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In hopes of inspiring people trying to discover their life purpose, I wanted to share my story. This is the story of someone who went into college for the money. He tried, under pressure, to turn his major into a passion, instead of turning his passions into a career. My situation: I'm finishing up college at a computer science major. I went into the field because I thought there'd be a lot of money in it, and that from going to school, I'd get my ass kicked into high gear and be able to get a good job. I was into PC gaming, like a lot of other CS majors, and chose the career because of that. I didn't think about being a creator, or the huge impact I could have or anything like that. From at least 5 years back, I started really getting into anime and Japanese culture. I started studying the language 2 years ago, and I started to actually see the potential of what I can do with it. I enjoy reading and writing, and I enjoy a well translated manga or visual novel. I think that in a way, translation can be a form of art. A good translation of a translated manga can literally make or break the impact of the work. In this sense, as a translator, you're interpreting the original story and conveying it to an English (or whatever 2nd language) audience. It's a tireless and meticulous career, working on translation, but I also mastering the language will be viable long-term. I worry a bit for betting it all on mastering a language, but I don't believe that prose in Asian languages can be translated into English prose by AI in my lifetime. The written language is so contextual and requires a real brain to determine what's going on in context. Mastery: Whenever Leo talks about the mastery process and coming to enjoy the work itself, it just rung so true with my casual study of Japanese over the past 2 years. I started to actually enjoy looking up individual Japanese words just for the sake of knowing them well, and for the sake of mastery. The reason is fluency, but Japanese is something that I didn't angrily dread pouring hours of frustrating and dread into. I started to enjoy the process itself, and when I have the time, I would slow down to be more thorough studying. Through the law of attraction, I started to get more interested in the culture, in cooking, I started meeting people at college who are into Japanese culture, and I started to look for mentors. All the sort of things that you're supposed to do when you enjoy something and want to master it, I was beginning to do with Japanese before I knew anything about self-actualization. Struggles, details (you can skip to the next section, but it has some specific details on my thoughts about the different career/life purpose prospects: My main difficulty now are some conflicting ideas about how to use the language to become a creator, outside of doing translation. I trust in the mastery process to eventually take care of my needs years down the road, so that I can become so skilled that I can translate, because my literal purpose for living is Japanese, but I've discovered my values and strengths, and I'm reviewing them daily. My life purpose statement I previously made was about programming, because I didn't even consider that I could turn my main hobby, the study of this language, into a career. I thought it was too impractical, and that programming was the logical, safe choice to quickly get that $40-70k job as a coder, as I let my years spent on interests just die completely, in hopes of discovering passion for programming. Some other fundamental issues I have with Japanese - it is largely escapist fantasy. For any Redpill readers here, a lot of this content is pretty much "The Ultimate Blue Pill Fantasy." But I think that by focusing on the creative aspects on the medium, and by translating material that inspires people is ultimately a good thing. Movies and TV shows are also escapist fantasies, but not everyone takes the same thing out of a movie. From Leo, I learned that you can watch a movie with the goal of being inspired from it, like with Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a bit complicated, because I got into Japanese content through escapism, but I feel like studying the language and changing the mediums I consume (more visual novels now than anime) has reduced the dopamine spiking and raised my consciousness a bit. There's plenty of depraved Japanese content that gets associated with anime, and this parallels all the addicting software and social media that's out there with programming. There's pretty much no creative medium I enjoy that doesn't have cons to it. You can even use classical music and fine art as distractions from doing work. Some interesting aspects of Japanese - I find the mediums of manga and visual novels to be especially moving. They're not the same sort of quick, instant gratification experiences that you could get in video games. You'll often a dozen hours on a single story arc before any major climax happens in a visual novel. My highest emotional peaks and peak interests were hit when I was reading visual novels. I think that by spreading this medium to the West, gamers and people who enjoy anime will learn to enjoy the calmer, slower paced aspects of entertainment, and of life itself. Some issues I have with programming and technology: The impact that technology has had on our society, lowering our attention spans, lowering people's consciousness, and all these little quick apps, I feel have actually fucked over my generation in a lot of ways, and now people are dealing with heavy procrastination with all the free dopamine everywhere. Men don't have enough positive male figures in their life, and porn and entertainment is so easily accessible that technology leads to escapism. Of course, technology is a tool and this is a huge negative generalization of it. Mark Zuckerberg might've had a positive creative vision with Facebook and creating his company, and a lot of these companies might actually have great intentions. Being connected with tons of your friends online sounds great in theory, but the anxiety, the fake posts, the instant gratification and dopamine, the distraction element, the attention span and motivation reduction, and all these other side effects are just killers for me. Rather than working with social media or making some game apps, I would want to create some meaningful software, and to spread self-actualization ideals through the software, but I spent years trying to program and never came to really enjoy the process. I'm annoyed that I was so unconscious when building up all this resistance, and didn't understand how I could ever possibly come to WANT to program. I spent every day of my life for years comparing myself to others, thinking about the money, programming under pressure, all before I grasped these self-actualization fundamentals, that made me really believe that I could catch up to and even surpass these friends of mine who are going off to work at Google. Career counselors at my college told me "Not everyone can be like him, but you can still get a good job programming." I think now that if could even make some productivity-related software, it would be really beneficial for people, and it would convey things like discipline through usage and support of my software. I also think that programming will become really chaotic, and in order to gauge the marketplace, I have to really stay plugged in. I would end up being a problem solving sort of career rather than a creative one, at least for some years until I become good enough to gain career capital and creative control. My entry into a programming career could be be too rigid for too long before I can create anything that I feel is meaningful. They say programming is just problem solving, but I don't want to be some reactive problem solver for a company. The solution to this that I came up with was working with Startup companies, and focusing on the creative aspect of programming. I'm definitely capable of becoming an excellent programmer, I believe, but with my conflicting passion with Japanese, and my low consciousness resistance towards programming that I built up from coding under pressure for my classes, it's not right. 10 years down the road, I think programming could be the better option, and I think in the near future I'll start doing it as a side hobby, so I can enjoy it and burn through my resistance. 10 years from now, it could become a new life purpose, or be combined with Japanese once I've become a master and have some economic security. There are other aspects of my life like health, fitness, and relationships that I need to work on, and having two exhausting mental hobbies, Programming and Japanese, isn't going to work out if I want to achieve those goals. My Big Fuckups: (choosing what was possible as a career) I didn't TRULY consider using my years spent on hobbies AS my career. I didn't believe I could do it. I didn't pitch the idea to my parents, even though I knew that I have a good 3-4 years of financial saving saved up. How was I going to tell them that this language I study for fun could actually become a career? Until last summer, I didn't have the confidence to speak up to my mom much at all, until I found TheRedPill and read No More Mr. Nice Guy and started building up my confidence. With learning Japanese, I sometimes guilted myself for spending too much time on it, instead of on college and my career. (NEVER GUILT YOURSELF). I went through Leo's Life Purpose Course and partially preselected Programming as the medium, though I had 3 or 4 other big ideas based on other interests and skills. I had Japanese as an idea on that list, along with writing, but I thought my parents wouldn't allow it and I don't have the financial freedom right now. There are a lot of other psychological investments I've made with Japanese that my ego won't let go of. I have friends of over 10 years that share the same interests as me. Trying to cut my ties with Japanese is equivalent to mental suicide at this point. At the end of my semester in college, I started having so much fun with people of similar interests, and I suddenly felt like "holy shit, I belong with these people." and was doing a lot of meta-analysis of the experience. I felt really overly attached to these people, because I felt like I would have to give up Japanese and sever connections with them next semester to transition into a programming regimen and career. When the semester ended, I felt extremely awful, worse than when my best friend died. I didn't even know that I could ever feel that level of emotional despair. I spent years repressing my hobbies and avoiding people with similar interests, investing into shallow one-sided friendships. At this point, I truly understood the inherent bias of having friends with similar interests - they actually care. Yes, it's a biased, neurotic, cliquey sort of caring that Leo talks about, because they value you because of your shared interests, but this leads to a real tight friendship. It's hard to find people who will be as egalitarian as you try to be, and will appreciate your interests the way you appreciate theirs. Sever attachments from people who don't love and support you, because life is too short to maintain so many shallow friendships. Investment is probably why Leo chose to combine his Sage advice with Actualized.org, rather than leave and become a sage himself, because he's become really invested in helping us, and he'd be abandoning the life purpose he adopted. On the other end of my own ego investment, I have a ton of negative ego investments against programming. I projected all my pain and anxiety towards it, by feeling like it's taking away time from my hobbies, and is creating all of my anxiety and unhappiness. I'd overeat just to be able to program more and get past the pain. I exhibited pretty much every neurotic behavior in the book to many extremes, when it came to programming. I would talk shit behind people's back because they were successful at programming and I wasn't. I thought that since these guys didn't do anything besides programming, they "didn't have a life," because they didn't have other hobbies. In reality, these programmers who enjoy their work and understand the mastery process are actually the happiest people I've ever met. Understanding the mastery process and my own potential to master anything, I feel that my biggest regret was pouring so much negative emotion into something that I actually always wanted to become good at. I felt like I wasn't talented, that it didn't come natural, or that I would lose myself and my hobbies if I dedicated all my time to programming. I realized that these beliefs are something your mind has built, especially with things you've attempted over and over again before learning about self-actualization, and so even with newfound objective information on the hours it takes to master something, and a path to doing it, it will still feel like we sometimes inherently can't do it. tldr; Basically, I see the beauty in Japanese culture, spreading it, focusing on lower dopamine mediums in Japanese, using translation and the written word as a medium, and I've got some intrinsic motivation for mastering the language. Hour for hour, the money will probably come later with Japanese for me, and I might be working slave wages until I'm truly excellent. I'd rather master Japanese and translate, starting at slave wages, than go into programming for the money like everyone wants me to. I'd rather "waste my degree" and follow my bliss, because it lights my fire. I recognize my own bias towards people who share the same interests as me and the connection I feel with those people, and my bias towards anything Japanese. I enjoy plenty of things outside of Japanese, even moreso thanks to self-actualization, and I enjoy talking with people who don't share my interests at all, thanks to mindfulness. I'm utilizing this subjective and biased reality of mine in order to master Japanese. I can't realistically do both programming and Japanese to a high degree, and Leo explained this. The mind subconsciously homes in on ways to optimize learning and retention when you have a singular purpose. It's like a heat-seaking missile, as he says. You start finding the most optimal methods, and because your purpose is so important to you, you see the longterm payoff and invest in those better methods, because of the long-term payoff for the effort in advance. Your time becomes precious. Being married to your life purpose and being disciplined to it gives you the freedom to relent to it. I have to redo part of Leo's Life Purpose Course with Japanese in mind, as I work towards mastery. My recommendations for those seeking their life purpose: Look for what you've done the most in life, something where you feel like you've gone through steps of the mastery process, and have begun to enjoy. Truly forget the money. Get a part-time job or some financial security (refer to Maslow's Hierarchy and what Leo says about supporting yourself first, and then going on to be a creator). Don't go to college until you're ABSOLUTELY sure about what you want to do, and I recommend dedicating hundreds of hours on your own into working on your skill you plan to Master before majoring in that field in college, so that you don't fall into the traps of working for the money. See what other people are doing with your productive hobbies - look at the creators on YouTube. Look at the people who teach your hobby, if it's something like that. Ideally it should be a hobby that's somewhat productive. You can even combine 2 things you enjoy, like watching movies and writing reddit replies --> into doing some sort of meta-analysis of movies as a video career or something. I think that if you've taken one of your hobbies so far that you find yourself saying "I can't live without this," you may find that you have already selected your life purpose. Tap into that, and go all in and see how much energy you can summon into working towards that hobby every day. See how confident you feel when you imagine "I can just utilize this one main hobby of mine, increase the priority to the top, and I can let the other ones go." Also, as a general thing: Watch Leo's Foundational videos on YouTube. They helped give me a clear picture of self-actualization. Also, don't fall into the trap of settling for a shitty life purpose or career simply because of having the goal of Enlightenment and enjoying the Now. The whole point of Actualized.org is to become the best that you can be, not become some enlightened guy at 7-Eleven. The Maslow's Hierarchy video was also really helpful in this regard, since I was actually debating between mediocrity + enlightenment. Also, not to sound like a shill, but the Life Purpose Course helps a lot of things click together. I think I learned to some extent like 50-70% of the theory from Leo's videos. I think a key to taking the course is to do it when you feel you're financially stable, or if you're in high school or college. The confidence you get from having a more complete picture, though, is worth the $250. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, just like the food you eat, the house you live in, the books and video games and coffee mugs and crap you buy. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, especially for the long-term. You only get one life. I can finally proudly share this video from Alan Watts, because I feel that I'm living it now - And if you still want to convince me how easy it is to become a programmer, I'll check some resources you send to try and do it on the side, but my life purpose is to master Japanese and become a creator with it.

