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Psychology cannot transform you. It can certainly give you a few insights into the mind, but those insights are not going to be transforming, because transformation always happens from a higher plane. Transformation never means solving problems — remaining on the same plane — that means adjustment. Psychology is still trying to help you adjust — to adjust to the society which is itself insane, to adjust to the family, to adjust to the ideas that are dominant around you. But all those ideas — your family, your society — they themselves are ill, sick, and to adjust to them will give you a certain normality, at least a superficial appearance of health, but it is not going to transform you. Psychology can give you a few insights into the mind, but because it cannot take you beyond the mind it can’t be of any help. Be a light unto yourself. Do not follow others, do not imitate, because imitation, following, creates stupidity. You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique. Nobody has there been ever who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you.

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. Youth is the most significant time to take any jump, because the jump needs courage, it needs energy, it needs risk, it needs daring. You will not be able to make a successful career in politics. A politician cannot have any spiritual experience. You will loose desire to dominate others.

You can have nothing and still be materialistic. I think solution lies more in sorting out the need for all these things. Material goods I think are fine in themselves, I don't see society manipulating us to go for these things, I observe that it's more a case of we created society to conform to our nature. It has gotten a little out of hand in recent times since Freud and his "unconscious aggressive desires" theory, but our basic apparent nature is always been to look outside ourselves for comfort and security. That seeking is the structure which is present, but the content of the structure changes as technology advances. So it's a little bit more tricky than assigning the blame to society at large for manipulating is. If you want to delve deeper I could suggest you are being manipulated in some ways by the literature you are reading regarding this phenomena (which in my experience does not solve the actual problem, but merely displaces it to something apparently "outside" oneself in the culture and therefore outside of one's responsibility to deal with. The only realistic solution I am aware of is meditation and a spiritual education, and by spiritual I don't mean a spirituality of attempting to transform society at large to serve the emotional needs of the species (a careful analysis of your experience will reveal that this is already the case because we are all already getting our 'emotional' needs met), but a personal transformation, because that really is the only control you do have in this life. You can't change the collective causal body, you can only change your part of it.

@Lawrence Yes it has to be involved in a sense, because the scientists creating this super AI will most certainly be conscious. And also the people who become robots will most certainly be conscious both before and after their transformation. Even the AI we create on a computer might become conscious at some point. But what I mean is that developing those technologies doesn't require to understand consciousness at all. There is no need to model it. No need to master it. No need to talk about it. Neurons are basically all you need to understand. Once you understand neurons, you can play with them. And once you play with them, the universe is at your fingertips.

Hello all! So a few weeks ago during my meditation session I started trying to observe things without putting a label on it, I started moving my hand around and looked at my hand to see it as it is, to see the formless thing it was, and then the awareness of my mental sensations shot backward (inward) I felt a huge vast open space and nothingness, it was frightening and i felt a surge of panic, I didn't know who i was anymore, All i felt was a vast ocean of emptiness. It only lasted for a minute and then i lost it again. Since then I ''know'' on an emotional level that I don't exist, because I've experienced nothingness, but somehow it wasn't a permanent transformation like for example Eckhart Tolle went through. Any suggestions to make it reoccur and make it permanent?

I was listening to some inspiring CD's that had suggested I read Napoleon Hills books , when I was looking into Hill I found Bob Proctor with his many Videos and good approach. Hill's teachings are the base of my actualization transformation from ineffective to effective. The original book versions are reported to have more tips that were removed in previous versions. I bought the paperback a few days ago and the audio book for ' Think and grow rich ' To top it off I picked up a CD , think and grow rich , Stickability : The Power of Perseverance

