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Found 2,461 results

  1. @Consciousone35 I would totally go to a Tony seminar, if you think it is just a waste of time, I don't even know what you are doing in a self-development forum. I don't know what happened in the situation you talked about but maybe she had wrong expectations about the guy, maybe she was hoping for someone to hold her hand and tell her how much he is sorry for her situation and cry together and Tony has chosen to not fuel this perspective. Every teacher has it's style, some are more aggressive than others, some can simply tell you to quit being a little bitch and that's what you needed, and another one can hug you, show you with motherly love, you feel good and nothing change. Triggering transformation in people is a lot more complex than most realize, you are going to have to touch some deep wounds and some people are not ready for it yet.
  2. Dr Chris Bache speaks of the 'Ocean of Suffering' which he delved into over many Lsd sessions in his explorations into consciousness. He found that his experience of this Ocean of Suffering - which comprises the collective suffering of the species closely intertwined with our own individual suffering - had a therapeutic impact and that every act of healing, either large or small has an impact on the whole. The end result of this healing is a collective transformation. In response to the question, why does this experience of suffering eventually end for the individual when the reservoir of species suffering is so vast, he says: "It may be that the that given the sheer magnitude of planetary suffering, any one person is only allowed to do so much. Perhaps some cosmic oversight simply says "That's enough!", and one is released from further obligation" This makes beautiful sense. I could not see how the continued pain I experienced when using psychs could have emerged from this life-time alone. Perhaps it was the uncovering of the suffering of previous life-times or, as Bache suggests, the dipping into the collective pain of the species. This gives me the motivation to welcome all experiences that come my way.
  3. If everything is information as I assume, then what is the body of flesh? The Bible says that the body of flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Yet, from a nondual perspective the physical body and the mind are one. A Course in Miracles says that the physical body is the belief in sin made flesh: And is this passage ACIM says that the body is another order of reality than thought as merely an appearance, so that's a nondual perspective: The body of flesh then means the belief that the body is a separate object, which explains why ACIM says it's a belief in sin which means missing the mark, meaning a misperception of reality. So I take it that the body is already pure information, even from the ACIM perspective. And this is something I think many spiritual teachers miss, even nonduality teachers, by making a distinction between the physical body and spirituality. What is needed is to look into the transformation of the physical body such as described in the Law of One as going from third to fourth density. Because not only the ego needs to be integrated, also the physical body needs to be integrated, or it's an incomplete integral approach.
  4. I guess not able to fight an oppressive regime. Oppressive governments hold people back from growth. So even if the local people are high on the spiral, it doesn't help because the government doesn't operate from that stage, these are red/blue governments that are very difficult to fight against. You will be in prison for a simple thing like freedom of speech, this limits the capacity of the population to bring change. Fear and authority suppresses any hope for transformation.
  5. @Visionary I feel it energetically in my body, and I was similar to the process of Transformation Mastery by Julien. I went through all of the shit that he mentions in his course, and it was being manifested in my thoughts, and once I got, why they are occurring and what they really represent - puff - pattern got broken. I understand what you mean by "many dark nights" (I think I do) because of the amount of the shit I went through. But how do I truly know - "Ok, cool, the process is over, I'm done with healing and shadow work, let's get going with the purpose stuff right now"?
  6. @28 cm unbuffed That's awesome. Happy for ya! Allow time to do its job. Do not try rushing things. Do not try dragging things. Let everything unfold naturally and effortlessly; smoothly. Rest in the knowing of who you are now. Everything will shortly realign, rearrange and readjust for you. Breathe. Let all things do themselves. Try several years of it ? I feel ya tho. It's not a pleasant spot to be in. But it's oh so worth it. I know you can already sense that. Be patient, have compassion and understanding towards the one who's going through a transformation. It knows its time.
  7. @Opo well. I have money. I have already lived in America for some time. America gives you a drive to work hard. Succeed. Compete. Learn. Grow. Diversity in America means you learn quickly about white culture, black culture, Mexican culture, native american culture and every other culture on planet earth. Where will you get such a rich experience? American politics is interesting and gives you space to learn how to struggle against Orange Spiral as a green person and you see real life transformation towards green. America is famous for its historic record of the most progressive movements in the world.. America respects hard work. American laws are strict. You have a lot of security and freedom as an individual. Nobody can simply tell you to go back to your country. American people are very motivated to self actualization. America has tons of opportunities for self actualization and achievement in life And finally, Americans are extremely sweet and loving people. For stage Blue, Green and Yellow and Orange, you absolutely need America. You don't have a shortcut to other stages. You need to be grounded in these stages first and foremost and then move upwards. I'm only looking forward to Stage Green with some turquoise. I don't want to be a full turquoise. The thing is that if you wanna be at stage Turquoise, then you don't need any country for that, because it's more of a personal thing. You can be a stage Turquoise anywhere in the world. You can live in a mountain. Mountains are everywhere. But to be a Stage Orange or Stage Green/or Yellow, be in a country like America where human rights are valued. You have money, you have power and you get huge public support from liberals who support your Green policies. What more can you ask for? America is a battleground country for mass development. It is moving ahead at rocket speed Europe is no match. . @Opo see if you wanna be like Osho, you could have your own ranch in some mountains in India or America or Europe. But if you want Stage Green at the least, then choose America.
