electroBeam

here is a good resource on the subject: http://www.thewayofmeditation.com.au/blog/find-an-authentic-spiritual-teacher/ Whats the best way to find a spiritual guru within physicality. unlike looking for a business partner or job, you cant just look these people up on the internet. plus figuring out whether these people are legit yogis and buddhists is hard to do considering theres no such thing as a spiritual resume. where did you look. And more importantly how did you asses their qualifications?

Its not a clock, its a mala. They have a long history of being used by ancient tribes to figure out whether or not certain food is poisionous. If you get a mala and meditate with it, it transforms based on your meditative experiences, and then can be used to detect certain states of consciousness. Buy one, and you'll see what sadhguru means.

@Ether jann esmann?

@Leo Gura that sounds like fate.

"Experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn no other way." i disagree with this proverb. it should be experience is a hard school, but only smart people are willing to pursue it. A fool avoids it for the words of others you never learn truly by just reading off someone elses words. youre not enlightened just because you adopted someones view about it. you only truly learn after experience

I've been doing the life purpose course, and I'm slowly discovering that what I really enjoy the most is being a big picture thinker. I don't really enjoy being specific and doing something specialized, but what I do really enjoy doing is working with how things relate to each other, rather than dealing with the world in a rather distinct way. For example, just say you had to build a lego house, I would rather figure out how the walls and roof and door relate to each other, and how to place them together rather than make a wall, or make a door, etc. I've got a few jobs that might be in alignment with my purpose: data science, sociology(sociology is so cool) complex systems, systems engineering. Though these jobs are hard for graduates to get into straight off the bat, and I can't really see how they could contribute to making the world a more conscious, loving place. Does anyone else know any jobs that seem like you need to be a big picture thinker in order to succeed? Sorry for it being so abstract, the inner voice doesn't like making things concrete and easy to understand

i disagree with Leo. Most people in society do some sort of low level personal development. 99% of people are looking for a promotion, more money, doing up their hair, getting better grades. If you want evidence just look up the harvard business review. Heaps and heaps and heaps of people are competitively trying to increase their skill in business. the business world is tough, making a successful startup is hard, being a ceo isnt achieved by everyone, precisely because heaps of people do personal development unconsciously or informally. Look at how well structured political speeches are, how well marketing campaigns are designed. The people personal development skills needed for that is absolutely astonishing. Obama did heaps of social personal development to get into office. Heaps of people are fit, every personal development stream is highly competitive. The self help category is an entire section in every library. Self help is just as big as the science fiction reading section. Its a multimillion dollar business just in itself. Like what Alan Watts said, personal development is ingrained in the American culture. But hardly anyone attempts to achieve spiritual growth,, thats where 99% of people are failing. And this isnt good, its bad. it means theres less gurus to guide you on the spiritual path. Infact 99% of spiritual people dont even do spirituality properly. And dont think this is a good ego boost, the point of spirituality is to get off the hook of ego gratification. its to stop playing the ego game all together. theres no room to feel special in that environment. No one is jealous of an old, smelly, illiterate, poor sage sitting in a mountain cave in the himalayas. If your friends were all like that, you wouldnt be jealous or feel threatened, you would be relieved that they arent pressuring you to go drinking every weekend, and instead just want to give you a positive influence to get closer to god.

@egoless you need to work for someone else first before you go and create your own farm. how else do you expect to get experience.

Ayurveda and Chinese Traditional medicine(the alternative medicines) are holistic in nature. We are using Ayurveda precisely because its a well thought out holistic approach to improving someone's wellbeing. I'm only suggesting stuff in my experience. I haven't dabbled in the educational space that much. I worked with a professor at my university on inventing a new online learning system that was based on a psychological research branch called self regulated learning. It was very multidisciplinary, but academic scientists do a terrible job of relating information together. This is because everything that is made in an academic setting must be run under the scientific method. The scientific method is predicated upon testing 1 variable only, that's 1 quantifiable piece of mental thought. If you add 2 or 3 variables, the scientific method falls apart. The scientific method, at its core, doesnt have any facilities for effectively testing relationships between multiple variables AT ONCE. This is a huge problem if you want to access the power of holism. And based on what I saw, the educational system is very mechanic and scientific in their approaches to teaching. Marking schemes rely upon breaking down pieces of information and attaching a mark to them so they can scientifically give each person a fair Mark. The actual techniques taught by teachers are very poorly designed for matching relationships between pieces of information. For example, to construct an argument, you need to use the PEEL method, point explanation evidence and link. Highly separatist sort of stuff. Actually teaching and disciplining students was the only holistic thing I saw. But the training programs for teaching kids is again, run by a highly separatist educational system who segregate everything to allot marks to people. There are holistic educational systems out there, like This one but.... these institutions are considered weird and esoteric hahaha. Convincing people who are rational(like the government) to fund these things is difficult. Maybe schools in India are different, so don't take my word for it. Though alternative medical practitioners are the only set of fields that are purely holistic in nature.

