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@Mrkvn8 Maybe consider: instead of thinking about it as "ways" to have fun...as in specific activities (although @ajasatya has you covered with those, awesome)...you could alternately think of it as "THE way YOU have FUN" as in: allowing yourself to have: the wonder of a child, the bliss of truly savouring, and the freedom of truthful, joyful, expression, etc

Management of self talk Take a deep breath and do it for a couple of times... Good... Look at your phone and remember that it is a medium for self texting.. What do you really want out of life? To feel good... See now this is the problem right there... You assign labels to feeling instead of just feeling it and its physical manifestations objectively... But these physical manifestations are temporary and keep changing so clinging to a feeling will obviously cause dissatisfaction as it will change.. But Dissatisfaction itself is a feeling and the seeds of dissatisfaction cause trees of dissatisfaction... So that means that if I can treat every emotion just as it is I can experience less dissatisfaction? What if the existential void of dissatisfaction is actually just a label can I just cange this label to bliss and love this feeling? Lets start with mindfulness on a serious level. A commitment from the heart.

I don't know the purposes of those who write here. Perhaps to make some money in training schemes to which I have no objection. But my reply may cause you to feel you have lost face because I will disagree with you. That's my intention but only to share. If you delete my account, that's fine, I get it. Besides that I am very old. And nobody cares I get that too. The astral travelling experience is as unmistakable as the death experience. What you all appear to fail to comprehend is such experiences take you into a world that is not human. I mean for example, ghost stories where the ghost is still him/herself from the world but it is not so -- leaving the body is leaving the human. To be sure there are ghosts but they are only the remains of the personality, not the former human who soon goes elsewhere. All this is subjective knowledge to you, even if I've gained the knowledge through experience, its current worth to you is only entertainment. Astral travelling is accompanied by specific and unmistakable events, as I've said, which none of you has mentioned. The after-effects of astral travelling are also unmistakable. The time difference (even if time is illusory) is stark. I won't say more about the astral travelling experience as I don't like fakes or fakers. @Shin Enlightenment. I notice on the forums stipulations about what enlightenment involves; about what the enlightened should be, even how they think or don't think. Imho Buddha, among other things, was a bit slow. Took him 7 years to realize fasting was pointless. But no one's perfect. Enlightenment is a brutal thing, although if you really want it you can have it. The downside is it's like being at the centre of a wheel and if you detract from the state for any reason you will be thrown swiftly into states that could make you worse than you were when you began. At the same time denial and complete destruction of yourself so that being thrown from the centre are important to your growth and continuity. Becoming a lawyer, doctor, president or soldier in battle are difficult but attaining enlightenment and keeping it is difficult even beyond your worst nightmares. Enlightenment is a huge career move. You, your world and all that you believe and hold dear will never be the same. Even if you're surrounded by people, even friends and family you will be forever alone. Doesn't mean you can't have a beloved, you can but there is alone and 'alone.' People know that already, but there's another alone even beyond that. ^^ More seriously, do you get the enormity? Sure, you can have enlightenment but for you it will be like living on a distant planet surrounded by aliens. Aliens who communicate in specific ways. Any deviation from their ways will be uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. You will have knowledge and solutions beyond the average person but there won't be a single thing you can do, and for many reasons. Become charming, rich even alter your features, no problemo, but from the standpoint of enlightenment mostly you won't, although charm is useful. Helping the world? Someone helped Pol Pot in Cambodia and he began Year Zero and genocidal insanity. You don't know their ultimate aims, you are not a God, you're only enlightened. Certainly enlightenment is all the lovely things you dream about, but it's not cheap. Are you ready to fast march up Mount Everest 9000 times with a heavy pack on your back hoping you don't lose your footing at 8999 while the world guesses you're a little strange? Then enlightenment is for you! Otherwise remember ignorance is bliss.

Meditation minus Bliss is not true meditation‏ It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together. Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face. That’s why your saints — so-called saints — look sad. Sadness has become a necessary quality for being a saint. They can’t laugh, they can’t dance, they can’t sing, they can’t love, they can’t rejoice. They talk about bliss but they only talk about it. You don’t see any bliss in their eyes, you don’t see any bliss in their milieu, you don’t see any bliss radiating from their inner center. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden. The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence. You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss God, you will miss nirvana. And you can also try to be blissful; that means you can pretend, you can practice, you can rehearse bliss. You can always try to be blissful, smiling, at least looking happy. Slowly slowly, it becomes so practiced… like Jimmy Carter. Now his smile is disappearing, but just remember two years before — you could have counted his teeth! You can practice it. I have heard that in the beginning days of his presidency his wife had to close his mouth in the night! I don’t know how far it is true, but it appears to be true — because if you practice the whole day, then in the night too your muscles become fixed. Even in sleep you will go on smiling. You can practice blissfulness too, but a practiced blissfulness is false. Anything practiced is false, remember it — never forget it. Things have to be spontaneous and natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. You are smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. You are showing joy, but you are not joyous. Your heart is a desert; only on the face you have put plastic flowers. They may deceive others, but they can’t deceive you and they can’t deceive a master. Your smile, your joy, is formal — just good manners. This too has happened. There have been many saints, very blissful, always singing and dancing, but deep down just deserts. They both have chosen only the half, and the half-truth is far more untrue than any untruth. Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world. Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life. Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol 8″

Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation. What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert - that's what meditation is. So perfectly good! Children are beautiful - pure energy dancing around, pure energy running around. Delight in it and watch it. I don't see why you are feeling yourself in trouble. The mind goes on creating trouble. Whatsoever you do, the mind goes on creating trouble. Now the mind says: Is this meditation at all? Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation - and don't be worried about it! The mind constantly creates some anxiety. Many times people come to me. They say they are feeling very good, very high - but is this real? Now the mind is creating a new trouble: Is this real? The mind has never asked this before. When you have a headache, do you ask: Is this real? You trust in misery too much. A headache is necessarily real, but if you go high and you feel a peak of bliss, the mind starts creating a subtle anxiety: Is this real? You may be in a delusion, hallucination, imagination. You may be seeing a dream. Or if you cannot find anything else, then: Osho must have hypnotized you. You must be in hypnosis. You cannot believe that you can be blissful, that you can be happy. Because of this tendency of the mind, the mind clings to the miserable. Mind is always seeking and searching for hell, because it can exist only in misery; in bliss it disappears. Only in misery does it have throbbing life; only in misery does its business go well. Whenever you are happy it is not needed; when you are blissful, who needs mind? - you have already gone beyond it. The mind feels left behind, neglected, it starts nagging you. It says: Where are you going? Are you hypnotized? What illusions are you seeing? These are all dreams! Because of this tendency, millions of people have come to a meditative point some time or other in their life but they miss the door. The door comes but they cannot believe in it. Meditation is as natural a phenomenon as love. It happens to everybody! It is part of your being, but you cannot believe in it. Even if it happens, you somehow overlook it. Or even if you feel that something is happening, you cannot say to others that something is happening because you are afraid others will think that you have gone mad. Your own mind goes on saying that this is not possible; this is too good to be true. So you forget about it. Remember again: in your childhood, or later on when you were young, there must have been a few moments. It is impossible that those moments were not there; they have been there in everybody's life. Just try to recollect again and you will remember there have been moments when something was opening, but you closed it, afraid. Sometimes, sitting on a silent night, looking at the stars - and something was going to happen and you shrank; apprehensive, frightened, you started doing something else. It was too good to be true. You missed an opportunity. Sometimes, in deep love, just sitting by the side of your beloved, something started happening; you were moving in some unknown direction. You became scared, you pulled yourself back to earth. Sometimes, for no reason at all, just swimming in the river, or running around in the hot sun, or just relaxing on the beach and listening to the wild roar of the ocean, something started happening inside you, some inner alchemical change, as if your body was creating LSD. Something inside... and you were moving in a totally unknown dimension - as if you had wings and you could fly. You became afraid, you started clinging to the earth. Many times in each person's life, such moments come; but those moments are not aggressive, they cannot force anything against you. If you are ready you can move, drift into them, slip into them, float with them, to the farthest end of existence. If you are afraid you cling to your shore, and you miss the boat. The boat cannot wait for you. So don't be disturbed by the mind. Watching children playing around is a beautiful meditation - because watching is meditation. But remember, don't think about it. If children are dancing, running around, playing, shrieking, jumping, jogging, don't start thinking - just watch. Watch without any thought. Be aware, but don't think. Remain alert - just seeing, a pure seeing, a clarity, but don't start thinking about it; otherwise you have already moved away. Watching children, you can remember your own child back home. Then you have missed, then you are not watching these children. Some memories are floating in your mind. A film starts moving; then you are in a daydream. Simply watch! (Osho in The Search #7)

