after death is nothing. The truth is, we have no idea what happens to our consciousness after death. we may have to relive the last day of our suffering over and over like groundhog day. we may be put in a situation that is even worse. we just don't know. There is also the idea that we CAN suicide. This is an issue because people have been shot in the head and survived. people have fallen from great heights and survived. people have survived all manner of things and the suffering that comes afterwards can be many times worse than the suffering of a person who feels suicidal. This is how I overcame my suicidal ideations; by realising that it is not under my control.

Interesting idea about the suicide containers. If I had an advanced terminal condition of some kind with only a few months to live and a likelyhood of a lot of physical pain. Considering also my family and sparing them the trauma of dealing with my slow painful death. In some instances, to me the idea has merit. If it's at the point where I really feel a fast decline occurring. We should have a right to sovereignty over our bodies. Maybe have my rotting corpse mix with some kind of compound where by just throwing in some tomato seeds in a few months,,, little Eucharist gardens develop,,,, Commune with cousin Joe after death,,,, Someone mentioned not editing their posts. That's a good one. Tough. That was a part of the deal in my last two Gurdjieff group online endeavors. Good luck Leonid! Thanks for sharing and trusting us.

Yeah you're right, but these suicides were often done in protest of policies at the time, government stuff etc and these monks just truly believed that their suicide would cause the most change and end the most suffering. So despite being in a blissful state, they threw it all away for others. It's kind of a beautiful tragedy, the person enjoying their life the most sacraficing it for people who arent enjoying it. Lmfao

Why would they commit suicide? Enlightenment doesn't equal suicide.

Thank you, @Nahm! Awesome post by the way! Just to make it clear, you mean that, instead of taking many things to improve (like the 5 I mentioned), I should just pick one? I'm thinking about it and maybe it's a good idea to challenge myself for 21 days to create a unique habit and then start another. Baby-steps. The post was really awesome! Thank you, @Dan Arnautu! My tears are not of excitement and joy, but I love releasing them. It's being a bit difficult to focus on presence while on neuroleptics, but I'm handling it. Thank you for your inspiring post, @rabbitat! I really appreaciate it :). Thank you, @Hellspeed! That's the whole point of my thread, that if I really need a desperation point to start evolving. I think my desperation point started when I was hospitalized and forced medications. Then after the hospitalization, I gained some weight, had back injuries and lost my best friend (suicide). Maybe those situations weren't challenging enough...

Do you mean you have watched some monks commit suicide?

is that picture real? Suicide by fire? I don't think enlightenment can help you remain calm while being burned alive. You're going to feel the burn.

@BjarkeT I think you're missing the point. The reason I made the manifesto is so we should avoid disaster. Scarcity means a scarcity of resources spiritual and physical so if you really embraced pain why don't you right now give everything you own to charity and start from scratch. It'll be a painful journey to do something like that and outside of your comfort zone. There's a difference between going outside of your comfort zone and embracing pain which I do agree with you it helps. What I'm talking about here is true suffering that leads nations on the brink of war and people on the brink of suicide. I think if we avoided this we'd be living in a better world. I don't know what your history is yet I saw when someone asked if working 24/7 is manageable and you said that you doubt it and your body needs sleep. In a world of scarcity let's say if we got rid of all labor laws and a person had to work 24/7 and sleep was considered a luxury we'd all be suffering for it for no reason. This scenario would usually happen in a scarcity world as opposed to an abundance world. If pain is your thing in an abundance world you'd have the chance to buy a ticket to go climb mount Everest that would most likely push you out of your comfort zone and grow you. In a scarcity world just to survive if you needed to be a wage slave it wouldn't exactly be painful it would just be boring and mind numbing yet if you didn't do this job you'd run out of money and your survival needs. Do you understand it's not about pain and pleasure it's about creating a sustainable system that sustains physical and spiritual growth. It's about not being a mindless cog in a heartless machine.

Would you voluntarily subject yourself to military service for 6-12 months if you were never asked to join the army? I wouldn't. The vast majority of people wouldn't either unless they were rendering military service for other benefits like money and career. I could say the same thing about farming, mining, forced labor, etc, etc, ... I propose that as we become freer from forced labor, the societies will become more conducive to enlightenment and personal development. Your friend's experience could have easily become just another distraction if I were him. It would be just another unneccesary pain to me. Pain could easily become a distraction or just another noise in my mind because my ego would react like a crazy monkey. Some people end up shooting others or commiting suicide in army. Each individual needs a unique path to growth. A better path for me would be to do "do nothing" meditation for one hour a day. Even if you were lucky to grow spiritually in army, army would do almost nothing for rising through stages of Spiral Dynamics.