I use it sometimes, edibles are great, otherwise the experience is always so short. Had my first semi-bliss like experience the other day through self inquiry (or another good label for it, the feel 'I' mantra), where i could feel the field of consciousness all around resonating with parts of my body, it was wonderful and it has deepened my every day consciousness and practice permanently. drugs ftw

When you truly grasp that there is only you here, that we are all simply one consciousness experiencing itself through separation, in that moment you will feel true love, unconditional love/bliss because you've just realized that there is no one else here thus nothing to fear since you are everything within itself. This feeling will ultimately lead to self love and usually for a very long time if you follow the wisdom and stay in the light. I feel like I've been there and back multiple times, this "in a sense" proves you can lose yourself so if you find yourself, go deep and embrace and surrender to it with every part of your being, because the more you lose yourself, the more you will find yourself.

@electroBeam Sup My dude! =D Surrender. Surrender to your experience. It is not random. Nothing that ever happens to you is random. It is the beautiful expression of life, as you are. Life will guide itself through you. You cannot control it. You will not control it. But life cannot lay on you anything you wouldn't handle. Give it up. Life has its own ideas of what it wants to do with you. You will not do anything in this process, unless you wanna stop the process. Life will flower by itself, you only need to allow it. Allow life, allow release, allow experience, allow the present moment. Your inner demons are life, just like bliss. It will get balanced out, as soon as you allow, the magic will happen.

