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@tatsumaru Carefully observe your thoughts until you're disidentified from them. When I watch the sunset, I just see a beautiful sunset! Something magical and delightful that was created for me to experience and enjoy. Of course, these thoughts don't necessarily appear while watching, but you can use them as means to arrive there. There are two ways for silencing the mind: Carefully observing them and questioning them to death. Meditation/self-inquiry/contemplation are great for that purpose. This will lead to a painful ego death for most people, for me it was a pleasant and freeing process, accompanied with a practical life failure. I have no experience with psychedelics, but they say they're better than all of the above. Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts and believing them. This is known as the Law of Attraction, or traditionally as prayer. A practical use of those methods is the positive affirmations method. Eventually, and after months of practising, the positive thoughts will sink into the subconscious mind and become as evident and clear as the negative ones you're experiencing right now. In my experience, both ways are legit and will lead you to the same place, and that is peace of mind, which will develop into happiness and then total bliss. It's really simple, all you have to lose is your 'self'.

Yes, the masculine and feminine need to be integrated and yet, metaphysically we will still embody and teach different energies. If it's going to change with time then we need to go into duality and understand our differences so that we can understand how we are also the same. We need to teach everyone how to properly start their journey. Certain techniques like psychedelics and Kriya yoga may not be appropriate or even safe for everyone. In a holistic sense it doesn't matter, but when it comes to helping people with specifics and helping people improve their lives, we need to understand our differences intellectually as best as we can, we need a compass so that we know what direction we need to travel in. That has been my journey and is the last leg, that I need to finally intellectually understand the power I was born with and learn to focus, channel it and teach it so that it can do some good rather than just be in a lofty bliss state I enjoy all by myself while letting the world fall apart around me.

What if your deluded by the ego leo?The more I become aware of how persistent and ruthless the ego can be in order to maintain itself,the more I doubt and question your vision and intentions.What if your life purpose or vision is corrupted by ego?The idea I’ve been concluding from all your enlightenment videos and information is that in order to fully experience reality is to infinitely become aware of your reality and how you ARE reality by dissolving the ego.The way karma plays into this,is that as long as you have an ego,you won’t be able to feel fully fulfilled and truly experience bliss because of the suffering that is brought by serving yourself/ego.So on one hand you are totally blissed out,drowning in reality’s beauty.and on the other your suffering chasing your own tail.My question is can one experience a balance of both?Can one harmonize both ego and truth?

Maybe that's why we came down here. To experience the polarity, the doubts, the fears and the anxieties but also the happiness the relief and the love. Maybe that's actually a better way of being than a constant state of contentment and joy. Would a constant state of bliss and joy actually be that great? Maybe, but I lean on the side of it not being worth it. Maybe the ups and downs are more engaging and fulfilling than anything that can ever exist. Maybe there is some eternal state of bliss, but honestly that sounds pretty boring to me. There must be a reason why these (illusions of) polarities exist, maybe it's actually superior to experiencing and realizing a constant state of oneness. What if I can love the rollercoaster? What if I can love the downs as much as the ups? The ups and downs and the doubts and the suffering make life intense as fuck and I'm glad to be experiencing it!

@seeking_brilliance Brings up a brilliant point here. Open your heart to love. Let it melt all your demons and shadows. The bliss will come afterwards. All those anxieties and fears and wickedness that you have repressed inside you. Bring it out. Shine light on the dark creatures. Let the light of love burn them away. That is the only way. It will be scary at first, it will be uncomfortable, but let them all out. Open your heart and show it to yourself. Let it cleanse.

Perhaps one of the issues is that you are trying to feel love. What does it feel like? You mentioned that you have felt bliss, but are you mistaking blissful feelings for feeling love? Perhaps love induces blissful feelings, sure. But love is love. It doesn't need you to feel anything.

No you are not missing anything. You are perfect as you are. That is the key to bliss. Knowing that who you are is perfection itself. Can you seriously find a single fault with your own makeup? Don't look down on the ego. Love the ego. See how hard it tries to please you and acknowledge its efforts. It's not something to be shunned or hated. It's something to be cherished and loved. Above all forgive and forget.

