electroBeam

It depends who you are though, because saying 'who am I' can make you point to the body, because society has held up the notion that you are the body for so long that that's what you point to when you are asked that question. Where with 'who is aware' its pretty clear you go back to the creator. Though loved that excerpt! I've been looking for the best meditation practices for a while now, and I'm surpised I haven't come across that one(and Rupert's) so much time wasted.

@Shiva what do you do after 'locking' onto your awareness? Because in my experience nothing happens, you just stay ultra sober. But you don't bliss out like a buddha.

its funny how small atoms, particles, science, art, our insecurities, and ourselves are compared to the infinite expansion of god. Our universe as we understand it is infinitely small compared to all of the universes, rules, galaxies, worlds out there. And that's on top of the fact that atoms are tiny compared to objects in this universe.

@Principium Nexus just wanted to add something that hasn't been outlined yet: Try meditating 24/7. Constantly be aware of what thoughts are going through consciousness, and if you can, focus on the present moment very intensely. Put a buddha wallpaper on your phone and laptop to remind you of what you are to be doing 24/7 -> seeing god for what he truly is, without the devil's influence. set an alarm every 15 minutes telling you to MEDITATE! And also most importantly, do some shadow work! Martin123's guide will give you a great start. I tried cognitive behavioral therapy, Cognitive Modified Therapy, heaps of psychologist appointments and videos off the internet about my social anxiety, nothing changed for years. Until one day I spoke to my Buddhist teacher about it, and she gave me the advice I just gave above. And I'm now able to talk to random strangers off the streets without anxiety, because once you start meditating 24/7 your mind switches from anxiety being in the foreground, to the present moment being in the foreground, and anxiety in the background. ---------------- And lastly, we humans hate suffering and pain of course, we try so hard to avoid it all. But suffering isn't all that evil and horrible actually. Suffering is just god's way of helping you get through your journey. You can demonize and hate situations that make you uncomfortable, or you can stop fighting it and start to accept and love it. Walk up to a girl you like, ask for her number, and when that deep anxiety comes flowing in, don't try and avoid it! Don't try and change your external circumstances, fully accept the sensations, feel into it and imagine a massive pulse of energy flowing through your brain while you do pickup. ------ and for the awkwardness, I've been awkward since birth, and its not going away, and it doesn't have to. Awkwardness is like our appendix, its redundant and a pain in the ass to deal with, but its not harmful. Keep marching on.

@Rider yeah my main struggles with pickup is that, I'll go an apply a technique, and it wont work, because I'll get the context wrong, or I'll get the 'when to apply it'/situation wrong. But when you use your intuition, it can kind of tell you if a specific thing is appropriate or not, and it can guide you. For example, I watched a pickup video that woman loved dominance, so I decided to act really assertive and pushy on a date, and she basically told me that I was a control freak. Which my intuition did tell me I was being a control freak anyway though. Maybe use your intuition, and sprinkle pickup on top is the best way to do things?

I actually became more successful with the opposite sex, when I stopped watching RSD content and did things on my own accord and to what my authentic self wanted. Pickup is so mechanical and clunky, especially for newbs.

@Progress wassup progress, I just asked to join the group, look out for a ginger dude with an asian and white dude in his profile pic! I use to have this problem, but I somehow manage to get very very very deep with people by questioning them on a very personal level.

@SOUL faith and belief in something are extremely different.

@Annetta apart of who? ...

"My ego" Who is the one that owns your ego? The mother ego LOL

@Gopackgo Colours and sounds are metaphysical qualities, but the amazing part is that, we actually don't know much about them. We don't experience a chair, we experience a set of colours right? Now thoughts are most certainly real, like colours, but we have do idea of whether what they represent are real. So thoughts and the 'external world' are very similar to each other.

@Martin123 @Scholar Even more interestingly, considering text on a screen, when you meditate on it, is just arbitrary meaning produced by your own consciousness, why are you guys talking to yourselves like a mentally ill person?

There comes a point where you get so use to mindfuck, and actually from the perspective of silence, nothing seems mind fuckingish anymore though.

On the other hand, don't burn your ship before you've crossed the ocean

@Shubh_5S My business' purpose is to raise the consciousness of others, to a point where all of their material suffering is evaporated through detaching themselves to their mind/body. So I'm currently developing an algorithm that has an ego, and simulates egoic actions, so that we can discover more about how attachment works on a scientific level. Later I plan to make an neural network capable of self awareness. This mean using back propagation on back propagation. Its still in its early stages though. My initial plan is to make an app called TinyBuddha, make it cost like 50 cents so that I can make a living off it, and basically it will give one koans that are custom tailored to an individual's mental state(or level of consciousness). Then next I'm going to try and get into academia and produce my discoveries that I have made using my machine egoic model.

@Loreena I haven't but good idea! Thank!

@Arman oooo you used the word "I", I smell ego, ego ego, fraud, charlatan!

the first step to reaching enlightenment, is to realize that there is no such thing as enlightenment.

so what exactly do you mean? Call each other on skype and meditate? + what time is the doodle based on? US West time?

