electroBeam

@Charlotte I use to like science in HS, but then I started hating it because of how wrong it really was (after contemplation) but now im starting to like it again. Why? Because I about a year or 2 ago I was a black and white thinker. If science was slightly wrong about something, I would palm it off as completely incorrect and stupid. Now I'm starting to realize this is a silly way to go about things. Yes a scientific model might be 90% wrong, full of lies, dogmas and self prejudice, but there is usually a 10% of the model that actually is enlightening and correct, and quite insightful. While what science is saying in an absolute, concrete sense is wrong, its relationships, patterns and connections with other subject usually can give you some valuable insight, if looked at it sceptically and holistically. Take for example Netwton's laws of mechancis. Of course these laws are technically wrong in an absolute sense, yet there does seem to be a relationship between objects falling to the ground. Is this relationship a constructed illusion? Could be, but even if it is an illusion, it gives you an insight into how the mind creates illusions, and also gives you insight into the cultural paradigms and ways of thinking in either Newton's head or the culture Newton was brought up in. F=ma starts to break down at a molecular level, but its not completely incorrect. There is still that 10% of it which is true, the other 90% is covered by quantum mechanics.

@Salvijus yeah, I can see that psychedelics obviously bring awakening experiences, but is it a wise, grounded way to do it? My gut is saying no. Small incremental steps + order seems to be a wiser choice than sporatic, chaotic leaps. @Strikr How did you integrate the experience to make the awakening permanent? How do you practice psychedelics? Do you meditate?

on most days(not all) I feel a constant fatigue feeling throughout my body. Description of the feeling: There is an overall tiredness feeling. Its slightly different to the feeling of sleepiness, in that the feeling has a bit of an irritation feeling, its highly linked to anger: causes anger in myself, and also amplifies my brain's resistance to emotionally and physically laborious tasks, such as meditation, engineering work, maths work, etc. If I try and sleep, that feeling will still be there, yet I doubt my body will actually sleep. The feeling is hard to localise, but it feels like its coming from my head and chest (heart and 3rd eye chakras). What I have tried to overcome it, and the results that came after it: 1. I have tried sleeping more (9 hours a day). There have been days where I have felt more energy (at the levels I want) where I slept 12-13 hours that night, yet these days are inconsistent and only very rare. On most days I sleep better, I would feel just as tired, and my body would spontaneously wake up tired, where I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep(it would spontaneously wake up with only 6-7 hours of sleep in a few cases, with no external stimuli to cause it, my body rarely can keep asleep for more than 8 hours) 2. Lower carb diet: I have tried a medium low carb diet, say about 30-50 grams of carbs a day. The diet would mainly consist of eggs, meat a small amount of kale and onion and tomato and cocoa fat (from 90% dark chocolate), all cooked not raw. After trying this diet, I have not noticed a change in my tiredness, what I have noticed suprisingly is that I actually feel slightly less tired when I have more carbs. On this diet I barely have any fruit and definitely no sugar. Other information: I regularly meditate on a daily basis (for about 1 hour) I do have ingestion problems. If I have gluten or milk, I will have diarrhoea. I have had a gluten and dairy diet ever since I was a child, up to a year ago, because my parents didn't know any better/were ignorant on the harmful effects of a child having diarrhoea weekly. While I do occasionally have gluten and lactose (maybe at most once a month) since then (due to changing diets after all this time being a real struggle), on most days I will have a lower carb gluten and lactose free and organic diet. I have been doing this diet for about 8 months now. I also feel more hungry than I should be, considering I eat about 1800 to 2000 calories a day. I definitely do not feel full, and I even feel slightly hungry constantly. Yet this could just be because I am fatigued (it certainly feels this way). Another weird thing I have, is difficulty catching my breathe. I constantly feel like I am not getting enough oxygen, and consequently yawn a lot. What possibly could I try to relieve my fatigue? Of course as expected, the local GP has done a very poor, infact negative job on my condition. Would you suggest any specific alternative medicine sect to try which is especially good at fatigue resolution? What about diet? Is there anything I'm missing?

