tsuki

Suffering is when we face something we consider unpleasant and our imagination sucks us in, telling what to do to stop it and avoid it in the future. Then, we decide what we need to accomplish it and try to secure it. We become attached to it. We desire. In order to secure it, we need power. Power comes from leveraging other people's attachments. We threaten to not provide others with whatever they need from us, or to outright disrupt their plans. This is how knowledge is born. That some things are good and other things are bad. Once you know this distinction, you prime yourself for this very cycle, because it comes back to the beginning. You have to avoid facing bad things, so you need to plan. See how this paragraph started? Notice that suffering is not whatever we consider unpleasant. Suffering is the reaction to it. How to stop suffering? Do not know good from bad. Pleasant from unpleasant. Future from past. You will die regardless of what you do. Regardless of what you plan. Come to terms with it - everything else will follow. Wake up.

Returning to the root - Tao Te Ching ("translation" by Ursula Le Guinn) Be completely empty. Be perfectly serene. The ten thousand things arise together; in their arising is their return. Now they flower, and flowering sink homeward, returning to the root. The return to the root is peace. Peace: to accept what must be, to know what endures. In that knowledge is wisdom. Without it, ruin, disorder. To know what endures is to be openhearted, magnanimous, regal, blessed, following the Tao, the way that endures forever. The body comes to its ending, but there is nothing to fear ---------------------- (To those who will not admit morality without a deity to validate it, or spirituality of which man is not the measure, the firmness of Lao Tzu’s morality and the sweetness of his spiritual counsel must seem incomprehensible, or illegitimate, or very troubling indeed.)

@CreamCat TEACHERS write in all caps in their journals.

@Amun Okay, here comes a new one: Concepts are a belief! Whoa! I'm pushing the boundaries of understanding here! How does this influence the metaphysical epistemology of spirituality?

Let's just settle on that Joseph is deliberately doing this to teach us how we ourselves evade self reflection, okay? How utterly blind we are to the fact that we're deceiving ourselves and that we can't be reasoned out of it. This thread is a perfect bait for us, spiritual egos.

@peqkno Define art. You can't. AI needs a definition to optimize.

@Viking Yeah, the mind says so.

@Aquarius Congratulations! You're the happiest person that can ever exist! How does it feel? Beats me. Chop wood carry water? Maybe we do what we do because there's nothing else to do?

@Aquarius We need the concept of meaning because we can't admit to ourselves that we're puppets that are guided by forces that are beyond our comprehension. We invent reasons to distract ourselves from the fact that our lives are utterly insignificant and that the final station is graveyard, regardless of what we accomplish and who we're friends with. Let go.

@Aquarius Meaning is a human invention.

@Viking All knowledge is grounded in belief. Even this knowledge that I'm presenting to you. Your reality is held in place by either your inability, or unwillingness to challenge it. What asks questions? The mind. What answers them? The mind. The point is not to silence it, but to see that you have nothing to say in what the mind ponders. If you do, it is because the mind says so. The mind loves to get hung up on its own riddles.

Anything can be explained by virtually any model. I think that it's besides the point to look which model is true because it depends on the person that is conducting the search. Some answers will fit into their worldview, and some won't. It's very valuable however to be able to hold even contradictory models just in case some of them become useful in one context or another. Of course, it's a great source of confusion for the ego to not be able to hold on to any particular theory of everything, but the price is well worth the payoff.

No. You can't describe it positively. At least, I haven't found a way, words turn to ash in my mouth when I try. However, strangely enough, I can tell whether my consciousness had expanded, but I can't tell whether I'm higher or lower level than anybody else. At best, I can tell whether I resonate with them or not. If I don't - I may be above, or below them. Sometimes ego gets its kicks out of it, but I can see through it. Expansion of consciousness can only be observed if it's rapid. The mind tends to freak out at that times, but it can get used to it. It's associated with dis-identification, as if some part of reality was a mechanism to operate on. Something had been understood for its mechanical nature. It's a great leap to see your personality as such, but it doesn't end there.

@Manjushri Do not try to fight anger. Anger is fight. See the paradox? Learn to stay centered despite this feeling.

No, it's just that it's that emotions are a strange thing to discuss. If you're having a specific dilemma - what is the point of asking other people's opinion? Nobody can tell you what you should feel and dealing with your feelings is very circumstantial. This is why psychotherapy is so time consuming. You have to learn to translate your feelings to questions and answer them to reach closure. Random strangers on an internet forum can only share principles to work with and these are very obvious and widely known. The other thing to learn is that people can't really be described and most important things are always left out when you're composing a life story to share. When people try to 'get' you while reading your stuff, they add a ton of their own baggage into the process, so it's not really obvious who are they responding to? You? Their shadow? I think that the most important thing about emotional mastery is taking ownership of your life and to stop getting hung up needlessly. Asking people to fix your problems is counter-productive in my opinion, but I get that unless you ask - you wouldn't have known that. PS. I wrote this post as is if I thought that you don't know these things, but I don't know you and it's an assumption, so please don't get upset. It's a general answer. PS2. It's sometimes the case that the best questions remain unanswered because they're too deep for the audience. Funny how easy it is to confuse the ambiguity of silence.

Struggling to become awakened.

Leo could start a boy's band with a hairstyle like that.

Do you think that this knowledge can be made universal to stop needless cravings? I realized this a long time ago, but it doesn't seem to stop the mind from returning to these thoughts from time to time.

@theking00 Realize that you are the one that thinks what other people think about you. You have no access to their thoughts. You have mental models of other people and you use them to predict what they think. Therefore, you yourself are always the one that judges yourself badly. Mindfulness during conversations with people helped me tremendously to spot where I'm adding unnecessary interpretations. It may be challenging to do that right out of the bat, so you may want to start with simpler practices such as labeling, etc.

@Arhattobe I can see the relative nature of the mind and I get that the reference point determines our perception. How would I know that I actually hit the rock bottom in this work, however? Are we simply bound to look for more and more methods, just to be extra sure? Also, you were very critical of nondualists claiming infallibility in the other thread. Aren't they simply ignorant like we all? I mean, ignorance is not an excuse, but at the very least - it's our existential condition. I can relate to this. How did you break through? I recently tried psychedelics with great results. Very potent when it comes to making trauma resurface. My progress is mostly mentally driven when I look curiously into my mental patterns and disrupt them with questioning. I had two realizations that left the mind speechless for a few minutes. Then, I wanted to test whether I can think or not and the mental chatter resumed. I can still the mind at will, but the will dissipates after some time as if I forgot what I was attempting to do. Would concentration practices help me? Is it present when you are reading mentally? Or is it when typing? Are you thinking the words as you are typing them, or are the dialogs parallel and loosely related? That's reassuring. I'm starting to get the better of my anger. I don't lose lucidity as much as I used to. Do you pick up on emotional cues when talking to people? Do you co-feel people's emotions, or do you read them via looking? Right. As it turns out, we're not stupid enough to be deterred from hurting ourselves only in fear of pain lol. I can get that you don't deliberate over actually hurting yourself, but a completely still mind with no background chatter frightens me a little. I no longer talk to 'me', I mostly explain concepts to other people mentally when I connect unrelated bits of knowledge. Glad to hear that .

Care to elaborate the biggest differences between, let's say - now and 5 years before? Specifically: The inner dialog. I get that there's probably no idle chatter going on, but can you actually talk to yourself mentally? What about mental images and sounds? Do catchy songs stalk you? Can you visualize solutions to complex problems? Do you get flashes of memories and tune out of physical sight? Psychological feelings. Anger, fear, sexual arousal, hunger, etc. Do you feel them? Physical pain, like hitting your arm against the wall - full force. Would you do it? Why not? Synthesia. Do you differentiate between distinct sense spaces such as sound, sight, touch? What do you do for a living? Is it mentally challenging?

@Preetom I was asking about abnormality in reference to your question. I'm not disputing the validity of the test. I just think that it's a remarkable result after a few years of meditation, so I was curious whether there were any abnormalities to begin with.

@Arhattobe So, you were just curious? I can kinda get that. Did you learn anything interesting? Also, do you maybe have a brain scan from before you started meditating? It may be the case that your brain was abnormal to begin with.