@Vaishnavi Hi Vaishnavi, i did a degree in engineering and i didnt want to waste it which strongly influenced my decisions. Im cofounding a successful startup in health care which uses IoT technology in combination with ayurveda to solve the well known silo problem Making a startup requires a suprising amount of systems thinking. because startups are small, you need to at the very least consider perspectives in marketing, sales economics, venture capital mindset, medical perspectives(i strongly suggest that you get into healthcare or something alturistic,working hard to save someones life is much easier than working hard to sell people icecream for example) even if your focus is engineering. which is great because your job has a certain energy and vibration that reflects a wholeness and completeness. In a startup, you get to see how a company is made from the ground up, which again means you get to feel everything in the company. Other than startups, ive interned as a research engineer at my university, and also as a data scientist at the CSIRO If you want to be a systems thinker, keep clear of academia. Researching in a multidisciplinary academic environment sounds holistic and meaningful, but when you actually do it, you realize academic research is unnecessarily clunky and mechanic. Submitting a research paper is 90% mechanically reading over your thesis to make sure all of the pedantic bs that doesn't change much wont be the thing that rejects all of your work. The other 10% is actual intuitive insight, which is only developed through a holistic understanding of what you're reading about. Concerns you may have: -> I'm from India! Startups suck over here! Yes the government isn't helping startups much in India, but really what you're looking for in a holistic career is to somehow give value to the world and to create an atmosphere that is most receptive to your spiritual work. The government in India specifically sucks at giving funding to startups and preventing their regulations, but governments can't hinder you in giving value to people in your country. A startup is a social movement with a clear plan of obtaining money, not a business. Startups require passion, enthusiasm and morale, not complex management seen in established businesses. If it helps, my country is rated just as low in the innovation and startup scale as India, and we are still thriving. -> It takes up a lot of time, time you can spend on meditation or self inquiry. Startups give you the opportunity to be extremely flexible in your working conditions. If you meditate for 4 hours during office time, no one is going to complain. You're the boss. You can arrange your life in a spiritually significant way, like how I've done. The only constraint is its hard work. Everything else you can do. Imagine making a startup that uses technology to more effectively harness water for farmers in india. Or by making some sort of device that changes India's culture to consume water at a slower rate, like for example make a deal that you will provide a water delivery service to indian farmers at a certain price, very conveniently, and this pricing model ensures that water is taken from rivers at a slower rate. Could you imagine being annoyed with spending a lot of time on a job like that? Maybe Sadhguru will notice and give you free meditation training In my second internship, I was still doing research, but for industry. What I've realized is unfortunately, the more intellectually smart you are, the more likely you will thrive in a very fragmented, specialized field, that is void of holistic thinking. See 90% of specialized work isn't holistic insight, its mechanic nitty gritty stuff that isn't fun, but intellects are very good at. The higher up you go, the more holistic it is, even though the higher you go the more political it gets as well. Even though that's the case, there are some jobs(in the engineering field) that are more likely to be holistic then mechanic: -> a job that has 'director' in it -> a systems engineer (its an actual job, for example SpaceX and Northrop Grumman has one) -> Senior Technical Engineer (google's hierarchy) To find a holistic job in the industry, you need to look for smaller companies, higher positions in those smaller companies, and the more vague a title is the better(probably because its holistic which is hard to define). A Cofounder is a perfect example of a vague title. Another tip is to find jobs where the actual workflow isn't well defined. Jobs where there isn't a well established way of doing it tends to be more holistic in my experience. This includes being an artificial intelligence expert rather than a software engineer(in my experience). This is because the more defined a job is, the more segregated and separate it is. Basically the formula for finding a holistic job: holistic-job-points = (how vague the title is) * (how high up you are) + how small the company is. Anyway the takeaway is get into a startup, if that's too hard use this formula ^ to find a holistic job. But if you really want to max out your holistic skills, the most meaningful way is to become an alternative medicine practitioner, if you have the balls to do so.

well dreaming about flying a plane doesnt make you a pilot. And you dont know if monks are the happiest people in the world. youre just assuming they are because thats what everyone else thinks. the only way you would truly know is if you had direct experience of that being the case. infact enlightenment has a 50% chance of being a scam and the majority of people on here hold it as a fact, even though they no idea if its true or not

About a month or so ago I had 0 relationship experience, so I decided to get off my ass and do something about it. I found this girl at university while doing cold approach, we've been dating for a month or so, everything is going well, its looking very much like a potential relationship. While this girl is the cutest girl ive ever seen, and I sure do want to be in a relationship with her, the primary reason why I got off my ass in the first place was to gain experience in dating girls, and to become a pickup god. If I decide to keep being in this relationship, obviously you can see that I can't hone in on my pickup skills. I'm not sure if I should continue the relationship, and just get into pickup if we break up, or if I should reject the relationship now before I get too attached, and just focus on doing one night stands to hone my skills my like the next 5 years before going into a relationship. I want to be able to attract any girl I want, so that im not stuck in the future looking for dates. What have you guys found to be the most effective thing to do? Its just my luck that the first girl I decide to date has to be really attractive and nice

The real test of whether you're worthy or not of this spiritual journey, is to see if you can handle and accept the world the way it is right now. God has the power to change the world however he wants. If it wanted the human race to be the most mature things in the universe, we would be. But we're not, precisely because god doesn't want it that way. Learn to accept all of god, not just the parts you like.