I was under the border for both b12 and iron in my youth (4 years ago) but now b12 is hovering just above the border after my diet changes. I should have payed more attention to Iron though. The doctor didnt test me on that because he felt like it wasn't a problem. My blood pressure is around 146 units. right now its 64. I was diagnosed with having a murmur at birth and can hear every beat of my heart without touching my pulse. No wheezing that I can hear. I have a very strong sensation that my throat is closed. It sort of feels like when you get a cramp in your neck muscles and your neck is squeezing. Not sure if this is relevant, but I constantly have a very irritating lump of mucus/snot inside my throat. It feels like (feels not saying its actually true, just describing a sensation) that the mucus is also contributing to the throat close problem. 6-7am almost repetitively. I haven't to be honest, thanks for the suggestion. Which tests would you suggest I should ask for next time I see a doctor? The doctor routinely gives me generic advice on how to solve the problem. He tells me to ensure I am not depressed, getting enough sleep and excising. I wish my problem would go away with doing those things, but it hasn't. What would you suggest for the doctor to prompt him to look for a more deep cause if there is anything I could say? And would you suggest any particular diet changes I should make + any breathing exercises to make my throat bigger?

@Gerhard Hey mate, you will derive heaps and heaps of value by contemplating on this idea: "treat your customers as human beings, rather than just another object helping you get donations". Engagement of customers is a huge factor in your business model. With engagement, you will get more people using your site, and more donations per person. Through the site, give your customers a more personal feel. Make them feel like they are valued, and that they are meaningful/important. Get them involved in the business and give them a sense of ownership with your business. Include them into your business as if they are apart of your family. To give you a concrete example (for the sake of conveying my idea, I'm not telling you to actually implement this), consider the following redesign of your site: Give them ownership and autonomous control over what they donate to. - When buying things from the book depository, they get to choose what to donate to. They have the ability to choose a donation that is deeply meaningful to them. For example, just say a person on your site had a family member with a heart attack, they can actually choose to donate to heart attacks rather than just "preventing malaria and deworming treatments". If that isn't possible for now, would be great to have the ability to choose between those 2, or even give them the ability to suggest things to donate to, like a democratic thing where you provide them a list, and you tally up which areas your customer base wants to fund raise to. If you can personalize it even further, like allowing them to choose the country they donate to, etc, even better. The more personal it is, the higher amount of donation money you will get. Give your customers real statistics on how their money is making an impact. Make them feel special and important, and really trigger their empathy and compassionate side. Don't just provide this site and not give them feedback, why would they donate to a site like that? Be as transparent and open as possible. - for example: show that you care about their involvement and you have a really strong passion with making them involved in the process, not just on the money side but also on the emotional side. Really show you appreciate their help. you could do this by: After they buy an item from one of your stores (like ebay) a very interesting, fun and fascinating interactive page pops up, showing how africa was before your donations, and how it is after. Show them statistics of the lives saved (with emotional pictures of malaria treatments inside the hospital). Keep them updated on your progress. Make it exciting for your customers to use your site: - You could give them 'compassion dollars' where every time they buy a product with your sites, they get compassion dollars (like 2 compassion dollars). If they get 20 compassion dollars, they get a free meaningful gift or humanitarian voucher. For example, they get a free teddy bear with an anti-malaria shirt on it.

For my life purpose I need to practice some skills that are not easily defined. Because of this I'm really struggling to nail down what exactly I need to do, and ways in which I can measure my progress and how well I went on a particular trial round. Here is the skills I want to master: Understanding reality as realistically and truthully as possible. I basically want to master the skill of western science. I want to understand experimental phenomena as realistically with as most clarity as possible. Yet how do I practice this haha? What practice drills can I tangibly put in place to master the art of observation itself? Master understanding and clarity itself? How do I figure out how well I am doing? Secondly I want to master the art of teaching others a skill/ teaching others so that they understand certain phenomena in very clear, clarified and deep ways too. Again how do you practice teaching someone a concept? How do I measure myself and how good I am at this? This is similar to mastering the skill of zazen. How the fuck do zen people train in zazen????? There is nothing tangible to measure? And even if you ask yourself questions personally like how much more clarity do I have on a daily basis, is my confusion decreasing, etc. These questions could be biased because you are biased + these questions may not even relate to zen. Its not like karate where its very tangible and specific what the move looks like, what the effect of the move is, etc. Any resources would be greatly appreciated!

