Manjushri

@electroBeam Mental states are physiological reactions? why so???

@Jack River @electroBeam @electroBeam This is what we're getting towards,i guess. Leo never says it's wrong? He says rationality is wrong, but only rants against materialism. Contents of consciousness

@Jack River For argumentation purpose, we took the opposing sides. My friend's task is to confirm materialism (because his emotional beliefs are more idealism-sided) and my task is to confute it. I'm aware of the underlying biases. And the best two examinations of a claim ARE: Why is it such? Why would it not be such? (we took the second one because the first one is self-explanatory within materialism)

@winterknight I searched the post and saw that nobody asked these two questions : How did "you" get "enlightened"? How does one become enlightened in general?

Anybody who is currently in Belgrade or nearby message me would be nice to get to know you

thank you for all your dear answers @Jack River Please elaborate. @wavydude We already have,and we got to this point. You can't solve the mind/body problem in materialism, so what a materialist does is reduce the mind to matter. @Hellspeed Why do you think so? I think it's important to be able to use logic for ontology too, the basic one at least.@Nahm Who says that? Materialists aren't necessarily atomists,no??? @Consilience Yeah,we figured this one out still, consciousness is then just an umbrella term for ons,ontos,being,God,whatever. we're talking about the contents in it - they can all actually be matter,why not? .@wren checking it out! thank you @Emanyalpsid hahahahaha, you sound like a Zen master please elaborate, you're too hermetic. We're not actually taking any standpoints, just trying to practice our rhetoric and logic, which I consider important. My beliefs aren't that emotionally tangled anymore. I can change them accordingly. I have a relevant read everybody! https://strangenotions.com/the-single-best-argument-against-philosophical-materialism/ Please tell me what you think! It's interesting.

TL;DR Drop your clinging to pleasure to get closer to attaining liberation. Stop trying to gauge experience and maximize pleasue. Just be. Question is in the last paragraph. so, something 'bad' happens (eg shit decision, i usually get angry at myself for making shit decisions!) and even 2hrs later I'm spinning it in my head. it's long gone but I'm keeping it it alive. even minute things cause suffering... 'I should've gone home an hour ago, wouldn't of have eaten outside and spent money and wasted an hour and got tired and then in an even bigger slump because i wasted time, didn't accomplish anything, got tired and basically ruined my evening' look at the monkey chatter!!! The situation is pretty neutral if you detach yourself from it. Only when you start taking it personally, you suffer what happens to me more and more often from practice is that my mind is trained so i know better, so i let go. or I'm too much in the present to care, even though (if we take that time and causality exist) the present moment was gravely affected by my past mistake. BUT THEN! Why do I consider that a mistake? That's where the inquiry starts. It's basically a mistake because i minimized my present and future pleasure. Not in the shit hedonistic way, but in the more 'enlightened hedonism (read : antic philosophy) way'. Every time I was bitching about something it was about pleasure. Let me try to explain it. Me going home earlier would of have meant more pleasure, because I wouldn't of have gotten tired, wasted time, expended energy etc. Even the utility categories such as optimal mental states and time (to clarify, eg : you're studying, so you need the optimal conditions for it. either u gonna use neurotropics or biohack or just ride the wave of when clear and energized mental states come. tiredness is a shit state for productivity, time is valuable if you're looking solely at PRODUCTIVITY and OUTPUT, future oriented, not present) it boils down to PLEASURE. now getting rid of the clinging to pleasure, I can sense the tremendous liberation in it. When you stop looking subconsciously GAUGING experience as in 'ooh this is good, this is bad, why did this happen, this cold is gonna ruin my weekend' and trying to maximize pleasure. Not talking about hedonists, more about everybody who is caught in the cycle of desire-aversion. And why do I want pleasure rather than unpleasant sensations? Oh shit! We're going deeper. In most people's cases that I've enquired, they think the headache is going to last forever so they resist it. What's really interesting is that in my case, I usually resist unpleasant sensations is because I think they're going to have some kind of consequence in the future. EG it's chilly outside, the cold is an unpleasant sensation (leaning towards neutral) and I'm shivering. What my mind does is GAUGE the experience and attach an implication. This thing that's happening now is going to affect my health (thus minimize my pleasure), so I don't like it! making the sensation unpleasant. This is all happening behind the scenes, it seems to me - sometimes it's conscious too. Otherwise, shivering is pretty neutral tbh. How do you get over this though? It seems pretty hard-wired for survival to care about the consequences of things, gauging experiences and trying to maximize pleasure. Otherwise you're gonna starve to death observing that hunger, or love the sunshine the entire summer and then die in the winter not having prepared a shelter and extra food ... Not that there's anything inherently bad about that, though.

