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Thank you very much for posting that video. I can confirm from long time experience (10 years+) of walking this path (Mahamudra, especially the system outlined in Pointing out the Great Way, but also Dzogchen) is very effective. It is orders of magnitude more effective in taking meditation and Awakening off the pillow into daily life than any other meditation system I am aware of, and I read about & tried quite some. I am convinced that with any other system it would have taken me at least 2-3 times longer at least, probably more. Getting meditation off the pillow and into daily life, not as mindfulness but more as Trekchö, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekchö#:~:text=In Dzogchen%2C trekchö (khregs chod,with its admonition against practice. , is in my experience essential to get the momentum of Awakened States going that is necessary for further insights - at least if one is not (geneticall or karmically) prodigy-like-gifted. Here Daniel Brown talks about the beginnings of Awakened-States, starting to get nondual: One thing to keep in mind: He already had Parkinson at that time of the shooting of that video, it was 3-4 years before his passing away last year. But besides that impacting him already, one can clearly feel his awakened state and presence. Water by the River PS: A brief summary of my experiences with the Mahamudra-System:

People would believe others without question if it sounds deep. Guy had 80+ awakenings, better take his word for true, whos got time for his own 80 awakenings? People will parrot what others say and false spreads as wildfire. If you are AWAKE you will drill "truths" like that and anyone who claims to have awakened to the truth. No time for zen devilry, it confuses the seeds (you and me)

Probably a few trainwrecks, clusterf*****, maybe even a few voluntary early returns to the source ahead. And bad Karma for many involved. Maybe some experienced and integrated and hopefully quite awakened ones will benefit. Lets see and hope the best. I just hope it won't be too much show. I personally wouldn't dare rolling out something like that to customers/course-recipients that have not been personally qualified on an individual basis for personal readiness, maturity and wisdom. Over a long time of screening. And rolling out a paid course to an audiance which in large parts gets picked up via the google drag-net fishing in many cases those with serious psychological problems... If we all agree that the Reality is Infinite Intelligence, this Reality has zero problems with handing out Karma for such an endeavour if it fails and has got negative (or very negative) impact on weighted average. And Reality is not fair & straight in rolling out Karma. One essential ingridient of Lila/Maya is the illusion-element of the trickster. The seductress Maya. Looks good in the beginning as attractive choice, and then later one gets served ones Karma. But in either way the outcome will be, probably literally the hell of a show ahead... Bon voyage Water by the River

Don’t dismiss logic so easily. If you say that your POV is Absolute Truth, then how are you rejecting Solipsism? If you rely on direct experience, there are no other POVs. It is only your logic that tells you that others exist. Notice that. That is why you can’t trust your perceptions. Even though all logic is based on your perceptions, it is a higher mode of perception that can think and analyze perception. But how do you know you have awakened other than you feeling like you have and being convinced? How do you know your awakening isn’t a self-deception? In my awakening, I realized there is no difference between the two. Don’t dismiss the camera analogy too easily. The videos you record on your camera are taking place in your camera, which takes place in reality. A camera just like your brain is a filtering process of consciousness. If your camera or brain gets damaged, you lose connection to reality. When your camera breaks, it “dies.” You can’t experience reality without a body/brain. Please notice that strange loop. When you are dismissing solipsism, you are trusting logic more than your experience lol. You ain’t gonna find another experience in your experience. Logic is gonna be an inference at best that there are others who experience like you do. There is no inference in direct experience. Inference is a conceptual/logical faculty lol.

Consider first that an infinite mind can have distinctly different wills, perhaps even direct opposite ones. Consider also that perfect Love gives you absolute freewill to do/be what you wish. The God that I "carry in me" that I have awakened to wills heaven here and/or in "spirit world". But what is meant by "heaven"? Something like a state of oneness and perfect Love, maximal consciousness. That doesn't mean I immediately accepted my awakenings, because like you I have been living in a different kind of state, it took me some time to more fully accept. But like I said, consider the first two possibilities then you might be open to considering the third assertion as "will of God".

Only when you have been through some hard shit, will this scene make sense to you. Survival, Law of the Jungle, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Deception/Lies/Trickery is what is being taught here. If you haven't awakened don't pretend to know what Death is. Because for you at that moment, it will feel real to you.

