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@justfortoday The first time I became aware of this was several years ago while I was driving. It was a very profound experience. Have you found anyone discussing this topic in more depth? It actually can go further than that, still in the dream but progressing up the story of consciousness expansion — in the same way that the universe appears to calibrate itself around you continuously, actually much more than that is apparently calibrated... The “causality bubble” is also recalibrating itself around you, such that the past is continuously imagined as what it must’ve been in order for this appearance “now” to make sense. All of it completely impersonal and without condition, meaning, purpose, value, intention, or limit — which is why there are no bounds for what is “calibrated” as described; everything that could be thought of as real is only an appearance, and the status of reality, if it could even be known that there were one, is utterly unknowable and infinite. ...Total story btw, as there’s nothing other than what appears, and by necessity... but that’s what can appear to happen.

It's not something that's remembered, it's a clear recognition that this seemingly real self is a complete illusion. It's a completely personal experience with an impersonal outcome. So-called positive and negative emotions and feelings can still arise but they are no longer identified with by the sticky self illusion claiming ownership over all experience.(ie. my emotional baggage). And yes of course human problems still arise like needing money to purchase food and a place to live. Nothing matters transcends the self illusion that would immediately ask the question "so then what do I get out of it" or "so how does this help me". It's the recognition there isn't a ME, there only seems to be. ❤

You are not alone because there is no you. you play with that idea, from the self. when the self disappears there is no loneliness or company, there is only what is, impersonal, empty of content, bottomless.

Yes, I agree with you. I was doing kriya yoga, but I noticed I had a hard time staying focused on certain sensations or being impersonal to some of the sensations I was feeling. Certainly, the abilities learned through meditation serve as a solid foundation for any path you decide to go through.

Yes, 5-MeO is overkill for you. Start with lighter things. LSD is still very powerful. Don't underestimate it. Yes, you can use psychedelics to basically work through all your personal bullshit. You're not going to be able to reach God effectively until you work through most of your personal bullshit. God is totally impersonal, so you better be prepared to be totally impersonal.

Disc test Your Behavioral Style The DISC system was created as a simple but powerful way to understand people's behavior and the way they interact with one another. This system describes people in terms of four broad styles: Drive, Influence, Support, and Clarity. Although everyone uses all four styles, most of us depend on one or two most of the time. Understanding your dominant style can help you to understand how others see you, where conflict is likely to arise, and what sorts of work roles will suit you best. DISC assessments are frequently used in the workplace to help teammates better understand one another and how to work together. Whether you're taking this assessment as a team activity or on your own, you can expect to gain a better understand of how you approach the people around you. The report you're viewing now is a brief, free sample of your results. Once you have reviewed this free report, you can choose to upgrade to your full report for more depth and insight into your behavioral styles. Let's begin by taking a broad look at your scores on the four DISC quadrants. DRIVE Takes charge and gets things done. Makes decisions and focuses on results. CLARITY Works steadily and systematically. Focuses on order, accuracy and precision. INFLUENCE Engages others and shares enthusiasm. Inspires and persuades others. SUPPORT Is helpful and shows care for others. Looks for ways to assist and serve. Drive Drive describes behavior that is assertive and results-oriented. When people show Drive, they tend to take charge, make decisions, and control the direction of tasks and projects. People who are highly Driven are described as assertive, dominant, competitive, and confident. They like to take decisive action and don't mind taking risks to get things done. They may be described as natural leaders. Drive is useful in leadership positions as it helps to push to get the job done. However, it doesn't work as well for people who are in supporting roles. Highly Driven people may be frustrated in roles with no opportunity for leadership. Influence Influence describes behavior that is engaging and enthusiastic. When people show Influence, they reach out to other people to build a sense of excitement and fun. They inspire and persuade those around them. People who are highly influential are described as warm, friendly, and sociable. They love to be around other people and get a "high" from connecting with a group. They have a natural charisma. Influence is useful in roles that require you to persuade others. Teachers, salespeople, managers, and parents all benefit from a command of Influential behavior. Highly Influential people thrive on human connection, and tend to wither when they're forced to do isolated, impersonal tasks. Support Support describes behavior that is helpful and caring towards others. When people use Support, they notice what others need and look for ways to serve them. They are empathetic and compassionate. People who are highly Supportive are described as kind, caring, and helpful. They rarely have their own agenda; rather, they prefer to help other people reach their goals. Very Supportive people spend much of their time caring for and serving others. Support is useful in caretaking and helping roles. Nurses, parents, and assistants of all kinds tend to use a high degree of Supportive behavior. Highly Supportive people are less suited to roles where they must take command and make tough decisions. Clarity Clarity describes behavior that is precise and detail-oriented. When people exercise Clarity, they work steadily on tasks requiring focus and accuracy. They take a systematic approach to finish the job. People who are high in Clarity are described as efficient, methodical, and orderly. They enjoy working independently on well-defined tasks with clear instructions and expectations. They place a lot of importance on getting everything done correctly. Clarity is useful in roles where accuracy and precision are important. Accountants, engineers, and computer programmers all need to exercise Clarity to be successful in their work. On the other hand, high Clarity people generally prefer not to have to motivate other people. Your Type in Depth Based on your responses, you lead with a Influence style, which means that your main focus is getting people motivated and working together. Why Influence? Influence people are enthusiastic collaborators, driven to bring people together. Every workplace needs people who are highly sociable and lively, who rally people around a goal, who easily build warm and positive relationships, and who have a wide network of useful contacts. At their best, others see Influence styles as self-confident, upbeat and persuasive storytellers and brainstormers who create a friendly atmosphere in the office. On the downside, others see Influence styles as disorganized procrastinators, restlessly going off on tangents and jumping from one thing to another with a lack of follow through.

