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The death of a close loved one can be used for great spiritual growth and will sooner or later be realized as a great gift. Not only because most people have learned not to feel their emotions and not to show them, as this is a huge suppression of the true self and can create a very unbalanced mind full of confusion and frustration and the shock of such a death can break that pattern and allow for (collective) opening and release, if that doesn't happen then the burden gets heavier and a breakdown is even more likely. So yes, by all means take (a lot of) time to get in touch with the sadness. I've also noticed that a lot of the sadness is not actually related to the loss of the physical form of the beloved, but it reminds of the pain we feel because of the separation with our true self in spirit. My dad died 6 years ago, some years after that moment I started to learn to become more conscious in this life and in my dreams, which has resulted in having clear amazing contact in dreams and sometimes even contact here consciously. I know this is real, I've had one very confirmatory dream experience which I validated in 'real life' and the evidence in general is clear. (www.evidenceforthesoul.weebly.com). Yet still, often it still touches me deeply when I might feel him in meditation or wake up from a dream, not because I am that sad he isn't here physically, after all, we meet on the regular, but because it reminds me of the free true free self full of unconditional love and free from suppressed emotions, fear and actually least importantly, I think, the physical body. Every time it touches me, it allows for the growth of my being, because it sheds some of the suppression and creates more realization of the true self which I then may re-member. And contrary to what you might expect, I actually dream more often of him now then I used to do a few years ago. I belief because it's less of such a shock to my system now, whereas otherwise it might be too much of a distraction and too strong of an desire for suicide if you are not settled strongly enough on the path. Peace and love, you can handle it.

Technically suicide will solve all of your humanely problems.

I quit doing pickup back in July after attending a PUA event which left me incredibly disillusioned. After quitting, I spiraled into a deep depression unlike none I have ever had before. I couldn't even bring myself to meditate anymore since then and was struggling to find a reason to go on living afterwards. I didn't want a girlfriend, I didn't want to be popular, I didn't want more clothes, I didn't care about success, and came to hate socializing. Even now I still avoid socializing whenever possible and have distanced myself almost all my friends. Over the course of those three months, I finished the remainder of Jed Mckenna's Enlightenment series, and began seeking, like for real. I also bought Haunted Universe about a month ago. Between the time when I quit pickup and began seeking enlightenment, I've also had many emotional epiphanies which led me to a deeper and deeper understandings of the nature of enlightenment as well as an out of body experience which led me to believe i was some sort of "ghost driving a body suit". Very deep, frightening insights, but I wouldn't consider my current state to be "abiding nondual awareness". I think this entire time, I was expecting enlightenment to save me from the inner demons that were let loose when I decided to quit PUA. I was so miserable that I said to myself, "Either enlightenment or nothing else (suicide)." I was incredibly angry. But now, having come to understand that life is a dream, truly understanding it and understanding how ego functions, the idea of suicide seems fucking stupid. Enlightenment just seems pointless now and I now have the urge to start bolstering my ego again like I did when I was a PUA, mostly out of boredom, sexual frustration, and other egoic reasons. However, I almost can't bring myself to do this, because not only would it feel like a huge step backward, but I have also come to hate socializing and have no motivation do so unless some outside force compels me to do so. I struggle with a lot doublethink, cognitive dissonance and ambivalence. On the one hand, I don't want a girlfriend and understand that I'm neither qualified or motivated to play the role of "alpha male" yet my ego is salivating at the thought of this. On one hand, I'm antimaterialistic (not that it's better than materialism) and on the other hand, I want new jackets, shoes, and whatnot. On on hand, I don't care too much about how my life ends up yet on the other hand, I want to be successful, have a good job, etc. Is the "ego death" i thought I was undergoing recently just depression? Is it just my DNA driving me to go out and do shit? Should I really be a PUA again? What do I make of this?

@Leo Gura Although I would agree that I am lost in life, I wouldn't say that I lack the maturity to pursue enlightenment. I've been doing self development for ay least three years now, two of those following you. I would at least consider myself an intermediate. My study of enlightenment theory also is not limited to Jed Mckenna especially since his tone is radically different from Tolle who is the first teacher I ever followed. I've also followed Spira, Swan, Krishnamuri, Young, Norquist, Adyashanti, Sadguru, etc. Lots of parallels but different still. All of the pretty much say what @Frogfucius said which is just lip service at this point. In any case my intense yearning for death has been caused more so by my intense hatred of existence which lasted for at two months. I come in and out of it. The thought of working for another 60 or 70 years for no reason other than to survive and reproduce disgusts and frightens Maybe that's "immature" but that does make it any less real. The clock on humanity is running out pretty soon anyway because of greed and ignorance. My interpretation of life being a dream is that people don't "die", the fade in and our of existence much like how a person fades in and out of a dream. Once I do fade out of existence, there's really no telling where "i" might end up next. There's not really anywhere to go because I'm everywhere and everything but that's just my intellectual understanding. I don't claim to be enlightened or on the brink of it, I'm just saying most of these things make sense conceptually. In retrospect, there's not any real reason for me to ask for your help or anyone else's because Im on my own either way. Im well aware that my ego is the one who is deceiving me and suicide is a lie and blah blah blah I get it. I get all this stuff conceptually but I'm not free from the confines of ego. I still have to exist and do things that I hate. And yes I know that is ego too. Anyways, that's my two cents.

