2 Months of Daily 90 Minute Strong Determination Sitting - My Profound Results/Report

[Consilience]

Intro

One quick clarification - Many of these days of practice have involved not only the 90 minute SDS sit, but a 60 minute SDS sit as well. I'm currently practicing both in the morning and evening which have provided multiple opportunities for this practice. The results mentioned in this post are most likely a result of doing this kind of intensity of practice twice a day rather than once. My morning SDS sits are 60 minutes, while the evenings have been the 90 minutes. Moreover, it's difficult to determine how much of these results come directly from the SDS sitting and how much stem from the overarching intensity of training (currently living at in a monastic training environment). Leading into this training approach was a 7 day meditation retreat where I practiced 8+ hours of this kind of sitting; not all at once, across multiple sits. Ultimately, all of the training feeds on and cannot be separated from itself, yet the consistency and challenge of the 90 minutes seems to be at the root of these results. 

It's also worth pointing out, while practicing I'll let my spine naturally straighten and adjust on its own, trusting the body's natural intelligence. All other body movements are off limits. The function of SDS is not to not move; the function is to purify the mind. The spine adjusting does very, very, very little to the pain one's experiencing and can even at times make the pain worse. However, sitting in good posture, strengthening the supporting back muscles and ingraining proper body positioning is more important to me than any minor benefits I may or may not get by not letting the spine move.

-

As I've mentioned in this post, I've been taking a step back from my engagement with the community. The recent fixation on psychedelics as a viable means for awakening has felt out of alignment with my integrity in so far as listening to my inner wisdom about what steps need to be taken in order to align with my highest value - Truth. My gut tells me Leo's path and mine are very different and that trying to brute force my way into awakening through psychedelics is a path of spiritual foolishness. This isn't to say it won't work for Leo, or that it couldn't work in general, but from what I've observed within myself, within this forum having taken a step back, and from what I've observed living with serious practitioners for the past two months (check out this post for why I become a semi-monk), my skepticism about psychedelic's leading to legitimate awakening is at an all time high. This isn't even to mention all of the strange Neo-Advaita energy on the forum. As such, my resonance with the Actualized community feels more distant than it's ever been since discovering Leo's work.

Yet despite this skepticism, and dis-resonance with the community, I'd still like to offer perspectives that may help many. Because despite the fact that we may have differing opinions or beliefs about awakening, one of the most beautiful qualities of Actualized.org is our commitment to discovering the truth about reality. Additionally, I truly believe Leo's work has been a gift to humanity and I would not be here writing a post in contradiction with Leo's position if it weren't for all of the earlier Actualized.org material. This post is an offering about the effects of hardcore daily meditation practice and what happens when one relentlessly commits to purifying the mind.

 

Themes:

Purification

My daily practice schedule

Why am I doing this?

Pain Tolerance

Emotional Rewiring

Integrity

Pain, Compassion, Interdependency, Solipsism

Psychedelics vs. Practice

Conclusion

 

Purification

Purification in this post means the process of the cessation of craving and aversion; in other words, the process by which we stop the mind's pushing and pulling on perception. One of the key axioms of Buddhism and many spiritual traditions that emphasize contemplative practice is that the quality of one's mind is a key variable with one's ability to directly perceive reality. For example, the "direct consciousness" of an awakening experience, the experience of God, or Nirvana will be unavailable to the degree one's mind is constantly at odds with experience.

By purification, I don't mean to suggest that the mind's activity is somehow impure, or wrong. In fact, once one begins to truly purify the mind, one sees that even the defilements of the mind (qualities such as hatred, greed, and ignorance) are themselves pure and of "one taste." This is where the Non-duality would come into play; every experience is of God. Unfortunately, because the mind has brilliant, deeply sophisticated self-deception mechanisms that keep the self-activity endlessly churning, this insight often gets co-opted by the ego. This is what is happening in many of the Neo Advaita community. I will concede, however, that as one actually purifies the mind, these defilements are seen as self-liberating; hatred, when experienced completely without resistance (hatred in its most "purified" or direct form) is no longer hatred. One cannot hate when hatred is experienced is its actuality. As such, this process of purification is not necessarily about permanently elevating one's state into wholesome mental qualities like metta, happiness, joy, tranquility, but is instead about a deep rewiring of one's mind and this mind's relationship with all phenomena regardless of quality, quantity, or activity. Purification at the highest level is the radical recontextualization of one's relationship to experience.