I used psychedelics in my past during a time when I was not really a seeker. It was for pure recreation, sort of. My first mushroom trip was probably the most valuable as I had 2 big realizations. The first was the realization that I was in love and that I wanted to be with my girlfriend forever. It just hit me. We were there at night in front of a campfire under the stars in Anza Borrego Desert just laughing our asses off at random jokes cuz we were feeling so good. And it just hit me that this woman IS my best friend and any amount of fear I had about what people thought about me dating her or judgements people had about us or even my own judgements just melted away. And I KNEW she was my best friend and that's all that matted was just being with her as my life companion. We've been together 12 years now. The 2nd thing I learned on the shrooms was about time. Were were on a good giggle run, telling stories, and then I kept saying what time is it? WTF? we have only been sitting here for 5 minutes? It literally felt like 45 mins had passed. Mushrooms hit you in waves where one second you feel great physically and the next second you feel like puking. Time is just all messed up when tripping in lots of different ways. But I sort of figured out right then that time is just a perception and maybe not even real. When you feel so care free and in the moment so deep that nothing matters. I was just staring at the flame of the fire watching it morph all over the place, seeing infinite depths of movement the closer I zoomed into a single flame. It was fascinating. So that taught me how being in the now really is a thing. It's hard to get back to that place now but I always reference that mushroom trip to remind me about the illusion of time and how to really mindfully focus on right NOW. All my LSD tips were for pure recreation at music festivals mostly just because it felt good. And although at the time I was somewhat into self help stuff, law of attraction, researching stuff like that about how positive thinking and your thoughts create reality, etc. I didn't really have an intention for spiritual growth so when tripping I would really notice people's faces. I felt like I could really tune into what people were feeling by their facial expressions and people watching was my greatest pleasure on LSD. We went to Disneyland probably a dozen times and realized that people, even at the "happiest place on Earth" all seemed to be deeply troubled and sad. I was thinking this was just more proof of the law of attraction at work, people complaining and creating more unhappy situations in life. I dunno about that kind of thinking anymore, but the point is that tripping just for the sake of escaping your problems feels really good but it's not a solution. It will just make you want to do acid all the time to get into that state where you are in the moment heavily and your body feels so good that any thing you put your attention on is bliss. I had one Bad LSD trip where I was at a concert with some people and I spaced out 4 hits over a few hours, then when the show started I got kicked out after the 3rd song. This was the scariest thing that ever happened to me because it was the first time reality got so distorted that I felt like I was on a different planet. I was going through this movie in my head but it was actually not happening in reality and I was literally wandering through the crowd, walking straight through people as if they weren't there and plowing them over so I got kicked out. Then I would flash back and forth back between reality and this dream I was having, and my friends dad was pinning me to the ground because I was trying to escape a threat in this dream, then I faded in and out of the dream and I was in the back of an ambulance. When I got there I thought I was giong to die but the just let me go an hour later. That bad trip had an interesting theme though. It kept coming back to images and ideas of spheres and going full circle. It's really hard to put into words but it kept going back to in the end, love being the answer. Like no matter what journey of emotions, the highs and the lows, it all comes back to love. I also how these weird freakouts and ideas of balance, like needing to run away because my life was being threatened, then a few seconds later laying down and Needing to sit still. Thank god during this time when I was outside I did not run away into a moving car in the street near me. But the weird way which this trip morphed into a them of love has had me thinking a lot about it and I still don't really know what to conclude from it, other than there might be some truth about love being the only answer, especially after I just watched Leo's blog video about his Infinite Love Awakening. I would just say start incredibly slow with shrooms and LSD until you are comfortable with the right dosage and only ramp up to high doses in controlled calm settings with support. I was lucky to have a large group and have my wife and my friends dad there to help me when I was literally seeing things that weren't there. Interesting, though, this fits with Leo's ideas of life being a dream. I guess it WAS reality for me at the time. Or did it even happen at all? Hmm

@Gili Trawangan In some traditions, the Self is conceptualized as Sat, Cit, and Ananda. The first two are Being, Intelligence, and the last one (Ananda) is Love/Bliss. These are not different aspects or faces of the Self, but rather its intrinsic "nature", like how liquidity, fluidity and wetness are intrinsic properties of water. If you take one of these away, the substance is no longer water. Likewise with the Self, if one dimension is missing or not cognized, that indicates subtle resistance that prevents it from being fully known.

Sure @Leo Gura I am so special.lol Maybe this is rare. Top of 0.1% is Just an average guy beaten by the devils so horribly. Go return back, cmon it's fun sacrifice again. Yes they all seek for gaining something. Self agenda, Bliss chasers etc. Truth is realized by deeply honestly good and pure hearted. Do God's work and get ripped apart again.

