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The poetic title is telling you this one is a must-read! May 25th, June 10th, June 19th. 2017. If you think these weren't awakenings you can call them whateverdafucks. I'll spare you and me the details and communicate what I actually find interesting. All three follow the same basic plot. I'm asleep, having a really fucked up nightmare. It deals with me losing my mind & going insane. The world becomes so unbearable and incomprehensible that I just surrender to it. Fuck this shit - if you're gonna destroy me - do it! I wake up all freaked out. Then, as the strong emotions die down, I notice something's different. There's no fixation anywhere in my body - I'm not sure where the fuck I went. Life plays like a movie. I take action along with the whole universe. Thoughts pretty much don't arise - they're pointless. The afterglow in the following day is having a relaxed body, a relatively quiet mind, and a focus on sensory experience rather than thought. Simple actions are just taken, not thought about. The ego arises and spins some bullshit, but then I remember - why the fuck would I care what it says. I'm more honest, because who am I protecting exactly when I lie? This doesn't seem to me to be just some Kundadlini shit, rather genuine awakenings or at least glimpses. Rali told me that based on my description. The ego took a blow each time. I had these awakenings while practicing immersing myself in my sensory experience whenever I remember, without a really strict formal meditation. I'd do the same thing sitting formally for perhaps an hour, and maybe walk for 30 minutes. Some days less, rarely more. I've been seeking for two years, starting shortly after Leo's first enlightenment video. I've done probably about 400 hours of self-inquiry and 400 hours of meditation in that time, sometimes having a daily formal practice of 3-4 hours and sometimes nothing. Pretty pathetic that I still haven't been able to install a daily constant meditation habit after all this time. But hey, at least these awakenings. Sensory immersion in daily life is a concept strongly emphasized by Rali from Naked Reality, and it's probably helped me the most. You can meditate on the cushion but if you take nothing back to daily life, good luck getting anywhere. Takeaways. 1) Bringing mindfulness into everything you do is really, really important. It'll make your progress much better. 2) Dreams can be a great catalyst for awakening - they can create scenarios so much more terrible than life (hopefully) will, putting you in a position where surrender is the only option left. Isn't it awesome when you can bring what you've learned in meditation into something as unconscious and dumb as a non-lucid dream? 3) Enlightenment and transformation really are distinct. When Peter Ralston says something, you better listen. The awakenings haven't made me a better socializer, they haven't made me drop any of my bad habits, they haven't made me more productive. They've made me give less of a fuck - which can actually be counterproductive at first. I reach for a sip of lemonade without guilt because guilt is fucking stupid. Yet it gives me terrible gas - the lemonade, not the guilt. It's practically stupid yet there's no egoic motivation to stop me. Enlightenment builds a powerful FOUNDATION for transformation, which I recommend you use if you want transformation. But transformation is hard work. Enlightenment is easy - it just happens, given the right conditions, creating which is perhaps not so easy. 4) Don't stress over the importance of awakenings. Just keep doing your consciousness work. Bonus question to you out there: Do any of you think, like I do, that reading informative text written in simple sentences is more enjoyable than reading eloquently phrased, complex sentences? This is Markus and I'm signing off, click the like button, post me your comments down below, and come check out the Actualized.org for....wait WHAT?

Inner transformation needs great patience. Understand , what is meditation, it will help. Go through this thread. You can try OSHO KUNDALINI MEDITATION http://www.osho.com/iosho/imeditate?mid=22

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

Hey -- What you have is a great vision, and who's to say it will stop there? We never "arrive", anyways." Go as far as you can see, and when you see farther, go farther" (or something like that). They say that when humans try to conceive of themselves being 10+ years older, the part of their brain that activates is the same part that conceives of a stranger. Even thinking of ourselves 5 years ahead makes us feel detached and impersonal subconsciously, so it's really hard to set meaningful goals beyond a certain point. And by changing yourself into a more conscious person, you will change the world. Think of the impact it will have on your friends and family to see this radical transformation: from no degree to degree, to being fit and healthy, fulfilling career... etc. Finding your Life Purpose will also change the world - Leo has a whole course on it Best of luck! Saba

