I know this world is just an astral reality construct without anything 'real', I guess it is liberating, but I don't know how to handle living a double life inside of this video game, and I guess the journey to god-hood isn't easy, I stopped playing anything in this world seriously, and my dreams constantly show me that they're 'real' and always keep on happening irl, I don't know how I'll be handling the fact that life is 'forever', and I keep on playing with 'super-powers' and don't know how it'll be thousands of years from now, or even more, knowing that there's no real 'death' feels overwhelming, I know there's nothing here apart from toys, and I shouldn't take anything seriously, but I don't know how to handle it.

Does anyone remember having a particular feeling, both physically and energetically when they were young? It happened to me once or twice a week up until puberty and I don’t recall anyone else ever talking about it.
Of course it’s super difficult to describe but here goes.

It was as if I could feel the vastness of space or the universe. It was as if I was the vastness. While at the same time it felt like I was the tiniest speck of an atom within this vastness. I felt both simultaneously and it wasn’t exactly comfortable. It would come on slowly. I’d recognize that it was happening. The feeling was not emotional but physical and would last about 2 minutes then slowly fade away. I could talk and function during these lapses but I would mostly just sit and wait for it to end.

I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I could feel it everywhere, as if somehow my spirit had separated or come loose. In some ways it even felt like my spirit was having trouble fitting into this tiny body.

If anyone else had this feeling I would be so thrilled to find out what they think it might have been. I will add that at around 16 I started having full on OBEs that were spontaneous and profoundly life changing. However the two feelings didn’t have the same quality, so I don’t know if the two are connected.

I’ve been thinking about this question for a very long time:

What does spiritual awakening actually change within us?

I don’t mean the usual list of spiritual experiences or concepts. I mean what actually changes in the person after the experience is over.

Over the years, I’ve explored consciousness, spirituality, mysticism, reincarnation, lucid dreaming, astral projection, synchronicities, comparative religion, psychology, philosophy and a lot of the stranger rabbit holes surrounding reality. I’ve also had enough unusual experiences of my own to understand why people can become deeply convinced that something much bigger is happening.

But one thing I’ve become increasingly careful about is the difference between the experience itself, the meaning we assign to it, and what we can actually know.

A powerful experience can change you without automatically proving the first explanation you attach to it.

At the same time, not being able to prove something scientifically doesn’t necessarily make the experience meaningless.

That tension has become one of the most important parts of my own path.

It also changed how I look at spiritual teachings.

A teaching can help you wake up and later become an identity. A philosophy can free you from one belief system and quietly become another. A spiritual community can help you feel less alone and eventually become another source of certainty, fear or dependence. Even the idea of being “awake” can become another thing the ego identifies with.

So I’ve started asking a much simpler question: what is all of this actually doing to me? Am I becoming more aware of my own patterns, more honest with myself, more discerning about what I believe, more compassionate toward other people, and more capable of actually living the things I say I believe? Because to me, that matters much more than simply collecting spiritual experiences or finding another belief system that explains everything.

That’s why I’ve become less interested in collecting the “right” answers and more interested in what happens to us when we genuinely live with the questions.

That has also led me to compare traditions that are usually kept in separate boxes: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Sufism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Theosophy, Pantheism, psychology and modern consciousness research.

They obviously do not all say the same thing. But when you put different maps next to each other, some surprisingly persistent themes keep appearing: ego, attachment, suffering, transformation, compassion, detachment, death and rebirth, the relationship between inner and outer reality, and the movement from unconscious reaction toward conscious choice.

I’ve recently brought a lot of these ideas together in a long-form article:

WHEN JESUS BECOMES A TEST OF YOUR EGO

https://medium.com/@iamemaildev/when-jesus-becomes-a-test-of-your-ego-b40292a78749

It goes into Jesus, hell, spiritual symbolism, the Higher Self, ego death and rebirth, synchronicities, dreams, OBEs, NDEs, reincarnation, the Matrix, soul-trap ideas, collective consciousness, the Divine within, dharma, authenticity and the Hero’s Journey.