  8. There is a bottom line assumption at work here. Something that you believe to be true about yourself, even though you may not recognize it as an assumption, because you live it as true. Now when you work on changing your self-and social-image, you already work from a point where that assumption of unworthiness is true. And so you argue and and manage this that you live to be true of you. Real transformation begins when you see that this assumption is non-essential to who and what you truly are. Once this is clearly seen, the belief can be dropped. So long as it remains to be a fundamental part of yourself, you will always have feelings of unworthiness in the background of your experience, no matter how much evidence to the contrary you create in your life.
  9. Human beings can change so radically that you won't notice a single trace of a screwed past. It's possible and I have done it. I was sexually abused when I was a small child but I have gone through such a deep transformation that I don't even remember it in the daily basis anymore. The reason you can resonate with Teal Swan is because she is still broken inside, as she says it herself. But she is deeply aware of her brokenness and that's how she plays the role of a teacher so well. So we have two points here: You can totally overlook someone's f**ked up past, depending on the level of healing that the person went through You don't need to be completely healed to help others. All it takes is awareness of your own wounds. Or simply awareness in general. And of course good wording and enough empathy
  10. Don Beck, author of "Spiral Dynamics", & Said Dawlabani, creator of MEMEnomics, walk us through the Spiral Dynamics model of understanding the evolutionary transformation of human values and cultures - and how that applies to economics. Ken Wilber Don Beck challenges Ken Wilber to Debate! From Graves' work, Beck and his colleague, Cristopher Cowan, developed the theory further and presented a structured evolutionary model of adaptive intelligence called Spiral Dynamics. Beck and Cowan first published their construct in Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Exploring the New Science of Memetics) (1996). Spiral Dynamics theory spawned much discussion and (sometimes tangential) integration of concepts by other theorists, such as Ken Wilber. In A Theory of Everything Wilber attempts to bridge business, politics, science and spirituality and show how they integrate with theories of developmental psychology, such as Spiral Dynamics Integral theory (Ken Wilber) All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL, pron. "ah-qwul"), is the basic framework of integral theory. It models human knowledge and experience with a four-quadrant grid, along the axes of "interior-exterior" and "individual-collective". According to Wilber, it is a comprehensive approach to reality, a metatheory that attempts to explain how academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience fit together coherently.[2]
  11. Now olmost 3 years into the spritual path, having handful of deep spiritual and some psychedelic experiences, learning a lot of lessons, doing leo’s course (lots of gratitude to leo for helping me on my path), undergoing transformation i never took possible, radically opening my mind for things that have changed my perspective on the world for ever... i now find myself to be kind of stuck/blocked in my path and posting here on the forum to get some insights and/or help but also to introduce myself on the forum in the form of a trip report of my life. shortly about me - I was fully living in stage orange the biggest part of my life and lived completely through it while in the ultimate orange territory; the army. earlier this year i quitted my job at the army, sold my house and moved to another place to pursue my life purpose as a musician. one more reason to quit was that i didn’t resonate with my environment and colleagues anymore because i was transcending consciously and unconsciously from stage orange to stage green the last 3 years. It was holding me back. spiritual path - About 3 years ago, motivated by depressed feelings , suffering and lack of purpose i watched a no bullshit how to meditation video on youtube from leo. Since then i’ve meditated dailly. One year ago i did my first meditation retreat (unfortunately also motivated by some upcoming depressed feelings around that time). in this first 5-day meditation retreat I had one experience of everything being love and light during one meditation, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life at that time. it echoed on for some weeks ending with a horrific ego-backlash around oktober/november. But it left me this Huge lesson to start practicing being fully inside my body. which I’m actually still struggling with with ups and downs. 13 weeks ago I did my second 7-day meditation-retreat, i again had some beautiful experiences of everything being love and my consciousness skyrocketed for a while. I also had some experiences/memories what seems to be of past lives. Memories - The first time i started experiencing these memories was back in januari 2018 when i took some psylocibine truffles. I had a awesome trip! Learning a lot about consciousness and gained the skill (or discovered?) of sketching/drawing (with a little bit of help from M.C. Escher, i had paintings of him al around my house, escher being in my life since childhood in the form of books and various other ways since i can remember, i even had the thought one time in my trip that i was the reincarnation of Escher haha?) I always felt a huge creative force inside me my whole life but it never manifested in the way of art, only music. The following weeks I had a strong urge To draw. I was drawing dailly for hours from a place of silence, the most awesome drawings! perfectly and effortlessly without even