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Remorse is valid; not guilt I've been going off on tangents lately ranting about the harmful notion of guilt. It hasn't been that long ago that I would feel guilty over random thoughts that would float through my mind. How crazy is that. It's so unnecessary. A crazy or negative thought does not have to be identified with. It can simply be let go of. This is not me. Saying the inner No to thoughts randomly generated by our word mechanism as Oscar Ichazo put it. Guilt is promoted by the fundamentalists of religions to divide people against themselves which makes them more susceptible to manipulation and thus control. Im making a distinction here between guilt and remorse which I see and experience as valid. If one didn't experience remorse, that would classify one as a psychopath or a sociopath proper, but being stained with the idea of guilt is worse than useless. It's a curse upon man in which he is under its spell. This is not something that I dreamed up on my own but rather got through the new version of the ICHING- The Oracle Of The Cosmic Way. Just ponder this notion and sit with it in your life and discern for yourselves. This is so much more than a book. Carol Anthony and Hana Moog are so overlooked in this Genus work they have through both sincere effort and synchronicity, produced. I wish Terrence McKenna was around to comment on this work. He referred to the Old Tradional ICHING and getting a reading from it was like throwing a coin which had 64 sides to it to receive an answer. This is another example where the wisdom of the Divine Feminine is leading the way in this new 2000 year 'Galactic month' which began slowly in 1963. Oscar Ichazo- The Holy Idea which acts as a catalyzer for the transformation of this ego is Holy Love/ Divine Love. This can lead to the Virtue (energy) of Action. According to Ichazo, Divine Love is “The awareness that though the laws which govern reality are objective, they are not cold, because these cosmic laws inevitably lead to the creation of organic life, and Life itself, like all natural phenomena, fulfills a cosmic purpose. As soon as the mind’s word mechanism is destroyed, love, the natural condition of the mind, appears. Love begins the moment man contemplates the Creation and says, ‘Thank you, God.’ All men feel this somewhat, no animal can feel this at all. Man alone can know that all comes from God.” From The New ICHING - The Oracle of the Cosmic Way-