Funnily enough, the vibe i'm getting from this conversation winterknight just posted is on of bliss. Of course its hard to confirm or deny when he chooses to not indulge it, but the "buzz" the dude mentions sounds like just that.

@Mikael89 I asked him that question to check his understanding. He speaks of love the emotion in his answer, and not Love or lovebliss. For lack of a better word, you can indeed be enlightened and not cognizant of love or bliss (I checked this with multiple teachers, and in my case the lovebliss came before losing identification), but that is still an incomplete picture. Considering how avidly you shield yourself against even the remotest possibility of something existing that is outside of your experience, might I perhaps suggest you to take a closer look as the reasoning behind it? Just a suggestion, nothing more. Lastly, I can't stress enough how the love i speak of is not the emotion. As I said, if this love does in fact have a somatic "feeling" it would be that of bliss. It's the sensation predominant in sleep. If you are able to experience lucid dreaming you'll have a great idea of what this sensation feels like. But the Love itself is not a feeling or emotion or sensation. It is recognition of the other as yourself. This is not the same thing as the pure void of awareness you may or may not have experienced.

@wk197 The love we speak about here is not something you experience. That is affect. Most people here are discussing affect, the emotion. That's not what you should aim for. Love is recognition of all as the Self. Imagine the love you have for your own hands. You don't feel anything about them, but they are familiar, and part of you. Now imagine your perspective changes in such a way that you recognize everything as your own Self. That is pure, unaffected love. The somatic feeling of this love is not emotional love, it's electric bliss.

There's no eternal hell. That's just a lie. Everything eventually comes back to source, bliss, when they're ready to accept it.

The three are one.The inherent bliss (peace), of pure consciousness-being, is the absence of an illusory separation and/or the mistaken sense of being a temporary,separate,finite individual. The individual "I" or "me", is only an idea, giving the false impression of being real. The individual looking for bliss is the cause of the absence of bliss. The individual,taking itself to be a thing (a person,a body), will only find bliss in another thing, or object. It looks to maintain it's sense of "realness" by seeking and obtaining the object while still keeping its sense of being an individual self.. Being consciousness bliss, is the one,unchanging reality,absent of an illusory,separate self seeking it as an object. Being consciousness bliss is, what is,when the sense of false,illusory self, falls away. But nothing really "falls away",as it was never real,or existed in the first place.

Hello, I would love some advice and sharing of experiences! A week ago, I was participating in my third Vipassana meditation retreat (as taught by Goenka). Somehow things became very weird and very different for me. I was really ambitious, because I did not want to fall into destructive thinking, so I even kept meditating (focusing on my breathing) in between meditation times. I remember my first "moment", when I started seeing patterns like psychedelic visuals on the walls and felt super happy and exited like a child. My meditations during the day and the days in general were super fine (despite mood swings: happy->excited->depressed->confused->anxious). An hour of meditation felt like 10 minutes. I saw lights and patterns (and did not react to them) and just enjoyed doing the body scan. However, at night times things became weird. For some reason I could not not meditate when I closed my eyes. I started feeling the energy in my body and often I felt some kind of force leading my attention, releasing energy from my body. I tried to resist, because I did not want to meditate so intense at night times and thought the order that force chose to go through my body was not right in terms of the Vipassana tradition. Like this, I always became really alert at night with a very strong heartbeat. If I did fall asleep, I experienced nightmares or dreams and hallucinations (I also hallucinated during the days from time to time). The most scary moment at night was, when I felt my body and realised that it was just pain, only pain in my whole body. (I thought "Wow, I never felt so much pain before" and started doing the Vipassana thing: feeling and not reacting). At some point however, I realised that I was not feeling my own real physical body, because when I pressed my fingers together, the feeling was different than this painful energy body. So I felt another body, a second body? this made me nervous and confused. Talking to the teacher, she fed into my worry and panic. When I told her that I was feeling a lot of stuff inside my body (the surface of the body is usually the object of meditation), she said that I should not do this as this is dangerous, because I could be confronted with things I could not handle. (New thought: I awoke things I cannot handle). Also, she said I should make sure to become calm and restful at night, because stress is very unhealthy (New thought: I should not have a strong heartbeat at night and need to try to get rest). I also talked about my pain body experience. Her reaction was that there are different ways to deal with it, but she cannot tell me about it, because "I was not there yet". Also, she advised my to go receive therapy after the course. Her words made me feel really insecure... I did not leave the course early, because I thought there was nowhere to go. Even if I stopped, the pain body was with me and I had neither the strength nor the technique to deal with it. I did talk to the management though about thinking that I should go to a mental hospital. They said it will be different after the course, I should not listen to my thoughts. I had one very extreme meditation during the day. Again, I had this force going through my body, wanting to go a different direction than I wanted (from head to feet, part by part). In the end, I gave in, stopped resisting and kind of just observed what was happening. I think the force went through my forehead and suddenly everything became light, then I saw a lot of nothing. I was nothing, there was nothing, at least no physical bodies. However, there were some red spots in this nothingnesss. I realised those red spots were part of my body. The force ignored a bunch of these red spots and went to one, that I identified as my heart. It was beating fast. Than it went to my lungs and made them contract and release two times. I felt incredibly good. I was just crying and feeling this ecstatic bliss. I interpreted afterwards that this experience wanted to show me that I should not fear my heart beating. Nevertheless at night, I was anxious about it again. When the retreat ended, I felt and was a different person. I felt like a child again. I had urges like hunger and thirst, I could barely resist or control. I could not listen to people when I did not care about what they said. I was extremely moody. I felt a lot of emotions coming up in my body as heat and pain, as if say had been stuck there. Because my world was so different, I wrote my identity on a paper to not loose myself. I tried to maintain equanimous. I felt like I needed to learn things new and some memories were lost like my pin code for my banking card. Those things came back slowly but gradually the days after the course. A lot of the things I experienced reminded my of the psychotic states of my friend who has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I feel fine and "normal" again. I stopped meditating as the teacher advised me to do. Only the memories are stuck in my head as thoughts that go in circles. I still experience difficulty sleeping, because of my fear of physical pain (or the pain body) causing me to feel pain at night (it is all in my head, I guess?). I feel that I would love some help and guidance, as I do not think family or friends or a GP will understand me so well ... Thank you for reading! I am happy to read your thoughts <3

