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People who have not faced deficits to survival because of awakening aren’t very awake in my opinion. It’s a common thing after full God-Realization for me to throw my phone across the room in an attempt to break it or flat out smash it to pieces. This is just one small example out of many things. If you’re actively trying to preserve your body, possessions, reputation, and pretty much anything else that makes up your ego, you’re still not awake to the fullest degrees. Last I saw Alan Watts drank himself to death. He never claimed to be awakened though from any of the talks I’ve heard. He always referred to himself as more of a spiritual commentator. I wouldn’t doubt that his spiritual understanding and experiences could have contributed to alcoholism or suicide though. I’ve certainly experienced many dark night of the soul problems that have been potentially worsened by awakening.

Hello, my dear night dwellers. As we all know, Insomnia is one tricky thing to befall a living thing. I’m sure most of us have been jealous of our dogs or cats. How easily they sleep, their minds still and tranquil. Us, however, goddamn. Some of us might not have anxiety or depression, yet still, we dwell in the night till the morning all the same. That’s precisely the point I’m about to make. Insomnia is one of the most mysterious and puzzling “illnesses” or conditions there are. There are no clear answers. Some people fix it by fixing their diet; some people have medical conditions, some mental. Some none of those. I know it’s hard to feel optimistic about this fucking condition. Trust me; it brought me to the brink of suicide. I am much better now. However, my journey is not the same as yours. My body isn’t the same as yours, nor is my mind. We are all unique, yet we insomniacs share a lot of things in common as well. It took many many hours of studying insomnia, biology, diet, neuroscience, nutrition, pharmacology, self-help techniques, psychology, a bit of literature, the human microbiome, and believe it or not, Zen Buddhism & Meditation, to finally have an understanding of how to deal with my insomnia. I’ve gotten it under control. However, I had to accept many changes I needed to make. Insomnia could be a journey to start discover yourself more deeply. Biologically, mentally, spiritually. I am not religious; I was born Muslim and became an atheist in my teens. I still consider myself an atheist to some extent. But spirituality does have an impact on your mental state. So does your biology, your nutrition, your lifestyle, etc. Now the danger arises when you dismiss these topics on hand and think you already know them. I can’t stress this enough. Your mind will trick you into thinking you understand when you don’t. It will trick you into dismissing them. It will come up with any reason possible to avoid introspection and come up with excuses to not read more and change yourself. Do not trust your mind. Do not trust your thoughts. Trust your intuition. Trust direct experience. This you can rely on. Learn things and then directly experience them and see what happens. Many of you will intuitively know that this makes sense. Obviously, it would help if you still had your mind to read and think and remember, but you get the idea. It will take maybe two years for you to filter out the good information from the bad. To see what lifestyle change works and what doesn’t. You need to keep an open mind, and you need to start to learn things proactively. Be consistent in your lifestyle changes. Not just try something for a week and say, “Fuck that it didn’t work, that’s bullshit.” That thinking right there is bullshit. Learning=change. Behavioral or psychological. If you read that stress induces insomnia, but you don’t do anything to change your stress level, then you haven’t actually learned. You just memorized a fact. You will be amazed by how many things you didn’t expect to influence sleep that does. “The greatest enemy of knowledge isn’t ignorance; It is an illusion of knowledge.” -Stephen Hawking Many people know that gut bacteria influence your mood and sleep. So they google how to increase gut bacteria. They get an article saying that probiotics increase it. They buy probiotics. Try it. Feel nothing. Then say, ok, well, it’s not my gut bacteria. When in reality, probiotics alone don’t help that much at all. This is just one out of a million examples. Insomnia isn’t your fault. It’s the worst thing to be told that it’s “just in your mind.” In a sense, it is true, but all of us have very little control of our minds and bodies. I know it’s hard to be motivated when you are sleep deprived. Somedays, when I lose sleep (rarely these days, maybe 5-6 days a month), I start to feel the same ways I felt before. Low energy, tired, want to give up on life. Just shitty overall. Suppose you sleep better the day after, or whenever, get back into the journey. We can’t control our sleep, but we do have control over many things that can start to influence both our minds and bodies. Later on, your mind and body will be your friends, not your enemies. But that won’t come quickly. Obviously, you see how big of a subject this is. I can’t explain every trap and obstacle. This is your journey to make. “Suffering is the greatest teacher.” -Guatama Buddha Don’t just view this as things to do to avoid suffering. It is that but also more. It’s about healing yourself. DO NOT BE NEGATIVELY MOTIVATED. Try to be actually excited about this. You don’t know where it will lead you, what changes might happen. You really don’t, even if you think you do. This is positive and exciting, not negative at all. Insomnia was the best thing to happen to me. I hope you will be able to say that about yours too. UNCONVENTIONAL TIPS Before you stack up on melatonin pills, try pistachios. There is evidence that just two pistachios contain enough melatonin to boost the hormone above physiological levels. Sleep hygiene is more complicated than the simple don't do anything in bed formula we constantly read about, if you do relaxing activities in bed like reading that can actually be helpful to associate bedtime with relax time. Insomnia causes depression and makes your mood abysmal. Therefore, most insomniacs you engage with in this subreddit are trapped in this mindset, so that's why this isn't a very helpful subreddit to gain optimism from, and that’s totally understandable. But just keep that in mind the next time someone slams exercising for not working or that diets have nothing to do with insomnia. Diet does absolutely matter, and diet is much more complicated than trying gluten free or keto or vegan. The raw material for neurotransmitter synthesis in your brain is derived from diet, it most certainly can impact your sleep cycles. The microbes in your gut produce 95% of the serotonin in your body (most of it won't pass the blood brain barrier, luckily your brain doesn't need much). & These microbes thrive when you eat healthy food, especially fiber. Getting your diet on check will require many years of careful rigorous experimenting, researching, not falling to delusional diets and most importantly not giving up. It takes a while for you to learn anything important, health should be your top priority no matter if you think your insomnia is genetic or not, diet will lessen the blows if anything. Getting morning sunlight does actually work for some but not others, give it a try and try to make it consistent. Coffee in the morning can actually up regulate GABA receptors, so it might actually help some sleep in some people (theoretically). Insomnia can be psychosomatic in some people, not necessarily completely but maybe a bit. If you sleep with the expectation that you'll wake up early, that will most likely happen. That's why if you're worried about an exam and sleep you'll wake up an hour before your alarm clock. How do you stop this? It's complicated, but just keep it in mind. Some people sleep way better when the accidentally fall asleep, because there is no expectation. Glycine is a non essential amino acid, some people report to increase sleep quality when supplementing with glycine.