touching a pencil once in my life before! The most complex mathematical infrastructures and perspective drawings without even doing research on it once. I now know where the name magic truffles come from... but at one point it scared the shit out of me... I was drawing memories that weren’t From me... at least not this life... But at the same time they felt mine and they were coming from a deep place inside that wasn’t my imagination. I later experienced flashbacks of these memories during a 2-cb trip and that Opened the possibility for me that there exists something like a past life. I came to realize that I probably experienced a lot during that life, even some trauma that still needs to be resolved. It may even be so that this trauma is blocking me now but i have to do more research on this topic. I’m still trying to find good recourses. Heart awakening - In the spiral dynamics videos leo points out that having a heart awakening is a great stepping point from orange to green. I Took this seriously and started doing meditation on the heart (the heartfullness way), wim hof breathing, reading books, doing psychedelic trips etc etc only to find out that I haven’t done enough research into the concept heart awakening. and i’m now facing some problems in the form of physical and mental manifestation and i think they all point to the same problem/blockage that prevents me having a heart awakening. I went to some doktors for some physical things like palpitations, migraines some neurological things tiredness/energy problems etc.. nothing weird was found and they couldn’t help me. One medical route i’m following now is lyme dissease, i’ve had around 100 harvest bug bites while in the army and had a very special psychedelic trip that confirmed this thought that i will talk about later in this report. i also started to have some mental problems like hyperventilation and fear 5 years ago I went to a psychologist 2 times and it was treated very Quickly... but it came back during my ego backlash last oktober/november. Went to another psychologist and again it was treated Very quick but i realized this treatment was just on the surface. during my life purpose course i’ve came to realize that healing/health/energy is the number one value in my list, so i have started walking this path now for a few weeks. 2 weeks ago i started with a haptotherapist/sjamanic healer. The first thing he noticed is that all my physical discomfort was all localized on the left side of my body, representing my unbalanced feminine side. One of my biggest issues in life is connection and communication with other people, this resonates with my feminine side. He send me to breathing therapy, holotropic breathing, to deal with my hyperventilation issue, im starting with that next week. I’m still figuring out other ways to heal myself and balance my feminine side. if anyone know ways i’d love to hear them. My masculinity probably have had to much of boost in the army ? Since my first meditation retreat one year ago i started to have some uncomfortable things during my meditations.. the first experience earlier this year was during a “do-nothing” meditation after a lsd trip. I felt a huge pressure in my heart area, it felt like a huge balloon helt under water and it was about to erupt, it felt like a sea of emotions and i thought I couldn’t handle it and fear came along, i pushed the experience away and forced it to stop... (at first i thought it was my physical heart and went to a doktor, had some tests but nothing out of the ordinary came out) i had this same experience again since then for about 4-5 times, everytime it feels too much and i push it away because it feels like I couldn’t handle it... Intuitively i think it has something to do with my heart chakra awakening or maybe past trauma’s. What is the best possible step i could take to deal with all this? What exercises? I’m starting holotropic breath work next week, i think that’ll help. I’m also going to do a kambo ceremony next month. And in the meditation i practice there is a exercise called cleaning that should be useful, i’m doing it at the end of each day. my girlfriend just finished reiki 2 and she could perform it on me, dont know if that is beneficial, i’m still a newbie on this field. For the physical part im starting chinese acupuncture tomorrow, this is also because ive had corona in march and still have some left over symptoms to make it all complete ? healing is definitely a huge part of my life at this moment in order to proceed with my life-purpose and life in general. Lsd and microdosing and lsa trip - lastly, i still have to tell about my last psychedelic experiences. Shit is about to get weird now... it started about 4 weeks ago i had a really bad week and bad luck around this time, and some days later when i was really down and wanted to escape from life for a while and i took a little bit of lsd and weed... i know really bad idea... but while tripping and, of course having a really bad experience! i started to experience some really high consciousness i’ve never had before... And at this place i experienced a meeting with leo and ken wilber... i don’t know if it just were hallucinations/projections of my mind or that I experienced this for real, but it happened and i remember it... one thing that i do know is that I don’t know anything and that i still have to learn a lot about everything in life, and after all my experiences nothing seems very weird anymore. I probably just tripped too unresponsible. the week after that my girlfriend was about to start with microdosing and i joined her, i started to feel better and took it seriously because i didn’t want these drops and downs anymore. I must say that it helped me a lot the last days and weeks and i starting to feel myself again and have energy for life and my purpose in life. And one interesting thing to notice