This experience occurred after roughly 2 ½ years of meditating almost every day. I was driving home from work when it happened. All morning I was in a meditative and contemplative state of mind. I was about 3 or 4 miles from home. In my mind I was thinking of the incomprehensible number of universes and the incomprehensible number of different “me’s” in existence. I thought about what would happen if they all met. Many of them would be similar and many of them would be vastly different. Some of them would look identical and others would look vastly different. Then everything stopped. I had felt stillness before but this was infinitely deeper than anything I had felt before. The moment I realized that all of the different possibilities of the form which constitutes “me” could look the same and others would look completely different something profound in my mind snapped. In an instant and outside of space and time I was all life. My entire perception of reality was cleaned. I was all life on earth, in the universe and in all of existence. I did not feel connected to all life. Thomas Roger did not exist anymore. There was just awareness in a body and that’s it. There was only life and it’s happening. I watched in sheer amazement at all of the people who drove by me and each person I saw was also myself. It doesn’t even make any sense that something like this is even possible but it happened. My mind did not judge or comment on the people I saw. I was simply in utter amazement at the sheer beauty of the life that was happening. (All of this happened while I was at a red light.) When the red light turned green I had no idea how I was driving, how I was seeing or anything. I returned home in a state of utter amazement, bliss and gratitude. It felt like all existence felt this way too. I know that doesn’t make any sense but it did. When I entered the driveway and emerged from the car and saw the world from outside the windows I almost cried. The air was so crisp. It was an overcast day but it was so profoundly beautiful. I walked in front of my house and said this. “I had never really seen reality before. This is the first time I have truly seen life.” I began to be overwhelmed with happiness. Every tree, every person, every blade of grass, every insect all life was one. I completely disappeared and was all life. I was all life. I walked up to some flowers in front of my house and looked at a bee walking along one of them. This made me especially happy. I began to laugh. I smiled so hard. I was the bee and the bee was me. All life was one. I walked into my house and went into my brother’s room he was sleeping. When I saw him I became even happier as I was also one with him. I began to laugh even more. I realized that the same consciousness that he was experiencing was the same consciousness that I was experiencing. That I am experiencing. That we all are experiencing. All life is experiencing the same consciousness. The medium through which it is experienced may be vastly different but the consciousness, the awareness is the same. I needed to get something to take to my college so I picked that up and went back out to the car still in sheer amazement and happiness. As I drove the car I also realized that the same consciousness that mom experienced I too experienced at that very moment and my whole life. ( My mother passed away when I was 16 years old.) At this point my mind couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled over less than a mile from home and broke down and cried at the sheer incomprehensible, profound and breathtaking beauty of existence. After about five minutes of crying in sheer awe and gratitude I sat there for about another minute and continued my day. This lasted for about two hours then I slowly came back as a tiny individuated ego. However there was still a great residual after effect from what I just experienced. (to call this an experience is limiting, it is a state of being) This was by far the most magical day of my life as of august 1st 2016.

Don't change the world, change yourself, grow into a meditator. You are only 15. When you are young, it is the easiest thing possible. It looks very difficult because you have not tried it yet. Give it a try. Why are you worried about the rest of the world? Let the world worry about itself. And you are not worried about what will happen to the rest of the world if you remain ignorant.... If you are ignorant, what happens to the rest of the world? You create misery. Not that you knowingly do it, you are misery -- so whatsoever you do, you sow seeds of misery all around. Please leave the world to itself. You can do only one thing, and that is, you can achieve inner silence, inner bliss, inner light. If you achieve this, you have helped the world very much. Just by changing one ignorant spot into an enlightened flame, just by changing one person from darkness into light, you have changed a part of the world. And this changed part will have its own chain reactions. Buddha is not dead. Jesus is not dead. They cannot be dead because there is a chain reaction -- from one lamp, from one flame, another flame takes over. And a successor is created, and they go on living. But if your light is not there, if your lamp is without a flame, you cannot help anyone. The first basic thing is that you must attain your inner flame. Then others can share. Then you can kindle others' light also. Then it becomes a succession. If you become enlightened, whatsoever you do -- or you need not do anything -- just your being, your presence will help others to flower, to be happy, to be blissful. But that should not be your concern. The first thing is how to be enlightened.

