Struggles with Backsliding for Years

[Sukhpaal]

Hello all. I have been on and off with practicing personal development for years. I used to be able to meditate for 20 minutes a day, now I can barely stand 3 minutes. I have been practicing non-duality since 2016 but I have wasted around 4-5 years back sliding and going through life unconsciously. I try to build habits slowly, but still eventually fail and fall back into old habits. 

I find it odd because I've had a few enlightenment experiences, including one on LSD but I can't even get close to how conscious I used to be. I'm tired of knowing what I want to pursue in life (consciousness work) but am unable to maintain habits after a few months of practice. I've watched Leo's homeostasis video, and have a strong theoretical background as I've read many non-duality books and watched videos--but in practice, I can do only 0.1% of it. 

Any tips?

Thank you all. 

[Ash55]

if you wanna build a habit dedicate a place for that habit

watch out for your environments, friends, eating habits, your exercise, what information you are feeding your brain, if your environment has decent fresh air "there should be some lush tree near you", the water you dink also should be ultra clean
any of that can effect your level of consciousness and can drag you down

also you have to have a degree if discipline

also learn about ego backlashes and how you can handle them i do tons of back sliding

[imit]

Hey brother, 

I think we might be in the simillar shoes as Im highly teoretical person and many things in life I managed to achieve in life that I would consider "higher level of mediocrity" with bare intelect. But along the way I figure out my purpose, what I want from my life and what is blocking me from that. So my advice here would be as I tell my self all the time:

• Eliminate hard addictions as this is cruicial and the most important task
• Build vision, mission, life purpose and set big goals to realize them
• Make commitment to build the base of your life - the bare minimum foundation for self-actualized life by eating and living healthy, building relatioships, having hobbies, forging your career or just having at least wage job to support yourself and stand firmly. 
• Know the Darma, stick to the Maya for now until you fullfuil your basic needs from Maslow Hierarchy of needs
• Craft highly valued skills that will make your living effortless and pain free as you will not strugle with money, discomfort, bad boss etc..
• The most important thing, personally to me: Build consistency every fucking day in the smallest amounts, but keep doing it over and over. Keep focusing on being pragmatic and commit 100% to living pragmatically to the fullest as this is your (and mine as well) biggest blindspot or weakness. Later on, you can change your focus. But until you build some solid self-discipline any consciousness work seems to be out of reach.

Hope I helped.

[An young being]

11 hours ago, Sukhpaal said:

Hello all. I have been on and off with practicing personal development for years. I used to be able to meditate for 20 minutes a day, now I can barely stand 3 minutes. I have been practicing non-duality since 2016 but I have wasted around 4-5 years back sliding and going through life unconsciously. I try to build habits slowly, but still eventually fail and fall back into old habits. 

I find it odd because I've had a few enlightenment experiences, including one on LSD but I can't even get close to how conscious I used to be. I'm tired of knowing what I want to pursue in life (consciousness work) but am unable to maintain habits after a few months of practice. I've watched Leo's homeostasis video, and have a strong theoretical background as I've read many non-duality books and watched videos--but in practice, I can do only 0.1% of it. 

Any tips?

Thank you all. 

Habit formation seems to be the problem here. Reminding yourself often to do the work can be one of the solutions. There is an app called Habits that could help. If you have time, read the book Atomic habits. If you have already read it, read the below summary again again everyday and try to implement it:

https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits-summary#:~:text=Atomic Habits by James Clear,habits and breaking bad ones.

 

[Razard86]

Look the problem is you haven't found a way to make it fun. For me I found ways to make meditation fun, that's what worked for me. You cannot force your way to God. It has to be a deep surrender that comes from the heart. This surrender needs to be pure. It needs to come from a deep desire to BE the full expression of LOVE AND TRUTH. I've noticed when your focus moves from this to worrying about survival matters your Consciousness takes a hit over time. Nothing wrong with that but the name of the game is Consciousness work is the path of deep surrender and a love of life. 

Also focus on removing your bias for things. The only difference between God and a human is bias. If all your bias disappeared right now you would be in God mode. The more bias you can remove the easier your life will be.