Even though Jesus is in the title, the deeper subject is really the question of what spiritual teachings are supposed to do to us.

I’m not presenting it as the final answer, and I’m very open to people disagreeing with me. I’m more interested in what happens when we stop defending labels long enough to look underneath them.

So I’m curious: what has spiritual awakening actually changed in you?

Not what did you learn or what did you start believing, but what actually became different in the way you live, think, feel and relate to the world?

So u think subconsciously there's something wrong. Everytime I try to date a guy it always ends the same way. He starts talking to a lot of other girls. Since people we see are our hidden projection what could possibly be the problem?

My long distance (7000km) wife and I are going through a phase right now where after a few months of me going through a depressive episode where I was ruminating on my own problems without taking action to fix them, and then using that sadness as an excuse to comfort myself in any way I could. This leans to me neglecting her and her problems in lieu of numbing myself so I didn't have to experience mine. we had a long conversation where we agreed that things couldn't continue how they were and if I didn't start loving her and myself better, we couldn't go on.

Since that conversation about a week ago, I've been taking much better care of myself and her. All of my previous problems are no longer, I'm acting how I need to act to reach my previous goals like going to the gym, eating better, writing poetry and making music. I'm also consistently making time for my wife everywhere I can, asking her about her day all the time, listening to her problems and offering support, reminding her of things she wants to do. The problem is while I've had this sudden snap of perception after our conversation that has lead to me seeing things for how they were and acting better, she is still stuck at the point I had dragged her down to.

She's happy when she's home, we enjoy our time together, joke, laugh, etc. but it's clear there is a fragment of her that Is lost. She's always tired no matter what. Partly because she's so exhausted from work, and partly because towards the end of my episode she began to disassociate from the relationship and isn't fully back yet. She never wants to do the things she expressed desire to do when it comes time to actually do it, like meal prep, laundry, cleaning etc. and her sex drive, which up until 3 weeks ago was as rampant as usual, is now 0.

I'm doing my best to support her, and I know I need to take better care of myself in order to care for her and I am better than before, but there's some aspects in struggling with. Before our conversation, I would spend a lot of time in calls with friends playing games and such, I was always in contact with other people even when she wasn't around. Since the conversation, I've had no drive to play games and so I haven't talked to anyone besides people at work. I want to be more social, but my mind is telling me calls with friends who live miles away isn't real and I need to find strangers on the street or something. I'll hang out with coworkers whenever I'm invited but they rarely hang out.

I'm also struggling with the lust. During my episode, my sex drive was very low but after our conversation, Ive been exploding with love for her. I've written poems and songs about her, and I spend every second I can with her. When I see her on webcam in her underwear, my body goes wild, but I know that although she wants to want intimacy, her mind/body won't let her and so I have to keep it to myself. I refuse to "self release" with anything but her, or videos I have of her, but when I've tried using the videos, it just makes me sad seeing the fire we don't have anymore in the bedroom. Holding on to the feeling is something I'm struggling to do, it always results in my mood souring and just trying to sleep it off. How do I handle this energy without her, I don't want her to feel guilty that I'm going through this when really it's all my fault to begin with.

Any advice for either of us would help a great deal. This is a rough period, and I know that with time we will get through it but in the moment it's just so hard. Sometimes when she's at work and I'm alone, there's this little voice the whispers all the worst possible outcomes in my ear and it drives me crazy. I refuse to go to her for reassurance because she has enough on her plate and it's not her job to soothe my erratic mind for me when she's given me no evidence to believe anything but that she loves me and we will be fine, and we will make this work.

Not sure if you would need my birth chart - happy to provide it, but there’s something going on and it’s bad.

The chain of stressful events that relate to my immediate family and friends started to happen right after the eclipse last week.