When You Fully Awaken You Literally Become The Instrument of God. I am a super conductor, I have a discerning eye that can clear through all lies. To do this you must speak the language of feeling, humans like to call it insight and intuition. Judge every teaching on Self-Love. What is Self-Love....the absence of all bias. I love Leo, but Leo teaches self-hatred in this video. People don't make you stupid, that is a denial of your authority. Take your authority back and realize that your own self-bias is the only thing holding you back. Want to understand the genius of people? Learn how to connect to feeling, because the feelings of what you call others is just your feelings. Spirituality is Therapy, and the number one rule of therapy is tell the truth about your feelings. If you cannot connect to people it is because you have not healed all your emotional pain. This is why the path is so tricky. First you must deny your humanity and walk alone to awaken. Then you must reclaim your humanity not through the prison of identity, but through the freedom of cooperation and understanding. THIS IS LOVE. To face your greatest fear!!! You fear to fall back into delusion once fully awakened not realizing....that IS THE FINAL TRAP!!!!! If you want to fully awaken....the last step...is to go back!!! Stay Frosty Out There!!!

There is no personal will, only absolute will. You are the absolute, you just need to directly realize it. Of course it feels like you have no freedom, because you are ensnared in a conceptual trap. Find your way out of the trap, and learn to be free. It is a gradual process of disidentifying from the human mind. The idea that you have of you is an illusion. You are not thoughts, feelings, or experiences. You are the awareness in which these phenomena arise. The more you distance your attention from thoughts, and focus awareness within, the more free you will realize that you are. It's the purpose of spiritual practice. Meditate. Contemplate. Renounce. Above all, Directly Inquire. All of this is within your ability to do, and will contribute to your realization of freedom. The absolute has awakened itself countless times, and it will awaken within you when you put in the spiritual practice to set yourself free.

It isn't productive when I do the work for you. But you were lucky to catch me in a bad mood, so I'll unpack it. But only this once. You claim that YOU have "awakened" (man, this word really should be banned or reserved for Leo exclusively) to the fact that all apparent characters are mere automatons with no free will and a "Chinese Room" inside their skulls - including your own character, the human who goes by Holykael. From this, I conclude that YOU (whatever/whoever you think of when I address you) do not identify with the human character Holykael. How could you? He is a mindless robot - he cannot possibly "awaken" because he isn't the subject of perception, he is an object. But YOU, on the other hand, DID "awaken" - so you must identify as the subject, right? So, WHO is that entity that "awakened" to the fact that "everybody is a mindless drone"? I will have to guess here, because you didn't say it explicitly - but I'm assuming that GOD did? If so, then you must identify as God. And, in your own words, God (which is you) actively imagined and handcrafted everything, including the life of Holykael. So, you are God, God has free will, which means you do; and Holykael's automaticity is not your problem, since he has nothing to do with you. Problem solved. Alternatively, you might have constructed something like this in your mind: you have "awakened" to the fact that "Holykael and the rest of us are robots" - however, that "you" who "awakened" is not the God himself, but some other "in-between" entity - who has the power to awaken, but still no free will, since it is reserved only for God, which isn't you. But, man, this is schizo, and I really hope you see it and didn't go this far. But lemme know if you did; I mean, I don't judge, and I'm sure we can unpack this as well. There is, of course, the third option: that YOU "awakened" to the fact that you are GOD - but also realized that even God himself is so total that it's invariant. In which case, no free will for us robots - but also no free will for God as well, whoopsie. Wouldn't that be a bummer?.. But, since you used phrases like "my life was handcrafted", I'll assume that you didn't go this way. Anywhoo, as Moksha so precisely pointed out, your main problem seems to be that of self-misidentification.

