FindingPeace

Perhaps consciousness isn't a 'thing' at all. Or perhaps it is everything. Maybe there's more to reality than literally meets the eye. Maybe consciousness is nothing at all, or maybe it is reality itself. We shall never know..

You don't know that there wan't consciousness. There was nothing to 'fill' the conscious-awareness, just like there isn't whilst you're in deep sleep. But is the 'container' called 'consciousness' still there even when there is nothing to be conscious of? Curious...

So what you're implying is that people who made some 'contribution' to society may not have done so had they been pursuing enlightenment instead. In effect implying that it is selfish and unhelpful to others for someone to do so. But this is a nonsensicle question. Firstly because these people did contribute to society with their discoveries. Or perhaps you are implying that there are people right now that could be making discoveries or inventions but are, instead, pursuing enlightenment. But then, how do you know what they may or may not discover or invent? And, perhaps, instead of discovering or inventing something 'useful' they actually go on to create destruction. You don't know what people may or may not have done instead of pursuing enlightenment, but then, that's exactly the point. If a cure for a disease was never invented because the possible inventer was off doing something else, then you would never know any differently. You're actually trying to use hind-sight to invalidate a spiritual pursuit. And in any case, who is it that's benefiting from these discoveries? You? So you want other people to not pursue enlightenment so that you can reap the benefits of their potential discoveries? It's all a moot point. History is what it is and was always going to be that way. And what people do from here on is what was always going to be. Whether or not someone could or couldn't possibly discover something 'beneficial' to society at large. Anyway, it can also be seen that some of these wonderful 'benefits', discoveries and inventions aren't always so beneficial in the long run, and not to everyone. In fact, with investigation, it can be seen that for every new wonderful discovery (medical procedure, disease prevention or cure, technology etc) some form of suffering also ensues. There is nothing that we can create that doesn't bring suffering with it. Even a cure for cancer would create suffering.

I've contemplated the 'meaning of life' for years now. But I've come to the realisation that 'life' isn't really a 'thing' at all. It seems like it to us because we live in awe of the reality around us, constantly questioning the hows and whys of everything. But really, what is life? Was is 'given' to us? A living being is really just a complex set of processes occurring. Not unlike many other processes in the universe. Is the planet alive? It could look like it from the outside. The mechanics of the universe could be interpreted as a form of 'life'. Rather than pondering life I find myself pondering consciousness instead. And how consciousness relates to the living being. There are no purposes in reality. It just is. And life-forms are no more special than any other 'feature' or reality. It is reality itself that is a means and an end in itself. It's its own purpose. Noone. In fact life is a concept that we atribute to a feature of reality. In that sense we gave it to us. Reality gave 'you' life. Just like it manifested stars, galaxies, atoms and matter. Which, incidentally, are all concepts and labels that we project on to reality, just as we do with life. I find it insteresting how the human species has become so preoccupied with understanding the 'meaning' of life. We are the only species to do so (we can assume). I wonder how people would live differently if they completely dropped the notion that life is a 'thing', that it's miraculous and 'special', and instead just lived it regardless. Interesting topic.

Commincation. Talk to her. Tell her what you just told us: Fundamentally if you can't communicate in an open, honest way about these things then you have more issues to deal with than just her going to a party. Tell her why it makes you uncomfortable. But, ultimately, you cannot control her. She will ultimately follow her own desires and do whatever she wants. And that's her right as a fellow human. So you may have to accept that she will go to the party anyway. But, at least if you've explained your issue with it, she has a chance to understand and to choose how to respond. Maybe you have nothing to worry about. Ultimately, this isn't really about her going to the party. There are deeper problems at the root here and communication is a good place to start. Be honest, be open. Talk to her and listen to her. And above all, be accepting of the outcome.

This work takes time - years. You're only just beginning. The problem is when you start to expect results. Then you become frustrated when you don't get them. There is no time scale to this work. You have to be patient and be accepting of the process, including the parts where nothing seems to be changing or working. Just being aware of these moments is valuable in itself. You're doing good here. Just keep at it. Abandon the expectation that it will all just fall in to place at some point. You don't know when that point will be. But it will come with time, practive and awareness. Accept the frustrations and learn from those experiences. An important part of mindfulness is just observing your thoughts and actions. Without judging them. So when you have occasions when you are still triggered, observe it, watch it, notice it. Don't judge or criticise it. Just allow it to be and perhaps analyse it in retrospect. You can still learn from these moments.