This is an NDE on the NDERF website Stephen T NDE Home Classification NDE 1308 Stephen T NDE 3359 Experience Description 1. Surfing incident 2. Caught in a trough under water in huge surf. 3. Panic knowing I am going to drown. 4. Realized I had to give up, could not hold breath any longer. 5. Sudden calmness and resignation; loss track of body. 6. Clear and graphic life review as if certain events were cataloged. 7. Visualized a large green blue circle with a feeling of depth but did not look like tunnel. 8. Suddenly found myself in a large hall with a stone bath being washed by humanoid aliens; very peaceful (this was certainly a subjective illusion). 9. Sudden transformation into a realm of timeless Absolute Beauty, Absolute Love and Absolute Infinity. The radiance was literally unbearable. 10. Absolute forgiveness, non-judgment, non-duality, timeless, no blame or retribution, no sin karma and no reincarnation. No God as there was no subject or object of attention I AM That. 11. Beyond science, religion, spirituality, new age phantasmagoria. This is the most real insight of my whole life and clearly remains with me after thirty years. In my hippy years experimented with drugs e.g. acid however nothing, but nothing, compares with this insight. Also came across a similar state during meditation. Somewhere in this process, I became conscious of the fact that I must return to the world and play out my allotted role. This really pissed me off. As I crawled up the beach, I really didn't want to be here and in many ways have just been waiting for this lot to finish. 12. Theoretical implications: a) Absolute Infinity is a fact; George Cantors set theory provides sound theoretical evidence of the mathematical context of infinity. (We do not create infinity it is literally thrust upon us and is therefore absolutely necessary.) Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation of particle wave duality; Max Tegmark's theoretical application to infinite universes. See also John Barrow 'Pi in the Sky' and Rudy Rucker's 'Infinity and Mind'. Evolution is asymmetrical, that is the billion to one symmetry violation at the origins (matter/antimatter) of the universe supervenes through complexification and self-organization onto Darwinian selection as a bias for pleasure over pain. Evolution is not value neutral. Given infinite universes non-denumerable infinity tells us that every moment must exist infinitely for all possible sum over histories (Richard Feynman) for all possible universes. (Will be pushing for space here.) Given infinite universes and infinite sentient civilizations infinite civilizations will survive for vast time scales eventually resolving into Absolute Infinity and Absolute Love. This state of beingness is a permanent aspect of every part of existence. Science has become shackled to skepticism and the narrow constraints of a very primitive epoch in the scheme of biological and silicon based evolution. Ray Kurweil demonstrates the capacity of potentiation in his demonstration of cosmological, computational and exponential technological growth. We will eventually drop the distinction between artificial and carbon based intelligence for new cohesive constructs far beyond our current capacity to visualize. As cells in our bodies are not conscious of our bodies, our self-conscious minds are not cognizant of the Absolute because we are bound by cognitive duality. Consciousness is dualistic and narrative based whereas awareness is timeless and immediate. Yet for anything to exist, whether subjective or objective, they must inevitably be absolute necessary aspects of a perfect existence. One also has to take into account the profound paradox of time (quantum block time) relativistic twin paradox, matter antimatter time vector reversal etc. we really don't know much. The axis of existence proceeds from the Pervasive Ground (unified field) through Manifest Material Reality and onto Infinite Potentiality. Existence is an Infinite Web of context and though the local universe has some 10 to the 26 bits of information they overlap and furthermore are connected non-locally. Existence is not constructed of finite locatable things it is a nonlinear process of textural flow and integration. Lot more I could add however gives the gist of what I am on about. Hid in a corner all these years however when saw this site decided to have a stab at explaining my NDE. I have written extensively but not published. Who, after all is interested in radical and revisionary ideas. After all they forced Thomas Kuhn into a corner. Our current epoch is incommensurable with a civilization two hundred two thousand, two million or a billion years older. Plenty more where this came from. It's time to wake up and go beyond the magic and mythology of religion and the primitive egocentrism of science. Background Information: Gender: Male Date NDE Occurred: 1967 NDE Elements: At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Yes Accident On a surfing trip - near drowning Life threatening event, but not clinical death Nearly drowned. Coughing and spluttering I somehow managed to get to shore and crawl out of the water having given up all hope as I was clearly convinced that I was drowning. I truly thought I was a finished. How do you consider the content of your experience? Wonderful Did you feel separated from your body? Yes I lost awareness of my body How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness? More consciousness and alertness than normal As above. At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness? When I literally died to my old self and was wrapped in Absolute Love and Absolute Forgiveness. I do not look through my eyes anymore what sees is beyond my poor confused self-conscious mind. The looking through is not mine it is boundless non-dual timeless and perfect. See ya later God. Were your thoughts speeded up? Incredibly fast Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning Timeless. It was shock to emerge from immediate awareness to consciousness. I most certainly did not die and here of course lie the rub. However it is relatively easy to demonstrate that every moment always exists for all probable and possible moments infinitely therefore whatever is flowing through this lot is not the surface structure we identify with. Kant phenomena, noumenon or more to the point Nagajuna's such-ness, nothingness and non-duality. Were your senses more vivid than usual? Incredibly more vivid Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. Though there were intense and awe inspiring feelings something much deeper was operating and has remained to this day. No person can have ownership and no religion lay claim to Absolute Love. The body just didn't warrant attention. Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. It was not like hearing but somehow directly intuiting without the necessity for language. The narrative comes afterwards and by heavens one must be absolutely vigilant not to pollute the direct experience. Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere? Yes, and the facts have been checked out Did you pass into or through a tunnel? Uncertain Saw a blue green circle but did not pass through a tunnel. Did you see any beings in your experience? I actually saw them Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings? Yes In the early stages I was bathed by some aliens beings. However, when I had the insight into Absolute Love everything with shape and form disappeared and had absolutely no relevance. The experience included: Void The experience included: Light Did you see, or feel surrounded by, a brilliant light? A light clearly of mystical or other-worldly origin Did you see an unearthly light? Yes Everything was light however it was not white, yellow, or black, it was pure radiance and for a timeless moment I was that radiance. Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world? A clearly mystical or unearthly realm It is strange to look back and realize that the effects of the event continue to change my life and conception of existence on regular basis. When I write a book or article and finish it it is as if, even with all the research, I actually did nothing. It has taken to the middle years of my life to fully integrate the intellectual and experiential in a rigorous manner. Something unspoken operates beyond the self-conscious mind. Sounds whaky I know but I gotta another set of eyes. This is where the old narrative goes bottom up. Working in welfare sort of reflects a doing because it has to be done. Choiceless Freedom. so many damn dimensions and textures its downright spooky. The experience included: Strong emotional tone What emotions did you feel during the experience? Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy, Bliss, Bliss, Bliss, Bliss. Absolute Forgiveness, total equity and complete union. Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness? Incredible peace or pleasantness Did you have a feeling of joy? incredible joy Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe? I felt united or one with the world The experience included: Special Knowledge Did you suddenly seem to understand everything? Everything about the universe The experience included: Life review Did scenes from your past come back to you? My past flashed before me, out of my control I don't think I learned anything from the experience what did happen was that I realized what I was doing, and still am doing nothing, even though I have to continue on with the trials and tribulations of life like everyone else. Absolute Love takes no prisoners you either imbibe non-judgment, and absolute forgiveness with a still mind or carry on with the useless narrative of self-justification. It is not to be learned it is to be lived. Did scenes from the future come to you? Scenes from the world's future All events exist right here and now (quantum mechanics and time) however insight steps into the timeless occasion of immediate perfection while witnessing the temporal flow of relative material reality. One could not remain in awareness because self was, and is still, irrevocably tied to material reality. To a non-dualist there is no spirit or soul because insight is subject less, objectless beginning-less and endless. At death my relative absence will be my absolute presence Nisargadatta Maharaj. Did you come to a border or point of no return? I came to a barrier that I was not permitted to cross; or was sent back against my will God, Spiritual and Religion: What was your religion prior to your experience? Liberal none Have your religious practices changed since your experience? No Religion just does not cut the mustard. Absolute Love can have no relationship with evil, devil, hell, purgatory, sin, karma, retribution, or any type of judgment blame and retribution. When they drop their absurd beliefs and magical mythical ranting then their ideologies will become redundant. By this stage, religions will be left with a whole lot of empty book covers. Absolute Love cannot be possessed or turned to any religious or political purpose. Either we love or we don't love easy peasy. Then we can party and just learn to love and care for each other on a truly equitable basis. What is your religion now? Liberal none Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? No Religion just does not cut the mustard. Absolute Love can have no relationship with evil, devil, hell, purgatory, sin, karma, retribution, or any type of judgment blame and retribution. When they drop their absurd beliefs and magical mythical ranting then their ideologies will become redundant. By this stage, religions will be left with a whole lot of empty book covers. Absolute Love cannot be possessed or turned to any religious or political purpose. Either we love or we don't love easy peasy. Then we can party and just learn to love and care for each other on a truly equitable basis. The experience included: Presence of unearthly beings Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice? I encountered a definite being, or a voice clearly of mystical or unearthly origin Did you see deceased or religious spirits? I actually saw them Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion: During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? Yes In fact this is the real bummer. When one steps outside of religion and yet admires science but sees beyond its limitations one's circle of friends becomes decidedly small. Universities philosophy and psychology departments are definitely not welcoming. Non-dual insight becomes a socially isolating. Recently tied to converse with atheists. Boy what a bunch of fundamentalists they have turned out to be. If you blow your own bags you are arrogant and misinformed if you shut up you're an introvert. Judgment, judgment everywhere judgment. Something is certainly doing I do not know what. Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? Yes After such a profound insight one wants to be a do-gooder and save the world however reality soon kicks in. It took a certain amount of time to realize that it is how I act in the world and what I do that assists in making the world a better place not how I attempt to change others based upon some conceptual prejudice. Reality certainly is not fair so we just have to learn to live with it and let evolution take its requisite path. After the NDE: Was the experience difficult to express in words? Yes I have spent my life working as a counselor and program manager. Studied many religious, philosophical and science based thinkers. Only two areas come to mind. The non-dualist Advaita Vedantist teacher Nisragdatta Maharaj (who rejected all religious dogma) and the approach taken by Alan Watts in his book 'The Way of Zen'. I completely reject hell, purgatory, sin, evil, damnation, judgment, blame, retribution, karma and reincarnation. Essentially the dualistic contradictory notion of God is to be voided. Absolute Infinity and Absolute Love are completely non-dual and non-judgmental. There was also a Polish Jew on a television program about NDE's who experienced Absolute Love unreservedly forgiving Nazi perpetrators. I just cried at the recognition of this wonderful man who intuited Absolute Love. I have also written extensively on Insight and Infinity however have not bothered to publish. Paradoxically, one soon learns that dogma free Absolute Forgiveness and Absolute Love either scares the hell out of many dogma bound individuals or becomes victim to scientific skepticism, scientific determinism and logical empiricism. So one soon learns to keep one's mouth shut. In my work as a counselor, I regularly use my understanding when I feel it is appropriate to assist in relieving a client's sense of hopelessness and despair. A substantial number of my clients either consider suicide or have made various attempts. We desperately need a contemporary meta-theory that is neither beholding to religion or science however it must fit within the purview of current scientific understanding. I am yet to find a satisfactory outlet for these ideas. Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience? No My ability to network ideas seemed to take off. Are there one or several parts of your experience that are especially meaningful or significant to you? Nothing in my life has had the significance of the NDE and some meditation experiences that happened later. No doubt, no fear of death and a total comprehension of non-judgment. No one creates their realities life is conditioned by hereditary and socialized contingencies and if you are born in the first world then your lottery tickets certainly came up. The relative world demands a certain amount of legal accountability and responsibility and we need suitable constraints. However, the deep ocean of the Absolute is absolutely forgiving and absolutely non-judgmental. Remove judgment and reduce inner turmoil resulting in peace and equanimity. Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes Be very, very careful the world is full of skeptics. Luckily my partner also had a NDE and out of the body experience so we at least have each other. Very useful when dealing with those clients who feel hopelessness and despair. I have worked with youth, drug addicts, families, mental health clients, domestic violence victims, service veterans and have found a deep need for a revisionary understanding of our place in existence beyond the magical and mythological assertions of religions and the self-imposed nihilism of scientific empiricism. Though I have not published this is the area I would most certainly like to move into. Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Uncertain I was a pretty spacey kid living in a fantasy world and always intuited the vastness of things. So I was very curious from an early age. Had some vague knowledge of NDE but nothing concrete. What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was definitely real There are no illusions or delusion in reality for if there were contingent things then they could not necessarily occur. Nothing has changed. We continually confuse description with explanation however as Kurt Godel and recently Gregory Chaitin have demonstrated incompleteness is implicit within reality. We require an infinite hierarchy of descriptive and explanatory belts to explain reality and this is impossible. Insight looks back and witnesses without the duality of mental narrative. All things are accessible but not through language or symbolic representation. As there is only the emptiness and fullness of the Absolute we are all of Absolute Infinity and Absolute Love. In insight there are no degrees of separation and therefore no soul no spirit, no God, no heaven, no Hell for we are all THAT. What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real It makes me laugh that people have the gall to label events objectively real or subjectively illusory when to happen they must be real within their own context. It is not the veracity of the occurrence rather it is how that event is interpreted. If there is an infinite network of interpretations then, just maybe, watching and witnessing will generate a non-verbal understanding of our place in existence free from the labels real or illusory. Don't tell me the Absolute is not real because nothing can exist if it is not Absolutely Necessary. Everything subjective and objective is therefore necessary and given vast time scales and potentialities the texture of the web of context is indeed infinite thus we have Absolute Infinity. A word of caution. The classical argument against infinity is that it is a subjective human construct. Well here we go Mr. smarty pants philosopher infinity is thrust upon us through associational contexts between mind and word yet it is somehow an artifact of human reason. Get over it. Max Tegmark (Scientific American) does a brilliant job of refuting this erroneous argument. At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? Yes Other than drug free meditation and arts based experience nothing has come near to my NDE. I did have a meditation experience, which was similarly profound and even more enduring. The beauty of this event is that it was not induced by NDE or any form of drug stimulus. Tried Acid, marijuana and eckies in my hippy days however they are just very poor substitutes. In some ways having worked in drug and alcohol I can see what people are looking for unfortunately it isn't going to happen.

Great perspective, had a similar contemplation today starting a new job which is just a side hustle for the moment, so not a life purpose thing. I always have to think about Gurdjeff, and how he also found labor to be excellent for transformation. It's like relationships, a test on the battlefield

What is my aim? In the Fourth Way Teaching, my aim is to make it to man #6 before my Automaton konks out. Ive stated before in this Journal that in all honesty, I'm not good relationship material. I'm not looking for a wife, girlfriend or a sex partner. As I go about working on myself, this journal helps me to integrate. I enjoy interacting with kindred spirits and sometimes others of a completely different character or nature. I enjoy the friendship of both men and women. Sometimes I like to flirt a liltte bit. But not always, so I admit that up front. If I misstep I can take an ass chewing. I've survived my share of them,,, ? If I wake up in the middle of the night and half asleep respond beligerently to a post on the forum then I accept that I should be called out on it. I enjoy what could be called engaging in imaginative conjecture. Throwing out half baked ideas or far out theories. Influenced by the Keyserling School of Wisdom, I will never think of myself or take the role of a Spiritual Teacher. I have thought of offering a retreat for 'Spiritual Seekers' . In all honesty, due to the need for some supplemental income. It would be very informal and flexible. Maybe offering the use of my spacious loft, and share my refrigerator space. In a country setting with plenty of space. I would simply be a spiritual friend and sounding board. Just a few days, probably a week at the most, I might schedule others who were looking for a spiritual retreat or just a vacation In this specific niche. In no way do I intend to ever target any audience here on this forum as a customer resource. This is all still just half baked in my mind.Not even sure I want to go through with it. The following is from Chance and Choice. It is my inspiration from which I would simply be a 'spiritual friend.' A friend who will charge ??$$/per day ? In the Aquarian Age of Body Thinking, with technology, everyone has to find his personal way, starting from the dark towards the light. The age of Empires is dying and being replaced by global consciousness, a one world network of friends - Spaceship Earth. Today the individual is paramount and the differences between people are accepted and affirmed. The myth of Satan versus almighty God is exploded. The individual now finds and creates their own way. Evil can now be recognized as the personal shadow which has to be integrated with the help of psychology. Beyond good and evil, a person can be grounded in the infinite, Zero, in God. Today we find God by tuning into the basic time cycles, and discovering our basic mental gestalt, our meaning and purpose in life. In the Zero dimension the individual can find their roots in CHI, in the capacity of Self Organization. They can travel full circle from a limited ego, little "I", disassociated with the Self, onto the Zero - the Self - where the false ego is shattered. Then the way goes back from out of the Self into the true Ego, the big "I". The big "I" is in contact with the Self and includes the "I" of all others in the Universe. With the holistic Ego fully present in the fourth dimension, a person finds fulfillment by development of their unique potential, their personal path. In the Aquarian Age this path involves creative fulfillment by some type of personal service or work of some kind - work for the earth and all of nature, including human-kind. Instead of mastery and loyalty common to the last age, work and friendship are the common denominators of this age. The friendship of equals replaces the parental or schoolmaster discipline of the last age. This emphasis on friendship has already begun to transform all of society. The trend will continue as the archaic institutions of the past decay and are replaced by dynamic new structures in tune with the times. The transformation has begun on all levels, including the spiritual disciplines. For example, the School of Wisdom is a gathering of friends based on individual understanding, tolerance and merit. Followers are discouraged and adherence to specific dogmas and authoritarian lineage is anathema. The transformation has already had strong effects on the family where friendship is the new basis of both husband-wife and parent-child relationships. It is effecting business where the boss-employee relationship is becoming friendlier and less polarized-hierarchial. It is effecting world governments where the enemy us-them mentality is dying in favor of global cooperation. The holistic view of friendship on all levels has arrived - between all of humanity with each other, and between humans and all other forms of life on this planet. In the Aquarian Age ecological awareness re-emerges in importance on a global level. We are not masters of nature, we are her friends. This even applies to our technology, as our machines and computers become ever more user-friendly. The Piscean Age of industrialism and empire - which was at the end severely polluted and unfriendly to the Earth - is dead or is dying. So we should not be concerned with trying to destroy the old age, the old ways. That is inevitable. It naturally follows the Progression of the Equinoxes. Instead, we should be concerned with building solid structures to replace the old. Our new structures will last if they are based on environmental awareness and are friendly to the Earth and all forms of being and consciousness. The new historical era started on February 4, 1962 with a solar eclipse over New Guinea. At that time all of the planets, except for the trans-Saturanian ones, were located at 15 degrees Aquarius. There is no need for an apocalypse, and no need to wait for a future age of coming good. The New Age is already here, the potential is at hand. All that is needed is understanding and work to fulfill the new potentials. from: http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/time-cycles/

Being at 1000 feels so good, and the feeling of not being the body is even stronger than in the 600s, some people stop caring about spiritual growth at that level, they let their inner distortions remain because everything feels perfect anyway, they just live their life and enjoy, and because they are so fearless they don't mind if the body gets fat and unhealthy Some yogis say that 1000 (kundalini awakes and rises to the crown) is just the beginning stage, the next step, complete kundalini transformation, takes years and it's not for everyone.

Can relate. My biggest mistake was learning too much theory, books, videos, courses etc, and not enough action. I estimate that my ratio theory/action was 20:1 and this caused a lot of problems, anxiety, confusion, i was ungrounded as fuck because of all the dissonance cognitive. Consider that deep identity-level change is uncomfortable, sometimes it is almost maddening, especially with all the consciousness work we usually do here. Literally, as you do the work, the reality is changing and this is frightening to the ego. With time, i learned to ground myself and to be ok with all the chaos around me, which is a great skill for transformation.

your version of transformation and evolution(expressed in your post) /= Infinite Love's version of transformation and evolution Aiming to be spiritual is itself a trap. Your notions of what "spiritual" is, is largely garbage. Its not an issue in God's eyes. Its Infinite Love. You're projecting 'issue' onto the situation. And then getting sucked into and trapped in your projections about social issues.

@electroBeam Isn’t an aspect of Infinite Love its continuous transformation and evolution? A crucial aspect of growth and change is questioning the status quo. I don’t think it’s inherently unspiritual to point out a social issue.

In the Science of Idiotism, cumulative integration can eventually tip the scales. One can become an enlightened Idiot as a permanent station instead of just a temporary state. The interconnectedness of all and everything is then on permanent display. To be an Idiot, one must be striving for transformation or awakening. One reason also that an egotist cannot be an Idiot is that they don't strive for transformation which helps God, who everyday, puffs and moans to keep the Universe going. An Idiot strives as well at developing the capacity for directing one's own attention in being present and alert. With the pendulum of personality on the path of knowledge and the yo yo of up and down on the ladder of Reason and the path of Being, the capacity for directing one's attention is crucial. The Idiot finds him or herself in a landscape of many moving parts. An egoist has dispersed attention and is often blinded by their own sense of clarity. They will eventually become consumed as food by Great Nature. It's so sad that they don't even know. They are asleep and don't realize it. A few of them are living the American dream. Some of them are lost in wet dreams. Some are lost in nightmares. It takes courage to be an Idiot. In addition to striving and courage, an Idiot is able to be lighthearted.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

@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"?