is how it affected my next lsa trip. 2 weeks ago i did a lsa trip, baby Hawaiian woodrose, with my girlfriend. don’t underestimate these little seeds! ?... we both took 550mg prepared capsules. Our location was in nature, we were staying on a camping ground for 3 days. The second day we took the capsules in the morning and left for a unforgettable hike in nature, my intention was “nature as mentor” yep that simple... My girlfriend’s intention was about finding her power in life, and we were about to get answers to this and even more in very profound ways! as we were walking i was becoming very contemplative and philosophical about the life and dead cycle and our consciousness was growing very subtle. Our trip was going very smoothly and mother nature was leading us at a very subtle way. At one point we were standing on a sightseeing point and we felt really small, our ego’s began to melt down. my girlfriend was undergoing a very smooth ego death. I, on the other hand, was struggling with surrender a lot! My girlfriend noticed a pattern of our last few trips and says i always have this on the same point of out trip. I can’t seem to find the problem but she sees it exactly unfolding every time. An half hour went by and i was still struggling with my surrender but suddenly it smashes me in the face and the unexplainable became explained, my consciousness expanded and my ego dissolved! I was laughing and screaming because it felt so good and it was finally there, all of universal wisdom was raining down on me, it felt amazing! After some time my girlfriend and i went back to our camping place and my ego was slowly returning into place and there it was... i started to get hyperventilation and a panic attack on the way back... the same one i’ve described before that is haunting me for a while... it came with a lot of physical discomfort and i thought i was dying, until i realized it was just a panic attack, when we were back inside the tent i felt bad... really bad! I had no energy and a lot of pain... in past trips with my girlfriend we discovered that my girlfriend has some energetic power while tripping and she can kind of cure my pain and discomfort at an energy level... so she was performing her things on me and it started to help... i felt better. just when i thought it couldn’t be more profound, we both started to feel a presence of someone else joining us. It all happened very fast and smooth. It was my grandmother who past away when i was a kid, unfortunately i never really got to know her...until now. She told us she was helping me already for a really long time and was giving me signs And directions in my life, everytime i asked for help the last weeks and months for my pain and discomfort and suffering she was actually helping me! My girlfriend didn’t knew my grandmother or knew anything about her but she was speaking for her, at the same time i could also feel her words in my body... the recognition at that moment is was absolutely the most beautiful experience of my life! I was finally crying after years of holding my tears back and it felt amazing to finally release it. My grandmother told me she was happy that I finally recognized her and that she was with me all the time and that she was leaving signs and signals, she told me that she was helping my mother too and she finished by saying that I absolutely need to keep practicing my gratitude! I never believed in things like these but my open mindedness got stretched a lot that moment. After this experience my girlfriend told me that leo was also here and he was looking self fullfilled, probably a projection of my mind or something because leo is an important part of my spiritual journey and personal development. After this was finished we moved a little and saw something moving on our bed... harvest bugs. in dutch they are called teek/teken. Translated it means “sign/signs”. It was the answer i had in my mind that i probably have lyme-disease showed in a horrible but clear way ?.... at least for me motivation to follow the path of healing. it was a really deep and profound spiritual experience. i just felt i needed to post this here, i hope you’ve enjoyed my writing. And i hope someone can learn something from my story. Thanks to everybody for sharing this thing together we call life. And lastly thanks to Leo for all the teachings and work that you do.
  12. There's too much to share... Here I go though: The world is a mirror and doorway to yourself. Forgiveness will free you. Killing someone is killing yourself. Judging someone is judging yourself. Loving someone is loving yourself. Love is the only thing worth living for. All will pass. Life is a journey of transformation meant to grow your capacity to accept and love yourself, and indirectly everyone else. God does exist. He is the clarity and light that sits in silence within your mind. We are meant to fulfill the direction the light/God takes us. Ego is Good especially when it is aligned with Love. There is a time for everything. Everything exists within itself, for itself. if you close your eyes, you open another.
  13. @Demeter Eventually yes, but the process of transformation was extremely disruptive. I don't imagine I could have completed a PHD course in the 5-7 year period it lasted. I definitely have a much sharper mind and better memory, than I used to, but I would not recommend raising your Kundalini for that reason alone, it is a long slog to get there. However, just meditating in general and keeping fit physically, coupled with an appropriate diet, should do the trick. Brain tissue is mostly Cholesterol, so eating plenty of eggs, dairy and fish should help keep your brain power up. I'm not aware of any psychedelics that would give you a brain upgrade, they serve a different purpose, which is mostly to connect you to the spirit world and to help you realise your true nature.
  14. @Rilles For me, every glimpse fades after a couple of hours. It always leaves me with "This is not quite it". It has kinda become a joke that I tell myself in many situations even though its more a bitter realization - "This is not quite it". I dont expect the lasting transformation to have a significant effect on my feelings. At least I still hope it gets myself out of my own way in everyday life. Would be a huge relief.
  15. Documentation of transforming my career to be about My life purpose. Current life purpose as of now: LP Statement: Design and share methods, systems and techniques for accessing and embodying bliss, love and insight/wisdom/intelligence. Domain of Mastery: Meditation, Contemplation, other spiritual methods for accessing bliss, love and wisdom. Medium: to be determined. Goals: 1. Maintain a consistent habit of at least 2 hours of high quality meditation. 2. Eat at most 3 meals a day. All meals fall under 50 carbs a day. 3. Read 30 minutes a day on shamanic or magick techniques. Apply shamanic or magick techniques for at least 30 minutes a day. Explore whether these methods contribute to your LP. 4. Replace procrastination with mindfulness meditation or strict contemplation. 5. Go to the gym at least 6x a week. Interesting thoughts today: 1. problem solving these days are just a more concrete, but more indirect way of accessing divine bliss, love and wisdom. For example software engineering is an inefficient, indirect but more concrete way of accessing bliss (as it solves a problem for a person, just in a small way).
  16. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” i find trouble finding a book telling me how to love myself, what it means to love myself, and how to go about it, the benefits also a book for self-transformation maybe they're out there? but i haven't found one that i've resonated with yet
  17. I'm getting to a point where I feel like I have to abandon one of my babies... neglect to say the least. After reading a book called 'The One Thing' it was clear to me that I needed atleast 4 hours of uninterrupted deliberate practice every single day to get on track to mastery. I have a longing to become masterful at both digital art & meditation. Is it conducive to have two different domains of mastery? Especially in the beginning phases of my life purpose? In a sense, meditation is difficult but takes very little creative energy although it provides me with alot of creative energy. The more I meditate, the more I am creatively juiced up but it is super time consuming when Im meditating 4+ hours a day. Also meditating long hours also comes with immediate ego backlashes where I get alot of inner work done but I'm more likely to procastinate on my creativity for the rest of the day. I can intuit the answer and the answer is to meditate a few hours a day and invest rest of the time into digital art but I also feel like meditation is a deep part of my life purpose & I strongly feel like life purpose & awakening doesn't have to be two seperate endeavours. I don't meditate solely for awakening purposes, the radical transformation it has brought into my life in just a few years has permeated through each and every part of my life. My concentration has increased immensely and I am able to endure emotional labor and repetition. I know the importance of having a good skillset & I won't be able to sustain my survival if I can't afford to pay the bills so I'm facing quiet a predicament. Ideally, I would be waking up super early and accomplish 4+ hours of deliberate and uninterrupted practice for both activities but as of now, its not practical because of my bad habits & my bodies demand to sleep 6+ hours. I guess a good question is, what is the difference between domain of mastery & the ideal medium when it comes to daily responsibilities and activities? My ideal medium is fueled by my mastery. I want to 'teach consciousness' with my digital art instead of teaching digital art with my digital art so gaining insights and mindfulness is absolutely essential for my life purpose. The trade off to pursue both is that I have to abandon activities like research & development, journaling, contemplating & reading. I can still fit that into my schedulde but I won't be able to do it for long stretches of time.
