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The world with no meaning "I walk the neighbourhood, I walk slowly. I watch all around me, I watch closely. Like a curious scientist I look deep, Through the mist of thought I manage to peek. There are people and flowers, They are right here, But they hold no meaning, That's pretty clear. There is no story, There is just this. And I walk on as Nothingness."

@Prabhaker All healing modalities imply that you are separate from oneness, that you need to be "fixed". Surrendering to the heart your personal identity is much more powerful to experience the infinite void of nothingness that you are.

I've just almost managed to completely surrender the self. Then the timer beeped. Heart was pumping again. I laughed a little bit. I was going deeper into nothingness and it was so fascinating, dammit, I probably will earn some money to feed myself to meditate more for couple of months and not work. Also, my digestive system starts working better in those moments. It certainly was the case with my first enlightenment experience 4 years ago, I precisely remember how I felt a very healthy sense of hunger afterwards. It feels like intestine muscles relax or move digested stuff easier. I don't know what exactly happens. But I certainly feel something is getting better inside Nofap and diet ok, smoking not ok. It's very inconveniently to make a proper list of goals from mobile.

@perlita Because it’s hard to notice falsity as an illusion in an illusion of falsity. And because it matters, and doesn’t matter. Like, everyone is talking to other people and looking in their eyes, without ever noticing the eye never grows, and the center is empty nothingness, and as we look at eachother’s eyes, we’re seeing “pupils”. The pupils (students) that we all are, the emptiness / the one that we all are. The situation is too obvious and that’s how it is convincing. The Light is allowed by that there is “we”, and that “get’s accomplished” by empty pupils allowing the light. You know what I’m sayin? It’s just a reference, pointing to the obviousness of the entire situation.

We count on conjecture and theory from lack of direct experience all the time. We’ve never been born back in history, yet we believe in those people who talk about World War II. Most of us have never been to Mount Everest, but we believe the famous people who say they have. Most of us aren’t scientists working with the Hadron Collider, but we believe them as the experts. So much of everything we believe is just from other people. This is what removing the ego is. Letting go of what isn’t directly experienced and believing what is really there. And in there, there’s nothingness. Only from nothingness do we know what something is, and so we have a framework to compare our beliefs to something entirely without assumptions.

I have posted this before. Explains the a little about the nature of experience... Originally, experience means to go through with/to end.... To not carry experience over as a projection onto the present movement experiencing. But that is not what we do. We cling to experience and project forward onto the “dynamic now” When this is the case, all present experience implies “the accumulation of the past, “knowledge/memory”, and that recollection is then projected in the form of a new experience. But that experience is not new if it is influenced by the accumulation of memory, knowledge, and past experiencings. Any movement as such is a movement of thought, no matter how much one feels thought was not in movement. If a experience is identified it is a movement of thought “the known” Any experience implies the movement of thought/the thinker. In this case the experience and experiencer are one in the same movement. When/If, the movement of experience “knowledge/memory, being static”, ceases to be carried over onto the dynamic now, “not recorded and therefore projected” then no content/movement of the self, “thinker/thought”, will be projected as an experience at all. If all that movement of self ceases to manifest, so does the experience/experiencer who experiences. Which implies there is no-body to identify with any-thing. The ultimate freedom. If there is no such dualistic movement of thought taking place then that implies whole action that is not divisive and fragmented by a center/ego/thought..... This implies that the center “the i” is not. This is what is considered “ONENESS/NON-DUAL”... In this all movement ‘without’ such dualistic action implies whole action, complete action, the action of truth. Infinite, absolute, immeasurable. WHEN THIS DUALISTIC MOVEMENT CEASES, THAT IS THE ACTION OF TRUTH ITSELF. THIS IS EMBODIMENT OF TRUTH, AND MAY BE REFERED TO AS THE INFINITE, ABSOLUTE, THE IMMEASURABLE. BUT THERE IS NO IDENTIFICATION/EXPERIENCE OF SUCH IMMENSE ENERGY. CENTERLESSNESS IMPLIES NOTHINGNESS AND NOTHINGNESS IMPLIES THE ABSENCE OF IDENTIFICATION/EXPERIENCE THE ENDING OF TIME.