I challenge your view of 'evolution'. Consider the possibility that living organisms (including humans) don't evolve in a linear, stagewise fashion, but evolve cyclically, more like a spiral. To give you a concrete example, the post-rational mind as you refer to has already existed since the beginning of man kind. Ancient siddha/Tamil Nadu tribes, ancient Egypt and South American and Australian shamans already expressed post rational features, not just in minor areas of their traditions, but integrated into the very ecosystem of their cultures. These cultures have existed post rationally since the last 10000 to 20000 years. Us as a society are moving up and down constantly in periods, like a sine wave. We move from pre rational, rational, to post rational, and back down again. What changes and 'evolves' are the themes in which these periods reside in. These themes are cultural, political or technological adaptations that change depending on the social or physical environment, and as long as the world's social or physical environment keeps changing, so will these adaptations. Examples of adaption range from the industrial revolution, to social movements like feminism, to the first invention of the bronze spade. You will find highly 'advanced' people and cultures from all walks of the time scale, from 10000 years ago, and there will exist post rational individuals 100000 thousand years from now, yet apart from the themes, I am certain that these individual will be no more advanced or sophisticated than the individuals 10000 years ago. Maybe the whole idea of linear, evolving progressions gives you a better insight into the cultural and mental beliefs the western society; ones who observed the phenomena, had, rather than the actual phenomena(evolution) they were observing itself.

Thanks great suggestions! so something like asking the students for feedback, indirectly questioning them to get a sense of whether or not they deeply learnt the deep empirical phenomena, etc.

I feel like if you want to be successfully spiritually or career wise, you need to get help, or be taught by someone else. I think that you cannot be successful just by doing spirituality or your career by yourself. Every great spiritual master had at least a few teachers they would ask questions to, most of the eastern ones had a sort of apprentice/guru thing going on, where they would get taught by their guru on a very personal level. So I have this underlying belief that if I want to be successful spiritual wise, I need to get help from somebody else. Yet I don't know what I need help in. I literally have no desire or I literally don't have any need to see a spiritual teacher face to face and ask them questions, except for the act of satisfying my belief said above. I am happy just sitting every morning for an hour, doing my bhakti yoga, empirically feeling what's going on, and then modifying my technique based on the empirical evidence. When I go to a Buddhist center just for the sake of trying to get taught, my questions always feel inauthentic, because I am just asking questions for the sake of asking them, rather than for any real reason. Same goes with this forum, sometimes I ask questions on here just for the sake of feeling like I need to because I can't get enlightened by myself, I need some guidance surely. But every time I post a question, either here or in some meditation center, my mind always tells me that I will get a much better answer if I contemplate the question myself, rather than ask someone else. So considering I don't have an intuition on developing connections with spiritual teachers or startup mentors, how should I go about getting taught by them? How do I get value out of a meditation center without it seeming forced or inauthentic? I feel like having a spiritual teacher would be of massive value, yet I don't know how to have a teacher? How should I go about it?

May I ask what this means and why it helped you spiritual/health wise?