  18. Journal topics Am I willing to go further with spiritual growth than before? This is a good question to ask myself. I'm on a nice little streak of a solid spiritual practice, plus good growth in a lot of different areas. I have my foot on the gas and I'm not making excuses. I like to say 2015 was my year, back then I really did this same thing and really went strong for a whole year. Consistent meditation, prayer, reading, big involvement with helping others, went really deep and changed a lot of things about myself. It was like a big year of transformation. Since then I've always had some spiritual practice and awareness, but not nearly as profound. I've also made other improvements I should recognize since then. But i've never felt as connected as back then. So now that I'm almost 3 months in on a really solid spiritual practice, plus really straightening other bad habits out... I'm willing to go further. I have to commit to this as a new way of life. Somehting I can't compromise on. It is really essential to my overall well being. Beyond that I want to confront the weaker parts of my personality holding me back. A fear of not being good enough/things not working out, plus an unwilling to grow up and take on more responsibility. I'm defintiely doing okay, but I'm still clinging to these bad beliefs. Same thing with my sex ideal and what I want to work toward there. I'm still holding on to bad beliefs and limitation. I'm really in a good place and ready for a good relationship. So that just means I got to keep working on bettering myself and improving myself. And also eventually putting myself out there. Am I willing to try a "new" version of God, a new relationship with my creator, am I willing to turn my life and my problems to him? Thus far I've been making progress with this and it's working. So yes, I want to commit to this. the idea is to not just be "cool" with God but to have a better relationship and maintain connection. Part of this is offering my life to God the way some people describe it. The idea that God works through me, that I'm a channel. The idea that I can get away from self will and instead consult spirit for direction and guidance. Put the focus on what I can contribute and not on what I can get out of life or how I can arrange it to make things the way I want. This also has to do with getting rid of bad habits and problems. I want to continue to turn to God for strenght and direction. Rely on God to build the person I want to become and should be, as well as have deep sense of acceptance by God. This also has to do with my emotional and thought patterns. These are possible to change. I've seen that already with becoming more positive. I want to turn to God to direct my inner states as well. A lot of times it's really the inner states that have importance, my actions can just be a result of my thoughts/emotions. Basically, I really want to commit more. I'm in a really good spot. Even if I have days of doubt, I'm in a great spot. Especially internally. I've gotten so much stronger over the last 3 months. I'm building good habits on top of good habits. I'm almost a year no porn. My biggest problem and difficulty is still long term financial well being and fear over this an an inability to grow up. I'm facing this and working hard and I should give myself some credit... it's a LONG TERM GOAL. Day at a time I'm doing so good. I'm solving my biggest problem. My other problems are on the retreat. I'm playing life on offense. the whole point is that all of this is a result of my spiritual practice and putting that first. It really is the priority in life. If i'm not spiritually right... that means that my whole outlook on things will change and I'll think everything will suck. My job will suck, life will suck, fall back into fear, worry, self pity, doubt, etc. SO I HAVE TO KEEP MY FOOT ON THE GAS. No letting up or backing off. Spiritual practice ride or die! I can't put anything before my relationship with God.
  19. When I started using psychedelics- shamanic medicine, slowly I started loving myself more. Like really... I used to never thing I was really attractive or anything... and like the love is so crazy that you just start loving everything about you... and so... I started really loving my hair and letting it grow out. The beard too. I used to always spend money getting a cool haircut and get worried about my hair. Its really cool because it reminds me of the "path" of not caring what people think, of the transformation you go through... Its cool to deconstruct that systemic norm of having to have your hair a certain way. People judge you sometimes and stereotype you but when you talk to them and dont judge them for judging you, and just connect person to person they start seeing your just another regular guy who just decided to let his hair grow out.
  20. @Applegarden you are right 100% about your observation. let’s see what future will bring us. Transformation was in my cards, no joke, I mean it.
  21. Indeed, Shunyamurti said that the deeper suffering is fear of non-being, which includes death but is even more than that. And that causes anxiety, which he said is deeper than fear. And he said that the ego lacks courage, a word derived from the word heart. The ego is disconnected from the heart, he said, and is a false self that lacks being. So the ego is a lifeless construct! And the deeper fear of non-being is an incredible trick, since the ego is already lifeless. Fear is at least about some particular things while anxiety is less specific. A good approach therefore is to become aware of the actual cause of anxiety which is a disconnected heart. Shunyamurti's explanation of the ego is very similar to A Course in Miracles. Carl Jung's definition of ego is more about how it is a necessary sense of self. And the integral perspective is that the ego needs to be transcended and also included. The ego's defenses keep blocking the heart. So that's another tricky part. An open heart means defenselessness. To the ego that means senselessness. So one should not underestimate the immensity of the transformation needed to turn the ego into a true self.
