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Hello everybody and hello Mr John Sherman! I am Nikos from Greece i m 23 years old. I suffered from anxiety and depression last 5 years. We had a car accident and me and girl survived the other 3 died in front of my eyes at the age of 18. I stayed in my house a lot after that. I was always social but that season of 3 years in depression and anxiety caused me to be in my house and completely " destroy" myself. After 4-5 years without medicine i tried to make some big steps. I was out finally and i got a pretty girl. I had so much anxiety in social situations.

What i ve noticed was that Even when i "succeed" in some " goal " or anxiety target that i had, Even if i made it perfect i still was sad. I couldnt understand why i couldnt be happy everything was nice around me.

Anyway after some time without knowing anything about Spiritual stuff.So when i ve had Big ups and downs i found out luckily about a book that transforms life. I didnt know about spiritual stuff. The book name was THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle. So i ordered that book. I never read but something pushed me to that book. I know this site isnt about tolle but i think i can share with you Mr John Sherman my experience since i m doing the looking so much and that message is so clear.

Anyway i managed with some way that he describes to close my mind for 1-2 seconds and peace arrived. Then i had a shock realization. The world around me become alive i cried. I looked at my family members so different than before. I didnt know what happened to me all i knew was that i wasnt my SAD STORY that i thought i was. That lasted 5 days.. MY ego completely dissolved the illusory self dissapeared for 5 days and my natural state was Like Heaven.

After 5 days some old pattern came back and my old mind took me over. Since that time i suffer so much. i Said words like " I know this isnt me this is a lie i saw the truth so many days why i suffer now i need to get back there! " . My mind made my awakening experience into a EVENT in my mind.

Mr John Sherman i saw your video about looking and its so clear to me. I wanted to share with you my experience even if i mention another teacher that i found out first and ppl will say "go write all that to the tolle forum " But thats not the case. Since i lived this heaven experience of natural state i know that this is all acts of the illusory self.

Thank you

Hello Nikos23!

After reading your report, the question I have is "Have you done the simple act of looking as John Sherman describes it?" Don't concern yourself with "spiritual stuff", what matters is simple, if you will direct your attention to the you that is always present and is the same you as you were when you were five years old, and try with all your heart to get a taste, just a sense, a momentary experience of "you", just that, what will follow is that the fear that has been the fog in which you have lived will lift, and in time you will lose interest in anything other than life, just as it is, full of unpredictability, ups, downs, good times, bad times, clarity, confusion and on and on. So just do the act of looking as it occurs to you to do and keep coming here to report your experiences and hear what others are saying. Also, tune in to John's online live meetings and connect with the conversations there. Soon you will find that all is well.

Love.

David

Hello Nikos,

I've read Tolle's Power of Now and A New Earth, and those books are very dear to me. They have taught me a lot about how the mind operates, and why it is so good at fooling itself. I've had some wonderful insights and experiences when I read them but the thing about those wonderful insights is that sooner or later, they lose their wonder. Back then, I was happy to learn that I wasn't the story about me that lived in my mind, but that never helped me to see who I was. I had my share of ego-less states that were filled with bliss but what they really did was go away after a while and leave a reference point. Before those beautiful flashes, my life was crap. But after these flashes, my life was still crap, but now I had the knowledge that it didn't have to be crap, which obviously made the experience of everyday life even worse than it was before.

But that's the whole point - life can be a very harsh experience, your story of the car accident is a very clear example of that. But it is only when you have looked at yourself, and have seen that you are still the same you that experienced the crash, and experienced every other moment of your life, without being harmed or changed, that life is fine the way it is. That, for me, was the biggest surprise after the first time I looked at myself - that all this anxiety, and at the same time all this search for happiness, were all born from the same source : that I didn't want life to be what I thought it was. Back then, life was a painful place to be. Now it doesn't matter so much how I feel or think life should or shouldn't be, these things usually get in the way of living.

I hope you find something useful in what I wrote. It's good to see you have found your way here.

Wouter