Yoga means that now there is no hope, now there is no future, now there are no desires. Total despair is needed. That despair is called dukkha by Buddha. And if you are really in misery, don’t hope, because your hope will only prolong the misery. Your hope is a drug. It can help you to reach death only and nowhere else. All your hopes can lead you only to death. They are leading. If you are disillusioned, if you are hopeless, if you have completely become aware of the futility of all desires, if you see your life as meaningless – whatsoever you have been doing up to now has simply fallen dead nothing remains in the future, you are in absolute despair. If you are in anguish, suffering, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, not knowing to whom to look, just on the verge of madness or suicide or death, your whole pattern of life suddenly has become futile. If this moment has come, Patanjali says, NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA. Only now you can understand the science of yoga, the discipline of yoga. If that moment has not come,you can go on studying yoga, you can become a great scholar, but you will not be a yogi. You can write theses upon it, you can give discourses upon it, but you will not be a yogi. The moment has not come for you. Intellectually you can become interested, through your mind you can be related to yoga, but yoga is nothing if it is not a discipline. Yoga is not a scripture. It is a discipline. It is something you have to do. It is not curiosity; it is not philosophic speculation. It is deeper than that. It is a question of life and death.

@Huz these...https://azarius.net/smartshop/magic-mushrooms/magic-truffles-sclerotia/ For sale over the counter in The Netherlands. Magic mushrooms, fresh or dried, can't be sold anymore in The Netherlands. Because there was one(!!) case in the past, where someone commited suicide, that may have involved magic mushrooms. If you compare this to the anual death toll of alcohol, you can see how ridiculous this is. Anyway, truffles are just a way to avoid petty laws. They are not technically 'mushrooms', and thus can be sold freely. Because, when talking about psilocybin mushroom dosage, people are usually talking about dried grams of mushrooms. Unless mentioned otherwise. Truffles are sold fresh, refrigerated and vacuum sealed, not dried. Fresh they contain alot of water weight. About 90% of fresh truffles, and mushrooms is water. So 10 grams of fresh truffles equals about 1 gram of dried mushrooms.

Well.. i don't want to repeat but yeah the more things you're attached to the more you're suceptible to suffer. It doesn't only applies to material things it also goes towards your psichology. I've been by most of this year on a journey of letting go. Actually it was fun, i started getting rid of all the unnecesary things i had on my room (and life) and my friends said to me all the time that if i was planning to suicide or what (i got rid of A LOT of things) jajajaja but actually i just found that although those things are nice and were good memories it was all in the past and most of those things were not relevant to my life now and just a way of manifestating my ego and my NEED to hold my past and that which i "built" although i knew i wouldnt need it anymore. At one point of my life i got to the realization that "it's better to travel light", first were the books, then clothing.. then other things like my gaming pc and my unused electric guitar.. but then it started shifting towards more deep things like pleasing other people, my relationship with money, my relationship with friends, family and romantic partners... and then it was towards just changing my life and accepting that yeah, life changes; i'll say no more as that is the moment that i am now If i could say anything is that.. yeah, it's better to travel light

This is neurotic, obsessive, and self-centered. This isn't a life purpose, hell no, and it isn't even a relationship. It's a needy, selfish, foolishly idealistic attachment to your idea of a person. For fuck sake man! To be specific, there are some very obvious problems here. One, you're trying to force your will on a person. That never works. Two, you yourself have unaddressed psychological issues. If you aren't mentally healthy yourself, how do you expect to take care of someone else, especially when they're mentally ill? However good your intentions, you will do damage. Also, how devastating would it be for you if she did die, whether from suicide or something else? If you see what you'd be doing as a "life purpose", your whole purpose and world would collapse. Let it go. You can't help her. Build up yourself first. Fix your emotional issues. Then if you still have the urge you could pursue a career as a social worker or whatever else.