@Betterself Yes, you are alone. As God. Nonduality means there cannot be any "other" who is not you. The deepest levels of nonduality can make you start to feel lonely, as you realize that you created this entire dream all by yourself and the illusion of "otherness" gets shattered. It can feel very solipsistic, but also, as the mind adjusts to your new understanding, the loneliness should dissipate. I do not exist. You created this forum to entertain yourself. And here you are reading all these posts that you yourself wrote to yourself. Seeking advice from "others" who are really just yourself. Try to see the beauty of that. Aloneness and connection are ONE. You can look at it like the glass is half empty, or the glass is half full. By being everyone, you are infinitely connected to everyone. You still haven't surrendered fully to nonduality. Yes, it's very radical and scary to surrender fully to it. The truth is radical beyond words. Your fear of being totally alone is precisely what you must explore and ultimately surrender. The ego-mind hates it of course and will be resistant, trying to anchor itself into something, anything to avoid Absolute Nothingness and Total ONENESS.

Of course I have heard about deities ( your spelling is wrong) and multiple gods, the question is - In all pantheistic systems , why to use God and existence interchangeably . Well, to be fair pantheism is exactly the belief that God and existence are the same thing so that is why those two words are being used interchangeably, but I was talking about pantheistic systems like this actualized.org, whose sole agenda is not to convince people that God is not the christian God but existence (which is the agenda of pantheism) but the sole purpose of actualized.org is to show and make understand the true nature of reality, and the non-material core of reality. In all this picture, why to speak of it as God? Why not just stick with nothingeness? Why to say- God is existence? That is not a useful sentence, as it only describes the nature of God , but we are not interested in God, we are interested in the nature of reality. The useful sentence is- Existence is nothingness. Existence is immateriality, consciousness. The goal of actualized.org is not to realize God (as it is in no way a religious organization that believes in God) , it's goal is to realize the true nature of existence so as to bring about a radical positive transformation in an individual's life which allows him to live an extraordinary life (which is what it's true goal is). Secondly, I asked - IF existence is god, why to call God God and not call God existence (which as I have already said , I was talking in the context of pantheistic system) and you said because there are multiple gods?Seriously? Because there ARE multiple gods, god is called god? So it is obvious? Well yes it is obvious IF just like you I was also believing that there ARE multiple Gods, but what is fascinating is how you cannot see that here in actualized.org, most people are not believers in the existence of multiple gods, most are believer in god= existence, so why do you think that just like you everyone is a believer in multiple gods (specially in this place)? Yes it would be obvious that God is called God if people believed in MULTIPLE gods ( let alone ONE), but how is it not obvious to you that here in actualized.org most people do not hold that belief? 1st question to you - Do you believe that multiple gods exist? Why? Second question - If yes, what the hell are you doing here if you don't even know the basic premise that this website is founded upon?

Hey Leo! Your confusion at the end I think is because you use the words 'consciousness' and 'awareness' interchangeably. Yes, it's all made up of 'no-'thing'ness/ a substance that can be anything/consciousness, if you will. Awareness, however, I see as "how accurate you see what IS, as it is; how much CLARITY one has. Why you struggled to explain 'How can they be different levels of consciousness?', is because you give both words the same meaning. Consciousness/no-thingness is the substance. Awareness, is the degree of accurate perception you have of reality, of existence, of the 'cosmic Magic!', if you will. Now THAT is what can be developed! 'Awareness', your clarity, not 'Consciousness'. The substance of which it (existence/creation/reality) is made just is what it is; there is no levels to that, only to Clarity/Awareness. How vigilant are you? How much are you aware of? Also, only certain 'entities', created by this 'substance'/consciousness/nothingness, has the attributes, the capacity, to become aware; Like our entity the 'human being'. A rock, on the other hand, doesn't have the attributes.

