Mada_

A while ago, I was doing "self inquiry" (however I was more neurotically focusing on what I thought was awareness). As I did so, pressure would build at the third eye, this became more and more apparent each time K did the practice. One time, the last time I did the practice, maybe around 5 months ago, an intense pressure began to build. It was as if my third eye was a tunnel, as I could direct this piercing poke on brumadhya itself, and even inside this tunnel, and behind my forehead. This piercing, that was directed by my intention, got so intense, that the brumadhya itself popped and energy spilled out of it all throughout my body; it poured down my face, fell down my body, there was so much of it that it felt like some collected at my ass cheeks. No article I can find describes this happening, nor any kundalini video. For a while I stopped all spiritual practice, and attempted to forget and surpress all things to do with it. Now practice (Angamardhana) Hatha yoga, and after I finish this Mandala period (40 days daily practice), I have another practice lined up (Yogasanas). The current symptoms are just a large area of dullness that resides at the the brumadhya point. Often the feelings of slight pain inside the head, particularly a small are, like a line, of pain maybe an inch or two, inside the head behind the right side of the forehead. Also my head gets very tense very easily, especially when I contemplate, study or just think, quite a lot of tension builds in the head, behind the forehead and closer to the middle of the brain. I try not to let it bother me. But if anyone has any information, resources or specialists I could see, this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks (Quoted from a previous thread I posted; thought maybe this is a more suitable place to post.)

Thank you for your help

@reves Thankyou so much.

Sometimes when I contemplate, my mind becomes rigid and it tends to end up as tension in my head. Perhaps I could just try to use my mind in a less rigid way, or meditate before I contemplate, do body-work more regularly. But it can also happen during meditation; primarily using the do-nothing technique. - Has anyone had this problem before. Perhaps when I zap the mercury from my brain it will reside, or when I get into psychedelics in a couple years I will become terminator and it will be fine. Appreciate ya'll. - peace and thanks

Thankyou very much for your reply. Do you think the exploded chakra is something to worry about?

Thankyou for this. What you have said has truly resonated with me, and I am inspired to continue on my own path.

