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What is trust and truth? How do you know if you can trust a birdsong? How do you know if the taste of an apple is true? All the models I create are like sandcastles. They have what some call "relative truth", yet ultimately they all wash back into the ocean. A wonderful interplay between form and formless. I would consider Leo's videos to be movies, just a different form of movie. That type of expression can be effective. Perhaps your mode of expression is similar, or you could create your own novel form of expression. You could integrate what you like about Leo's form with other forms of you like. Is not creativity a transformation of previous form into novel form? I'm a sucker for anything integrated. It's how my mind works. If I could only pack four items for a journey, curiosity would be one of them.

The global ego can be seen as an unholy spirit, haha. It can sound funny when recognizing that all it means is that the world is still incomplete as a holon, so it's not whole, not holy, so it's unholy, or "fallen" and ruled by "satan"/ego separation, the prince of this world. The individual ego is a fractal version of the global ego. Integrating the personal ego therefore means also healing the global ego, which results in the completion of our planet as a holon. This is a complete form of healing; a process of making the incomplete planetary holon complete. Our fallen world is actually not a sickness. It's a necessary developmental stage of third density. So healing in this complete sense is about a transformation, an evolutionary leap rather than curing a disease. Since the personal ego is attached to the whole global ego it's an extremely rigid form of blockage and separation. Fortunately, what to the personal ego is an immense obstacle is a puny form to the Holy Spirit. And it's the Holy Spirit that does the work of integrating our egos into the planetary holon.

I can really relate retty well with you! Painfully well, in fact. Depends on what you want to do -- do you want to better your external circumstances, underestand, you will have to go many strivings and suffer to get into comfortable place, which is for indefinate amount of time, and will pass after some time, as you know life tends to change in unexpected ways. If you want to focus on innerwork, its a rabbithole, but it leads to freedom, mostly only suffering worth to going trough. How can you feel better? Use your suffering to inspire action for transformation, underestand that without action towards the change, there will be no change, just recognize that. Its ok, and just try try try alot of spiritual stuff out, follow your intuition, keep reining your consclusions, let your minds die, no matter what. Do i relate? I am in the process of dropping everything and just keeping my job, which is unfullfilling, rest is based on enlightenment work/ lifestyle advancment. Please, hang in there! You will thank yourself later.

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An even bigger change is I believe the transformation from ego consciousness to a collective consciousness for humanity. A hidden breakaway civilization with a collective consciousness may already exist on earth. That's a totally different society than the public ego-based society. How to turn humanity and the whole earth into a planetary holon seems like something mindboggling to me, yet that's what people like Dr. Bruce Lipton have talked about. Lipton even said that we aren't even humans yet! Only when we form a unity will we become humanity, he said. We have evolved as far as is possible on an individual level according to Lipton. I interpret that as a coming evolutionary leap into a collective consciousness, what the Law of One calls a social memory complex.

Maybe taking things personally is normal when a person is talking to another person. It becomes impersonal only when one of them becomes deluded that they are something other than a person, above a person. Beyond a person. God isn't beyond a person, god is all inclusive, not anything above or beyond. I am not too attached to anyone. I am attached the exact amount to facilitate within me the grieving process to undergo the transformation that I have been waiting to experience since the moment I opened my eyes in this incarnation. Hahaha This made me laugh so much xD. How dare I... how dare I point out some rather insensitive and abrasive tendencies stemming from arrogance and entitlement, what an abuser am I. Ahaha Thank you for that dear India. That was prescious.

I'm interested in the change of direction Leo has taken. He makes a good point about rewatching his previously released episodes. The talk he gave a week ago was over 3 hours yet I watched it twice and would probably gain something if I watched it a 3rd time. His series on self deception is one I watched repeatedly. The idea of observing and processing one's own schadenfreude is something I've kept returning to. Purifying the emotional center is another way of putting it. The way it's expressed in Gurdjieff groups or Fourth Way Work,,, Metanoia is another rarely used word that has significance in regards to personal transformation. In the King James Bible, this Greek word - 'metanoia' was horribly translated as repentance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanoia_(theology) Martin Butler's last podcast is relevant to the idea that it's negativity that makes the world go around. How does ordinary resentment feed schadenfreude? Negative, lower emotions like resentment trashes out our third eye or intuitive capacities.