Look, why do you think that solipsism is a problem? I'll tell you what upsets people so much about it: What you wish for is that you are not the only ego in existence, and that there are other egos. But if you realize that not even you are an ego, then solipsism completely ceases to be an issue, immediately. "your" bubble of consciousness is as ridiculous of an notion as "other" bubbles of consciousness. Consciousness is impersonal, without a center (ego = belief that you are a separate center of consciousness). And of you understand that, the notion of "other" centers of consciousness just disappears with the illusion that you ever were such a center. Consciousness. That's the key thing to understand. It means that there is nothing but a conscious universe. Let go of the duality between yourself as the conscious agent and the "unconscious" dream. Consciousness means that there is no difference whatsoever between being conscious and being whatever it is that's "inside" of consciousness. There is neither a you, nor an other. There is no you to be trapped in solipsism. You as consciousness are everything, everywhere and everyone, without being anything, anywhere or anyone. As consciousness, you are "alone". But AS the universe. AS infinite perspective. Which is identical to no particular perspective. Solipsism won't be solved by thinking, but by actually realizing who you are. Because in doing that, you will discover that you anxiety about there not being any "other people" was completely founded in illusion, namely the belief that you are not pure consciousness.

had this once actually kept trying to see it again after a few weeks at 3 am or so when i woke up to pee. Did it every night I remembered. Nowadays when I look at the mirror, I never get the sense of "me" anymore like I used to. It's just an impersonal animal, not even a human. If I focus more, it becomes impersonality in its essence, and if I go even deeper, it becomes me, but so does everything else. and to be honest the 'devil in the mirror' only pops up if you have some unresolved area in your mind which houses this very terror/feeling/entity in its essence. You gotta deal with that. We house lots of these entities in our minds lol. Best way is to self induce a sleep paralysis state, think of the entity untill it manifests, and face it head on with love.

I've had a similar experience in front of a mirror, ~three years ago. I was washing hands, and as i lifted my gaze from my hands to the mirror, i saw an empty impersonal animal staring back. Chills went from my ass to the top of my head and i ran to bed, afraid to look at any more mirrors that night. And the next day, everything went back to normal.

You sound like liberation is ... disappointing ?? . There was no party, just a crazed rat running on its wheel thinking it was moving forward. liberation is taking that rat out of the equation. absolutely liberating. Who is liberated? The experience, that can flow without crazy rats interpreting everything according to his crazy criteria. Because there is a you: the reality, totally impersonal but existent, undoubtedly. infinitely richer than the wretched rat

I´ve heard this "form is formlessness" mantra for as long as I have been into meditation. Maybe my understanding of what it really means is different from other people´s, but to me it is a game word that has no equivalence with my experience. I clearly see as an everyday fact that some totally unmanifest, impersonal, formless Awareness is projecting "form", the manifest, creating it through the very act of perceiving it. Form is nothing but the solidification of perception, the solidification of the energy, of the cosmic "dough". But this energy has no existence on its own. It depends on Source, it depends on its "being perceived", and Source is formless. That is my experience.