of course, Leo should look beyond his own interpretations of his experience, and beyond infinity infinity has no absolute, and has no ground. groundless and empty as Leo says. while true ground of all, true absolute, actual God of monotheism, Allah/Elohim/Christian God, True God transcends infinity itself thats the biggest mind twist, especially for nonduality folks and alive infinite intelligence that Leo tripped to, is not really a God of monotheism it is what Sufis call as Universal Being, or Universal Soul, or Self-unfolding Being or just big SELF also known as Adam Kadmon in Kabbala think about it, you just trip and arrive to godhead, who is actually just a bored intelligence with human qualities and its not even clear whether he is alive or dead. whether you can call him god or just a dead reality what kind of god is this? god with existential boredom? nothingness whatsoever? empty awareness field? infinite machine of infinite possibilities? is it god or is it some mechanic calculator? can you intuit that there are inconsistencies here brahman = atman. but brahman is not God that transcends infinity. brahman is the name for impersonal aspect of this reality, which is maybe dead maybe alive, maybe dream maybe real, maybe this maybe that, utter nonduality however pretty nondual picture only applies to this reality, but it fails when you recognise that your witnessing of the here and now, is not simply equal to reality but its rather pointing to absence of the real subject in the reality, it points to absence of actually real thing in this infinite reality. coz actually real and true is beyond this infinity. absolute truth is not infinity, or being, absolute truth totally transcends infinity, and you can't trip to it, in other words creator and creation are not in nondual bowl, they are not the same thing. absence of the real subject in this reality points to that real subject does not exist in this infinite reality, real subject transcends infinity so its not true to equate all old gods into the same god, all religions into all being about same thing, archaic paradigms of pantheism and monism to monotheism based on revelations, all mystical schools into the same thing, all notions into one undifferentiated bowl of oneness, and think that this undifferentiated bowl of maybe alive maybe dead reality is the absolute truth that people pray to? and consider as holy? praying to dead consciousness? to infinite machine with existential boredom? can you see that its not so simple my friends. but in the same time its all much more simple than we think it is, and 'deluded' religions who followed prophetic revelations understood it much better than us modern-time sages, not just conceptually but also experientially, because only messengers who had message from Absolute Truth could taught you how do you form relationship, binding (religare) with Absolute Truth, God. and your reliance upon your own techniques or own understanding can only take you to merging with brahman. do you really think that Jesus or Muhammad did what they did just so you can merge with dead brahman intuition can sense things that actual direct experience cannot. actually, intuition is more real than experience, or than perception. and ur intuition probably sense that something isn't correct about this, and your experience of god might probably been tricking your understanding of the map of the territory human-being is reflection or projection of this universal being (Adam kadmon), its an archetype of reality, thats why you are one with it, thats why Leo sense that he is it, and it is him. of course reality is infinite mirrors all referring to each other, thats why its all relative, because absolute is simply not in this reality true God is witness of this reality/infinity, but his essence is not here, he is not 'what is', his essence transcends 'what is'. God is what isn't, his absence in this reality actually points to him existing outside of this reality, when mystics say God is everything they confuse realisation of him witnessing everything with his actual essence being in everything, but we can't say that his essence is in this reality, coz its totally different from this infinite reality, Sufism had this debates between various schools and resolved this misunderstanding long time ago, Sufism has term called 'monotheism of witness', which means that being is all one, while Allah is witness of being, and actual essence of God transcends being our infinity and this infinite intelligence is probably like a tiny toy in his 'hands' maybe this whole thing of misunderstanding god is the obstacle towards your enlightenment. so Leo, I believe in you but I carefully follow Leo's growth, and it is very interesting to watch, because he brings lots of interesting stuff, even if I don't agree with him about God. coz without Leo i would still be studying all the things like nonduality that he studied for us, so without Leo i wouldn't come even close to anything, but now i wish to repay Leo, so that this maybe will boost his progress. he is great in investigating reality, but i hope there will be time when he will start to investigate about what can be outside of 'all there is'

Hmmm. That's a tough one. I want to say yes, but I feel like this might be one of those hidden meaning posts lol I feel like these are all things we are introduced to as children, with the exception of the nothingness, emptiness, and timelessness. But as we grow up and go through many different types of experiences, we learn more about ourselves and are able to then refine these qualities because we are now aware of them being there and needing to be nurtured.

Can creativity be cultivated? Can love be cultivated? Can nothingness be cultivated? Can emptiness be cultivated? Can that which is timeless be cultivated?

