Enlightened People Of This Forum - What Has Worked Best For You?

[beaucoup]

Reading across this forum, there seem to be at least a handful of members on here who are awake. 

Out of sheer curiosity and just to get an overview, I wanted to aks you guys: what has worked best for you? 

Any method, practice or teaching that did the job, or at least did it better than any other method? 

Thank you in advance :-)

 

[Nahm]

@beaucoup discovering what I am has worked out best for me. Do that. Listen to Leo. Meditate before you listen to him. The only thing in question is how much you can hear. 

[Arkandeus]

- expansion of imagination

- meditation

you can expand your imagination with psychedelic experiences, as you get in touch with the mystique, the actual taste of magic,which can lead you to lose your belief in the common reality that we are physical bodies trying to survive in a world

meditation is great, there's nothing you can't gain through meditation that you can without it. every sort of knowledge you need is inside, you have access to cosmic knowledge and memory, you are not dependent of anything, you have everything you need right with you. 
as you meditate you will learn, learn, learn, learn, about yourself, about the world, its insane how much you will learn just by dampening the distracting thoughts. 

I meditate 24/7 as I live, there's no need to be in a static position to meditate, nor do you have to achieve total silence to be in meditation, if you're aware of your thoughts, you're aware you're the one listening to the thoughts, and you actively try to diminish them/understand them, you are meditating

Edited July 23, 2017 by Arkandeus

[cetus]

@beaucoup I see similarities in the people who are advancing in their spiritual journey.

1) The willingness to accept a radically different perspective of what they are. The ability to let go of old concepts that may have kept them stuck in the illusory 'fabricated' self that goes in the same old circles.

2) Surrender, surrender, surrender. I see this as the biggest factor for spiritual growth and the search for truth. Whether the surrender happens in meditation or through the use of psychedelics, it all comes down to surrender. It is not so much the vehicle that really matters as the true willingness to totally let go of everything that is 'you', without holding on to illusion or personal concepts that keeps one stuck. The old has got to go before there is room for the new. They accept this as truth. The people that advance more quickly seem to have that ability to dump the old in massive quantities. The ones who advance more slowly do so because they let go (surrender) in little tiny pieces. So new growth happens more slowly. And there is nothing wrong at all with accepting change more slowly. Everybody is different. When they are ready to hear, they will hear. The truth is, what is truth could be said in just one sentence.

Someone submitted this video a week or so ago (sorry I forgot who that was but kudos to them) and it points to truth.

These words say all there is needed to be said.

 

[Sean Johnson]

I believe the biggest hurdle is finding the courage to do it alone. Confronting the void that is within you, head on, and surrendering.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Sean Johnson

[AlwaysBeNice]

Not consciously enlightened, but what I found to help a lot is to understand the negative ego (or part of it): it's just a protective system you designed as a child to deny emotions that we've learned to suppress because they were too real for this world.

Learning to find your emotional side, nurturing it and learning to express it again can really open you up. So don't try to fight the negative ego, accept it and release it.

These suppressed parts are also at the root of distraction thinking/fake personality/action patterns.

Suppressed emotions tend to crop up during the letting go process of being the Self in my experience, so realizing the Self and doing this healing work seems to go hand in hand.

(This also explains also why young children are naturally happy (the natural state/emotionally open) and why 3-4 out of 5 suicides are done by men in the west (stronger taboo on emotions). Also all the suppressed emotions can be found in chronically tight muscles along the spine that hurt when you press them).

 

[robera]

 

[Shin]

At first, tons of meditation (just listening to sounds eyes closed), now mostly just being and admiring nature.

It's already so beautiful and magic now,  actually I'm wondering if my body could handle that much emotions.

Probably not, but I've gone too far already :3

 

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by Shin

[ajasatya]

8 hours ago, beaucoup said:

what has worked best for you?

• retreats (2~3 sesshins in an year)
• long meditation sessions in group (zazenkai once in a month)
• long meditation sessions alone (strong determination sitting)
• periodic zen sessions in group (regular zen meetings once in a week)
• consistent practice of asanas as taught by iyengar (hatha yoga)
• kriyas as taught by yogi bhajan (kundalini yoga)
• singing the mahamantra with krishna devotees (bahkti yoga)
• contemplation (just going to a random place and doing nothing at all)
• gradually transform my life in an endless meditation (24/7 mindfulness)

but if i am to choose one, i'd surrender completely to zen and just go live in a zen monastery.

it was extremely hard in the beginning. extremely hard. the discipline i needed was enormous but nowadays it feels effortless.

[Principium Nexus]

Nothing worked for me, I gave up.

[Joseph Maynor]

Not fully enlightened yet.  But I watched all of Leo's videos 3 times in a row.  Oldest to newest, oldest to newest, oldest to newest.  Like that.  I also watched all of Emerald's (the "Diamond Net" on Youtube) videos 2 times in a row (link below).  You need to know some theory to work on your enlightenment.  You are fighting illusion with illusion.  You gotta dig in there with good theory, self inquiry, and learn from a Guru how to avoid many traps.  This forum is great for doing just that and we all aid each other here ultimately.  We are all sages in training here.  If you want to become enlightened, you can definitely do it here.  But you gotta do the hard work.  The intellectual work.  And the self-correcting work.  Basically you have to convince the ego that it, itself, is a phony.  That's what enlightenment is.  It basically works like this for the ego -- should I believe me or my lying eyes!  And that's the beginning of the end for the ego once awareness raises to that point.  Once the ego starts to give up the ghost and dissolve, then all your problems do too.  Kinda sweet.  

Emerald's channel.  The Diamond Net.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvW2U2-szAK2lBzUYOw0DwA

This is a very good video from Leo that everybody should watch now.  Even if you are advanced.  It is worth it.

And one from Emerald

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Danielle]

Exhaust yourself with seeking, in other words, surrender, but surrendering is really hard if you don't exhaust the seeker 

[Zephyr]

3 hours ago, robera said:

 

"A wise man once said nothing"

[cetus]

2 minutes ago, Danielle said:

Exhaust yourself with seeking, in other words, surrender, but surrendering is really hard if you don't exhaust the seeker 

The seeker awakens to the truth that there is no seeker. The moth before the flame.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Danielle

1 hour ago, Danielle said:

Exhaust yourself with seeking, in other words, surrender, but surrendering is really hard if you don't exhaust the seeker 

This is the hardest and most counter-intuitive of things to do.  The final surrender.  The ego uses need to know, need to have right answer, need to understand, need to judge, need for clarification, to fight for its very life.  It's on the ropes but it's still hanging in there.  You gotta give the ego that one final knockout punch.  Let go of knowing and get into a true state of not knowing.  This is what I am struggling to do with my enlightenment right now.  There's actually no struggling because there is no free will.  But it is taking the time it is taking for my awareness to get keen enough to cure this issue.  I assume it will take the rest of my life to clean out some of these beliefs from the subconscious mind.  Enlightenment is a life-long process, a cleansing away of illusions.

Great video if you haven't seen this one.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[JustinS]

@Joseph Maynor Have you done a 10 day meditation retreat? 

[Joseph Maynor]

@JustinS No.  

[pluto]

Love, Gratitude & Surrender