Be careful. The mind has no free will in itself. True. Just like the body in itself thus has no free will. The mind can be more than just a machinebox for pleasure and pain, though. It can be a 'box' for knowledge/wisdom. For Awareness to find itself. A box of attaining higher and higher degree of Awareness (coming closer and closer with one's True Self (= can never be fully reached)). Awareness in it's purest form (which is what you ultimately are, and which is that which you are trying to attain/become one again with (if you are spiritual in any sense)) naturally has pure, free will. Can you ever become 100% one with your true self (Awareness) during a human life? Nah. But just to throw some random numbers out, one could say Leo is somewhere around 5% while most others on this forum are at like 0,5% , and the average population is around 0,001%. (im just joking around here fun here, but to illustrate a point). Jesus or Buddah were maybe at 50ish% (:DD) Anyway. Permanent Enligtenment as something that just BOOM!-happens in an instant while meditating/doing drugs, -- now you are free -- is one big hoax/trap within true spirituality. Enlightenment is a never-ending path. No discussion here. Enlightenment is "basically" just about attaining more and more Awareness/True Knowledge/Wisdom of reality (= your true self)... which is the same as saying that it is about self-realization (because the more awareness you get, the more understanding you get get of the nature of Awareness (= your true self). " trying to become what you already are. " ... Well, you are currently not Awareness. You are governed by Awareness (God). And ultimately, yes your true self is Awareness... but currently no human beings on Earth can claim to be Awareness during their life, and none will ever could claim to be so. None can claim to be God during a human life. As long as you are governed by Awareness without understanding how it governs you, you will continue to have absolutely no free will at all, yes. The more understanding you can get of how the govering of your true self (Awareness), the less "no free will" you attain (:D) . What is the first rule one must learn of how Awareness works? The law of casuality. Every action/effect/happening has a cause/chain of causes. By then applying this rule (= pure logic) while observing your mind carefully, one begins to attain awareness. Nah, I disagree. Suffering stems from ignorance ... and ignorance only. Ignorance = not being aware of how casuality plays out, or even worse, maybe not even realizing that there is a law of cause and effect (every effect has a looooooooooooong (basically infinite) chain of causes, and our goal here is to a get a glimpse of this infinite chain.. yes then it will be a finite chain (not complete), but the longer the apprant "finite chain" is, the closer you are to being God, which you of course can never become fully). So ignorance is the root to all suffering. It's true that from ignorance often (almost all the time) comes false desire. False in the sense that you won't be happy by eventually getting what you desire (only momentarily, this is the great game of the the ignorant-lived life :D). What can only make you happy in the long-term is by attaining greater and greater understanding of the mentioned law (= higher, and higher degree of Awarenesss). Another law that is good to know is the law of change. Nothing is permanent. But you can sort of derive this law from the other law by just observing reality. It's true that the first step to attain true Awareness is by first acknowleding that one is indeed ignorant (=no free will=not in control of what has happened in the past=yes it's "God's"/Awareness' will that has happened). How does one get past this step as quickly as possible? My ego wants to say that one should read The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston. Many times maybe. Then one realizes that one knows nothing by reading and applying what's taught in that book. Great fucking book. If one cannot first acknowledge that one knows nothing (like Aware in the science-forum currently can't acknowledge that he knows absolutely nothing about physics), then one will be forever stuck on the spiritual path to self-realization (of attaining true Awareness/knowledge). The next step is then to trust that the Universe and Mind/Ego functions in according to the law of casuality (to trust logic basically, as in fucking pure, pure, pure logic). That is to say, all experience is based on the law of casuality. The third step might be then to all see that nothing is permenant. Change is law. Fourth step? Now it's just an "easy" ride from here. Because one has now attained radical open-mindeness (by getting past step 1). One has attained knowledge of the law of reality functions. So now it's just to combine the two (--- I know nothing about this -- -> Let's observe without filter/ego --> And apply the law of casuality (logic) to what one sees). And in a sense, yes, one is really enlightened now, but now the REAL enlightenment-game has just begun. So basically fourth step is now just to combine Law of Casuality with knowning of being ignorant, and then true wisdom will come (higher and higher degree of Awareness will slowly but steady be attained, yet one can never reach it fully, only partly ... one has just shifted game from "The Game of Ignorance (stuck in social loops)" (or "Power games" as Aware calls it) to "The Game of Knowing one is Ignorant" (=true self-realization game) Shifting from the I'm-not-Ignorant-Game to the I-Am-Ignorant-Game can be described with this parable: You were born an eagle. But the eagle-egg was by God placed in a hen-nest. You are then born and believe that you are a chicken/hen.. So because you believe that, your whole life you act like you are a fucking chicken/hen. The first step to Enlightenment for the eagle-who-believes-he-is-a-hen would happen if the eagle one day questioned his own mind: "Am I really a hen..?" ... Next step the hen would then realize "hey, I don't know who I am" ... (there's difference in saying it without seriousness (Nah I don't know who I am) without meaning it really (one still thinks he's a body/mind)) and then with 100% seriousness saying "I truly don't know who I am fucking am, let's try to find out by using the law of casuality and self-observation). The hen would then maybe one day find out that he can fly. Then he will be viewed as the Jesus Christ-hen by the other hens ("LOOK IT CAN FLY!"), and the hens themselves will then continue to believe that only that hen was truly a son of God (= an eagle), while they themselves are just "human bodies/souls" walking around This is what is happening on this planet (Just believe and have faith in Christ, and you will come to heaven when you die, rofl-fucking-mao:D). While truly, all the other hens were also born from an eagle egg!! Most (99,99%) will just never realize it - SADLY! :< Now ... How come we as humans have the ability to even have knowledge of the the Law of Awareness (law of casuality) ??? No other animal has the ability to think in terms of logic (in terms of casuality)... Now, most people use this ability to think in terms of logic on the outside, physical world. "Rationalism" ... They never thought about the possibility that logic could also be applied to the self-study of one self ... This is where the magic happens Then one might also realize, that the physical world is not really physical, but just a fun little creation of Awareness to distract itself from seeing itself.:D But science is still fun. Awareness decided to create this big physical world (= apparant reality) just so it could get lost in it for the fun/love of it. Getting lost is fun. Realizing that you are lost = wisdom. Awareness is playing a game of hide and seek, really. It pretends it's a physical thing, while that physical thing in fact is something the Awareness created it self (it just forgot that it did, lol). So in that sense .. all human beings are sons/creations of Awareness/God. Eating the apple from the garden was like Awareness was running around in the garden (heaven/bliss/nothingness) like a child and just then decided to eat the apple. The apple is viewed as the apple os wisdom in the Bible... Well truth is, the apple was the apple of ignorance. Eating the apple, Awareness instantly forgot that it was Awareness, and instead it became ignorant and begin to believe it's a physical thingxD Guys and girls and friends... Life is one big game without any meaning... We are all running around confused and pretending we know stuff... while in Truth that which we know of (the physical world) is just one big hoax created by the True Self to distract itself (LOL) from finding itself again (LOL). But Awareness also decided to put some signs out there for itself.. Some signs that would lead its children (human beings) to MAYBE become aware of the fact that they are ignorant ... apparantly most people are not, though. Socrates... what a fucking wise motherfucker.. I'm gonna read something of him instead of just pretending I know who he was based on quotes from goodread.com LOL But let me repeat... Life is one big game without any meaning.. The physical world is one big distraction.. Why did Awareness create this game of hide-and-seek for itself to get lost in? Well, flip the question around: Why the fuck wouldn't it? Existence is all about ENJOYMENT, LOVE and HAVING FUN. That's ALL it is fucking about lol... Quit your fucking silly boring 8-17 jobs (the fact that some people have some jobs shows just how fucking ignorant they are: they actually believe it is important whether or whether not they will have food enough to survive the next day... Hey, why so scared about death? Death my just be the fucking greatest blessing of all for all you ignorant motherfuckers:D So again, why the fuck wouldn't Awareness create a big infinite physical world to get lost in? Imagine you were Awareness? WHAT THE FUCK ELSE COULD YOU DO THAN CREATING SOMETHING FUN? How can you NOT-CREATE anything? LOL So let me throw in a 4th thing... existence is also all about CREATION... That's why are all fucking programmed to fall in "love" with the opposite sex so we can reproduce these physical bodies, LOL. So CREATE SOMETHING my friends. Become artists. Write books about this fun life joke. Create music (FUCK I LOVE MUSIC LOL, as long as it doesn't have artifical vocals singing about the false life which I know is a joke), create paintings, create computer games. Fall unconsciously in love. Overdose on some fun drugs. Maybe die, so what? Yeah Computer games!! That is the best thing ever man...LOL .. Awareness already being lost as a human body-mind, a mind which is already COMPLETELY ignorant of Awareness, and that mind then proceeds to get lost inside a computer game (World of Warcraft for example) .. Now what the fuck do we have? We Super-Lost x2 .. YAY MORE FUN!! haha Actually just for the lulz guys, I may have more respect for a big, fat virgin nerd who devoutes his whole life to live inside a fantasy game (world of warcraft) than a workalcoholic dude that spends his whole life working 9 hours a day in a job he hates.. HAHA, at least the nerd is having fucking FUN within the game... Having internet sex with female gnomes and stuff.. killing big bosses and getting some fancy gear. No work, just fun!! YAY Guys, read my siganture. Alan Watts knew what's up. Combine Socrates, Watts, Buddah and Jesus into one big fat AI-robot, and maybe we have a physical thing that is actual 99,99% God. Actually -- just buy observing the nature of awareness (that it apparantly has created this physical hoax-game to get lost) one must conclude that this is also what we human beings like to do: TO GET LOST.. And that's also what one can observe everyone are.. Everyone are fucking lost, like beyond help of ever not getting lost. The fact that I'm sitting here and rambling about how it's all a big meaningless game... that might be a glitch of some kind... Like Awareness forgot something when he created the game.. Or maybe it was just a sign I talked about, so Awareness had a "lifeline", if things got too crazy (=too much suffering/pain inside the physical non-existing world-game) (like it is now: DONALD TRUMP is the world's president, HAHA WHAT A BIG FAT COSMIC JOKE :DD) ... Guys, I think I am a pessimist in regards to human life... This game has gone too far, just look around the world.. I don't expect the human race to sustain itself for more than a few hundred years. (or maybe I do, maybe I will do something about it, I might decide to use my "ACTUAL FREE WILL" to CHANGE something... maybe... haven't decided yet guys (because I'm a fucking ignorant fool lol).. So guys,, if you crave more money$$$$$$$$ invest all your money in virtual reality comapanies and live on the street for 5-10 years and become a billionaire in a few years Virtual Reality is gonna be huge man.. Lost humans not knowing they are lost then deciding for themselves to get lost inside a world inside a world , haha it is really funny man. okay guys, this whole post has just been a stream of thought, it started as a serious reply to dodoster and then i can see it turned out to a lot of not-serious ramblings (don't take me too seriously please, I'm just having fun). so in all seriousness... I've said that life is all about CREATION, FUN, LOVE, ENJOYMENT (FOR EVERYONE! NOT JUST FOR "ME" BECAUE TRULY I AM YOU). ... now the question is, how do one become content 24/7 ? how is one never NOT-filled with love/humour/happiness/desire to create/help ... and why is there deeply within all a feeling of joy when seeing joy/happiness in those close to us? To the second question, it's because Awareness inside know that It Is All. So when I see my mother being happy when she seems me and hugs me, the Awareness within me knows that that equals me being happy. When I see a picture in the TV of a sick, underfed African baby in pain, I feel pain, because Awareness knows it is the fucking baby just as much as it is the current bodymind that tries to trick it into believing Awarenss is that (lol). To the first question (to the how is one never NOT filled).. the answer begins where this comment starts... getting rid of TRUE Ignorance by acknowleding one is really ignorant (= false ignorance/true wisdom) , and then building from there. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” “To find yourself, think for yourself.” “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (so fucking true lol) “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” !!!!!! The Book of not Knowing guys by Peter Ralston. Read it and then leave this forum and start living your life fully. hehe. (im lost guys, but im having fun while being lost). But basically life is all about understanding, communication, being in service for others (=Self), and then also having a lot of fun, creating more meaningless stuff (like this random post), loving and enjoying, and maybe reproducing some more bodies, which because you believe you are wise, you can then program a new body to be just as wise as you, which feels nice for the little awareness stuck in bodymind. ;D But Real Love, Real Creation, Real Fun (xD) can only happen when one first has began the journey of self-realization which starts by realizing one has been an ignorant fool all live (remember to also love yourself though)... So to sum it up.. Awareness/God has created this physical game for itself to get lost in only because of love (throw in some curiousity, infinity, infinite matrixes/games/realities, why-not-feeling, fun, too maybe also). Love (positive feelings) is the only feeling with any logical value, any other feeling (hatred, fear etc) have no logic behind them, if you become truly aware. Meaning of life is polarized: For some "incarnations of Awareness" it is to get as lost as possible and never realize one is lost (most of humanity). For other "incarnations of Awareness" it it so get as not-lost-as-possible by first acknowleding one is infinitely lost. One could say both are equally valid. Yet, one could also say that because love is the only logical feeling in the universe, then the meaning of life should be to get all beings to only feel love... and therefore one could say that true spirituality is a more meaningful game than the other games. And for most actually it is a constant mix of these two I guess, but very screwed towards the first, at least in regards to finding one's true self. Why is it so? Only God (True Complete Awareness) knows:p For both of these ultimate polarized games, there are smaller games of: power, attachments to the physical world, detachments, understanding (most important one, as long as it is purely based on first realziing one's own ignorance + law of casuality + law of change = True Understanding/attainment of awareness), service, communication, having fun, creating random meaningless stuff, enjoying what life has to offer and becoming unconsciously deeply attached to such things (drugs, food, sex, money, sleep, playing computer games, watching tv, reading, whatever man). Sooooooooo “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