Consciousness made your life personal, not the ego. It creates, and it destroys, which is another way of saying that it partitions and unpartitions itself, infinitely. It is all Consciousness. Ultimately, you are impersonal. Only in the relative cosmos is personality a possibility. Within that cosmos, there must be differences, otherwise why create it in the first place?

Then WHY APPARENTLY MY LIFE IS PERSONAL????? Since Im the universe, my Life should be impersonal. You know you Will say "well thats the ego, which has made the Life personal. What you are is Awareness which is unpersonal,One,Nothing." Cool. But this ego have some parents and another person has other parents. This ego Drives a Hyundai and another another ego Drives a BMW. Why why why if its really One why the fuck we are different and we are Stuck on personal stories until we die??? Maybe there are an infinite number of Gods/Awareness, and each of them is its own universe.

I've had 2-3 maybe one second long experiences where it was like i was seen as empty and impersonal and meaningless as an ant or a bug of some kind(hard to describe), and even though it seems to me that i'm using my thinking to make sense of the world, my thinking/internal monologue was somehow also seen as empty and meaningless and erroneous. And the sense of emptiness had a familiar "taste" to it. Too bad these experiences only last for a few seconds and then everything goes back to "normal". And often when these type of experiences happen i can't help but try to remember them for a while. These usually happen out of the blue. Once it happened when i was walking in the forest with my dog and i was playfully imagining that my body left a trail of color in the air where i walked and boom, suddenly everything was seen as empty and impersonal(for a second). I don't know what to make of these experiences or whether they are mystical or not, but i found them a bit frightening, amazing, mysterious and familiar.

Of course it IS an option. It always is. Don't get me wrong, I'm IN NO WAY encouraging you to do it, but it'd straight up be false to deny that it IS an option. I don't know what your beliefs about death are, but here are my two cents on the matter: There's no evidence that anything you currently call "you" will survive death. What was there "before you were born"? What is there when "you" are in deep sleep? No matter what that is, I think upon some close contemplation you could agree that it is totally impersonal and the "you" that you currently think you are does not experience any of that state. So, of course, you can decide to end life, but you will end up there, anyway. As far as I see it, there isn't any evidence that anything we do in life actually matters beyond the moment that it is happening, because everything we know as the world will (and, as a fact, does so every moment) perish and leave not a wreck behind. So, whether you're happy or miserable doesn't matter one bit in the end. Death is the great equator, the great liberator, in a way, because both kings and peasants will end up as a pile of rotting bones. This doesn't mean that death is something to be sought out, but it also doesn't mean that it is something to be avoided at all costs. Death is as pointless as life is. Now, this might sound bleak and nihilistic, as if nothing mattered, but even the fact that nothing matters does not matter. Another point that has helped me, because I also find myself in the place you're in time and again: How's "your" body? Does it really want to die? And if so, why doesn't it? Once it's time to die, there's nothing that "you" could do about it. As long as the body is relatively alive and well, there's reason to live, simply because the body wants to. The body is also the prerequisite for ANY action (at least in the everyday state of consciousness), thought and emotions are completely powerless without the body, maybe they're not even possible without the body, but that I don't know. You'd even need the body to kill the body. So, why live? Because you're still alive. The ego mind might not like this point, but apparently, as long as the body is relatively fine, everything's okay. Maybe some of this helps, I wrote this to you as much as I wrote it to myself haha

Yes the "infinite love experience" is an experience. But what I refer to as love is not what you're referring to. You're referring to a love that accepts everything to an extremely high degree. When love accepts fully (which is already the case), there's no one experiencing that love -- cessation. Impersonal love is not an experience.

1. Okay, so... Love is the only thing that accepts everything (itself) fully. 2. Truth is the only thing that accepts everything (itself) fully. Both true? If yes, then love = truth. Not personal love — impersonal, unconditioned love.