Hello all I am a healthy, happy, professional, semi-contemplative, spiritual person. I have taken up to 8 grams of dried penis envy from time to time. 3.5 grams seems to be plenty. Does everyone have suicidal-like thoughts, fears, or panics on psychedelics from time to time when taking heroic doses? I feel very healthy, well, and not suicidal at all. These thoughts seem reasonable when one is tripping and the veil of reality is peeled back. It seems normal for the mind to wander to deep profound thoughts. The cosmos seems so meaningful on some trips and so meaningless on other trips in a beautiful yin yang way. Sometimes we get disassociated from our bodies or surroundings. The ego death. All boundaries and barriers and the mind itself seem to dissolve. Or do psychedelics amplify or expose our internal issues? Is there a suicidal impulse buried deep inside me? My hunch is everyone encounters these thoughts or philosophical musings in bad trips or panic attacks or when losing touch with reality while tripping. But why don't Joe Rogen, Terrance McKenna, or Graham Hancock ever mention the dangers of suicidal thoughts? Many media people seem to promote psychedelics but I never see any warnings of suicidal thoughts or almost assured encounters with this thought. But in my opinion that does seem to be the big trick of psychedelics and maybe the Eleusinian mysteries. It is the sudden confrontation with death/suicide which gives insight and new meaning to life. It is the joy at returning to sobriety and reality which is a huge relief. Surviving the trip is the fun part. "There is no such thing as a bad trip." Is everyone recommending psychedelics with a wink and a nod almost hoping you bump into the suicide skeleton lurking in your closet? Are suicidal thoughts the secret gimmick of psychedelics? Is suicide a taboo and no one wants to talk about it, or is everyone embarrassed they had this thought and keep it secret or at least do not connect it to psychedelic usage? Switching gears, have any of you had what you consider to be the ultimate revelation of reality or just a horrifying idea which you keep to yourself? I have. It reminds me of the Radiohead video for "Just" or the movie "Birdbox." PM me if you had the revelation and want to hear my revelation, but I beg all of you not to ask me for it. Watch the Radiohead video and the movie "Birdbox" before contacting me. We can share revelations, but I feel it is best if you come to this revelation on your own. If I tell it to you, it will only delay your enlightenment or transcendence. It is a paradox. You cannot be awakened. You must awaken on your own. I am happy with my revelation, but it is a very unpleasant horrifying paradoxical thought and you may regret hearing it. I feel too guilty simply posting it or writing it down or telling anyone about it. I don't want to put bad vibes out there. Thank you all for reading. Thanks for any replies. I feel I am posting in the correct forum and topic. Please send me links to alternate forums where I can re-post for more views or discussion about my post. I am a rookie at online psychedelic forums.

Im just curious, if one can reach full permanent awakening with the the motivation to escape suffering?

I like that. All three levels of the ego are transcended by direct realization. Appearances still come and go, but you no longer identify with them. You can still navigate from a distance through the dream, but there is absolute awareness that you are doing nothing, thinking nothing, and identifying as nothing. That is the true flow state. The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all.

Be careful of any teachings that demonize ego. This is a false teaching. There will always be ego, because the dream is EGO/SELF. Any teaching that claims you will dissolve the ego is delusion. What is dissolved is the experience of being a separate ego. This is how you know who is awakened and who is not. Non-awakened people hate their ego and all other egos. This is because they have a desire to rid themselves of all what they deem "negative expressions." They demonize anger, impatience, violence, etc. As a result they are stuck in a cycle of self-hatred and will never awaken unless they drop their self judgment. Awakening is basically retirement. When you are completely satisfied with your creation/avatar then you will be ready to die to your individual expression and become a collective expression. So LOVE your ego unconditionally, THIS IS THE PATH TO AWAKENING. Loving your ego is the same as loving life, because all your complaints about life are just complaints about your ego and its relation to other egos. An avatar that is complete has nothing to gain or lose, thus has nothing to prove so as a result it doesn't matter if they live or die. Because in their eyes....IT IS FINISHED!!