I can't seem to get satisfied. No matter what I try, nothing satisfies me. What I am trying to do is live a good life. I really want to live a life that satisfies me. I believe that what I should do with my time here on earth is basically figure out what makes me happy and do it. Use intuition, channeling with deities to try and deeply connect with that thing that deeply makes you happy, and try and connect as much as you can. This is what personally makes me the happiest. And I want to do this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So to cut a long story short, my approach for living this life is this: Find a job where I can get paid to do things that fascinate me, makes me curious, makes me excited, makes me touch that aspect of reality that is beautiful, transcendent, find a job that allows me to bask in pure, raw, renaissance style creativity. If I find a job that does this, the job and workforce can be my very own spiritual channel for connecting with God. Just by being in the prescence of the work place, and just purely by doing the work, I connect with god. Just like how ancient Indian yogis built those amazing temples because the very act of being apart of building those temples gave them nirvana. I want to find a job like this. So I found a job that did that for me.... until 6 months ago. I'm currently the CTO of a company that makes robots for the medical area. Its deeply meaningful because its medical, I personally see it as a divine act of grace because saving someone's life is one of the most meaningful things you can pursue in live, and it requires me to get in touch with intellectual and empirical exploration of life... because I need to delve into artificial intelligence, which gives me the divine opportunity to really contemplate on what being human actually means, and what intelligence truly is from an existential perspective. Yet I have a problem... even this job doesn't satisfy me as much as I want. What I really enjoy in life is the pure act of discovery itself. Purely observing phenomena and getting fascinated, wowed, overwhelmed by it. Like if I read some mathematic formulas about chaos theory, and then try out the formulas in real life, play around with them, and discover some amazing empirical observations about it... I get overjoyed. Has anyone got any tips on how I can try and infuse this sort of work into an engineering startup? Do you guys generally try and have a work life balance, where you sanction off some of your work to mundane survival, and the other to something your passionate about, or do you try and combine them? Any personal reflections would be awesome! Thankyou in advance

@Your place at Heart Do you know the Tamil language or have any interest in learning it? Sadhguru's speeches tend to be more direct and pure and less censored when he talks in the tamil language. There would be massive amounts of value you would add to this forum if you translated and presented the deepest wisdom he proclaims in those videos. I only understand bits and pieces of Tamil, but this video had some real good value in it, like just compare this video: https://isha.sadhguru.org/in/ta/wisdom/video/aanmeegam-enral-enna To this one: watching the tamil video just makes my body light up with energy because of how truthul it is. None of that is the same with the first video.

By non ordinary, I mean non-ordinary reality, as described by Michael Harner. Out of all possible states of consciousness, from any spiritual sector, which state is appropriate for expression of creativity and intelligence. I would imagine that this non ordinary reality would exhibit: - less boundaries than ordinary (physical reality) reality, or boundaries that are expressed in infinite/pure form. - a highly energetic state (sort of like in Kriya, when all the atoms in the world become infused with prana) - deeply existentially insightful - because this state isn't about performing some task (for example shaman healing, where you get spirit animals out of people) but about a new perspective or way of thinking, I would imagine that this state is more abstract than other non-ordinary states (like dreaming, shamanistic states, etc). Does anyone know of such a state? And if so any resources for practicing it? I do know of a culture that did enter this reality, this culture was ancient egypt, but practicing their culture is extremely hard as there are no masters these days who practice it, and finding information about it is difficult.

thanks for this! The 'allowing the music guide you' is an attractive concept especially.

@ExodiaGearCEO I actually found bhakti yoga/love and devotion to be a perfect solution to this problem. You know loving kindness meditation? Instead of infusing people around you with love, infuse your business with love, then keep that love energy up throughout the day. This only works with meaningful businesses though... ones that actually save lives or make people happier.

@Leo-Tzu Drop all theories and beliefs you have about life, and pursue what remains. Drop your beliefs about orange -> pretend they dont exist Drop your beliefs about turquiose -> pretend they don't exist pretend spiral dynamics is a made up, crackpot theory drop all beliefs about spirituality and non-duality -> they are made up by crack pots. There is no non-duality Pursue what remains. This is true spirituality.

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

@Puppet Master I love your enthusiasm, but a tree is no more real than an imaginary unicorn in your head. Maybe you are confusing the essence of the tree with the actual appearance/clothing (which is the tree).

not quite, you can do all of these things BEFORE enlightenment. Its called 'paranormal activity' and it involves what you wrote above, 'manipulation of the physical'. Changing physical laws, switching dimensions. But this is still a physical act. Enlightenment is beyond the physical, its beyond being an admin, its literally leaving the game totally and living a real life. Still playing the game, even being an admin, even changing the code to manipulate the game's laws is actually petty compared to what is actually possible. If you were changing laws in front of Sadhguru or Ramina Mashahari, he would look at you, the same way he looks at orange stage wall street millionaires manipulating the system to get cash. Changing physical laws and switching dimensions is really just a practical application of Jacque derridia's technique of deconstruction. It boils down to changing your projections about reality, so that reality literally changes, but deconstruction will not get you enlightened. Deconstruction is still a technique within the dream.