Update: After 6 month i looking back on this thread, i just try to give solution who have diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. So quick story, after i diagnosed with ocd, long story, i work with psychiatrist for medication and psychologist for CBT, but what work on me the most is ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy, this is work. Search app called NOCD on Play Store or Apple Store You can also search channel: Mark Freeman, OCD and Anxiety by Nathan Peterson, Ali Greymond Finally, after long journey, i can manage my ocd. If i look my suffering in the past, even want to suicide, it really glad i'm here and finally overcame it. Every problem has a solution, don't lose hope! Btw, right now i focus on finding my life purpose after taking Leo's Life Purpose Course: Help me if you can by reply on that thread. I hope this information really help you all who suffer with ocd, anxiety, or other neurotic symptoms. For me is effective, rather waste a lot time for other solutions that didn't work. The key here: Is let the thought, and don't do any compulsions or try to control them. Let thought be thought, and have no meaning. Keep practicing and see the difference until you healed. The obsession will lose their power. Hope it helps! Thank you Glad to share experience here, i made it with ERP and you can too : )

Does suicide drop your score?

Welcome back Leo. I really miss you. Leo you have transformed my life. You saved my life. Without you I would have committed suicide. Keep up the good job Leo. Your videos are like medicine to my life. Regarding the environment I am living in, your videos give me hope to live and thrive in the world. I love you and I love your work. I have tears shedding over my face due to your work. I will contribute to actualized.org in someway at some point of my life or return something back because of your awesome work. Your work has transformed the quality of my life. I just can't tell and label how much. Your work transformed my relationships, habits, life purpose, thinking, reality, development, vision, skills, conclusions, hope, internal world, external world, education, circumstances, feeling, love and advice. Your work has shaped the trajectory of my life. You are a reason for me to live in the world. Thanks again for your hard-work. Welcome back and resume your hard-work because without it I will not live or continue to survive in my life.