Watching Leo's latest video. "What if depth is the trap?" "If reality is infinite, then why do you keep going down the rabbit hole? There's no end." "What more is there to gain by going deeper?" All these questions popped into my mind. But then I realized something. Leo is just a talking head, myself, letting me know of farther terrain. See, I've been going through a huge transformation lately. This seemed to be a big sign, in neon letters: "I need to work on myself." Just as Leo went through a huge awakening, so have I. So many fears. So much uncertainty. Holding me back. Everything is just a "ping" for me to awaken further. That's all this reality is. My addictions are pleasure without joy. WHAT I'M AFTER IS JOY!!! My neuroses are just cycles that keep me from realizing I'm Infinite, pure Love. OF COURSE!!! Everything is a call to awaken deeper and discover more fruits. How have I been so blind? Do you realize? Everything in YOUR life is moving you closer to God. All you judgments, fears, and insecurities. ALL of it is preparing you to realize your true nature. If you were God, wouldn't that be how you would construct life? We are all scared. But the "you" that's scared is the "you" that must die. The last thing you want is to die. See, this connects with the last season of Mr. Robot, season 4 (can't recommend it enough). SPOILERS. (stop now and watch it on amazon prime unless you don't enjoy a wonderfully crafted and transcendent story. Seriously, you already got what you came for. These following words don't do it justice in the slightest. Watch it.) The "Elliot Alderson" you've been following for 4 seasons is not the "real" Elliot. He suffered from a split personality disorder. So the Elliot you've laughed with, cried with, rooted for, and hated for 4 fucking season has been the dark Elliot. The one who took over without you knowing it. The one who kept the "real" Elliot held hostage in a dream where every fantasy came alive. Almost every fantasy, that is. "You," that person you think you are reading these words on a screen, is the dark Elliot. An invader. Your society raised you this way. Certain traumatic events shaped you this way. "You" are built of walls and resistances to protect you from a cruel world... the one you couldn't love or accept in its totality. Because the real Elliot was raped as a child, he created another personality as a defense mechanism. The child created a monster without knowing it, and that monster started taking more and more control over his life. It was what he always wanted to be. For Elliot, he was an extremely smart little boy, with a Dad who showed him the wonders of computers and other technology. So the "dark" Elliot became a computer hacker who wanted to right all the wrongs in such a cruel society. He wanted to return all the power to the people. He saw all the injustice and wanted to make it right. He created "F-SOCIETY," a vigilante hacker group with the sole mission of taking down the big conglomerates and erasing all debt and economic injustice. If only it were that easy... Reflecting on my own life, what I wanted as a kid came true... I just wanted to play video games, jack off, and shut out the world. Yes, it's all clear to me now. I didn't want anything special. I didn't understand the world. I was spoiled rotten by my parents and became very self-centered. "Why do anything at all? Can't I just... do nothing and play video games? Pleasure myself? If there's no meaning to it all, what's the rush? Career??? Pshhh...." I've been acting out these childish wants for close to 10 years, and I explored their conclusions. It prepared me. Yet the "real" Elliot still calls to me. He's pushing me towards greater self awareness. I've seen things that can't be unseen. Awakening. Psychedelics. I can't stop understanding more about myself. I'm at a point where now where "I see you." The dark Elliot that has been running my life for so long. He's just a child. Scared. But I know he needs to die for the real Elliot to live on. That's how Mr. Robot ends. You see, the dark individuated consciousness watches a movie with his family one last time. He lets go. But he's ready to. He has suffered enough to understand that he's been robbing the real Elliot of the fruits of life. In fact, his whole journey through all 4 seasons has been pushing him to realize this. The last words of the show? His sister leans in, and whispers with heartfelt emotion like she's seeing him for the first time: "Hello, Elliot." The entire show, however dark it may have seemed, was really a potent story about Love. The "dark" part of Elliot was compelled to die, as a sacrifice for the "real" part of himself he never knew. The one thing the real Elliot never experienced in his prison dreamscape, was the love of his sister. We experienced a letting go; a death. But death is just imaginary. It's a necessary mechanic of evolution. For new growth to occur, first must come the destruction of the old. I must embrace that child in me. He's scared of what may happen. But I have to comfort him, and ensure that everything will be alright if he just lets go. There's a partition in all of us that doesn't want to let go. He's scared of the trauma that may be unleashed. Maybe there are experiences you've had that you couldn't love. But you are not that child anymore. You can now face these truths with a new perspective, if you're ready (and don't beat yourself up if you're not ready. It takes time). Let that child die in your arms, reborn. With Love.

It depends on what one defines as 'rigged' but when the Democratic party does everything it can to stack the process against Bernie including closing polling places in areas he had a clear advantage to gain more percentage points in tight contests making it harder for his supporters to actually vote. Not to mention the media doing everything it can to craft a negative narrative about Bernie in attacking everything about him including his supporters which really does influence undecided voters about whether they want to be painted in that way themselves. Then other candidates do everything they can to block him from potential delegates to win it outright with a majority it does make one consider that word could be apropos to the situation. Yet, that doesn't mean they actually cheated the vote count which would be election 'fraud' as opposed to what one could just consider 'rigged'. Of course, that does not erase what you suggest about their ability to transcend the things that would prevent them from being ready for such a transformation.

In awakening quite often the clarity we view our own self with also exists with how we view others but it may not be as complete of a transformation immediately so it will be a benefit to your path to discern whether you are seeing others in the clarity of awakening or the veil of ego.

Aging is a natural process and not a disease. Spirituality is a life long process of transformation. Nothing to do with aging. The whole idea that we'll be immortal is a huge fallacy. Technology can only aid survival but cannot halt death.

It's not meant for you or me or anyone who wants family, romance etc etc. It was designed for those gurus who sat alone meditating in the mountains and who wanted to live like a hermit away from cultural bondage. You need to account for the context here. They are not modern day motivational speakers with wife and family and a flying career. These were ancient hermits who lived and favored a particular lifestyle for themselves and their descendents It was a school and system that they followed very much like the rules or teachings of a catholic institution. You only have to apply nuggets that personally appeal and bring a progressive transformation in your life. Rest you need to ignore because it's not applicable to you but it was applicable to them in their time A lot of the eastern teaching of being away from society makes sense to Eastern people since back then (and even now but not often) societies were extremely oppressive and granted no freedom for spiritual exploration or even personal occupation of choice because of a rigid hierarchy. Hence running away from social burdens made absolute sense in terms of freedom and bliss

Sometimes self sabotage is the only way to progress... transformation is rarely linear. If Biden gets the nomination my gut is saying 4 more years of Trump as well. But 4 more years of Trump could very well create the collective suffering and damage needed to transform our society for future generations. I had hoped the damage already done would be enough.

It's really just cause they wanna be like Walter White in Breaking Bad. It's a sign of transformation you know.

As I mentioned before I inclined to yoga especially ashtanga because it grounding for my self. I reached the point where I decided to take teacher training course because it could serve as a survival instrument and I hoped that some of these people were far in the personal development. Well, I know it is not true and I realized that many of them they are just still stuck in survival mode. Not only that but I asked about yoga teacher jobs and I realized that yoga studios are screwing up yoga teachers and in order to earn enough money one has to waste lots of personal energy and there is no enough energy left for their own practice. So my goal become how to go beyond survival? There is no security in the world but I listened to Sadhguru and he expressed that it is almost first time in history that we can just buy stuff, live from it for a long time (a year or so) and concentrate on transformation. Hurrah, so I buy stuff, close myself, going to exercise and meditate and I'm going to transform myself into enlightened being. I realized that it might not be the path for me as one can look at it as running away and it can at certain point become a problem. How to go beyond survival as a householder with family? I had to wait until I have seen that my children can be self-sustained and I can be involved at the limited level. Anyway, I've observed that there is some healthy level of parents influence on children but beyond it parents just create barriers and blockages in children's future development. At the same time I look at my relationship(s) and I wonder what would happen to the relationships if one goes beyond survival? I see there issues with my addition to pleasure, porn and sex, I think I worry about the unknown. I transformed my life to a rhythm where I would incorporate meditation, yoga, self-development into my life. However, I've seen it is not enough. The only resolution I could come up is that I start something that would support my practice and at the same time bring some compensation that would support my life and expenses or at least part of expenses. So, I decided to start yoga studio where I would play a role as a teacher. At the same time I have to find a space which I would own and I could manage how much to pay yoga teachers so myself too. However, this idea changed over time and it transformed from yoga studio to holistic center. I would use topics and experiences that I went trough and offer it in terms of workshops over the time. I wondered how would I call it, I came up with an idea of sahaja yoga (sahaja means spontaneous enlightenment). Then friend of mine become involved in choosing name and she proposed name Arya and given that I wanted to involve her in the studio I changed the name. Also I did not want to influence things, I try to give things free flow. Then I was influenced by Leo's video which ultimately explained few things around Self and Love that I already experienced and I had them in my mind but they were not connected. I started to see connections and it led to ultimate idea for name: Self + Love.