What theories and techniques do you know of, that was related to the ancient egypt era, and spirituality? I did ancient egypt in high school, and from that experience, the egyptians seem like a bunch of deluded fools who were fixated on silly beliefs like your belongings transferring to your next life, weird gods that just look completely stupid when you compare them to the beliefs of buddhism and janism and mysticism. Maybe you guys can change my view on that? Im struggling to find my life purpose, or solidify it. I really really love advanced technology. The things that make my brain melt in awe are things like advanced military technology, artificial intelligence. But also what i really really desire is technology that is mysterious and magical. The thing that comes to my mind is ancient technology. It has that transcendent, magical element that I really aspire to. Theres a general culture around modern tech, where we design tech just to solve some convenience. Like a car is a more convenient versiom of walkong, typing is a more convenient version of walking, etc. What I really find inspiring in ancient tech, is that they mix Religion wirh technology. For example, The ancient myan calendar was not used just for convenience, but for understanding a transcendent aspect of life. Another aspect of inspiring tech is that it carries a sense of energy to it. the pyramids of egypt have been said to focus energy on humans who are under it. Not necessarily electricity but general interpretations of energy. Can anyone add something that will help further solidify my vision and life purpose?

just like how spirituality is an attitude, not a materialistic state, a spiritual job is more about how you approach your work, not what type of work you do. You could have a job as a priest, and yet still rape little children and be dogmatic for the rest of your life. You could also be a toilet cleaner, and wash toilets with such love and devotion, that you give the entire room this metaphysical beauty and sparkle, that whoever enters the bathrooms you clean, get instantly transformed into a happy mood by it. You could even put lotus flowers on the drying rack just before leaving. By doing this, you are practicing spirituality. Sure you aren't specifically doing a technique, but your living a spiritual lifestyle, which is 90% of devotion anyway. You would probably have a passion in something: something deeply interesting, aligns with your deepest desires. Now go and pursue that, and pursue it spiritually.

@blazed If you base your entire idea on 1 dude (Leo), then it appears that psychedelics can give you revolutionary experiences, but they seem not to be as effective as permanently changing your state of life. That doesn't mean they aren't valuable, you can still retrieve extremely valuable insights about where you need to be heading or what direction you should take in your life. And your still dogmatically stuck on this idea of consistency. Every person's experience is literally different. If you fly a rocket into the sun, you actually might survive. The idea you will get evaporated is just an idea, and the only way you know if you will die or not isn't to listen to others, but to listen to your intuition and 'feel' for what is going to happen. This whole notion you have of truth being a yes or no for everyone is silly and stupid. What is true for one isn't true for others, and the materialistic paradigm is the place where consistency seems to hold up the most. Go further and further into subtle realms, and consistency between people's experiences stops working. The only reason why the materialistic paradigm is consistent in the first place is because the paradigm is a language, its not real. And just like how everyone agrees that a cat means an animal with 4 legs, everyone agrees that you will get evaporated by the sun. But neither of them are real in existence, some dude just made up the word cat, and some other dude made up the sentence evaporation with the sun.

its well known that people become more primitive, based on life circumstances. In natural disasters you will often find people behaving similarly to chimpanzees. A perfect illustration of this dynamic is the fictional life of pi. get someone not necessarily enlightened, but is turquoise, and I bet ya that this individual can identify with primitive behavior if put in the circumstances.

@Slade its no different to learning to fly a plane by yourself. What's your opinion of that? If you learn from a pilot, you will become skilled much quicker. Learn all of the mistakes yourself, take much longer, but the xp you will have wont just be based of the words of a teacher, but actual real life xp.

@Outer when I look closer at those images, I see these colour dot looking things, I guess the earth isn't as big as this screen after all