It has been a while, but after a long spout of laziness, playing victim etc. I feel I have my spark back. what has changed since my last post: I am no longer practicing yogasanas (traditional hatha yoga); the practice would tend to take up to 4 hours at times due to my own incompetence; I think a lacking of cognitive ability would result in the visualization aspect of the practice (50% of what is supposed to be a 50 minute practice) to become significantly slower than what is ideal, and therefore greatly extend the practice. I was jeopardizing sleep and meals a lot of the time, and due to this hassle I would often chose to miss days of practice. At one point I got really frustrated at the whole process, and decided to just go on an eating, youtube and netflix heavy indulgence spree. This indulgence lasted for weeks. But fortunately, as of recent, I am starting to lose interest in such lazy behavior. what is going well: Healthy eating (initially intended habit): I am eating consistently healthy, have been doing quite well for about a week. I am feeling really great and am practicing self control. Relationships: I met a girl. She is absolutely beautiful, she is quite profoundly intelligent, constantly surprising me with what she says. I met her last year at a camp put on for my school, and I thought that she wouldn't go for me because I thought I came off quite open amd feminine in our initial interactions; but the last time I saw her I mustered up the courage to tell her that I thought she was beautiful, half an hour later we were making out. We were laying in this park quite late at night, she was in my arms; I felt the encounter had this element of spontaneity that was missing from my life. My life is all about finding time to do very specific things: "okay I need to read everyday", "I need to start a mindfulness practice because it will benefit my life", "I am going to do more psychedellics in my 20s", "when am I going to be able to be strategic enough to implement all of these tasks into my life, carefully enough to not backslide" I ruminate. But having this girl, another human, in my arms did not feel like a task, there was no procedure I had confined myself to that I could get wrong. I felt like this enlivened me and inspired me to break free from my rut, now taking a more contemplative, investigative approach to my life, whilst anticipating when it is wise to slow down. Reading/learning: My reading habit has improved as I have taken a more relaxed approach. I have often struggled with neurosis when reading non-fiction books; attempting to force every little bit of information into my head by trying to recreate the premise of my book on my pahe of notes. I've also been confused about whether it is okay to read more than one book at a time, would that be a lack of discipline/focus? (I thought). But lately I've been reading three books at once: one on nutrition, the way of the superior man and the big leap; just reading as much as I feel like and doing my best to assess the value of the information, genuinely contemplate it. ----- what is just going, but not well enough to point out how well it is going: Yoga: I am currently completing another Isha traditional Hatha yoga program, this time I am learning a practice called Angarmardhana, which has fitness based intentions as opposed to the purely spiritual intentions of yogasanas. I've been telling myself that the reason for temporarily replacing my yogasanas practice (on account of the duration complications) that I can strengthen my body and then maybe as a result do the yogasanas practice more effectively. But I think it also has a lot to do with practice being more fast paced and for a shorter duration with supposedly faster results, perhaps such results will be motivating. I am not proud of this thought process, but it has contributed to where I am. I plan to face this practice with much more discipline than I did yogasanas, finishing the mandala period and adapting through any and all discomforts. After this program I want to adjust my sleeping schedule to wake up at 4:30am, this way I can complete my practice at the ideal time recommended my sadghuru (however I don't know if this applies Angarmardhana, I know it does to yogasanas) and also consistantly experience the serenity of the morning. I am also feeling confident about commitment to this practice as it will replace some of my exercise habits, adding more motivation as I enjoy having an exercised body. Exercise: Quite inconsistent. Yet not non-existent. Contemplation: Yesterday I sat for one hour and just inquired. I want do be more constant with this. Today I had an opportunity to sit for an hour before a bus arrived, but I came up with excuses not to on account of reducing stress for an upcoming transportation related situation. However when I got home at the end of the day, the promise window of time that I would return to would result in the loss of some valuable sleep on account of very early transportation commitments related to my yoga program. I learned that even a window of time is precious, and I think inquiry into reality and what life is about is a precious way to fill it. I will avoid such cop-outs in the future. Emotional work: I haven't implemented any of 'the Work' of Byron Katie yet. I haven't scheduled a large block of time to do so but I will do so soon. When I contenplate I experience emotional relief, which is allowing me to relatively effextively manage my emotions. Life purpose course: I am not doing the course everyday, i have been stuck on this one exercise that is supposed to only take 15 minutes, for a total of like 6 hours (accross different spurts of 15 minute sessions). But I do make progress with each session, even if it is taking longer than it a should. And I feel like with my latest developments with health and personal reflection, that I will be much more effective when I return to the exercises this week after my yoga program is over. ----- Insights/developments: - I am beginning to see that I have ludicrous existential biases, and if I don't live a contemplative life, then such biases will be maintained my whole life. Thought can disguise itself as being separate from reality. Which is an example of a strange bias. - upon reflecting on my inherent "gifts", as David Deida in his book "The Way of the Superior Man" discusses a man "giving his gift" - "Most men's reason for doing anything has to do with discovering their deepest truth, enjoying total freedom and love, and giving their fullest gift". I was wondering what gift I may have, as I always imagined a gift to be some inherent talent burried somewhere inside me that would make me lots of money if I found it and bring me happiness, kind of like Bruce Lee discovering his love for martial arts. But as I dug deeper it dawned on me is experience is all I could find. And in this sense my experience would be more of an active, creative process, rather than a search to find a specific thing. And perhaps all I need to do is be as real as I can be. Apart of me wants to choose inquiry into life / reflection and contemplation as "the one thing" that I choose as my thing to intensely orient my life towards. But I think my intentions aren't necessarily to find the nature of what things are, although I love to do so, but moreso to find what the point of human existence is. Now that I think of it I do love to contemplate, and I love having paradigm fucking insights, so perhaps this is all I need to know. Thanks for reading any of this at all. I hope you're doing okay in your corner.

Hi, my name is Tommy, I am 18 years old and I live in Australia. I have been doing self-actualisation work for coming on two years now, and I am creating this journal to keep a general track record of my daily practice throughout the week, the struggles that I am facing and how I plan to get through them, articulating my vision so that I can understand it better. It is time for me to take responsibility for my compulsions and inadequacies, and make the most of not only my youth, but of my whole life. Being young, I have precious free time to set the foundations for an incredible life. I have realised throughout my life that life itself is a messy, messy thing. Sometimes it feels like it is as simple as pointing a hose towards my plants and watching them grow, other times it is as though I have dropped the hose, full pressure, and the fucker is spraying all over the place. This journal is a place that I am to catch my hose, and direct my energy to what I think is important. This journal as a means of holding myself accountable I will be keeping track of the consistency of these practices, by starting my posts with a tally of whether these practices have been fulfilled on a weekly basis, and if the practice is not completed on a daily basis (e.g. The work of Byron Katie, due the often extended duration of the practice), I will set a date and location to complete such a practice and report when I have completed the practice in a future post. My practices include: - Yogasanas (Classical Hata Yoga) - Reading, taking notes (learning) - Healthy eating - Contemplation using a journal - Journalling (often Leo's Life-Purpose course work) - Exercise - The Work of Byron Katie This journal as a means of logging my progress of facing my challenges, and articulating the larger vision that I am moving towards The issues I have been struggling with lately is binge eating. I have a habit of lashing out and eating whatever will bring me immediate pleasure, followed by watching hours and hours of Netflix television series. In the initial stages of this journal, I want to focus on my binge eating issue, by pledging to not unnecessarily indulge in processed food, nor consume and wheat, dairy or added sugar (apart from honey if that counts). I also want to continue to log my progress towards finding my life purpose, because when these binge eating and Netflix episodes take place, it is often at the expense of completing work from Leo's course. Thank you for reading and I look forward to connecting with you all in the future.

