Superfluo

@Michael569 Yeah, I meant this when I wrote I'd like to learn in a detailed way, but not too deep. My bad, I was not clear. What do you mean? In the meanwhile I found this: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/recommendations/2017/08/05/textbooks/ What do you think? Thank you for your answer!

@Matt8800 Thank you!

@Sauvik However I'm still healing, and I'm still having a hard time at healig my root chakra. ......I forgot to mention: learn about chakras

@Sauvik Check out the "Completion Process" by Teal Swan. It's a process described in one of her books, but she made a video on it, it should be enough. The process is tough, but it's one of the best solution I found if: you don't mind heavy sessions (I do it almost daily, so you could do it if you want) you can't/don't want to use psychedelics (psychedelics are more powerful, this is what I read in the forum) you want fast results (during one session, at the beginning of my journey with this process, I "resolved" a trauma and the day after my way of feeling in my body changed drastically. So you can see results overnight if you do the exact steps. At least this is what happened to me) you want to go to the root of the problem There still are some cons: Like I said previously, it's tough, it's physically and mentally exhausting If you want to get rid of all the trauma, you should do it various times, but it's up to you to decide how much to do it It's a bottom-up approach (it means you work with the emotions in your body), and it should be integrated with a top-down approach (therapy, psychologist, ecc.) One session could take more than 30 minutes, it depends on your wounds. Personally, when one session take too much time, I stop it and restart from there during the next session. This tool is powerful but it's not perfect. And as Teal Swan said in one video, a trauma occurred in a relationship should be healed in a relationship. This means that for some wounds you may want to heal with friends or partners. How? Setting boundaries, expressing your emotions freely, being vulnerable enough to accept the love you receive, ecc. This is the process I use the most. However there are more tools out there, and I invite you warmly to learn by yourself, and to study books and videos. You can use the tools that fit you the most. So what do you do? Use the search function in the forum and type "healing". You can find some valuable info. Practice meditation and/or Body Scans. Holotropic breathwork is a practice that can be as powerful as some psychedelics, and you only use your breath. Kriya Yoga (well, yoga in general, but Kriya is more powerful as Leo said) is said to remove emotional blockages. I read these books: The Dark Side Of Light Chasers - Debbie Ford Invincible: The 10 Lies You Learn Growing Up With Domestic Violence - Brian Martin, 2014 Emotional Blackmail - Susan Forward, Donna Frazier You can type on Google "Best books on healing" and read some of them. If you can't/don't want to buy them but still you want to read them, use libgen.io Finally, there was a post some time ago. A post about various methods of healing. It was on this forum. But I can't find it anymore. Fortunately, I copied the text, but I don't remember the user that wrote it. Here's it. Total and absolute self-love. This should be done on two levels. 1. You create something I like to call Meta acceptance. That means total and absolute acceptance of yourself in all situations. Practically this means, that whenever you are feeling down, you can accept yourself without judgement, whenever you screw up, you choose to accept yourself, but that doesn't end there. If you screw up, and beat yourself up, you choose to accept your beating yourself up! See why "meta"? The self-acceptance chain runs a little like this: You find yourself in a emotionally disturbed state. Your thoughts are among the lines of "I am not good enough". >> "Oh stop, don't think of yourself like that!". The way you apply meta acceptance is - First accept the thought of "Oh stop, don't think of yourself like that". (If you want something a little tangible for acceptance you can mentally hug the thought.), and once that thought is dealt with, you move onto the other thought of I am not good enough. And you accept that. 2. Acceptance of your body and feelings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcNGtZPPSS8 - Leo's visualisation works perfectly for this stage of self-love. Basically what needs to happen is the activation of your heart-center and then spreading the "love feeling" to the rest of your body. Hammer it down with a visualization! Healing is in essence an inaccurate concept. There is nothing wrong with the "unhealed" one. When you decide to take up on healing, you are choosing a different perception, different quality and embodiment of life, and different energetical configuration of your being. It is not better, nor worse, that is why we choose our suffering, as well as we choose our bliss. We choose healing because DAMN IT FEELS GOOD! (And from that standpoint only you can make an argument that the "healed" state is a better one, because it is in the direction of your intuition, which is nothing else but following what feels good). So every day, you choose to step more into the reality of a better feeling energetical state. Into the blissfulness of being. How? VISUALIIIIIZE! Let's assume that there is such you that is fully healed, fully recovered, fully on the bliss side of the emotional spectrum. The you that is passionate, alive, joyful, fearless. How exactly does the embodiment of these qualities (or any other of your choice) feel? How does it feel in your body? What kinds of thoughts are you having? What kinds of people do you hang out with? What is your financial situation? What is your family and relationship situation? What does it look like when you communicate with others? What kind of job, or what kind of person are you in a job? How assertive are you? How responsible and sensitive are you? And so on... Use the miracle that is your imagination, visualize that you are already embodying every single quality you desire to embody. Imagine that you are blissful, joyful and peaceful. Every single day, whenever you remember, just imagine this YOU! This YOU that you know you came here to be, and imagine that you are ALREADY living that paradigm. This allows you to stay motivated, make it number one priority, and will have a healing effect within of itself. And through the visualization - Allow yourself to raise your standards. Give yourself permission, that you truly deserve to feel amazing. You truly deserve to have an amazing life, you truly deserve to be the one you know you came here to be. Pranic breathing/visualization An exercise to be used whenever you feel an emotional trigger in your body. This usually happens in the stomach and abdomen area, but not exclusively. 1. Close your eyes, and make yourself aware of all the feelings in your body. Identify everything you choose to work on in the moment, anything unpleasant or limiting. 2. On a count of 6, take a deep breath INTO YOUR TUMMY!!!!!! while visualizing All the emotions rising up! 3. On a count of 6, hold onto everything you have been meaning to rise up while holding your breath. 4. On a count of 6, breathe out, while letting go of everything you have been holding onto. Then hold your breath for 3 seconds, and breathe normally for a little while (doesn't need to be more than 2-3 breaths). 5. Repeat the whole process until it feels redundant. I highly recommend doing this practice daily. Sidenote: It helps if you calm your mind before the exercise through any means you find fit. The Wim-Hof Breathing technique This is for an advanced stage of already initiated healing. I do not recommend this exercise for the initiation of the healing process. If you feel that it resonates with you and fits your needs, then by all means use it any time you deem appropriate. 1. Breathe in the full capacity of your lungs, and breathe out instantly. Repeat the whole process 25-30 times, until your head feels a little dizzy. 2. Breathe out your last breath from the previous step and hold your breath for as long as it feels comfortable. 3. Go back to n.1 and do the whole cycle again. Repeat for at least 3-5 times. LEARN TO LISTEN TO YOUR BODY This is a very simple but crucial part. Get yourself into a habit of making choices based on what feels good in your body, and you can turn your whole life into healing, making the process much quicker, and more intuitive. IN ex. you wake up, you do your morning routine, and you don't know what to do next. Move your awareness into your body, and ask yourself "what would feel the best to do next?". There might be answers such as drink a glass of water, have sex, go for a walk, masturbate, go socialize, etc. This can at times get tricky, and that is when we are presented between a dilemma of Egoic vs. Authentic choice. Imagine that you are in a restaurant, and you can either choose to eat a cake or a salad. Now there are instances, where eating the cake would actually be an authentic choice. It is completely fine. But let's say you are trying to shed some weight, and naturally eating a cake would feel good! Right?! Well Then follow this principle. Will it also feel good 5-30 minutes after I made the choice? (eaten the cake..), How to deal with negative/lack beliefs First a quick guide to make yourself aware of your limiting beliefs - Let's say there is something that disturbs you. Maybe your spouse doesn't text back and you feel bad about it. So you calm your body and mind, and start enquiring within. Why am I feeling bad about this? >> It feels like they don't love me. If that is true, why is that so bad? >> Because with no love my life is meaningless. If that is true why is that so bad? >> Because that would mean I am not good enough. If that is true why is it so bad? >> I am not good enough This was just an illustration, your enquiring process will probably be much longer and have perhaps several dozens of questions, you might check out Katie Byron's process that she calls The Work. So you've got this belief that you perceive as limiting, and decided to do something about it. Great!!! ADMIT DEFEAT. You cannot win over a belief in your subconscious from the stand-point of This is not true! I will fight this! Because in essence, your subconscious has so much more power than your conscious mind. You can't override it with brute force. So admit defeat. The belief is there. You do not believe you are good enough. After admitting the defeat there should be (there may be exceptions so don't take this as a rule or confirmation of "I am doing it right") a sense of relief. Because you have been running from this belief your entire life, trying to prove it wrong. But now, when you admit defeat, there is no longer the need to accomplish anything in order to escape from the belief. There is acceptance. There is a little more peace. Now when you are aware of your thought of "I am not good enough", trace the thought back into your body. Close your eyes, and follow the trail of your emotions. How does that thought make you feel? What are the underlying emotions behind this belief? This might take a while to take an effect, but sooner or later, you should arrive at an emotion that can be worked with. AND THAT is when your breathing exercises kick in. What should follow is a lot of release of unconscious emotions. Your most cathartic moments are the ones when you are overwhelmed with emotions. List of cathartic actions/events/situations Journaling and writing down thoughts in free association Tingeling or weird sensations in the body Speaking in tongues CRYING shouting outbursts of anger panic attacks unexplainable fear obsessive thinking unvolutary body movements strong urges (such as you have a strong urge to do something, or bark, or run,...) puking diarhea hyper horniness hyper sensitivity feelings of love feelings of resentment feeligns of disgust feelings of victimhood halucinations feeling sick feelings of stiffness and many many more :o) Desire I MUST BECOME DESIRELESS DESIRE IS THE SOURCE OF ALL SUFFERING The belief in lack is the source of all suffering. - Bentinho Massaro What do you make of this one? The belief in lack is the cause of all suffering. Is that clear? Like... do you understand how deep this goes? When you are born, you don't really believe in that much of lack do you? You prolly don't believe that you lack money as a kiddo. You probably don't believe that you lack sex, or that you lack comfort (ok debatable). But surely not as many things as you seem to be lacking now. Desire is the driving force behind all action. Without desire the universe would literally could not exist. What's the problem then? Lack based desire vs. Inspiration based desire. All of suffering is an illusion, because it is based on lack. Which IS an illusion. You can never truly lack anything. If lack were real, happiness would not be a possible state of mind. I can prove this to you! Lack is truly an extremely illusory state of consciousness. Right now, as you are sitting behind your computer screen! Are you lacking a big shiny red apple in your hand?! No? But it is not there? (unless this is a fucking huge coincidence in which case I'm highfiving you) So how can you not lack it? If it is NOT THERE! Well you don't... probably. You are not in a "state of lack of the big red shiny apple" that would be driving you crazy. So how come you can lack anything else? Like money? Or love? Or anything what so ever? Can you see the illusory state of mind? Lack cannot possibly rationally ultimately exist. Conclusion? Desire is OK! There is nothing bad/wrong/untrue about desire. The trick comes in distinguishing lack based desires and inspiration desires. To be fair, as of now, most of your desires are probably going to be lack-based. And that is fine. It is a great tool for growth and healing. How to exploit desires for growth 1. Every time you feel bad about a situation, ask yourself "What must I believe that I lack right now?" And realize that it is a one big lie. You cannot lack anything. And even if you did lack something, wouldn't the most logical thing to do be just straight up getting the thing you think you lack? Instead of reminiscing and feeling bad about it? Find out what you perceive you lack (let's use the example of companionship) "I believe I lack companionship." If it were true, that I truly lack companionship, what would be the most logical course of action? >> Go out and talk to people Ok great why don't you do it? Looads of self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviours probably will kick in. >> I don't wanna go out, people don't like me, I am shy, I am introverted, I can't make friends, I don't know anyone, I am a loser etc. See how the perceived lack was what created the suffering? It wasn't the desire itself. It was the belief that you lack companionship. 2. Every time you desire something, even when it is based on lack, follow it. Do NOT SUPPRESS YOUR DESIRES. That will truly result only in self-sabotaging and self destructive behaviours that will lead to more emotional issues down the road. Every time we desire, we don't in actuality desire the object of our desire. We desire the feeling of having the object. If I want a car, I don't actually want that car. What I truly on a deeper level want, is a state of freedom, or worthiness, or security,... Can you activate that feeling of already having that car within your being, WITHOUT actually having the car? Yes you can! Visualize, breath-work, mindfulness, breath-work. What does it feel like to have that car? What are the sensations in my body? What kinds of thoughts are coming up now when I have it? What is between me, and the feeling of having the car? Is it the feeling of "I am not good enough"? Or the thought of "I am not worthy"? Once you arrive at a conclusion, healing can start, lack can be purified, and desire will be used to it's maximum to grow you, and to teach you your lesson. side note: You can motivate yourself through realizing that once you get yourself into a state of mind where you "already have that thing you desire" without lacking it, it will be SO MUCH MORE EASIER EFFORTLESS AND FLOWING to get that thing in the external reality, that it really doesn't make any sense at all to keep believing in lack. Using your imagination This is my favorite part. Healing your inner child through imagination. This is where you can go nuts and fucking sky is the limit. This is the fun shit! And a very very easy principle so listen up. Every time you manage to tune into your inner child to feel some of its emotional needs, visualize whatever comes to mind to fulfill those needs, and build yourself a world in your head of people and circumstances that are absolutely ridiculously amazing. suggestions Bathing yourself in light and love Creating whatever guardian figure to hold you (or your inner child, depending whether you choose a separate perspective or not. (I used to use Obama a lot =D) Being in beautiful places Being praised by everyone Being cheered on by everyone Drinking healing water Releasing your emotions as demons from your body Conversations with people who have hurt you in the past with the intention of closure or forgiveness and again... go nuts, sky is the limit <3

