nistake

@Anna1 The consciousness section here in a nutshell

Burmese position with support pillows. That's how I do it. It's pretty comfy once your legs get used to it, but I couldn't do more than 1 hour at the moment. Om Swami said that he was convinced that he wouldn't be able to walk properly anymore after his long retreat. And yet, he continued meditating. Now that's determination

Watching those two episodes takes like ~3 hours. If learn how to contemplate properly and implement it in your daily life, you can get insights that can change the trajectory of your life in the best way possible. Wouldn't you say it's worth it?

Maybe next time try to separate yourself from the anger. If you completely identify with it, it's no wonder you get carried away and "ruins" your session. Instead of reacting to it blindly, just say to yourself: "Now I feel anger. What is this anger? Where does it come from?". Don't try to get away from it, don't try to calm yourself. Observe it silently as long as necessary.

Check out the two episodes of contemplation. Just a side note: Don't try to "kill" your ego. That's quite a neurotic way to look at it. Instead, work out your emotional/psychological issues and traumas and work on accepting yourself fully with self-love. You won't be able to do this in 6 days, that's for sure, but this kind of solo retreat is a perfect way to start this progress.

Yup, an episode about shadow work would be awesome.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I like to do hatha yoga exercises or even simple streching before meditation (I don't do Kriya). The human body tends to get tensed if it is not used regulary/properly (i.e. sitting at a desk all day). I'm not really talking about preparing for intense energies, but the simple fact that it's much better meditating/doing yoga with a nice and relaxed loose body.

Well, I think every job/profession has the shiny side and not-so-shiny sides to it. The shiny side that you see in the final product. In your case, the complete animation. It looks awesome and it's really satisfying. However, it's necessary to bite the bullet sometimes and just power through the difficult parts of the work. Let's take a look at Leo. I'm sure that his business is insanely satisfying and meaningful. But I'm pretty sure that it has several aspects that are not so exciting or even downright boring and tedious (just like every other job/profession). For instance, finances, answering to emails, moderating the forum, editing videos (that can be a huge pain in the ass in my opinion), etc. Maybe Leo enjoys some of these, who knows? The important thing is, sometimes you just have to find the strength to power through the difficult parts of your work. You have to know that it's gonna be worth it.

Or 'The Way of Liberation' by Adyashanti. Short and practical book straight to the point.

@Leo Gura Just out of curiosity: game designer as in programmer (like back-end stuff) or 3D modeling, texturing and other artsy stuff?

I think those are classic symptoms of your shadow. One of the forum users here has some great videos about it. Check these out, great stuff:

Quite insightful, great stuff.

Joe Rogan

It wasn't so bad in my opinion. Obviously it wasn't made for hardcore spirituality crowds, but that doesn't mean that "oh no, they corrupted the holy psychedelics, these people didn't even deserve to use them, yada-yada". It's a lightweight stuff for the average netflix user. It's great at that and it's sort of informative. At least, it doesn't demonize the use of these drugs. That's a start.

@Elton Yup. Don't expect straight answers right away, just let it all out. That alone can be really helpful.

A funny story from an interview with Adyashanti: One day, when I was thirty-three, something happened without any emotion, which, for me, was absolutely necessary: I heard the call of a bird outside, and a thought came up from my gut, not from my head: Who hears this sound? The next thing I knew, I was the bird, and I was the sound, and I was the person listening; I was everything. I thought, I’ll be damned. I had tasted this at twenty-five, but there had been so much energy and spiritual byproduct. This time I didn’t get elated. It was just factual. I got up and went into the kitchen to see if I was the stove, too. Yeah, I was the stove. Looking for something more mundane, I went into the bathroom. What do you know: I was the toilet, too. Quite funny tbh All jokes aside, this interview is really insightful. It cleared up a few things for me. You can read it here: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/384/who-hears-this-sound

Well, there may be several reasons for that. I suggest you open up an empty Word document and write down the exact same thing you wrote in the title. Do the stream-of-consciousness journaling stuff. Don't limit yourself, don't try to reason, don't accept the easy answers. Just keep writing and see what comes up.

Maybe check out this book: https://www.adyashanti.org/store/publications/books/the-end-of-your-world-531?sorton=dpublicationdate&sortorder=asc&nstart=1&start=1&n=5&subjectid=&searchTitle=

@playdoh That's all fine man. Just because you engage in spiritual practises, you can enjoy the mundane things as well. No need to be a recluse and renounce everything.

That's good and all, but try to explain these things to a person who's never even heard about spirituality/ego/enlightenment. I think it's fair for these people to start off with basic stuff. Like working out emotional issues, resolving traumas, maintaining a healthy lifestyle (exercise/diet/etc), then move on to enlightenment work.

Well, meditation shouldn't be just a hobby of yours hoping that you'll get those "magical" benefits. If you take meditation seriously, it should be a lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with wanting benefits at first, but after a while you need to do some contemplation about why're you're doing it. You'll get those benefits anyway if you're sincere.

Definitely, but I try to be mindful even when I engage with unconscious hobbies.

This was a great talk. I quite like Adyashanti's attitude. He doesn't really mess around, he gives it to you straight in an everyday language. A lot of spiritual teachers tend to romanticize enlightenment as if it was a super-powerful blissful state that you can stay in 24/7. Which is not really the case.

Now that's an interesting question.