Sure, fully agree. Thanks for highlighting that. ( : A functioning healthy working character floating around in oneself it not a bad thing. I generally like the model of Ken Wilber on these topics (below). Any kind of healthy realization/transcendence should make one more loving and productive. If it kills the functioning character, makes one disfunctional, insane or mean, it is not the healthy version of realization/transcendence, but the sick one. If at all. differentiate, transcend and integrate (the healthy model of growth and transcendence), but disassociate/split off, don't transcend, and of course don't integrate (the sick version of failed growth and transcendence), and, uuum, mucho problemas. Daniel Brown once said: How can one spot deep and mature Realization? With the conduct with which one lives ones life. Yours truly believes that this is the ultimate compass, beyond blabla-bravado, conceptual castles in the sky, the lastest new awakened state of the day, claims of superiority of whatever-kind. Anybody who claims otherwise: Why not? Too difficult? For whom? Selling Water by the River The Meaning of Egolessness – Ken Wilber Ken Wilber: Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of egolessness, Egolessness-awaken - a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with that self. One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of egoless is that people want their egoless sages to fulfill all their fantasies of saintly or spiritual, which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time. All of the things that people typically have trouble with money, food, sex, relationships, desire they want their saints to be without. Egoless sages who are above all that is what people want. Talking heads is what they want. Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it. In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be less than a person, somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings. We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us! All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us: we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether. And that absence, that vacancy, that less than personal, is what we often mean by egoless. But egoless does not mean less than personal, it means more than personal. Not personal minus, but personal plus all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints and sages from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) the ultimate source of their power but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all. These great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the term, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal). To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm. They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that’s a narcissist), they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source. The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure atman (the pure I–I) that is one with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God. Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Bal Shem Tov these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God. There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego : it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger. (As Nagarjuna put it, in the relative world, atman is real; in the absolute, neither atman nor anatman is real. Thus, in neither case is anatta a correct description of reality.) The small ego does not evaporate; it remains as the functional center of activity in the conventional realm. As I said, to lose that ego is to become a psychotic, not a sage. Transcending the ego thus actually means to transcend but include the ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each previous stage taken up, enfolded, included and embraced in the radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not get rid of the small ego, but rather, we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul and Spirit include body, emotions and mind; they do not erase them. Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit. All Forms are not other than Emptiness, including the form of the ego. It is not necessary to get rid of the ego, but simply to live it with a certain exuberance. When identification spills out of the ego and into the Kosmos at large, the ego discovers that the individual atman is in fact all of a piece with Brahman. The big Self is indeed no small ego, and thus, to the extent you are stuck in your small ego, a death and transcendence is required. Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to the Kosmos instead. But we do not want our sages to have big egos; we do not even want them to display a manifest dimension at all. Anytime a sage displays humanness in regard to money, food, sex, relationships we are shocked, shocked, because we are planning to escape life altogether, not live it, and the sage who lives life offends us. We want out, we want to ascend, we want to escape, and the sage who engages life with gusto, lives it to the hilt, grabs each wave of life and surfs it to the end this deeply, profoundly disturbs us, frightens us, because it means that we, too, might have to engage life, with gusto, on all levels, and not merely escape it in a cloud of luminous ether. We do not want our sages to have bodies, egos, drives, vitality, sex, money, relationships, or life, because those are what habitually torture us, and we want out. We do not want to surf the waves of life, we want the waves to go away. We want vaporware spirituality. The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as tantric, these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. They enter with awareness the nine rings of hell, for nowhere else are the nine heavens found. Nothing is alien to them, for there is nothing that is not One Taste. Indeed, the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light. To embrace them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of the One and Only Taste. To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and awaken to a glory that time forgot to name. Body and mind and spirit, all contained, equally contained, in the ever-present awareness that grounds the entire display. In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers. In the brightness of the day, dear God roars. Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave, thoughts wander. What are all these but the endless movements of One Taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to all who would listen: is this not you yourself? When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?