Expanding our perspective about various systems is important so I thought it would be great if we have a big list of systems to understand so we can evolve faster. ...Than from that list if you have an insight from the questions below, share, post it as a comment below. So we can gain wisdom, balance, discernment, a more meta perspective to see the interconnectedness of things , be more reflective (conscious), humble and evolve. This stuff can get very deep, we can think of systems that created other systems. So... 1.What is the system that created____________? (insert the system that you would like to better understand (-a pragmatic one-)) 2. What is the system that fixed that problem? (answer with what you think would solve the problem (challenge) that you have or somebody else had mentioned in the list) 3. What's the purpose of this system ("A system also has purpose, it servers a function and is very important to understand what the function is, the function is even more important aspect of the system beyond the elements and the relationships, so as important as the relationships are in the system the purpose of the system is even more important, because that determines the general behavior of what the system is doing and the most important function of systems is to protect themselves, to maintain homestasis and to expand themselves and to grow...see systems as living organisms" ~Leo) 4. How does the system maintain itself? 5. How does this system affect other systems? I Will start with what I can think of right now but Will add more to it in the future. What is the system that created____________? The ego Subtle addictions: gossip... mediocrity/ the top 1% in terms of wealth achivemenet/under achievement poor relationships (friends, relatives, family ) /great relationships a healthy individual /an unhealthy individual an evolving human being /an devolving human being success oriented mindset / failure a hippy a narcisist naive realism the illusion of freewill the illusion of time the ego illusion the tempation to exist (:D) instant gratification rather than long term vision a healthy human cell / an unhealthy human cell a ripped body a detoxified/ calcified pineal gland a meditation habit an early riser abundant energy / lack of energy focus / lack of focus other systems a fullfiled human being / unfullfiled human being a creative an icon an example (for yourself, for others) a new perspective / the same perspective a good memory / lack of memory a productive person / unproductive one the result that I would like to accomplish revolutionary new inventions belief in yourself /dis belief in yourself fear anger good habits /bad habits emotional maturity / emotional immaturity evolution of consciousness master /dabbler a strong immune system a great feedback loop consistency /inconsistency ignorance procrastination avoidance overwhelm transformation Below are some examples of systems Leo has mentioned in his intro to systems thinking. Poverty Shrinking Middle Class Global Warming and the Environment Drug Addiction War Obesity Crime Low-Quality Marketing Education Unemployment Terrorism Corruption Depression Endangered Species Runaway Materialism Video summary: Video: Feedback in this topic would be very beneficial. If somebody doesn't understand a system that created the problem and you have gained the insight of what solves the problem than please post it).

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

People don't know the answer, enlightened masters know the answer, only few people listen to them, they might have millions of followers but few try to understand them, trust them. When Jesus says , "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Do you trust him ? Even poor people don't trust him. Once in a while a rich person can think that what he is saying can be true, but vast majority can't believe him. We have tried all things. We have created ladies and gentlemen, and they didn't prove to be much. We have changed societies, we have tried utopias -- they have all failed. Reform has failed, revolution has failed. Spiritual rebellion has never been tried on a large scale. And whenever it has been tried on a small scale, it has always succeeded. With Buddha it succeeded: thousands of people went through transformation, became new. With Jesus it succeeded, with Lao Tzu it succeeded, with Krishna it succeeded. success has always been with spiritual rebellion, but very few people... It has never been on a large scale. It has never gripped the soul of humanity. And that is where work is needed now.

It just depends on the type of growth and transformation someone is seeking but there is definitely some common aspects shared by them.