Hi Davie. Once you are bitten by the enlightenment vampire, the transformation is inevitable. You can try to go back to your previous way of living to reduce the transformation speed for awhile...but inevitably the desire for finding your true nature will come back at some point, whether in this life or the next. The first stage of the transformation is what you're going through, and it can be rough. Popular culture calls it "hitting bottom." Spiritual culture calls it the "dark night of the soul," but it sure as hell doesn't last a night. It can last months or years. You realize that yes, life is fundamentally pointless. It's a zero-sum game. We're all going to die and it will be as if we've never lived. All is vanity and striving after wind. No objects of experience last forever, and yet we are all play a constant game of chasing objects because of an underlying assumption of incompleteness. Related to that last point, you are chasing short-term gratification objects (chocolate and video games) because they are a faster way to make you feel more complete than your martial arts. In essence, what is happening is that ego is dissolving. The ego, your current state, is one of looking to the past for knowledge of how to be complete in the future. When you clearly see that no future object attainment will ever make you permanently complete, ego goes haywire and looks for the quickest avenues to cover up this fact. And when those other avenues begin to run out... you're left face to face with futility. To ego, this is absolutely terrifying, as it always needs a reason to keep going. If there's no reason...then what? Well, some of your ego-fueled hobbies may drop, you may lose friends you used to cover up your incompleteness, you may even lose touch with family. Everything that once defined you slips away. Actually, this is incredibly liberating, as it eventually leads you to the realization that your true nature is already whole, limitless, happy, and complete. Then, you can do whatever the body/mind feels inclined to do as an expression of this wholeness. But that's a ways down the road. My suggestion is to let this run its course. The more you try to resist and force yourself to maintain what you once had, the more you will suffer for it. If depression comes, let it come. If you feel like crying in bed all day, go for that. If you gorge on chocolate and video games enough, the pain you receive from overindulgence will be enough to make you quit. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing. At the same time, notice your thought patterns, the sob stories, the victim mentality, the sense of incompleteness that comes out of all of this. Perhaps write a biography about the "Davie" character, listing all of his quirks, his habits, his likes, his dislikes, his beliefs, etc. and see if you can start to piece together why he is the way he is. Before this turns into a novel, some food for contemplation... do dogs need a reason to live? Cheers. P.S. Don't worry about that "be present in the moment" hogwash. There's no need to manipulate your experience. I suggest starting up a "Do Nothing" meditation habit. Look up Leo's video for details.

Basically, all the stuff that Leo goes over in his videos relative to the external experience. It's a lot like our anatomy. The external is masculine, the internal is feminine. So, life purpose, goal-setting, enacting your agenda on the world, rationality/logic, individuality, transformation/change, intellect, doing, strength, stoicism, results, discernment, etc. To develop your feminine side you would cultivate compassion, awareness, a connection to the unconscious mind, embracing paradox, being, exploring the mysterious and non-rational, unconditional love, emotional awareness of self and other, etc. Masculinity is like the daytime and femininity is like the nighttime. But in relation to what Leo said above, as a joke, in our society acceptance of the body's natural functioning is still quite taboo in women. This is evidenced by deep cultural attitudes about female sexuality and female body functions. It's why Leo's joke is funny and a perhaps bit unsettling for those of us in the "fairer" sex who value a proper feminine appearance. But farting has nothing to do with masculinity or femininity... even though our cultural attitudes suggest otherwise.