I was initiated into shambhavi mahamudra kriya yoga, I want to continue, there was a time were I saw great benefits. My body felt delicious, great mood, and life was more vivid. But nowadays my kundalini symptoms flare up when I sit in the asana, I feel energy rising into my brain. The heart on the left and right heat up, tremble, and once it even felt like it burnt me a little bit. Interestingly it's only when I do a short loving kindness meditation and chant at the beginning of the practice that this flare up happens, throughout the actual kriya everything feels okay, it's just a bit frightening. I just feel so guilty about missing days.

I have grown up in a household with parents who are both fine artists. My early childhood was just drawing, I never could wrap my head around video games, nor did my parents buy me any, and I would always have access to notepads, pens and paints, so that was what I did. As a result of this, I have always been a talented illustrator and painter. It comes very naturally to me, and I am able to fuse imagery. Yet this is not my bliss per se, but my talent for imagery extends to photography, film which I feel like I could explore as an outlet. I was always intrigued by spirituality and personal development from the age of 15, when I joined a small sangha, I was also passionate about philosophy which I valued over art due to language's ability to vividly portray, to convey a clear message and not a metaphoric one. Starting to watch actualized.org conveyed that to me, I love this no-bullshit approach to conveying a message. But on the other hand, I love nature so much, I deeply value simple observation; on account of this and my artistic strength I am now seriously considering becoming a nature photographer. I think that telling the world explicitly how they could change their life is more effective than showing them metaphorically. How do you think art services the world?

If so, what did you think of them?

I've backslid a lot but never this bad. Yesterday I went back on all of my habits. Today binge watching netflix for the first time in like a year. Is it likely that I will do a full 1.80 if I implement them all back at once?

@Gili Trawangan I can relate to the point of art helping to transcend the ego. When listening to some really beautiful jazz this morning I felt my ego took a backseat. Can you perhaps provide an example of a work of art that has had such an effect on yourself? @rNOW I am familiar with Banksy's work; this is a good point, Banksy's art presents a clear and powerful message aimed to service the world. Thankyou for your replies <3

@Knock Good points friend, thankyou for this. Inspiration is an important point which I am overlooking. Nature is my biggest inspiration in life, so I could share this with people.

The digital timers I buy often break easily. Does anyone know of a digital timer, available online, that has been reliable for you?

@Mu_ Thankyou friend.

What are your experiences with enemas? Is anyone averted to them? If so, why?