7731 ...and the new video is ooooon... money! Nice topic when America just got a tycoon as a president... Nice topic when just some days ago I wrote a german poetry slam on being poor. It brings many funny stories with it, like Leos when they had to light candles because their electricity was cut off. No, seriously about most of the stuff that has to do with the lack of money I do laugh now. Still, when I think of the future I tend to worry... At least I can say that I am not afraid of the word business and it´s not that I am completely idealess about what I could do. The thing is that I don´t want to walk on thin ice. I know that I don´t know much about it and I want to learn. Last semester I even tried to attend a course from the business administration faculty to get a taste of the basics but it was a way too time and energy consuming investigation and I decided to put my focus on other things first... That´s another struggle with self actualization... To take decisions on what to learn first because somehow, it´s all important because it´s all part of life... Health, relationships, spirituality... money... depression I´ve learned to get through my downs. My very low psychological downs. When they end I get caught in something I call an identity crisis. I do not have neurotic thoughts anymore but I am extremely problematized about who I want to be and what I want to do. It is basically going from thinking nothing is possible and the world is ending to everything is possible and just take responsibility. The power scares me and paralyzes me. I spent last week sort of hiding in my four walls, rearranging my life and making up a plan that will, freeze time for me in a sense. I took a couple of decisions and had some realizations on what I really need and want and how "I bloom". time Let´s be honest. Learning takes its time and making a really good plan, mental preparation and training execution-they all take time. Last week there was this episode on culture (I do the worksheets by the way). Do you know the Lewis model of how time is understood in different cultures? I found that very interesting when I read about it around a year ago http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5?IR=T . I think it´s a little like an invisible religion. Everytime one looks at the clock, "one does his/her prayor" and I like to think of all those expressions we use about time and I like to replace the word by "life". I have no time vs I have no life. Wasting time vs wasting life. I don´t have time for that vs I don´t have life for that. In some expressions you can even replace it with death. Even though for us humans time is always a symbol of finiteness it allows us to somehow cover up the direct confrontation with the finiteness of our lives themselves. Then there are people who are pressured by it, or are addicted to this invisible weird thing. Seriously... And there are all those other perspectives from which you can look at it, not just semantics or philosophy or psychology-how about physics? Do you remember this elder man I told you about who I visited in summer, my neighbour John? Before I left he said that I should remember that time is stretchable and suppressable. How did he mean that? I can´t stretch and suppress time... Or do I? I don´t even know if behind this construct, this concept there is something I can truly grasp. Uh life´s so weird... And then "time runs". Like water. Don´t get me started in that one... spiderweb Let me tell you something... Even though the journal helps me in some ways I find it stupid. I never feel wise writing the journal and I know I´d never feel wise even if I ever accomlished saying something wise. The only time I feel wise in my life is like in situations like this morning, when I am silent, I am standing between some trees and the sun is shining through the clouds and I can hear the wind and see the trees moving and the leaves falling down like oversize confetti. My life is like vision through a spider web. I can see the web, I can see what´s behind but I can´t see it in all clarity and all beauty. But I can see it and I know it´s real just like the web is real. Now one could just get rid of that strangely transparent but still visible web by destroying it... If one overcomes the fear of the spider... Who made the web... And if one is willing to get a little dirty... I wish real life was as simple as removing spider webs. I used to be afraid of spiders by the way... But then I learned loving them. My favorite is Bagheera Kiplingi. Obviously because it´s cute, colourful and vegan. But please note that I´ve never encountered one in real life. wind Okay we talked about time and money and spiders so let me give in to the wind... I remember being a child and sticking my hand out of the cars window to feel the wind because wind was really soft even when it was very, very strong and sometimes even painful. And when it is really strong and on an island surrounded by the sea it tends to get really strong then sometimes it builds so much resistance that you can´t really close that little hand and it feels as if you can hold it. As if this ungraspable gas is an object. Okay, okay I know I should stop my isolation because I am starting to look at the world like an alien again but I really love it and let me continue... And I remember as a child that in winter I would go outside sometimes and literarly let myself fall against the wind without falling down and that was pure awesomenes. My grandfather from my fathers side died when I was a child but he once told my mother that a life in which he can´t feel the wind in his face is unworthy living to him. When he was brought to the hospital and realized that from now on he´d be bed bound he just died within weeks, in fact he died when I was on a vacation in Germany. Sometimes I wonder if he committed suicide. He loved his life but I can imagine him doing so. If he did then I think it was smart because nobody there had the knowledge or knew how to get access to the knowledge that would had made the situation financialy, psychologicaly and medicaly best. So... A life away from my values is no life, I do not want to die in misery and I want to be brave enough to end it in case all hope gets lost rather than suffer waiting for death but before all I want to enable myself to get and sustain my dream life as long as possible and that ladies and gentlemonkeys... Well, I´m working on that... DNA, a little family history and geography Leaving aside all cultural influences... I have some influences through my genes too. I have influences on who I think or used to think I am just by the landscape I grew up in... As I was going through one of my so called identity crisis I digged up memories again and tried to remember good memories to find my way to set my life in a way I´ll get more of those. First I want to mention that my mother mainly grew up in a small village near Munich in Germany. As a child she´d swimm in a river and she even said that together with other kids they´d build a float, a raft from woodpieces and float on the river with that... And dad? Well dad grew up on the island (I just noticed that I like saying island instead of Rhodes and Greece because I feel uncomfortable doing so) in a small village at the foot of the highest mountain. He´d walk miles and miles as a child. He had no toys apart from a slingshot but he and his siblings shared a donkey (all this is from second sources because he never talks to me about the past and actually there have been years in which he sort of did not talk with me at all-imagine something like the grandpa of Heidi and no, not the cartoon)... None of my anchestors are city people, not even town people in fact. None of my anchestors have gone to university and none of my anchestors were saving money with 13 I think, to buy a Nintendo DS light... (Red coloured of course because when I was a child red was my favourite colour). Me? I grew up pendling between town and the sea coast middle of nowhere and some summer vacations in Germany. I have felt being ripped out of context about a million times. I remember something though. I remember being at that beach with walls of rocks on both the left and the right side and I was there with one of, if not my best friend from the closest village, ( I think I´ll dedicate a whole entry to her one day because humans have fascinated me a lot throughout this life) and we were jumping from that rocks into the water. We were on the second highest rock (I said I´d jump from the highest with 18 but with 18 despite visiting the island I did not visit this beach) and from experience I can tell that the longer you wait the worse it gets and I was trying to overcome my resistance looking at the view from up there (be ensured that it was great), I took a mental photograph at that moment and then thought "It´s my house/home (in greek that´s one word for both)" and jumped. My summers as a child were mostly spent on beaches and this beach in particular was something I knew in and out. It was part of home. I was never deeply patriotic but I liked nature and being part of it and that has not changed untill today. Oh and don´t you dare assume that all other kids felt the same way. Like even my brother who had the potential to feel similarly to me did not simply because he is afraid of deep waters... And climbing rocks was never his thing either-he read comics and books instead. I´m not afraid despite the fact when I was a child I did as well have this other friend who was living by the port (the island has two ports-that´s the small one) and one day we were really deep in the sea and she thought it would be fun to just push me under water with zero warning... Obviously I thought this was my end and that I will have to die but somehow even without having taken a breath I made it back to the surface... pfff... The stupidity of humans is more dangerous than any octopus, crab, sea eal or eagle or big wave. Okay, whatever, I´ll go do the worksheet now... No, actually just allow me to keep talking... Oh and I sound like a grandma-no seriously- when I tell stories about my life I tend to talk about them in a tone as if my life is already over... I have so many memories of so many people and experiences. At least my perspectives come from something real that allows me to recognize and relate to other people. Sometimes I feel the urge to just hold the impression I got from a person from who I learned something or shared any experience with. Sometimes I don´t want to write about myself at all. I tend to isolate myself, still humans are my main teachers and therefore inspirations. I could watch them forever. It started in kindergarden... I was late and the others were already playing a game that translates to something like "there comes there comes the bee" where kids walk in a row forming a circle and sing and pass under each others arms and clap and shit like that and I looked at this and had one simple thought: What the fuck? This made zero sense, was completely stupid, non creative, non adveturous and had nothing to do with bees... Of course I had to conform after a while and participate. Later in elementary I kept mostly observing rather than participating... In second or third of elementary the kid sitting next to me got incredibly angry because I was constantly staring at him. The teacher had to change my seat... I´d stare at people and I would notice everything. When I was 8 or 9 the teacher said to my mum that I was so silent that she forgets my existance. I think with 10 or 11 I started to stare less at everyone and focused on drawing cartoon frogs on my books (in Greece school books are freshly printed every year and made of simple paper-most children throw them away when the school year is over and in higher grades they like to rip out the pages or even burn them-yes they absolutely love going to school or learning... not...). my theory is that I got inspired by a character in a manga comic I´d read sometimes who had an obsession with frogs-not that I identified with her but I definitely found this authentic... Okay I forgot where I wanted to go with this...

@NTOgen I would like to comment on each sentence, but let's keep to the juiciest minimum. I know that real christians only dislike that they are left alone w/o man they used to love and be with. But they firmly believe and act out of the place that the dead are in a better world so no grief for them is due. Suicide is the worst sin -> eternal suffering -> not doing it. Let's agree that thinking, investigation and analysis are the same thing - prefrontal cortex logical stuff, our "drill" as Rali puts it. So asking yourself who am I, observing, contemplating, analyzing the answer and re-asking from that new place again and again - is what was postulated as "proper" stuff in my initial question, where SDS is a catalyzer. My question is what process do you postulate instead? P.S. All this feedbacking and wiring stuff is not good - it's not formal enough to be biologically correct, let's drop it, it's a rabbit hole. (I sometimes think much simpler that pure awareness is one program and ego is the other and logic is the third, emotions is 4th, sensations, memory... and they all communicate with each other in our brain - computer) This is a misunderstanding -> from your previous points I understood you force that thinking on your belief web alone would do it w/o observations and contemplation and I exactly formulated my point based on that.

Animals (dolphins and whales, mainly) have been known to torture, commit suicide, mourn death, rescue people, and so on. Male chimpanzees have been known to commit infanticide and eat the baby, even when the baby may in all likelihood be theirs. Chimpanzees have also been documented as going to war with other tribes - the only non-human species known to have committed acts of war.

This is exactly the sort of baloney that's being circulated, especially in some Buddhist sects. It's a real joke and I have absolutely no doubt that some of this is contributing to the demise of Buddhism. The most convincing theory of reincarnation I've heard is from the karma kanda sections of the Vedas and it goes like this: For the sake of simplicity karma is accumulated actions. For example, if you eat an ice cream and enjoy it you create a tendency to repeat that behaviour which causes a preference to repeat that action. It becomes a habit that just lives itself out repeatedly. The traces of these actions are called "fragrances" in the Vedas. The modern scientific explanation (which supports the Vedic theory) is that these tendencies are stored in seed form in the causal body, or if you prefer the DNA or the 'unmanifest'. These genetic tendencies are also called 'vasanas' and it's the vasanas that create another body to continue to act out the karma accumulated in the "previous lifetime". So the "person" and the physical body that the vasanas create is the part that dies (well in actuality energy doesn't even die it is just transformed), but the vasanas continue to live on and they are the aspect that creates the next body. This is why quantum physics asserts that it can prove the existence of God. God is basically the causal body projecting these tendencies outward in order for consciousness to experience itself as forms. That's all we are really as individuals. The vasanas. The Gunas (shakti or energy) are the "fabric" of existence that allows these vasanas to play out. The vasanas provide the action and the Gunas provide the canvas for the action to take place on. So the Gunas are satva, Rajas and tamas. These are just Sanskrit names for the three forms in which shakti appears in form. Satva is the ideas, tamas is the material aspect and Rajas is the projecting power that transforms satva into tamsaic concrete objects. An analogy of this would be the creation of a guitar. Satva is the idea of the guitar, tamas is the materials (wood, metal and plastic) and Rajas is the action that makes the idea into a reality - the energy of assembling the different parts of the guitar to make the idea into a material object. This makes much more sense to me than a lot of the theories put there. Suicide I assume would continue to manifest itself in some negative tendency in the next body that bundle of samksaras creates.

Ordinarily, the man who commits suicide does not do it feeling himself responsible for it. Mostly he feels people are driving him to commit suicide; certain circumstances, certain events are compelling him to end his life. If the circumstances were not such, he would not have attempted the suicide. A man, for instance, was in love with someone, but his love was not returned. Now he wants to end his life. Had his love been reciprocated, there would have been no need for him to embrace death. In fact, this man who is contemplating suicide is not doing so with any readiness to die really. He is willing to live only on one condition. Since the condition has not been fulfilled, hence the denial of life. The man is not interested in dying actually; the truth is, he has lost interest in living. So basically this kind of suicide is a forced one. Therefore, if a person who is about to end his life can be stopped even for two seconds, perhaps he will not attempt it the second time. Just the delay of a couple of moments can be enough, because in those moments his mental resolve will fall apart -- it was put together forcibly. A man committing suicide is not making a resolve. The fact is he is running away from making the resolve. Ordinarily, a man who has killed himself is not a brave man; he is a coward. Actually, life was asking him to exercise his will; it was telling him, "The woman you loved before... now make a resolve and forget her." But the man didn't have the capacity. Life was pointing out to him: "Forget the person you loved before, love someone else." But the man didn't have the guts. Life tells someone, "You were rich until yesterday, today you are bankrupt. Nevertheless, live!" He doesn't have the courage. He is not able to make a determination and live. He sees only one way out: self-destruction. He does this in order to avoid making firm resolves. Meeting death like this is not a demonstration of his positive will; rather, it is a show of his negative will. A negative will is of no use. Such a man will be born with an even weaker soul in his next life -- with a much more impotent soul than the one he had in this life, because he escaped from a situation that had offered him an opportunity to arouse his will.

@pluto Good to know. A couple of quick questions b-c I really don't know much about the subject. Since all memory is wiped away you come back as a happy person next time living life to it's fullest? And what happens when you die a natural death at a ripe old age? Something different apparently. What would that be? Also I'm not sure what my mission is. How can I find out before it's too late? Is there an age cut point like 70 or 80? How would I know if this life is a "restart" now ? Any way to know? But what is there to know if all memory was wiped? I'm confused now. What happens to snakes that commit suicide ?

I've thought about this, and I don't think suicide or how we live our lives up until the final moment has anything to do with how we reincarnate. We are all playing a role, one in which we have no control over. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are not independent of the universe. One thing I wonder about reincarnation, is if we reincarnate into a different form of consciousness for eternity, each time with a clean slate. I wonder if people I see on the street are me, but in a different form of consciousness that I experience from the one I'm having now, but not independent of my consciousness. I wonder the same about other animals. Crazy shit.

Suicide will only make you have to do it all over again with a new body and a wiped memory. You cant complete your mission thus must restart the game.

I don't believe in reincarnation. With beliefs about science and evolution in my web of beliefs, it just doesn't make any sense. Do I know it doesn't exist? Nope. I can't think of a conceivable way it could be proven one way or the other. You didn't ask any specific question about suicide, so I'll go on the things others have commented. Is it selfish? Sure. So is moralizing about suicidal people being selfish. I use selfish as in "stemming from the ego" rather than society's seeming definition of "this person did something I don't like, thus they're selfish for not having considered how I'm affected by it".

ON REINCARNATION I have no idea and never will. Some people claim to know but there is never any definitive proof so I personally dont believe them. I consider the entire subject a waste of time even thinking about. I believe its more likely to be an archaic way for religions to control and manipulate people. ON SUICIDE The statement "suicide is a selfish act" is WRONG. Suicide is a desperate act by someone who is in intense pain and wants their pain to stop. That is a HUMAN response to extreme pain, not a selfish one. Over 90 percent of the people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death, so they are not thinking clearly. Saying that a person who had severe clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or a similar illness was engaging in an act of selfishness when they died by suicide – even though their thought process, mood, and judgment were greatly affected by their mental illness – is not only inaccurate, but downright cruel, to both the person who suicides and the suicide survivors. Those who use the word “selfish” are merely helping perpetuate the STIGMA associated with suicide. A suicidal action that manifests from intense, excruciating, unbearable pain associated with a serious mental illness has nothing to do with selfishness.

Personally, I don't know. I used to think I knew enough, but then life likes to throw unpredictability at you. I believe in reincarnation, but I think that we do it just for the fun of it. There's no meaning to it other than experience. I guess we choose to be an aborted baby in one lifetime, just for the heck of it. We choose to be beaten up and scarred in some lifetimes. And in some lifetimes we might choose to be rich, or famous, or both. This is just my idea. There is no inherent purpose to reincarnation other than experience, in my opinion. What happens if a person commits suicide? Some believe there's a karmic backlash against it, and some think there is no reincarnation. And some believe that suicide will have no karmic backlash. And some people don't believe in karma, period.

But Leo...what if one is content with being an enlightened asshole? Why would they then give a shit? Maybe an enlightened person would have the preference of living in a 'better' world, treating others well, etc. But what if they don't? As long as they're not acting egotistically and thus causing themselves suffering, there seems to be no motive other than preference. This reminds me of a part in a McKenna book where someone asks him for help with a suicidal loved one, and he tells him to buy her a suicide handbook or something...Lol

Yes and no. I do mainly use this principle in my work because it correlates with the Taoist way of life and the way Zen does its thing and I follow both because they are highly effective. So yes, enough awareness curates most shit out of your system over time, however you can at some point consciously decide what you want to change because you are so aware of the negative behavior that you can just drop it w/o much battle. So, let awareness wash you clean automatically and then take it to polish certain qualities of yours if you want to. It's fun. You cannot ever indulge consciously in unhealthy behavior. That's why awareness kills it off. When you do something unhealthy willingly and consciously you must've interpreted it as something healthy, otherwise you couldn't do it. Awareness wouldn't allow it. Take suicide as the most extreme example: You simply cannot kill yourself until you've constructed your reality in such a way that it is seen as the savior, as a healthy action to stop your misery. No, that's stupid and doesn't trigger learning. Learning is triggered when you try something (that you really wanna accomplish) and then you fail. And then you fail again. And then you win. And then you fail again. In this process your neurons are actually weighting themselves to get the wanted behavior going. That's why at some point everything seems easy. So just keep doing your thing, you'll fail many times along the way, I'll promise.

What is true about the pineal gland ? I've heard that DMT can be produced naturally by the brain, especially at the moment of the death, but also while doing consciousness works like lucid dreams. I've heard that when you commit to suicide in a lucid dream, your brain, eventually, can produce DMT, which can leads to an OBE.

@bflare A drastic change in your lifestyle helps you to become enlightened. It doesn’t matter whether from the palace you move to the hut, or from the hut you move to the palace. A drastic change in your lifestyle brings the revelation easily, because it uproots you from your ground, it brings you to a totally new territory. You cannot remain the same, you have to change. Buddha was born a king. He got fed up with his palaces, with his richness, with his luxury; he became a beggar. In the middle of one night, he renounced his kingdom and went into the forest as a beggar. Someone can renounced poverty, and start living like an emperor. What is the difference? Just one difference is there: Buddha’s renunciation was simple, his renunciation is very difficult. To renounce a kingdom luxury and is a very simple phenomenon; you just get out of the palace and into the mountains. But to renounce poverty is not so easy, otherwise all have renounced it. It is difficult task. In your eyes, the kingdom is so valuable that it is amazing that a man would renounce something for which you have been hankering your whole life. The man is not respected for himself or his spirituality, he is respected for the money that he has left behind. You are still counting money, you are still looking at the bank balance. A spiritual person is not attached to things, what should he do then ? Throw all the things, start living nude and chew grass or commit suicide ? If a person is non attached , why will he even renounce a thing which he knows has no value, what's the point ? A spiritual person is detached to everything , but he can live any kind of life style which he finds appropriate to help others, it is just like a movie actor acting for a particular role. He can live like a beggar or he can live like a king.

Lets do another Self-Inquiry here: Who am I? Who is asking? I have come through this couple of times already. Who did? I know, this was just a though of "me" doing it. Who knows? Its the same again. Who says so? A thought. I am not a thought. Who are you? I am not even speaking for the true I, I guess. I want to say that I know that these are all just thoughts. I have already uncovered that they are false. Did you? Yup. When? Ah, couple of days ago, I know where are you going. That is just a thought. I know. Do you? I think so. Thought, thinking that it is false as any other thought but still not taking it very personally. This "I" that is talking all the time is not true I. It knows it. "I" know it. Thoughts have to be false because reality is true and they are not representing reality. If they are not representing reality (using language) they have to be false and even non existing. This sentence as well as the last one does not have any place in reality. But they are here. Yeah, but their meaning is not true. And the "fact" that they are not true is false too. It is just an infinite loop of non existing thoughts. Ach.. Who wrote this? "I" did. I do not exist. The I that eats, writes, drinks, learns, speaks etc. is not true. It is just a thought. Says a thought. Damn. I am trying to get enlightened. Yup. Though this "I" that is trying to get enlightened does not even exist according to the paragraph above. Oh, I guess that when paragraph says it, it must be true. I can not get enlightened? Yes. You can not. Probably. This whole thing is staying on some kind of logic, mental construct. And mental construct is saying that all mental constructs are false. I guess it would help if I just stopped writing for a while, because thoughts can not get me anywhere. Because "I" am trying to get somewhere. And I do not exist. Yup here I am. Sitting still here. Writing this sentence. Though it is not me doing it. Well in a way yes but the thought "I" can not be controlled I guess anyway. There is noone to control anything. Crap. I am just stucked in some shit. At least it feels to me. I would love some kind of process. "I" needs process, I needs this and I needs that and I is not happy about this and I really hates that, I would rather do something else and I... does not exist. Fingers just write these words. Thoughts just appear. But all of this is lie. Still I am writing it. I am not. Damn. There is noone to be enlightened yet here I am... not. All of my belongings, all of my memories, all of my personality, all of my beliefs, all of my attributes, all of my relationships, all of the things I hate, all of the things I love.. none of that matters, I do not matter and it does not matter. It is completely ok because none of it really exists. Yet here I am thinking about it. See........ here comes the thought that I do not exist. Over and over. See........ here comes the thought that I am not getting anywhere. Who thinks all this? So deep in the shit. I am seeking answer and I know I can not give it to myself like this. I feel like a jumping rat that is in a maze (which is just a circle) and bumping into boxes titled: paradox, DO NOT ENTER infinite amount of thoughts. What? Why am I even writing this? Who is writing this? Its interesting how I do not believe in free will, I think that I do not exist, I think I can not get enlightened and I think that I need to surrender yet here, in this fight, all of these things are just burdens. They do not matter. Thats it. Do not carry anything. Do not carry anything. What is left when I leave all the stuff behind (+ emotions, I forgot them )? What is left??? I want to say that I know the answer. I want to say "nothing", I want to say that it does not even closely describe the state because there are no words left to describe it. Here we are again, concetrate on "I" and it will melt away with all the thoughts it came with. And the "I" will do it itself. This is called a real planned suicide and there is one bonus, you die while being alive. Also, note that this is a lie. Now the rat ran few circles and found herself on the same place, little bit dizzy but nowhere. It makes sense, where would you go in the circle? Now the rat was watching some of the stuff on one of the boxes and completely forgot about the maze. Here it is again. What do I suggest it to do? Leave her intentions, leave her body, leave all the rat memories and escape. Escape from the maze. Wow, what a lie to tell the rat. Cool, self inquiry poem: Who am I? What am I? Am I, I? Am I? Lie. Wow I really like this. Who likes this? Who listens to the music in background? Who sits on a chair? Who is writing this? Who is reading this? Who just stopped for a moment? Who was just looking around the maze? Why do I feel I exist in the first place? Because others told me so. They learned me all this thinking. Called me a name. Told me that I am the body. Told me that I experience all of this stuff around. I am trying to debunk this. Though I know that I can not do it from inside (in a sense). I have to get outside of here. Outside of this lie. Who does this? It is just a egoic desire though without egoic desire people do not get enlightened. It is part of the journey. It is necessary at some point but you can leave it behind as well as everything else once it brings no good. The time has come to release the burden. Who releases the burden? Noone? Does the burden releases itself? Maybe. Who does not know? This feels like the end for today. Dragallur

So you experience it 24/7 ? Or just during meditation? If it's happening 24/7 you need to see a doctor. If it's just during meditation then it most definitely stops and starts. Watch when it starts and when it stops or changes. Just watch it very closely. Watch how your mind is around it. Is there aversion? Is there craving for something else? You may find that if you really closely explore the pressure, accept it and notice how the resistance to it makes it seem worse then it will change or stop. It's like when you have a pain in the legs. The more we resist it and want it to end the stronger it gets but when we place just bare attention on the actual sensation then we see that it is the mind that creates the problem. In my own experience what I have noticed with pain is that it can seem very intense and unbearable then my awareness goes elsewhere and the pain is non existent. It's like a tree falling in the forest. With nobody there to hear it fall there is no sound. Be very gentle with yourself. Don't force yourself to tolerate it but just gently watch it. If it becomes too much then stop meditating and rest or try some walking then and continue. Maybe you're striving too hard. Also Fanta I want to address your other issues about suicide and depression etc. Often when people start meditation they begin to see life in a new way and at first this can be really nice and uplifting and bring hope. You might experience a new found sense of freedom and experience and some really blissful mind states. After a while though you sort of acclimatise to the changes. What at first seemed so amazing and dramatic no longer seems that way. What becomes apparent is that you are still the same person with the same issues, conditioning, patterns, habits etc but now you have been given a chance to really see things as they are, to see the true nature of reality. What I mean by this is that before maybe you were kind of living on autopilot. Identified with your thoughts and feelings so you could not see any other way to be. When you begin to meditate you then have a slight shift in your perspective and you begin to see all the ways that you have been causing yourself to suffer for so long. There is no blame in this and you must treat yourself very gently like you would a small animal or child. You now have an opportunity to begin the purification process. The mind can become very stirred up as all the old stuff begins to surface. It can be very painful and challenging and you may need to find support. Many people give up because they have been misinformed and led to believe that meditation will fix everything, take away their problems and or depression and it will all be a blissful journey to a quick enlightenment and so they become disillusioned. However, disillusionment is a great thing. It means you are no longer under the illusion. You can now see reality more clearly. It's true that meditation is very healing and deeply transformative but it doesn't happen overnight. It can get worse before it gets better. It has taken many years for the habits to form and so it takes sometime to undo them. It takes courage, rigorous honesty, persistence and determination. This is why it's called the road less travelled because many people don't continue once the work really begins. You will feel like giving up and feel it is all pointless but keep going. It is really important to do some metta practice ie a heart based practice. Cultivate loving kindness toward yourself and others. Many western meditators are too in their heads. I hope you find a teacher and community to support you as you grow. If you are having mental issues it may be wise to seek a good therapist and also look for a Sangha in your local area. I wish you all the best on your journey. ?