Hi everyone.... Recently weird things happen in my life. I amn't actually Canadian, I just wanted to hide my personality and that's why I wrote it as my name. The topic I'm gonna be talking about here is very important for everyone. I want to ask you to write all your opinions and way-outs here, so we can solve this problem together. I arrived in Canada in December last year (2015) , since then, adaptation became a very hard process for me. in my country, I had so many friends and everything was easier. What happens here in Canada? I'm locked in my room and watch Leo's videos all the time just to survive and not die from a boring life. My only destinations are gym and school. (school is over till Sep.) I don't believe in myself, I don't trust myself. I've read so many books about this topic, but still, I don't have a feeling I can transform my life. It happens everyday. Every day is almost the same, I 'm addicted to the computer, I waste thousands of hours on it. Today I've heard my friends in my country've gone on a holiday and they are picking up girls , chilling and having an unforgettable holidays. Since then, It became motivation for me and at this moment it seems like I can do everything. I can pick up girls, I can go out and as Leo says, I can fuck the world... But still, when I hear that my friends've already done it 10000 times, I feel weak, I feel frustrated because I start to compare myself to them. I've watched Leo's episode ''how to stop comparing to others'' about twenty thousand times, maybe twenty-one I amn't sure. I'm fed up with everything. I'd been trying recently to find power in myself and transform my life, but since I've heard from friends that they're having so much fun, I felt horrible. This isn't envy, this is something different. It makes me lose my authenticity, and it sucks. What's wrong with me, I know that there are many people here with the same problem. I watch all of Leo's episodes, about 100 times each episode, but still, I only LISTEN, I DON'T Change anything. I just continue living with other people's lives. What's the point of this everything, I can't see a bright future in it. I listen to Leo, I remember everything, I try to really change myself, I meditate, I read so many books and then what? -nothing. Addiction to computer , sitting at home most of the summer doing absolutely nothing valuable, thinking about sex all the time, (and it always fucks my mind that I don't get laid.) Every day, Every morning, I tell to myself, today is a day of transformation, I tell to myself :''Go, u wanna get laid? go and experience , use your knowledge and prove that your knowledge works.'' It isn't about getting laid, I'm talking about sex because this fucks my mind all the time, But not only this, I want to transform my life. I did everything I thought I needed, but I got only waste of time, that's it. I'm angry about myself, but it is what it is, I amn't gonna hide anything, that's what is happening in my life. Every day is the same day. boring! Watching my friends' lives and wish I had something like them. It blows up my mind. Really, I'm a already 17 and I'm old enough to change my life. I know there are many people in the situation like me here, post your ideas, what do you think about it? How to start using my knowledge, how to start real life? how to step in masculinity ? (I've watched Leo's episode about this topic too, please don't link Leo's any episode here, I know the whole text already.) I need action, but I'm like a stupid man, maybe I am... With Respect Canadian.

I think that this forum has already reached its limit. Am not saying that to upset anyone or Leo. But I feel that there is way too much focus on the word "enlightenment" or "life purpose". This stuff confuses most people. And I cringe everytime when I read something like: "Omg, I had an enlightenment experience" or whatsoever. I always look back at Jiddu Krishnamurti when he once talked about the transformation of the mind. Jiddu died 30 years ago, so his words are at least 30 years old. I look at myself and think that at this point I am surely not the transformation that he was talking about. And I am really curious whether I can do that. But for now the transformation that I experienced were baby steps. So how am I supposed to expect faster transformation from other forum members? I just can't. I see the forum as what it is. It put me in a certain position and from that point I have to walk a very lonely road where no forum needs to be by my side. That is the struggle. I came to this forum because of some inner resistence. Now that I feel better in certain aspects the only thing to do here is to leave this place or help.

You see, in the old days of the Upanishads, most students were guided by a teacher, a teacher who was qualified to teach. It was a real tradition. Students had to practice a long time for Non-dual teachings, because their minds had to be ready to accept this experience so that it transformed into body wisdom rather than cognitive wisdom. Some people had to practice 12-15 years before they were allowed in on non dual. It was kept secret. Now, in this day of New Age bastardization and compulsive shallow congnitive Absolutization of the Relative, all that meaning has been lost and re-labelled "dogma". Everything now is dismissed as "dogma". This is innocent, but it is also ver ignorant. This happened because people listen to teachings that confuse relative and absolute and throw out the baby with the bathwater and screw themselves and the path because of the BELIEF that anything relative and meaningful is just "dogmatic". This is the problem here in these forums and in the New Age. It is the capitalist "quick fix" anybody can become "enlightened" fad of weekend Satsang. It's turned into like going to Church, except at least in organized religion you have some respect and reverence for relative duality! Now days the non-duality scene it just a big lie. So if you buy into the New Age lie, you will become an Absolutist who just walks around policing the language world and calling everything dogma and ego, but with no real understanding or transformation under their belt to back this up. Its just more ego pretending to be open minded.

Notes: SDS training wheels; how to increase SDS time rapidly WARNING: experimental technique I thought I would just briefly cover how I increased my SDS time from 1 to 3+ hours overnight for anyone who is interested. I combined technology, with some knowledge of physiology, yoga and hypnosis. I'll briefly describe exactly what I did and the theory behind it. In this video Shinzen Young explains how becoming goal oriented in SDS time rather than in psychological transformation can be a hindrance in spiritual development, so it's something to keep in mind. The goal is not to see how much you can take. Firstly, to be able to sit longer you need to develop your concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity. I presume that these are higher brain functions that happen in the neo-cortex/ frontal lobes. The Ted talk below explains how stress in the body causes a “self-lobotomy” of higher brain function. The biggest factor in this mental shut-down is irregular heart rate. It turns out that you can influence your heart rate by controlling your breath, there are a lot of details to how this works (you can follow your nose around these journal articles if you want to learn more about this) To cut a long story short, when you inhale your heart rate increases and when you exhale it decreases. To keep your heart rate regular the time you spend inhaling and exhaling in each breath needs to be constant and even, you can watch how Neil's rate increases and decreases evenly after he begins the breathing exercise. To lower your average heart rate the inhale should be shorter than the exhale, i.e. you spend less time increasing (inhale) and more time decreasing (exhale). You can increase your heart rate by doing the opposite - take long deep inhales and rapidly exhale. This is a cool hack I use to help me wake up quickly in the morning, it gets my blood pumping fast so I can metabolise the sleep hormones quickly. The problem is, when you begin this process you have low concentration and sensory clarity so you won't be able to keep it up very long. This is where I incorporated technology, yoga and self-hypnosis. I sampled one line from Sadhguru's isha kriya meditation using audacity (a free audio editing program) and put it on my phone to play in a loop. The idea is to take and hold the two thoughts: “I am not this body” “I am not even the mind” with inhalation and exhalation respectively. Notice that this ensures that your inhale will be shorter than your exhale and the duration will be the same for every full breath. This is what we want to keep your heart rate low and regular, and your higher brain function running so you can practice concentration clarity and equanimity better. With each inhalation and thought “I am not this body” I “felt” my entire body, washing my attention over the whole thing, noting any sensations, emotions and practising equanimity to the best of my ability with anything I felt. Then when I switched my attention to exhaling and the thought “I am not even the mind” I practised witnessing the internal talk and images that arose as I said “I am not even this mind” The subconscious mind is programmed by plain repetition, so as you're doing this you are basically brainwashing yourself to dissociate from the body and the mind to the witnessing state. I also used the insight mediation app to sound interval bells every 30 minutes, because it makes it easier to keep going when you have an idea of how much time you've done. Over the coming week I increased the time between interval bells until I was able to sit the full 3 hours without any time reference, then I stopped using the audio and was able to sit motionless, for a full 3 hours without any mantras or tech within a week. Additional notes: Begin with a growth mindset, your first sits don't have to be perfect. If you have to move to readjust your back or whatever then do it, an imperfect long sit is better than a perfect short sit because you will work through more resistance, it doesn't take long to perfectly still. To get a good posture I visualised a helium balloon taped to the top of my head gently pulling it up to the sky. I eventually found the sweet spot where my back was straight and stable without using any muscles. I noticed that breathing was difficult when my back/abdominal muscles were too contracted. You could just start out in a chair which would make this easier.

What's to become of the flower seed after full bloom It does not exist yet is told of its magical transformation "You were once a small seed in the dirt" the flower hears. "You will become a beautiful expression of nature" the seed hears. Non of this is there reality. Just stories of others from others, I am a seed in the dirt, catching water soaked mud and fleeting glimpses of sunlight. I am a brilliant flower blossom that gets bludgeoned by rain and misses the feeling of soil. Of all this, who is what and what is not?

Dunno what I am supposed to add here. When you ask us what kind of morals you are supposed to have, you basically behave like a very young child not knowing anything about the world, which actually isn't a bad thing. But being in your age (you are writing a thesis now) you have to have some sort of values. Look at your life. Be aware of what you are doing. What you are doing is what you are. Just think a lot about your own life and don't get obsessed with other people like ted bundy. You are upsetting me somehow. I feel like I am talking with a potential copycat murderer. There are people who are mentally ill, there are people who are/were very unlucky in their life, there are people who just find another reason to live a very dark life based on torturing and killing and whatsoever. But why should I look at such people? I don't define myself as a person that likes torturing and killing, because I have compassion. I have emotions. I believe that being is a great alternative to not being. Torture and killing for me is just some sort of sadistic stuff that is only covering stuff like fear. Defining morals as something very unique this sentence is total bullcrap. Every human being has its very own morals. It always depends on you and the other person. Will you let the other person influence you to become more and more like he is? Do you have some fundamental values that can't be changed that easily? Even if this ted bundy lives in your environment. Why should he influence you? Only because he is present? Do you think that you are soooo manipulative? I am not saying that the perfect human being should not be manipulative at all, but representing your own values or whatsoever is a strong trait, I guess. Well, you don't have to define what is right and what is wrong. This is just a way for human beings to simplify life as much as possible (source: religion or whatsoever). There are questions that can't be answered, in my humble opinion. But if you REALLY want to find an answer, you will. Believe me. Do whatever the fuck you want. Answer the question for yourself or just don't answer it. Having a great quote from my favorite dude Jiddu Krishnamurti: “You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don't know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn't find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn't answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is."

I intend to visit 2 weeks of the fall retreat. Which Workshop would you recommend taking? Week 1 Experiencing the Nature of Being Week 2 Pursuing Consciousness through Transformation Week 3 Consciousness Training Camp Final Week Contemplation Intensive

http://www.chenghsin.com/workshop-fall-series.html Peter Ralston has a 4 week retreat this fall. It conists of 4 different workshops: Week 1 Experiencing the Nature of Being Week 2 Pursuing Consciousness through Transformation Week 3 Consciousness Training Camp Final Week Contemplation Intensive It's 4000 USD for the 4 weeks. I have enough money for it and I'm highly considering it. Has anyone here worked with Ralston before, is he the real deal? @Leo Gura you have been to some of his workshops right?

@John I think Tolle the night of his transformation was really willing to die. He had enough. Maybe he discovered that one not need actually die in order to discover the peace a suicidal person is looking for? I had an experience like this myself, where I just let the identity die because I saw that it actually did nothing for me, only caused me problems. It was short lived though, and not a lasting thing, but I got a glimpse of what it means to awaken: Pain happens, but there is nobody there to suffer.

@charlie2dogs One of the biggest jokes in the current hive mind - the grand transformation of the collective human consciousness. Yes, even I bought into it.

I find that a lot of people - including myself - set these aspirations for the person that we want to become and very often fail to do so. And I believe part of the problem is that we tend to fix the behavior rather than the root cause that leads to it. This leads to maybe a change in behavior, but it does not really transform the "I" which is what I am interested in changing. I have recently red the book called "pursuing consciousness" and in this book Peter Ralston states that in order for real transformation to occur within the self, one must find the real cause to why the self is as it currently is. But how does one really become aware of the root cause of a partucular behavior? That is what I really want to know. Therefore, It would be great if u could cover this some day, Leo

Can You Change Your Life? (is a customer interview) http://pathwaytohappiness.com/sound_files/pod11-holly-interview.mp3 The real transformation that you create for yourself, is in actual practice. Those exercises can be found in the self mastery course. Before you start changing your life, you start with mastering yourself. You are the instrument with which you create your life. And without first tuning that instrument, you are likely to miss the mark of what you are aiming for in your life. Do You Need Guidance? http://pathwaytohappiness.com/podcast/pod21-teacher.mp3 -Enlightenment is when you see things as they are. -All that one has to do to make that journey is to shift his point of perception -Choose to put your point of perception to a different view point at anytime, to take you out of victimhood and out of judgment. -To a certain point, you have to get free of the path, but to even get to a point where you can depart, you have to develop the skills to develop your attention and therefore follow a path. -Book learning is quiet different from developing consciousness. What do we do with that knowledge? We have to pratice. -Don't be under the belief that if you really care about someone, you have to point all what he's doing wrong to him. It's a different kind of caring, not as accepting or as respectful. In the structure of belief system, of how to become more spiritual by having expectations in being more perfect, doesn't fit. You have to adapt a point of view where you accept yourself (and others) completely the way you (they) are. -Wanting to become perfect on the spiritual path is counterintuitive. Finding Your Self http://pathwaytohappiness.com/sound_files/pod16-finding-self.mp3 -The quest starts the day you're not happy with the global situation you're in. -To make possible to express more love, you have to get rid of your fears. That means getting rid of fears made of beliefs, beliefs that are connected to fear. -We bounce between our good self-esteem and our bad self-esteem. Those self-images create an identity. -Within that matrix of who we are, having to find ourselves over the years, we' ve made hundreds of agreements "oh I'm this way, I'm not that way","I'm good at maths, lousy at english, I cant sing or paint". All those images exist in our mind. We've been defining ourselves by agreements and by imaginary characters, conceptual ideas of who we are, many of them based in fear. Some kind of self-rejection, some kind of "I wonder what they think about me" story. The thing the people mistakingly go do in finding out who they are, they go looking among those imaginary characters they have among themselves, that they've had created. And all these imaginary characters of themselves not one is really them. -That path to happiness or that path to love in your life is about uprooting all those false images based in fear even the positive ones based in illusions, because you aren't that imaginary character either. Your own mind becomes a big trap, it becomes a matrix of illusions and many of those are based in fear. You might ask :"well if I'm I'm not any of those character, who Am I, what am I?" The who Am I question isn't a so good question to ask, because it leads us to believe in an imaginary character! -At that point, it can be very frustrating to get more lost instead of finding yourself. But that is the nature of the journey. In the journey you have to dissolve all the illusions, and it can be pretty uncomfortable. As you honestly dissolve all these false images and illusions you have about yourself, you will find that you'll be happier, because there is more room in your life. -As your consciousness expends, and you dissolve the fears, you dissolve the false beliefs -From that divine point of view of truth, love or consciousness , only perfection exists. -The mind has an idea of what the body is supposed to do and look like, it judges the body as wrong in some fashion. It's kind of ridiculous. The world of the body is separate from the mind, and the mind very often tries to control the body, and therefore creates a conflict. When we are not aware, we create a judgement of our body, it can end up in feeling guilty, ashamed, being angry at our body. The body by itself is a beautiful being, the divine world by itself is only perfection. It's in the middle world of the mind that there is all those comparisons, judgments, victimization out of emotional reactions. -You have to let go all the egos versions of self in order to embrace the authentic self, witch is a divine self. It's a big and beautiful leap in consciousness. It allows a world without conflict, in yourself and in the world, and see everything as beautiful. Unconditional love and acceptance for life. -Why do get people angrier over the years? We learn to accumulate stories, opinions, beliefs and agreements in our mind and we collect all these ideas in the mind, but we never clean up our mind. We collect them and a lot of them are in contradiction. We are not taught to evaluate thoughts, we are not taught to let them go. -In that quest of finding oneself, you have to dissolve the world of illusions of the mind, to find who but more importantly what you are... which is life, conscious life expressing itself through that body. -It take consciousness, awareness and mastering control over your own attention, this is not an intellectual paradigm.

@Orange Hi The ideas presented by people, even here, are just ideas. There is no truth in borrowing other people's ideas at all. Yes borrowing ideas can be useful for fixing up certain life situations, but in the context of personal transformation ideas and concepts are mere representations, or personal/collective "models" of truth. The "Truth" we are speaking of here is the realization of Absolute Truth, where the idea of the separate self sense is transcended and reality can be seen without any filters of the separate sense of self distorting the view. In that place one can see very clearly what is true and what is not true about life because there are none of the divisions of separation present - everything is One. The Absolute is not a place one is able to hang-out in for long periods of time, unless one gets very good at transcending their ego! And also this Absolute state is not the be-all-and-end-all of life. As Natasha pointed out, it's also wise to re-inhabit the relative world of separate forms, but now with some knowledge, insight and background awareness of the Absolute. Having an experience of the Absolute nature of reality affords us the opportunity to now start working on shedding off the layers of our own personal and collective conditioning or what some would call our false identity. The stories which keep us bound to re-enacting certain negative patterns, attracting certain unwanted situations, addictions, anything that has a hold on us is a "story" and that story is kept in place by stored emotional memory which is then feed by a "story" in the mind of thinking. This is programming, and this is what we call our personal identity. Changing the personal identity is hard work, but it's easier if we have this background knowledge of the Absolute reality. This way we're able to work with these stored emotions without buying into the story in the head. The more one can learn this skill of releasing old emotions that have been causing us to fail without buying into the ideas attached to them, the more one can create a more realistic and "truth" based worldview based on our own inner intuition and less influenced by our past conditioning and beliefs. The less of a grip our past conditioning has on us, the more we are able to have a say in our own lives. This is only my take on this, others may disagree, I'm not sure if I got it right, even, but this is how my own understanding has unfolded.

@Emerald Wilkins, interesting answer! In the last year I had some periods - mostly a set of 3-5 days every few months - in which I felt completely enlightened. It then always went away and brought cycles of horrors and transformation after it. What I found so astonishing while I had theses enlightenment experiences is that I felt like somebody just pulled a cork outta me and I just felt like after all this time I am home. It kinda expressed itself in every little part: I moved a little bit slower, I acted and breathed very rhythmically just out of intuition and it felt a bit like flying - like you are weightless. If you meditate, focus on that one sensation of feeling unwell. There is this one feeling that nearly all of the time is inside of you. For me it is a lot in my upper body and brain. It's like a tension. This is your experiential guess that you are separate (in my experience). You feel this a lot if you sit for 90 minutes or longer. It is like the centre out of all the urges to stand up, to worry, to fuck your mind up comes from - it feels like that. When you have an enlightenment experience this tension just loosens up and by default you feel to be everything you can possible perceive. And out of this release of tension I felt that all calmness, all understanding, flow, tears of joy and knowing just came by. If you have this a few times and you see it then tighten up again - loosing tightness and you have this in cycles - you begin to notice how you are mainly talked into the illusion of yourself by your thoughts that come up and everything you come in contact with in the normal society. I just had to think about how as children you tighten up yourself if your mom and dad found out you had a little bit too much fun. This sensation probably manifests at some point in life because you feel it again and again and because this is so unpleasant you begin to play all kind of games to not feel this. And by that you let a seed of separation grow inside you.

So in the last few months I kind of purged through a transformation - I still am - which is completely new territory for me. I don't know if one can read and guess it through my posts on this forum but at some point you probably will. What happened is that after I watched Leo's "Free Will"-video I meditated on the question "What is my next thought?" and for the first time in my life I had the sensation of having a thought w/o having the sensation of originating it from myself. It's kind of like if you talk to yourself and then the sensation of "you talking" stops but the talking itself doesn't stop. I had this throughout the meditation a couple of times and I think I probably cried out of joy / fear / confusion - I don't recall. I proved the first time in my life - after meditating for like 8-10 months or so - that this enlightenment stuff is actually the real deal. Before all that, although I had some mystical experiences and what not a few times you could still write them off as something that's weird, not reproducible, mystical. But that meditation opened a whole other chapter and should introduce me to a few new things. And I cover them in detail in a sec. Basically from then on I had my typical meditation cycles of feeling good and bad but it deepened from week to week and a complete new dimension you could say came into picture - my awareness heightened (and still does). The following things happened and still happen to me and I connect them with the heightening of my awareness (basically through observation): 1.) You think you are mentally ill. One of the first reactions after and still in the meditation I mentioned is that I thought I'm schizophrenic, that I'm done. This really fucked me up for some time. You may have the intuition that this is your spiritual progress but at first it seems like you are getting worse then you ever were. Why is that? Basically, you are now - as a normal person - resting in your illusion that has been successfully built over the years. You have your problems - what is probably the reason you wanna get out of yourself - but it's mostly okay. When you start to break that shit down you will reach the moment where you are totally lost, you are trying to find yourself, thoughts come up, feelings come up and you just think you are ill. Maybe you have even moments in which you sincerely think you are dying - I had those. You will have to come to the point where this is okay for you. it's hard at first, trust me. 2.) You begin to see patterns in everything (you think you hallucinate). If you've ever done acid which SWIM has apparently done you know how it feels when you get out of your head and into your senses. It's not like you are seeing your dead grandma, it's more like you have now in your normal state a very clear hallucination of the separation of things that was implanted in you from the early days on. This vanishes when you are on acid and also when your awareness heightens. Of course not in such a dramatic way like when you are heigh on psychedelics, but you will have some very interesting moments. Like for example you take a walk and you feel a sudden recognition how the trees next to you represent the flow of nature, how the grass and the flowers are highly ordered in their flow and how even the most unnatural human-made thing is completely bound to nature. You can see that a lot in fancy hotels. They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it. I could bring up a whole lot of other examples, basically you will rest in your senses way more and feel a intuitive recognition how everything is descending from this natural flow. (When I first had this I got really fascinated with Taoism and I still am highly addicted to that stuff. It's a real good sum-up of what is happening if you ask me. Probably the closest you can get with words.) 3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay. At some point it becomes very apparent to you that you actually have no control at all. This comes and goes but over the time you can prove that for yourself. I did and still do that sometimes. I focus a lot on the arising and vanishing of my thoughts and actions and are now able to at least see that I do not create them. It's scary shit as I said. But also - when you are through feeling scary about it - you will begin to rest in it because there is nothing else to do. As you do that you will reconnect with your intuition and through that be able to push the boundaries in certain situations and be totally fucked up and okay with that in others. Basically you become aware of the dance of love and terror in your day to day life and see that it is a game and that you were and are completely fascinated with trying to let one side win - well this doesn't work. If you become aware of that, you will find rest. And guess what, then you kind of sudo-won. Because even though you might be shitty at some times, you don't feel connected to it any more. 4.) You completely let go of what you think and do. This again, is very scary at first. But you'll reach a stage in which you have the sensation of not being the source of your thoughts and actions in such clarity that it seems like you are the container in which they arise and you are acting them out. At this stage, there is still some separation left (the feeling of being pushed around) but it's totally surreal. 5.) You begin to not care about your ego so much any more. At some point I just found myself making fun of myself in front of a buddy of mine and I felt complete peace. I laughed myself silly. In that moment it completely strut me that I would never do that. I would feel completely shitty and would try to manipulate the situation in such an advanced way that I don't make a foul out of myself. This intuitively stopped (to some degree). This is completely freeing if you experience that. Also, pain seems not to harm you so much any more. Not in the sense of you can cut an arm off and be well but you hurl yourself somewhere, feel the pain very consciously but not be affected by it very much. It's very strange to experience that at first. Well, I could go on and on with similar points but I think you get the drill here. Also, I want to mention that all of these experiences came and come in phases in which they presented themselves very clearly and then lowered again. But it seems like your base-level of mindfulness slowly gets adjusted by this and you tap into a whole new world. So, if you see any of those think back to this post, lay back and smile. You are on the right track. Cheers to you,

dissociation will fail eventually, it takes a transformation of the human being from the human identity to a being of consciousness which is their true and first estate.

See ya in the fall then I do not see enlightenment as an end goal. I foremost agree that self-mastery is the first step. However, I am not sure that it is necessary to separate service-to-self and service-to-others. In much the same way that it isn't necessary to separate enlightenment and transformation, if you have read 'Pursuing Consciousness'. I take a very integral approach to personal development. After the LP-course, I formulated a life intention (to grow and catalyze the growth of others). You may notice that with this intention, a positive feedback loop will be created; As I grow, I am better able to catalyze the growth of my environment and as they grow, they won't hold me back as much. Most of this is theoretical speculation though, I have yet to apply much of this in my own life... The future is bright!