You're too nice! You know, if you do open up to them, that could possibly deepen your connection with your friends, and take it to the next level. The more you open up to them, the deeper your friendship with them will become, which is truly a beautiful thing to experience; to have a deep, intimate connection with people that you trust and love. But I personally don't open up to my friends. I mean I'm open to telling them about my political views, and giving them my opinion on sensitive topics like whether I'm jealous about someone or not, but I always act casual with it, and don't give them any hint as to whether I'm being serious or not. I keep my insecurities to myself(apart from talking about them on this forum) because I feel like the stuff I'm going through is stuff that nobody else experiences, and so I don't think they would understand, and even if they did, their unconscious behavior would lead them to judge, which would be a huge disservice. But if you have friends that would look out for you, compassionately understand your problems and talk with you about them, then you should definitely talk to them about your problems. Man it would be so beautiful to have a group of people you could care for selflessly.

I was listening to a guided meditation by Adyshanti today, and I had an insight, but I'm not sure on how to take it.... For a bit of context: Whenever I meditate, I'm always trying my hardest to get the most out of the meditation session, I make sure I focus really hard on the present moment, and make sure I let go of my thoughts as much as I can, any act that is the opposite of what mainstream society does -> get distracted by toxic thoughts, etc. So I've always subconsciously assumed that enlightenment would be something like this: my mind gets very still, my ego disappears, I start to see a deep pitch black void that's behind the experience I see, like opening a closet and finding god or something in it(makes me laugh now ) and boom enlightenment. But I always got really frustrated, because I could never seem to find it, no matter how much focus I put on it. And I could never drop beliefs I had that I intellectually knew were wrong(or so I thought) so basically meditation would just end up in one big frustrating cluster fuck, over and over again, and I wouldn't just do this for 20 mins a day, I would do this walking to university, in the shower, everywhere. But uh... Adyshanti said something in his guided meditation that hit me. He said that there is nothing to find, and that everything is already there. I've heard the mantra heaps of times(youre already enlightened, you just don't realize it, etc) but I didn't believe them because I'm still suffering and have an ego therefore im not enlightened. But I just realized that actually, everything that exists right now, everything that we already know, and have known just not acknowledged it, is actually all there is, and ever going to be. Like its not like awareness is just going to jump out of no where and go bam here I am! But does this actually mean that all awareness is, is that thing we've always been aware of since our birth? That thing that is aware of thoughts? Because there is literally nothing else it could be. But at the same time, its so simple and obvious, its always been there, like it hasn't come about just because we've started meditating, its always been about?? I'm expecting enlightenment to be more finding something, and not just accepting that the thing in front of our noses, like it has to be more than that, because if its not.... that's really fucking simple and obvious. The other thing I'm confused about is, if its really that thing that we all know, and can all see right now! Then why do people talk about it being so different to that? Like everything being one? And how are there multiple levels to this thing? All levels are in awareness?? And why does it take so long to realize this when its so simple? And why do people talk about different states of consciousness being required to realize this awareness? Like haven't we all been aware of it ever since we are born? And why do people go through so much shit on this path if its so simple, i.e. the dark knight of the soul, weird non free will realizations, and so much other weird stuff. Its not like anything has changed realizing what awareness is, consciousness hasn't changed at all hahaha. People make it seem so much like its about finding a needle in a haystack or something, like its hidden, and suddenly it will pop out of nowhere, but after that meditation session im not sure anymore. Am I just dreaming something up or not getting something? Because this is very confusing. Sorry for the disorganized post, kudos to someone who can understand it.

@Martin123 the thing im confused about is what do you focus on? hahahaha. Because its hard to focus on awareness itself. But yeah letting perception fade in the background is certainly good to do. But focusing on your ego seems to be a good practice to do.

When you're trying to find god though, how does that leap happen from not seeing awareness to seeing awareness? Do you just have to keep trying and hope for the best? Because there's been plenty of meditation sessions where I wouldn't discover anything at all, just have insights. Sometimes it can feel like you're wasting your time or being mislead or something. And also how do you actually break beliefs? Say you close your eyes and press your fingers real hard, and notice that you have an image of your fingers pressing and you really believe it, how do you break that belief? Because I've tried focusing awareness on it like a lazer beam in hope that it would lazer the belief in half, but that doesn't happen the belief just keeps with you.

@Barna if you are everything, can you make poverty go away plzz

Yeah this is something I'm confused with. Everyone says let go and just surrender and don't control anything... but if you do that, you become unconscious because if you don't control anything and just do what your ego wants you to do, it will dream about stuff, get angry at you, etc. So I feel like I do have to control my meditation sessions otherwise it will be just a waste of time. Or try and control and not control, do what Osho says and let meditation affect you, like meditation is a medical doctor/psychologist, but still do what the doctor says(like focus etc) so still control yourself to a certain extent.