Sorry to hear you're going through all this, I totally sympathise as I can recognise some of your story in my life too. You're the innocent victim of domestic abuse and violence, your feelings of anger, suicide etc are the result of the trauma you experienced. My advice is to seek professional help, it sounds too intense to deal with by yourself. If necessary, your family owe it to you to pay for it too.

Wishful thinking. You're not thinking clearly in this matter. You're emotionally dogmatic and irrational with that position. I mean come on. "Suicide is always a dumb decision. Never be suicidal." That's like those fanatic anti-abortion people who go crazy only because their fucking emotions go bananas.

I have suicidal thoughts related to a difficult situation I used to be in. After my grandfather died, my step father moved in. He was abusive for about 5 years before finally being evicted. My money was stolen, he punched mom in the face yelling "stupid fucking whore," and destroyed the house. Meanwhile, mom blew money on drugs and lied to all of her children constantly. She told me to stay out of everything that was happening and focus on myself. She told me that there was nothing I could do, but I refused to accept what would continue had I done nothing. I did not listen to her because I did not my step father to hurt her. She tried calling the police multiple times and they did nothing. While considering suicide, I sometimes told myself "I don't care.". I recognized that these words were not congruent with my actions because I acted like I cared about the safety of my family. By recognizing that this was a lie, I was unable to convince myself to kill myself. I continue to have suicidal thoughts because of how I handled this difficult situation. I felt that I was powerless, but refused to accept the situation. I now have thoughts of killing myself because in the process I became addicted to anger. I told myself I should hold onto it because there is otherwise nothing I can do. I hurt myself a lot in the process. When directing this anger toward my step father I considering killing him or myself. I noticed that my thoughts stopped making sense when considering killing him. This is similar to murderers whose motives can't be understood because they sound perplexing when explaining What they were thinking. This could be a consequence of lying. What happened actually is that I moved out of the house and in with my grandma where I live today. I then made a power point presentation for language studies. I explained everything I had planned and the entire situation at home. I did this because I knew that my mom and sister could still be hurt if I did nothing. I put the subtitles in English and translated it Spanish for about 100 people from many different language courses. My older sister thinks I'm inconsiderate because my younger sister continued going to school with everybody knowing what was happening in her house. I knew I could not calculate all of the consequences of my actions, so I followed my intuition. If mom is forced to be checked for drugs, the situation at home can't be kept out of the courts forever. My society would have the power to change the situation and potentially prevent my family from being hurt anymore. Eventually my step father was evicted and more students at school started writing about domestic violence. How should I approach the strong emotions surrounding this situation? I am having a lot of strong reactions during my meditations and I have a hard time handling them. "I hate myself" is still a repeating thought. I don't feel like changing the situation made me happier.

@BornToBoil Hey. Life is hard. It's true. No you won't go to hell if you commit suicide. I'm sorry if you feel pathetic right now. I hope you'll do better and find peace. There's so much more to life to experience, to love. There's plenty of reasons to stay alive. I hope you find those reasons.

Since I'm not a medical doctor I can't really give an objective position on antidepressants. They are essential for people with suicidal depression as they reduce risk of suicide and they help people feel more stable and grounded. I think in that case SSRIs are great but I think they should be used to look for the real root cause and deal with that while the SSRIs are keeping the depression at bay. I got a few sources on my blog you may find something helpful in there. Finished the latest post just now. Also, some guys on this forum focus on spirituality and consciousness coaching maybe you could reach out to some of our members to help you ( @Nahm, @Emerald, @mandyjw, @aurum) - hope you guys don't mind me quoting you.

It's not as much a "metaphysical suicide" as much as it is a stripping away of untruth. Pushing through to what? ? Pushing would imply that there is something to move away from.