So my formula is basically : - ground myself before talking, or during the chatty phase - cultivate loving thoughts and genuine wishes for the other person to be happy, free from suffering, etc - see what i can offer and what the person needs -open body language, eye contact -listening without interrupting -asking RELEVANT questions. not the ones you read from google -actually CARING and being interested in the other person hehe and the key part : -making it all about feelings. that's how the best conversations go imho. expressing them and being vulnerable but grounded at the same time, makes it a great experience with a potential to connect easily. ever since I've been doing this, I have the reputation of a kind and loving person. ps circling is awesome too.

@Shin meant to be? what kind of belief is that?

@billiesimon even better lol, just root out the people u don't want to connect with

I'm trying to meditate now but everything that happens is me sinking into semi-conscious patterns and behavior, even getting up etc. But often times it happens that you get less sleep, but not that low of an amount to just go to sleep. I don't to my practice to suffer because of this, but it does. I do 20 mins instead of 45 and that sucks.

I marvel at science, but when I have to study facts, etc. - I simply don't care. I'm learning the nervous system atm and it 'should' be darn amazing, but....

@Joseph Maynor there are good apps. I limited social media to 10 mins a day, after that the app blocks it. App Off Timer

I can see the quality of my meditation sessions decreasing when I use my phone. But it's too useful to quit. What probably makes me the most distracted is the freelance job feed... but i get real easy money with it. its the only 'scroll' and 'check often' type app i use. I sometimes get lower consc and check whatsapp often too... Wat do?

Or is it only one? When I say one I mean the one 'I'm' experiencing right now. What about Las Vegas consciousness?

@Solace Metta Bhavana? What else? I get glimpses of immense love during tje day from just a 5 min metta.

@Nahm @Nahmhahahahahahahahahahaha@Nahmhahahahahahahahahahaha! The insight that it's me hit me like a truck yesterday when I read Leo's post. here it is : https://www.actualized.org/insights/the-magic-of-consciousness Before that it were always pixels on a screen. I think i stared at the . gif for 20 mins in awe. Thank you @Leo Gura!!!!

@non_nothing @Nahm @non_nothing wow... that's amazing!

@Joseph Maynor ok, we're close to the point. can you read my reply to Leo? So basically anything outside of my field of direct sensory experience that's within Awareness is an abstraction? like in a dream?

@Leo Gura read my reply to the topic, I wanted to say is it one consciousness living itself from different angles or is the consciousness 'I'm' experiencing the only one? Like in solipsism just without the ego. Is there anything ever happening in Las Vegas or only the things present in the consciousness 'I'm' experiencing - like in a lucid dream. So something would happen in Las Vegas if I went there or read the news, etc.

@Shiva Facebook is not a problem. I open it once a day just to see messages and don't look back. I started college so I installed whatsapp to communicate easier with mates and I use it a lot that's the only time/consciousness sink app. It makes me restless and low consc. It can happen too from surfing, even tho I limit myself to surfing only with a purpose.

This is a confusion I have about nonduality. When I say multiple, I mean one consciousness living itself from different angles?

It happens sometimes. What do you do in order not to fall into autopilot?

Every once in a while you need some motivation to get on the cushion. Post your favorites here! here's mine : if you ain't conscious, you ain't living.

@Outer i always happen to be. it never happens that i dont!!