@Leo Gura do you mind giving an example? Or further information?

Why do advaita Vedanta, and neo advaitans always say that bhakti and karma yoga are limited and will not take you to self realization? What specifically is wrong with bhakti and karma yoga and what specifically is special about gnana yoga that makes spiritual leaders assert that bhakti and karma yoga are limited.? Infact in my own experience, bhakti and Kriya yoga are 1000 if not infinite times more effective at connecting with the divine than gnana yoga could ever being. Gnana yoga in my experience just leaves you in mental masturbation and going round in circles, chasing your tale. What am I missing here, what dangers am I putting myself in by 'wasting' my time on bhakti and Kriya yoga, as one guru said from an advaitan perspective.

@Martin123 I already follow (and have his Shakti Pat in absentia) but a lot of gurus disagree with him and think his Shakti Pat is just projection of the mind hence why im asking this

@Highest why is that? Why is bhakti not gonna get you to liberation?

@Toby Australia, will check them out thanks!

@Toby Mooji is another example of someone who denies Kriya Yoga I understand his stance though, he thinks that everything other than the absolute is 'just the mind'. Like he mistakes prana energy for being just a projection.

@Toby http://srivasudevacharya.com/sri-vasudevacharya/ Unfortunately I talk to teachers in person so this is all I could find of him

@SamEuphoria93 yes I have tried it. Its very difficult because a lucid dream state is very different to the waking state you're always in. You may have for example a kundalini awakening during the lucid dream, but find out as you wake up that it was just a hallucination. A projection of what you think a kundalini experience is, not a real kundalini experience. 2nd consideration is to repetitively lucid dream every night is difficult. After a year of training you might be able to lucid dream 3 times a week if you're lucky. But self inquiry is very effective during a lucid dream. Discrimination(which the founding pillar of jnana yoga) is very effective during lucid states. Honestly if you want to get in more meditation time, you're better off practicing mindfully resting throughout the day so that you develop the ability to sleep 3 hours a night. This approach will be quicker and you will have the luxury of meditating in a waking state rather than a dream state. There's nothing more real to a waking state of reality verse a dream state of reality, but it's just more easier to get distracted by delusion in a dream state. It's not a state appropriate for meditation.

Actually, most yogis and individuals (including me) have much more success with visualization type yoga (Kriya, Tantra) than neo advaita methods like self inquiry. Infact gnana yoga is considered the most difficult form of yoga possible.

Has anyone been successful in figuring out how to ask a girl for dating/attraction feedback when she rejects you? I went cold approach today and found a girl, but she said she was too busy, so I asked her frankly in a playful way, where did i go wrong, and she didn't want to tell me and just kept laughing. This was on the phone btw. Has anyone else been successful in asking out girls who rejected them on where they went wrong? Like how will you improve if you're not entirely sure on what you did wrong in the first place.

This is from my direct experience, so its likely it will be true for you and its worth investigating. As human beings, we actually have enormous potential to tame our minds. Evolution has literally given us the tools to tame our monkey mind, and to change our level of awareness. We have the ability to think logically, control our thoughts to a certain extent, and get rid of unpleasantness through these means. BUT DONT MISTAKE THESE ABILITIES AS BEING 'YOURS' you're not the brain, youre not the ego and you're not the body. You are simply the thing aware of all these things. This awareness that you are has no ability by itself to control what is in its field of awareness. It will flow like a wave, to different levels of unpleasantness depending on cause and effect. mental suffering can actually linger on after the brain has no control. Its not necessarily just a mental projection. Pain and suffering can happen without psychology. This is a scary thing, because when you die, you will have to give up your mind, your ability to meditate away pain, to convince yourself that everything will be ok and if your last moments are filled with suffering, you will actually keep that suffering for possibly eternity. Can you imagine being stressed for eternity????? With no way to stop it. This is real, I experienced it. So the reason why I'm sharing this, is to motivate the people on here to partake in spirituality intensely. Ofcourse you wont believe me, but if you decide to empirically investigate this phenomena, through psychedelics and self inquiry, you will have lifetimes of motivation, trust me.

@Psyche_92 you need to get use to loosing everything and restarting from ground zero if you want to keep actualizing. This is a natural part of the process. The actualization you've been doing for the last 2 years was building a scaffold for a building, now you need to start from ground zero and actually build that building again. See what you've been doing for the last 2 years isn't actually self actualization, its putting on a bandaid for problems that you've been having. Now you need to rip it off and solve the actual wound. This is what EMDR is, its solving things from the root. You can't avoid you past, you need to embrace it and accept it. Time to destroy all the bandaids you've been making and begin to actually fix the root problem: heaps of resources out their to do that I wont mention them. You haven't wasted the last 2 years of your life, its probably the case that you were too ignorant to solve things from the root 2 years ago, so bandaids were the only way, but don't expect that bandaid to hold forever.