When meditating, working on yourself, if you wonder whether you are making any progress or not, know well that you are not making any progress – because when progress is made you know it. Why? It is just as when you are ill and you are taking medicine. Won’t you be able to feel whether you are getting healthy or not? If you do not feel it and the question arises of whether you are getting well or not, know well that you are not getting well. Well-being is such a clear feeling that when you have it you know it. But why does this question arise? This question arises for so many reasons. One, you are not really working. You are just deceiving yourself. You are playing tricks with yourself. You are less concerned with what you are doing and more concerned with what is happening. If you are really doing it, you can leave the result to existence. But our minds are such that we are less concerned with the cause and more concerned with the effect – because of greed. Greed wants to have everything without doing anything. So the greedy mind goes on moving ahead. Then the greedy mind asks, 'What is happening? Is something happening or not?' Be really concerned with what you are doing, and when something happens you will know it. It is going to happen to you. You need not ask anyone. There is no fixed road. Everyone is on a different road; we are not on one road. Even if you are following one technique of meditation, you are not on the same road as someone else who is doing the same technique; you cannot be. There is no public path. Every path is individual and personal. So no one’s experiences on the path will be helpful to you; rather, they may be damaging. Someone may be seeing something on his path. If he says to you that this is the sign of progress, you may not meet the same sign on your path. The same trees may not be on your path; the same stones may not be on your path. So do not be a victim of all this nonsense. Only certain inner feelings are relevant. For example, if you are progressing, then certain things will begin to happen spontaneously. One, you will feel more and more contentment. Really, when meditation is completely fulfilled, one becomes so contented that he forgets to meditate – because meditation is an effort, a discontent. If one day you forget to meditate and you do not feel any addiction, you do not feel any gap, you are as filled as ever, then know it is a good sign. Do not make meditation a habit. Let it be alive! Then discontent will disappear by and by; you will feel contentment, and not only while you are meditating. If something happens only while you are meditating, it is false, it is hypnotic. It does some good but it is not going to be very deep. It is good only in comparison. If there is nothing happening, no meditation, no blissful moment, do not worry about it. If something is happening, do not cling to it. If meditation is going rightly, deep, you will feel transformed throughout the whole day. A subtle contentment will be present every moment. With whatsoever you are doing, you will feel a cool center inside…contentment. Of course there will be results. Anger will be less and less possible. It will go on disappearing. Why? – because anger shows a non-meditative mind, a mind that is not at ease with itself. With meditation you will be more and more happy with yourself – remember, with yourself. These will be signs, the general signs. So do not think you are achieving much if you are beginning to see light or if you go on seeing beautiful colors. They are good but do not feel satisfied unless real psychological changes are there: less anger, more love; less cruelty, more compassion. Unless this happens, your seeing lights and colors and hearing sounds are child’s play. They are beautiful, very beautiful; it is good to play with them – but that is not the aim of meditation. They happen on the road, they are just by-products, but do not be concerned. In a relationship, observe what is happening. How are you behaving toward your wife now? Observe it. Is there any change? That change is meaningful. How are you behaving with your servant? Is there any change? That change is significant. Meditation for me is not a child’s play. It is a deep transformation. How to know this transformation? First you will feel your inner transformation in your outer relationships, and then you will go deep. Then only will you begin to feel something inner. So probe into, penetrate your relationships, and look there to see whether your meditation is progressing or not. If you feel a growing love, unconditional love, if you feel a compassion without cause, if you feel a deep concern for everyone’s welfare, well-being, your meditation is growing. Then forget all other things. With this observation you will also observe many things in yourself. You will be more silent; you will have less noise within. When there is a need you will talk, when there is no need you will be silent. You will feel more at ease, relaxed. Whatsoever you are doing, it will be a relaxed effort; there will be no strain. You will become less and less ambitious. Ultimately, there will be no ambition. Even the ambition to reach moksha will not be there. Even the desire for liberation is a bondage. Even the desire to be desireless is a bondage. One thing more: whatsoever you are doing, do not think that results will be coming in the future. If you are doing something real, results are here and now. In inner work, if you have meditated today, results are not going to be tomorrow. If you have meditated today. the perfume of it, howsoever little, will be there. If you are sensitive you can feel it. Whenever something real is done, it affects you here and now. So meditation is not just a certain thing which you do for one hour and forget. Really, the whole of life has to be meditative. Only then will you begin to feel things. And when I say that the whole life is to be meditative, I do not mean to go and close your eyes for twenty-four hours and sit and meditate – no! Wherever you are you can be sensitive and that sensitivity will pay. Then there will be no need to ask, 'Am I progressing or not?' Only with this capacity of being aware of all things happening around you will you develop the capacity to feel what is happening within. Osho, The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 2, Talk #18

