LastThursday

It's clearly not easy to do, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the question. If I was being pragmatic, I would say it's far far easier and more productive to influence the world through talking, doing and thinking rationally. However, my intuition tells me it's possible. There have been too many instances in my life where I've wished or thought about something and it's manifested soon after, without me doing anything. Again the pragmatic side of me would just say it's confirmation bias. But it's hard to shake off the notion completely. The real question is, is there a method or means for effectively manifesting things in reality? And if there is, what are the limits? Why isn't it a science? The other question is, why do it at all? Do you only want to manifest because of a perceived lack of things in you current life, or because you want an easy escape route from a crappy life? Is it actually better not to feed the monster and learn to appreciate what you already have more? Lastly, if visualisation is not effective, then why waste your time with it? You may as well use your mouth, arms and legs and brain to get on with it. In other words, is visualisation just a comfort blanket?

I'm hoping for a materialist death. My body breaks down into its constituent atoms, which are then scattered back into the cosmos from where it came. Bliss. I think the reality will be very different however, more like existence will go POOF! And feel sorry for the rest of you in advance. But maybe, just maybe I'll get immortality - whichever "I" that would be.

No it doesn't. Like any good society the forum needs to be circumscribed and have it's own rules and regulations and policing. This forum is actually very democratic, tolerant, free and quickly weeds out disruptive users.

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing. Be gentle on yourself. Focus on the relationship, not the Aspergers. It's an interesting question whether increasing levels of consciousness or awakening can transform Aspergers. I like to believe that anything's possible. But if it is, it will take time and a lot of work. Patience is needed to transform the self.

@TheAvatarState I hate to be that person (how devilish), but I can see the strong irony in the number of words you've used in this thread. Why do you use this sub-forum? Personally, I find it a good way to orient myself on my spiritual path. Of course, I still have to do "The Work" with or without the sub-forum - and you are right in that sense.

Could you explain a bit more what you think the danger is? And why you think it's bad?

Even if you have video evidence of your mother giving birth to you, it proves nothing. That would be you looking at a baby being born and identifying with it as you - but that thing on the screen is not you. The baby being born in the video is a facsimile and a mirage on magnetic tape (if you're older than 20). To know if you were born, you would very literally have to go back in time and re-experience at first hand being born. So, the problem is: there is no time. All other evidence is second hand and not to be trusted no matter how convincing. "Romans" is just a concept you have, made up of hundreds of little interconnected factoids. Romans for you, exist right now, as a mental web of concepts. All you're doing is identifying the concept "Romans" with the concept "Past".

Honestly, don't waste your mental energy on this thought. Be old, when you get old. Worry about it when you get there, not now. Take advice from an old(er) person. Plus, it really ain't that bad! As for illness, it's 99% diet, fitness and good mental health.

You weren't born. There is no "since". There is no time. Otherwise you believe time started with your birth - and so time must exist.

I recently had the following conversation with a friend of mine. Take what you will: F: But how can you lead life without judging others? Surely that's not possible? LT: See it like this. You should aim to be like the Sun. It gives warmth to everyone and everything equally and expects nothing in return. F: But doesn't the sun burn people? LT: Yes, but that isn't the fault of the Sun. The Sun doesn't judge, it just shines. The onus is on people to tolerate the light. F: That seems selfish to me. LT: Only because you're not the Sun.

When you start paying attention closely things are shifting constantly, it's all very staccato, not fluid at all. I like the following thought experiment: You take a flight to Paris, but then by some dark magic the memory of the trip itself is completely wiped from your memory. What would someone experience in that situation? A very noticeable shift. Naturally, you would then immediately start "filling in" the discontinuity and eventually conclude that time had actually passed, but you had amnesia. But the real question is, exactly what sort of time was it that happened during the trip? In other words is time the pure raw experience happening in front of your eyes? Or is time the constant "filling in" of discontinuities? Or both? Or neither? Can memories of anything be truly trusted?

Fine. But how you choose to interpret the content is your prerogative, everyone has their own "context" they bring with them. My point is that video and text (in the forum) is pure content - and we are just consuming that content. Consuming content does not awaken you; having more or better quality content, will not awaken you. As you say, it's all the extra-curricular activity which will awaken you (meditation, introspection and so on). Maybe I should have said: "interact better together". I get your sentiment, but categorising people "feels wrong" to me. You will probably end up with some form of tribalism, the oranges versus the greens, and the turquoises who don't care and are above it all. And a questionnaire is certainly an impediment to participation. This forum is niche enough as it is. At least by having everyone interact together it stops the tribalism and gives new participants access to the wisdom of long standing participants. But just sometimes it just feels a bit like being on a 10 lane highway, with different people going at very different speeds - and talking about subjects at very many different levels. This is not conducive to raising up the consciousness of everyone. Saying all that, I don't really have an answer, just chewing the fat.

Sarcasm alert: I hope you're not suggesting that we introspect as a community so that we develop ourselves as a community? End sarcasm. Don't listen to they naysayers. We only watch the videos and go on the forum for the content, don't be fooled by anything else. If you want to awaken, do that in your own time. If the content helps you awaken, then that's a bonus. Personally, the videos are fine as a resource or library. The only way they could be improved is to have closed captioning (subtitling) - but maybe they are already? Also having a searchable text of the scripts for all the videos would be hugely beneficial. The forum is a different entity, in that it's a community. My main gripe would be that too many threads degenerate into two or three people "thrashing it out" generally without any sort of resolution. And there is a lot of "wise-man stroking beard" type comments (guilty!). Or comments where the words fit together, but the meaning is incomprehensible. But it is what it is, it's probably the better for it. How else do you get a bunch of people at very different stages of development to interact together?

Who is telling you to take life seriously? Why do you want to do that?

It's projections all the way down. Flowing with it, not against it, will allow you to swim to the other side without drowning.

Or neither. This illustrates my point well. The words 'Nyan' and 'Meow' don't actually capture a cat's call at all - despite them supposedly being onomatopoeic. If it did we'd be looking for the cat every time we heard the words. We are suckers for language,

Here's my thoughts: Language is nothing more than combinatorial symbolic manipulation. The symbols can be anything: letters, sounds, semaphore, binary. The symbols are completely arbritary, but have to be distinct enough to tell them apart from each other and there should be a finite set of them. By themselves the symbols are useless, but put them together in specific ways and they can be used to convey any sort of information. The juxtaposition of symbols then allows speakers to hang real world experiences onto those specific patterns. In effect the patterns of symbols point to a category of things in the real world. The things themselves can be any experience including thought. Communication between individuals boils down to constructing these special patterns that are pointers to experiences the speaker is having. The receiver of the communication then "runs the program" of the communication and "re-experiences" it for themselves. This is in effect a form of mind reading or thought transferrence. The system is not perfect because it is finite. To speak takes time, so the rate of transferrence of information is limited. Also the number of patterns (grammar, syntax, words etc), is huge but finite. This means that it is necessary to take only specific parts of the speaker's experience when communicating; the number and rate of experiences is much much greater (probably infinite) than the rate of information in speech. In other words the recipient of a communication can only receive a sketch of your experiences. But like a good artist, we will "fill out" the sketch to make a full picture which fits with our own experiences. Language is powerful, because it puts us into different states of consciousness, which can change our behaviours and actions - this leaves us open to manipulation by other speakers (positive or negative). It is also powerful, because when speaking we become habituated to only taking certain parts of our experiences to convey information and we ignore the rest. This habituation has a distorting effect on our perceptions, by placing greater importance on some experiences over others - over time we become blind to the non-important experiences, maybe to our detriment. But note that we experience things whether we are speaking or not - thought, memories and experiences carry on quite happily without language. It's easy to become too confident and make language the ground of our experiences, it is definitely not. It is a superficial layer above our experience of the world.

It is utterly incomprehensible, but you are staring into and experiencing the void right now. Any meaning you try to pin on the experience is coming from within the experience itself . In fact the observer or the awareness is also a product of this experience. Some say that it's possible to come out of the experience itself and awaken.

Indeed. Why all this separation business if not just to become aware of the connectedness of everything? Duality leads itself to non-duality.

Impatience is not a virtue. Anything that can happen, will happen; and you will be there to experience it.

Surely this is a tactic to make sure that we're not delusional? Mastery doesn't have an end. If you think or even "know" you've reached the end, then most probably you're wrong.

How long is the present moment? When does it stop being present? Did the present moment really just happen?

That would make a great opening line of a novel. The story of your childhood never went away. It's always "right here" for you to use.

Interpreting your dreams is like interpreting real life, very difficult, and you're probably wrong a lot of the time. Interpreting other people's dreams, and you may as well give up. But here's my advice and interpretation: Don't fixate on the girl. It seems to me that the source of the nightmare is that you'll lose your friends (it doesn't matter how). It doesn't seem to be a too unreasonable a fear to have. Why not instead work through the scenario (while you're awake), confront the fear so to speak. How would life be without any friends? Could your survive? Would it make you more resilient? Would you be lonely? And so on... Also. Don't fixate on the dreams. They'll pass.

I would say that in an everyday sense there is a difference between just thinking about things and taking action. I don't think that a pragmatic thinker is any more or less prone to taking action than an idealistic (or arty) thinker. However, the nature of their actions will be very different. A pragmatic thinker might be more logical and rely on common sense and as a consequence is better at planning and project management. But a pragmatic thinker may have a narrower range of choices because their thinking is more inflexible. An idealistic thinker will be wildly more flexible by having lots of constantly changing ideas - it could lead to paralysis in taking action - but may also lead to a more flexible approach to problem solving and taking action. If you're running a business having both types of people is great, and maybe a third person to mediate between them (the finance director)!