Some of the dangers I've experienced. (They're a mix of positive and negative, and this isn't meant to be sarcastic or judgmental) -Being aware of how neurotic and unconscious you and others are. -Spending your time wisely and focusing on the long-term. -Being criticized by others who are bigger failures than you, who will try to suck you back into the matrix. You may be seen as a hippie, a workaholic, or a threat for not just "going with the flow of life." -People may call you religious or atheist if you align with. -Having a life purpose that "won't pay the bills" (immediately) will piss off your parents. -You might be seen as "not having a life" because you don't waste all your time dabbling in different time-wasting activities. -Your friends will try to deplete you and waste your time and bring you back into low consciousness, and you may to leave them if their ideas don't align with your purpose. -Emotions may actually become more intense as you consciously feel them and become aware of them. -Suicidal thoughts, depression, existential crisis - happens when you still have a very incomplete picture of self-actualization. I was going through this when beginning to dive into Leo's videos. You might start to feel like "everything's pointless" until you surrender to the now and start to realize your potential, that you can do anything because you're not so separate from others, etc. -Savior Complex - you might try to save your friends and family, but most of them won't listen to you, because they're highly unconscious. I wish I had friends that meditate and do self-actualization, but ultimately it's a journey you'll primarily tread alone as you refine yourself. -Dreaming big for the first time - I didn't realize how much I had suppressed my dreams of being able to accomplish anything significant. This was a huge shift for me, in terms of my long-term goals. -Awareness of other people's beliefs, your reaction to them, and how you may embody them as well. You'll quickly notice generalizations. I think I become triggered into consciousness by what people say, and have to be aware of my need to interject "The world isn't really that way" or "it's pretty negative to see our city this way." I try and look within and see how I make these same sweeping generalizations. (Leo made a cool video on how to exploit other people for your own personal development.) -By being aware of certain behaviors, they may become autocorrected, or become harder to justify. As you become aware of certain negativity loops, playing the victim, etc., and through meditation practice, your mind may dissolve the negativity as it pops up. And this is the biggest one: Presence, Bliss in the Now, and enjoyment of the mundane beyond what I could've ever imagined. You can just go outside and really look at a tree and relent to the present moment, and realize what a ridiculous fucking miracle it is to even be alive, in that moment. You can take it in without really thinking too much, and without having to much about it. Conversations also start to happen like this, and I find myself psyching out sometimes. It might lead to become overly attached to people, and being attached to the present moment, and then rejecting the next moment. (Say you're really present while going for a walk, but you come back and lose consciousness when you have to do work.) So, it can inadvertently lead to a clinging, but you'll be aware of it, and that's cool. I would say to watch a mix of Leo's videos. Leo's video on Maslow's Hierarchy helped me a lot in consolidating the different ideas, because I was like "Wait, can I just skip to enlightenment? Can I just be that guy who works at 7-Eleven and is enlightened?" I'd be listening to a bunch of his videos on my phone, walking through my college campus, altering my interpretation of the world and the people around me. Sometimes I'd just walk through campus with no music or audio and see reality "as it is" while being aware of neurotic tendencies to project certain beliefs, judgement. So, getting the big picture is important, so I'd recommend the Life Purpose Course and to watch a ton of his videos. On this topic, I think the whole point is that you can reconcile your life purpose with self-actualization and enlightenment, and through following the hierarchy and being a creator, you're making the best use of your experience. You could become a monk, but you'd lose a lot of potential impact you could have as a creator first.

@Kaity Thank you soooooo much, this means so much to me! I adore when someone leans their head on me, and it totally has that beautiful day effect on me too. In coercive control, the abuser is usually trying to force affection and sex on the partner. In my case it was more powerful to deny it. Affection was so natural for me, that it took hundreds of rejections of my hello/goodbye/goodnight hugs and kisses before I broke. I realize that western culture has various cuddle-neurosis (men & men, adults & children, etc)...but this fear of "affection- rejection" neurosis is new for me. In my last (terribly dysfunctional) relationship, I was continually told that I wasn't deserving of hugs/kisses. Consciously, I have recovered enough to know that I am deserving... but there are lingering barriers to regular affection for me. Some are societally triggered in others, but there is a real awkwardness with myself now too....mostly because I have gone years without it. What do you recommend, to bring physical affection back into my life again without having to be sexual with "randomz"... lol...? I can visualize the incredible bliss when this physical connection is a part of my life again, yes, it's amazing and powerful like you said! Thanks Kaity!

I'm taking a vacation to the jungle. I'm taking Ekart Tolles book with me. I've only read half the book in 1 year. lol. (thinking about the guy who reads 300 books a day or whatever) lol But I work 9 hours a day 6 days a week and struggle to shave etc regularly, so busy. So... far from being enlightened, over this year I discovered how to find complete bliss, and while I can't actually "do it" unless I'm in the right frame of mind. I tend to know when this is. I still have no idea what bliss means, and Leo's videos don't even mention it. The question is, what happens if I get a break through while in my hotel or out with the spiders and snakes of central America? Anyway, this is just a light hearted question for your ego's entertainment.

@SaynotoKlaus Its something I really have been through as well. And the dealing with it, is always the opposite from the desired result. And the goal of meditation that one set, just stimulates the whole thing willing to get a certain result, stimulates the thinking I must deal with it, and as a result, you really identify with both the goal that must be reached, as well as the search for such emotions, and the must to deal with it as a separated entity that is going to deal with it. I solved this whole problem by releasing tensions in both body and mind, without dealing with anything else then just relaxing by giving it away with breath. First I did everything to do solve it, and when tired enough, I started working on releasing tension, teaching, shaping my mind to an understanding that what ever I do is entangling with it. I also became much more varied with meditation. The wild horse my mind was with the emotions of heat and short bursts etc was not to be tamed by the wrong knowledge of domination. I therefor choose to learn during the day to respond differently to my own actions. I started to go to woods, not to meditate, but to just be alone. Walk, breathing calmly and releasing tensions. So I made it an all round flexible approach to learn to calmly respond within myself to get it calm. The result now is. I can without tension meditate, just observing breath, the middle path. But I can as well, if a thought goes on and on, be so intense, without being intense, that the thought will just be crushed by the happiness, the bliss. Make it an all round discipline to work very flexible on this problem. But my greatest fear related to what you describe at that time, was my great fear of loneliness. And that I worked on, step by step, calmly, nature, being alone, becoming a child again.

Maybe here's a place for my question. Does anyone find an increase of moments of "bliss" while listening to music, and in connection with doing a bit of self enquiry work and only a small amount of meditation? I don't mean just a "high" you get from music where your hair stands on end, but a full blown summersaults in the mind and complete surrender? It's happening to me a fair bit. I've also had a expansion of awareness experience while doing some open eyed self enquiry?

@OhHiMark So true..." ignorance is bliss" ......or is it?....

@Aware Just reading your words generate a big bliss on my body, and I can't read anymore. Lol... What you say sounds so real to me that is scary.