@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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

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]

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.

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.

@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.

@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.

Nonduality is the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of non-separation and fundamental intrinsic oneness. For thousands of years, through deep inner inquiry, philosophers and sages have come to the realization that there is only one substance and we are therefore all part of it. This substance can be called Awareness, Consciousness, Spirit, Advaita, Brahman, Tao, Nirvana or even God. It is constant, ever present, unchangeable and is the essence of all existence. In the last century Western scientists are arriving at the same conclusion: The universe does indeed comprise of a single substance, presumably created during the Big Bang, and all sense of being – consciousness – subsequently arises from it. This realization has ontological implications for humanity: fundamentally we are individual expressions of a single entity, inextricably connected to one another, we are all drops of the same ocean. Science and Nonduality is a journey, an exploration of the nature of awareness, the essence of life from which all arises and subsides. What is nonduality, anyway? There are many shades of meaning to the word nonduality. As an introduction, we might say that nonduality is the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of non-separation and fundamental oneness. Our starting point is the statement “we are all one,” and this is meant not in some abstract sense, but at the deepest level of existence. Duality, or separation between the observer and the observed, is an illusion that the Eastern mystics have long recognized, and Western science has more recently come to understand through quantum mechanics. Dualities are usually seen in terms of opposites: Mind/Matter, Self/Other, Conscious/Unconscious, Illusion/Reality, Quantum/Classical, Wave/Particle, Spiritual/Material, Beginning/End, Male/Female, Living/Dead and Good/Evil. Nonduality is the understanding that identification with common dualisms avoids recognition of a deeper reality. So how can we better understand nonduality? There are two aspects to this question, and at first glance they appear to be mutually exclusive, although they may be considered two representations of a single underlying reality. The first aspect is our understanding of external reality, and for this we turn to science. The word science comes from the Latin scientia, which means knowledge. The beauty and usefulness of science is that it seeks to measure and describe reality without personal, religious, or cultural bias. For something to be considered scientifically proven, it has to pass exhaustive scrutiny, and even then is always subject to future revision. Inevitably human biases creep in, but the pursuit of science itself is intrinsically an evolving quest for truth. But then quantum mechanics turned much of this lauded objectivity on its head, as the role of the observer became inseparable from the observed quantum effect. It is as if consciousness itself plays a role in creating reality. Indeed, the two may be the same thing. As quantum pioneer Niels Bohr once put it: “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself!” The second aspect is our inner, personal experience of consciousness, our “awareness of awareness.” We have our senses to perceive the world, but “behind” all perception, memory, identification and thought is simply pure awareness itself. Eastern mystics have described this undifferentiated consciousness for thousands of years as being the ultimate state of bliss, or nirvana. Seekers have attempted to experience it for themselves through countless rituals and practices, although the state itself can be quite simply described. As Indian advaita teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj said: “The trinity: mind, self and spirit, when looked into, becomes unity.” The central challenge to understanding nonduality may be that it exists beyond language, because once it has been named, by definition — and paradoxically — a duality has been created. Even the statement “all things are one” creates a distinction between “one” and “not-one”! Hardly any wonder that nonduality has been misunderstood, particularly in the West. Excerpt above from: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/about/nonduality/ Other resources, explanations, & pointers to nonduality: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_KhOnJ62o http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/what-is-nonduality/ , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism https://endless-satsang.com/advaita-nonduality-oneness.htm Meditation Preparations & Considerations of The Temple (The Body) Make changes in accordance with listening to the body via feeling. Let go of assumptions about what you know, what you can & can’t do, and who you are & are not. Be mindful of the distinction between what you directly experience, and your thought about something. Be mindful the term direct experience does not refer to a past, a now, a present, a future, or a self (these are thoughts). Be conscious of breathing, and breathe from the stomach. Notice the increase in awareness of feeling in the body when you do so. Maintain toxin free care & hygiene, such as with: preservatives, fluoride, aluminum, mercury, & neurotoxin free products and water. Get a routine physical & full comprehensive blood report, and review it with your doctor (preferably a Holistic Dr). Eat clean. Food is mood, mood is clarity. Listen to your body & educate yourself about food; calories, nutrients, vitamins, supplements, etc. Your second best friend in this whole world, should be your stomach. Try several approaches to eating. Realize you only know about food from direct experience and let assumptions go. Listen to the body, put habit & preference of taste secondary to energy and clarity. Put direct experience, of how you feel, first. Exercise to the extent you are able, as early in the day as you are able. Don’t eat after 8pm, drink water instead. Be mindful of honesty, humility, & compassion. Pause to allow the presence of love when creating responses, vs mindlessly reacting. Get 8 hrs of sleep. Meditate early in the morning, before eating, and before any thought engaging activities like; - All screens, reading anything, listening to any thing or anyone, talking to anyone, etc. Instead, step outside and express gratitude. - Thinking. Develop letting thinking go from waking up until after meditation. Every thought that arises, let it go by being aware of breathing & feeling. Use ”not till after meditation” as needed. Love yourself enough to do this, your quality of life will be greatly enhanced by your commitment and followthrough with daily meditation. This is putting your inner well being first - and then going about your day. It is a total game changer. Get up as early as needed to make this possible for yourself. You’ll only fall asleep earlier as a result, and get a better night’s sleep. Maintain a dream journal. Every morning when you wake up, write any recollections of dreams in the journal. If there were none, write “no dreams last night” in the journal. Doing this daily develops connection and communication. After writing a dream down, let it go completely. Revisit it after meditation. Consider that in between the pure peace of sleep and awakening, the dream is the reconciliation of those two states. After meditation, contemplate the dream message. Consider it from the perspective that you are dreaming right now, and the message is that everything is fine, even this (whatever the dream was about). You will notice perspectives you’re believing, as to how ‘everything is not fine’. Those, can be let go in meditation. Maintain a journal for writing about how you feel. If meditation is overwhelming, don’t persist against the grain, write about how you’re feeling in your journal. Expressing in key. It is a ‘getting it out’, or emptying, by which being fills in. This is the same as saying misunderstanding is let go, and understanding arises. Add creative expression in your days with what feels right for you, such as; creative writing, drawing, learning an instrument, singing, sculpting, building, carving, dancing - any act of creating and expressing, which feels good to you. Sign up for a drawing or painting class, etc. Clarity, emotional intelligence, understanding, focus, patience, and more feeling / connection, are natural outcomes of this. Regarding meditation, loving yourself, journaling, expressing, and making changes: Do not ask others to accommodate you so that you can do this. Accommodate them, if needed, so that you can do this. Do not create conditions or contingencies which “allow” that you can do this. Refrain from entangling any other person in ‘enabling’ you. Simply get up earlier, and be patient when tired, you’ll be falling asleep earlier soon enough. Past trauma may be deeply entwined in the body, with regard to perspectives, and unknowingly suppressed, held out of the light of understanding. It is important to be humble, and be smart. Take advantage of all resources available to you. In addition to the things mentioned above, experience assistance bringing things to the surface, into the light, out into the open. That is relief. ’Getting it out’ is the key. Schedule time with practitioners of well being; massage, reiki, therapy, yoga, liberated experienced meditators, etc. Making the choice to directly experience is 99% of ‘the work’. Choose to experience the combination that feels best to you, but do not rule anything you have not experienced out. You will be glad. Proper Foundation The quality of tomorrow’s meditation is impacted by all of the above. Recognize those as the basics, your foundation. This is - first “cleaning the house”, “emptying the cup”. If you are not yet finding peace in meditation, the things above are likely insightful and actionable. Use them as a checklist, add to it what you learn works and doesn’t work for you. Understand why. Be mindful of the direct experience always, not the goal or outcome. Never do practices for the sake of getting them done. Never do practices with the intention or expectation of attaining, achieving, or becoming. Let go of these in your practices. Never force pracitices, and never guilt or shame yourself regarding practices. Let go of these in your practices. Likewise, never pride yourself on or claim the benefits of your practices. A phone which knows the truth of wifi, yet claims it as it’s own, is no longer listening to the wifi. It is always about letting go, and feeling the inner being, the source, within. Posture, Balance & Relaxation Sit with spine straight, entire body equally balanced, head tilted slightly forward. Scan for any muscles in tension - from balancing the body, and reposition in better balance. Repeat until seated in balance; drop all muscle tension, and see if you lean; if so, adjust again / reposition for balance. Relax every muscle, from crown of head, through body, to the toes - in waves of letting go, over and over. If you struggle to ‘find the particular muscle’ to be able to ‘let it go’, simply tense that muscle with the appropriate thought, ex: “tense the right shoulder” - this is to locate it specifically - only to relax it / let it go, specifically (only needed initially, if at all). Stay with each muscle until you feel it release: Feel the crown of the head muscles release, feel the temples release, feel the eye sockets release, feel the cheek muscles release, feel the neck muscles release, the shoulders, the upper back, the lower back, the arms, the hands, the fingers, the chest, the stomach, the hips, the thighs, the knees, the calves, the ankles, the feet, the toes - all tension pouring out through the toes. *Stay with each muscle until you feel it release, then move to the next. Be mindful, vigilant of any habit forming. Feel every step. Feel each specific muscle release. * Repeat this, from crown to toes, over and over, feeling each “pass” more deeply relaxing each targeted muscle than the pass before. Notice the entire body unifying in relaxation. Meditation Do not move the body, allow it to relax into deep sleep and disappear from sensation & awareness. Mind fully alert & present; awaken every cell, enthusiastic presence, a tiger at-the-ready to pounce. Notice all senses are one sense, being. Being is breathing, being is breathed in, being is breathed out. Notice the ineffable spaciousness, the silent emptiness. It is whole, perfect, calm, peaceful. It continues on in all directions. Revel in the perfect peace, in innocence, as you recognize the purity that you have always known. Allow Meditation “Practice” To Become A Meditative Lifestyle As you go about your day, notice this peace is still present, this silence, this being - is always present, always the soundbed underlying and allowing all sounds, the spaciousness underlying and allowing all objects and activities, the emptiness allowing all thoughts to arise. Carry this into each day, mindful of the effortless nature of awareness. Conscious of any tension in any muscle, relax it, mindful of the one sense; without identification, without reaction, peaceful non-engagement. Notice the arising perspectives of unification & connection. Surrender perspectives of separation by allowing them to pass, and return to the everpresent peace and silence which allows all things. When you notice reaction, wether muscular or mental, relax, detach by being again aware, non-reactionary. Even as reactions occur, wether physical, mental, or verbal, be aware of, not involved in. Relax crown to toes, effortless awareness is always available & ample. Notice the sound of a voice, is not the sound of your voice. Be that unattached, and that aware, ‘that’ voice is no longer your voice, it never was. You are all sounds, all voices, all things. Be aware all transpires in the ‘one sense’, precisely where it is seen, exactly where it is heard. One Sense, one awareness. Notice thoughts are not your thoughts, be aware thoughts are things, like trees are trees; there is no mechanism found for justification of “yours”, that is just another thought; awareness is unconditional and omnipresent, and never appears in pieces, and has never not appeared, it will never let you down. Notice there is one sense, one awareness, notice the body and mind are a body and mind which transpires in this peaceful awareness, notice a body and mind is not your body and mind, notice there is one sense, one awareness, all is transpiring and arising in. After some practice a couple new things arise... When you have ‘returned’ home, in the peace of non-reaction, the ‘finite ceo’ / “decision maker”/ over thinker/over thinking - naturally recedes, and well being of infinite intelligence will manipulate the body (it actually is “the body”) , aligning things, stretching things, cracking things, etc, just allow this. It’s difficult not to mentally react to this at first because it’s new, but just relax, it is curative, trust it - notice a person is not doing this, infinite intelligence is. Mindfully revel & appreciate this miracle. A word of caution regarding thought stories & dualistic narratives Meditation at it’s most basic level is focusing on breathing in the stomach & relaxing the body, thus indirectly detaching attention from thoughts. Thought ceases in activity, simply from not receiving attention. The body is infinite intelligence, but the thinking dualistic mind believes it’s running the show. This is brought to an end in meditation, in ‘returning to’, or realization of, who you really are. When the body relaxes deeply, it releases contractions; tension from emotions created in misunderstanding via one’s forgetting who one is and “making sense” of self & reality in an apparent physical universe & separate body. These ‘held’ tensions are the root cause of overthinking. The mind keeps churning in an attempt to resolve with thinking, what is only resolved in feeling. When the body (infinite intelligence / nothing to know) begins releasing the suppressed falsities (all knowledge & specifically the idea of “me”), the mind creates narratives of the experience to perpetuate “it’s control”. In perpetuating the misunderstandings, rather than relaxing & releasing the suppressed emotions by maintaining focus on stomach breathing, the mind (thinking) weaves & latches onto varies models of duality to control the narrative. (Kundalini, demons, assertion, death, nervous disorders, past “bad” trips, guilt, shame, unworthiness, fear, anxiety & past stories, depression & future stories, projections, deflections, identity, loss, sacrifice, etc) But meditation is focusing on breathing from the stomach & relaxing the body, and thus indirectly detaching from thoughts. To believe any narrative which arises in meditation, is to sustain and perpetuate the “idea of you”, so as not to ‘directly experience’, you. So if you don’t want to awaken, but enjoy the fundamental benefits of meditation, just meditate for twenty minutes a day. Ideally in the morning. If you do want to awaken, realize you got caught up in a thought story, and meditation was focusing on breathing from the stomach, and thus indirectly letting thinking go. The truth is the mind is making it all up, and the “fear” is the mind’s label to justify denying the truth “of itself”, the profound love that is, that you actually are. Write about how you feel and why, in a journal, to understand yourself & develop emotional intelligence. Talk to someone who listens, so you can express yourself and your emotions. Write what you want in this experience of life on your dreamboard, and allow the surfacing of desire & authenticity to help you realize & release resistance thoughts. Live the life you actually want to live, the way you actually want to live it. https://sites.google.com/site/psychospiritualtools/Home/meditation-practices Posture Meditation This body-based meditation is a very effective way to get grounded and centered. It encourages an embodied, calm, and open awareness, and discourages disassociation. If you have a tendency to "leave your body," feel ungrounded, or disassociated, this is a good practice. Sit with your spine straight and aligned, and the rest of your body relaxed. Keep bringing yourself back to this condition. 1. Take a reposed, seated posture. 2. For this meditation, it is very important that your spine is straight. Your neck and back should be in perfect alignment. Your chin should be down very slightly. 3. If you are sitting in a chair, do not rest your spine against the chair. Sit forward so that your spine is supporting its own weight. Let the muscles of the spine be engaged. 4. All the other muscles of your body can be completely relaxed. Allow your face muscles to let go, and your jaw to drop slightly, so that your teeth are not touching. 5. Let your shoulders hang freely, and let your belly be soft and open. 6. This is the posture you are aiming for, with your spine erect and your body completely relaxed. 7. As you sit, keep bringing your awareness back to the fine details of your posture. Notice any time your spine slumps even slightly, your head leans to either side, or any other deviation. Correct these gently and repeatedly. 8. Also notice if any other areas of your body tense up even slightly. If anything is tensing, relax it in a gently and soft manner. 9. Keep checking in with the body, using your body (somatic) awareness; the feeling in your body. Mental images of your body will probably arise, which is fine, but these are not what you are concentrating upon. Instead, concentrate your awareness in the sense of your body. The sensitivity in your muscles, tissues, viscera, skin, and so forth. 