  22. @peanutspathtotruth I wasn't aware of those particular YouTubes, Thanks, I'll have to check those out sometime. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, This is a good article based on Phd., Episcopal Priest, Cynthia Bourgeault's articulation of the Gurdjieff Work.Iit's to the point about Three Centered Awareness becoming Three Centered knowing. In All and Everything Gurdjieff called 3 Centered Awareness,- Fulasnitamnian Awareness An expression of the Law of Three, it was pointed out to students in a Wisdom School that the Law of Three produces a Fourth,,,, a new airing. I copied and pasted the complete article from this link. It reads better with italicized highlights and dividers on the website itself, though. https://wisdomwayofknowing.org/resource-directory/three-centered-knowing/ elete Article Three-Centered Knowing Note: for a more detailed introduction to Three-Centered Knowing, see Chapter 3 of The Wisdom Way of Knowing Wisdom makes use of an ancient body of knowledge about the physiology of spiritual transformation and a methodology for increasing our “receptivity to higher meaning”. The human being can be considered “three-centered” or “three-brained.” The centers include: The Moving Center, which has 2 subsets: instinctive (like a ‘hard drive’) which regulates operational systems of the body; and moving center proper (more like ‘software’) which concerns outward and voluntary interactions with the physical world through our five senses, as well as movement and rhythm. The Emotional Center: (centered in the heart and solar plexus) This is not the seat or center of our personal affective life or our personal identity as some contemporary thinking would imply. In fact as Cynthia explains with regard to our attunement to our feelings, “The real mark of personal authenticity is not how intensely we can express our feelings but how honestly we can look at where we are coming from and spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agendas that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today.” Furthermore, ‘passions’ in the conventional sense of the word, actually divide the Heart (for example, over-clinging). The Heart, as the center of the emotional center, is for divine perception, serving as a bridge between our mind and body. It has the capacity to perceive paradox, the both/and. The Intellectual/Cognitive Center has a natural aptitude for reasoning, doubting, and making fine discriminations—all legitimate and necessary. But as Cynthia describes, this center has a limited capacity in spiritual life: “In terms of the spiritual journey, trying to find faith with the intellectual center is something like trying to play a violin with a saw; it’s simply the wrong tool for the job.” The path of Wisdom embraces the whole person: mind, heart, and body. The three centers working in harmony is the prerequisite for Wisdom knowing. In fact the notion of ‘sleep’ as opposed to conscious aware awakening, is an indication of finding yourself in one center only. When we are alive, balanced, and present in all three centers a higher consciousness and Presenceis available. These three centers of intelligence can serve as foundational elements around which individual or small group practices and experience is built. Paying attention to each center and weaving in opportunities to connect with each center helps cultivate three-centered awareness. Practicing Three-Centered Knowing Moving Center Practices A simple body centered exercise to practice in pairs, for noticing sensation and experiencing the resonate field of Presence: With a practice group or practice partners, take turns noticing and naming sensations in your body, each of you naming three sensations (ex: I am noticing my feet making contact with the floor, I feel tightness in my chest, there is ease in my belly). As one partner is speaking, the other is witnessing. See if you notice an energetic shift as you become more embodied. Notice times of bracing: Notice when you are in a state of bracing or grasping. Can you pause and reconnect with your heartbeat, your breath, your feet , your torso, and then return to the simple hand gestures of opening and closing, giving and receiving, being with what is. Incorporate gestures and body prayers: Try opening and closing your hands, feeling the sensations of grasping and letting go, or even try a full body prostration (as described in The Wisdom Way of Knowing, chapter 3). Emotional Center Practices Sacred Chanting wakes up the emotional center with sound, and can deepen the connectivity of the group. Try familiar Taize chants—freely available to listen and follow online. There is also a growing body of Wisdom chants pioneered by Darlene Franz, which can also be accessed online (see references and resource list below). Lectio Divina: can be practiced with any short piece of sacred text or passage. There are a variety of ways to approach this practice. Here is one suggestion: Start slowly reading a passage aloud, and allow yourself to be drawn to a sentence, a phrase, or even a single word that seems to attract your attention. Read the passage again slowly, quietly allowing your faculties (your reason, your imagination, or emotions) to begin to work with this passage. This is about a “heart to heart” encounter with the text…it will be different every time. Read a final time, resting in the sacred presence, and in deep receptivity with the experience. (Some groups may decide to include a period of centering prayer at this stage, as an alternative to meditating before or after the lectio.) As you feel complete with the first three steps, take turns sharing what you noticed or what became alive for you or impacted you from the passage. Many Wisdom groups begin by using The Gospel of Thomas in a Lectio Divina format. Intellectual/Cognitive Center Practices Whether as a personal individual practice, or in a small group, consider what material or area of interest might provide fruitful exploration. Some suggestions are: Discussing parts or chapters from Cynthia’s books, or books or readings from other Wisdom writers Taking one or a few Gospel of Thomas logions (passages) for discussion References and Resources: Books by Cynthia Bourgeault (Cynthia has many published books, and the following provide some specific references to Wisdom practices including those mentioned above): The Wisdom Way of Knowing The Wisdom Jesus Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening Chanting the Psalms The Gospel of Thomas by Lynn Bauman The Gospel of Thomas or other e-courses from Spirituality and Practice Wisdom Chant resources by Darlene Franz
  23. @LfcCharlie4 I think you're making very good points here. Even when the I-thought is literally absent, there can be a tendency which will still happen. So these things need to be adressed. But there is also another point, which is very subtle but important: When we talk about what we're doing here, it's not really only awakening. Most of us (I hope) don't see an end point. We are embarking on the endless journey of maturation as a Godly being, whatever that means. There is naturally also personal transformation that is necessary. We are even a personal vessel for God, even though we are not identified with it. And that will have to be worked through. Awakening(s) are very specific insights into the nature of reality. They don't magically erase everything else. So when some speak about awakening, they mean the whole thing: maturation, fulfilling our full purpose. Others really only mean enlightenment. Looking at teachers, I see a clear correspondence between this complete view of the work and how the teacher is embodying it.
