For people who are pursuing the Big E, these could be something to think about or do.

Survey on the enlightened: Overwhelmingly positively inundated their lives, greater sense of meaning and purpose in life. Puts everything in perspective. Improved psychological and physical life. Decreased sense of anxiety, depression.

Video Link: http://bigthink.com/videos/andrew-newberg-on-how-to-achieve-enlightenment

Quick Transcipt:

• Great resolve/desire to be enlightened.
• Get relaxed and write down reasons why you would like to be enlightened. What enlightenment means to you, what is it that you are thinking about, what you will ultimately like to achieve with this type of process – this begins to get the mind open and engaged in the process, helps the brain say ok, “This is something I really want, this is what I think it is, this is what I am working towards and this is what begins us down that path towards enlightenment.” Preparing for this experience: Get ready – relaxation techniques, thinking it through, getting yourself into the kind of mood that is ready for this kind of experience becomes very helpful and important.
• Critical: the one that people need to think about: Many different approaches & practices/rituals: Individualized approach. Try many things – meditation may not be for you. Something you can keep coming back to, a rhythmic process, meditation/thought processes/creativity/prayer/singing/trans-cranial magnetic stimulation? of the brain/challenging yourself with different types of questions, etc.
• Letting it all go/surrendering: Keep revving it up and then just let it happen, pull the rug out from under the whole thing, that feeling of surrender radically changes the way your brain works at that instant. Frontal lobe (helps us to do purposeful things) – during meditation/prayer, activity gets to a very high level, but when you surrender, it drops down to a very low level. When we give our purposefulness over to the process, frontal lobe decreases substantially. It is the crash that really rearranges the way the brain works and sets up that powerful experience, that dramatic experience. Biologically, it is the driving force behind that experience. That feeling of surrender is a critical aspect down this process.
• Reflecting what this experience means for you, how you incorporate it back into your thought processes, beliefs, experiences, your world, the way you think about the world. Being able to come back and reflect on that, whether it’s thought processes or things like meditation, this is a critical element cos ultimately it brings that experience into your life and makes it real for you and makes it something that changes the way you think about the world for the rest of your life. The mini-epiphanies (small-e) can set you up for the Big E experience. Keep coming back to them, keep experiencing them, keep working on it – the most effective way of getting enlightened.

 
Note to Self:

1. Resolve but leave desire for E out of practice.
2. Be realistic about E. What can be learned and used right now, in every moment, is the knowledge already milked from the process. Live like you already are E'd, which in a way is true anyhow. Thanks Seth!
3. Continue "Do Nothing" meditation, try Progressive muscle relaxation techniques: https://www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/MuscleRelaxation.pdf
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihO02wUzgkc
4. Keep repeating cessations/fruitions. 
5. Well, what else than to keep at it and not suffer for it...

When neuroscientists tell us how to wake up using their latest and greatest techniques, always based on their latest research (which we KNOW is bound to be revised)... I cringe.

Haha I hope someone like Doctor Avocado gets it right soon though.

What do you think this guy said was BSC,  Chris?

What's "BSC?" I'm sure I should know that acronym but I don't. Sorry. Fill me in and I'll reply.

Ooops sorry for typo - BullShit :p

BS - I understand.

I don't think neuroscientists are offering up BS. I think they're legitimately trying to figure out how the brain generates mind and consciousness and a sense of agency and all those cool things they don't now seem to understand. So the science has limitations. Explanations from a scientific POV do not seem to translate well into the spiritual/dharma practice realm, IMHO - at least not yet.

I guess I don't agree.  I think that the fact that we can describe how these most profound human experiences and most basic intuitions about what is real are simply concrete physical systems is the Dhama. 

Why bother with spritual or ancient models of reality when common scientific understanding of the universe takes you to the same place? 

Can you elaborate? 

I'm not advocating any particular model of reality, ancient or modern. Just commenting on the difference between practicing meditation and the results one can obtain from that versus the scientific explanations of what meditation does that are now available. One is experiential, one is descriptive. Both seem to be incomplete to me but as a practical tool allowing human beings to understand and then change their experience the practice seems more viable today than the science.

What I am trying to say is that meditation is actually just the process of accepting that all the narratives and meaning we imagine are imagined.  

You can practice meditation and achieve full awakening within  the context of any of millions of models of reality.  You could see the world as made up of earth, fire and water elements or see it as entirely a figment of your imagination or as God's will manifest.  Any of these will allow the mind to come to a complete rest and drop the delusions that cause suffering.

I am proposing that regular old scientific reality is also a valid through line to complete awakening.  You do not need to imagine fields of pure consciousness or reincarnation or progress on a path.  You can just look around, see a meaningless process ocurring and chill.  

Seth, I agree with your comment but would add that awakening can also deeper. In my experience it's not just about mental narrative and overcoming that as the pretense for existence. It's also about understanding mind at a deep level and the processes involved in perception itself, how mind operates to create our reality. Science, too, is mind objects. It's very, very useful and it's been a huge benefit to human beings, but it's still mind objects.There is no way out of that box as we learn, slowly in ost cases, that everything starts with mind.

I think it's ironic that a few thousand-year-old awakened people were able to uncover this just by looking inward anf paying attention: Hindus, Buddhists, Sufis, Native Americans, random people of any stripe. Science may one day be able to explain fully and in detail the brain's functioning, and maybe even replicate what meditation practice can do. Until then, mediation practice (of any sort) is what we've got.

I'm not worshipping ancient religions. Just realizing their efficacy as one practical course to follow. I prefer the modern scientific paradigm, too, and have adopted that as my view - until the next revision, and the next, and the next...

I think we are agreeing.  I am not arguing against meditation. 

I agree that we are agreeing.