I wanted to experience a change in perception without too much of a mindfuck (which I had strongly during my first two shroom trips), so I decided to experiment with a low dose. I drank a hibiscus tea with ginger, since that’s supposed to prevent eventual nausea, with 2g of dried psilocybe cubensis. Although I expected the trip to be less intense than my first two, I was not quite prepared for it to be that different. My first two experiences where like a roller-coaster. It was a an emotional up and down from blank panic to profound bliss (at some points they even merged together). I had lost all my past and identity. I couldn’t remember who I was, but at the same time feeling very present and aware. This trip had nothing with me pacing around talking to myself like a complete psycho, as I knew it from my past experiences. I was lying on my bed meditating as I waited for the onset. I noticed exactly when the effects began. it was from one second to the other: suddenly I couldn’t do the labeling anymore. It was just impossible because ‚hearing‘ and ‚seeing‘ merged. I just wasn’t able to separate them from each other. Then ‚feeling‘ joined them. After some moments of very strong closed eye hallucinations (mostly fast moving geometrical patterns with neon colors), they stilled and I turned back to normal labeling. Then it became impossible again and the cycle began once more. That went on like this for like 10-20 times more, varying in duration. After a while I felt getting more and more lost in the patterns (like tunnels) and I had to give up the labeling. I tried focusing on my breath, but I had to give up that as well. So I decided to surrender and to follow my visual sense, focusing my awareness on the colorful patterns. Now, this is where it gets very difficult to put into words…but I’ll try it. After a while I felt like I was floating through concepts in my mind. like every thought that came up became plastic: the thoughts materialized in front of my eyes (they looked like grey, sharp stalagmites and stalagtites shooting out of every direction from an orange background. I just floated through that orange thing with sort grey rays coming towards me and I left them behind rapidly. Sometimes I would catch a more detailed glimpse on those thoughts and something inside of me would react like ‚wtf, this can’t be. what the heck is this? now, this can’t be real‘ (I can’t recall the exact content now, but I think most of them related to friends and people I know). Then this strange thing happened like 5-10 times: I suddenly identified with one of my friends (often from the past). I literally felt like I was him/her. and then I thought: ‚wait, no! this can’t be me. this is my friend, so I must be someone else‘ then an excited: ‚well, who am I then?‘ and I actually didn’t know. not figuratively, but quite literally: I couldn’t recall my name. I couldn’t recall my face or my personal history. But it didn’t terrify me. Neither did I feel euphoria or bliss. I was just generally curious. I continued asking myself ‚who am I?‘. shortly after that either my name, my personal history or the image of my face would return to my mind. I always felt a little disappointed afterwards. This trance eventually stopped and I felt hungry. I ate some fruits I had previously prepared for the trip. (eating whilst tripping I can only describe as a great delight: it tasted so sweet and fresh, I felt myself getting completely lost in that sweet moment) Then the trip became weaker and I tried to do some more meditation. I tried the ‚do nothing‘ technique and it felt amazing. sounds, but mostly visuals and feelings floated by and I just felt very distant from them, glossing over them with something I could only describe as curiosity and a mild amusement. I am not quite sure what to make out of this trip. It was just so different from what I expected (less emotional, less mindfuck and more of a calm state of flow) I hope I can elaborate this stuff the following days and integrate some of the experiences into my daily life. I still have to wrap my head around what the shrooms were trying to tell/show me. Thanks for bearing with me if you came so far. :-)

One should do physical exercises which make him more aware, alert and alive throughout the day, not only after gym. Every technique that makes your mind silent is not meditation. You can avoid the complexity of spiritual transformation. You can chose a technique to force your mind to be still. It is a negative state; it makes mind only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together. Weight trainers tend to pull their chest out and belly in. There is a stupid idea popular in the whole world that belly should be pulled in and chest should look larger, it hinders natural breathing. Breath is literally the bridge connecting all of these aspects of our being and our existence. When you are relaxed ,as the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used – in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. There is a Japanese word for the initial source of breath. That word is "tanden". Right breathing is connected with tanden, which is located two inches below the navel. The further a man is away from existence, the further his breath moves away from tanden. The higher your centre of breathing is, the more tense you are; the lower the point of your breath, the more you are relaxed. If your breathing is from tanden, there will be no tensions in your life. This is the very reason why children are free from tension. Observe your breath in a moment of relaxation. You will find it coming from tanden. When you are filled with tension and anxiety, observe your breath. It will become short, and it will come from the chest. Short breath is an indication that you are far removed from your original nature. There is a reason why we breathe from the chest. A very wrong concept has pervaded in the world. According to this, the chest should be well developed and large, and the abdomen should be flat, almost against the back. This mad tendency has created a terrible disturbance within the human body. In order to inflate the chest, the breath has to fill the chest and not be allowed to go down further. Observe yourself sometimes as you sit quietly by yourself on a chair. Let yourself loose, - there should be no tension - and you will feel the breath rising from your navel. But we do not let ourselves relax even when we rest. Is the idea of having an expanded chest so ingrained in us.

One thing that I am still strongly identified with is my self image. Its this dark, amorphous, subtly changing image of my physical self. My contour, my face, my head. It's always shadowy but there and it's as though it has a hook in my awareness. Even questions like 'who am I?' seem to unfold on top of it.. There is so much resistance. I did Leo's guided neti neti method and found myself grasping for some experience. Some massive bliss and relief.. of course that did not happen and I was left with anger and frustration and that stuck to me like glue....