That being said, learning to cultivate wholesome mental qualities is a very powerful method of purification because it forces us to confront our twisted addictions to various forms of craving and aversion. For example, one cannot be deeply absorbed in a jhana without first having dropped the activities of craving and aversion; in this way, we could say the 8 jhanas are states of mind in increasingly more direct relationship with reality. This is one framing of jhanas and not the only one, nor 100% true.


My Daily Practice Schedule

Below is a standard day of training at the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth, MAPLE (where I'm currently living). The SDSs are not mandatory; rather they are something I do for myself. Most in the community don't do regular SDS sitting. Because I am living there as a guest, I am actually not practicing as much as the apprentices and residents. I am living within the community and working remotely.

4:30 - 5:00am Silent practice

5:00 - 5:30am Chanting

5:30 - 6:30am Silent practice (SDS)

6:30 - 7:30am Exercise + Cold shower

7:30 - 8:15am Silent mindful eating practice, breakfast

 

12:30 - 1:15pm Silent mindful eating practice, lunch

 

7:00 - 8:30pm Silent practice (SDS)

8:30 - 8:45pm Chanting

8:45 - 9:15pm Self practice/Bed
 

Why am I doing this?

Before coming to MAPLE, there was something inside the depths of my mind that knew my aversion needed to be addressed if awakening was my goal. My meditation practice had developed sufficiently enough to where despite being able to consistently reach radically profound states, these states were fragile, completely dependent on conditions being favorable enough to see clearly. Despite being able to experience formless jhanas, emptiness, and God without chemical augmentation, this clear seeing was only available when I wasn't suffering. As pain, whether bodily or emotional, increased enough, the availability of this clear seeing disappeared.

The first week of being at MAPLE was a 7 day meditation retreat. The first day I was sitting and ruminating about how I wanted this retreat to go. I told myself that this first retreat would be a great warmup, but that on the second retreat later in April, I would focus on SDS and my relationship with pain. I starting getting pumped about how great this experience was going to be and how my mind would be after April. And then some sort of higher power, or higher self phenomena smacked me in the face and forced me to acknowledge nothing was holding me back from pursuing this SDS goal now, in the January retreat.

Over the course of those 7 days I sat in so much pain, unbelievably intense pain and emotional distress coupled with waves of perfect equanimity and peace. Hours and hours of physical stillness giving rise to waves of pain, struggle, and breaking free massive amounts of grief and love in my heart. By the end of those 7 days my mind was more clear than it'd ever been. Something in my being wanted to keep the momentum going though, seeing that the fear and aversion towards pain had not been fully uprooted.

 

Pain Tolerance

When one examines the actuality of pain, there are broadly speaking two flavors of phenomena going on. #1 The sensations of pain. #2 The mind's resistance to pain.

The key to purifying pain is by bring awareness (mindfulness) to these two interpenetrating sensations and untangling them. Most people experience these as one movement which is what creates the suffering. #2 can only resist #1 when both are tangled up together. The mind can only suffer when #2 is allowed to merge with #1. The reality of #1 and #2 cannot be seen when both are tangled up precisely because of the illusory nature of their entanglement. They are not actually tangled, existing as one movement; they are already distinct phenomena and therefore the suffering one experiences from pain is an illusion. Yet to uproot this ignorance, one must see the constituents of the illusion clearly.

When one begins to directly experience #1, the pain takes on a flavor of fluidity and spaciousness. Pain starts to be experienced almost like liquid, as though there are little microcosmic waves making up each millimeter of the body's perceptual shape. As #2 is experienced directly, it begins to literally evaporate. The mind's resistance, #2, is spatially located right within the pain itself. When one penetrates this supra-subtle experience of #2 and it is seen directly as itself, it no longer has the infrastructure to ground itself. Hence the evaporation of #2 as one brings mindfulness to it. As strange as this may sound, #2 can only exist while #2 is actively resisting #1; it's a microcosmic strange loop and in Buddhism is called Dependent Origination. #2 Resists #1 which reinforces/gives rise to #2. Of course, this is a process dependent upon time which when we perceive reality with perfect mindfulness, time and space are seen as illusions as well thus the whole thing falls apart.

Unfortunately, I don't have complete clarity on the exact dynamics of what is going on beyond what I mentioned above. I am still studying suffering and my relationship clearing seeing the causes and conditions of suffering, and therefore the causes and conditions obstructing my awareness of God. However, as a result of this practice and the aforementioned experiential observations, I can sit in much larger amounts of pain and for longer periods of time than I have ever been able to in my life.