Arguement 1- Inference from medical cases The brain is such a squishy substance. It can be held on ones hand, and can be touched , and seen and smelled and what not, just like a football or a volleyball. Both objects come under the category of 'touchable'. But when something happens to the brain of an organism, the entire functioning of the organism changes. This is a well known fact. There is the cerebellum which if it gets damaged there is no motor activity. There is an area in the brain called broca's area which if it gets damaged you won't be able to speak. Damage to some other areas leads to inability to read, or understand. Damage to medulla oblangata might end your life then and there. But no matter how much we talk about these squishy areas in the brain which influences the various functioning of the organism, what doesn't ever change is the nothingness that lies behind them. For example there was a guy who had a rod rammed up through his head (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage) and even that guy had consciousness, may be a very low quality consciousness but still consciousness it is. The damage to the brain did change the quality and the complexity of the consciousness, but it didn't change the fact that he had lost no consciousness or more precisely the 'nothingness. You can have a high quality consciousness, or a low quality consciousness, you can be high as a kite or in a vegetable state like in coma, but the 'nothingness' simply never goes away. You can hypothetically think of a person who was born blind, couldn't feel anything or touch anything, couldn't move, couldn't hear, couldn't taste nothing, only his vital functions were working. Now, what would this person feel like? The person is completely barred from the contents of reality. He has no means to react to even the slightest modification in reality. What would his consciousness look like? A completely null void. And that is the ultimate substrate of all existence. Argument 2- Evolutionary history of consciousness You do have the knowledge of the complex experience of being a human. Now think of lesser form, what about hippos? They are not capable of doing higher cognition. They just eat, and breed and die. What about insects? Look at their brain. It's almost negligible. So their experience is less richer than that of mammals. Now look at poriferans. They are just attached to a substratum until all their cells disintegrate. They don't have eyes, they don't walk. Water comes in and goes out through them and that is how they get their nutrients. They have no nervous system, nothing at all. As you can see, their consciousness must be nearer to that of nothingness, as they have no systems to absorb those experience from reality. All right , now think of amoeba and bacteria. They are like 98% water, just a bit of ions and organic molecules floating around , they are like very tiny minsicule drop of water. And yet they can reproduce , they can produce toxins and so on, so even in them there is a consciousness, which is even nearer to nothingness because they are even more simple. From a long chain of evolutionary history, the human brain has developed which has helped to make the interaction of the human organism with it's immediate reality, more richer. But this long chain of evolutionary history shows the source of the ultimate basis of life and consciousness, moving more and more towards a simpler consciousness thus more and more towards nothingness. And that is the ultimate reality. Our brain is complex enough to keep us distracting with the modifications of reality and hence toward a continuous bondage of suffering, but if we can keep on peeling off this complexity, and keep directing our consciousness towards a more and more simpler form, we too can experience the non-existence of existence. Argument 3- examining the molecular nature of matter So yes, it is true that the brain has our experience richer, but what subtends the brain? What is holding the brain? What is the substance of the brain? Neurons? A collection of neurons? Sodium moving in and potassium moving out through the neurons of the brain in response to the stimuli picked up by the sensory organs? Well yes it has created the experience but where do these ions come from? Where do these neuronal cells come from? They are just a collection of specific proteins and carbohydrates, and what are these proteins? Just a bunch of amino acids. What are these amino acids? Just a bunch of nitrogenous compounds made up of nitrogen and hydrogen atoms and what do these atoms contain? You guessed it. NOTHINGNESS!

In Leos latest video on consciousness he says that consciousness has to be completely empty without any qualities/attributes. Because if consciousness was big lets say, if 'big' was a fundamental quality or attribute, then it couldn't take the form of the opposite attribute, 'small' that is. So consciousness is completely empty, without any qualities or attributes, therefore it is NOTHING. But it is not nothing in a conventional mening in a way that it doesn't exist, because it does exist! And here comes my question, isn't 'existence' a quality in itself? If so, then consciousness is nothingness with ONE quality/attribute, namely the attribute that it exist So, consciousness can't take the opposite form to that attribute, it can't be non existing. And if consciousness can't cease to exist, is it really totally free and infinite then?? We as humans are free to cease to exist(suicide), the same can't be said for consciousness, it lacks that freedom, since consciousness with its only attribute is what is prior to everything and something fundamental that never change, IT IS, and can never turn itself into non existence? Hence no ultimate freedom?

I've heard Leo say that "ego death" and "physical death at the end of our lives" is the same thing. But then in other videos, he says "who knows what really happens", so which one is it Leo? Also, if we consider karma, our level of consciousness and how it transfers or unravels based on that, and if we look at the Tibetan Book of the Dead and see how this process could possibly unfold, then.....wouldn't it be best to do everything and anything that we possibly can during our life times to work on cleansing ourselves of our karma by increasing our levels of consciousness, healing our deep emotional traumas and striving to become Christ like. This of course is looking at this from the duality perspective, but how can consciousness all of a sudden become Nothingness, if say a person is living within a very rigid physical reality framework and has accumulated a lot of trauma? Wouldn't they not reincarnate if we are all reunited with Nothingness at the end of our "physical lives"? From a lot of my personal psychedelic experiences oh mushrooms and ayahuasca, there are just too many similarities to what they describe in the book of the dead. So then why is it that "it doesn't matter" what happens and what you do after you reach Enlightenment? Wouldn't you want to work on your "perspective" as a human being so you can end up in a better place after your body expires?

2 cells out of the blue got bored in infinite time and decided to merge together, creating complicated cells and bacteria which created evolution, this all came from a giant rock (earth) which came form the big bang which came from nothingness/consciousness, existence itself, everything is one thing. Thats why they say "given enough time anything is possible".