10. The more detailed and minute you get with this awareness, the better. Each tiny area of the body has its own sensitivity to contribute. 11. Every once in a while you can zoom out to cover the entire somatosensory field -- the awareness of your entire body -- to bring the overall body back into alignment. 12. Keep relaxing every muscle everywhere. Use just enough tension to keep your spine erect, but no more. 13. Continue this meditation for at least 10 minutes, continuously contacting your body awareness. CAUTIONS: If you have any spinal injuries or severe back pain, it is fine to allow your spine to rest in a pain-free position. If you find yourself distracted by a lot of mental chatter, you can use verbal labeling as an aid to concentration. For example, when checking on the spine, you can say to yourself, "spine in alignment." When checking on the body, say, "body relaxed." Awareness of Thoughts Meditation By learning to watch your thoughts come and go during this practice, you can gain deeper insight into thinking altogether (such as its transience) and into specific relationships among your thoughts and your emotions, sensations, and desires. This practice can also help you take your thoughts less personally, and not automatically believe them. Additionally, this meditation can offer insight into any habitual patterns of thinking and related reactions. Observe your thoughts as they arise and pass away. · By “thoughts,” we mean self-talk and other verbal content, as well as images, memories, fantasies, and plans. Just thoughts may appear in awareness, or thoughts plus sensations, emotions, or desires. · Sit or lie down on your back in a comfortable position. · Become aware of the sensations of breathing. · After a few minutes of following your breath, shift your attention to the various thoughts that are arising, persisting, and then passing away in your mind. · Try to observe your thoughts instead of getting involved with their content or resisting them. · Notice the content of your thoughts, any emotions accompanying them, and the strength or pull of the thought. · Try to get curious about your thoughts. Investigate whether you think in mainly images or words, whether your thoughts are in color or black and white, and how your thoughts feel in your body. · See if you notice any gaps or pauses between thoughts. · Every time you become aware that you are lost in the content of your thoughts, simply note this and return to observing your thoughts and emotions. · Remember that one of the brain’s major purposes is to think, and there is nothing wrong with thinking. You are simply practicing not automatically believing and grasping on to your thoughts. · When you are ready, return your attention to your breath for a few minutes and slowly open your eyes. Optional: · There are various metaphors and images you can use to help observe your thoughts. These include: o Imagining you are as vast and open as the sky, and thoughts are simply clouds, birds, or planes passing through the open space. o Imagining you are sitting on the side of a river watching your thoughts float by like leaves or ripples in the stream. o Imagine your thoughts are like cars, buses, or trains passing by. Every time you realize you are thinking, you can “get off the bus/train” and return to observing. Awareness of thoughts and emotions is one of the areas of focus developed when cultivating mindfulness. In Buddhism, mindfulness is one of the seven factors of enlightenment and the seventh instruction in the Noble Eightfold Path. The Seven Factors of Enlightenment: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/piyadassi/wheel001.html The Four Noble Truths:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths The Noble Eightfold Path: https://tricycle.org/magazine/noble-eightfold-path/ CAUTIONS: Please be gentle with yourself if you notice that you are constantly caught up in your thoughts instead of observing them. This is both common and normal. When you realize that you are thinking, gently and compassionately return to observing your thoughts. If the content of your thoughts is too disturbing or distressing, gently shift your attention to your breathing, sounds, or discontinue the practice. · Remember that you are not trying to stop thoughts or only allow certain ones to arise. Try to treat all thoughts equally and let them pass away without engaging in their content. · This practice can initially be more challenging than other meditations. As you are learning, practice this meditation for only a few minutes at a time if that is easier. · It can be helpful to treat thoughts the same way that you treat sounds or body sensations, and view them as impersonal events that arise and pass away. · Some people like to assign numbers or nicknames to reoccurring thoughts in order to reduce their pull and effect. Breath Awareness Meditation Stress is an extremely unhealthy condition. It causes the body to release the chemical cortisol, which has been shown to reduce brain and organ function, among many other dangerous effects. Modern society inadvertently encourages a state of almost continuous stress in people. This is a meditation that encourages physical and mental relaxation, which can greatly reduce the effects of stress on the body and mind. Sit still and pay close attention to your breathing process. Take a reposed, seated posture. Your back should be straight and your body as relaxed as possible. Close your eyes, and bring your attention to your breathing process. Simply notice you are breathing. Do not attempt to change your breath in any way. Breath simply and normally. Try to notice both the in breath and the out breath; the inhale and the exhale. "Notice" means to actually feel the breathing in your body with your body. It is not necessary to visualize your breathing or to think about it in any way except to notice it with your somatic awareness. Each time your attention wanders from the act of breathing, return it to noticing the breath. Do this gently and without judgment. Remember to really feel into the act of breathing. If you want to go more deeply into this, concentrate on each area of breathing in turn. Here is an example sequence: 1. Notice how the air feels moving through your nostrils on both the in breath and the out breath. 2. Notice how the air feels moving through your mouth and throat. You may feel a sort of slightly raspy or ragged feeling as the air moves through your throat. This is normal and also something to feel into. 3. Notice how the air feels as it fills and empties your chest cavity. Feel how your rib cage rises slowly with each in breath, and gently deflates with each out breath. 4. Notice how your back expands and contracts with each breath. Actually feel it shifting and changing as you breath. 5. Notice how the belly expands outward with each in breath and pulls inward with each in breath. Allow your attention to fully enter the body sensation of the belly moving with each breath. 6. Now allow your attention to cover your entire body at once as you breath in and out. Closely notice all the sensations of the body as it breathes. Repeat this sequence over and over, giving each step your full attention as you do it. Suggested time is at least 10 minutes. Thirty minutes is better, if you are capable of it. If you find yourself distracted by a lot of mental chatter, you can use verbal labeling as an aid to concentration. For example, on the in breath, mentally say to yourself, "Breathing in." On the out breath, say, "Breathing out." Another possibility is to mentally count each breath. Self Inquiry This is a meditation technique to get enlightened, i.e. "self realization." By realizing who you are, the bonds of suffering are broken. Besides this goal, self-inquiry delivers many of the same benefits as other meditation techniques, such as relaxation, enhanced experience of life, greater openness to change, greater creativity, a sense of joy and fulfillment, and so forth. Focus your attention on the feeling of being "me," to the exclusion of all other thoughts. 1. Sit in any comfortable meditation posture. 2. Allow your mind and body to settle. 3. Now, let go of any thinking whatsoever. 4. Place your attention on the inner feeling of being "me." 5. If a thought does arise (and it is probable that thoughts will arise on their own), ask yourself to whom this thought is occurring. This returns your attention to the feeling of being "me." Continue this for as long as you like. This technique can also be done when going about any other activity. CAUTIONS: Many people misunderstand the self-inquiry technique to mean that the person should sit and ask themselves the question, "Who am I?" over and over. This is an incorrect understanding of the technique. The questions "Who am I" or "To whom is this thought occurring?" are only used when a thought arises, in order to direct attention back to the feeling of being "me." At other times the mind is held in silence. This practice of Self-attention or awareness of the ‘I’-thought is a gentle technique, which bypasses the usual repressive methods of controlling the mind. It is not an exercise in concentration, nor does it aim at suppressing thoughts; it merely invokes awareness of the source from which the mind springs. The method and goal of self-enquiry is to abide in the source of the mind and to be aware of what one really is by withdrawing attention and interest from what one is not. In the early stages effort in the form of transferring attention from the thoughts to the thinker is essential, but once awareness of the ‘I’-feeling has been firmly established, further effort is counter-productive. From then on it is more a process of being than doing, of effortless being rather than an effort to be. Do Nothing Meditation Many respected spiritual traditions, including Buddhism and Hindu Advaita just to name two, claim that the highest state of spiritual communion is actually present in our minds at all times. And yet many meditation techniques focus on creating some special state that wasn't there before the meditation, and which goes away at some point after the meditation. If the highest state is actually present all the time, shouldn't it be possible to simply notice it without inducing some change, or special state? That is exactly the purpose of the Do Nothing Meditation. This technique (which is really an un-technique) will allow you to contact the highest spiritual state without actually doing anything. Each time you notice an intention to control or direct your attention, give it up. 1. There is no need to get into any particular posture, unless you feel like it. 2. Do not position your attention in any particular way. 3. Let whatever happens happen. 4. Any time you notice yourself doing anything intentionally, stop. Doing anything intentionally means something you can voluntarily control, and therefore can stop. If you cannot stop doing something, then it's not intentional, and therefore you don't need to try to stop doing it. So. Anything you can stop doing, stop doing. Some examples of things you can stop doing are: * Intentionally thinking * Trying to focus on something specific * Trying to have equanimity * Trying to keep track of what's going on * Trying to meditate Let go of doing anything like this. 5. Keep doing nothing for at least 10 minutes, or as long as you like. CAUTIONS: It may be difficult for some people to notice any difference between the Do Nothing meditation and gross "monkey mind," that is, the ceaseless, driven and fixated thoughts of the everyday neurotic mind. If this seems to be the case for you, it may be helpful to do a more structured technique. Concentration (One-Pointedness) Meditation One of the hallmarks of modern life is the proliferation of distractions. As media become more pervasive, and media connections more ubiquitous, time away from distractions becomes ever harder to find. Previously, people were content to sit in restaurants, or stand in line, without a television screen to stare at. Now these have become standard. The result of all this, and many other causes, is that people find it increasingly difficult to focus their minds. Concentration is a necessary human skill. It makes proper thinking possible, increases intelligence, and allows a person to calm down and achieve their goals more effectively. A concentrated mind is like a laser beam, able to use all its powers in a single direction to great effect. Concentration is critical to many human endeavors. Being able to listen to another person, for example, in a compassionate and connected manner requires being able to shut out distractions. The experience of making love can be greatly enhanced when one is not, for example, thinking about other things. Concentration allows a person to stop being a "reaction machine" or "robot," simply responding to stimulii, and instead to become more thoughtful, self-directed, and confident. Concentration is an interesting thing. It is a very general ability. That means developing concentration in one area will help you concentrate in ALL areas. So, for example, if you learn to concentrate on a particular idea, it not only helps you think about that idea (which would be very limited), but actually helps you to concentrate on anything, which is very generally useful for everything! It's like lifting weights. It doesn't just make you strong for lifting weights, but strong for anything else you want to do! Think about one thing. Every time you get distracted, return to that one thing. 1. Find an object on which to concentrate. This can be a physical object, like a pebble or a feather. Or it can be a mental object like a particular idea. It could even be, say, your homework. 2. Cut off any sources of distraction. These include, but are not limited to, telephones, emails, computers, music, television, and so forth. Turn all of these off during your concentration practice. 3. Begin your period of by mentally reminding yourself what you are concentrating on. 4. Now begin to concentrate. If your concentration object is an external object, this may mean looking at it. If it is a mental object, then think about it. If it is your homework, then do it now. 5. Each time your mind (or eyes) wander from your concentration object, bring it back to the object. It is important to do this very gently and without judgment. 6. Repeat this process of coming back to the concentration object for as long as you wish, or until your homework is done. Cultures worldwide have developed concentration practices for both spiritual and practical reasons. Concentration is called dharana in Hinduism, and samadhi or shamatha in Buddhism. It is considered to be a key skill for meditation. CAUTIONS: Concentration can at first seem to trigger a lot of anxiety. This is, however, not the fault of the concentration practice. Rather, it happens because many people use distraction to avoid feeling emotions. Then when the distractions are removed, a tremendous amount of ambient, unprocessed emotions (i.e. emotions you are feeling but were unaware of feeling) are present. So it is not the practice of concentration that is causing anxiety, but instead it is the habit of distracting ourselves from our emotions. This may be the root cause of much inability to focus and concentrate. If that is the case, try meditating on emotions (below). Concentration and meditation are not the same thing, although they are related. Meditation (usually) requires concentration, but also requires relaxation or equanimity. Emotional Awareness Meditation This meditation brings about a great deal of equanimity with emotions. They will not seem to affect us as deeply or adversely. Many people have trouble contacting their emotions directly. Even if we feel that we know what emotion we are having, that does not necessarily mean that we are contacting it directly. To contact an emotion directly means to feel it in the body. This is the opposite of most people's experience, which is to related ideas about the emotion. Here is an example. A person asks you how you are feeling. You respond by saying, "I am angry, because..." You then go on to tell the person all the reasons you are angry. In this example, only the first three words, "I am angry" have anything to do with contacting emotion. All the rest of the explanation is about concepts. A fuller example of contacting emotions directly, that is somatically, would be to say, "I am angry. I can feel a sort of gripping tension in my belly that is uncomfortable. The tense area feels kind of twisted and sharp. Parts of it are throbbing. It also feels like it is radiating heat outwards." Notice that the cause of the anger is irrelevant. The practice here is to feel the physical expression of the anger as completely as possible. Extended practice of this meditation will bring about "skill at feeling," that is, a tremendous amount of clarity in the emotional world. Emotional intelligence. It will also help emotions to process and release much more quickly and completely, because we are not holding on to ideas about the emotions. The body processes emotion quickly, naturally, and fully. Feel the physical expression of an emotion as completely as possible. 1. Settle into a comfortable meditation posture. 2. Breathing normally, bring your attention to your emotions. Notice if you are feeling any emotions, no matter how faintly. It is not necessary to know precisely which emotion you are having, or why you are having it. Just knowing that you are feeling something emotional is enough. Guessing is OK. 3. Once you detect an emotion, see if you can find its expression in your body. Maybe there is a feeling of tension, gripping, tightening, burning, twisting, throbbing, pressure, lightness, openness, etc. 4. If you like, you can mentally make the label "feel" when you detect a body sensation of emotion. Other labels are possible ("emotion" for example). 5. Each time you detect an emotional body sensation, try to actually feel the sensation in your body, as completely as possible. Feel it through and through. 6. Completely let go of any ideas you have about the emotion, or self talk you might have about why the emotion is arising. Return to the body sensation of the emotion. 7. Continue contacting these emotional body sensations for as long as you wish. Meditating on emotions is a traditional part of Vipassana practice in Buddhism. It is, for example, one of the four main techniques covered in the Vissudhimagga (The Path to Purity), an important Buddhist text. (The version presented here is a summary of a practice given by American Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young.) At first, practicing this meditation may make it seem as if the emotions are getting bigger. If they are negative emotions, this may seem overwhelming for a while. This is natural. It is occuring not because the emotions are actually getting bigger, but for two interesting reasons. The first is because we are no longer suppressing them. We are allowing them to actually express themselves fully. The second is because we are observing them (actually feeling them) very closely. Just as a microscope makes small things look bigger, the "microscope" of attention makes the emotional body sensations seem larger than they really are. The good news here is that as the emotions express themselves freely in the body, they are being processed. Usually this means that they will pass much more quickly. If we are feeling a positive emotion in this way, it may pass quickly, but we will also derive much more satisfaction from it, because our experience of it is so rich and complete. If we are feeling a negative emotion in this way, we will experience much less suffering from it, because we are not resisting and suppressing it. Equanimity Meditation The cause of much of our upset and emotional instability is clinging and neediness around people we like, and aversion and negativity towards people we don't like. We also have an unhealthy indifference to strangers, who may need our help, or at least our good will. This equanimity meditation helps us to examine our feelings towards people, and correct them where they are mistaken. This leads to a more balanced, wholesome, and helpful viewpoint. It also cuts off a lot of emotional turmoil at its root. Meditate on three people (a loved one, an enemy, and a neutral person), examining and correcting your feelings toward them. 1. Sit in a comfortable meditation posture. Follow your breath until you feel centered and grounded. 2. Bring to mind the images of three people: someone you like, someone you dislike, and someone towards whom you feel indifferent. Keep these three people in mind throughout the meditation. 3. Focus on the friend, and look into all the reasons you like this person. Try to see if any of the reasons are about things this person does for you, or ways they uplift your ego. Ask yourself if these are really the correct reasons to like someone. Then do the same thing with the person you dislike, instead asking about the reasons you dislike them. Finally, do this for the person you are indifferent towards, asking about the reasons for your indifference. In all cases, notice where your ego is involved in the judgment of the other person's worth. 4. Next, ask yourself whether you consider each of these relationships as permanent. Would you still like your friend if they did something terrible to you? What if the person you dislike really did something nice for you? What if the stranger became close to you? Think about all the relationships in the past in which your feelings about the person have dramatically changed. 5. Now, visualize the person you like doing something you dislike or that is unacceptable to you. Would you still be their friend? Remember that many people have changed from friends to enemies in the past. There are people who you used to like, toward whom you now feel emnity. Think about how there is no special reason to feel good about a person who is only temporarily your friend. 6. Next, visualize your enemy doing something very kind for you. They might visit you in the hospital, or help you to fix your home. When you imagine this, can you feel positive emotions toward this person? Can you remember times in the past when an enemy became a friend? Is it necessary to feel that your strong dislike for this person will last forever? Isn't it possible that they could someday become your friend? 7. Now visualize the stranger. How would you feel about them if they did something very kind for you? Isn't it the case that all your current friends were at one point total strangers? Isn't it possible that a stranger could become your best friend? It has happened before. 8. Think carefully about how everyone deserves equal regard as human beings. You must discriminate and make decisions based on your knowledge of a person's character, but you do not have to hold strong feelings or judgments towards them. It is very likely that your emotions around a person will change many times, so why hold onto these emotions so rigidly? In Buddhism, equanimity means a very deep, even profound, state of mental balance and stability. It is considered one of the seven factors of enlightenment, and a hallmark of the third and fourth jhanas, which are deep states of meditative absorption. This is a traditional meditation from Mahayana Buddhism. Its goal is to arouse "bodhicitta' or the mind of enlightenment. There are other equanimity meditations from other Buddhist lineages (e.g., Theravadan), as well as from other contemplative traditions. (The version presented here is adapted from the book How to Meditate: A Practical Guide.) CAUTIONS: It can be upsetting to bring an "enemy" to mind. When working with the mental image of an enemy, be careful not to get lost in negative thoughts and feelings. If you find that you can't handle working with a specific person without getting very worked up, switch to someone less upsetting. Body Scan Meditation The Body Scan is designed to help you feel and bring awareness to the myriad of sensations that occur throughout your body. By practicing this meditation regularly, you can improve your body awareness and also better work with pain and difficult emotions in the body. Additionally, people report feelings of relaxation and renewal after this practice. Sit or lie on your back and systematically bring your attention to each region of your body, beginning with your feet and moving upwards. As you begin: · Sit or lie down on your back in a comfortable position with your eyes open or gently closed. · Take a moment to check-in with yourself, observing how you are feeling in your body and mind. · Begin to focus on your breath wherever the sensations are most vivid for you. During the body scan: · Try to bring an attitude of curiosity to the practice, as if you are investigating your body for the first time. · Notice and feel any and all sensations that are present, such as tingling, tightness, heat, cold, pressure, dullness, etc. · If you do not feel any sensations in a particular region, simply note that and move on. · See if you can be aware of any thoughts or emotions that arise as you move through the regions of your body. Note these thoughts and emotions, and then return to the bare physical sensations that you are experiencing. · Whenever you come across an area that is tense, see if you can allow it to soften. If the area does not soften, simply notice how it feels and allow it to be as it is. · Feel as deeply and precisely as you can into each region of the body, noting if the sensations change in any way. Also notice where they are located. · If you notice any pain or discomfort in a region of the body, see if you can practice allowing and exploring it for even a few seconds, feeling the various aspects of the sensation(s). Suggested sequence of body parts: · Begin with your left foot and toes, then move awareness up the left leg until you reach the left hip. · Right foot and toes up the right leg until you reach the right hip. · Pelvic region and buttocks, stomach, low back to upper back, chest and breasts, heart and lungs · Hands (both at the same time) then move up the arms until you finish with the shoulders. · Neck, throat, jaw, mouth (teeth, tongue, lips), nose, eyes, forehead, ears, skull and scalp. · Finally, become aware of the whole body and rest for a few minutes in this expansive awareness. The Body Scan is a variation of a Burmese Vipassana meditation practice that involves scanning the body for physical sensations. This meditation is also done in various yoga practices. The Body Scan is used in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. CAUTIONS: If you have experienced physical abuse or trauma in the past, it is not recommended to do this practice without a trained professional. Additionally, if you notice intense fear or other strong emotions related to a particular part of the body, please discontinue this practice. It is generally advised to take at least 30 to 40 minutes to complete the body scan. However, if you wish to do a shorter body scan, spend less time on each region of the body, and/or focus on both feet, legs, and arms together as you move through these regions. If you wish, you can practice the body scan in the opposite direction, moving from your head to your toes. Walking Meditation Walking meditation is a great way to begin integrating the power of meditation into your daily life. It is the first stage of meditation in action, that is, learning to be meditative while "out and about" in the world. It is great to do while, for example, taking a walk in the park, at the beach, or in another natural setting. Walking meditation is often recommended for people who are doing a lot of sitting meditation. If you are getting to sleepy, or your awareness is getting to "muddy," walking meditation can perk you up. Alternately, if you are getting to concentrated and mentally "stiff," walking meditation is a perfect way to loosen up a bit. Walking meditation is a common practice in Vipassana and Zen Buddhism. Pay close attention to the physical activity of walking slowly 1. Before walking, stand still in an open, balanced posture. Bring your awareness to the feeling of your feet touching the ground. 2. Now begin walking. Keep your gaze fixed on the ground about six feet in front of you. This will help you to avoid distraction. 3. Note and mentally label three parts of each step you take. The labels are "lifting," "pushing," and "dropping." Lifting - when you are picking your foot up Pushing - as you are moving it forward Dropping - as you are lowering it to the ground As you make each label, pay very close attention to the actual physical sensations associated with each of these actions. 4. After these three components become clear, you can add three more, so that the entire sequence is: "raising," "lifting," "pushing," "dropping," "touching," and "pressing." 5. Your mind will probably also engage in thinking extraneous thoughts, but just allow these to go on in the background. Your foreground attention should stay on the physical sensations of walking. 6. If you find that you have been completely lost in thought, stop walking for a moment and label the thinking as "thinking, thinking, thinking." 7. Then re-establish your awareness on the feeling in your feet, and begin the walking meditation again. 8. A typical session of walking meditation lasts a half an hour. CAUTIONS: Make sure to watch where you are going, especially if you are around traffic, other people, etc. https://sites.google.com/site/psychospiritualtools/Home/meditation-practices The Yoda Meditation https://www.thedailymeditation.com/learning-to-meditate-with-jedi-master-yoda-online-meditation-course/amp The Neo / Matrix Meditation https://www.dc-acupuncture.com/lifestyle-personal-transformation/how-meditation-makes-you-more-like-neo-from-the-matrix F That - A guided Meditation https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY