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I appreciate your thoughts but I disagree. I'm not particularly interested in getting into a debate about it, though. Thanks, but the truth it doesn't really matter all that much one way or the other in the end. There is a direct experience of the Truth that is more important than the theories. 1. Whether there is pain depends upon your context. There may appear that there is, but there is not, actually. This can only be understood when you know your true nature yourself. 2. No, enlightenment is a matter of piercing the illusion of personal identity. The best way is Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry combined with other practices to quiet the mind. There's no real use trying to understand the enlightened state beforehand, except to know that it is pure truth and bliss. It is beyond words and concepts, actually, and best not to weigh yourself down with expectations. You cannot fully surrender on your own. You can only partially surrender -- that's the most you can do. What that means is that you accept whatever happens -- both in the outside world, and in terms of your thoughts and emotions. Let it go. Let it all go. Let decisions go. Let pain go. Let the need to change things go. Or if you feel that need, let that go. Whatever you do, think, or feel, let it go, let it go, let it go. Whatever pain you experience, let it go. Whatever desire you have, let it go. If you feel like you cannot let it go, let that feeling go too. That is the continuous effort of surrender. This will turn into full surrender but you cannot control when that happens. The other possibility is to practice Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry at all waking moments, which will automatically turn into full surrender at a certain point.

I believe that every single living being is entitled to everything they need for everlasting bliss. When it comes to human beings, there exist models and theories which outline the needs that all human beings must get met in order to live the longest and happiest life possible. One of these models/theories is Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid.

I doubt the Ananda part. At least i can't feel it. That existence and consciousness are essentially the same thing, makes totally sense to me. I literally can see it. But the bliss part is absolutely missing for me.

Love is so powerful, you could experience eternity passing by so smoothly, so easily, in the blink of an eye, in the bliss of the moment Love is magical, feeling the hundreds of butterflies fluttering in your stomach, feeling the support from people far away from

"Ultimate Truth is Wordless. The Silence within the Silence" "Darkness within darkness the gateway to all understanding" "Silence is truth. Silence is bliss. Silence is peace. And hence silence is the self." There's so many beautiful quotes, for the direct path. I think the problem is most people just don't like the silence and dont want to melt into it, ego death is also very scary in the silence and can bring out existential fears.

I see that spiritual seekers negate physical processes and other perceptions linked together with intelligence. An advanced teaching includes it. In fact we know how awakening looks like in the brain and the reasons for bliss. What we don't know how the body and perceptions come to be in Atman (or how Atman comes to be in the body). If ever we do, if we judge consciousness to be primary and not matter, then the brain is a receiver. It's a glass half-full, half-empty thing.

If Ramana Maharshi was a kid in a western world in the 21st century, his path wouldn’t be as direct and wouldn’t have had the results he had. Ramana Maharshi was a raised in a very different environment and culture. Yeah he did absolutely nothing. He sat in a temple for days and weeks with little to no food where rats ate into his thighs and he sat there in bliss. Didn’t need to do anything. Can you do that? Probably not. You don’t appreciate the depth of the problem and the deeper of a hole people western countries are in spiritually in terms of how much harder and longer I t can be for them to get enlightened. This is a self deception from lack of seeing the greater context of Ramana Maharshi’s time and setting.

I am still a noob on the path to some degree, but after 7 years of pretty consistent practice, quite a bit of psy use, and the last few years of obsessive practice. I can't help but to think how I feel like the destruction of 'separate self' is a bit of a sham, dishonest. - Yes can have conscious complete dissolution in meditation, in sleep states, etc. And you can experience deep empty-ness/freedom when functioning in a body-mind as well. And I don't know how far that goes.. But afaik, as long as you are functioning through a body-mind, you will experience yourself as separate to some degree. You are only the full substratum in these glimpses. If you were it out of those glimpses, I don't see how you could function or even experience life. Nor what would the point of it be? Wouldn't it make more sense to be able to transcend it, rest, know, and then go into your life again? (I guess from a POV of disliking yourself/life, that that would seem desirable, but hating one's life, albeit popular on earth, isn't some standard or built-in state (it can really seem as if it's all negative, if that's your state of mind, it can distort the whole universe, I've had many times where when I was feeling good again, that I've been: 'oh wow, it's actually really possible to feel good', it totally seemed impossible at times, I know)). - So anyways, as long as you have relative functioning.. You can have relative joys and pains: when someone leaves, when someone comes, when someone likes what you do, when someone dislikes what you do. (And yeah, pain doesn't have to be as painful as we often think, can be beautiful even, and masters aren't beyond this, I've noticed myself, and that's only normal, and some speak about it openly, like David Spero.) And to know that Peace/Self-Opening can never leave you, that you are also inherently untouched, that is of course a world of difference, and sometimes you may be even so high it doesn't matter at all. Though I think to strive to be beyond emotions all together is a trap. Same with striving to be in a state of constant 'bliss', love can hurt as well, it's just part of it, good times, bad times, or good times, challenging times). So I would say, don't go around, thinking you are not enlightened if you get hurt (nor think you are enlightened..) or that you need more 'fixing'. Though we can also use our pain to know more of our nature of freedom and grow, certainly.

@Leo Gura Was Ramana Maharshi a developed human being from your understanding Leo? Even though he didn’t know about the stages of development, he is stage turquoise. And he lived his life in meditation, surrendered to the will of God in a state of complete bliss, from the age of 16. There is no improvement to be done there on top of utter perfection. There isn’t even such a thing as development when it is all subjective. There is no more developed or less developed. There is just the Self. I haven’t seen the Self so I’m really talking out of my breadth. In meditation there is bliss for a few minutes, and there I see that this is all I ever wanted. So I say no more until I am more mature and developed in this way. I could be wrong about all of this. It’s nice to share perspectives with you. @Rilles We can’t stop action because that’s the nature of the universe, it creates through us, with us, and all around in infinite directions and depths.

@Leo Gura How can you develop something that is absolutely perfect? The Self is this. How can the question of development arise when we experience this divine love or steady stream of bliss within ourselves in each moment? Paradoxically I’ve experienced dozens of times that development will happen when we live in this state of perfection faster than ever before because there is no more fear holding us back from change, and massive growth Also it is worth contemplating, who is the one developing? This implies that there is an “I”, a doer. This is why I say and the sages and Jesus, find the Self first, and all else will be shown, all questions will be answered. Most importantly we find Happiness. The mind then falls silent, because the only reason it wanted to develop itself (had a need to or desire) was to find happiness.

When I do SDS I get lots of pain and suffering and if I'm able to go long enough it turns into bliss and then cycles of pain and bliss. If you do a really long SDS you are pretty much guaranteed to feel bliss at some point

@How to be wise It’s the best possible scenario. Absolute bliss. It’s the unknown you’re fearing, not death.

I can resonate. When I first began practicing yoga it was quite the challenge of course because I had so much built up trauma stored in my body that it caused me to have deep emotional/physical reactions in which I had to overcome. Trembling, rapid breathing, slideshows of random uninvited memories. Such things like EMDR and inner child meditations, conquering the Shadow of my childhood also created similar experiences like this, but which ultimately felt like I was unraveling into cathartic bliss.

@StardewValley You are failing to see that you are NOT supposed to be in pain. Just because most of people experience pain, not fall into ''I am supposed to''. No, there is no supposed to look or feel anything during meditation. Just go with it. If you are experiencing bliss or balance (back pain + bliss elsewhere) I would suggest to keep the going, observing the pain - bliss sensation, and Keep going and going and going to start seeing the 'bottom' of it.

@Leo Gura Just seeing your elaborated response now. My very first trip was more enlightening and pleasant than any other. It was during a time where I meditated way more often than I do now and I did it with intent to elevate. I had a very profound experience from it. I forgot most of it because it was years ago but I remember feeling pure bliss and experiencing fractals, and what not. The other two where great also but this one was not only a mind fuck it scared the shit out of me. This really turns me off from it psychedelics. Who wants to be go through this? If its like my first trip where its all bliss I'm all for it but this was sheer terror. Having your mind blown is cool and all but i want it accompanied by the agape love I felt the first time and not this shit lol Thanks for the insight Leo. Really appreciate it.

I originally took LSD because the idea of seeing visuals other than what I usually see was amazing. The experience itself ended up being just as amazing if not more. Then I continued to take it for fun. I was in many psychedelic FB groups in which they spoke about things that sounded like wo woo stuff to me as I was a hard materialist logical atheist. I didn't understand and the only response I got was to take more psychedelics. On 1mg of LSD I had the realization all is one. It came into my head like a lightbulb clicking. It was so obvious. I was in a state of perfect bliss. But that was on my come down. The come up and peak I was in a state locked on the floor sweating and seeing shit I can't even comprehend. I didn't think much of it. Continued to do LSD for fun and then after experimenting with DXM I did LSD+DXM and had my first major enlightenment where everything clicked and thats when my past insight clicked as well. My friend showed me Leo's video on the magnitude of reality because at the time reality just working amazed the fuck out of me. This trip marked my path towards higher states of consciousness. Now I technically do psychedelics for both fun and insights, but I find the most insights occur when I am not pursuing insights and just fun.

Great perspective. What to eat has always been a question because we override our bodies natural intelligence with all of these moral philosophies and egoic beliefs. As long as we have strong egos, we will continue to eat unbalanced, because the place we live from (in the head) is unbalanced to begin with, and uncomfortable emotions will lead us to addictive habits to mask them. Worrying about diet creates more worry. Focus instead on what you want to create like Love, joy, and bliss and all else will be added unto you. My body innate wisdom shows me what to eat. My body is my temple for the pure consciousness I am. I am health. I Am life.

@Jack River “Psychological time”. You remind me of Faceless. @Serotoninluv Security and comfort for the ego is different from bliss. Bliss is what you feel when your identity expand outside the body to include everything. It can also be called unconditional love. It feels very peaceful!

@How to be wisecan you list me your negative emotions? Do you see sadness as negative? Sounds boring to me...i would rather feel nothing and have bliss arise spontaneously at any given moment. Maybe they just don't define the emotions they have to be negative...possibly it's taking the seriousness out of the identity?

@How to be wise I think he was pointing to the illusion that self so impulsively moves towards. There is true happiness/“bliss” when living a whole/undivided life. The point is self and it’s conditioned movement will associate “progress” as leading to ecstasy. This is psychological time at work and only as I said before sustains the false division of self/conflict.

100% wrong. The more conscious you are, the more you feel blissful with life. This is so obvious! I can’t believe that you don’t know that yet. In Vedanta, they associate “The absolute” with three terms: Sat Chit Ananda, which means Truth, Consciousness, Bliss. Do more study please! Awakening clearly has a preference to bliss. Unconsciousness prefers terror.

Be aware of associating "progress" with "ecstasy". This was a major trap for me. Awakening has no preference toward bliss or terror. Awakening doesn't care if the personality feels good or awful. Also, the personality is not a static construct. It is dynamic - constantly evolving. There are methods that may resonate with a personality. Yet, the idea of a "correct" or "better" method is very subjective. If Byron Katie resonates with you and your intuition draws you in that direction - go for it. Yet, your personality may outgrow Katie. Things that seem spiritual or true today - might not seem spiritual or true next month. Neti Neti, Kriya Yoga may re-enter. Or a new method may enter. I observe a lot of suffering caused by the personality trying to maintain the illusion of a static personality over time.

1) It’s perfectly fine to enjoy your practice. I feel like sustaining 3 hours per day is plenty of difficulty for now. The biggest thing is dont get lost in the bliss. Are you trying to feel good or are you trying to observe what’s true? 2) I would dedicate a specific time during your meditation to be examining emotions, and another segment towards surrendering and letting go. It sounds like you’re over thinking this one a bit. 3) This is a great question. From my experience, it depends. Ive found that quality is more important than quantity for meditation. So maximizing quality is key here. However, Ive also found there to be a non-linear increase in efficacy as the mediation practice lengthens such that I suspect 1 super solid 12 hour session would yield greater growth than 12 1 hour sessions. But! This doesnt take into account time and also like... there’s no way id be able to sustain a 12 hour session at this moment, so the 12 1 hour would actually be more helpful given the quality principle. Hope this helps.

I am pretty sure you can stop attaching yourself to negative emotions (which would be emotional mastery I guess) and still be attached to the physical body, to mind, to bliss etc. - therefore not completely free.

You don’t need to do anything external (I.e. any rite, ritual, or practice) to spiritually awaken. Spiritual awakening is not dependent upon the clothes you wear, your kriya yoga practice, psychedelics, mantras, affirmations, changing how you behave in any way shape or form, upon doing any “spiritual practice” or upon anything external. To open yourself to Unconditonal Love means you don’t need to change your life in any way! You are already perfect, whole and complete right here and right now. Our minds trick us into thinking happiness is outside of us; in a spiritual practice or a relationship. Happiness comes from within. This means you are free to do anything you want externally, you don’t need to use your minds anymore to tell yourself what to do or how to behave. For the purpose of spirituality is to transcend the mind entirely, not to use the mind to motivate us to do certain things that we think could bring us happiness. All that is required, all that was ever required is to focus within, upon your heart, or upon the breathing chest. Watch unlimited happiness grow, as it does for me more everyday. Let your heart guide your external life. Let it show you the way in every second, because your heart is your true self, the infinite consciousness that always experiences a state of pure bliss. Let this video further take this all important point home. Learn to stop being a slave to your mind by coming into your hearts, by valuing Unconditonal Love more than anything else, more than any thought no matter how important it may seem. https://channelhigherself.com/videos/satsang-with-the-self/how-to-stay-motivated-to-do-spiritual-practices-meditation-yoga-etc/