Surviving Sudden Spiritual Enlightenment

Beautiful Sleepwalkers

Spiritual Enlightenment: A Cure For Mental Illness?

Many people who are spiritual seekers have mental health issues. Some are aware of this, have been diagnosed and are either in or out of… Read more

Bipolar Disorder and Malfunctioning Antennae

An Ultra Sensory perspective on bipolar disorder. A lot of people come to this site who are diagnosed bipolar, and while I never intended to… Read more

Why You Should Believe Me

Spiritual teachers say a lot of conflicting things. How do we know what is true? This is such an important question. Leaving the issue of… Read more

Q&A

You guys ask the greatest questions.
Check out the Reader Dialogues.

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Q&A Persistent Déjà Vu and Is This Normal?

The usual hatchling questions: Am I going insane? Is this normal? Am I the only one? WTF? A reader shared an experience he had around 7 months ago, which brought on changes in the way he sees things. He’s 19, and I believe he had this experience while he was… Read more

The Martial Art of Managing Bipolar Disorder

Q: “To effectively manage their condition, they need to vigilantly watch their thoughts, examine their thoughts, and challenge the reality of their thoughts and the emotions that follow. It’s imperative..It’s absolutely a martial art” : this deeply resonates with me but how do I establish this vigilance/form a container for living… Read more

Feeling Alienated From Your Culture and Traditions

When you live in a homogeneous religious culture, sudden spiritual experiences can leave you out of step with all that you know. A young man in his late teens wrote me from Egypt. He has recently had some very powerful spiritual experiences that have expanded his consciousness, and also left… Read more

Does Eating Food Affect the Process of Kundalini or Spiritual Awakening?

Here’s a question from a reader about the effect of eating, or not eating, on the flow of Kundalini and the spiritual process. Q: Diet seems a big big part of my awakening. For the past 5 years I’ve practiced a mostly raw vegan, fruit based diet… now mostly just… Read more

Survival Guide

“I’ve seen through the illusion of self. Now what?”
Exactly. How do you live after spiritual enlightenment?
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When Life Loses All Meaning: Coping with a Pointless Life

Often, sudden spiritual awakening can be followed by a profound lack of motivation and the feeling that life is meaningless. How do we navigate this? I’ve been having an interesting exchange with a reader of MA who has expressed something I’ve heard many times from different people who have experienced sudden… Read more

Depression After Spiritual Enlightenment

Realizing the emptiness of all things is a normal part of spiritual awakening. For some people that leads to serious depression and the feeling that life is pointless. If you feel stuck in this painful nihilistic perspective, you are not alone. I received a very poignant message from a reader who… Read more

Spiritual Enlightenment and Mental Illness

So many of the effects of sudden spiritual enlightenment are similar to those of the mentally ill. What if you are just insane? This is a really important issue. If you are having a psychotic break, then you need help. If you are going through sudden spiritual enlightenment, you should… Read more

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One of the fundamentals we cover in Peerless...learning to distinguish which thoughts and feelings are yours. What's yours. What's not yours. What you find can be quite surprising. People who are really emotional are often not experiencing their own emotions at all, just picking up and embodying ambient emotions. It's surprising how much of what runs through your mind and emotional system doesn't belong to you, doesn't even have anything to do with you. It's taxing, confusing and unnecessary. This video has audio, so be sure to tap on sound.