It’s not about the thoughts, it’s about the body releasing conditioning. “Pushing through” is a conditioned mindset to let go of. Relaxation is meditative. Meditation is relaxing. Letting go is effortless, not effortful. When emotional misunderstanding releases, have a good cry and let it out. If you can’t, write about how you feel, and let it out. If you can’t, talk to someone and express how you feel, and let it out. There is no “facing radical truth”, “metaphysical suicide”, etc. It can seem like it from years of conditioning & suppressing. We adapt and don’t notice this, so it can be a lot to let go of. But that’s the point, and the more you let go of, the better you feel, and the less you fear. The radical truth is love, loving you, flushing the conditioning out. A mindset of ‘facing it’ is making an opposition of it. The ‘scared’ is emotional suppressing. The emotional scale is a great way to understand. It’s empowering to be able to move up the scale, to know how and do it anytime. Like riding a bike, it becomes second nature with some practice & understanding. The body mind eventually does it automatically as needed in subtle ways. It’s most worthwhile. It’s also not about faith, determination or conviction. It’s about beginning to feel, remaining present, or returning to being present again & again. The more you feel and understand yourself, with tools like the emotional scale, the clearer it is that there is no problem or anything to be scared of. It’s good that it’s coming up...notice the mind’s narrative, which essentially is the habit of suppressing the feeling, and let it out. Try a variety of meditations, one will ‘click’ with you. Don’t try to ‘force’ one style or practice into place. One of those meditations will ‘click’ ‘subconsciously’ with a specific suppressed emotion. This kind of does the work ‘behind the scenes’ for you in a big way.

Serious and very pertinent question here. I mean this genuinely and sincerely. How do you meditate without going crazy? In the "altered state of consciousness" my beliefs and conceptions of reality are stripped away. In the face of the radical truth of the present moment, my gaseous existence, it's all too much. How do you guys manage not going crazy or feeling like you're going crazy? Did you just push through with conviction, faith and determination and it was all good? Is this some sort of metaphysical "suicide" process you have to go through? Does the crazy never go away? What is your advice/thoughts/experiences? 2018-2019 I had a fairly regular routine of meditate. But now I repeat the same pattern over and over. I meditate once or twice over a one or 2 days, get scared by what I experience, and then go back to living my life for a month or some weeks before I decide to meditate again. I've decided I'm going to push through this time. Well I hope I do, lets see

Suicide is not wrong per se, but it's sad because it's just a misunderstanding. You are not suicidal. Those are just thoughts and feelings trying to trick you. You are not those nasty thoughts or feelings, and you don't have to follow their command at all. You are beyond them all, perfectly good as you are. The body don't want to die. Don't hurt the body. The body is completely innocent in this drama. What wants to die is the false you. It's just a psychological entity that has temporarily hijacked you. If you look closely you can spot it, or parts of it. It's sneaky as fuck. But ultimately it's not even real, though it makes you believe it's very much real. It's completely harmless just pretending to be you. You actually hold ALL the power, you just need to realize it.

Suicide is always a dumb decision. But so many people nowadays are suicidal is nuts. Never be suicidal.

@BornToBoil suicide is essentially in most cases a refusal to take the responsibility of living out your life through the karmic debts and spiritual lessons that beset you. Reincarnation can be validated in your direct experience if you have an experience of infinite consciousness and omniscience, which can be obtained through what Leo teaches. When you refuse to live out the circumstances of your karma, you end up reincarnating in very similar circumstances because the spiritual growth that was designed for you by God and Karma did not take place, so you're just kicking the can down the road. Why not live out your self actualized life purpose here and now? and then be ultimately liberated from reincarnation?

@Kundalini Cataclysm Nice. One can also contemplate, what is a death which is not a suicide? What is separate and comes to end, such that it’s end was not within it’s beginning all along? The seed was of the apple, the apple of the tree, the tree of the seed. ”What” dies, ”Who” dies, “I” dies, “you” dies. Awareness simply remains. Aware of these thoughts now, too. ”Seeds” and “trees” and “apples”, two. The eternal One, aware of “you”.