Salvation is such a beautiful feeling. When I think of God it feels like peace, pure love, pure Bliss, freedom and fulfillment.

The pouring of milk – over the vertical stone shaped as Shiva-Lingam, known in Indian culture as Rudrabishek – is considered to be the most important performance of all Vedic rituals. While there are many views on its provenance and significance, one of the most striking one is that Shiva-Lingam corresponds to the pineal gland, which has an identical, lingam-like shape. Because pineal is the master gland, and in conjunction with pituitary, it produces the most important hormones which cascades down as pure bliss on a cellular level. The trickling down of the nectar has been surrounded by mystery with many forcible techniques devised to 'milk the Heaven'… Thus Hatha Yogis used (and still do) cut the frenum to loosen up the tongue to reach the roof of the palette so as to activate the normally dormant gland.

Yep. “My life” equaled that. Only the absolute would do. Hearing you loud and clear. I did the accumulation like a Boss, and gave literally all of it away. It’s not missed a bit. Let’s talk about your plan. I died for this. Please dispel my typical bullshit and jokes, that isn’t one. (It is too though?) Only you can awaken, everyone else already is. Chance is a farce. I’ve mentioned this lightly as it’s arrogant af sounding in type, but “I” meet with people, we talk, God creates, we create, ‘they’ awaken. If I am useful in your pursuit, use me. For me, you were always awake, and I was the last one to get the joke. Reincarnation, lifetimes, etc - tricky as they are both and neither the setup & punchline. Infinite Humor. Perpetual mindfuck. Perfection. “It” can’t be “gotten”, it’s not a content of thoughts, nor the thinker of thoughts, “it” is appearing as thoughts, and believing them, or recognizing “it” in them, as them. It’s entirely perfect, convincing itself it is otherwise - that that is “reality”. Perfect. The kick in the balls, is, it is you. Not “Absolute God You” - just you. Imagine a God of infinite magnitude and power, with the innocence & self awareness, yet thoughtlessness of a 1 year old. Now be mindful and honest within - how “grown up are you, really? What meaning has that? yours Make a distinction as such, create it, without identification, there is only absolute which appears to include a “distinction” and an “identification”... unconditional is as is, eternally, and remains undisturbed, un-contracted, uncontrolled, un-contorted, “delusion free”, indeed well known. Why, who, how? Me. Make the distinctions, with identification, and the Truth remains inconceivable, ungraspable, heartbreakingly just slightly out of reach - “physical”. Why, who, how? Me. You draw out the absolute mindfuck of direct experience. Once, age 16, a coked up, drunk 25 year old guy mistook me for someone else. Apparently, someone who did him very wrong. Long story short, couple weeks in the hospital, face stitched back together, and these days the only remnant of it is some admittedly rough sinus / ear issues, a handful of scars, and a God-load of compassion, appreciation & love for him. The moral of that story, in my direct experience - I do not know what anyone is thinking, feeling, nor experiencing - when I believe I do, vicariously but also truly not - “I” suffers. You might call this a great paradox of direct experience vs suffering. Nothing is what it seems, right down to the very last atom. Such is, with all things, unveiled “typically”, as self, nature, animals, people, object. The depth of our (“my”) overlays upon it are simply “deeper” than you’ve yet “been” / unconverted / inspected. Put incredibly short - kid asks his dad how God could allow Hitler, while his rated M video game is paused. Even more simply - you don’t know what death is. What you’re ‘missing’ is Awakening is total. There is no relative. This is something unlike all other thoughts, concepts, ideas. It is not conceivable, only “experienceable”, as what is without experience, and there is not then again, because there never was, experience. It’s “paper thin”, so much so there’s no paper at all, and one is basically forced to point with a term like paper thin. If “it” seems huge, direct experience brings it down to eye level, if properly inspected. Nice...tricky though...the statement “ignorance is bliss” is likely not made from the one in ignorance. We tend to suffer, under the assumption it’s part of physical reality, individuality. Separate self = suffering. In ‘personal sense’, I did not find it blissful, there was no foundation of sense at all. Now ‘i’ am entirely ignorant, and it is indeed bliss. Then be effortless, without friction and confusion. Let all go. Can’t? Inspect that can’t. Inspect “the one” who can’t. Something to ponder, awakening that which is unlimited, is not done via limits. Create your awakening, drop any limitation on formulating such a plan. It is worth everything.

Not necessarily a teaching but understanding and not of everything (e.g. I don't care about makeup) but rather of that which is beyond the world of duality and oneness (for example Tao). My greatest dream is not so much to accumulate stuff in life and experience pleasures (although I surely don't mind living a wonderful and fulfilling life even if it's an illusion) but rather to wake up from the dream and uncover something that is real and doesn't change. Something that is the fulcrum of everything else, the source, the Tao, Tathagatha, beyond coming and going etc. I can't be satisfied with just looking at how wonderful the birds and trees are and pretending I am omniscient. I want to uncover what is going on, why am I here, where I came from, how creation works, what other dimensions are there and I want to know with 100% certainty that it's the truth, not just some other simulation, matrix, dream, confusion, deeper level of illusion etc. I want clarity. Well I guess I am wondering if everyone has the chance to wake up within their lifetime or not. I don't get that. I've heard it before from many teachings but I've never been aware of any unconditional love in the relative. After all if it's unconditional it means it isn't relative either which means it can't be experience within the relativity. Also doesn't unconditional love mean that you should love the jihadists, torturers who skin people alive, nazis, dictators, the people who caused the incident at Chernobyl and etc. (insert other horrible scenarios). I think he liked to scare his students that unless they create their soul they will be lost forever in order to motivate them a little bit. Also the way I interpret it is that ignorance is bliss, enlightenment is bliss, but moving from ignorance to enlightenment is hell. I would like to be able to progress on the spiritual path more effortlessly, without so much friction and confusion wasting 10 years on one thought etc. The Buddha was complete at 35, I am not saying this to compare high scores, I just wish that there is a way to improve the efficiency of the spiritual process.

Meditation today INCREDIBLE concentration is getting stronger and more fluid, this is so ridiculous in a such good way. I cant believe it. After i finished i was in such a happy state. Im wary of saying bliss because i have a feeling thats a level above happiness. But for about an hour and a half after todays morning session (25 minutes), my energy levels were high, i was all smiles. I have to remember tho that TRUE happiness is independent of whats going on around you. True happiness is when you feel happy even though your stressed, sad, grumpy, or things dont go your way. I dont have experience on this yet so i wont dwell too much on it. I dont know if i mentioned that i bumped my sessions from 20 min to 25. Yesterday and today sessions seemed to go by soo quickly, which i geuss is a side product of improvement? I am started to enjoy meditation thoroughly and im sooo happy im sticking with it ahhhhh. I feel like i just tasted the very tip of benefits of meditation. If i achieved this at only a few weeks, i cant imagine what advanced meditators experience on the daily. And if according to some people here, advanced meditators only have a taste of what reality is, i cant even fathom how deep it goes. But baby steps.

Absolute existence-consciousness-bliss. Through the lens/prism of ego, 1) Your own absolute existence appears as an illusion of you being a fickle entity in an absolute, independent material world 2) That absolute consciousness appears as an illusion of you being a fickle entity that possess a tiny amount of miserable consciousness which rises and falls, comes and goes 3) That absolute bliss/love appears as the illusion of the dyad of pleasure and pain experienced by that fickle entity called 'evilangel'

Well it's just yet another way of saying the same unsayable thing, namely, that when the veil of ignorance constructed by body identification is pierced, the mind is then 'seen' consistently in the context of its Background. That background is Peace, "brahma rasa," (the taste of the ultimate/aesthetic bliss), the 'experience of pure being,' etc. It's what Ramana Maharshi calls sahaja samadhi; it's equivalent to what he says when he says he sees only the Self. Or is there some other aspect of this that you're wondering about? Right. So you can view this particular mystery two ways. Either you can say: it's something that simply cannot be understood by the human mind, but that God alone can understand. That's one way of putting it. Another way is, if you pursue self-inquiry to its 'end,' then you will dissolve the ground on which this question stands. The question itself will turn out to be unaskable or in some sense incoherent.

If If I could only write a 2/3's long page paragraph that would make people lose their minds in bliss. That's my dream. That is something I've repeatedly thought about over the years. After having gone through the impermanent bliss states of good relationships and sex, alcohol buzzes, cannabis highs, successes in occupation, or the magical-ness of other substances. Also after making it thru deficient times of depression, suicidal-ness, dread, shame, hatred of self and others, and generally experiencing life on earth as consisting of several actual low middle layers of hell realms. But this state of being that I talk about conveying to others through the threshold of God Realization is not one I have permanent attainment of. As only a seeker of truth myself, the memory of the experience of there being no problems and nothing is wrong in a fully present state and also a brief connection with the voice of continual revelation. But perhaps before my Automaton wears down and konks out, and if an opening and reconnection does happen to produce a bridge of words in the form of that 2/3 page paragraph. That would fulfill one of my wildest dreams. Everyone who had an IQ over 80 regardless of whatever kind of life they had lived when after reading this document would all be overcome with goofy grins. Some others might maybe begin to sing or start taking off their clothes and from that time on the world would be transformed. And those whose IQ were under 80 would be brought up into that realm by the ingenuity of a recently transformed world culture. That's one of my wildest dreams. Just thought I'd share it. I know many will view this as a symptom of being grandiose but why not? It's a dream. ?‍♂️

You need to really emphasise kriya yoga. After all my searching, I've never witnessed a technique as amazing/awesome/shocking as kriya yoga. Its highly effective, and while you say spiritual teachers have a low success rate, in my research and experience kriya yogis have the highest. In Sadhguru's shambhavi(inner engineering) 2 day event, over 1000 people developed no mind(including me). The bliss developed in the 3rd eye area was just insane. I witnessed marks on my skin that looked distorted(almost burnt) from the kriya yoga - that's how powerful it was, it caused physical changes to the body. I witnessed the entire stadium compress into the present moment and then explode into infinite form, geometries and sounds. WTF! Sadhguru thought this experience was normal and expected from the yoga Kriya yoga(Lahiri's) gives you powerful energy moving up and down your spine in the first week of practice. Compare this to zen which takes years to get anywhere for most people. Jann Esmann's kriya yoga is even more unbelievable than both above. When practicing that yoga, I experienced the present moment be nothing, and that nothing was somehow infinite love(not love, infinite love! That's love in multiple directions and velocities, multiple shapes and forms WTF!) and that was on the first day of trying it. All of Jann Esmann's student's get self realized, and he told me personally that jnana yoga can't get you beyond realization. In my experience that's true. I've(ashamed to say) done little spirituality work in the last 4 years due to motivation and trying techniques that are ineffective and just assuming all of spirituality is too hard, but after trying these techniques above for the last 2 months seriously, am absolutely stunned that no one else is doing this stuff. I've tried the other techniques you've outlined here, but the problem with them is because they are so ineffective(in zen you probably get a tiny/nano mystical insight every 5 days or so) its hard to keep motivated. Furthermore they require many hours to get anywhere with them, furthermore they miss out on a massive part of spirituality which is the geometry of the body. I'm sure there are some value to them for specific cases(like increasing concentration or something)