Pain and my fear of it just feels vapid, to some degree.  I feel a confidence and determination in my practice to continue uprooting this wrong view. Death, decay, and the pain of impermanence feel remarkably more peaceful.

 

 

Emotional Rewiring (Infinity)

Because #2 is an emotional/conceptual experience, bringing mindfulness to this emotional activity has a natural, automatic rewiring effect. Mindfulness rewires the mind; it is truly an activity of grace and a miraculous miracle. Not only does one begin to build an enormous amount of mental resiliency sitting with this type of challenge, but there is a confidence, faith, and uprooting of doubt about the power of meditation, the path, and what one's natural mind is capable of. Because this practice forces one to examine and bring equanimity to challenging emotions, this practice has immediate and direct carry over to living in a the state of this world.

 

The world is painful, harrowing, horrifying, and terrible in so many ways. How does one see God in all of it without becoming numb to it all? By coming into right relationship with God. As long as there is a lack of equanimity with the actuality of God, one will not be in right relationship with God. As long as one is resisting the various forms of pain in this world, one will be unable to grieve for its horror. As long as one cannot grieve at this existential scale, one will be unable to love God. And if one cannot love God, one cannot love themselves. If one cannot love themselves, one will be unable to know what they actually are in its totality.
 

By deeply rewiring one's emotional system to experience large magnitudes of pain, we begin opening up the heart to experience the collective magnitude of suffering, that this suffering is of God's nature. As bold of a claim as this is, we won't be able to truly love and therefore know truth until this collective suffering is held in the deepest, unfathomable depths God's mind and heart. The aversion we have towards pain is also an aversion we have towards accepting what we actually are not just individually, but in the infinity of our true nature.

 

Integrity

A primary operating principle of mind is to provide answers. A primary operating principle of the body is to be comfortable. Integrity is developed when one can sit in not knowing and when one the body can sit with discomfort. SDS prevents the mind from providing answers. With this much pain, there are no answers. SDS prevents the body from finding comfort. With this much pain, no comfort can be found.

As we cultivate this equanimity and let the pain naturally work through our system, we purify the mind. As the mind is purified, integrity is developed. It's pretty simple. We won't be able to trust ourselves or our word as long as our minds are out of alignment with actuality. At the root of this lack of alignment is one's relationship to pain.

 

Pain, Compassion, Interdependency, Solipsism

As a matter of direct experience, there are no others. There is only the aggregation of sight, taste, touch, sound, smell, and mind. As a matter of becoming directly conscious of what one is, it is experienced that the consciousness "inside of me" must be the same consciousness "inside of another." Why? Because this consciousness is completely pure, complete without quality or form. When looking into another being's eyes and questioning what they are, we can come to directly realize this consciousness looking out of each other's eyes shares the exact same nature and therefore by necessity, must be the same consciousness. It is paradoxical and a mindfuck.

When one directly experiences Absolute Unity, all is seen to be one. It's not that other's don't exist. And it's not that you exist. And it's not that I exist. It's not that you are me, or I am you, nor is it that you are God and I am God. It's that there is a movement of infinite unity, and interdependency. The activity in one's mind is at the end of an infinite, interconnected chain of causes and conditions giving rise to outcomes and effects. All movements of relative reality interpenetrate and connect with all other movements of relative reality, at all levels. The personality cannot be separated from this totality. So when it's seen that there is no such thing as 'the' "personality" or the self, that the self is just a purely spontaneous movement, when we TRULY experience our real nature, what we are on all levels of relativity and absolutely cannot be separate from anything or anyone else. This is Solipsism. But that word and its philosophical implications are a poor conceptual framework for the unity I speak of.

When the ego mind intellectualizes this, all kinds of resistances, fears, and twisted interpretations arise. When consciousness awakens to its own nature, a reservoir of endless compassion begins to open. Why? Because the suffering of another is, to some degree, experienced as one's own suffering. The suffering we find within ourselves is the suffering underneath the mind activity of other. There is no separation. There is no duality. When we see the necessity of alleviating our own suffering in order to come into union with truth, we see the necessity in alleviating the suffering of others, and perhaps all beings. For it is impossible to truly end our own suffering and therefore truly awaken to our true nature as long as a single being remains lost in Samsara. At least, this seems to be where my experience is going.

The pain I've experienced from SDS has shown me glimpses into such horrific atrocities throughout the history of humanity and by extension, the endless eternity of infinity's activity. Samsara is like an infinite set within the infinite set of infinities. It has an end in its endlessness. Yet this end is impossible unless we merge, come into marriage with, and move towards our own pain, our own suffering. Awakening without this unification is incomplete, half-baked, and ultimately a pitiful substitute for what our hearts actually yearn for.