It's my favourite book on Leo's booklist by far. It was the first spiritual type book that really clicked with me. I've read it three times over the course of about a year and a half, and every time it's like a completely new book. There's enough information and insight in that book to last a lifetime. If you're doing any form of consciousness work or just spiritual development in general, and you haven't read The Book of Not Knowing, it should be your number 1 priority. Pursuing Consciousness is great too, but focuses more on very very deep personal development work (Ralston calls it transformation).

Excerpts from ~ Meditation The First And Last Freedom - OSHO Osho: What Is Meditation? Meditation is not an Indian method; it is not simply a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It can come to you only through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always out of the total; it is not an addition. You must grow toward meditation. This total flowering of the personality must be understood correctly. Otherwise one can play games with oneself, one can occupy oneself with mental tricks. And there are so many tricks! Not only can you be fooled by them, not only will you not gain anything, but in a real sense you will be harmed. The very attitude that there is some trick to meditation – to conceive of meditation in terms of method – is basically wrong. And when one begins to play with mental tricks, the very quality of the mind begins to deteriorate. As mind exists, it is not meditative. The total mind must change before meditation can happen. Then what is the mind as it now exists? How does it function? The mind is always verbalizing. You can know words, you can know language, you can know the conceptual structure of thinking, but that is not thinking. On the contrary, it is an escape from thinking. You see a flower and you verbalize it; you see a man crossing the street and you verbalize it. The mind can transform every existential thing into words. Then the words become a barrier, an imprisonment. This constant transformation of things into words, of existence into words, is the obstacle to a meditative mind. So the first requirement toward a meditative mind is to be aware of your constant verbalizing and to be able to stop it. Just see things; do not verbalize. Be aware of their presence, but do not change them into words. Let things be, without language; let persons be, without language; let situations be, without language. It is not impossible; it is natural. It is the situation as it now exists that is artificial, but we have become so habituated to it, it has become so mechanical, that we are not even aware that we are constantly transforming experience into words. The sunrise is there. You are never aware of the gap between seeing it and verbalizing. You see the sun, you feel it, and immediately you verbalize it. The gap between seeing and verbalizing is lost. One must become aware of the fact that the sunrise is not a word. It is a fact, a presence. The mind automatically changes experiences into words. These words then come between you and the experience. Meditation means living without words, living nonlinguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. When you are in love, presence is felt, not language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent. It is not that there is nothing to express. On the contrary, there is an overwhelming amount to be expressed. But words are never there; they cannot be. They come only when love has gone. If two lovers are never silent, it is an indication that love has died. Now they are filling the gap with words. When love is alive, words are not there because the very existence of love is so overwhelming, so penetrating, that the barrier of language and words is crossed. And ordinarily, it is only crossed in love. Meditation is the culmination of love: love not for a single person, but for the total existence. To me, meditation is a living relationship with the total existence that surrounds you. If you can be in love with any situation, then you are in meditation. ———————- oooOooo ——————– Society cannot exist without language; it needs language. But existence does not need it. I am not saying that you should exist without language. You will have to use it. But you must be able to turn the mechanism of verbalization on and off. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; but when you are alone with existence, you must be able to turn it off. If you can’t turn it off – if it goes on and on, and you are incapable of stopping it – then you have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. ———————- oooOooo ——————– Language must be dropped. I don’t mean that you have to suppress it or eliminate it. I only mean that it does not have to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day habit for you. When you walk, you need to move your legs. But if they go on moving when you are sitting, then you are mad. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a technique to communicate. When you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this, you can grow into meditation. Meditation is a growing process, not a technique. A technique is always dead, so it can be added to you, but a process is always alive. It grows, it expands.