Where to begin... this body is male around 40 years old and live in Sweden. Overweight but in pretty good shape strength-wise. But that doesn't matter. Ok let's start again I found actualized a few years ago. I have always had a life long interest in the "meaning of life" is suppose that's where it went wrong and right from the beginning. I now 30 years later realize that there is no concrete meaning to your life at least not how I had imagined it but then again I found a lot of helpful tools along the way to live life. Then again in the new year of 2019, I decided to meditate regularly. A primary reason was to have one critical skill to use if I got a terminal illness in the future. I figured it would be good to have rock-solid mindfulness. But the regular usage of the mediation app for 15 minutes to 30 minutes a day for a year started something. I could continue a connection to oneness were there before was no road ahead. Then I found actualized again when Leo made his real-time enlightenment becoming good video. Despite understanding that 99.9% of the earth's population must think he has become crazy everything made sense to me and I saw the final stretch of road to enlightenment. The thing is I have a life that is not compatible with enlightenment. And it resists the transformation. I can feel and predict it and I see that my ordinary life is crumbling for every inch of enlightenment I let into my life and every day. And it is so hard to stay the course because I have no one to tell to bounce ideas to ask for advice to share the transition with. I believe my whole life might change if I continue this road. I believe that once you have glimpsed the road there is no turning back. My work as a sales rep for a tech company was boring before but now it seems like madness to continue. And I can't let my mask slip at work but I am just an inch from telling them straight "I hate selling can we please do something creative instead?". Fear. Surely I will get fired for saying that. In my relationship, all decisions were fear-based and based on how to be a good boyfriend. We almost broke up but I stuck with it and promised myself to be true and speak my mind and wishes. This is of course not the deal she signed up for and thus the relationship might crumble. My "free" want to spend it in a state of ecstatic creative flow! But how a lifetime of keeping the lid on my creativity and waiting to figure out the meaning of life has set som breaks on that process but at least now I know what I am looking for. Spontaneous inspiration to do stuff. Things where the automatic reaction is "what might people say?" there I think is the best portal into an exciting creative opportunity. So I hope I will document this journey here. In some way. I don't want to be rich, famous or influential. I just hope that one day I can look back to this post and realize I now live a life where I am free to be true to myself and others. Where creative flow is my livelihood and I have no fear.

@Martin123 it's sort of interesting, whenever i had my first awakening after/during my reading of the power of now some years ago, i actually just assumed all the fears and unconscious behavior could be dealt with by simply grounding myself in the present moment. Over time it became incredibly hard to do this and i found myself binge watching and rereading more eckhart tolle, taking ice baths and meditating, especially when/before doing things i'd usually be all 'up in my head' about. Eventually i found out the hard way that having a mere awakening didn't change anything related to my attachment issues with women, the deep seeded fears and beliefs that felt natural to express still found their place. After i'd learned about the attachment theory everything seemed to click, i was given answers and solutions to how "i and others" perceived various situations. This went so deep i remember crying tears of joy that "how sick i could be" was learned behavior for self protection and that digging deeper into these issues was the "how to" transform into a healthy secure individual. Forgiveness was possible it seemed but like any other tool, it only gave what i was willing to accept about the story i'd been told by my very own programming; so ultimately, finding clarity in purpose and vision is by far the path to true self transformation. Is attachment theory necessary for this? No, but it can definitely be helpful in exposing blind spots. Ironically enough it can also be just as much a distraction/hindrance to changing one's story/narrative because it puts limitations that are only really circumstantial on oneself and others I don't think Nahm was intentionally trying to exploit/attack your ass (or way), but i can see how you'd interpret his post as such based off your previous posts. Truth is subjective dawg, your interpretation of his advice is what conjugated the accusations. His advice is completely valid, step out of the story, rewrite the script. Only without the understandings in attachment, the rough patches could be more daunting/unbearable as i found to be the case

@Nahm The clarity that arises is pretty simple. What you're suggesting is a form of spiritual elitism that ultimately devalues the ones who are in the midst of their healing journeys seeing self-realization as some sort of a promise of a relief, while being deceived by those who only use it as a form of spiritual escapism. Your attitude, with all due respect, isn't too far from what leads to allegations of sexual misconducts against spiritual Gurus who promise an all-encompassing relief in the form of transcendence. You cannot transcend suffering, you can only awaken to endure the suffering that acts as a divine agent of alchemy and transformation. Anything else is a rather harmful form of escapism that ultimately doesn't serve anyone, only delays one's evolution. It is fine to speak about self-realization when self-realization is the topic. But it has nothing to do with emotional integration and evolution, and the placement of such advice in these areas is rather dangerous, because the individuals on the path of emotional transformation (and while that is ultimately all of us) tend to be in very vulnerable and impressionable positions and states. Spiritual oppression, it is a patriarchal attitude leaking into the vulnerability of spiritual evolution. Not good @Nahm, truly, and I say this with love and respect, but absolute firmness and clarity. Not good at all.

It seems to me that there must be a subtle body within the physical body. Like a morphic field that controls how the body grows, how wounds are healed etc. The subtle body is I believe finer vibrations of the vacuum energy. And the subtle body interfaces with the physical body via the water in the body. (Water has amazing properties.) Moving from third to fourth density involves transcending the ego and getting a more advanced and capable subtle body. The ego shadow has to "die" to allow for a rebirth into a collective fourth density consciousness. And that "birth" process is about fourth density capacity through the Holy Spirit moving into the subtle body and into the physical body through the water in the body. It's a transformation from a third density body to a fourth density body, what Christians sometimes call a glorified body.

@Francis Trach Just my own 2 cents. For anything to have sentience it must have what can be termed "reality sentience". This means that to the extent that there is sentience, the person is aware of and can make adjustments to reality. This is the definition of free will. You are an aspect of reality, which is to the extent that you have sentience, free to transform reality. To this extent, you as reality, are responsible for every decision that is bound up and made within sentience, outside this, you are excused. Free will and sentience have a coupling which cannot be uncoupled, this is because sentience itself exists as a kind of freedom, this is why awareness appears as a kind of "nothingness", this is because this is the encasing by which contents can flow through and you can make changes to the universe through the synthesis that your consciousness engenders in its interaction with those contents. This doesn't mean we're "all powerful free will universal changing beings" of course, meaning free will exists on a spectrum and we exist somewhere to the right in the animal kingdom as well as individual differences existing right across the human population. Free will resides in the prefrontal cortex mostly, thus it is the place where people should concentrate most if they wish to improve their free will incrementally over the long term rather than have it diminish more and more with age due to misuse and lack of use. There's really no way out of free will unfortunately, and I seriously doubt anyone here would be able to logically falsify the statement. Reality exhibits ultimate sentience and therefore ultimate free will relative to that sentience, we are like tiny microbes as reality which have been granted with awareness to reconfigure along with reality in the larger picture of realities ongoing transformation and understanding of itself.

@Nahm defiantly leaps & bounds from 3 years ago but it’s cool, for a while there it was like I was bipolar, some days Blissed out, some days Mr. Anxiety, All part of the transformation I guess, if I can keep progressing like this I know one day I’ll be great! self inquiry is also an all day event with me which is an amazing tool as well. shinzen young said his stream entry of enlightenment was with sds & his polishing or finishing off was with self inquiry. I believe he said this.

Thank you. ?? I feel like I had a major realization about my psychedelic path that Ive yet to notice thus far. Maybe it’s because of the tools Im using (LSD and mushrooms) not being as powerful as 5MeO or DPT however it seems to me that in these wildly altered states of consciousness not only am I able to gain insight, but what Ive noticed is that these insight’s transformative capabilities have been inconsistent to say the least. On the one hand, I am forever changed after as much tripping as Ive done. Ive felt oneness, love, truth, nothingness and consciousness in ways I never thought possible... Ive literally felt the love of god and infinity. It’s nut. But I still come down. The energy that is this ego/body/mind returns and a contracted self energy resurfaces. Yet in a sense... it doesn’t return. From a certain pov, I can walk around dead sober and slip back into what I can only describe as psychedelic states of consciousness. I can tear up on a train going home from work because of the empathy and compassion I feel for complete strangers, I can look nowhere and see how all of this is spontaneously coming from nowhere... but I still come back. Attention still “sticks” to the imagery and story of me, as if there’s true authentic legitimacy. I don’t feel enlightened and yet enlightenment never feels separate from who I am, what I am. So what are psychedelics really doing? It feels like they are pushing possibilities forward, they are pushing the boundary yet the boundary snaps back. The transformational process seems to certainly be occurring but it feels like it’s only being sustained because of how much other work Im doing besides psychedelics. I see possibilities, I go super saiyan, and come crashing into ego, only to finally see that this distinction between tripping and sobriety is utterly arbitrary. Psychedelics are a high, a state change in which truth seems to become so much clearer but more than that, they present a possibility for how life may be lived but these possibilities are as temporary as the altered state. Until the possibility is integrated through the slow transformation and evolution of this mind/body/ego system, it will be entirely fleeting. But until transformation is seen as 100% available right here right now, how can one hope to transform? Moreover, what does truth have to do with transformation? Sort of rambling at this point... essentially I feel these tools have so much to teach, but after this last trip, I feel the weight of responsibility of the integration/transformation work. The psychedelics don’t promise change, they can almost guarantee massive, powerful insight but even these insights aren’t enough to produce the changes in experience you’d expect from becoming conscious of certain facets of truth. Why is that so? I truly wonder. Habits that seem to help: - 1 hour meditation per day following tmi system - constant passive contemplation “who am I?” “What am I?” - keeping my body healthy - sleep - no pmo - using weed very sparingly - practicing metta - journaling - watching actualized.org videos - reading books - moving towards situations that create fear like approaching strangers or holding eye contact - following principles like keep going and patience etc.

Hello guys. I'm trying to understand my own stage. So I was doing analysis and was going back to my old thinking patterns since I was young(6-8-10). One thing I'm aware is that I was 100% non judgmental, and even now when I see ppl I'm like that's the way he understands things, or if someone insults me in anyway I'll be like, he got triggered by something else or he felt threatened by my attitude. Also I used to go to church/mosque cuz I though praying to god was good and made me feel good. My praying would be literally like this: Jesus,budha,allah,Mohammed whatever is the truth thank you, and I would go to sleep ? (nvr interested in learning Islam method of praying or any kind of church ritual) Had friends, atheist and Christians. Also I lost this belief in GOD, or whatever I though god was when I was like 15 16, I was like wait a min, all those books are fairytales, but still thought that thers some good morals and needed for some ppl to help them with a deeper sense of life and help them psychologically. Since I started meditating though 3 years ago, and since I came to the US 2 years ago my patterns of thinking would go like this: I need to do smth with my life, and also I developed some sort of devotion toward my guru and Shiva as a figure of not the truth but someone who gave humanity tools for transformation. I also had mystical experiences if you will, like my vision turned green while meditating, and I lose sense of my body completely, no tension, no feeling on the body, it's just me, my emotions are still there but the connection with my body completely gone. Does this makes me a BLUE/ORANGE/GREEN/YELLOW? BLUE coz I think shiva or my guru are needed for my spiritual growth, ORANGE cuz I need to do smth tangible with my life, GREEN coz I value respect a lot and consensus, YELLOW cos I find it funny and I'm aware that understanding reality or having mystical experiences can come either from yoga,psychedelics,watching Leo's videos or just going deep decoding your psychology, and reading about Systems lately and how important they are. Also I had those experiences, does it make me PURPLE according to the model or TURQOISE. Also guys I'm being aware of some old programming I had before, everytime I meet someone that kinda was doing what I was doing, or knowing more than me in a certain field I would feel threatened, was this some kind of RED?

You may have already heard that advaita talks about oneness, the oneness of the existence that exists without a second; it says that this oneness is your true nature! But this is not a theory and not something that is meant to be just intellectually understood. This oneness is realized in one’s living experience which not only transforms you but also liberates you from all psychological bondages. I will give you a short introduction on Advaita Vedanta but will also let you know about some pitfalls that one can encounter if certain things are not understood. Before Advaita Vedanta is taught, the disciple is expected to develop four-fold qualifications called sadhana chatushtaya. I will also quickly go over them in this post. First, advaita (non-duality) doesn’t really have a contradiction with dvaita (duality). And there was a reason why various dvaita (dual)) schools emerged after Shankara’s time. What is usually described as advaita philosophy or the non-dual oneness is the fruit of the spiritual path. What is described as dvaita philosophy (the duality of God and devotee) is actually a path. In the beginning of bhakti, there is duality; but it always ends with non-dual oneness. In Advaita Vedanta, bhakti or devotion is considered as one of the means to purify oneself and develop sadhana chatushtaya or four-fold qualifications. But the problem with Advaita Vedanta is usually this: people directly go for the theory or the higher teachings in Vedanta without developing these four-fold qualifications. It is developing the four-fold qualifications that takes the most part of a person’s journey. This mere intellectual understanding sometimes results in pure arrogance with absolutely no transformation. When you tell someone that sounds like “You are God”, it is very likely that it will be misunderstood; the person may also forget his duties and become very careless; because from the perspective of Advaita, nothing really matters. But in practical life; everything matters. Even after realizing the truth in your experience, you still have to play the role in the real world. You would certainly live like a water drop on a lotus leaf, but the world still sees you as an individual bound to the obligations of the society. Advaita and Dvaita People like Ramanuja and Madhva who came after Shankara addressed the above mentioned problem. If you see the traditions in the world which see God and devotee as separate, you will notice that they all promise a place after death where they can live in God’s presence. We often hear vivid descriptions of vaikunta, paradise or heaven. This was just used as a trick or a social tool. To the general public, it was this teaching which was appropriate: develop loving devotion to God and surrender to him; after death, you can live with him forever. This was like tricking a child. By saying this, they can lure them into showing devotion. This in turns purifies the mind. According to the tradition, even if liberation is not possible for a person in this life, the spiritual development that he went through is carried forward to the next birth. There have been many places in the world where people were quite primitive and completely lacked any moral sense or obligation towards society. Just imagine a vast peninsula which has no empire, no state, no kings and no public laws. 5th century Saudi Arabia is one of them. Many people, as a reaction to how things have turned out in the name of Islam and how Muhammad’s life was described in Hadiths written down many decades after his death, have come to a conclusion that Muhammad was a power hungry warlord, who was just after power, women and sex. But that will contradict many things in Islam itself. Even the critics of Muhammad agree that Muhammad was a genius. Also, historians suggest that he was not illiterate as it is believed by Muslims. Muhammad also played tricks; he made compromises too. The idea of eternal hell was actually a social tool developed by Plato, a disciple of Socrates; it is not there in old Testament of Bible. Muhammad used this concept to discipline the people of Arabia. He was against female infanticide and many other social problems. Most importantly, Muhammad asserted that surrender or submission to one supreme God is the true form of worship. There was no concept of religion those days, even though people had various beliefs. People only had a concept called ‘deen’ which meant ‘the way of life”. Muhammad asserted that Islam or surrender to God is the right way of life or deen. Islam stands on five pillars which basically is: oneness of God and submission to God; 5 prayers a day which has different postures just like yoga, a way to convey submission and also to focus one’s attention; fasting for a whole month with an attitude of devotion and love; going on a sacred pilgrimage where various devotees from different races and places gather as a symbol of equality and charity to the poor. But Muslims later became too sensitive towards their faith; even though Muhammad improved the status quo of Arabia as per historians, he couldn’t improve it completely in his lifetime. So, only Sufi tradition preserved the original teachings more clearly, which the mainstream Islam rejects as heresy. Jesus also insisted that love towards God and love towards human beings are his two commandments. So the bottomline is devotion is one of the ways to purify oneself. And a personal God or a personification is required for it; this divine has to be one and not many, so that one can surrender to it. It is the same as prapanna as described in Gita. Apart from devotion, karma yoga, or doing one’s duties without attachment to the fruits of actions, also purifies the mind and develops the four-fold qualifications. Karma yoga is about focusing on the action rather than the result, on the present rather than the future; it teaches to develop love towards one’s actions and do the actions with focus and involvement, not with a mind that is daydreaming about the results. Pure Karma yoga produces states of flow quite effortlessly. Other sitting meditations and kundalini yoga also comes under karma yoga. Four-Fold Qualifications - Sadhana Chatushtaya So now you may ask; what are the fourfold qualifications that one should develop? 1). Shad-Sampat Out of those four, let us just see one for now, which is Shad-Sampat or six virtues. So this one among the fourfold qualifications is further divided into six: Sama: calmness of the mind; Dama: gaining control over the mind and senses. Uparati: The tendency to naturally drop certain conditioned behaviors and habits; for example, you may lose interest in certain habits. Titiksha - forbearance. Not getting too excited in pleasure and ability to withstand suffering. Sraddha - trust; This is a trust in spiritual path and see it as a working method; this trust naturally develops once you start feeling some changes in your mind and experience. Samadhana: Resolving all the internal conflicts so that you gain the ability to focus. The most practical way to go for is to first slowly develop these six virtues; don’t give any deadline. The practice has to be taken slowly and gradually so that you also live your social life in the meantime. For example, a person who starts with can first work on forbearance or titiksha. This means that whenever you go through suffering, you should go through it willingly since there is no choice and try to bear the suffering without getting too distressed about it. You can also develop shraddha, or a faith that you would be able to grow spiritually as the time goes by. Focused attention meditation that involves focusing on an object (like dhyana or shamata) can bring calmness to the mind and develop sama. It will also slowly develop dama or self-control. That is essentially about bringing the wandering mind under control without letting the mind distracted by sense objects. Uparati is something that would happen naturally when other virtues are developed. Samadhana is something you develop last. 2) Vairagya - Non-attachment The next thing in four-fold qualifications that I am going to explain is vairagya or non-attachment. Many people mistake that non-attachment is renouncing one’s possessions. But one can lead a normal worldly life and still develop non-attachment,. This is usually symbolized as a metaphor: one lives like the lotus leaf in water; even though the leaf resides in water, it doesn’t get wet or the water doesn’t stick to it. Vairagya also refers to a certain state of mind; To understand that we have to learn about a concept called ‘hedonic treadmill”. Hedonic treadmill theory is a psychological theory that states that regardless of the objective outcomes of lives such as success and failure, the experience of life always returns to a base-level happiness. Happiness never increases as time goes by; the base level happiness always remains the same but it keeps us in the hedonic treadmill, chasing for objective outcomes without actually reaching anywhere. This base-level happiness is a limited happiness and one is not satisfied with it. It is only self-realization or the realization of the truth about one’s own nature which can make the limited level of happiness to blossom fully, giving an individual the absolute sense of fulfillment and liberation. When one realizes that running on this hedonic treadmill is fruitless and is not interested in the objective outcomes, he has developed vairagya. Now one may ask, if one chooses to not to be interested in the objective outcomes, won’t he stop working or performing? No; this will increase the performance. Because it will actually make the karma yoga to mature. Since you are not interested in objective outcomes, you can be fully devoted to action, while doing your obligatory duties. As I said, flow states are very normal when one is in karma yoga; so actions actually give a sense of enjoyment at this point. 3. Mumuksutva - Desire for liberation Now you know that self-realization and the liberation that happens because of it while living is the only thing which will give you the absolute fulfilment. So, your concern shifts automatically from worldly desire to the desire for liberation. Your calm mind, non-attachment and the desire for liberation will make you more focused on the practice and also make you qualified to understand what Viveka is. It might have taken a few decades to reach up to this point. But there are exceptions, like people who get vairagya and mumuksutva in a very early age in life. 4. Viveka - Discrimination of the observer and observed. One need to realize something that is self-evident. You know the existence of anything because you are conscious of it. You know that a tree you see exists because it is a perception perceived by the consciousness. Consciousness is what that knows everything; that knows that this world exists. So, existence of anything is only known by the existence of consciousness. You are also aware of your own thoughts, emotions, subtle mental movements and mood changes as they float as the contents of your consciousness. When you see everything from a totally subjective perspective, you will see that this world itself appears as a perception in your consciousness; it is as if everything is happening within consciousness. It takes a great deal of objectivity to understand and develop viveka. Usually a human being is too attached to the concept of ‘me’ or ‘self, which gives him a sense of separation from the world. But when you develop non-attachment, it will be very easy to see this concept of little ‘me’ as an object of consciousness, which only appears to exist because the thoughts flow in the mind in a high speed. Just like a fan which is running in a high speed creates an illusion that there is a circle, the thoughts when moving fast gives a continuity and creates the illusion of self. But if you take a step back from your thoughts and just observe what they do, sometimes they may slow down and you may be able to silence your mind for a few seconds. In that few seconds, you would just exist as consciousness simply perceiving sense perceptions. You can now see that you are actually consciousness itself, and that the thoughts, emotions, body and everything you perceive in consciousness is not you; But consciousness, which is the true Self, is now identified with the body, mind and many other concepts like one’s beliefs, one’s nationality, one’s religion etc. It mistakes a selective part of what is observed as self. This idea of mistaking the body and mind as one’s self is avidya or root ignorance, which is considered as the root cause of all suffering. Since it is because of consciousness that the world is perceived, consciousness is seen more real than what appears on the consciousness. This consciousness or the pure awareness has no attributes and gives space for the life experience to occur and the perceptions to exist. Whether you are sleeping, dreaming or in a waking state, it is consciousness which pervades all these three! With this understanding you can inquire everything that happens in your consciousness and see that it is not you; because you as the pure awareness that observes a thought or emotion should be separate from what is observed. Since you can observe the thought, the thought is not you. This discrimination or clear identification of the observer or the pure awareness (the real you) and the objects of observation (thoughts, emotions, perceptions etc) is viveka. Now this may raise a question. Doesn’t Vedanta say that everything is one and there is no two? Doesn’t the discrimination of observer vs observed promote duality? No.. Actually, this discrimination is necessary to remove the attachments and the selective identification of consciousness with body, mind and certain mental concepts related to the egoic self (my beliefs, my religion, my country etc). The concept of oneness doesn’t have to be promoted as a teaching, belief or a philosophy. This is the reason some traditions do not talk about oneness or the absolute Brahman that exists without a second. It may actually confuse people at the earlier stages. Brahman is the same as your real self. Upanishads say prajnanam Brahman, which means consciousness is Brahman. You can imagine your consciousness as a screen and everything that is observed in consciousness as moving pictures on the screen, In a sense, the screen and the pictures are different; but the pictures do not have any independent existence on their own, So the picture part is called as maya and the screen part is brahman. But you need to understand that the screen can exist without picture. The pictures are just modifications of the same reality. You may see thousand men marching in a screen but the screen is one. But until or unless this oneness of Brahman becomes living experience, theoretical understanding of what is Brahman is of no use. When the final realization dawns, both observer and the observed is realized as one and the same; this is Advaita. If you want to really understand oneness, it has to start with developing sadhana chatushtaya first. The final stage of Vedantic path involves to be completely established as a witness or awareness; It is called as shakshibhava or nididhyasana. This is the same as mindfulness in Buddhism. It requires just being a witness and passive observer of everything that passes by in consciousness. You just let the mind happens by itself; you neither give force to the thoughts, emotions and subtle movements of mind nor suppress them. You simply let anything arise and pass away in your conscious experience. Your focus is more on silent gaps between thoughts and mental movements. these gaps keep increasing until the observer and observed converges and all the distinctions disappear, There are many other things taught in Advaita like karma and creation of the universe. But they are not really much important, Understanding karma helps, but many things can be learnt in the later stage. The only thing one can focus on as a starting point is to work on purifying one’s mind. I have explained more about Sadhana chatushtaya here: You can read my book “The Truth About Spiritual Enlightenment: Bridging Science, Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta” to learn more. Also read: Buddhism and Vedanta are the Same – A Detailed Comparison Shanmugam P's answer to What's the essence of non-duality?

Hey thanks ❤️ And thank you for asking... Patience. I think experientially, patience is like an acceptance of now, and letting go, a being, a surrendering to now. Often times I can get fixated in the future, whether its 5 minutes from now or 5 years from now, the mind, my mind creates these stories and imaginations of what it wants to one day occur or what it needs to plan for. But when I look at nature, when I look at the pace at which life moves, it moves very slowly. Transformation, evolution, change all happen at a snail’s pace relative to the quick fixes the mind craves. So patience is like reconnecting with the operating principle of life... just be with whatever is and be patient as impermanence and change play itself out. Moreover, let the patience be imbued with trust that whatever happens is exactly what needed to happen, and is all a form of self love and growth. My goals will manifest however they will manifest, trust the slowness of this journey and be at peace with what is already.