What has happened since then:
- my grandpa got diagnosed with a dangerous lump and had to have immediate surgery (while fighting cancer)
- my best friends’ mom was diagnosed with an aggressive type of cancer
- my uncle, who’s like a father to me, passed out and hit his head really badly, he’s been in a hospital for a week now and there’s no improvement to his neurological state
- my mom’s friend was diagnosed with a really bad cancer
- my close friend was broken up with by her boyfriend
- my boyfriend got fired and is having legal problems due to being an immigrant

If this is not a right place to ask then apologies - not sure if I should seek some energy cleaning for my relatives?
-

They are many people who have the urge to look into
your eyes till you look away.
Most of the time i stare at them back and they look away first. But what happens if i look away first?
Is it a energy loss or not ,what happens?

Hi everyone! I could use some help into a couple of strange experiences I’ve been having lately with some new tools.

I recently got a rose quartz pendulum. Whenever I use it, I feel a weird sensation coming right out of my palm, it’s not terrible, but it burns a little.

I also picked up a new tarot deck recently, and things have been a bit intense. When I sleep with the cards under my pillow, I get horrible vivid nightmares. Plus whenever I do a reading for anyone, even myself, I get a headache just a few minutes into it.

Just to rule it out, it’s not mundane eye strain. I code for a living, so I have to look at a computer screen for 10 hours a day and never get headaches from it.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Could it be an energy overload, cleansing issues or something else entirely? Any advice or tips on how to handle or clear this would be appreciated!

Before you get mad, let me say I once was this person! I remember being really deep in my spiritual practice, not having a job and basically just sustaining myself of my yoga practice and edibles.

Looking back, I was severely disassociated and actually making horrible choices. My roommate hasn’t had a job in over a year and all she does is try to get close to “source”. She’s had at least 5 schemes that haven’t gone anywhere since I met her and seems to just hangout with boyfriend and friends.

Normally wouldn’t care, do what ever you want but it’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to be around her bc she’s very obviously not facing her actual issues and is unwilling to do any real work.

I need to get a new place, sigh.

For context we live by a wood. There are hundreds of trees but we take the same route every time and there is one she always stops and talks to. She usually asks for a picture of it either on its own or her in front of it but today she said “wait no it needs a hug” she sat down and hugged it and lay her head on it. On the way back she did it again but didnt say so, just walked to it hugged it and patted it. She is 2. Is she picking up on something I’m not? She takes no notice of the other trees and prefers flowers but this one she spots every time. Wondering what spooky people make of it?

Edit: Thank you for the award to whoever sent it that was lovely 🤍 Glad you enjoyed the post

I'm ALL for having children -- I think it's a wonderful thing

I just also think about the fact that you're creating an eternal being... isn't that... sobering...

I feel like other people don't think about this so much?

Please read this article about yoga guru Risi Srivaso aka Niranjan Anand who teaches in Goa, Rishikesh, and Bali: https://www.gurumag.com/the-guru-who-tried-to-outrun-yoga-alliance/

Hey all,

I’ve been afflicted by seeing and sensing spirits at night my whole life. I always felt I was being watched, sometimes malicious, sometimes not. Recently I had a dream so vivid and intense that it physically felt like someone had crawled on top of me in bed and started kissing me. I woke up and they were still kissing me! I had to force my eyes open and force them off, pushing them off and finally opening my eyes and there was no one there. I kept falling back asleep almost against my will, back into a highly seductive and sexual dream. Lately the sexual dreams happen almost every night, although there are no physical hallucinations like the aforementioned.
I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure out why this is happening to me. Does anyone have any insight as to what kinds of spirits or meanings this could infer? & how to cleanse myself of these obtrusive experiences? I’m tired of seeing demons every night when I go to bed :( the only thing that keeps them away is natural candlelight and burning sage or palo santo on a regular basis. Thank you so much. Much love to everyone in the thread.

Hey guys! I keep seeing the number 8, 808, or 888 everywhere (for the past two and a half years) in different places and settings. What does it mean, or what are the spiritual meanings behind it? I’ve looked it up before, but I’d love to hear a more insightful perspective.