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

@Fidelio There are certain things a seeker will intuitively understand as he proceeds with the journey. He doesn't have to wait until enlightenment to know all those things... Even when you listen to a true Guru, you will intuitively understand what he says is true.. Eckhart Tolle talks about this as well. He says that when you hear something which is true, the truth in you will respond to it and say 'yes, this is true'. When I heard him saying, I could immediately resonate to it. I did go through a spiritual awakening three years ago. But I stopped seeing enlightenment as serving any purpose way long before that. Seeing enlightenment as a means to something is a trap. We don't have to make it very complicated. If you see enlightenment as a means to an end, thats fine for now. That is how every one has to start his journey.. There is nothing wrong in it. It is a part of the whole process. But slowly, as a person goes through his journey, he starts to crave for enlightenment. This is natural.. At one point in life, I wanted to 'be' enlightened at any cost. It was a life or death question.. But then I came across the perfect teaching I needed on time.. I heard 'You are already that, there is nothing to change, nothing to do, nowhere to go... '..I came across many teachings of Advaita. I also understood that the very desire that I have for enlightenment was actually delaying the whole thing. If I have heard this teaching when I started the journey, It would not have made any sense to me.. But it took another 6 years after I heard this teaching for me to go through a transformation.

There is no home, there are only houses. We try to make homes out of houses, but in fact, home is projection - there is only a house - it feels cold. We need a home: we want something cozy, something that belongs to us, something to which we belong. Something which is an extension of our being, something which we can make part of us; something which is not just a place where you live, but which becomes alive with you. A house is a dead thing; a home is a living entity, but it is a projection. So those who are searching for a home will find themselves frustrated again and again because they will find again and again that it turns out to be only a house. Home was their idea. It was their illusion, their hallucination. It was their poetry, their romance. They have been weaving and spinning something invisible around the house which nobody else can see - only they can see it. But it is just a mind game. Man is born homeless, and man remains his whole life homeless. Yes, he will make many houses into homes and he will get frustrated. And man dies homeless. To accept the truth brings a tremendous transformation. Then you don't search for a home - because home is something there, far away, something other than you. And everybody is searching for a home. When you see its illusoriness, then, rather than searching for a home, you will start searching for the being that is born homeless, whose destiny is homeless. There is no way to make a home. And this is a miracle: the moment that you realize that there is no way to make a home, then this whole existence is home. Then wherever you are, you are at home; because now there is no question of making a home - now there is no question of creating an illusion. You have accepted your homelessness, not with any unwillingness, any resistance, but joyously, because it is good that you are born without a home; otherwise that home will be an imprisonment. Just think, if people were born with a home, they would be born imprisoned. To be homeless is to be free. It is freedom. It means there is no attachment, no obsession with anything outside; that you are not in need of getting some warmth from the outside, but that your warmth is within you. You have the source of warmth inside; you don't need it. So wherever you are - without a home - you are strangely at home. The people who are searching for a home are always getting into despair, and finally are going to feel, "We have been cheated, life has cheated us. Somehow it gave us the desire to find a home - and there is no home at all, it simply does not exist." We try in every possible way: one finds a husband, one finds a wife, one brings children into the world.... One tries to create a family - that is a psychological home. One makes, not a house, but tries to make it almost a living entity. He tries to make a house according to his dreams - that it is going to be a fulfillment of warmth, that in this coldness.... And it is vast, the coldness of existence. The whole universe is so cold, so indifferent, that you want to create a small shelter for yourself where you can feel that you are taken care of, that something protects you... that it is something that belongs to you - you are an owner, not a homeless wanderer. But in reality this kind of idea is going to create misery for you because one day you will find that the husband you have lived with, the wife you have lived with - is a stranger. Even after living together for fifty years, the strangeness has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has deepened. You were less strangers on the first day you met. As time has passed and you have been together, you have become more and more strangers to each other, because you have come to know each other more and more - and now you don't understand at all who the other person is. The more you have known, the less you know. It seems that the more you have become acquainted with the person, the more you become aware that your ignorance about the other is absolute... there is no way to destroy it. Your children - you have thought they were your children, and one day you find they are not your children. You have been just a passage they have come through. They have their own lives - they are absolutely strangers. They don't belong to you. They will find their own ways and their own lives. Who is with you? Nobody is with anybody. You are in a crowd always, but alone. Either alone or in the crowd makes no difference: either in a home or just a wanderer - it makes no difference. I have never had a home. When