I've just finished a 7-minute session of meditation. I was cross-legged, eyes opened focusing on a lamp. As the session was ending, I started to experience a blurred sight. My room became a little darker and I could see a pattern of lights where I focused my sight, and all of this was "applied", "printed" on things I looked, so I could still see objects but they were a bit darker and with this pattern. This pattern of lights was similar to what you see when you close your eyes and look inside your eyelids. This pattern came and went as I inhaled and exhaled slowly. At first I thought it was something related to my breathing, like what you see when you hyperventilate (even if I was breathing slowly). But as I started to mentally surrender to that experience, wanting to see what would have happened, I started to feel a choking sensation in my throat, a pressure (I was still breathing slowly but normally), and my eyes started to itch, I couldn't make them stay open easily. The more I tried to surrender to all of this, the more these sensations increased, until I stopped. Is this an ego backlash or something similar to the stuff descripted by Leo in The Dark Side Of Meditaton?

@Meditationdude Thank you!

@Meditationdude Thank you for you answer! It's comforting So... what should I do? Are you referring to something particular? Or should I just explore more?

@Leo Gura I've seen you read essays, research papers, "advanced" documents, ecc. when exploring and learning new ideas, concepts or facts. Do you think they are more powerful tools than books you can find in bookstores? Do you think in-depth knowledge about, I don't know, psychology or nutrition is useful for personal development and people would benefit from it? Or is medium level knowledge enough?

Maybe it's a dumb question, but what's the divine's name? "God"? Is there a specific divinity to address?

@Matt8800 Okay, I think I got it. Thank you!

@Matt8800 Thank you for your response. I'll read your post! When you say internal power, do you refer only to mental power? And could it be also related to willpower energy usually associated to the third chakra?

@Matt8800 Hi, I'd like to hear your explanation on this. Some time ago I was in my house and I went into a room where sunlight enters with difficulty meaning that room is usually a bit dark during the day. That time I went there at night to relax and meditate (I know meditation at night is counterproductive). While I entered the room I started to feel fear, and I didn't know why. Then I thought I was fearful because of a presence, but I don't know why I thought that. At first I thought I was imagining the presence, like a fantasy that my mind made up (I'm learning about spirits, entities, other dimension and I had some experiences like glimpses of no-self that have convinced me to give credit to this realm of siddhis, but I'm not fully convinced, and it was also night, so I was tired). Then I sat, still fearful, and tried to visualize this entity because, hey, if it is imaginary (I know this word is misleading in this realm lol), I could be able to make it go away and get rid of that fear. So I visualized that entity and it appeared to me as a terrifying woman moving around me: black hair, pale skin, white dress, like the ones you see in horror movies. So I thought that couldn't be real, it's my imagination. That entity didn't want to hurt me physically but I felt it was a threat and it scared me. But I continued with the visualization, and I did this: I visualized a yellow/white light of love emanating from my body so much that it "touched" this entity. After about ten seconds, the entity started to be affected by my light and it was purified and became a beautiful woman (still black hair, pale skin and white dress) that stopped moving and started looking me with passivity, dead silent, its face calm and serious. At this point I stopped feeling it as a threat, and I'm not sure of this but I felt a subtle feeling of positivity coming from it towards me. Nothing "strange" has ever happened in that room before that event, even when I went there at night. It's a one-time event. Is this legit or not? If it is legit, why it behaved like that after it was purified? I've felt a similar unjustified fear, related to some presence in the darkness, various times in my life, but I've always thought it was in my mind, like a childish fear of the darkness, of the unknown. I'm confused, because sometimes I'm able to read minds intuitively, like if I'm with a person and I'm attuned with him/her sometimes I just know the next thing he/she is going to say with high accuracy, or I istantly "receive" a thought that is not mine without being able to pinpoint where it comes from. And sometimes I'm also able to just know other people's feelings, but I don't know if it's just a trained ability to read body language. Thank you!

Love/Acceptance: embracing every aspect of people and loving them, without losing myself. I try to help people with practical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual obstacles, even little ones. I show a lot of kindness and acceptance during interactions with people. Everytime I talk with someone, I make people feel good about themselves without diminishing me. I consider many different points of view to see things from other people's perspective and understand them. Thank you , I guess I made this confusion too complicated

Hi everybody. I think this is something which everyone could benefit from, something for people looking for inner clarity. I recently tried to jot down my personal values. But as soon as I began, I faced some obstacles. When I first wrote my first values, I stopped to evaluate if they were true. In my life I always helped people, I strived to not make people suffer (not people pleaser, just kind heart). I don't know if this value is authentic, because it comes from my experiences of pain: I experienced pain, and I don't want people to do it too. I practiced shadow work a lot to heal past experiences, and it was overwhelmingly helpful, but I still have this behaviour. In addition, social (and egoic) pressure of being good, of being seen as good influences this value. Also, when I'm kind and unconditional* loving with someone, I'm not "super happy"; it feels nice, but it's not intense. Even if someone told me I was extremely kind and loving toward him/her, and he/she really appreciated it, I bet this wouldn't make me deeply happy and grateful as I think it should. However, I couldn't live without loving and being kind towards everyone and everything. I feel I'm at a reasonable level of peace with myself (or at least I think so), even if there's still some little inner work to do. Could it be only a matter of being able to feel loved? Or could it be not a value of mine? I have a hard time figuring out if this value is something wired in my brain that I don't really value or it is normal to feel this way. Thank you. PS: I'm INFJ ahah *true unconditional love is only possible when you eliminate all judgements, all filters, all ego (enlightment). However, I lean towards unconditional acceptance of everyone and everything. I just behave like this. Not bragging, I'm just explaining.

@Serotoninluv I haven't thought about this topic yet, about higher levels of intuition. I'd be glad if you could tell me more about it.

In the last decade I searched for truth, I did self-inquiry and I questioned all that I've learned, without me knowing it (due to negative emotional states, I searched for a truth to hang on, now I'm okay) (just to tell you that I'm not a newbie in exploring my inside ahahah). The other day I was feeling negative emotions. I was sad and I felt lonely. Trying to understand the root cause of those feelings, I came up with a thought that I already had in the past, but that day I used it. I asked myself: "What if this negative state, this feeling I'm having, that I think is sadness/loneliness, is not sadness/loneliness? What if I feel sad only because I think this feeling is sadness/loneliness? What if this feeling is actually happiness but I have mistaken it my whole life for sadness/loneliness?" In other words, I convinced myself that feeling was happiness. As I shifted my assumptions, I felt good. This shocked me. How can it be possible for an emotion to change depending on our thoughts? Maybe I was wrong, maybe I just wrongly recongnized that feeling of happiness as sadness. A mistake in analizing that feeling. But what if I'm not wrong, what if I have not made a mistake? This means that emotions are merely physical sensations to which we learn to associate thoughts. But feeling good (the following relief I had) is not only a thought. Do emotions have no intrinsic value? But then, our emotions arise in certain situations and for certain reasons. How can it possibly be? How can all of this fit together? In addition, what ensures me that even the sensation I had when I felt good is not me deceiving myself again? Can I then trust emotions? All of this reinforced my idea that everything perceived is part of an illusion. Thank you for your answers!

@ground Yes, I agree. @Leo Gura and @Seed When you say "emotions of the higher self", you mean emotions like love, happiness, peace, playfulness, appreciation, right? @EternalForest Yes, it's mindblowing to realize you are the one and only person that prevents you from happiness. It's life transforming! @Serotoninluv Yes, intuition is something beyond the mind, I think.

@ground Yes, at first I didn't see that my reasoning was biased. Okay, this is something that had already been stuck on my mind for some time. But then when we associate a feeling of dislike or like to a sense appearance or idea, we are doing it starting from some previous knowledge, otherwise we couldn't generate this association. Why associate pleasure and not pain to a certain sensation that has no value? In addition, if conceptual associations can lead to emotions, can we say that emotions are thoughts applied when a sense appearance or an idea arises? It seems like the ego is applying itself to itself. It seems so much twisted to me, I've never explored so much emotions with this point of view. @Leo Gura I came to similar conclusions. So how can I trust emotions? Do I need to be skeptical? But the only way to know it is to try, I guess. @tsuki Interesting point of view. Thank you for all your answers!

@ground Okay, I agree with you. Much like I was expecting. But I have a counter example: if you take a child and you don't teach him anything, the child still learns to smile when certain sensations arise. How can it be possible? And the child doesn't try to cry, to get mad, or to ponder in order to see what's the correct thought pattern for that sensation. I'm not trying to prove that emotions are an illusion. I'm mostly trying to understand how this specific illusion works and to evaluate different perspectives regarding sensations, thoughts and emotions.

@How to be wise Some questions to stimulate new reflections and ideas: How do you know inanimate objects aren't aware? Maybe they are a lot more aware than humans, but we don't have an organ to perceive that. Maybe they have a consciousness, but we don't even see that they have one because maybe we can't understand or perceive it. From a spiritual perspective: enlightened people tell you that everything is pure being, that all is one. So if you have a consciousness, even inanimated objects have consciousness. Now let's get to people. I don't understand if what you mean with "conscious people" is "people that grasp the meaning of reality, life and stuff" or "people that I perceive are separate from me and therefore, as I have a consciousness, they have one too". If you mean the former, I don't understand why if you are idealist you must assume that. However, all people are conscious but the majority of them has their consciousness dimmed, blurred, tarnished. That's because of how they grew up and how they live their life. If you mean the latter, I suggest watching Leo's video "Why Brains Do Not Exist", I'm not the most reliable person to explain it. But I'll try. I'll explain only the key points in my reasoning so that if you want to know why I say what I say you are more inclined to research that. So: Reality is everything you perceive. Perception happens inside the brain. You could say it is a thought. But "the brain" is also a thought. So it's the thought that's inside the brain, or it's the brain that's inside the thought? The same conclusion arises if you reflect upon the thought-mind relationship. Personal conclusion (also told by Leo in his videos and by some spiritual teachers): "You" as a personality/identity/being don't exist. Everything is just perception that is perceived. There is not "me" or "you" that perceives. So there's no distinction between "you" and "everybody else". So if you think you are conscious, everything is conscious. Everything. Even rocks, houses, trees, cars. You are all that exists. Actually there is no "you". There is only being that has different masks. This is a solipsist point of view I think, yet we still can say people are conscious.

@How to be wise Some questions to stimulate new reflections and ideas: How do you know inanimate objects aren't aware? Maybe they are a lot more aware than humans, but we don't have an organ to perceive that. Maybe they have a consciousness, but we don't even see that they have one because maybe we can't understand or perceive it. For example, there are animals that communicate through body language, and the same species of animals understand each other. What if maybe rocks and crystals communicate with what we perceive as the reflection of what we call light, and we are too "short-sighted" to understand that? From a spiritual perspective: enlightened people tell you that everything is pure being, that all is one. So if you have a consciousness, even inanimated objects have consciousness. Now let's get to people. I don't understand if what you mean with "conscious people" is "people that grasp the meaning of reality, life and stuff" or "people that I perceive are separate from me and therefore, as I have a consciousness, they have one too". If you mean the former, I don't understand why if you are idealist you must assume that. However, all people are conscious but the majority of them has their consciousness dimmed, blurred, tarnished. That's because of how they grew up and how they live their life. If you mean the latter, I suggest watching Leo's video "Why Brains Do Not Exist", I'm not the most reliable person to explain it. But I'll try. I'll explain only the key points in my reasoning so that if you want to know why I say what I say you are more inclined to research that. So: Reality is everything you perceive. Do you perceive something that doesn't exists? For example do you see, or hear, or taste, or touch, or smell a phoenix? No. You could say "But I can think of it!" But it's not a direct experience of reality, in fact most people don't think that phoenixes are real. Then, your sensorial organs are linked to your brain through nerves. Materialistically, when you perceive something the nerves produce chemical reactions and electric impulses that arrive to the brain. And it's the brain that processes the information and puts them together to produce reality (think about the fact that our eyes perceive light upside down, but our brains fix our perception, otherwise we would see upside down). So we could say that perception is a thought. But where does the thought takes place? In the brain, you could say. But when you say "in the brain" you think of a brain, you think of a squishy thing. But then: It's your thought that's in the brain? But then, the brain is a thought... How do you "solve" this paradox/misconception/fallacy? You could say that thoughts take place in the mind, and the mind is in your brain (even if how mind and brain relate is difficult to explain, but let's put this aside). But again, "the mind" is also a thought. So the mind is inside of itself? How do you manage to solve this? You can't if you still follow materialistic conceptions and ideas. Let's ask ourselves some questions: "If I'm not my body, because the body is a perception/thought, and I'm not my thoughts because I'm not a thought (be careful of this second assumption: thoughts arise and fade away, so you might think you are not a thought. But you could think that maybe the "me" you think you are is the longest thought ever. Examine in depth that if you want), what am I? Do I not exist? But... but... I exist, I perceive this thing called reality!" Well, examine in depth this too. Now the link with people: when you apply this whole process to you and also to the people, thinking that other people could do this reasoning, you can come to the conclusion that everything is just a perception that is perceived (I haven't written who of what does the action of perceiving for a reason). But let's make some steps back. We said at the beginning that your reality is in your mind . Then other people are in your mind. So their consciousness is a thought in your mind. But other people could make the same reasoning and say that you are a thought in their mind! The solution? Based on my experience and what I've learned (so don't take it for absolutely true), if reality is just perception that is perceived, there is not "me" or "you" that perceives. Everything is just perception. So you literally are other people, and even objects. And if you think you are conscious, then other people are conscious, because it's all one giant magical stuff. There is no "you vs. reality" or "you vs. other people" or "you vs. your thoughts". You don't exist. I'm not sure if I explained it well enough, and if it's the answer you were looking for.

Hi everybody! It's been a while since I've started my journey towards growth and actualization. I watch videos (Leo's ones and other videos on YouTube), I read self-help books, I read topics in this forums, I read articles and blogs, I listen to podcasts, I try to change my behaviour and the way my brain in programmed, I try to change my habits, I started to heal with shadow work, and many more. However, now I'm starting to run into tons of information, and I don't know how to manage them. In a video, Leo suggested taking notes and spending a lot of time searching for information in order to find the most suitable ones for oneself. But now I have a lot of scattered notes, and too much information to handle. Everytime I read a topic here, in the forum, I see lots of valuable details, sentences, but I can't keep up with every one of them. I also can't keep up with all the videos I watch, all the powerful sentences in a book, ecc. I thought about making a mind map on paper for each argument, but it requires too much time and it will be hard and maybe useless. I'd like to avoid having to read again a book because I forgot something, or watch again a video of 2 hours because I was a little distracted and missed a key point. I also often run into information I already acquired, but I can't know it before reading/listening to/watching something. And I'm also a bit concerned about losing what I learned during this journey. In the end what really matters is practice. But how can I practice in an powerful way if I can't put all information together? So, how do you manage your personal growth? How do you organize all your knowledge? How do you approach new information? What do you focus first? How do you manage not to be overwhelmed? Thank you!

In the end what y'all have told me is basically to get my *** off the chair and practice ahahahah. Thank you everybody, I needed that kick in the *** to start doing instead of continuing to ponder. All your advice are valuable. @aurum @Leo Gura I've watched Leo's video about the Commonplace Book. It's very helpful, it can boost hundreds of times learning and productivity. I didn't knew OneNote was so powerful! So grateful to have watched that video!

@Serotoninluv Thanks! You could say "I'm All" (warning, enlightenment-related horrible pun).

@Nahm Yes, I agree, but I didn't mean to go spiritual :D, but thank you. As latins said: "repetita iuvant", literally "The things (that are) repeated are useful". Interesting A powerful quote, thank you @aurum I've just seen the video on his channel, guess I'll watch it. Thank you @Andreas Yes, totally agree. In fact now I'm in the process of shifting from absorbing to actually doing and I'm aware the ego tends to keep me in my comfort zone, thank you