If you find it too complicated, you can try OSHO KUNDALINI MEDITATION This “sister meditation” to the OSHO Dynamic is best done at sunset or in the late afternoon. Being fully immersed in the shaking and dancing of the first two stages helps to “melt” the rock-like being, wherever the energy flow has been repressed and blocked. Then that energy can flow, dance and be transformed into bliss and joy. The last two stages enable all this energy to flow vertically, to move upwards into silence. It is a highly effective way of unwinding and letting go at the end of the day. Osho on How to Shake: "If you are doing the Kundalini Meditation, allow the shaking – don't do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don't do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don't will it. "If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stonelike, rocklike within. You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question. "When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rocklike being should shake to the very foundations, so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rocklike being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not. "Enjoy it, but don't will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it you cannot will it." Osho Instructions: The meditation is one hour long, with four stages. First Stage: 15 minutes Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed. Second Stage: 15 minutes Dance ... any way you feel, and let the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed. Third Stage: 15 minutes Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out. Fourth Stage: 15 minutes Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still. http://www.osho.com/iosho/imeditate?mid=22

If they are real friends, they will let you be alone during this period, and they will rejoice your coming back once you do. It's a win-win situation you got there. Anyway, just follow your bliss ya kna

https://jacquelynmikus.com/2017/05/09/my-sedona-experience-the-journey-to-endless-bliss/

For centuries and centuries teachers have been teaching that you are the creator of your own suffering and no one else is responsible. You have heard these things, you have read these things. But this is not your feeling, this is not your realization. I know that if I put my hand in the fire it is going to be painful. If I know, I cannot put my hand in. But if somebody else has told me, if I have heard through the tradition, if I have read in the scriptures that fire burns, and I have not known fire, and I have not known any similar experience, only then can I put my hand into fire - and that too only once. Can you conceive it? That you have put your hand into fire and you have been burned and you have suffered, and again you go and ask, ′I know that fire burns, but in spite of it I go on putting my hand into the fire. What to do about it?′ Who will believe that you know? And what type of knowledge is this? If your own experience of suffering and burning cannot stop you, nothing is going to stop you. Now there is no possibility, because the last possibility has been missed. But no one can miss it; that is impossible. Once you know.... But remember - the knowledge must be yours. A borrowed knowledge won′t do; borrowed knowledge is useless. Unless it is your own experience, it is not going to change you. Others′ experiences are of no help. You have heard that you are the creator of your own suffering, but this is just in the mind. It has not entered your being, it is not your own knowledge. So when you are discussing, you can discuss about it cerebrally, but when the actual phenomenon happens, you will forget, and you will behave in the way you know, not in the way others know. When you are at ease, cool, collected, silently discussing anger, you can say it is poison, it is a disease, evil. But when someone makes you angry then a complete change occurs. Now it is not an intellectual discussion, now you are involved. And the moment you are involved, you become angry. Later on again, retrospectively, when you again get cool, the memory will come back, your mind will again start functioning, and you will say, ′That was wrong. It was not good of me to do that. I know anger is wrong.′ You have to make a clearcut distinction between what you know and what you have gathered as knowledge. Don′t rely on information. From the greatest source - even if you collect from the greatest source - information is information. Even if a Buddha says it to you, it is not your own, and it is not going to help you in any way. But you can remain thinking that it is your knowledge, and this misunderstanding will waste your energy, time and life. The basic thing is not to ask what to do so that suffering is not created. The basic thing is to know that you are the creator of your suffering. Next time whenever a real situation arises and you are in suffering, remember to find out whether you are the cause of it. And if you can find out that you are the cause of it, the suffering will disappear, and the same suffering will not appear again - impossible. When you are suffering you can say, ′Yes, I know I have created this suffering,′ but deep down you know that someone else has created it. Your wife has created it, your husband has created it, someone else has created it, and this is simply a consolation because you cannot do anything. You console yourself: ′No one has created it, I have created it myself, and by and by I will stop it.′ Only spirituality can lead humanity towards non-suffering. Nothing else can lead, because everyone else believes that the suffering is caused by others; only spirituality says that suffering is caused by you. So spirituality makes you the master of your destiny. You are the cause of your suffering, hence you can be the cause of your bliss.