So right now I am working on the life purpose course, I am doing all of the exercises, over and over doing the best that I can to get them right. But there's subtle parts of the course, not the specific action steps, but subtle aspects such as the implementation of a general journalling habit or personal visioning habit (I assume this does not constitute as leaked material, delete if not allowed x) that sometimes I feel get shown 99% commitment e.g. "Oh well I contemplated a different topic that day so that counts as me journal-ling." I want to do the course with 100% attention and focus, not 99% focus. Lately I've been backsliding hard on some addictive tendencies in terms of food, I give into actually buying unhealthy food when I am out which I have not done before. I'm lean, and pretty muscular, energy levels are good when I sleep right. I mostly eat meals that are super healthy, my only issue is sugar addiction and lashing out when I'm in a bad mood. But today, after reading a book on the immune system and healthy eating, I was able to connect some dots, and consider the point that if I do not get my nutrition in order, well, I will be debilitated and die. So it seems wise to continue gathering information, taking the action steps, and then implementing this. I also have a really difficult relationship with my brother. I believe he constantly attempts to manipulate me, he talks a lot of shit, and he is overall shallow, boring, lazy, materialistic and just starkly contrasts my values. His neurosis irritate me, he doesn't think before he speaks to me, he just blurts shit at me (I can see my nature these are very debatable criticisms, what I have written demonstrates my general attitude towards him.) Once I was in a situation where he was in my vicinity, this was after finishing a Shambhavi (yoga/meditation) practice, and I felt joy and attempted to surrender to it, resulting in me laughing. He then decided that I was going insane and tried to convince me of such. I tried to defend myself, but it came out as me just bullshitting because there wasn't really anything to defend, the situation spoke for itself, and my speech did not do it justice. So now he seems to think I am going insane, and he seems to think that I am some kind of social recluse because I only rarely see friends and don't go to the pub, and I haven't been vocal about beginning a career. This creates a really tense, mechanical and uncomfortable environment between us; like sometimes we have passing chats and then we make progress e.g. Once I outlined how I thought we both attempt to impose our values onto each other, yet this will never work as out values are differing and subjective. This seemed to dampen the fire quite a bit. - My brother isn't so much a toxic person; I think I personally just try to avoid materialism and drinking alcohol, and he does both those things. These things are not bad, I just don't want to be around me because it is kind of boring. So in this way I find it difficult to respect people, or I have given it enough time to find such understanding really truly in my experience. So on account of such opinions I hold, and there is quite a few, it makes me want to go deeper into the work of Byron Katie (or do more emotional mastery inquiry), I have done some before, but struggle to keep it up e.g. I end my sessions early often as I try to go as deep as possible, but there are other things that I want to do e.g. Yoga, journal-ing, reading that I see as equally as important. So yeah I get to 'have a look' but it is not the process finished in its entirety. I have just finished high-school, I'm working 18 hours a week with good money. I'm in the perfect situation to do the life-purpose course time wise, I feel like I've also got time to set my health straight. I can look deep within myself, I can look for meaning deep within myself, in fact I've done just one exercise like 5 times just so I could get it right. My thinking about going forward: I could even read a book on speed reading first, then finish and implement the book on health, by then I having a solid and steady reading/research habit that can be continued following other endeavours (something critical that I am spotty on at this moment). Then I was thinking get my sleep schedule in order so I'm awake and constantly energised in my life. Followed by some solid, committed "work" (of Byron Katie), and also some radical honesty which is something that I have not looked at yet, and I think this could really help the course. - But then I am also aware that I am pretending life is a linear process. Procedures tend not to work, yet perhaps I just have a narrow view of procedures, and execution is just changing implementations relative to the idea of my goal. Is there something apparent that I am missing? What would be some drawbacks to alternating my attention between emotional mastery, focused course work and yoga/spiritual work? One I can see is that often I am not organised enough with my time, so then sometimes it means that I sleep less, which brings me back to the idea that I get my sleep in check before I commit to the course/other work. It seems as though it would be better to do the work if I were healthy, emotionally grounded, at least mended the relationship with my brother. But isn't backsliding inevitable? Is there a person who exists that does not slip up? Is it possible to change permanently?

Then why does Sadghuru starkly demonise doing yoga without initiation?

If so, what did you think? Would you recommend it?

I had this insight today - there is not "right" way to eat, hence why different people eat different things, "thriving" is relative. However when I drink an orange juice for the sweetness and the cool, refreshing sensation on my tongue, I undermine my primary intention of prosperity, an intention that could go without such pleasures. Thank you for sharing brother!

I think I have also had a similar experience; thank you for reminding me, I take for granted my experiences of love.

Perhaps combined intricately, like flour and water.

There has been a few months gap between beginning the course and where I am now. I have taken quite detailed notes of the core concepts, and on the second pass of the values section. Because there has been this gap, would it perhaps be a good idea to begin the course again, as I want to do the course as thoroughly as possible. Thanks. @Leo Gura

Here is a question: What is there to want other than consciousness, this, and/or an alien banana peel (etc.)? I cannot find want, but there is a force that drives this. And so I conclude that I must align with whatever is true. My question is, why would you do anything else? - I have so many objections: I am deluded (probably true), I do not deserve it as I have not done enough work to subscribe to any insight; all insights are illegitimate because of this, I am not psychologically ready nor physically ready, I have do not have any success so I will constantly be faced with the pressure of leaching on society as opposed to pulling my own weight. (I am working on all these things at the moment) - Perhaps I'm talking shit. And I assume I am in dangerous waters as I came to this conclusion in my notebook and not looking at my hand, but then again I do look at my notebook.