  24. Apparently the Netherlands are potentially entering into the 2nd tier (as a society). I haven't found a great many resources online for describing this, but I do find this David Brooks article on the NYT to be suggestively interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/scandinavia-education.html "They look at education differently than we do. The German word they used to describe their approach, bildung, doesn’t even have an English equivalent. It means the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person. It was based on the idea that if people were going to be able to handle and contribute to an emerging industrial society, they would need more complex inner lives." "Today, Americans often think of schooling as the transmission of specialized skill sets — can the student read, do math, recite the facts of biology. Bildung is devised to change the way students see the world. It is devised to help them understand complex systems and see the relations between things — between self and society, between a community of relationships in a family and a town." “Bildung is the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself ever bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying ever bigger personal, moral and existential freedoms.” "Their intuition was that as people grow, they have the ability to go through developmental phases, to see themselves and the world through ever more complex lenses. A young child may blindly obey authority — Mom, Dad, teacher. Then she internalizes and conforms to the norms of the group. Then she learns to create her own norms based on her own values. Then she learns to see herself as a node in a network of selves and thus learns mutuality and holistic thinking." It's pretty amazing, actually, that an entire society has figured all that out. Meanwhile, we in the USA are stuck with the comparatively adolescent Libertarian view of "greed is good" and "every man for himself".
  25. I have been very inactive in this forum for quite a while, but now it draws me back again to share this. It comes from the heart. It is more aimed at myself, I am not trying to teach anyone, these are just insights. Only looking beyond the ego won't do it. Only looking within the ego won't do it either. Bruteforcing truth upon the ego did never work for me, after all these years, be it through tedious self inquiry or 5-MeO, or whatever. And there were many deep awakenings and purification experiences nonetheless. Of course, looking into the Absolute Truth of things is most essential. When done extremely sincerely, there is love, silence, stillness revealing itself to be your essence. But seeing what you are does not make the ego surrender. I think many of you can relate when you have experiences like this: - You realize what you REALLY are. - You realize "you" have been holding yourself back all this time. - You bathe in perfection, but at some point the clouds come back, and sooner or later you're kind of lost again. One of my most strong barriers in this work has been the wish to annihilate the ego. Most of the time, this only hardened its shell. Why? Because next to all the superego voices that beat your ego up all this time, now it invents a new "spiritual" superego that is the worst of them. And with that voice, you always eventually want to kill your ego. Wanting to kill "your" ego will just make it more defensive. So this is where Personal Truth gets in, which is something shadow work should aim at clarifying. This is a very VERY important point: When the ego fully (!) understands how things really are, it will surrender without one moment of hesitation. But for that, there needs to be a clear understanding of why you suffer on a personal level. We not only suffer because we take ourselves to be something which we are not. That is the ultimate root of the problem, yes, but there is more personal, relative truth to be seen. It has to be seen. The truth is that the ego, the foundation of it, is completely innocent. To call it a devil, albeit true in a sense, is really dangerous, for it most likely introduces more superego voices (happened for me). What has to be seen is that you are a sweet little child, precious and full of beauty. All you want is to love, to play, to dance, to enjoy all things with everyone. That is your purity, even as a personality, not only as Truth itself. All the "wrong" you did is because you did not understand. So of course there is no wrong. There is no reason to ever doubt, ever second guess, or ever worry. This is so important. This can only be seen when you are connected to the love that you are, the infinite ocean of love. Only this love can give this child the understanding and compassion it needs. When the child sees its own innocence, and how it imagined all these voices some time in very early childhood, it no longer wants to believe them. Ego will choose love when it sees that that is the truth. Yes, all the layers upon the ego, they act like they don't want love, because they are internalized punishers and demanders. They are fictions. And yes, also the ego is fiction of course. But only when the ego sees it for itself, when it truly understands "Oh I see, there is only love, and that's all I ever wanted and deserved and needed. Oh, and I also see that why I'm suffering is because I believed in lies. Oooh, and I am also a lie? Well, when I have to cease so only love can remain, then I happily leave.", only then will it accept its fate. This is how surrender happens, through understanding. And of course, there is also grace. It is in no ones hands to fully understand. We can just assist our ego, with true love and gentleness (and sometimes firmness), to see what is real. And that has to include all the personal barriers, because they will remain either way, even after enlightenment. That's what many teachers call transformation. It both has to happen anyway when you want to mature. I personally found this to be extremely important to fully grasp. This is like a team effort with your ego, and at some point, it will take one for the team so to speak. And then the team as a whole readily steps into the cleansing fires, for the only aim of the team was to prepare the stage for Truth to enter.