Oh man, I've been there. I can relate to suicidal ideation. I can't claim to have fully overcome it, but I did dive into it quite a bit. Here are some things that might help you: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-biggest-mistake-you-have-ever-seen-caused-by-ego/answer/Artem-Boytsov The source of this answer comes from this page: https://www.true-freedom.net/#Part_Ⅰ._Enlightenment. Much of the content of this page has been quite helpful to me already. This was actually created by fellow forum member @BipolarGrowth I believe. If not, sorry for misquoting. https://www.andrewholecek.com/suicide-from-a-buddhist-perspective/ https://www.andrewholecek.com/karmic-implications-of-suicide/ Also, assuming you haven't experienced death through spiritual practice and/or psychdelics etc., I suggest you try to admit to yourself that you actually have NO IDEA what really happens through and after death. Thus, you'd be changing a situation in which you at least theoretically have ways to get out of the deep hole you're currently in for total and utter uncertainty. That means ANYTHING could happen. Death could deliver you into a situation that is equally shitty as your current one, a better one or even a worse one. This unknowingness can be quite painful and terrifying in my experience, but admitting it has helped me quite a few times already. I hope any of the things I've posted can help you. You're not alone in this mate.

I don't think there is anything right or wrong with it, and I don't think that saying it's wrong as a way to coherce someone to not commit suicide is the best or most loving way to do so. I'd say to a person who wants to do it "Ok, I love such that you're free to do it and I can't necessarily stop you if you wanted to do it." But also that I think it's true that if the person did commit suicide, they'd feel deep regret since they might realize the love they've broken by losing life, reality, others, etc.. So it's almost like those saying to not commit suicide can only simply suggest it, perhaps from empathic knowledge that the person will regret it. And that if a person doesn't want the other to commit suicide from hurt about missing that person, that that could be selfishness on their part, but perhaps also love as well, but that perhaps the most loving way to interact and respect a person who wants to commit suicide is to try to not impose your own desires on them since they may then feel trapped and not free, but that the best way may be to simply suggest in a way indicating you're not trying to manipulate them, but simply trying to help them see if they really want to or not and that they may really regret the decision. I don't know at all about this as I've not really thought about it. But I think for me I see truth in these values of showing love to others by not imposing your will on them, even in these types of situations, and that that may be the better way of helping them in the end since you're showing them unconditional love, which may be a more powerful force in helping them change their decision then trying to manipulate and force them to not commit suicide since you're selfishly not wanting them to die so you can avoid your own suffering from that (which I'm also not condemning, since I think that is also 100% understandable). Seems to be something there with truth.

Not the final outcome of life. Planning a date is not the same as planning a suicide. You can't simply stop eating and drinking water. Your survival instinct will kick in and you will go back to eating. Some people might have suicided by starvation, though it's just another method of suicide. It's still suicide.

@Preety_India but aren't people constantly deciding outcomes of their life with their every action? Also, what if I just stopped eating and drinking water and died? Would it still be a suicide?

@BornToBoil 2 things can potentially be wrong with suicide: That you hurt people who know you. And the possibility that life can get better, but that doesn't apply to everyone. Some souls are obnoxious and aren't loved by anyone. In my opinion people got it backwards. When a birth happens there should be mourning and when death happens there should be joy.

Why shouldn't a person kill themselves if they feel like it? They probably are not going to go to hell or something like that, so what reason there is for staying alive?

I would fucking love to be stuck in a social scene. Daygame? No bars or clubs? That would be paradise for me. Except for the masks and the social distancing. But isn't everyone receiving classes online? Dear @coca my advice to you is to give up. Just. Give. Up. In the sense of expecting to get laid anytime soon. Please don't give up on living. Keep living@coca once you give up everything is gonna be easier. I battled with depression from age 31 to 33. I thought about suicide a lot. I am glad I survived. PM me if you wanna talk Arc

I'm ready for death too, but not because of enlightenment stuff. The problem is that the body insists on surviving, even if you rationally know that suicide is the right thing to do. So life is a prison of suffering, and you don't even know how you got there. Life is so bizarre.