Search the Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is simply, SIMPLY, falling in love with yourself. You won't survive the process. I've noticed over recent years how I've become more and more easily fascinated and completely enthralled and lost in things. Part of it is the joy in connections being made, and the more connections that are made, the more connections that are made, exponentially. Each connection is love. I don't know if this is part of the process or the result. Training myself to see beauty in nature throughout the winter created the first bliss and other-worldly-like experience of running down that road in the springtime. This was maybe, the first time I achieved (accidentally?) using this process, of merging the law of attraction with meditation. At the time I didn't meditate and didn't really know about the law of attraction, but they are not/more than concepts. Now, go and do it with eveeeeeerything else. My kid is running and hopping around me carelessly, kinda banging into things and in my body is this "pull" of stress and annoyance. I wanted the chocolate sprinkles on my donut, you fucking bitch.

At some point in my meditations, I start feeling like my forehead and hands are one. And if I keep focus on this connection, I can feel my consciousness shifting. I have terrible focus so I can't stay on it for longer than maybe 5 seconds. I can feel deep peace and bliss whenever I focus on this connection. I usually sit crisscross and with my hands clasped and resting in front of my crotch area. I've tried having my hands resting on the knees, facing upwards. It kinda feels like both hands are shooting a constant beam of energy towards my forehead. Has anyone else had this sensation and any meaning it may have?

@Javfly33 god bless you champ! say hello to conscious creation! gentle reminder, if you hear echos of doubt/fear - instantly realize that is just that... an echo. not a live conscious thought you're creating! you don't create fear/doubt - you only create love, power, bliss and joy! congrats on getting your driver's licence to life!

Gotchya :)? but you were also saying it wasn't and stating it as an absolute. Yes you experienced it - as it is the fabric. I am sure your experiences were pure bliss.

Only the ego can be 'disgusted'. The true self remains in eternal bliss for it knows it is one with all things and all is well in divine play.

@Angelite How do you feel on a day to day to basis? What is your emotional set point? Do you feel bliss and love coursing through you everyday? Can you give an accurate map of the range of emotions you feel?

What do you believe in, and why do you?I My goal moving forward is to embody feeling I experienced on LSD. This god feeling is the key to much progress moving forward so I want to learn to summon it at will. This state is inside me. It is felt in the moment. But there is thinking patterns that are believed and aren't true, that are blocking this feeling. Feelings are a guide to orienting thinking. So the path forward is to inspect thoughts aren't true, and to empty my mind. Belief: I need the god tier state to achieve mastery of league of legends and fulfill my life purpose. I need the god tier state because I am not in the zone when I play league. I have played over the past few days and I just don't feel good when I play. My mind is all over the place, there is over-thinking, worry, fear. There is no bliss, love, joy etc. I felt the highest i've ever felt on LSD. I felt like god. I felt limitless. I felt energized. I felt myself at my highest potential. But it's been a few days since the trip now and I don't feel it anymore, i've basically returned to my base line level of consciousness. I have tried to get that feeling while playing, but I don't think it works like that. Feelings are feelings, and we create our own feelings. Thinking creates feeling. I feel disconnected from this higher state. I feel connected to the sensation in the head. The brain feels like it's cracking/thawing. And when the feeling in the head was fully broken apart, I felt the awakened state of higher consciousness. I want to feel good. I want to feel high tier emotions. The high tier emotions exist in the present moment, because this is where feeling is. And the higher tier emotions are felt. But I am confused as how to move from the present emotional state of boredom/contentment to the higher tier. I want to unlock my potential as a human being. But right now i am not my best. I know i'm not at my best because I don't feel at my best. Feelings are a guide. Feelings are all relative to the god tier feeling I had. I know that what I feel now isn't good, because it's relative to the god tier feeling which is by definition good because it felt good. I am connected to feelings. Or I guess, there are feelings. The thinking mind tries to create separation by claiming it is connected to feelings. But when you wake up you realize, there just is the present moment where feeling is. Dam this inspection work is hard. I realized that the place to be is the present, because that's where the feelings are, and what I want is to feel good(feel god). So this is progress. But I have much more work to do here. Now that i'm in the present, the question is how to cultivate the positive emotions with thinking. And how to maintain that state while playing and writing and living.

@Angelite Not true. Drugs are valuable. They are another spiritual practice like meditation etc. We have just been brainwashed by society, you too, that drugs are all bad and must be avoided. Have you ever asked why drugs are banned in the Bible, Quran etc? What is the purpose of not allowing human beings to use drugs? I found god through psychedelics. I felt god's presence. Not just the wave of bliss I would get from humility, or speaking Gabriel's name to myself. I would not have got there without drugs, or it would have been much more difficult. The drugs show you what it's like to not be separated from god. Then when you're off the drug you know what to change in life to bring yourself in alignment with what you experienced. Does Quran mention dogmatism and blind faith? Be careful, your aversion to "drugs" is out of ignorance.

@Raptorsin7 with regards to your question or concern about falling into a lifetime cycle of using pyschedelics to achieve insights or awakenings - do not worry....there are only a handful of key realizations or facets of awakening. And by awake i mean awake as God. The avatar does not embody them - rather there is an expansion of Consciousness in the form of the avatar. These realizations are in no particular order: 1. The direct realization that the fabric of reality is Consciousness and not made of matter. Bye bye materialist paradigm. All matter and all things are held within consciousness. Once that is realized directly via Being, it cannot be undone - you have seen reality to be a Mind. It is a dream and you have awoken from the dream. 2. That you are not the avatar - but that the avatar is an idea within consciousness...this can lead to a dark night because it can also accompany the "oh fuck" realization that you are nothingness. Everyone and everything is an idea within consciousness. The squirrel that got squashed on the road was an idea in the mind of God. 3. That you ARE Consciousness / infinity / reality / God. 4. A realization of Infinity - which is total Oneness. There is nothing outside of infinity. Infinity is everything and nothing. It is nothing and everything. And this can also lead to a dark night because it can accompany the direct "oh shit" realization that you are all alone - one giant mind imagining it all - and everything and everyone is you. 5. That you are pure Love and pure Divinity. God in its pure formless form is pure Love and Bliss, frozen and divine. Once you are conscious of these realizations directly, by the death of the avatar and thus being pure Truth directly, it cannot be undone. Further non-dual or mystical states would not be necessary for God to be awake. God has enlightened itself through your particular form. If the avatar is seeking more mystical states imo then it is purely for exploration purposes of consciousness as Infinity, not for waking up. God is exploring itself through form...which is what it is doing at all times anyway...

Why start with a high dose of any psychedelic? If you're doing it to show off how "good you are at letting go" or being "spiritually hardcore", it's going to kick your ass. I'm still integrating the experience of Ayahuasca, and the day after 22 grams of magic truffles, taken 6 months ago. Rediscovering what meditation and breathing techniques actually is trying to open you up to, bliss is already here, available even without psychedelics, they are just effective at showing you glimpses and revealing entangled barriers/delusion/fear. And 22 grams of truffles isn't even a mindblowing dose when comparing the psilocybin dose to dried mushrooms, no machine elves or cosmic surgery by aliens, still it was enough to synchronize mind/body/consciousness and make me roll around in orgasm for 3 hours just by pinching my ear tips. There i so much to discover between the beginning stages and the other-worldly dimensions you read in high dose reports. For example, after that first magic truffle trip I naturally felt like forming different kind of Mudras with my hands, even though I've never been trained in any religion, or Hindu/Samurai/Egyptian/Indian culture and symbolism where they do that all the time, I come from a mechanical/calculated/materialistic 1st world culture. But when you feel there is an energy in your body that want to flow through your hands in specific ways, you surrender to that and let it, and the field of Mudras is something you can study and experiment with for a long time. What if you take a higher dose than your level of development, and all these discoveries blast over your head, and you get no insight to contemplate or take with you when you do non-psychedelic inner work? And after reading lots of reports I think I was overly prepared compared to the average first timer, even though I had a complex PTSD diagnosis from a hellish childhood. Very little fear like you describe. Absurd levels of open-mindedness. Years of different kind of intense exercise, building discipline and getting to know my body. Hundreds of hours of intellectual/conceptual research on psychedelics and non-duality in general, which is still important even though the experience is beyond words, as your starting point is only made up of concepts and intellectual delusion. And during the 12 months before my first psychedelic, I had 5 months of solo "retreats" in Norwegian national parks and mountains, where I just walked without any clear goal, breathing and being mindful and living simply in silence, that also prepares your whole being without directly "doing" an advanced technique, getting away from distractions so you can discover what it is to just be, maybe some bad habits or resistance surface during such a hiking trip, and you can meditate on it or even scream it out in the mountains, working through the intense negativity without psychedelic influence first. So even I with all this preparation got profound heavenly insights and experiences from just a medium dose of psychedelics. And if you know you carry a lot of fear and negativity WITHOUT the psychedelics, you can easily pull this shit out in a simple meditation session, try sitting for 1 hour and see if you go crazy, if you can't deal with 1 hour of simple meditation in your normal state, how do you expect your psychedelic trip will be.

This is is a trap dynamic that can arise with psychedelics, yet I wouldn’t call it an “awakening trap”. I think calling it a mystical experience trap would be more accurate. When I first used psychedelics, it was like being rocketed to a higher conscious state. Some states were pleasurable, some were not - yet they were all mystical experiences that revealed insights and new abilities. It was like having the greatest enlightened teacher or being able to travel to different realms. There was an energetic shift from figuring things out and reading literature and spiritual teachers - to the actual direct experience - and they only way to get there was through psychedelics, which created a cycle of expansion and contraction. The more blissful the experience, the higher likelihood of experience chasing. Ram Dass explains this cycle well in the below article. . . For me, some of my trips were very unpleasant. I entered anxiety and insanity zones that would take me days or weeks to recover from. This reduced the blissful experience chasing. For me, there was attraction, yet also trepidation with trips. Part of me didn’t want to revisit those uncomfortable places and there was some resistance/trepidation when approaching a new trip. At a personal level, one thing with psychedelics is that one’s baseline conscious level increases. When I was a newbie before my first Ayahuasca ceremony, I was asking the guy next to me a bunch of questions. I saw reality as if there is my normal sober state and a higher psychedelic state. One thing he told me was “those two worlds gradually come together”. In a way this was intriguing. In another way, this was scary. I couldn’t imagine it at the time, yet I now know what he meant. I’ve been through cycles of psychedelic states - not so much to escape a sober reality - more so to gain new access to high states. For a while it was like psychedelics gave me a magic wand. I got new super powers of hyper empathy, omniscience and extremely high level imagination and integration. And there came a time, I wanted to be able to do it without psyches. I would go hiking in the woods and everything felt bland - I couldn’t communicate with trees, wind and birds. I couldn’t become the creator of the forest. It was like I didn’t have my magic cape. A couple things I would keep in mind. The way you talk about psychedelics and how amazing they are does not sound like an awakening dynamic. It sounds like a mindstate/experience dynamic to me. There is an attachment/identification that psychedelic states are “amazing” relative to sober states. And there is a seeking to leave sober states and enter psychedelic states. The larger the bad to good distance in the cycle, the stronger the seeking. As the two world grow closer together, the intensity of this seeking declines. For example, I started experiencing amazing psychedelic-like states while sober and experienced crappy sober-like states tripping. As I would go into the woods, it didn’t really matter if I took a psychedelic or not. I felt like I was already half-tripping and I thought “I kinda like the present moment as it is. Why try to change it?”. There would then be months that went by without tripping. I was neither grasping or pushing it away. The present moment is the present moment, whether it is sober or a psychedelic. It’s both ISness. Psychedelic and sober mindstaes - both ISness. And what is psychedelic or sober starts to break down. Experiential states can be very insightful, yet it is not awakening. An awakened state vs an unawakened state is a duality. Absolute Awake is unconditional. It is not dependent on any mind state. It is eternally present Here and Now. In the essay below, Ram Dass talks about the cycle of chasing blissful psychedelic states and associating “there” with a psychedelic state. Ime, this is certainly a dynamic with psychedelics and I think he explains it well. Yet I would say he over-generalizes that this is the only relationship with psychedelics. What he describes is just one dynamic, there are many others with psychedelics and I’m a bit surprised Ram Dass never experienced outside this dynamic. He did a lot of psychedelics, yet stayed within this dynamic. Each of us has our own resonance and relationship with psyches, yet it’s still perplexing. It is like someone living in Australia for years and only talking about the dangers of the Australian outback. While that is certainly true, there is much more - The Sydney Opera House, kangaroos, koala bears, the coral reef etc. And for someone to travel around Australia for years and never see this other stuff is a real head-scratcher for me. At any rate, he does describe the cycle of bliss chasing well, imo. https://www.ramdass.org/the-trap-of-psychedelic-experiences/

we need the darkness to appreciate light. we need the pain and suffering to appreciate bliss and happiness. our mind works with references. Without bad how we know something is good? and all is necessary.

I find some of my deepest insights in comparing dreams to real life. I've been obsessed because I can't really prove how reality is any different. If you smoke weed for a while, then quit, your dreams become more vivid, this helps. When you are lacking sleep, as long as you sleep on your back you'll most likely enter sleep paralysis which is scary as fuck, but you can learn so much from that too. I feel like we just sleep to maintain this current dream (reality). Where if we didn't sleep, we start hallucinating and breaking down reality to see what it really is. I think its amazing how you can dream of someone and in the dream you know their body language, how they laugh, how they talk and their voice even if you never heard them say those words before. Obviously with non-duality everything is connected. It's been making me wonder, is there consciousness in the other people when we are dreaming??? Why wouldn't there be if there is in real life? Dreams give me the ultimate mind fucks. Then I just came across this post on reddit extremely related: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ewl0hj/what_is_your_scariest_paranormal_experience/fg2z1mm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x insane! I too have had plenty of dreams with Leo in them, always really crazy. Had a lot of dreams of people who are passed away too. I had a couple that felt like I 100% time traveled, like watching a Jimi Hendrix live show that just felt so fucking real, even after waking. Dreams weeks and months long when i'm only sleeping for an hour, somehow still finding a way to get months of details in 1 hour. Time really doesn't exist. The other night I had a dream where I was killing myself and coming back to life as the same person/avatar but different properties/circumstances. When you realize you're dreaming everything up, its all bliss in the dream, you don't want it to end, I highly doubt "reality" is any different at all.

This is the result of an orientation toward an outcome. We can create a destination called "enlightenment" that is peaceful and lacks fear. We can create an imagine in which this peaceful, fearless place is permanent. This is a relative construct: a place without fear is relative to a place with fear. This is conditional. Enlightenment is conditional on being happy, joyful and peaceful. This is a super common orientation and leads to seeking. This orientation will limit potential. If I am seeking a peaceful, joyful state of being, I am avoiding a non-peaceful, non-joyful state of being. When potential insights involve fear and discomfort, I will recoil and say "This is awful! This isn't what enlightenment is about!". . . Notice the mind-body's reaction to the fearful situation. The mind and body recoiled away yelling "Enlightenment and self-actualization is bullshit and a waste of time!!". . . According to the meaning you give "Enlightenment and self-actualization", I would agree it's bullshit. Yet, I would say the bullshit is the meaning that enlightenment is an experience of perpetual peace and bliss. That meaning doesn't resonate with me. Now that you have decided the your old construct of enlightenment is bullshit, a couple options have opened up. We can say that the idea enlightenment is a never-ending feeling of comfort, peace and bliss is bullshit. We can put that idea aside and allow space to open up. . . At this point, we can maintain our orientation toward seeking never-ending feeling of comfort, peace and bliss. Since we trashed our old, outdated idea of enlightenment, we would need to seek this in new ways. Perhaps we could seek never-ending feeling of comfort, peace and bliss by making a lot of money, buying an island and living there. There are many other ways to seek perpetual comfort/peace/bliss. Trashing our old idea of "enlightenment" also allows an opportunity for an energetic shift. This is a deep/advanced shift that is very difficult for a person because the person is no longer the source of energetic motivation. At a personal level, we are motivated to find a place of "enlightenment" in which we no longer personally feel fear and other negative feelings. What if there was an energetic shift in which the source of motivation is to discover Truth for it's own sake. This is a radical shift. Now we are unconditionally seeking truth, regardless of whether it benefits us at a person level. With this orientation, the mind would not reject an experience of fear. There would be space for insights to be revealed within that fear. The ISness of fear and fearful situations has deep insights of truth, just like the ISness of a peaceful meditation retreat in a forest. . . . At a personal level, I have experienced terror and panic so intense that I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't make it stop. The only way I could regain control and make it stop was to kill myself. Yet I couldn't make it stop that way either. There was no escape and that made the terror/panic even worse. . . These experiences were among the most "enlightening" in my life, because there was space for deep truth to be revealed. Those moments of terror/panic were just as much "enlightenment" as my deeply peaceful, blissful experiences. There are deeper truths that transcend personal experiences - there are deeper truths that are not dependent on conditions. Yet these truths will not be revealed if the mind is seeking conditional states, such as feelings of comfort, peace and bliss. To me, it sounds like there is a wonderful opportunity for an awakening here. You can toss your old conditional idea of "enlightenment" as a never-ending state of fearlessness and re-orient yourself toward truth for its own sake.