I noticed I'm becoming a lot happier these days thanks to meditation. Happy enough that I'd spend much of the day in bliss. But there's still some things that tend to get me down these days. Because of my efforts, I feel a deep acceptance and wider inner peace for these emotions well but they still pain me. I notice in casual conversations — people will step in with pretty average answers in questions about their life. But being in personal development for 5 years — I tend to give more overall optimistic answers while being humble enough to admit some flaws. And I get the sense that by being better — I lost some equal standing with others. That maybe people won't relate to me as a friend well the better I get. That if I continue my hard work now in bettering my life, I'd reach a point where I become a hero — the kind of hero people mistakenly believe know everything about life and are perfect —inhuman. I get more genuinely cheerful as the days go by. I'm more the relaxed and easygoing cheerful than the loud and excitable ones. Will I seem fake? Some kind of liar? Arrogant? Lacking self awareness? It might sound stupid — but one of the major issues I've went through was caring how much people thought of me. I have some insecurities of not being accepted and belonging somewhere. If I get even much better at life than I do now, will I inspire more or will cause more jealousy? I guess I'm concerned for these people. I clearly remember the memories of looking at people who are stars in society at life and work. And often felt that it was impossible to match them and even still feel these a bit these days. I don't want people to feel that way. And I don't want to be hated. Yes, it's not my fault. But I still feel these emotions. It's painfully ironic. I went through life fearing telling others my more flawed side. Now I fear showing any tidbit of achievement and great happiness. This also applies to when I teach or give advice — the act seems like a subtle message saying that "I know more than you," and I don't want to cause the above. Not that it stops me from doing so — but it saddens me. Scares me. What can I do?

All knowledge, culture and basically all language that mankind has created can be summed up as world mind. You are an integral part of world mind. You perpetuate it through every interaction and every thought you have. The you that you think you are is actually world mind working through you. There is no you other than that. Liberation means liberation from world mind. The purpose of the spiritual quest is to flush ever last bit of world mind out of your system. First you use the spiritual beliefs to get rid of common beliefs. In the end even spirituality has to go as it is also part of world mind. Spirituality is part of the dream. There is no such thing as spirituality. Without world mind everything functions perfectly, just as it is supposed to be. Everything is as it is and the is-ness perfectly accepts everything. In order to get rid of world mind, every last bit of you (person) has to go. You think you are a separate entity in this world but that is an illusion and causes the friction you experience in life. Existence is one unitary movement. Right now you function under the premise: perceiver - perceiving - perceived This duality is perpetuated by the world mind in you. As the world mind subsides this duality collapses into non-duality. How to get rid of world mind? World mind has a strong gravitational pull. You experience this gravitational pull as fear. Fear is the anchor of all beliefs. Spirituality offers many techniques to transcend fear and beliefs. You can work on a level of emotions (e.g. Sedona Method) or tackle the problem from the angle of thought (e.g. Byron Katie). The more you let go of fear and beliefs the weaker the gravitational pull will become. In the early stages your focus should lie on gaining momentum. Practice, reading, meditation, diet, yoga and so on are highly recommended. You know that you make progress when you see your personality transform. Things that bothered you start to bother you less. Past problems become non-issues that you don't even think about anymore. You slowly become more energetic and positive. You are able to hold paradoxes in your mind without the need to resolve them. You always see the two sides of the coin. The later stages are even trickier than the first stages. You overcame most of the gravitational pull of the world mind. You probably had an awakening or two. At this stage your practice starts to develop a life of it's own. Some techniques you use become automatic. This topic is on your mind almost 24/7. Now a different force starts pulling on you. We could call it "the void". This stage can be pretty scary and confusing. The world mind in you recognizes that it is about to be defeated. It starts to fight and wonder, "Maybe this whole spirituality thing wasn't such a good idea after all". The more you resist the fall of the world mind in you the more friction you will experience. The number one advice at this point is surrender. Surrender, surrender, surrender. A big trap at this stage is that the ego starts attaching itself to spirituality. Instead of worldly goals it yearns for divine moments, peace, bliss and all that jazz. If you recognize that movement in you realize that it's just another movement of the world mind that you need to treat just like everything else before. The last step you have to take is not a step you can take. Every movement you make is a movement away from it. Even the need to be free of this situation is standing in the way of liberation. There is nothing in your power that can do about it. All that is left to do is to surrender and to wait for the world mind to finally call defeat. What then? Of course we have many reports of people who went through this transformation but in the end you can't know if what they say is true. You have to fully accept and embrace the unknown. Everything could happen. You could die and that's why it's so scary. This text probably won't make you feel comfortable and that is the purpose of it. Spirituality is not an easy path. It takes everything from you, everything. This text is part of the world mind and should be discarded once it served it's purpose.

wow, love this. I think this was one of my bigger insights during the last shroom trip. It was kind of hard for me to formulate the insight. I had this deep struggle within, it kept choking me and I kept looking, seeking, doing, thinking and trying to grasp like crazy. then I suddenly realized That I need to let go and so I did. It felt lie such a release. Like struggling up an infinite mountain, reaching the top and then jump down in total bliss and freedom <3 thanks for putting this into words

Shin...It was more like this: He was excited because he saw nothingness and this: It's called Riding the Ox Backwards in Zen. (Well, the animation is supposed to be going backwards instead.) And, this massive light goes into the body with extreme bliss like this: It may have been different since it's done with 5meo. I dunno.