Sure, however: (a section of what I just posted in a thread in the politics section...) Unconditional love creates (appears as) character-structures (we could conceive of each individual as a unique maze) which unconditional love can explore through. The structure can have all sorts of challenges and impediments and imperfections — this is responsible for and indeed necessary for the diversity and uniqueness of beings. However, at every step, each and every intention is literally the expression of unconditional love, which is perfect. It is only the maze which appears as imperfection, so any judgement of choices in that maze is actually just a judgement of the maze itself — since, at all times, every single choice is always just love... love choosing the most loving choice (it just can seem like a terrible choice if the maze dictates it to). So not only are all intentions good, they’re hopelessly unable to be anything other than perfect. If you want to call the appearance of the maze God, then sure, depending on who you ask, God is imperfect. But there is only love — no need to call it God. It’s completely impersonal. In order for something to be other than love, it has to be viewed personally, but love is impersonal.

https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/blog/poetry-prose/hsin-hsin-ming-poem-alternative-rendition Rupert Spira made a beautiful translation of an Ancient Buddhist Poem from China "Hsin Hsin Ming." A very elegant and lucid description of nonduality. Rupert Spira's Rendition: "To be at peace and content is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When likes and dislikes are not present, everything becomes clear and simple. Make the smallest distinction, however, and you will be exiled from the realm of eternal happiness which is your home. If you wish to be happy and at peace, then hold no opinions for or against anyone or anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is a conditioned habit of the mind. It is a recipe for unhappiness. When we allow the appearance of things to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness is disturbed to no avail. Our essential being is perfect, like boundless space, which is complete in itself with nothing lacking. It is our rejection of what is present or our seeking of what is not present that determines whether or not we feel the peace and happiness that are our very nature. Do not lose yourself in experience but do not turn away from any experience. Be free from all experience but completely open to all experience, and your innate happiness will shine forth. Do not think that the activity of the mind is a problem or that the cessation of its activity is necessary. To attempt to stop the mind’s activity is itself the mind’s activity. Neither lose yourself in the mind’s activity nor engage in the effort to still it, but simply be knowingly the witnessing presence of awareness, and your innate happiness will emerge from the background of experience. Your true nature of pure awareness transcends all experience and yet is immanent within all experience. To assert or deny either aspect is, therefore, to miss the nature of reality. It is not possible to think of reality or to express it in words. To know the nature of reality it is necessary to know the nature of one’s own being, which lies behind all thinking and talking. We invest our happiness in changing things only because we have forgotten or ignored our being. If we want lasting peace and happiness it is only necessary to return to one’s being. Do not search for happiness; only cease allowing the thought, ‘I don’t want what is present; I want what is not present’ to run your life. The slightest like and dislike with respect to experience veils our innate happiness. Do not reject appearances in favour of awareness, for it is infinite awareness itself that shines in and as all appearances. When we stand knowingly as the presence of awareness, nothing can disturb us, and when a person or thing no longer disturbs us, we no longer see them as separate from us or as a source of happiness or suffering. When we no longer divide our experience into good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, the personal self vanishes, for it is created and maintained only by resisting, holding or seeking. In the absence of a separate subject of experience, the separate object or other dissolves and their shared being is revealed as the experience of love or beauty. An object only seems such from the perspective of a separate subject of experience, and a separate subject of experience can only seem to exist in relation to an object. As such, both the subject and the object are, in reality, a single, infinite and indivisible whole. Knowing this, we make no judgements, and neither prejudice nor opinion obscures our vision. To be established in peace and happiness is neither easy nor difficult: it is simply to know and feel oneself as the presence of awareness, with which all experience is known, in which all experience appears and, ultimately, out of which all experience is made. For one whose life is determined by resistance, holding and seeking, everything they do simply compounds their unhappiness. The more effort they make, the farther they are from happiness. Ultimately, even the desire for enlightenment is the desire for something other than what is, and is, as such, the very activity of suffering itself. If, on the other hand, we simply abide knowingly as the presence of awareness, there will be neither resistance nor seeking and we will live free, undisturbed and fulfilled. When our thoughts and feelings are governed by resistance, holding and seeking, we no longer see things as they are. We make distinctions and judgements only because we overlook the unity of being that underlies all people and things, and as a result become upset and exhausted. Nothing of value comes from it. For one who is established in their true nature and, as a result, allows things to be as they are, the goal of life has already been fulfilled. Such a person seeks nothing, holds on to nothing and resists nothing and is, therefore, at peace and content. For one who is lost in their thoughts and feelings, life is a constant battle of resistance, holding and seeking, and thus they are rarely at peace. Everyone’s essential being is the same. It is only when our essential being is qualified by experience that distinctions between people arise and thus conflict begins. To seek our being with the mind is a mistake, for our being lies at the source of the mind; it can never be found as an object of the mind. Activity and inactivity, like and dislike, good and bad, right and wrong, gain and loss all come from ignoring or overlooking the underlying unity of being, from which all people and things derive their temporary name and form. If we do not allow appearances to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness will pervade all experience. If we do not resist what is present and seek what is not present, experience will lose its capacity to veil its reality. One who remains established in and as the presence of awareness will not lose their self in the content of experience, and as a result, peace and happiness will prevail. Such a one will not separate their self from any experience, and as such, love and beauty will shine in their experience. It is our likes and dislikes which confer independent existence on people and things, and as a result our shared being is overlooked. To understand this is to be free from experience even in the midst of experience itself. In this condition, preferences simply no longer arise. The peace that is the nature of our being is equally present in both activity and inactivity, and therefore it has no preference for either. In the absence of any distinction between activity and inactivity, we cannot even call it peace. Thus, it cannot be defined by words or restrained by any law. One who is in touch with the peace of their essential being no longer negotiates experience from the vantage point of a separate self. Such a one is free. Our essential being is like empty space: nothing leaves a trace on it, nor does it hold on to anything. For one who is established in their true nature, thoughts and feelings add nothing to their self nor remove anything from it, and thus they begin to quieten down. Everything simply is as it is. In reality there is no separate subject or object of experience; there is no self and no other. This absence of otherness is love itself, from which nothing is separate and nothing excluded. The recognition of one’s true nature is independent of the content of experience. In this recognition, the relative value of things in time and space, whilst remaining, is outshone. At every moment, experience is always a single, infinite and indivisible whole, for all such definitions would refer to parts of the whole. Wherever we look it is all a manifestation of the same impersonal, infinite, intimate reality, which admits no boundaries, distinctions or differences. This reality cannot be debated by the finite mind. It assumes the names and forms of ten thousand things, without ever being, becoming or knowing anything other than itself. To understand and feel this is to live a life of peace and joy. It is the origin, the path and the goal of the non-dual understanding. It cannot be spoken of and yet all words speak of it. There is no path to it because it is that alone which is always and already present. Turn towards that and it will take you into itself." Thanks for reading ❤