I left my father's house for the last time, I told him, "I will not be coming back again, because this was only a commitment to my maternal grandmother. She had a promise from me that I would come back at least at the time of her death. So just to keep the promise, I have come. Now there is no longer any commitment." My father said, "You always say strange things - this is your home!" I said, "That's where we differ. Neither is it my home nor is it your home. But you continue to live in an illusion and one day you will understand that this is not home." And I told him a famous Sufi story I have told many times. The king heard one night the sound of footsteps, somebody walking on the roof of his palace. He could not believe it. The palace was so well guarded - how had somebody reached the top? He shouted, "Who are you?" And the man on the roof shouted, "You should ask it of yourself first: who are you?" The king rushed out and called the guards to catch hold of the man, but he was not found. And the next day, again there was a stranger. But the king recognized the voice - it was the same man. And the strange behavior that he had shown the night before... to walk on the roof and then to talk in such a way, and to say to the king, "First you should ask, who are you? You don't even know that and you are worried about me! You do your business - I'm doing mine." The man was fighting with the guard at the gate of the palace and saying, "I want to stay in this caravanserai for a few days." The guard was saying again and again, "You seem to be an absolute idiot; this is not a caravanserai! This is the palace of the king, his home!" And the man said, "Then I would like to see the man who lives in such an illusion." The king was listening: he recognized the voice. He called the guard and said, "Bring that man in." And he asked him, "Are you the same man who was on the roof?" The man said, "Yes." "And what were you doing there?" He said, "My camel was lost, so I was searching for it." He said, "You seem to be really mad! Your camel was lost on my roof? Has anybody ever heard of camels getting lost on the roofs of houses? And now you are fighting with my guard and calling my home a caravanserai! This is very disrespectful to me: I am the king, and this is my home, and you have to learn how to behave!" And the man started laughing. He said, "Strange! You are telling me to learn how to behave, and you don't know at all what behavior means! Because I came here once before, and I found another man in your place. He was also saying that this is his home. I had come before that too, and there was another man and he was also saying that this is his home. Now you are saying this is your home!" The king said, "That man was my father, who has died. And the first time you came you met my grandfather." The stranger said, "That is what I wanted to make clear to you, that they called this their home, and then they had to leave it behind. They could not take it with them. It is a caravanserai. This is an understanding, that many people have been here who thought it was their home, and they are all gone. You will be gone when I come next time! When so many people stay here and come and go, this is a caravanserai!" "And I also wanted to stay for a few days, so what is wrong? You will stay a few days, your father stayed a few days, his father stayed a few days, and this has been going on for centuries. But I am not illusioned: to me it is a caravanserai." I told my father, "One day you will also understand that this is not home, because in this world we are born and the day we are born, we start dying. You can call your homes your graves, but you cannot call them homes, because you are only dying in them, you are not living!" And since then I have been in many houses which people thought were my homes, and I have been telling them that they were not, that there is no possibility. It is good to understand that we are wanderers, gypsies - searching for something, certainly. But the search can either be for a home... that means some security, some warmth, some coziness, some love from the outside, from somebody else - and that is the wrong way. That is the way of the worldly man - and he always ends in misery. A sannyasin basically recognizes the fact that the search is not for a home, the search is for: who is this being? - the being who is born homeless, and will remain always homeless. Don't search for the home, because there is none. Search for your self, because there is one! And finding that one, suddenly, miraculously, the whole existence becomes your home. And you don't create it, you don't project it, you don't make it. Suddenly it is a revelation. You cannot believe how you have been missing it up to now. The home was always where you were. The gypsies have a better name in the Indian language. The gypsies are basically from Rajputana in India. They got the name "gypsy" because they first went out of India to Egypt and from Egypt they entered Europe. It is Egypt that gave them the name "gypsy" - from Egypt. But they are really people from India, and in India their name is "khanabadosh." That name has tremendous beauty. It means a person whose home is on his shoulders; so wherever he goes, he is always at home. The word khanabadosh is tremendously significant: khana means "home", badosh means "on your own shoulders". It is not visible, it is there, but it is revealed only to those who can find who this wanderer is, who this seeker is. Rather than going after the sought, search for the seeker. And finding the seeker, you suddenly find the whole existence is your home; wherever you are, you are at home, even in a hotel. Because every house is a hotel and every place is a caravanserai. So it is a question of how you look at things. When I was in India, I was at home; when I was in America, I was at home. When I am in Nepal, I am at home. And tomorrow I don't know where life may take me, but wherever it takes me, I will be at home. That, nobody can take away from me for the simple reason that I am not making any projection which can taken away. Just finding yourself, you find that the whole existence is your home. Osho ~ Light on the Path

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That's cruel. @Damir Elezi is saying that she is a lovely person. He used to enjoy the relationship and she has been very supportive and loving. He the only person she can really relate to. Whenever he bring up something about breaking up, she pretty much begs him not to break up with her. That is enough to continue the relationship. If there is no improvement, it only shows that they don't know art of living. Both of them keep fighting over small bullshit things almost every time they see each other. So, both of them are immature. Learn to love totally , unconditionally. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful , but if you escape , you will not grow.

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

If you just do meditations and nothing else that is like preparing and preparing and never going to the examination. The test has to be there every day. People need to change the attitude that exists about work, particularly in the Western mind. Meditation should be part of the work, not separate from it. Work is a necessary part of your transformation. Work and relaxation are not contradictory. In fact, the more you put yourself into work the deeper you can go into relaxation. So both are important. The harder you work the deeper you can relax. Work is valuable. It will bring humbleness and silence. People should feel that their work is something very special, and that whatever work they do is respectable. The emphasis should be on full-time work. 6 hours a day is perfectly okay. For 6 hours you should forget everything else – forget the whole world, forget your problems – whatever work it is, be total in it.

It seems many of the practitioners with the intended goal of spiritual transformation prefer to go with the intense vision quest styled experiences. While that can be often inspiring through the revelations from it I found my most effective lasting work came during the time I was microdosing. It's all the rage currently in silicon valley and the tech start up culture but I was doing it nearly 30 years ago without calling it that. There was even a period of time of almost two years where I took mushrooms every day but the dose was small so I could carry on with a typical day in the life of what I had going on. Since I am so fluent in the psychedelic experience I didn't need to have an intense trip to gain the breakthroughs and shifts in my paradigm, less was more for me in this type of exercise. It also was beneficial to be able to see ordinary every day life through this shifted prism instead of be so submerged in an intense trip that wouldn't be suitable to be in such public settings. I know that many set time aside for an intense trip and put themselves in an environment that is safe to experience it but I went the other way with my practices during this period of time. I used less of a dose and exposed myself to more of the world, not an increased dose and secluded away from the world. This allowed me to be exposed to all of the various association triggers in actual life while being to process them through the purview of the shifted prism. Using a small dose in a morning cup of tea allowed me to function in every day life seamlessly. So instead of getting a breakthrough in perspective in the abstract that I would then have to contextualize and find a way to carry over to real life from a memory of it I was already experiencing it in life in the present moment already contextualized and orienting my perspective in real time. I had significant emotional and mental trauma to transcend in which this method of use had a dramatic and lasting effect in me.

Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are prevalent now, and many western psychologists think that yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, when you are healthy only a discipline can help then. It is not for pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic; they are not mad they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still, they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed. Therapies are for ill people. Therapies can help you to come to yoga, but yoga is not a therapy. Yoga is for a higher order of health, a different order of health – a different type of being and wholeness. Therapy can, at the most, make you adjusted. Freud says we cannot do more. We can make you an adjusted, normal member of the society – but if the society itself is pathological, then? And it is! The society itself is ill. A therapy can make you normal in the sense that you are adjusted to the society, but the society itself is ill! Yoga is not therapy; yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define yoga in terms of adjustment, then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine! If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens before you. Patanjali takes it for granted that you are interested in yoga, not as a hope, but as a discipline, as a transformation right here and now.