Sample Bottom-Line Contemplation subject of contemplation: why it feels uncomfortable to show love I don't want to show love. It is okay with my sister, but when other people see that we cuddle I feel so weird. I don't want other people to see that. It feels uncomfortable. I have fear, some kind of fear. They could see underneath my skin, underneath my facade. They could see a part of my authentic self while they haven't seen the authentic me yet. They could see my true emotions and that feels embarrassing, uncomfortable. I think the same goes for the emotions/feelings of sadness, fear, hurt and unconditional love. It is embarrassing to come out of meditation with the feeling of unconditional love for everyone, calmness, bliss. Why is it uncomfortable to me that others could see and know my true emotions? It feels as if they could hurt me. They could go behind the facade with their hands and do something that I don't want/like. Like they could tickle a little, naked, helpless infant without protection. What could they do to me without the protection of the facade? They could see my vulnerability. The y could see that I get easily hurt when somebody says something mean to me. They could judge me because of my vulnerability, laugh at me, joke around with me. They simply could hurt me. And the negative emotions could arise after they have left the protection of my facade. I would cry, go away to be alone and protected and feel bad. Emotions of being not strong enough, inadequate, weak, not worthy, self-guilt, not being appreciated, not being loved, without help or support, all on my own. I don't have the control about what happens to me when I open the facade. I could get pushed around and feel so bad afterwards. I run away from this fear of being seen vulnerable through anger, hiding or denying that I feel bad. I don't want anyone getting too close to me except for my sister, with her it is no problem. It is like a threat to my life. They could kill me easily behind the facade because behind the facade I am not strong but helpless and weak. I have to hide my vulnerability through a fence where other people cannot look behind. But when they get to see through it they can see the vulnerable me with cannot protect itself. Therefore the ego has to maintain and strengthen the fence. It defends the fence by hiding or simply going away from uncomfortable situations. It maintains the fence by keeping up my self-image and the opinions others have about me. And it strengthens the fence by fixing bad, inadequate parts of the self and finding new identifications. When I feel inferior the fence gets threatened, when I feel superior the fence gets strengthened. (I wrote this text this morning after waking up on a piece of paper. Not edited afterwards. It took me about an hour)

I do have rajas. I do have karma. I do need to be a karma yogi before I become a sanyasi. How do I know? Because I suffer in work, I suffer in learning, I suffer in leisure, I have active bad habits. I do not have a powerful contemplative mind. When I try to be contemplative, I got thoughts and actions which carry me away. Act of knowing is awareness. When you are aware yor know. Knower is awareness. Awareness is knowledge. Removing ignorance is gaining awareness. Possibility field of forms takes form of knowledge in Maya. Transcending into pure awareness transcends past knowledge - into everything. Actions and objects are a form of knowledge. Experience is knowledge too. It's impermanent. How can an action be knowledge? Wherever somethin like this happens I should go into meditation. Or music suprisingly or eating )=?. Read on dharma. I think programming is just that for now for me. I do not want to care anymore, I want to know. I don't want to be an ignorant rajasic-tamasic person because what is the point? If I can be in bliss why should I be desiring? Fuck desires, fuck fears, fuck self judging, fuck doubting each miniscule pleasure. Thanks to math, bits of physics, psychology, SC, philosophy, neo teachers and now Advaita Vedanta, I already know the Truth. Everything is this factual math field of possibility a.k.a. physics multiverse a.k.a. information field a.k.a. phylosophy knowledge field a.k.a psychology/Advaita Vedanta awareness field. This is the only thing and our universe is a fold within it with us being complex little subfolds. All the folds but no separate entities. Everything is just one giant arational folded entity. This is a belief or a model but there are no facts which tell this model is not correct thus it must be true (no it must not, you're just creating a pet theory - stop it you dumbass). Everything is connected, anywhere we look there is no separation. Any law of physics ends up in no separation between anything (uncertainty principle means we do not know where and how a force carrying particle starts to communicate with a particle of matter. I just came up with idea that at that point Maya engine reshapes itself and for us inside it just looks like uncertainty in natural world. Ofcourse it's strange if world consists of separate granular quants of everything. But is perfectly logical if this particles interaction is an intricate refolding of single entity during which there are intermediate states of folding which do not carry any precise "natural world" meaning or "show" or "interpretation". Hanging and loading periods of computer does not carry any real meaning for us - we just do not understand what is going on inside, when there is a very intricate process of reshaping the memory going on). All separations are human abstractions. Quant can just be the smallest size of a fold of awareness in Maya. Speed of light can just be the highest speed of falling of this smallest folds dominos of Maya, basically a viscosity of Maya. It is not scientific because it's infallible. Awareness is every possibility so anything we can predict to be impossible can actually be possible in Maya. To make predictions with this we need to restate all principles of physics in terms of this folds - a math model. And evtl. I'm not that good at math. Ofcourse Advaita Vedanta would not tell us all this - because it's complex and unneeded when there is a much easier instrument - burning devotional desire to be liberated from suffering. But abscence of such things makes me believe I'm a program in my brain and all this enlightenment is BS. Well, the brain is a program in Maya. And program in it is a program in Maya too. So I'm a program in Maya. What is told is that I have a weak acceess to infinite Awareness outside of Maya and I can get there buy contemplating knowledge and self inquiry on top of cultivating calm - sattva. Moreover, there are tons of people who claim they "self inquiry. Why? Because it seems so stupid as fuck. So so fucking stupid. But I want to get enlightened. It's stupid but very complicated which makes it even more stupid. Why is it stupid and complicated? Because it has like 25 formal steps, 50 pitfalls, you need juiciest parts of your day to waste on it and you need to do it for hundreds of hours with no returns whatsoever. And it sounds legit to lots of people. And it appeals to burning desire and weakness in ourselves. How sick and stupid is that? I'd say crazy sick and stupid! Well you don't believe me? You haven't searched for, bought and used illegal drugs? You haven't wasted half a year of income to visit some crazy ashram full of bhati? You can't sit crosslegged motionless for 90 minutes? Well, fuck you, this is not for you, you're piece of shit in my way to greatness. And this is for special open minded evolved people. And you mind your own business, carry on. Die suffering, I have nothing to offer you, I don't know how to help you and I do not care, I have thousand of people who are evolved and open minded and I'll go with them. I'm projecting somewhat no doubt, but really, really, REALLY, isn't that a Leos message? Nope, I've reread the topic and the answers and I'm really projecting ))))))) Leo is impartial there, he just pedals the theme we should be working harder than each of us most probably do, nothing like I depict it. There is some hype there as well, but nothing more. Actually some other colleagues pedal some egoistic themes like I've depicted but not Leo. So why do I project? Well, out of desperation obviously. I should talk to them more and project less. Should I? Should I say I should anything? I really should not should I? Hehe. Why do I despair? Well for obvious reasons. My meditation practice crumbles, I am just like 15-20 hours into Vedanta satsang after 1.5 months, I'm still into all that victim stuff, I haven't seriously self inquired yet and time is ticking. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Be patient, cowboy. Why so serious, you know you care less and less and know more and more and that is the real growth isn't it? Enjoy life my boy.

@Sharpadox You want to be a concept artist, cool. "Video games wasting hour's of people life" this is a limited belief. Video games aren't good or bad, it's just part of media culture, it's not black or white. You want to be a psychologist too, why not combine both. I feel the same about "helping the society with a better consciousness" but it seems a kinda neurotic goal... I think becoming a sage is independent from a career, but the career may have more impact on society than a sage alone in a cave. "Service to other" in general seems a kinda cool value, whatever it's in video games entertainment or psychology therapies. Follow your bliss, and trust your intuition (+life purpose course). In general, I would say "serve yourself first, and impact the society by your being". Whatever path you choose doesn't really have importance in the end. (My experience in CGI industry, working as an animator, is that in big companies you don't have decisions to make, even if it seems creative, you are just a piece in the puzzle, and basically do a technical job. Guys who choose art directions and scripts/dialogues that impact the society are at the top of the pyramid, and often it's where the money leads the game. So you could choose to be independent and work in a small team, like most indie games today). This is @Leo Gura's life before actualized.org^^ : For more inspiring material, I suggest "Indie Game: The Movie" if you haven't seen it yet. See you

"Pure" consciousness is always, the ordinary and extraordinary, which you might define as buttering your bread, tying your shoelaces, reading this post, having an experience of sustained bliss or meditation high, reading a book or jumping into a pool, anything that happens to you or anyone else is perfect for the fact it's appeared First what is enlightenment? The realisation of your nature, which some claim as everything, or Consciousness, God, Infinity, whatever symbol you wish to label it, although the moment we attempt to label it we reduce it, for words are bound in the apperance of themselves, so I honestly don't know what my nature or anybody else's is, for I see "nature" as another symbol, Yet how can our claim we present to reality as eternal, whole, perfect & infinite, also be claimed as having levels or a hierarchy to it? High awareness vs low awareness, duality vs non-duality, Higher self vs Lower self, aware vs unaware, blind vs seen, we reference these terms in relation to ourselves, but if the very nature of our identity is an illusion, or a misconception, anything we term in realition to ourselves also falls under the category of illusion or misconception, for again, language and thoughts are bound in the appearance of themselves, while at the same time "bound" is yet another word, Yet the apperance of all, including all thoughts, all experiences, ect.. is nothing but the appearance of itself. I don't really know, confused myself writing this honestly, so it's just a thought

@Nature Transcript I am reminded of the fateful day of twenty-first March, 1953. For many lives I had been working—working upon myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done—and nothing was happening. Now I understand why nothing was happening. The very effort was the barrier, the very ladder was preventing, the very urge to seek was the obstacle. Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible. Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose—out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air—it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close. Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant—and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you. The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving. The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you; you have to create it each moment. It is like pedalling bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on, if you don't pedal it stops. It may go a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedalling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping. It has no more energy, no more power to go anywhere. It is going to fall and collapse. The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. That is the very phenomenon of the ego—the jump ahead of yourself, the jump in the future, the jump in the tomorrow. The jump in the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential it is like a mirage. It consists only of desire and nothing else. It consists only of thirst and nothing else. The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing. The day I stopped seeking…and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is the day the seeking stopped. Because if I stop it then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my effort, now stopping becomes my desire, and desire goes on existing in a very subtle way. You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops. So this is the dilemma. What to do? Desire is there and Buddhas go on saying desire has to be stopped, and they go on saying in the next breath that you cannot stop desire. So what to do? You put people in a dilemma. They are in desire, certainly. You say it has to be stopped—okay. And then you say it cannot be stopped. Then what is to be done? The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it, and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you. Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon. The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future. Nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere. You go in rounds. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, 'Come on, run fast, you will reach.' But howsoever fast you run you never reach. That's why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away. The slower you go, the slower it moves away. But one thing is certain—the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon. You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge—because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential. The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening. In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you. It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits. It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not on your own, the moment you drop, the moment you disappear, the whole existence rushes towards you, enters you. And for the first time things start happening. Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don't mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could there be hopelessness. Both had disappeared. The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it its counterpart, hopelessness, had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience—of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words—but it was not a negative state. It was absolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt. Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me. And when I say I was helpless, I don't mean the word in the dictionary-sense. I simply say I was selfless. That's what I mean when I say helpless. I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground—there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss…bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. There was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid. Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable—as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it—I was blissed out, stoned. It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a very non-sense world—difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss. The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing. Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past. By the evening it became so difficult to bear it—it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labour when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain—the birth pangs. I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was very imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was—maybe it is going to be my death—but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome. But something was going to happen—something like death, something very drastic, something which will be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection—but something of tremendous import was around just by the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I was drugged. I went to sleep near about eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar. Only with one difference—that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you…clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet. I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange—as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together…the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say 'the creator and the creation meet.' It was weird. For the first time it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a new vision to your life, a new quality. Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened—I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration—almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality. That's why when Buddha and Shankara say the world is maya, a mirage, it is difficult for us to understand. Because we know only this world, we don't have any comparison. This is the only reality we know. What are these people talking about—this is maya, illusion? This is the only reality. Unless you come to know the really real, their words cannot be understood, their words remain theoretical. They look like hypotheses. Maybe this man is propounding a philosophy—'The world is unreal'. When Berkley in the West said that the world is unreal, he was walking with one of his friends, a very logical man; the friend was almost a skeptic. He took a stone from the road and hit Berkley's feet hard. Berkley screamed, blood rushed out, and the skeptic said, 'Now, the world is unreal? You say the world is unreal?—then why did you scream? This stone is unreal?—then why did you scream? Then why are you holding your leg and why are you showing so much pain and anguish on your face. Stop this? It is all unreal. Now this type of man cannot understand what Buddha means when he says the world is a mirage. He does not mean that you can pass through the wall. He is not saying this—that you can eat stones and it will make no difference whether you eat bread or stones. He is not saying that. He is saying that there is a reality. Once you come to know it, this so-called reality simply pales out, simply becomes unreal. With a higher reality in vision the comparison arises, not otherwise. In the dream; the dream is real. You dream every night. Dream is one of the greatest activities that you go on doing. If you live sixty years, twenty years you will sleep and almost ten years you will dream. Ten years in a life—nothing else do you do so much. Ten years of continuous dreaming—just think about it. And every night…. And every morning you say it was unreal, and again in the night when you dream, dream becomes real. In a dream it is so difficult to remember that this is a dream. But in the morning it is so easy. What happens? You are the same person. In the dream there is only one reality. How to compare? How to say it is unreal? Compared to what? It is the only reality. Everything is as unreal as everything else so there is no comparison. In the morning when you open your eyes another reality is there. Now you can say it was all unreal. Compared to this reality, dream becomes unreal. There is an awakening—compared to that reality of that awakening, this whole reality becomes unreal. That night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya. Not that I had not known the word before, not that I was not aware of the meaning of the word. As you are aware, I was also aware of the meaning—but I had never understood it before. How can you understand without experience? That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the really real, or whatsoever you want to call it—call it god, call it truth, call it dhamma, call it tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there—so opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing it. A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky—it was suffocating me. It was too much! It will kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me—it looked like that. I rushed out of the room, came out in the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth…to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenon. Even the sky is a small place for that big phenomenon. It is bigger than the sky. Even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease. I walked towards the nearest garden. It was a totally new walk, as if gravitation had disappeared. I was walking, or I was running, or I was simply flying; it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation, I was feeling weightless—as if some energy was taking me. I was in the hands of some other energy. For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no more an individual, for the first time the drop has come and fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there. I reached to the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. It was too late, it was almost one o'clock in the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter the garden like a thief, I had to climb the gate. But something was pulling me towards the garden. It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating. That's what I mean when I say again and again 'float with the river, don't push the river'. I was relaxed, I was in a let-go. I was not there. it was there, call it god—god was there. I would like to call it it, because god is too human a word, and has become too dirty by too much use, has become too polluted by so many people. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, priests and politicians—they all have corrupted the beauty of the word. So let me call it it. It was there and I was just carried away…carried by a tidal wave. The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place—the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time—their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful. I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous—the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards itself. I had not chosen it, god himself has chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction. It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o'clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours—but it was infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless. Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality—uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable. And that day something happened that has continued—not as a continuity—but it has still continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency—each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment. That night…and since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it. I became tremendously powerful and at the same time very fragile. I became very strong, but that strength is not the strength of a Mohammed Ali. That strength is not the strength of a rock, that strength is the strength of a rose flower—so fragile in his strength…so fragile, so sensitive, so delicate. The rock will be there, the flower can go any moment, but still the flower is stronger than the rock because it is more alive. Or, the strength of a dewdrop on a leaf of grass just shining; in the morning sun—so beautiful, so precious, and yet can slip any moment. So incomparable in its grace, but a small breeze can come and the dewdrop can slip and be lost forever. Buddhas have a strength which is not of this world. Their strength is totally of love…Like a rose flower or a dewdrop. Their strength is very fragile, vulnerable. Their strength is the strength of life not of death. Their power is not of that which kills; their power is of that which creates. Their power is not of violence, aggression; their power is that of compassion. But I have never been in the body again, I am just hovering around the body. And that's why I say it has been a tremendous miracle. Each moment I am surprised I am still here, I should not be. I should have left any moment, still I am here. Every morning I open my eyes and I say, 'So, again I am still here?' Because it seems almost impossible. The miracle has been a continuity. Just the other day somebody asked a question—'Osho, you are getting so fragile and delicate and so sensitive to the smells of hair oils and shampoos that it seems we will not be able to see you unless we all go bald.' By the way, nothing is wrong with being bald—bald is beautiful. Just as 'black is beautiful', so 'bald is beautiful'. But that is true and you have to be careful about it. I am fragile, delicate and sensitive. That is my strength. If you throw a rock at a flower nothing will happen to the rock, the flower will be gone. But still you cannot say that the rock is more powerful than the flower. The flower will be gone because the flower was alive. And the rock—nothing will happen to it because it is dead. The flower will be gone because the flower has no strength to destroy. The flower will simply disappear and give way to the rock. The rock has a power to destroy because the rock is dead. Remember, since that day I have never been in the body really; just a delicate thread joins me with the body. And I am continuously surprised that somehow the whole must be willing me to be here, because I am no more here with my own strength, I am no more here on my own. It must be the will of the whole to keep me here, to allow me to linger a little more on this shore. Maybe the whole wants to share something with you through me. Since that day the world is unreal. Another world has been revealed. When I say the world is unreal I don't mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real—but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves—they exist in god, they exist in absolute reality—but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage. You create your own dream around you and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world. There are not two things, god and the world. God is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes, without any dreams, without any dust of the dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only god. Then somewhere god is a green tree, and somewhere else god is a shining star, and somewhere else god is a cuckoo, and somewhere else god is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river—then only god is. The moment you start seeing, only god is. But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere—in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth. This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is very ugly, your world is your world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it. When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world—or your world if you drop your dreams. When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any Buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it?—that dreams are private. You cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife to your dream—or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, 'Now, please come tonight in my dream. I would like to see the dream together.' It is not possible. Dream is a private thing, hence it is illusory, it has no objective reality. God is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination—suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny. Let me repeat. Without effort you will never reach it, with effort nobody has ever reached it. You will need great effort, and only then there comes a moment when effort becomes futile. But it becomes futile only when you have come to the very peak of it, never before it. When you have come to the very pinnacle of your effort—all that you can do you have done—then suddenly there is no need to do anything any more. You drop the effort. But nobody can drop it in the middle, it can be dropped only at the extreme end. So go to the extreme end if you want to drop it. Hence I go on insisting: make as much effort as you can, put your whole energy and total heart in it, so that one day you can see—now effort is not going to lead me anywhere. And that day it will not be you who will drop the effort, it drops on its own accord. And when it drops on its own accord, meditation happens. Meditation is not a result of your efforts, meditation is a happening. When your efforts drop, suddenly meditation is there…the benediction of it, the blessedness of it, the glory of it. It is there like a presence…luminous, surrounding you and surrounding everything. It fills the whole earth and the whole sky. That meditation cannot be created by human effort. Human effort is too limited. That blessedness is so infinite. You cannot manipulate it. It can happen only when you are in a tremendous surrender. When you are not there only then it can happen. When you are a no-self—no desire, not going anywhere—when you are just herenow, not doing anything in particular, just being, it happens. And it comes in waves and the waves become tidal. It comes like a storm, and takes you away into a totally new reality. But first you have to do all that you can do, and then you have to learn non-doing. The doing of the non-doing is the greatest doing, and the effort of effortlessness is the greatest effort. Your meditation that you create by chanting a mantra or by sitting quiet and still and forcing yourself, is a very mediocre meditation. It is created by you, it cannot be bigger than you. It is homemade, and the maker is always bigger than the made. You have made it by sitting, forcing in a yoga posture, chanting 'rama, rama, rama' or anything—'blah, blah, blah'—anything. You have forced the mind to become still. It is a forced stillness. It is not that quiet that comes when you are not there. It is not that silence which comes when you are almost non-existential. It is not that beautitude which descends on you like a dove. It is said when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, god descended in him, or the holy ghost descended in him like a dove. Yes, that is exactly so. When you are not there peace descends in you…fluttering like a dove…reaches in your heart and abides there and abides there forever. You are your undoing, you are the barrier. Meditation is when the meditator is not. When the mind ceases with all its activities—seeing that they are futile—then the unknown penetrates you, overwhelms you. The mind must cease for god to be. Knowledge must cease for knowing to be. You must disappear, you must give way. You must become empty, then only you can be full. That night I became empty and became full. I became non-existential and became existence. That night I died and was reborn. But the one that was reborn has nothing to do with that which died, it is a discontinuous thing. On the surface it looks continuous but it is discontinuous. The one who died, died totally; nothing of him has remained. Believe me, nothing of him has remained, not even a shadow. It died totally, utterly. It is not that I am just a modified rup, transformed, modified form, transformed form of the old. No, there has been no continuity. That day of March twenty-first, the person who had lived for many many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old, started to exist. Religion just gives you a total death. Maybe that's why the whole day previous to that happening I was feeling some urgency like death, as if I am going to die—and I really died. I have known many other deaths but they were nothing compared to it, they were partial deaths. Sometimes the body died, sometimes a part of the mind died, sometimes a part of the ego died, but as far as the person was concerned, it remained. Renovated many times, decorated many times, changed a little bit here and there, but it remained, the continuity remained. That night the death was total. It was a date with death and god simultaneously.

God has given you absolute freedom, you can choose to suffer, you can choose bliss. Without freedom to suffer you can't grow, without suffering you will remain unconscious, it is the experience of suffering which makes you realize bliss. Without any darkness can you realize existence of light ? No, God is everything. If God is all good, where bad , evil comes from ?

According to near death experiences, who have very real experiences of God, infinity, total bliss etc. You are met by loved ones and God/The light; bliss; being home. Then you have life review. Then you stay there for a while. Because we learn about it via NDE experiences people are sent back, or chose to go back for what ever reason. I belief 'being sent back' is not really a choice that is made separate from you, because ultimately you are God, but if you haven't raised you awareness enough it made seem like you are being sent back by it, but for your own best, because at a higher level you like to evolve further in the game. - So I think you can do everything, another incarnation, staying in heaven, creating what ever you imagine, being with other souls, incarnating in other planets, dimensions etc. But if you have a low consciousness and thus lived a selfish life, you might decide from the higher consciousness to go back and raise it further; become closer to spirit through your own evolution first, and perhaps experience some balancing because of some choices you made because you like the idea of karma and it serves your growth. You might like this site by the way: www.evidenceforthesoul.weebly.com

This has gone over my head, thank the Lord! Ignorance is bliss

How happy do you have to be if you realise you are not fearing your biggest fear right now? Instant state of bliss - less than one hit of marijuanna - because it allows me to see my real fears and realise if I am not experiencing them (in the present) I should be in a state of permanent elation. What more could one ask for. I can feel myself flowing. I love meditation. LOVE. To feel good in the body is LOVE.

Sooo, boys and girls. I had a quite interesting year and I thought I sum it up in this post, so you can benefit from my lessons and have some fun reading. Plus I'll probably share a little forecast in which direction I currently take my spiritual journey. I'll take the major topics and hindrances I faced this year and illustrate them a little bit and cut all of the uninteresting shit. So it goes like this ... +++ Existential Crisis +++ If I had to sum up my whole spiritual journey this year with one phrase, it would probably be that: an existential crisis. A complete brain-fuck and wrapping every one of my world-views inside out. It's kind of interesting, I started my meditative journey in early April 2015 and for most of that year and the first two months of 2016 it just gave me lots ad lots of typical benefits. I would be way more calmer, I stopped biting my finger nails, I stopped smoking, I had my first clarity experiences, I was very pumped up to do my meditation etc. etc. Then in early 2016 I watched @Leo Gura's Free-Will-video and meditated after it one the question: "What is going to happen next?". And in this meditation a strange shift happened. It was a very physical kind of opening (like literally a popping in my head) and from then I could consciously conceive that there are thoughts that I consciously formulate and there are thoughts that just come up and fill up the space. From this day on, my whole life should begin to change. In the next 4 months I had the deepest experiences of fear, anxiety, helplessness, depression, falling apart etc. etc. that I ever had in my life. Besides that, I had the deepest realizations I had so far on my journey, 3-4 deep awakening experiences that always were surrounded with 1-2 weeks of total bliss and then an even deeper amount of existential crisis than I experienced it before. It all ended in early August I guess, right after I had my first Kundalini awakening in late July. This was one of the strangest things I ever experienced and at the time I didn't even knew what it was. I found out 1-2 months later here on the forum and then through research, that what I experienced was a Kundalini awakening. Now, this whole phase was extremely strenuous. I had weeks and months in which I would wake up and be bombarded from second one with tremendous and ridiculous thoughts. In my daily meditation it would even get worse and make me completely crazy. I had a few sits I had to end after about 40 minutes because it was too hard. I had phases in which when I went outside I felt any kind of distress another person carries around amplified times a thousand in my own body with awful thoughts screaming at me. Why did all of this happen? Well, I was bullied when I was about 12-14 years old for doing shitty rap music and I have some regular deficiencies and problems most of us have. If you wanna get out of the trap, you'll have to cut every single one of these bindings to the world. And you have to let go of your shadow. And that's not a pretty process. I had 2 times I seriously thought about suicide, because it was that hard. Funnily, right after these times I had even deeper awakenings. But well, if you go through such a phase yourself (and you will more than one time probably on your journey) go back to this post and see you are not alone. It's natural and its very good. It gives you so much strength, realization and vision. It's incredible. You come out of that as a new human being. Also, how did I went through all that w/o going completely nuts. Well, I went nuts for some time to be honest. I had times in which I wasn't sure anymore whether this is just purging or whether I'm mentally insane. I followed my intuition that said "Wait it out" and so I did. Everything was okay. I went through it. In that time I tried literally every kind of meditation technique, listened to every Alan Watts lecture multiple times, listened to tons of Rupert Spira stuff, Mooji stuff, did all sorts of things to help me out and they all did to a certain degree, but in the end I just had to take it and experience it. It's hard, and it's okay to give in in that phase and learn from it. I started smoking again for example, because I knew it would help me out here and I could stop it when I'm through and have the mental power for it. For you it might be eating some ice cream, binging on other shit. Sometimes, this is necessary. +++ Change in perspective +++ Another key change this year was my change in perspective. When I started out on my enlightenment journey the one thing I was mostly fascinated about was: "How is the day to day perspective of an enlightenment being?" Because they always say: "Well, you have it. You are it." But there still is a change that is happening, right? Why are we doing this work otherwise? Well, yeah there is a shift that happens. And it'll start to happen with your first enlightenment experiences and then slowly sink in to your day to day life over time. That's at least my experience. I can consciously recognize who i really am at every time. I can see it. And this happened with I guess my second deep enlightenment experience. From then on it stuck. And now its for me more about adjusting my whole life to it that I integrate these experiences and deepen them for the rest of my life. Because, although the simple recognition of who you are is a thing you can either see or not, all of the implications that you can draw from that to your normal life, are endless and can be deepened endlessly. And that's where the journey really begins. To name some symptoms that stuck with me since I saw: I see colors brighter than I did before. I see new patterns in what I perceive. I see a lot of the games that nature plays with itself. I see how things mutually arise and aren't caused by each other. The list goes on and on. But remember: These are just personal symptoms that came with the recognition. It's not the recognition itself. I have phases in which these symptoms will get amplified and I might tap into huge amounts of intuition. This is where the crazy shit starts. I had 3-4 times visions of events I could have never predicted that turned out the exact same way as when I saw them in a dream. I sometimes have an extremely accurate sense of time (like sitting in a meditation and being able to tell when it ends in the last 2 minutes). I have this 11:11, 10:10, 13:13 phenomena going on a daily basis sometimes 5-10 times since I guess like 6 months now. I had a few mystical encounters in meditations and dreams. And a lot of other crazy shit. I'll probably do a whole post on that in the future. I mean, you can think of that what you want, but if you have it yourself going on very frequently you start to at least see how intelligent and crazy nature is. And that your normal one-coffee-bored-consciousness is not where it ends. But yeah, my perspective changed completely this year. I recognized who I am and am now able to integrate this for the rest of my life and see where it takes me. +++ Psychedelic experiences +++ This year, I also started to experiment with psychedelics in a more spiritual and integrative way. I started using psychedelics (mostly LSD) in the summer of 2015, but in this year I did I'd say probably like 10 deep LSD trips, 10-15 DMT-trips, a few shroom trips and then of course the MeO-experiences. I also had 2 bad trips (one on LSD and one on shrooms [actually just 1 week ago]) and I found that these bad trips are the ones that do the deepest inner work and that really change your being permanently. So after some time you'll know how to handle them and use them for this. It's great. Ever since my first and last MeO-breakthrough I am still integrating the experience. I had one sober really, really deep enlightenment experience that lasted for 3-4 hours a few days after the breakthrough and a lot of what I'd call clarity experiences. Also, another round of shit came up over the weeks that I had to deal with and go through. But right now I'm pretty good and I think I can do the next experience in a few weeks (after all this x-mas and new year stuff is over). In the future I think I will mainly focus on 5-MeO-DMT, shrooms and normal DMT since I found these three substances to do the most permanent and deep healing for me. I use 5-MeO to crack the shell, shrooms to heal the wounds and integrate what is puring out and I will start with normal DMT as well again because I think the realizations you get from it will be hugely intensified through the 5-MeO. Every time I take a substance right now, whether its weed, alcohol, some party drugs or what not, I get a medium to strong MeO experience along the way, which is crazy and pretty cool. I don't know why, but it happens to be that way. Psychedelics have shown to be a huge amplifier on my own journey. It's great. +++ HoloSync And Meditation +++ Another biggy is HoloSync. I started using the Awakening Prologue in late August this year and will buy in a few days the Awakening Level 1. HoloSync boosts my daily meditation like motherfucking nuts. It's incredible. I go so much deeper. I sometimes am high from my meditation for 3-4 hours after it (sometimes the whole day). It also induces little existential crisis to integrate your shadow and it's worth its price, if you ask me. I love it. Meditation is just so much more fun with it. Try it out if you wanna boost your journey. It has also shown to help me focus, be more intuitive, more creative and just give me a better feeling throughout the whole day. I totally love it. Also, another thing I've experimented this year with are various forms of meditation. I did my standard "Do Nothing" + "Strong Determination Sitting". I use these two as my standard and then will lay other layers on top of them like doing some Tao meditations, breath meditations, counting meditations, mantra meditations. Right now I do a mix: I do my HoloSync and in the first 30 minutes I do a counting meditation and in the last 30 minutes I do a mantra meditation with the word "no-thing". I hesitated a lot to do mantra meditations because it is always connected with TM and a lot of people seem to not like it for that reason, but I found out for myself that it gives me great results. So the lesson here is: Try out a bunch of things and do the ones that work. Fuck what other people are saying. If it works for you great, do it. Engineer your own techniques. +++ Going The Whole Way +++ Well, and lastly I wanna take all this and put it in a box. I hope that if you've read that far, one thing you picked up is that I had a lot of highs and downs, a lot of trial and error, a lot of crazy shit, but that's just the journey. Was my existential crisis bad? Yeah, it was fucking nuts. But anytime right I have negative shit coming up for a few weeks I kind of laugh about it in my mind because it has no real power anymore. I know anxiety, pain, anger, loneliness, being tied to these things so deeply and intimately that they don't scare me anymore. Every thing I go through is there to let me know that the person I was always seeking and was always wanting to be, is just myself. Is just giving up the search. Giving up the "wanting to be different". And that everything I should do, comes from an inspiration that arises by itself when I rest in this calm and fulfilled state. But it takes some time to get there. It takes heavy seeking to arrive at the point where you can't seek anymore and have to give it up. It takes massive action. And even then you'll have cycle after cycle that shows you new stuff, that presents new challenges etc. etc. But along the way you'll become a master of it. You'll master yourself and you'll lose all fears and all hectic to get it done. So if you take one thing away from this post, then it is this: To become abundant, happy and fulfilled and enlightened, you have to take your neurotic being and try go get there by pushing so hard for it that you'll see at some point that you just can't keep up with the work you have to do to keep this happiness. And then you'll fall a deep, deep way to the bottom and realize that you are happy and abundant by default, that inspiration and realization happens by itself, and that action will always come and pick you up when you wait for it to arise. It'll show you the way. It always does. And you'll have the time of your life. So, go the whole way and see for yourself. There is no rush, there is no one to get there first. It's just a ride you can take if you want. Anyways, merry motherfuckin' x-mas from your silly-ass angel of death... Azrael

@Consept Stop Masturbating, Even Possible? It is very possible, as I am not entangled in it. It ends when the attachment to desire (the craving) ends. If you want to reach out to truly attempt attaining awareness and live up to it like I do, you must drop it, and happens naturally when following the right discipline, to skillfully get rid of lust, surely the tension, the burning stops, and bliss remains. But I want to make a clear distinction here. The masturbation is not what truly does the harm, it is the wrong conclusions, the wrong thinking, the not skillfully remove lust that truly is wrong, unwholesome. If you want to get rid of masturbation, one must be skillfully doing it, or leave it alone, and live your life with doing it. The real problem is, due to that people remain lustful, they remain bewildered, also about willing to remove it, live in doubt with it. There for I conclude that it is not the masturbation that is the problem, but being attached to desires, the craving, being lustful, is the true problem. To wrap it up: Masturbation can only be happening, if one beLIEf to be someone. If there is just body, and Awareness, there is no sense of self, and thus no craving. However, its not the masturbation that must be cut off, its the craving that must end, the attachment to desires, the lust. If you are however interested in truly skillfully put it to an end, then end the attachment to desire (which is difficult to do). If one stops eating to much, goes back to once a day, in the morning, drinks often distilled water (or tea), and ends his sleep problems, lust is dropping like a rock thrown in a lake and attains much energy. Then the refraining from unwholesome deeds, such as wrong view, intentions, speech, act, effort, livelihood, attention and concentration, and focuses on Awareness and does not mind worldly activities, surely the attachment to desire will naturally come to its end, due to all things in nature are temporary. Stoping with masturbation, just refraining from it, without skillfully spiritual practice, is just unintelligent, foolish, hurtful. Its better to be doing it everyday, then just stopping it forcefully. It leads often just to aggression.

Sri Anandamayi Ma was once approached by someone in doubt whether to join the Ashram or not, I don't think I can give up all the pleasures of my wordly life and she said: 'Ahh, you are a true renunciate. You are renouncing the infinite bliss of God for those few crumbs? ' Bliss or Hubris: You Choose ~ Shunyamurti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwaUr9qfInY

Most impressed with this man out of the hundreds of teachers I have seen, or skimmed over, that is still alive. He talks about God, infinity, the ultimate bliss and fulfillment with such consistent calmness and presence that I belief it comes from truth and unconditional love, and the things he shares are clearly deeply insightful, clever and sometimes hilarious. I hope he may benefit many: