Post Your Biggest Challenges With Spirituality Here

[Leo Gura]

I want to understand you better, to better tailor future content to your needs and to be a better teacher.

To that end, post here your biggest challenges and obstacles with spirituality and enlightenment. Avoid obstacles related to basic life success or general personal development, because we have a separate thread for that in the Self-Actualization sub-forum.

I don't need to hear your entire life story and all your petty problems. Try to condense it down to two or three core issues that you feel really stuck on within the domain of spirituality. These might include being stuck in a 9-5 job and thus not having time for self-inquiry, or not understanding how to self-inquire, or fear that enlightenment will screw up your social life, or not understanding why enlightenment is not an experience, or just not being able to motivate yourself to meditate every day, etc.

• What's bugging you?
• What's keeping you up at night?
• What's triggering you emotionally?
• What's keeping you stuck?
• What's got you confused?

Note: This thread is not meant to be me coaching you or giving you solutions to your problems. I just want to gather some data to better understand you. In the process, you may also better understand yourself.

Thanks!

[Barna]

Here is a hard one:

How can I love every moment of my life more and more until I reach an ecstatic level being?

[Leo Gura]

@Barna Is that a real concern for you, or merely a theoretical one?

[Barna]

@Leo Gura  This is the goal of my life. Everything else I do are just means to get there.

[cetus]

It's getting a little stale lately. What can I do to freshen the spiritual air? I sometimes feel like I'm covering old ground for the third time.

[Guest username]

1. How do I determine true insight from self-delusion: I recall the advice you @Leo Gura gave at the end of your intuition video, but honestly, it hasn't really resonated with me. Perhaps my intuition is too undeveloped to be discerning yet. I'm very good at bullshitting and deluding myself despite my dedicated introspective practice, open-mindedness,  and being fairly non-attached to ideology. I'm very interested in truth and am pretty serious at avoiding all the traps along the way, but never-the-less, it's like the devil in me can be insurmountably cleverer. 

2.  How can I develop good judgement so I can distinguish between non-sense spirituality and profound truths that I simply cannot yet understand? : It's hard to judge things without having seriously investigated them. It's easier in science since you can rely on the third person perspective and data from other people to draw conclusions, but with spirituality and first-person investigation, it seems like you can only use other people's wisdom as pointers and must ultimately draw from your direct experience. Given this, I don't know if I'm stumbling upon some lesser-known esoteric, mystical wisdom or just total bullshit. Even with having a big picture of non-duality, the fringe stuff is hard to determine whether or not it is worth looking into. Then again, even with non-duality in general, it can be sort of a headache when multiple enlightened teachers have criticisms about other paths and claim that spending time even bother to learn about certain practices will waste my time and guarantee that I don't reach enlightenment.

3.  Celibacy( or any matter of sexuality as relating to spirituality): I am considering an celibate, ascetic life-style as a means of being more committed to my spiritual practice and self-realization, but I hear a lot of controversy around this. In even spiritual communities, a lot of people say this is a bad route because it cannot be done in a healthy way and the only reason anyone would resort to this is due to repression. Western health advice also seems to be biased against and claim that it is a signal of maladjustment and that sex is necessary for health. Other teachers say it is a powerful form of raising consciousness and can be very beneficial in the route to transcending ego.

4. Surrendering all experience: This is probably the hardest one. I have a strong need to feel good, and I whenever I feel like I am making progress, I keep running into ridiculously powerful impulses to chase pleasant experience, as that's all I have ever really known in terms of what a good life meant. That was my initial motivation for doing self-actualization work and now I'm letting go of that. It's a very big shift to drop one of the foundations of my entire life.

Also, other aspects of ego seem too subtle to deal with. Even if I can get my mind to go silent, I fail to have any fundamental shift in consciousness. Over time, there have been minor shifts in my perception and a lot of the automatic projections on my environment have disappeared. For instance, I am no longer mistaking my narrative of life as life itself as can observe thoughts as arising sensations. However, even with the stilled mind that is not actively labeling anything, there seems to be underlying perceptual constructs like "I am a human being. This is a room. I am looking at a computer." It just happens so automatically.

Same thing with deep emotions. Sometimes when an emotion comes up it happens so quickly and and strongly that it is hard to observe for what it is until after it has passed. With more superficial thought stories, it's like I can observe them as they occur. With deeper triggers (particularly really embarrassing or hurtful memories) the experience happens so quickly that I need a few seconds to calm down before being mindful of them, which is a big improvement from not being mindful at all, but it could still be much better. I notice that stronger sensations have a deeper feeling of being real attached to them.

Edited May 5, 2017 by username

[jse]

Placing trivial life challenges aside, I'd like to be part of a 5-MeO retreat.  In a safe location, hosted and guided by a Mr Leo Gura.  Please.

[Guest username]

@jse I think Dr. Martin Ball does one-on-one sessions with clients, and he's more experienced than Leo on that particular thing.

[cetus]

1 minute ago, jse said:

Placing trivial life challenges aside, I'd like to be part of a 5-MeO retreat.  In a safe location, hosted and guided by a Mr Leo Gura.  Please.

I'm in.

[Leo Gura]

@jse No can do, due to it's legal status and short supply.

The closest thing to that you'll find is Yopo snuffing in South America or Dr. Octavio Rettig in Mexico.

[jse]

32 minutes ago, username said:

@jse I think Dr. Martin Ball does one-on-one sessions with clients, and he's more experienced than Leo on that particular thing.

I think he does better with females.  Besides, I don't particularly look forward to being vomited on.

Please tell me it's my overactive imagination, and there isn't some subtle hidden sexual repression going on there...

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by jse

[Guest username]

2 minutes ago, jse said:

I think he does better with females.  Besides, I don't particularly look forward to being vomited on.

He'll only do it if it's what you need.

[Mediator]

What was a big obstacle for me and what I've seen after observing humans for a while is that people tend to be very neurotic, particularly about their spiritual practice. This combined with boundary issues will keep anyone stuck forever. 

[Dan Arnautu]

1. The fact that meditation both gives you peace of mind and brings your unconscious bad stuff to the surface. Should I meditate or not as a 19 year old even though I don't want to pursue enlightenment right now?

• I don't think I am ready yet for spiritual work but I don't know what to do (I still haven't started my career oficially, haven't nailed down my life purpose, need a lot more experience with relationships and building more succesful habits)
  • Should I meditate daily even though I will pursue enlightenment only maybe 10 years from now? Won't all the things that come to the surface interfere with my work, habits and other stuff and make me go through intense emotional labour (or only self-inquiry will do that)?

2. Reconciling spirituality with the practical aspects of life. Should I give up researching on spirituality entirely for now until I figure all the other stuff out? 

• The more I learn about spirituality, the more fearful I become of reality and all that is + I get into really weird emotional states. It may be a fear of uncertainty and shattered perspectives 
  • When I go out with friends now I keep asking myself continously „How am I actually them and how are they me?„ and need to enter the flow of the conversation before I can finally relax
  • Before knowing anything about spirituality I was less fearful to meditate and treated meditative experiences with curiosity rather than a fear that what I'm doing might dissolve al that I am (the ego), which it does, and will proceed to do so when I figure all the other things in my life out
    • having a Samadhi experience was the coolest thing for me even if I did not know what it was then
  • Fearing shifts in awareness or progressing too quickly when I am not ready for it. Had a few experiences already that freaked me out temporarily

[AlwaysBeNice]

All of them are pretty redundant, I am extremely happy I am on this path, it's already bringing out so many truly wonderful fruits, but my top frustrations are:

- Knowing I am choosing to hold back from surrendering into freedom. I have had I think 5 moments or so when I felt truly close to true surrender but every time my ego went: 'WOW YE OK, OH.. FEELS GOOD B-... But ehh what if I just hold on for now.' .. 'SHIT FUCK, WHY DIDN"T I LET GO' STUPID ME'

And learning to forgive myself for saying no to it, and that, despite it being a weird choice really, it's actually common.

- Intellectually knowing quite well I am a perfectly good person, deserving of all love and praise, but still seeing constant old subconscious patterns of devaluing myself towards other people.

You see clearly how retarded the devaluing patterns are now, you know it doesn't help you or the other person, but still going along with that habit.

-

But all in all it's all pretty cool to witness regardless, and it's always improving so I'm happy.

[Sage_Elias]

Hey everyone...I'm 19 years old and I've given up my religion and my pursuit of money, to become enlightened. I'm comitted to this path but I have a challenge.

 

Having enough money to eat healthy.

 If we are gonna be doing enlightenment work, its a good idea to be eating the healthiest foods on the planet because its good for the body and mind. However, I don't want to be working a 9-5 job (this time is needed for my practice and learning) and I'm not as experienced at the moment to start helping other people and feed myself doing that. So what should I do? The best thing I've come up with thus far is to become a yoga and meditation instructor at a Hotel.

 

Ps. I'm not going to university...fuck that shit

[cetus]

3 minutes ago, AlwaysBeNice said:

-... But ehh what if I just hold on for now.' .. 'SHIT FUCK, WHY DIDN"T I LET GO' STUPID ME'

You nailed that one!

[SLICKHAWK]

What bugging me is how ignorant we all are. Its tough being vegan highly conscious around most who do not have passion to change.

Keeping me up at night. Not much i sleep well however the dark side always trying to keeo me down or place fabricated bullshit in my head. I only release and find positive thoughts. Yes the mind is troubling.

My emotion is triggered on love or relationship. Emotion is the true devil in us which keeps us socially distorded into false reality.

Im stuck in theory of infinite life and not remembering my former past. Who am i? Why can i be awake and nit remember.

Confusion. Yes however i follow my heart. Not my mind. I feel my body and work towards truth of man. Confused about our path to create higher conscious amongst all those around us.

Live love. Love life. I love myself. I love all of you.

[Bojan]

Leo, if all humans started eating fruits & vegetables only, using electric cars only, creating electricity the eco way (Sun, wind, water), would then all people on Earth be feed, and healthy? Is this maybe the next practical step for societies when most people are green stage psychology? How to help solve problems like basic human needs? Maybe we would not have many diseases and problems like today, if we apply these ideas.

Sorry for wasting your time, a lot is missing, I think that what you are doing (improving people), will maybe lead to the world for humans with these ideas applied. The cartoon idea of robots doing the agroculture and other kinds of work seems nice! Nice Iideal for humanity. 

[nightrider1435]

I've managed to really start digging into my self, and I'm starting to see the dark side of my subconscious. I have been trying my best to remain present throughout the day, but I am just really sensitive to my emotions right now, it has been a handful.  I am using psychedelics as well and each experience changes my world view when I come out of it, and it stays. Now I'm sitting here wondering, am I going to fast, do I need to slow down? Should I just mediate and chill out with psychedelics for awhile? I'm getting concerned that I may see to much to quick and fuck myself up, but at the same time its like I've been addicted to my spiritual progress lately and I just want to keep going and going and going...

Actually I just need to go back and re watch Leo's videos because its been a while 

Edited May 6, 2017 by nightrider1435