The compassion born from embracing hell with love and the direct realization of unity is the source of energy needed to awaken to a depth and degree too grandiose for words, and too heart wrenching for tears.

 

Psychedelics vs. Practice

Psychedelics have played such a crucial role in my own process. They've played such a critical role with opening my mind up to the infinitude of consciousness and what the mind is capable of encountering. They've shown me the divine to a depth and degree I cherish. The grace and blessing of having experienced what I've experienced on psychedelics almost hurts to acknowledge, as though I am unworthy for the amount of wisdom they've provided.

But for my own path, the real work has just begun. The boredom, fatigue, craving, aversion, resistance, numbness, addictions, and defilements of the human mind must be dealt with head on. As is becoming increasingly obvious from Leo and those who have consistently used psychedelics, psychedelics do no uproot these defilements of mind and in some cases, they can reinforce certain defilements. As long as these defilements exist in the mind with a lack of mindful clarity, ignorance and suffering remains.

I hope that by reading this report, the great psychonauts of Actualized.org can realize the importance of manual practice and perhaps start to see more clearly what needs to be done manually, and the ultimate limits of psychedelics.

 

Conclusion

The fastest way to make tangible, powerful, and exponential results with this work is through rigorous meditation and the relentless pursuit of purifying one's mind. I cannot stress this enough.

You don't need a $1000 course, you don't need 5-MeO DMT, and you don't need endless amounts of over conceptualization and arm chair forum philosophy. What you need is to take the emotional hit of doing the work. 2+ hours of meditation per day and going on annual week+ long meditation retreats is a start, but as you can tell from my daily schedule and the fact that I'm living in a monastic training environment, I do a lot more than that. However, the results have been utterly undeniable. And you will make profound results without needing to go join a monastery.

Further, I would make a bet that the community of actualized.org responds extremely well to rigorous meditation practice, contrary to Leo's beliefs and what he encourages. Because we have such powerful philosophical frameworks and because many of us have such ample experience with altered states using psychedelics, I believe this potentiates the effects of meditation. I could be wrong, but this is based on examining how practice has evolved within the context of my aggressive use and history with psychedelics.

Depending on how this is received, I may make an additional practice report going into more generally how it's been living and training in community at MAPLE. There is so much that could be said, but I'll go on ahead and end it here. I hope this report helps inspire you to take meditation more seriously, and provides a glimpse into what is possible with rigorous meditation practice.
 

[Consilience]

Forum won't let me edit post, made a typo with the schedule. Lunch time needs to be labeled with "pm" and evening times are labeled as "am", but should be labeled with "pm". 

[Tim R]

37 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Forum won't let me edit post, made a typo with the schedule. Lunch time needs to be labeled with "pm" and evening times are labeled as "am", but should be labeled with "pm". 

I got you fam ?

Damn, what a post. Thanks for sharing, that was interesting to read! Quite some insight you got there

[Gili Trawangan]

Thanks for sharing.

Clearly, this is the right path for you, the passion comes through in the writing.

And I agree with much of what you say. But...

50 minutes ago, Consilience said:

The world is painful, harrowing, horrifying, and terrible in so many ways. How does one see God in all of it without becoming numb to it all? By coming into right relationship with God. As long as there is a lack of equanimity with the actuality of God, one will not be in right relationship with God. As long as one is resisting the various forms of pain in this world, one will be unable to grieve for its horror. As long as one cannot grieve at this existential scale, one will be unable to love God. And if one cannot love God, one cannot love themselves. If one cannot love themselves, one will be unable to know what they actually are in its totality.

This doesn't resonate with me. If there's something that awakening has shown me, is that happiness is available now. Full happiness, completeness. The world is maya. One doesn't have to grieve it, one must only become aware of how the world is insubstantial. Suffering is simply illusion. To be in right relationship with God, one must only align with what is already. Joy, gratitude, acceptance, happiness, these are alignment and "right" relationship with God. That's how I see it anyway.

Best of luck for the rest of your journey.

[Shambhu]

@Consilience

You are a real kindred spirit!

Thank you for sharing your experience with others here.  I sincerely hope that you will continue to do so in the future.  Your hard work is an inspiration, and though different from mine, it reminds me of my own journey in many ways.  Most people do not realize what is possible through genuine spiritual practice.  You are certainly not most people.

I remember trying psychedelics as an experiment after a decade of intense spiritual practice, and I actually felt pity for those who accepted it as their path.  What a poor substitute.  

I am delighted to hear of your progress; keep it up!

[Breakingthewall]

4 hours ago, Consilience said:

The world is painful, harrowing, horrifying, and terrible in so many ways. How does one see God in all of it without becoming numb to it all? By coming into right relationship with God. As long as there is a lack of equanimity with the actuality of God, one will not be in right relationship with God. As long as one is resisting the various forms of pain in this world, one will be unable to grieve for its horror. As long as one cannot grieve at this existential scale, one will be unable to love God. And if one cannot love God, one cannot love themselves. If one cannot love themselves, one will be unable to know what they actually are in its totality.
 

By deeply rewiring one's emotional system to experience large magnitudes of pain, we begin opening up the heart to experience the collective magnitude of suffering, that this suffering is of God's nature. As bold of a claim as this is, we won't be able to truly love and therefore know truth until this collective suffering is held in the deepest, unfathomable depths God's mind and heart. The aversion we have towards pain is also an aversion we have towards accepting what we actually are not just individually, but in the infinity of our true nature.

Great to read something profound in this forum. Thanks for posting 

suffering exists and it is enormous. suffering brings god closer because its god. In a hedonistic world, people do not want to hear this, they try to eliminate the idea of suffering, implying that those who suffer do so because they want to.  reality is terrible, and the terrible is beauty and is god. jesus on the cross is god

Edited March 12, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Consilience said:

As is becoming increasingly obvious from Leo and those who have consistently used psychedelics, psychedelics do no uproot these defilements

And no such claim of uprooting defilements has been made.

The claim made was simply insight, consciousness, and God-realization. If you want to transform your mental habits, that's decades of additional work.

God-realization is a distinct event from changing your human self. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.

[Jordan]

I enjoyed reading your post. I really want to try meditating for an hour in the morning and evening. It has been in the back of my mind to do it for a while. Purifying my mind does sound worthwhile. I have been prioritizing keeping my girlfriend happy, working and trying to heal my knees. Since I have not meditated consistently, sometimes I can go an hour without moving but often I don't last more than 20 minutes. I will give it a try starting tonight.

[Koeke]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

God-realization is a distinct event from changing your human self. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.

But if God-realization and changing your (human) self are an infinite process, then how are they different? Aren't they both "therapies" on the same spectrum, going toward the same thing? 

In other words: how is evolution within the self (becoming more whole/integrated) different from the evolution of the self as a whole (transcending and including itself)?

Edited March 12, 2022 by Koeke

[Leo Gura]

34 minutes ago, Koeke said:

But if God-realization and changing your (human) self are an infinite process, then how are they different? Aren't they both "therapies" on the same spectrum, going toward the same thing? 

In other words: how is evolution within the self (becoming more whole/integrated) different from the evolution of the self as a whole (transcending and including itself)?

God-realization is not a "therapy" of any kind and it is not an evolution or anything of the sort. All of that is dream stuff and God-realization cuts through all that BS. It's not a process either.

[Consilience]

51 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

And no such claim of uprooting defilements has been made.

The claim made was simply insight, consciousness, and God-realization. If you want to transform your mental habits, that's decades of additional work.

God-realization is a distinct event from changing your human self. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.

The changing of one's mental habits is a by-product of the real fruit - clearly seeing into the nature of reality. The process of purification is not done to change or transform the self. This would actually add to the sense of self. Purification when held with "right view" is used to uproot the mental activity preventing one from insight, consciousness and God-realization. 

The claim has been made that you've had deeper awakenings than the Buddha and that meditation is a waste of time if one is interested in awakening. This post would imply this is not the case. 

[Consilience]

4 hours ago, Tim R said:

I got you fam ?

Damn, what a post. Thanks for sharing, that was interesting to read! Quite some insight you got there

Thank you fam. 

 

4 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

Thanks for sharing.

Clearly, this is the right path for you, the passion comes through in the writing.

 

Hopefully it resonates. 

4 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

This doesn't resonate with me. If there's something that awakening has shown me, is that happiness is available now. Full happiness, completeness. The world is maya. One doesn't have to grieve it, one must only become aware of how the world is insubstantial. Suffering is simply illusion. To be in right relationship with God, one must only align with what is already. Joy, gratitude, acceptance, happiness, these are alignment and "right" relationship with God. That's how I see it anyway.

Best of luck for the rest of your journey.

It's paradoxical because yes, wholeness, complete happiness is a quality of this moment, but this happiness doesn't exclude the horrors of the world, nor the grieving of such horrors. The happiness of awakening is independent of perceptual conditions. This is radical. This claim is absolutely radical. It means that the grieving, pain, and even suffering, when held in the view of Awakening, is happiness. 

Your description of the world seems more in line with an Arahant's view, whereas mine is more in line with a Bodhisattva's. My personal awakening means very little to me if it's not helping to bring harmony to other beings. To treat the world as an insubstantial illusion, while a perfectly accurate view, feels too contracted and self oriented. 

Best of luck to your journey as well friend. 

[Consilience]

@Shambhu

Thank you so much brother  You are certainly not most people either. The depth of your practice comes across in your posts and they're always a joy reading. 

Psychedelics are a poor substitute indeed, but their allure makes perfect sense from my pov. Expecting most people to do the amount of work I've done or even you've done seems like it would be an unreasonable expectation? I'm not sure what is reasonable to expect, honestly. I'm still floored by how deep meditation goes and continually humbled at how much work left there is to do. Unfortunately, most don't make it to the point where enough momentum is built to see the staggering results that are possible. Even more unfortunately, most people don't understand that the results with meditation start to unfold non-linearly. For most seekers, psychedelics will be a more powerful experience than practice. But once practice starts to rival psychedelics... ?--> ❤️

Anyways, thank you again! I am so appreciative of your support. 

 

[Consilience]

@Breakingthewall Yeah... Jesus on the cross is definitely a symbol that comes to mind as one encounters this collective amalgam of suffering. I'm very glad the post resonated. 

[Consilience]

1 hour ago, Jordan said:

I enjoyed reading your post. I really want to try meditating for an hour in the morning and evening. It has been in the back of my mind to do it for a while. Purifying my mind does sound worthwhile. I have been prioritizing keeping my girlfriend happy, working and trying to heal my knees. Since I have not meditated consistently, sometimes I can go an hour without moving but often I don't last more than 20 minutes. I will give it a try starting tonight.

The most important rule with this type of sitting and sitting in meditation in general: Do not harm the physical body. If you have injuries, seated practice will look very different for you than others.

Sitting for long periods can also be undulated with chairs, standing, or lying down in a position where you won't fall asleep. But yes, as important as these other areas of life are, meditation practice will serve to bring more harmony and happiness to all of it. Following this instinct is the most important move you'll ever make in life, in my view. 

[Koeke]

43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

God-realization is not a "therapy" of any kind and it is not an evolution or anything of the sort. All of that is dream stuff and God-realization cuts through all that BS. It's not a process either.

But then why are you saying that every awakening you have is deeper than the previous one in which you claimed you had a God-realization too?

Edited March 13, 2022 by Koeke

[Terell Kirby]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

God-realization is not a "therapy" of any kind and it is not an evolution or anything of the sort. All of that is dream stuff and God-realization cuts through all that BS. It's not a process either.

What motivates you to still teach after realizing you have no other? I guess it’s for Self benefit these days?

Either way, thank you for teaching Yourself about Yourself. When I realized that I am you, an instant connection and understanding was developed. Sending Love you way for your contribution to Universal Consciousness ❤️ ?? 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Terell Kirby

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Consilience said:

The changing of one's mental habits is a by-product of the real fruit - clearly seeing into the nature of reality. The process of purification is not done to change or transform the self. This would actually add to the sense of self. Purification when held with "right view" is used to uproot the mental activity preventing one from insight, consciousness and God-realization. 

The claim has been made that you've had deeper awakenings than the Buddha and that meditation is a waste of time if one is interested in awakening. This post would imply this is not the case. 

I would just say you're not awake.

The Buddha is imaginary. When you really awaken you're realize that.

The real fruit is so radical you will not care about purification or changing your habits.

But hey, whatever works for ya. I don't want to piss on your triumphs.

[Thought Art]

@Leo Gura that reminds me

[billiesimon]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

God-realization is not a "therapy" of any kind and it is not an evolution or anything of the sort. All of that is dream stuff and God-realization cuts through all that BS. It's not a process either.

I agree but I'm pretty damn sure that god realization makes you so sharply aware of your human shadows and neurosis that you will become quite efficient in healing them (with classic introspection).

I can attest that my spiritual seeking has given me huge awareness of my psychological damage and how to heal it. My therapist is shocked at how fast I am healing and how fast I can become aware of inner damage. This would not have been possible without consciousness work. 
Even though awakening is NOT healing the ego per se.

Edited March 13, 2022 by billiesimon