You unmotivated because these are not authentic desires. They are society's expectations. You don't have to conform to what everyone says. It's your life, not theirs. Fulfilling other people's expectations will never motivate, fulfill or satisfy you in any way. Your motivations and actions need to come from within, from the authentic you. You need to detach and stop caring what other people think or say. It's not their place to tell you how to be, how to live your own life. It may not sound good, but it is a means to getting out and becomming independent so you can start working on authentic motivations. You may not like taking a shitty job to start with, but it's a start and it gets things moving. It at least means that you can take some responsibility for creating a life for yourself. It's not actions that need investigating. It's motivations, insecurities, fears etc. These all lead to actions. Work out what's going on with these things and actions will follow. Then you will see how and why you behave as you do and what, perhaps, you want to change. If anything. You won't make a living out of introspection and self-enquiry. But not everything in life is about making a living. It may be necessary to some extent, but as you do more inquiry you may come to realise that there is so much more to life than just making a living. But you need to do this inner work to see this, on the side . Is it a 'bad' side? Or just a side that is not as exciting and stimulating? Video games are a hedonic addiction. Addiction to the fix you get from the excitement and stimulation. Just like recreational drugs. Or partying, or other hedonic persuits. By comparision everything else will give you a sense of withdrawl from that stimulation. If you remove the stimulation and excitement, the rest of life wouldn't appear so dull or depressing. You're actually creating that separation. Do this more. Find more time to focus on it. That nice feeling, that's the peace, the happiness, that most people are looking for but never find. That's the moment of being present in reality. That's the light you may want to follow.

I think 'awareness' and 'consciousness' get used synominously at times but they aren't the same thing. 'Consciousness' is another word for your experience of life. When you are in deep sleep you have no experience of anything, you are unconscious. When you are awake you are experiencing sensory inputs as well as thoughts, feelings and emotions. Even during dreaming there is a conscious experience. Consciousness is the phenomenom that gives you the experience of life, The minds eye, sounds, sight, touch, thoughts, emotions etc all are experienced within consciousness. 'Awareness', on the other hand, is another way of describing attention. Awareness is sort of the mechanism that focusses what we are conscious of at any givem moment. You can be aware of what you are seeing, or hearing, or thinking and feeling. But usually you can only be aware of specific things at a time, not everything at once. Also, there are things that we rarely give our attention to because we are not used to it or have never done so - like thoughts. So raising awareness is basically training our attention on to things that we usually don't. LIke thoughts. Or certain psychological behaviours. Or aspects of life or other experiences. Meditaion and mindfullness raise awareness of the present moment and the nature of thoughts. It teaches us to more frequently put our attention on to these things. Higher awareness is effectively learning to give more attention to aspects of life that we didn't previously. By doing so we see things that we didn't previously and in time we may have realisations or epiphanies and take corrective action to certain things in our lives. Ultimately our perception of life will change because we are becomming more aware of things within our consciousness, which will lead to a different perception overall. Perception is a subjective experience that is reliant on our level of awareness. Greater awareness leads to a more fuller perception. This leads to a greater understanding of reality and a healthier mindset that leads to more authentic and healthier motives.

Mostly ISTP with a hint of INTP. Seems I'm borderline on the S-N axis.

I've experienced this. Most conversation contains very little information or value. Just small talk. If people talked less they may become more aware of reality. Or perhaps that's the problem. Talking is a distraction from being quiet and just 'being'. To quote Leo from his video on awareness "While you're talking, your life is expiring". I enjoy not talking. Peace is a wonderful thing. It allows time to let in the world around me. To contemplate, to introspect. To 'be' more. There are times when talking has it's uses. To convey information, to complete a social 'transaction'. But most of the time it's gossip, or mindless small talk. People find it comforting, a form of bonding. But I do think people should take more time to be quiet and just 'be' more. There's no need to fill a silence. Instead of being uncomfortable with it, embody it. Enjoy it. It's a beautiful thing.

Interesting because I would argue that permanence doesn't exist, therefore change is inevitable and unstoppable. We may not be able to witness change, especially as it can take a long time, but ultimately everything is changing all the time. Not so much as an atom remains constant - afterall, everything in space is moving therefore there is a change in position occuring constantly. But everything ultimately changes. Nothing lasts. Relationships don't last. Life doesn't last. Material opbjects or matter changes over time. The sun won't last. The universe won't stay as it is. The house you are sitting in won't be there forever. Your brain patterns change from one moment to the next. In fact you change on a moment by moment basis. But, another way to look at it is this: since the present moment is the only moment we have that is real, and it is only a snapshot in time, then change cannot be perceived because in the present moment there is no change. 'Change' can only be perceived by reference to memory of the state something was previously. So technically you're right. Change can't be seen because it relies on memory, which is not real. Do people spend their lives chasing change? I'd say that many people spend their lives trying to maintain things from changing. Many people are afraid of change. Afraid of that which is different. It's the resistance to change that people often suffer from. Most people are chasing comfort. Comfort dressed up as growth. You're right, adaption is growth really. Accepting what is and going with the flow, working with it, not against it.