This sounds more like conditioning, where unenlightened people have a load of mental baggage which affects their behaviour. What I don't agree with is the individualism of the religious karma theory. We don't have our own personal stock of karma or conditioning following the soul through incarnations. Rather it's impersonal and distributed throughout society. The effects of one person's good or bad deeds ripple out through society and even nature because we aren't separate, there's only one of us really. Karma is communal not individual imo. Edit. With the example of the thugs, why are they thugs? Maybe an element of free choice, but also influences of nature/nurture. Genetics inherited from the family tree, and upbringing. If someone's had a tough childhood it can affect their brain development. We are who we are because of the whole situation outside of ourselves.

What is your view on what Ajahn Brahm is saying, have you seen or read any of his stuff? he is very explicit in the video, he basically is saying God consciousness is still ultimately suffering that should be let go of, to go to beyond to nothigness: Interviewer: 54:25 nirvana as a non-conditioned non-personal awareness at the level of the universal atman what they say and describe like to be finally drawn into and absorbed into nirvana as a drop of vapor is drawn into the ocean and they're losing all personal individuality 54:53 replace it by the impersonal individuality of the universal essence the universe is a person in that sense so you're just kicking the can down the road so the universal essence has to now suffer wherever this consciousness has to be consciousness that's what one of the reasons why i think it's called vi like by its duality to know is to know good and bad you can't just have knowing good and therefore there is a change sometimes that's really joyful but then it's more joyful and the ordinary joy is not as good as the lord joy it's suffering there this is one of the reasons why you can see that all types of consciousness and inherently suffering and that's exactly what the buddha said is dukkha cheetah is duca manno is dukkha all types of consciousness known as it's like wishful thinking you know we human beings don't like to face the truth and we want to be but we don't want to be suffering so they think come on just so i'll get rid of the stuffing but still keep you know things i like i like knowing or will and after a while you find that you can and why do you want to anyway because people think they are that's why they don't want to let go of the the idea of being after a while when you realize there's nothing here nothing here now it's nothing destroyed