This is NOT disingenous. When you live from a non-dual awareness the belief that there was ever an outer or inner is hilarious!!! There never was!!! Close your eyes, open your eyes, this is the same!!! I keep telling you, stop thinking in terms of duality. Duality is for survival, ONENESS is for awakening!!! You need to train your mind to break all dualities!!! How the hell you think I awakened permanently? I trained my mind constantly on a daily basis to dissolve all dualities. You are not understanding because you are still living a dualistic experience. Dualism is BULLSHIT!!! There is no difference between a stick man and you. There is no difference between a 2 dimenisional world, 3 dimensional world, and a 4 dimensional world. Awakening shows you that you can get stuck in a specific perspective. But there is an ability to escape that perceptual perspective. Normal humans cannot perceive a difference between dimensions. They are stuck in a 3 dimensional experience of reality. When you live from a non-dual perspective you live from a perceptual experience that defies what science would tell you is possible. In fact I am pretty sure if I can get my hands on some more psychedelics I could permanently change the settings of my experience even more to perceive reality permanently from another perspective. Also stop talking about pointers. Again...if you are not awakened debating with me on the forums is not going to help you. I have already shared how to awaken. 1. Get a proper understanding of your true nature. Your true nature is ONE that APPEARS as many. That APPEARANCE is impermanent, but what you are is PERMANENT so clearly you are NOT a SOMETHING. That SOMETHING is an appearance. Your true nature is NOTHING. NOTHING has no qualia. It is not visual, it is not physical, it is not emotions, it is not matter or atoms, it is not time, it is not space, NOTHING does not even exist according to how existence is defined. NOTHING is BLANK. If you have ever blanked out and I am not talking about blacking out (eyes closed black screen) I am talking blank as in...there is a gap in experience for example before your first memory of your life there was BLANK. That BLANK is your true nature. 2. After you fully understand conceptually what you are. It is time to enter an alter-stated of consciousness. You can reach this through meditation, breathwork, edibles, psychedelics, (be careful with this next one) dissociatives. 3. Sit/lie in that state until your awareness starts to wake up to what it is. Do this continually until that awakening causes a permanent change in your biology. That change will be felt by the whole body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. The human avatar is designed to experience consciousness through the filter of their brain. If you modify the brain by changing the psychological framework/conceptualization then the body will slowly alter itself to perceive reality through that framework. 4. Understand that awakening is just the rewriting of the original framework you were given early in your life that you live in a physical, material reality. Had you been given the truth from birth you would already be awakened. Awakening is actually very normal, it's only rare because currently within this time period/history of humans they are currently confused. Think of non-awakened humans as still thinking the Earth is flat in this analogy.

Very nice description, and interesting similiarity. That is exactly the essence of the method (Mahamudra stage 1. Skill of Reckognition) once really implemented (after a long time of practice to get really able to do that) that got things really going for me with awakened states. "What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, one learns to get that fast also..." Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast ...., see link below Selling Water by the River

awakening means you found god and by finding god you find satan and yourself. The holy trinity. And you can decipher what they are in real time. Its a cheat code god gave you because you are not going to make it without god. and god said you were perfect and woke you up father - darkness (void behind your head) sun - light ( void in front of you) holy spirit - you (void in the middle) You are flat like a pancake This guy is awakened

Yes. I saw too much deep structure similiarties in all the spiritual traditions. That made sense to me. That was the only coherent explanation of the Kosmos for me. And the concept of Integral (Wilber) resonated deeply in me. So, a long time nothing happened where it could be said that meditation is more than just mindfulness training. Relaxing, interesting, a bit of bliss, but also in the beginning just one of the hardest and most annoying things one can try. Basic meditation training: Formal training on the pillow, mindfulness during daily life. Over quite some years. Stage 1 Mahamudra: Skill of Reckongition: And the thing with the increased thought-emerging-frequency was really the point where it took off. First, the ability to stay "on top" of the mindstream and cut it at will. Later, awakened states with nonduality followed. Stage 2/3: So then, a few years later, Nonduality followed. Before that point, it brought quite some bliss. But nothing where one could say: Yes, thats it. Don't need any external proof or convincing anymore. Nonduality changes that. It is evident. Stage 4: And then later, after some years letting these states develop and ripen, always here Ultimate Reality started dawning. 4 Mahamudra Main-stages: 0: Initial Concentrative Meditation as preaparation 1 stage: Skill of Reckognition: Cutting off the Thought Mindstream 2 stage: Yoga of Unelaboration: Always Here (never not here, timeless) Mind opens up 3: Yoga of One Taste: Nonduality 4: Yoga of Nonmeditation: Separate Self gets transcended. Pure Impersonal infinite Consciousness/Awareness without any separate-self flying around in it, itself being the world and all manifestation. That is the deep structure found in every meditation system. It is always in a deep structure similiar to that. And the tricky point, where most of the discussion happens here: Between 3 and 4. Psychedelics do bring one to a pretty empty nonduality. But not to that which stage 4 brings.... Not fully empty and impersonal. Not fully conforming to the enlightened mindstream. Water by the River