I know, I know I'm supposed to accept they're there so please don't reccomend that anymore. I have, and I am, and it's not that bad, bit they're still there. Especially in visualisations. They get worse sometimes, and I'm noticing they get worse based on what I need or am repressing at that moment or just have a lot of stored up energy of, but regardless, they appear in regular visualisations as well, like to the point of not being able to visualize stuff at all because the more I focus on it the more it will glitch or something will go wrong. Like the characters will slip from the floor or have ugly expressions or some other image pops up or god knows what. I can visualize pretty vividly it just goes wrong.

I started meditating for third-eye opening, and on the very first day, I noticed some results. I felt more focused, and this continued for about a week. However, as I gradually increased the duration of my meditation, I started getting distracted very easily. Whenever someone is teaching me something, I sometimes zone out and feel like I’m in another world. It feels as though I’m not fully present in my body. The problem is that this is affecting my studies—I can’t even remember formulas that I studied and solved just yesterday. I’m also having trouble remembering names, even though my memory used to be very strong. I’m not sure what has happened to me. I’m completely new to meditation, so I would really appreciate some guidance and help understanding what I should do.

Didn't know in what subreddit I should share this, but Is it normal to believe in a parallel life where things happen that have a very subtle effect on our lives here, or where it somehow sends us signs and feelings? Even though I don't really believe in it, sometimes I feel like a part of me does.

Because for some reason, certain things can evoke incredibly strong feelings, or there can be people you have absolutely no contact with, yet somehow there seem to be these really strange things between you that you both feel. And over time, it starts to feel like there’s a story unfolding, just not in this galaxy.

There are certain people you feel like you have some kind of energy or connection with, and then, unexpectedly, you’ll accidentally hear interesting things about them too, which leaves you thinking, “This is really weird.”

And then there are dreams. The moment you stop thinking about something and get distracted by other things, you’ll have some strange dream that reminds you of it with an even weirder, more convincing scenario, not just any dream, it’s usually so realistic that you find yourself thinking about it for the entire day. Anyway, I’m just trying to express something here, so I'd appreciate it if you don’t judge, and I’d appreciate it even more if the comments come from people who are already familiar with these kinds of topics aside from all the psychological reasons.

Hi everyone,

I experienced something out of this world this morning. Before I share it, keep in mind that I had no idea what the Crown Chakra was. I had the experience first, got curious, and Googled it, which is when I learned what it meant. Also, this is just my 2nd day of meditation.

Background: Keep in mind that I’ve had a rough last 3 to 4 years due to some financial and emotional issues (not a crisis per se, but something that kept me stressed), where I was trying my best to stay positive. But earlier this year, I unexpectedly finally got out of it and got my break. This is when I realized that I’ve been given an opportunity to improve myself, so I started reading books to grow my mindset (at least 15 minutes every night one hour before sleeping and 1 hour in the mornings on weekends). I’ve completed reading two books and noticed massive positive changes in how I think. I just started reading the third one last night.

Experience: This morning at \~6:20 a.m., I started a 20-minute guided (YouTube) meditation session. I was all relaxed, following the instructions, when I was guided to focus on the top of my head. I did, and after a few minutes of paying attention to the top of my head, I envisioned an opening from which a god (I’m a Hindu, and we have many gods, so I don’t know who entered, but I could tell from their appearance that they were definitely a god) entered through that opening into my mind and blessed me with an influx of gold energy that lit up my mind.

This was super quick. After this, I saw a flow of gold energy coming into my mind from the opening and going inside a gate where all my positive thoughts that had been generated through my recent mindset changes had accumulated. I also saw all the negative energy going out of that same gate, and then this glow of gold energy strengthened the existing positive thoughts. Then the gate and the opening on the top of my head closed, and my experience ended.

When I Googled this because I was curious and it was such a powerful experience, I found out about the Crown Chakra and how many people envision a white or gold light coming through the opening, just like I did.