No. In fact I feel that the human species is in no way superior. Who get's to determine that? Us? How convenient. If anything we need to re-learn what it's like to live freely without an ego. Like other beings do. I don't see other beings suffering the same degree of mental health issues, superficial and petty problems that we do. We are an arrogant and egotistical species. We live in chaos, inventing problems, competing and fighting one another in mass wars, and exploiting one another for our own gain. Other beings appear to live in relative peace, a peace generally only disturbed by our presence and activities. I actually envy other beings. That said, I appreciate the ability we have to experience life in a more rich, full way than our cousins. If only we would all drop the egotistical behaviour, stop and take a look around at the beauty of reality in stead of living in an augmented, frenzied, neurotic world of our own creation. Superior? Not a chance.

Could you have been abused? Maybe, maybe not. But does it matter? It's almost as though you are looking for a story to tell that confirms that you are/were a victim of something. In the present moment you have no memory of being a victim. So why create one? What if you dropped this whole line of questioning and carried on with life? The past is something that doesn't exist. It's been and gone. The past exists only as a concept and a memory. And even then, our memories are not accurate and they have a funny habbit of changing. In this case you don't even have a memory and you want to try and find one. Ask yourself this: are you, right now in the present moment, suffering as a result of this mysterious, unknown, past? Are you suffering a reoccurring trama about this 'event'. How is it effecting your life right now? Don't get caught up in a lengthy distraction about something that may or may not have happened. The past is a distraction. The now is the only this that's real. Where you go from now matters more than where you came from. Focus on the NOW. Unless the past is still effecting you, in which case dig down to it and sort it. But, ultimately, accept that past. Accept where you've come from. It is what it is. It doesn't define you. It isn't your identitiy. You are who you are in the present moment. That's all that is real.

The ego has nothing to do with protecting us. Rather than being an evolutionary 'tool' it is more likely a side-effect of our other congnitive functions - namely language, memory and the ability to conceptualise. The body is a system that is designed to survive. Ego or not, it will do what is necessary to protect it's physical self. The ego is not the body or the mechanism that maintains and protects it. The ego is a story about a 'person' who has a life that has history and a future. It is an identity. A cat doesn't have an ego yet it manages to survive successfully without it. To lose the ego is not to become a vegetable. There are still brain functions that look after the body. All that happens is that the illusions, the ego 'smog', that currently distort your view on reality, will no longer be distorting it. You will have clear, untainted, view of life and reality. This will not change the ablility to survive. Or take care of the body. How well is your ego currently taking care of you? How vunerable are you right now with the ego? Psychologically very vunerable.

Why do you feel this? Herein lies something that, itself, needs introspection on. Inner work can, and perhaps ought to, be done on your own. Other people only become a distraction, unless you are looking to learn from others. But then you need to find people at your level of growth. I tend not to share my inner work with other people. Other than perhaps here on the forum. The danger of talking to others is that it can become a lengthy philosophical debate instead of genuine growth. Inner work is personal. It isn't a debate or a philosophy. It's about looking inwards and systematically repairing insecurities and fears, identifying motives, beliefs and values that are causing you problems. It's about reprogramming your own mind. Only you can do this and only with the right tools. People like Leo can provide the tools but only you can do the work. Exactly how can you do this work with other people, without it just becomming a distraction?

Passion is an emotion. I don't think it stems from the ego. The ego is concerned with things like validation, approval, success, achievement, status, comfort etc. Authentic passion is none of those things. The ego can, however, behave in ways that can appear 'passionate' but that are really concerned with the things listed above. But true passion is almost devoid of ego. When you are engaged in something passionately, the ego becomes irrelevent. I would say that a true passion is akin to a peak experience. A flow.

A guy visits an enlightened persons house and sees a picture on the mantelpiece. He asks the enlightened person "What's this a picture of?". The enlightened person replies "Oh, that's just a selfie I took in the mountains someplace". The first guy replies "A selfie? But there's no one in the picture, just the mountains!".