The deciding step for really getting the nondual awakened states flowing what is described below. Before that point in practice, no Nonduality, the visual field rock solid "material" and out there "external". No awakened state. To get there took quite some years. Could have been faster with good coaching, but didn't have that. Imagine it like this: Many years of meditation the mindful-way. Zero awakened state from that, not to even think about Nonduality at all. Didn't even know what that really is, despite reading about it. And then the bliss of these states, and nonduality opened up.... But that was also a process over several years. Cutting off the mindstream like this, or at least letting it fully transparent flow in oneself (that is not the usual mindfulness, its thought train appears like an object-flow in you), changes the energetic states of the whole system. It is an indirect path (but it can't be different): You influence the thought via ATTENTION (this is something you can guide/focus/control). You can't directly influence the Awakened State, how could you. You look into the thoughts, like described below. They dissolve then, their nature IS emptiness/consciousness. That done long enough brings the energetic shift to the awakened states. At least for me. And for thousands of others, see the Mahamudra-and Dzogchen practicelineages. Since more than one Millenia. And of course you can do that also! Every being can. The essence of each thought IS Consciousness/Emptiness. The separate-self IS these thoughts, and corresponding feelings. One can dissolve them all. And that clears the way. Reality it litereally desinged in such a way that: Separate Self = Clouding over= thought stream when that is not cut/Trekchö, the clouding mechanism starts: Reality is "out" there/external/duality, "solid/material, and limited (visual field bubble has an imagined border) not infinite. Switch off the separate self thought/feeling flow, the illusion-system ("out" there/external, "solid/material, and limited) gets switched off). That design of Reality makes complete sense: Samsara NEEDS this illusion (external/duality, solid, not infinite) The illusion can be dissolved by aligning to Reality (EMPTY IMPERSONAL JUST AWARENESS, NOT separate self-illusion).when that is practiced to make the mindstream conform to Reality, the illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite) fall away. Yoga of One Taste And in that nondual impersonal state of Infinite nondual mere appearance/lucid/not solid Infinite Consciousness, one can dissolve the final subtle illusion: Subtle Separateness of a Transparent witness, still coloured by Individuality and Separateness. Yoga of Nonmeditation. I can only highly recommend you to read the book, start the practice (similiar as described below) over a longer time period, and see what happens. Psychedelics only lift the veil mainly concerning this here (external/duality, solid, not infinite). But they don't dissolve the Illusion mechanism, the clouding over. Let's describe it in Engineering-language: The separate self is a positive feedback-loop: Uncut/Untranscended thought-stream including separate self I-thoughts/I-feelings triggers a system that cause these illusion arisings for the visual field: illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite). And also regular dissatisfaction/suffering, which make the ego work on its next salvation-project to bring experiences that bring bliss and relieve. The endless circle of suffering, N+1. and an enormously stable clouding-over illusion system of the separate self. Works in Billions of people, normally nobody wakes up just by chance. Some do, then its normally Karma or something the like. But extremely few. Cut that system, at some point the cutting/Treckchö becomes self sustaining: positive feedback loop. Because its lovely, brings bliss. And before that tilting point, it takes energy, because its unpleasant. A negative feedback-loop while meditating. Mayas Illusion-protection-mechanism. Must be there, else everybody would be meditating. Then, via keeping the mindstream cut/Trekchö/Transcended, another positive feedback loop sets in: The Endohuasca-system gets triggered. This then makes the visual field mere appearance/lucid/not solid/infinite, and especially duality/externality goes. Brown calles it Boundless Timeless Awake Awareness/Consciousness. And resting in that brings even way more bliss, which allows dissolving core elements/Traumas of the separate self, and staying lucid in daily life also with problems. In these states, the last remnants of the separation-illusion are dissolved... Try to think in "positive-feedback-loops", and tilting points/mountain-passes to reach, having climed in goes downhill or automatic/nice/blissful. and initial uphill-climbs to get to the first downhill-track after crossing the mountain pass height Willpower/Suffering while meditating until a certain point, then blissfull/downhill/automatic. Then, ego/Trauma/pain throws curve ball, and the current meditation/bliss fails. Further practice. Momentum building. Gradually dissolving of the separate self contraction and suffering, bliss gets stronger. Increasingly, more and more difficult life situation can be handled lucid. And the magic point is, after some years: Sitting somewhere on a park bench, the bliss flowing, and: realizing the freedom & fullness of not needing anything. Water by the River From this Link: For me, the crucial Point for really getting the meditation "really" off the pillow into daily life was getting to THAT here Skill of Recognition: (1. Yoga of Mahamudra system) Now it gets interesting. That was the decisivepoint for me once I understood that, and implemented it. Afterwards, it started to get nondual pretty soon... If you look HOW the thoughts emerge, (1) out of what they emerge, (2) what they are, (3) in what they move (4) into what they disappear ALL of that (1)(2)(3)(4) must be present. Thoughts DO appear. From "something". Stay in "something". Consisting of "something" All of that is Emptiness, or Consciousness, or Nothingness. Thoughts are made of "that","move in that", "dissolve into that". and you will never SEE that, or can say what it is. Nothing. But not a blank nothing. An aware Nothing. Actually the essence of all world-appearances, but that comes later, when it gets nondual, at the Yoga of One Taste. What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, you learned to get that fast also... Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast. You don't control which thoughts arise. Depended origination, they are just emerging by themselves. You can focus on just their arising (of thoughts), just their staying, just their going away. At some point, they just emerge, looking into their nature is automatic, and they immediately dissolve. No duration. Just emergence, and poof gone. And when you are fast enough, you get a continuance of staying mindful. When that happens its pretty clear what happened. Your attention got so fast that you can stay mindful even through the high-speed thought emergence. At the end, they come very fast, they don't get "elaborated out". Thinking, or elaborating the thoughts out, is slower than their emergence. They emerge already fully complete with their content, and then slowly get "talked/elaborated" in your mind. Natural reaction: So WHO the f*** am I (pardon my french) when I don't control what thoughts emerge and if they appear fully with their content in a fraction of a second, and get elaborated later in a hypnotic show over several second? good question... to be answered later. Outcome is: You know the nature of every possible thought (Consciousness-Emptiness-Nothingness), of the whole mental-continuum of thoughts, all that there can be. Their nature. you can cut off or transcend/just watch your normal mindstream in most daily situations without getting caught up/hypnotized by it, which already here leads to a lot of bliss. Not sufficient bliss to get ones separate self completely handled, but already quite wonderful. That is the start of real freedom. You know how your mindstream hypnotizes you, and gets faster when you actually look into each thought arising and its nature. At some point you get fast enough to cut off every arising, or let it elaborate in a controlled aka mindful way. @UnbornTao Oh please hit me. Instead of watching some nice travel-documentation as planned on TV yours truly did again the overkill...