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Synthetic Self: "I'll do this practice and go deep within to find my higher self, my essential nature."⠀
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The Synth, or your persona, has only mechanical things inside. Programs, apps, data storage, etc. ⠀
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I see you, and you are massive, immeasurable. Your Synth is like a tiny hologram inside of you, a useful tool. So it's interesting that you rummage about inside the Synth, seeking what is not inside the Synth. Seeking. Being a seeker. Becoming a Seeker. You'll find plenty to look at, lots to discover and tinker with. I rather enjoy tinkering inside my Synth. Only, it's not what you were looking for. ⠀
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I stand in a room with other people, and I'm massive. I take up the whole room, and more. My consciousness is immeasurable, rolling in and out like the tides. People don't see this. They don't even look for it. The brain is set to match a pattern, and the pattern they are trying to match is the Synth. They are looking for the hologram. ⠀
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We are massive, undulating and moving like ocean size bodies of water. We also have a Synth tool, a tiny hologram. We are the same, only your location differs. Your default location, where you focus your awareness and "reside"...the place you call Home and Self, is the Synth.⠀
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Your pattern recognition is set to Synth - to recognize yours and those of others. The world to you is populated by Synths, and the other...the Spirit or consciousness or whatever...this is an exotic thing. A mysterious thing. Because you can't see it directly, even though it is the most mundane, the most common...it's everywhere. You don't recognize it easily. So it seems elusive, "spiritual".

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You're spinning in circles. The mind wants to fret about something. It wants to rehash, replay -- either a scene or a feeling track. There's nothing wrong with that, except when it's not something you control, initiate and end. This whirring just happens. Some people leave this thing running, in the background, all the time. ⠀
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Why? Because you don't know better, mostly. You're used to it, and accept that's just the way it is...unless you become enlightened or achieve some kind of remarkable yogi status. ⠀
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But it's not like that at all. Your mind is a tool. Use it when you need to, then put it down. That's not Yogi Stuff. It's just basic human stuff. ⠀
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This background spinning leads to anxiety, friction. If your mind wants to fret, it's okay, let it. But put some boundaries on that. Like...ten minutes, starting now. Go on, fret. Worry. Replay. When ten minutes is up, stop. ⠀
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Feel better? I mean, from the 10 minutes of whatever that was...worrying. Replaying a feeling track. Rehashing something that happened this morning, when so and so said such and such. ⠀
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Did anything change? Did you resolve something in this ten minutes? Did you find a solution? ⠀
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Next time your mind wants to fret, instead of giving it ten minutes, try something different. Make a mental image of what it would feel like if whatever this thing is that your minds wants to fret about was resolved, or what it would feel like if it never happened, or what it would feel like if it was about an alien who lives on another planet and you were looking into their life from a remote viewing portal. Do this for ten minutes. Just hold this in your mind and feel that feeling. After ten minutes, stop. ⠀
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What was that like? Does it feel different? What does it feel like to feel the mind tugging you toward its default activity? What does it feel like to feel that tug and then choose what to do?

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How useful is my advice? ⠀
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In my Peerless and Mastery courses, I give a lot of practical ways to quiet the mind. Is this useful advice? Yesterday I did a private consultation in which I reframed my client's perspective: Is this mental chatter even a "problem" that you need to do something about? Do you even NEED to quiet the mind? ⠀
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It seems very different, these two perspectives. One is that you need to master the mind, learn techniques to turn down or even shut off the chatter in order to claim enough space for that elusive *something else* to emerge. What is it? Wisdom? Presence? Your Essential Nature? The other perspective is that holding onto this idea that mental chatter is a problem that needs to be remedied so you can claim some kind of pristine awareness, perfect awakening, is in fact just part of the mechanics of seeking...part of the same mind mechanics that generate the chatter in the first place. ⠀
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Both perspectives are true, depending on what level you are operating from. This is important to understand. You seek, you seek outside yourself, and inevitably you seek through the experience and wisdom and advice of others. But you can only digest and use the advice that is appropriate to your level. That's why you'll come across teachings that you feel in your gut are *true*, and yet if you try to apply them you get really weird or no results. They lead to more confusion. Then more seeking. But you're pointed in the wrong direction! You need the advice and teaching that is not only true, but true for you...where you are.⠀
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And that means also that when you are no longer where you are...when you've moved past that into truly new territory, a fundamentally new level...your old methods, the old teachings, the previous advice...may no longer be appropriate for you anymore. This is so hard, because they were true and they did work. Those practices are like old friends. You are faithful to them. But they are not old friends. They are steps on a ladder that you leave behind without looking back as you move ahead. The only precious teachings are the ones you need, the ones that are appropriate for you right now.

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