This is fairly typical of human society. You have two choices in life: you can go with the flow, do what everyone else does or what they tell you to do. Or you can do something different. The issue is that other people see it as a threat to their own ego or world view when you start doing things differently to what they expect. Generally society will always try to pull back or outcast people that try to break the mould. This is why cultures develop and a general world-view that is common to a society. It might have had a useful survival purpose back in ancient times, but in this day and age it only holds people back from exploring their true potential. It also threatens people when they see you doing something different and also see how it is benefiting you. This creates an incongrunce between their morals and what they do in life and what you are doing. For them it becomes a moral issue - there's the 'right way' and the 'norm' which is morally acceptable and there's the 'wrong way' or the way that breaks the 'code' of the society. But when they see the 'wrong way' creating success and fulfillment from you it creates a huge misalignment within their own beliefs and values. Sometimes because they wished they could do the same but never had the foresight or motivation to pursue it. I've experienced it myself. There was a time when I chose to leave education and the pursuit of a high-end career in order to pursue something 'less glamourous', but fundamentally more aligned with my own interests and passions. I got all sorts of eye-raising objections from friends and family. However, as I continued regardless, I also got respect and encouragement from people for my taking the initiative to do something of my own accord. When people put up resistance it says more about them than it does about you. It isn't you that's doing something wrong. It's the fact that you activities are provoking something with the other people that they are denying themselves, that is the issue. Their resistance isn't about you, it's about them. It's diffifcult to know how to continue in the face of such resistance, especially when it causes conflict - particularly within the family. You either have to press on regardless in the face of the resistance, knowing that at least you are giving yourself the best opportunities in life that they are, in effect, taking away from you. Or you change your circumstances so that you aren't around the people causing the resistance. Not always easy either. Ultimately, to give up on your own growth and development and fall back in line with everyone else, is to life your life as a slave to the conditioning of society. It's the antithesis of personal development. Incidentally, there's another name for this topic - it's the crab mentallity. When a crab tries to climb out of a bucket of crabs, the others will try to pull it back in. Don't let other's be crabs in your bucket of life. Get out of the bucket and live a more fulfilling life than they will ever live.

Why not? I've been asking myself the same question lately. The more inner work I do on myself the less inclined I feel towards the other activities of 'success' and 'achievement' that everyone else seems to be going for. Even the notion of 'contributing' to the world can be put in to question. Utlimately, pursuing a life devoted to peace and truth, devoted to living in reality, can be an end in itself can it not? Reality is a beautiful 'place' and experiencing the beauty whilst you have conscious-awareness of it is and end in itself. But then, as you do more inner work, authentic motivations will surface. What those will be you don't know yet.

A meditation habit.

It is my understanding that reality itself is a subjective experience. Therefore truth is largely subjective. The greatest truth we can experience as a living being is pure, untainted, experience without the clouding from the ego or the mind. I suppose the ultimate 'truth' is something that doesn't have to be believed or conceptualised. Something that just is as it is. Not a thought, a belief, an idea, a story etc. In fact it would be impossible to convey the truth through any language, because to do so is to conceptualise and abstract it into something other than what it really is. You can't know the truth. You can only experience it.

I don't doubt that genetics can affect our 'brain wiring', which can consequently affect the way someone thinks, their level of awareness and their psychological biases and dependencies. These things can manifest as 'mental illness'. Examples I have seen are things like obsessive-compulsive or narcissistic behaviours which tend to run in families. I'm not such an advocte for the term 'metal illness' as it implies a 'norm' or base-line. I don't believe that there is such a thing. In any case, the mind is flexible and re-programmable. Even if the mind is biased towards certain thought or behavoural patterns through genetic influences it can, with suffient inner work, have neuroses or dysfunctions worked out of its system. But, although there are genetic influences as to someone's inherent brain patterns, social conditional has the massive influence. I would say that the majority of dysfunctional or neurotic behaviours are conditioned through innapropriate environments and treatment throughout early life.

The fundamental mechanism behind this is attachment. You are so strongly attached and identified with things from your past that anything that triggers a memory of it also triggers an emotion. Nostalgia is an interesting emotion. I see it like this: when I look at an object from my past and it prokoves an emotion I find that the emotion is usually one of pleasure (from remembering the time) followed by sadness. The sadness comes from the fact that we are comparing the past moment to the present moment and evaluating the past as being happier or better in some way to the present. That is effectivey what nostalgia is - feeling attached to a time that we value more than the present moment. And this can be because the present circumstances of our live's just isn't as 'good' or happy as the past. So the issue here is that something is amis right now. Life isn't fulfilling. Because if it was, then we wouldn't be so attached to the past. There would be that emotional reaction. So are you feeling emotion because you feel that your life now isn't as fullfilling as it once was?

Emotional intellligence is very important if you want to live an authentic, successful, less stressful, less neurotic life. People with a low EQ tend to be at the mercy of their emotions. They are slaves to then. They let their emotions direct the path of their lives as they weave through life trying to avoid situations that provoke negative emotions and seek ones that provoke positive ones. Low EQ will generate a lot of 'drama' in your life. Emotional intelligence will help you to be less reactive to the circumstances of life and better able to respond more apropraitely when you do feel emotions. More often peop react to their emotions rather than respond to the situation that triggered them. There is a difference. Something that having a higher EQ will reveal.

Technically, your environment should make no difference to your personal-development. You could live in the centre of a bustling city, or out in the peace and solitude of the countryside. You can develop yourself either way. But then it depends what sort of 'development' your doing. If you're doing more inner work then the city can be a huge distraction. On the other hand, if you're looking to obtain success and achievement then it can be conducive to live in the city. As for what your city is 'supposed' to offer you..well it isn't supposed to offer you anything. What you require of it depends on what you are seeking.