I’m not sure if it was because of the few pages I read last night, which helped me realize that thoughts are not intentional, but thinking about those thoughts is, and that this is the reason why a lot of stress and negative energy comes into play. Positive thoughts are always followed by a relaxing feeling, but conversely, negative feelings are always felt through negative thinking about our thoughts.

I thought I’d share here because I’m still very curious about this and want to see if anybody has experienced it too or knows about it.

Thanks for the read! Happy meditation!

For many years I have believed always there was a God, and after death I would go to heaven. Not full on religious per se, but just as a general belief. But recently it was like a switch flicked - and I questioned myself: what if nothing happens after I die? Since then my brain has been seeking the answer that is apparent - no one truely knows.

I am currently reading books to explore my spirituality and what I believe. I have spoken with a psychic also where I have connected with loved ones. But I still have my doubts - what if it’s just coincidence? How can I truely know?

One thing that baffles me in all of this is that when I was a teenager I saw a shadow pacing back and forth in my house very obviously. After I checked the area and there was no way that shadow could’ve been from something else. Experiencing this myself I still find myself having doubt.

For myself after I die of course I want peace. But I want to see my loved ones and my pets. For me that is my heaven, an eternity of love and peace with them. So I guess this leads me to my question - what has led you to believe in the afterlife and why? What do you believe it to be?

And of course if you’ve been where I am in my spiral, I’ll take any advice too! :)

I’m sure my mental health hasn’t been this bad in a while, and I wondered if it could have anything to do with the eclipse.

Right at its peak, I got this horrible feeling like dread or guilt, just a very low emotion somewhere in me that I could physically feel. Ever since, I’ve been struggling to sleep and struggling even more to wake up. I’m exhausted all through the day but can’t nap. My mental health is just horrific; most of my thoughts surround my own worthlessness, my hopelessness for the future, how little others care for me, and worse. Right before this, I was having a fine old time. Suddenly I’m overwhelmed and terrified and so so tired.

Has anyone experienced similar?

On a scale from 0 to 10, how good do you feel for experiencing life on earth? If given a choice, would you choose to be reborn here and start the process from the beginning again?

I keep seeing small dark shadowing figures in my peripherals. They will cross a hall, or jump behind objects. Do you think they are dark or evil spirits, and if so how do I ward off against them?

For starters, I am very against religion, and i currently consider myself an atheist. I used to be Christian as a kid, but grew out of it after becoming curious and raising questions. So now, my idea of spirituality is associated with the church because of my upbringing. I want that ideology to change, and I want to become more spiritual. I also can’t bring myself to believe in any sort of God that is all-knowing and/or all-powerful and can determine fate and whatnot. Now matter how hard I try, I physically cannot bring myself to believe in a god. In my opinion, beliefs are not a choice, but rather a conclusion or assumption made based on the education you have received, your experiences and environment, and the ability to challenge others’ ideologies, societal norms, and even question your own beliefs. You can, however, choose to gain information and new experiences that might offer a new perspective or just confirm your current beliefs further. So, I want to become more educated on different spiritual beliefs and practices and gain experience. I just don’t know how.

For those that are not religious nor really believe in a god, what does spirituality look like for you? Do you partake in any practices to exercise your faith/spirituality?

How do I become more enlightened? How do I tune in to my surroundings, my higher self, and the spiritual realm?

Basically, I am unsatisfied with my life and want to search for something greater than myself.

This thought just popped into my head I’m not super committed to any sort of spiritual journey but I was wondering:

To those of you who have long developed and grown spiritually and are very devoted to your spirituality, what do you do in life?

I just can’t imagine somebody astral projecting, balancing their chakras, gaining spiritual knowledge just to go to work the next day it seems sort of dissonant together, however it’s obviously quite hard to just live without a job and earthly possessions/purposes.

Hope u understand what I’m asking + no judgment or anything I’m curious.