You can learn a technique for meditation, but technique is not meditation. Meditation happens, you can not do it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It can come to you only through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always out of the total; it is not an addition. You must grow toward meditation. This total flowering of the personality must be understood correctly. Otherwise one can play games with oneself, one can occupy oneself with mental tricks. Language must be dropped. I don’t mean that you have to suppress it or eliminate it. I only mean that it does not have to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day habit for you. When you walk, you need to move your legs. But if they go on moving when you are sitting, then you are mad. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a technique to communicate. When you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this, you can grow into meditation. Meditation is a growing process, not a technique. A technique is always dead, so it can be added to you, but a process is always alive. It grows, it expands. Whenever someone begins meditation, he will become aware of many things of which he was not previously aware, and because of that awareness he will suffer. This is how things are, and one has to pass through them. So if you start meditation and you do not suffer, it means it is not meditation, but just a hypnosis. That means you are just drugging yourself. You are becoming more unconscious. With a real, authentic meditation you will suffer more, because you will become more aware. You will see the ugliness of your anger, you will feel the cruelty of your jealousy, you will now know the evidence of your behaviour. Now, in every gesture, you will begin to feel where a hidden animal in you, and you will suffer. But this is how one grows. Growth is a painful birth. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness. Suffering disappears in two ways. You become unconscious; then suffering disappears for you. But, really, suffering remains there. It cannot disappear. It remains there! Really, your consciousness has disappeared, so you cannot feel it, you cannot be aware of it. If you become more conscious, in the meantime you will have to suffer more. But accept suffering as a part of growth, as a part of training, as just a discipline, and then one day, when your consciousness has gone beyond your suffering, suffering will disappear not just for you – it will disappear objectively. Use suffering as a stepping-stone; do not escape from it. If you escape from it, you are escaping from your destiny, from the possibility of going beyond knowledge by using suffering as a device.

Why can't we do both? There's nothing restricting us from doing both self development and enjoying what we like at the same time. In fact, that is the ideal way to express oneself authentically. Although, if just chasing after self serving things were satisfying them there wouldn't be as many miserable people as there are since most are doing only that anyway. Often, the most significant transformation that someone can have is to be more fulfilled in life as it is and not what they change about themselves.

Youth is the best time for inner transformation because youth is the most flexible time. Children are more flexible than young people, but they are not so understanding. They need a little experience. Youth is exactly the middle; you are no longer a child, no longer ignorant of life and its ways and not yet settled as an old man. You are in a state of transition, and the state of transition is the best time. Of course most of them cannot sit still like an old man too long, but there is no need to sit like an old man for longer duration. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?” Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

It's the motion of your attention. That's why 'we' wanna educate the attention by various techniques. The more the attention is educated to be deliberately on the things which the will wants, the more transformation of the subconscious into the consciousness will be possible and available. If you are gonna ask the 'unconscious' now though? I'm out for now? see you later!? But, it's important not to get confused about the definitions, what Leo wrote is important to keep in mind, "You're thinking of consciousness as human awareness. That's not what is meant when we say everything is made of consciousness. What's meant is more like: The substance of everything is no-substance, which is consciousness." otherwise your fundamental sensation of life could get off-track, which seems as if it's not a big deal at all at first but, then people start to experience reflections of it unconsciously in their lives without understanding why they feel empty or unsatisfied..

You are lucky, you have wasted on 4 years and realized it. People waste their whole life, some after sex, some after money, some after fame ; when death comes they find they are empty, society has fooled them. Only few persons like Buddha die contented. Depression is a common mental disorder. Globally, more than 300 million people of all ages suffer from depression. Most of them have some experience with the opposite sex. Experience with the opposite sex doesn't necessarily end your miseries. But you gave better opportunity to grow into a mediator. Unless you are frustrated with yourself, there is no possibility for transformation. They are searching happiness and contentment in wrong direction. After a long journey, they will find that they are empty inside, but they will pretend to be happy in front of others to hide their tears. You find the source of blissfulness within you. Blissfulness which is not dependent on your circumstances. Find the knack of meditation.