When you meditate and you experience bliss for the first time

pond jumping, part 1. I'm finally back to some semblance of sanity after three weeks of insanity. Ten days in Ireland, ten days in Peru. Seriously, I was beginning to go insane. It wasn't because I was away from home, nor was it because of the layovers and long travel times. It was due mainly to lack of alone time and dietary options. No offense to the Irish, but your food totally sucks, especially for vegetarians/vegans. Hardly any fresh produce; all deep fried processed potato-ey constipating foods. The group that I was with also provided too much food. My constipation was so bad that I looked pregnant; I'm surprised nobody asked me if I was. Being incredibly constipated reminded me of my hellishly miserable school years. I have no doubts now: an unhappy body is an unhappy psyche. Then there was the group I was with. The three other millenials I roomed with were so shallow that even the Irish puddles were saying, "Dayum son!" Is this really what it's come to? Snapchatting every single fucking moment of your life? Filling every waking moment with noise? Gossiping about the Kardashians and the people sitting next to you? I know I sound condescending. But my God, I'm concerned. More and more, I feel like a stranger in a strange land, and Leo's recent episode on loneliness really resonates. I also think of this scene from Wall-E. I went to Ireland for a songwriting workshop, hoping that it could give me some clarity on my relationship with music. It did, but not in the way I hoped. The workshop felt like a break-up. I've spent the past three years seriously building my music and songwriting skills, but now I realize that it's not what I want to do full-time. I hate traditional songwriting. I feel like a charlatan whenever I do it. This workshop reminded me of my social studies classes in primary school, which I always hated. I was a math/science guy in school. The insight I gleaned is this: I'm primarily a musician, not a songwriter. I'm an emotional engineer, not a storyteller. I listen to music less for the lyrics and more for the musicality. For the past three years, the universe has been beating me down, telling me not to be a performing artist. I don't feel built for it. I'm extremely introverted, don't resonate with most people, and most people don't resonate with me. I went into music for music's sake, not for a sense of impact on others. Now I'm craving that sense of impact, and music's not giving it to me. The next insight: music probably won't be my full-time job. I can see myself having an online following and doing busking/local gigs, but no more than that. The blog's also been an interesting experiment, but I feel it burning out as well. I figure I'll keep writing here and ditch the blog. Along with "Follow your bliss," I received some solid advice from one of the songwriters who led the group. "If it ain't 'Hell yeah!' then it's 'No'", she said. Well, songwriting and the blog are not a "hell yeah" anymore, and no amount of listening to music/reading has reignited the fire. I purposely paused on the Life Purpose Course because of how volatile I've been lately. To be expected as a clueless twenty-something...

@Azrael I believe there is a point where you realize that what majority of hoomans call falling in love and "bliss" is actually a bigass load of suffering. In my case several months ago romantic feelings started spontaneously appearing for girls I had not seen for ages, and then disappearing as the lovey-dovey romance was purged away. Funnily enough usually the bottom line emotion of the "love" was loneliness... talk about purity of romantic love FUCKING HOLYWOOD FUCKING HELL FUCK YOU XD.

You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss Atman, true self. You will look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that you have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. You have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. You have chosen meditation, you have forced your mind to be still. It is a negative state; your mind is only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. A meditator is not identified with his mind but he can use his mind whenever he needs. He will become more intelligent, but he is able to turn the mechanism of verbalization on and off. Unnecessary chattering of mind will not be there. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; but when you are alone with existence, you must be able to turn it off. If you can’t turn it off – if it goes on and on, and you are incapable of stopping it – then you have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. When you walk, you need to move your legs. But if they go on moving when you are sitting, then you are mad. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a technique to communicate. When you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this, you can grow into meditation.

I guess I could have phrased that more clearly...I just mean that this realization that "nobody exists" seems like it is rather earth shattering, the "collapsing of the dream". But it's not really a phenomenon you hear about for a typical person, for instance I don't personally know anybody that has experienced this, spiritual seeker or not. But I know plenty of people that have experienced the flow state or moments of bliss. So it could be that there are other elements involved in the collapsing of the dream, that guys like Tony Parsons are unaware of. From his vantage point now, it may seem like a spontaneous event that is not preceded by anything, but he may not be aware of everything that allowed him to finally awaken. Paraphrasing Nisargadatta Maharaj, the fruit falls instantly from the tree, but the ripening took time. Parsons may be unaware of the ripening process he himself went through. And the fact remains that the majority of these neo-advaita people did indeed spend much time seeking and meditating prior to their awakening. Perhaps that is the ripening process.

1. Start with the daytime. With the first ray of consciousness as you wake up in the morning, start the experiment. After a thousand attempts, perhaps one may succeed but even if one attempt is successful you will realize that the thousands of attempts were worthwhile. If even for a moment, you came to experience that he who walks is not you but he who is unmoving is you; he who is full of desires is not you, but that he who is forever desireless is you; that that which is perishable is not you, but the fountain of eternal nectar is you. Start with the daytime, and gradually you will succeed in carrying it through into your sleep. Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples to practice awareness during the daytime, and then he would tell them that just before going to bed they must remember: ”This is a dream.” You are still awake. There is no dream yet, but you have to keep repeating to yourself: ”Everything I see is a dream.” Touch the bed and intensify the feeling: ”Whatever I touch is a dream.” Touch one hand with the other, and experience: ”All that I touch is a dream.” You go to sleep sinking deep into this feeling. There will be a constant stream of feeling moving inside. After a few days you will find that in the middle of a dream you will suddenly become aware that it is a dream. As soon as you remember that it is a dream, the dream breaks, because the dream works only in the absence of consciousness. Then you will be filled with bliss such as you have never known before. 2.Shankara’s Vedanta propounds the concept that the universe is an illusion. This philosophy is an experiment of the same kind. The seeker has to remember constantly that whatever is happening is a dream. While getting up in the morning, walking on the road, in the midst of the marketplace, he has to remember: ”Everything is a dream.” Why? Because this is the method. It is a process. If you experiment constantly for eight hours, this remembrance will penetrate so deeply that you will remember it even in the middle of the dream; you will remember that it is a dream. At present you are unable to remember. Actually, you are doing it even now – but in the reverse order. All your waking hours you feel and understand that whatever you see is real. And that is why dreams seem real at night, because the feeling is very strong. What can be more false than dreams? How many times on waking up have you realized their falsity, their uselessness? Yet every night you make the same mistake. Why? There must be a very deep reason behind this folly. The reason is: in your waking state you take everything to be true. If you take everything you see to be real, then how can the dreams you see at night appear to be illusory? You take them to be real. The maya experiment is just the opposite. Whatever you see during the day, you remember that this is unreal. You forget again and again, but once again you pull yourself together. You remind yourself that everything you see is nothing but a huge drama in which you are only a spectator. You are not the actor, not the doer, but only a witness. If you nurture this feeling, it becomes a constant flow within. Finally the dream disappears in the night, and this is a great attainment. If the dream is shattered, you are ready to take the third step. If the dream is shattered, you can take the third step of retaining consciousness in deep sleep. But right now this is difficult for you. It is not possible to do it all at once; you must proceed step by step. 3. While walking along the road, stop! Become the observer: realize that it is the body walking and you are merely an observer. While eating, stop! Become the observer. The body eats. You are merely observing. While attending to the customers in your shop, stop! Become the observer. Do not get so engrossed as to forget the observer. Take hold of yourself time and again. It will require a continuous effort. You will find, by and by, that the effort becomes easier day by day; now and again you will get flashes of 'pure consciousness'. When 'pure consciousness' comes easily in the daytime you can gradually utilize it in your dreams. Then when you are about to fall asleep let the last thought in your mind be: ”I am the observer”. As sleep overcomes you let this thought reverberate in your mind: ”I am the witness, I am the witness...” And thus you fall asleep. You will not be able to catch the moment when sleep comes and the repetition stops. If you cultivate the feeling till you fall asleep the feeling will continue into sleep, for it is only the body that sleeps. As you cultivate this feeling more and more, one night you will suddenly become conscious of the observer in your sleep. And as soon as you become aware of the observer a rare thing happens – dreams vanish. Dreams occur only because of your unconsciousness. Now nothing and nobody can make you unaware, unconscious. He who awakens even for a moment in his sleep, his unawareness is gone forever. The day you awaken in your sleep you become a yogi. You cannot become a yogi by performing asanas. These are merely exercises. They are good and useful to keep the body healthy, but if you take them to be the true yoga then you are deluded. Yoga means: the art of awakening in sleep. Thus he who awakens is a yogi. Osho ~ The Great Path

To repeat your question: What will actually bring you happiness, bliss and fulfillment? Answer: Loving. To be free from fear. Which is manifested in such things as greed, want, validation, etc. These are all forms of tension. To be loving, unconditionally, requires total release of tension. No fear. So one can open their heart like a blossom of radiance. A self-development goal, in this regard, would be to be fearless. Which is manifested as being soft, open, allowing, accepting, forgiving, tolerant, patient, and listening, because all these traits is what truth is. And it's full expression is unconditional love.