Fuck. If you told me a week ago what I am going to write now, I would have laughed at you. On May 25th I realized absolute Truth. What I did: During the week, that passed I had a 6.5d solo retreat and with some intense 10 to 12h of daily practice. The weekend before (May 18th-20th) I went on a nice camping trip with 3 of my friends and fellow self-actualizers. We did some inner and regular self-actualization work together and enjoyed time in nature. This was a great preparation and helped me to put some space between practical everyday life and the retreat. My intent was to reconnect myself with spirituality and to go deep into the work. I combined several different practices, kriya yoga, labeling and do nothing meditation, holotropic breathing, walking meditation starting at 5am in the morning. On the 4th day I took 300µg of AL-LAD. I tried to time everything in a way that I was a least likely to get disturbed by my housemates. Here's my schedule: M = meditation SDS = strong determintion sitting SHF = "see, hear, feel" (labeling) Holo = Holotropic breathing Allthough I was able to follow through with the entire schedule without missing one single practice (which I am kinda proud of ), I ended up having a lot of what I would call half-assad sits and sloppy meditations. I had to move and open my eyes a lot, even during strong determination sitting, and I ended up getting lost in thoughts a lot. Nevertheless I was able to enter a state of great calmness by wednesday. I also did 1h of walking meditation 3 times/d, just walking around in a park next to where I live so I wasn't really that isolated from the rest of humanity allthough I didn't really speak to anybody. In case you might be wondering, I had psychedelic trips before this one. I was actually doing psychedelics before I stumbled about Leo and the concept of personal developement. And over the last 5 years I had a couple of mushroom and salvia trips, one 25I-NBOMe experience and 3 AL-LAD trips prior to this one (100, 200 and 150µg). What I experienced: The actual retreat and practice itself was rather ordinairy. I had to go through some emotional work and purging to enter a state of great calmness and equanimity on day 3. To cultivate this internal peace helped a great deal with preparing me for day 5. The holotropic breathing also did a lot. I typically fall asleep soon after the breathing is over after a state of trance where most of the purging seems to happen for me. After waking up I alway feel so relieved. On the 5th day, I prepared everything for the actual trip. I sat down and said to myself: "I am ready to learn! Whatever may come, I am open and will accept it." Then I orally administrated the 300µg of AL-LAD and listened to some music for about 35min to help myself relax a little from a mild pre-trip anxiety. As I noticed it starting to take effect, I turned off the music and laid down on my bed. I started to see visual phenomenon and allowed myself to get fascinated by the patterns of the ceiling above me. I just let myself ooze into them and start to get absorbed. Everything got more and more intense and suddenly everything (my whole visual field, but also the inner world of mind and the fields of sound and touch) collapsed into one giant mosic like totality. And then, I suddenly realized what happened. I was no longer there. There was just infinite formlessness. I became Truth. I should note, that the experience was profoundly beautiful and profundly shocking at the same time! My human body just contorted in awe and horror. I felt every single emotion at the same time. I also noticed, that I started to hear sounds. High ringing type of sounds, that augmented the chirping of the birds outside and low drone like sounds, that seemed to be related to my breath Now the really profound thing was, that I seemed to be able to switch back and forth between this state of being absolute formless infinity and the state of being a contracted human form. This was immense! I experienced how I (absolute infinity) contract to create form, mind, relative reality, ego and suffering. I realized, that I am god and how I am constantly creating everything. I realized, that what most people call hallucinations or visuals on psychedelics are actually artefacts of how creation of form from fromlessness happens. They are just how absolute nothingness looks like when it creates reality. This switching back and forth produced enourmus insight and I was able to learn so much! It went on about 4-5h and then, I started to stay more and more in the domain of forms. As the trip became milder and taper off, I decided to take a long-ass walk because I wanted to be outside and in nature. It was so beautiful. My mind still was in this hyper-intelligent mode, that it seems to enter on AL-LAD and started to produce insight after insight, and it integrated all the theory and concepts about nonduality with the experience. The trip was about 8 to 9h long and I entered a nice afterglow, that lasted the whole next day, as I continued my retreat. I returned back to the state of great calmness, I had the days before the trip and the experience became more and more of a memory. I started to realize, that this glimpse won't be permanent. But the insights stayed with me. What I learned: I became Truth. I experienced, what I truely am. Everything is in perspective now. I learned how creation and existence work. I understood how I (the Big I, nothingness, god, infinity, formlessness...) contract to spit out all dualistic forms including my human form, the mind and reality. I also realized, how I have to create suffering and ego in order for this to happen. This was an profundly powerful and eye opening insight. It also showed me, how I (my human form) can literally not exist and be happy at the same time. For my body even to take a single breath, I have to create form and therefore suffering. And it made this whole issue of having to physically die to get enlightened very clear. Letting go completely litterally is the way, that I can return to nothingness. There can only be Truth or there can be creation and suffering. I understood every single contemplative practice, how each one works and in what way it is supposed to reveal Truth to you. Kriya, breathing, and all the different meditation techniques, Leo and Shinzen talk about make total sense now. I also learned how to meditate intuitively. The way Infinity came to me and the way, I had to let go sort of made a permanent imprind and I was able to recreate the way I focused my mind and surrenderd myself on the next day. It's basically a combination of open, choiceless awareness and a very deep surrender (simular to the do nothing technique). Leo's guided meditation video actually get's pretty close to it. Allthough I am not able to recreate the deep state I had on my trip, I can archive a calm and extremely peaceful no-mind kind of state that way. I learned how life purpose and spirituality work together. This became so clear to me by becoming infinity and seeing how reality comes into existence. Maintaining a minimal sense of self for this mammal, that I am to survive is best done by aligning myself more and more with the truth and with living an integrated purposeful life. I learned how the whole issue of authenticity and relating to other people is connected with spirituality. This was huge insight. The only way to relate to other beings without creating suffering is the way of utter vulnerability. Like if you literally would lay you naked body in the arms of another person, exhale your last breath and say: "You can have everything! My entire existence, it's yours!" This kind of surrender is the exact same surrender that is needed for enlightenment. I learned, that the biggest trap, I can now fall into is to cling to the memory of my awekening too much and to have too strong of a desire to recreate it. Whenever I am clinging to the memory, I am not surrendering to the Truth. What's next: More practice and more tripping. This experience of infinity I had is already fading and I see, how I have to do a LOT more work, to make it penetrate the core of my being more. I want to take my spiritual practice way more serius and I want to embody what I have learned. More theory. Even though I have studied quite a lot, I now feel like I needed the experinece to truly understand any of the theory. There is so much more to learn now. More life purpose work. I am curently building a life around being a musician and I want to do it in the way that is as alighned to Truth as possible. Having seen infinity made it increadibly clear to me how this has going to happen. Doing more for my body. I have seen what increadible miracle it is to have the form of a human being and I want to take care of this mammal that I am as best as I can. And allthough I have a pretty clean diet, I have all sorts of tense muscles in my back and consume quite a lot of caffeine. Getting more into fitness and exercising is inevitable right now. Working on truthful and authentic relating to others. I want to be able to open myself to others way more and to become a lot more honest. Tips and advice: Unlike Leo, I would advise you to have your first experience of Truth with AL-LAD rather than with 5MeO-DMT. I understand, that this is sort of personal, but if I would take the 20min of my trip, that where most intesne and imagined myself getting blasted into this state within a few seconds, I wouldn't have been able to let go so smoothly and I guess wouldn't have learned nearly as much.> Think of it this way: If you were trying to understand light, and you can choose between a lightbulb, which is nicely dimmed on and off again, and a single bolt of lightening, I guess for a first timer, the lightbulb is much more helpful. Probably my most important advice: Study the theory! If I wouldn't have been studying the theory of nonduality for the last couple of years I would literally have gotten nothing out of the experience. My mind wouldn't have been able to make sense out of anything. It would just have been some hallucination for me. Having concepts of what I was experiencing helped a great deal with recognizing it as absolute Truth and the way that AL-LAD makes your mind become this hyperintelligent wisdom machine worked greatly with that (which is another reason why I would recommend AL-LAD over 5MeO for a first time experience). On retreat, practice starts to take on at different dynamic on its own. Stuff comes up and it might be getting very hard to do some of the techniques as good as you would be able to do them in your daily practice. Don't judge yourself for that and don't judge your performance. Surrender to whatever happens and try not to get frustrated. The retreat is at play here and it will give you whatever you need to learn right now (sort of like a trip). Thinking in terms of good or bad retreats is not useful (recisely like thinking in terms of good or bad trips is not useful ). Solo retreats are perfect settings for breakthrough doses of psychedelics. If you are serious about experiencing Truth for the first time than this is definately one of the most recommended alternatives. If you're struggeling with this issue of life purpose vs. spirituality, consider psychedelics. For me they made the solution to this increadibly clear. They actually showed me, that there is no real difference between the two, especially, if you understand how your core values relate to Truth. Lastly: Remember, that letting go is the key! I am so greatful right now. Awakening is so powerfully life transforming and liberating. Thank all of you for walking this path together. I hope this report is helpful. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer.

@B_Naz Best thing to understand is that we must start closer to home. I mean don’t ever go beyond where one has not yet began. Learn about the nature of thought/self. That way you can avoid getting caught in self deception, (identification with ideas) The only way to end thought is to understand its whole movement and maintain religious awareness of that understanding. In that understanding and awareness makes for the cessation of experience acting as a barrier between the conditioned mind and nothingness. The art of living?

Basically, it means awareness. It's the intellects inferred description, if you will, of the indescribable. Anyway, then BE reality. That's the point. Have you had any spiritual epiphanies yet? If so, have you gained self-knowledge from the experience? Self- knowledge can be gained without an epiphany though, by using a teaching, such as Vedanta. The self-knowledge I'm referring to is that you are actually awareness (or nothingness), not the apparent person you have thought you were and what that means.

You only know very little, and what you know is what is in your direct experience right now in the moment, and you may only understand attributes to what is in your direct experience, the more you pay attention to it the more attributes you will come to know about it. "Faith = being in a place of not knowing, accepting what arises, Belief = the ego's way of labelling or controlling experience". Focus on the left hand you become the left hand, Focus on right the hand you become the right hand. Focus on the breath you become the breath. Focus on thoughts you become the thoughts. Focus on emotions you become the emotions. Focus on the pain you become the pain. Focus on another you become the other. Focus on existence you become existent (more alive/awake/present/in the moment). "The thing you are looking for is the thing that is looking" Unfocused with great intensity you become the nothingness/emptiness/silence/pure consciousness/ Samadhi, whatever. "You are looking through a small lens" To quieten down the mind they tell you to do the focus on breath meditation, actually they say you can't quieten the mind, you can only remove awareness from it. So basically you're just training where you place your awareness. To truly be one with the object/subject in your awareness the concept of "you" has to disappear, there must be no illusion of the self, there must be no self. "No one can pass the gateless gate, no one's mind has ever figured out how, and no one ever will, no one can pass the gateless gate... So. Be. No One." "There is no self that awakens, there is no you that awakens, what you are awakening from is the illusion of the separate self. From the dream of the limited you, to talk about it is meaningless there must be an actual cessation of the self to realize directly what it is, and once it is realized there is nothing that can be said about it, as soon as you say something you are back in the mind 'I've already said too much'." "Not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore; Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore; Not that which speech can illuminate, but that by which speech can be illuminated: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore; Not that which the mind can think, but that whereby the mind can think: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore. The One Power that illumines everything and everyone is indivisible. It is the Ear behind the ears, Mind behind the mind, Speech behind speech, Vital Life behind life. The ears cannot hear it; it is what makes the ears hear. The eyes cannot see it; it is what makes the eyes see. You cannot speak about it; it is what makes you speak. The mind cannot imagine it; it is what makes the mind think. It is different from what all we know; yet it is not known either. Those who feel they know Him know Him not. Those who know that anything amenable to the senses is not Brahman, they know it best. When it is known as the innermost witness of all cognitions, whether sensation, perception or thought, then it is known. One who knows thus reaches immortality." Notice where you put focus/awareness is where things unravel? how you learn, how you get things done, notice how all unconscious activity is basically activity that robs your focus when you know it should be used elsewhere? "The degree to which a person has evolved or become enlightened is the degree to which one has gained the ability to adapt to each moment or to transmute the constantly changing human stream of circumstances, pain and pleasure into bliss."

TL:DR version: Focus/awareness/Consciousness is the only thing "known" to you in your present moment. And pure consciousness is emptiness/nothingness/Absence/Brahman, everything else is consciousnesse's illusion, the game of lila. This thing is literally a fucking super power this is what Sadhguru means when he says "Focus in one direction" and "pay attention and anything will yield to you", this is what "law of attraction is" all problems arise because our attention is always being stolen by useless unconscious stuff. No wonder people meditate 24/7, they're training their awareness to stay in blissfulness, no wonder the buddha did that, mastering the skill of focus. This is not about popping psychedelics and going on fun mystical trips, spirituality is self mastery, psychedelics might be useful to someone who's stuck on common ego, but all these psychedelics user seem to want to trip the rest of their entire lives, that's bullshit, sounds like another addiction. Like Eckhart Tolle said "maple syrup for the mind".

*note* I'm really asking Leo here and hope he has the time to answer. I'm not looking for every Joe blo's opinion from their beliefs. I'm not interested in opinions. If you really think you can answer these questions, from actual experience, and not coming from a place of feeding your Ego's importance, then yes please, I'd love to hear your wisdom. In the video, you talk abut it taking the will to give up literally everything, including the will to live, to become Enlightened / Awake. You have to 100% commit and surrender to dying. Not 99%, but 100% giving up your life totally and completely. The will to pull the trigger, but 1000 times worse, as your killing yourself over years or decades. Watching everything in your life, everything you love, all slowly die off piece by piece. Sounds like the worst misery. But, you're saying this is the only way to actually wake up. The Only way out of the suffering. The only way to ever actually feel true love for anything. But here's the problem I have. I've already died. I've stopped breathing, turned grey, lips blue, and felt the numbness and darkness envelope me. Felt my life fade away into nothingness. I got to the very very edge of forever death. And in that moment, on that edge, I said 'No, no I will not go now! I will fight with my very last bit of will to not go over that edge. I had more will than I ever have in my life to stay alive. And I did. I met death and lived. But in this video, you say the only way I can become Enlightened, to become Awake, to ever stop all the suffering, to actually experience real Love, is to go to that exact same space on the edge and say "I surrender to death". I...I, do not think I can do that. Knowing what it felt like to die, I don't think I can willfully do that to myself. Now here's my real fear, knowing that I can't willfully kill myself, I might spend the rest of my life knowing that this is the only thing there is to do with my life. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not sex, not women, not pleasure, not purpose, not companionship, not even love, or even the basic joy of being alive, absolutely nothing is going to satisfy me or bring me any kind of real happiness. Only being Awake / Enlightened / Truth / being God, will I ever experience peace. Knowing that this is possible, and never trying, will drive me mad. Always knowing its there and possible, but I'm too chicken to try, the rest of my life will be fucked. If I try and fail for decades, wasting my life, my life is fucked. If I can't summon the will to actually kill myself (which I know I can't do), then the rest of my life is fucked. I won't be able to forget this, or let it go of this, if I know that there is a chance that all the suffering can actually go away. I just don't know what to do, if I can't do what you're saying I have to do in this video. Sorry for all the reading to do, I tried to make this as succinct as possible. And thank you for any answers or insights.

After Enlightenment one is fully identified with the human nature and the being. Human Being is the gate of everything, including you the reader. If a human being fully identifies with nothingness, what we see as the whole universe outside of the human body/mind, then that human being dies, literally. So awakening is from inside out, not from outside of the body/mind (nothingness to in <human>). In itself, the body/mind of each of us is literally infinite, the direct hologram of everything else.

You are overlooking a very important point: that "you" is an illusion. After enlightenment, you're not identified with being human any more. Your identification shifted to Nothingness and therefore Everything. So there is nothing to improve because you are the whole universe in all its possible forms. How can you improve infinity? Infinity includes every possible state. So there's nowhere to run. Moreover, the concept of "improvement" only makes sense if you assume time exists. And at higher levels of consciousness, it doesn't. You become so present to the NOW that you cannot even conceptualize a future in which something could be better or worse. And of course the concepts "better" and "worse" are just judgments of the ego-mind to begin with.

Originally, experience means to go through with/to end....To not carry experience over as a projection onto the present movement experiencing. But that is not what we do. We cling to experience and project forward onto the “dynamic now” When this is the case, all present experience implies “the accumulation of the past, “knowledge/memory”, and that recollection is then projected in the form of a new experience. But that experience is not new if it is influenced by the accumulation of memory, knowledge, and past experiencings. Any movement as such is a movement of thought, no matter how much one feels thought was not in movement. If a experience is identified it is a movement of thought “the known” Any experience implies the movement of thought/the thinker. In this case the experience and experiencer are one in the same movement. When/If, the movement of experience “knowledge/memory, being static”, ceases to be carried over onto the dynamic now, “not recorded and therefore projected” then no content/movement of the self, “thinker/thought”, will be projected as an experience at all. If all that movement of self ceases to manifest, so does the experience/experiencer who experiences. Which implies there is no-body to identify with any-thing. The ultimate freedom. If there is no such dualistic movement of thought taking place then that implies whole action that is not divisive and fragmented by a center/ego/thought..... This implies that the center “the i” is not. This is what is considered “ONENESS/NON-DUAL”... In this all movement ‘without’ such dualistic action implies whole action, complete action, the action of truth. Infinite, absolute, immeasurable. WHEN THIS DUALISTIC MOVEMENT CEASES, THAT IS THE ACTION OF TRUTH ITSELF. THIS IS EMBODIMENT OF TRUTH, THE INFINITE, ABSOLUTE, THE IMMEASURABLE. BUT THERE IS NO IDENTIFICATION/EXPERIENCE OF SUCH IMMENSE ENERGY. CENTERLESSNESS IMPLIES NOTHINGNESS AND NOTHINGNESS IMPLIES THE ABSENCE OF IDENTIFICATION/EXPERIENCE THE ENDING OF TIME.