Really Inspiring. Bon voyage on your path, that will walk itself soon enough all by itself, just following the bliss of its own essence. The Path showing itself to itself, after having won the grace of your True Nature. Some day, there will no one walking this path anymore. The path will become the unfolding of Infinite Reality itself. A Reality so wonderful expressing itself in every moment that no interference will ever be necessary again, or even possible again.... The states that can be achieved by meditation and energetic techniques are real and very powerful with enough practice. Most people get quite serious when they see that: The awakened states of for example infinite Nonduality, or Real Impersonal No-Self - Impersonal Infinite Consciousness Suchness, do have their impacts on the brainwaves, and for sure for the body-own Endo-Huasca-System producing a cocktail of body-endogenous Psychedelics: https://dmtquest.org/endohuasca-magic/ How else to explain the powerful infinite nondual awakened states achieveable by Psychedelics can be had with meditation and energetic practices, and which are so similiar to the Psychedelic experiences? Yes. Because it is a stage that has been earned by transformation and transcendence. States that have become permanent as stages. Going from states, to plateaus, to very permanent stages. And the remaining self doing these practices gets more and more refined. Pure. Impersonal. Empty. Transcendal. Not the remains of a separate ego/self, switched on and off by psychedelics, but never fully gone. The remains hindering the Full Realization in daily life, and are also projected on Infinite Consciousness during the trip, disfiguring its pure empty impersonal nature. So some lense always remain that prevent the final deep shift of Full Enlightenment. Ken Wilber: "The downside comes with people that only use psychedelics or drugs. And I found that over the years they just become mean it's somehow I just kind of closes them down. Its like you keep doing it and you keep doing it you keep doing and it doesn't quite cause the transformation. It can cause a peak experience but generally not a transformative experience and some people like David Deida will say that in order for altered changes of state to contribute to transformationpermit transformation it has to be basically endogenous not exogenous. It has to be has your own source. The people that do use both [psychedelics and meditation] and use it as a sacrament I think an enormous bit out of it. " Anybody ever wondered why that is? That Spirit/Infinite Reality prevents the crossing over through the Gateless Gate to Full Enlightenment if the soul is not purified enough, the separate-self/ego-illusion emptied out and transcended completely, all deaths died, all illusions gone? Maybe it is not a bug, but a deep deep feature? If we admit Infinite Intelligence to Infinite Reality, maybe Infinite Reality demands and requires giving up and transcending certain last subtle lenses also, letting the Illusion of separation fully die? And a high degree of compassion and some kind of Boddhisattva-vow? Because Infinite Reality itself IS Love? A fundamental archetype of manifestation, of essence? Sounds familiar and resonates? This combination of Transcendence and love is a deep structure of all spiritual systems of all ages. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj — 'Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.' Water by the River

It doesn't matter while the ego exists. The longer (the older) the ego exists the more pessimistic it will become because the more it will see how fucked up survival is. A religious person will counter this with their faith in God and that God will ultimately fix everything. That's called keeping the faith. An awakened person, however, knows that faith is a falsehood. That they ARE exactly what is being manifested. They can still get lost in the dream and be a pessimist. But at the highest level they still grasp it is a game. Getting lost in it is just fine.

True. I think you would like the Mahamudra-system a lot. Yoga of One Taste is the Neti Neti path to its end, Yoga of Nonmeditation throws away each and any effort and reamaining separte-self doing anything: One just rests in nondual state that one knows very well then, and waits for the grace of crossing over. Gateless Gate. "One can do NOTHING here to cross over to Full Enlightenment/Basis Enlightenment. Because that would be an act of a separate self. An effort. A movement of a separate self WANTING something, manipulating the mindstream, grasping for the understanding, doing something.... One can only automize the meditation/mindfullness, staying fully present, letting the Awakened Impersonal Awareness flow by itself, let IT do the meditation itself, get out of the way... Bringing out the full force of this Utterly Impersonal Awakened Awareness. Ones True Identity. And that is the last contra-intuitive trap: ONE CAN'T FORCE IT ("artifical activity"). Because forcing it would be a separate self arising doing it. One can try to force it (for example Koan-style), but then the Crossing Over normally happens in a moment of grace, of relaxation, when artificial activity is not present." Selling Water by the River

Considering all this thinking ones way to the Absolute... This Mormon choir does it at least in style. While staying with decent, humble, sane and likeable egos. Not blowing it up to coscmic proportions. At the moment of Death My strength if from heaven And what is even stranger: Besides some mods stating something like "take it slowly" there is zero comment from higher up on: "Enlightenment is just a reinterpretation" instead of Awakening and actual awakened states. With a questionable effect on the general spiritual flight level of this forum. Selling Water by the River

Enlightenment It is not just a reinterpretation or recontextualization. It tends to stabilize awakened states in daily life. Change of brainwaves for example: Good luck doing that with reinterpretation or recontextulization. Or "thinking" ones way to Enlightenment, blowing up the Ego to cosmic proportions. I mean Leo clearly says Awakening is a state change, an awakening, and not just recontextualisation or reinterpretation. Nonduality is clearly an awakened state and not just mental reinterpretation or recontextualization. Water by the River