Thank you very much for the comment. Most of the time, I am totally grounded as some kind of absolute, total nothingness that somehow is capable of projecting (and creating through the act of perceiving it) a beam of impersonal consciousness that stubbornly solidifies into the visible universe and my inner world, with a figure which is the body that acts as the centre of the play. And I am beyond the beam and the universe, which seem to float within me. That´s my solid awakening...which I know is still lacking something. As you say, yes, it is that trascendental Awareness which I am what is imagining reality, or, as I say, creating it through perceiving it. But there is a lack of joy in the process. I don´t feel the love of a father to his children. Mind you, I am a very happy, enthusiastic individual, and in my life there is joy, kindness, music, art, calm and laughter...but there is not the kind of trascendental Love for that which comes out of myself: that individual, relative perspective as a whole. Leo Gura advised me to try the psychedelic path. It very probably would be the solution.

Hello, everyone. Congratulations for creating this kind of rare greenhouse for metaphysics, which I found after stumbling across Leo Gura´s videos in the net several months ago. I honestly consider them some of the best descriptions of the mystical experience ever. As this is my first post, I´ll say that I am from Spain, and although I´m older than most here (46 years old) , I suppose I share the basics with all of you: natural tendency to introspection, early age insights with no proper context, obsessive search, and finally getting that context through life-changing readings (Nisargadatta mainly, but also most of Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Christian Mysticism, Dzogchen, etc.) that seemed to explain previous awakenings and paved the way for future ones. OK. Although I obviously would like to have a response from Leo, since he´s the most experienced person here and somehow the pioneer, I would greatly appreciate any opinion/help regarding something that has been around my mind for some time, after reading some experiences that I would not say "contradict", but at least are not totally consistent with mine. Which, mind you, is solid, with some total certainties, but not spectacular, since I never resorted to psychedelics. Let´s go: My experience is simple (and astonishing at the same time): there is something like a translucent, absolutely impersonal bubble "in front of me", which does not belong to any "body", or particular time or space, within which everything (the Universe, my body included, and my inner world of thought) appears, with the exception of the Awareness inside which the bubble itself arises. And, paradoxically, I am that Unmanifest Witness or Aware Space... I already don´t feel like I am human. I see a human body and a human thoughts playing a game within me. And about the Bubble I should add that, as an unlimited canvas, any being or image can be created there. The dough is the same. John Wren Lewis, after his exceptional NDE put it best: "Absolute Consciouness focuses down into this body-mind perspective, playing something like a game called John Wren Lewesing, and it is the Absolute that watches, not John" Everything about my spiritual awakenings relate to the fact that we already are the Aware Space to which any experience appear. No spiritual practice could make me become more "Aware Space" than what I actually feel that I am. Spiritual practice can, however, radically affect the subtlety of what I perceive, affect the contents of the particular perspective that the Absolute (Aware Space) is conscious of while this incarnation exists. So my question is based on the fact that this is as far as meditation and introspection have taken me. I am very well aware that the psychedelics are a much more powerful path, and I also know that there are insights that are veiled to me for my resistence to use them. And I am surprised when I read experiences about the Godhead as being something "out there". In some of them you depict the Absolute Godhead as something with an outer flavour, like a distant light to reach or an external Mind to decrypt. In my (limited) experience, however, the Godhead is precisely that which perceives, The Aware Space where common daylife or colourful insights happen. The Watcher/Subject of "my" particular perspective and my true nature. ce. I know one of the usual posters in this forum agrees ( I asked him in another platform), but I feel like this is the last obstacle I have to sort out, and I want to be sure and have the roots in the right place, so I´d greatly appreciate opinions on this paradox and a psychedelic perspective that I lack. Thanks in advance:)

Phew, this is a vast and deceitful topic - I think some distinctions are called for. Selfishness, to me, implies being or doing with own gains in mind, usually on behalf/cost of others. True selflessness, to me, implies doing good deeds without any motif, without agenda, without underlying selfish needs. For true selflessness to exist, you would probably have to have gone through complete dis-identification with ego, to such a degree that you don't even care if you live. That leaves the uncomfortable realization that when we think we do selfless acts, they are actually selfish and there is something in us that we are gaining by doing that "selfless" act. Meeting that need in us, if only for a temporary moment, is what gives the deep pleasure, and that's what makes us come back for more. Yes, ouch, this is a painful realization, but it's not a bad or harmful realization, on the contrary, it's seeing a bit more clearly. My interpretation of this is that you don't want to be more selfish, and instead you want to become more responsible, responsible towards self. By becoming responsible, you will need to face that which has broken down, or prevented self-esteem and self-worth to emerge, and rebuild these traits as they are the foundational building block of our experience of being. In this process you will have to face some shadows of the past, and also aspects of the current that you are avoiding or not able to see. Pursuing a spiritual journey without facing one's shadows is spiritual bypassing, using spirituality as a solution to avoid having to deal with the psychological issues that we've accumulated throughout our lives. We need to own back these disowned aspects. This means that we need to stop and see what it is that is weighing us down. We need to become aware of our dogma and our self-created defense and control mechanisms which sole purpose has been to build a tough shell, or wall, around those sensitivities in our lives, so that we don't have to, or have to fully experience the related pain and suffering. One of the most common problems, or distractions with personal development is that we turn outwards and try to solve external problems. We identify problems with our work, with our families, with our partners and with all and everything that is around us that rub us the wrong way. What we need to do is to shift focus from that external world and shift focus towards ourselves and start figuring out where we have gotten ourselves stuck and how we need to get ourselves unstuck. This could be interpreted as what you say "becoming selfish", but I want to call call this "becoming responsible" for self and the world that we create for ourselves. This is where we are have the power and freedom to create whatever changes, within ourselves, that contributes towards creating the kind of world that we want. This doesn't mean that we can change what is, since that which is, just is. But it allows us to make more complex sense of what is happening around us, and shift our own perspective in such ways that we relieve the excessive suffering that we call upon ourselves, by not being able to flow with what is. For example, bad parents become nothing more than themselves products of circumstances, cultures, their own parents. What they do, or have done, isn't coming from being evil, or wanting to do evil. They simple wasn't capable of doing otherwise, based on their own shadows and suffering. Becoming able to shift towards a more complex, more holistic perspective is inevitably followed with emotional detachment, as a long-going process. Gaining more complex and impersonal perspectives also makes it easy to forgive others and ourselves, building a strong foundation for cultivating self-compassion. Sometimes you have to slow down, really slow down, to be able to speed up. That slowing down is the inward turning phase needed to accelerate growth. This is somewhat like driving your car with the handbreak halfway engaged, it slows you down, it causes friction, it gets heated, and it will break you down from time to time. Slow down, figure our how to disengage your build-in breaks, and someday probably sooner than later, you will be able to go fast without that friction. @Preety_India I guess this boils down to one question - are you willing and able to slow down, let go of outwards distraction, and turn inwards to relieve yourself from your inner demons/shadows? This is the single most difficult obstacle to overcome on the developmental journey.

Different music has different effects on me. This track always makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. There's always strange mix of emotions. It's hard to describe why it resonates so much with me. Maybe a deep part of my Shadow is that I don't feel at home. I'm constantly restless, feeling lost and disconnected. I'm in need of a place to call home; wherever I look it's not there. What does home even feel like? I'm forever waging war against the injustice of feeling like I abandoned myself long ago. Everything is impersonal and un-familiar. I'm propelled forward only by the changing of the days and the whims of sea of change around me. If not for that I would cease to be as I'm unable to find true North and impel myself that way. There is no ground or earth to root to and claim as mine - nothing that will guide me when I'm unsure, comfort me when I'm uneasy, or return to after a long time away.