Extreme Z7

About half an hour to 45 minutes. . then I let my legs stretch out for about 5 minutes before going back.

@Mattylonglegs My personal method of combating sleepiness is just to meditate cross-legged. Although if you already do meditate cross-legged then, welp, I don't know how to help. . .

<01-05-2017> Starting 2017 With Some Baby Steps First of all, I would like to apologize for not posting in my journal for a very long time. I just temporarily lost motivation to write here and lost some momentum. Also the Christmas partying had its own effect. I decided to start 2017 with one commitment to end the year being massively better at drawing than I was when the year started. It may not seem like much but being able to have high expertise in drawing is one of my dreams in life and I feel that this year will only feel well spent for me if I focus it on my drawing practice. It was on mid-2016 when I decided to start drawing daily and I plan this to be the first year in my life where I draw everyday with no excuses. This counts a project so I'm taking advantage of Leo's pre-mortem technique. I'm not going to get into too much detail but I will say that my main strategy is to focus on learning something new in drawing everyday. Whether it's from a tutorial or some fun new idea where I learn something from the process. I am very much still a rookie/amateur at this so focusing on making drawings that will inspire me won't be my main focus, yet I will certainly not dismiss drawing something because of inspiration. Aside from this, I am also near finishing reading the first book of 'The Law Of One'. I'm not too emotionally invested as to whether what is shown in the book is true or not but I give it a 50:50 possibility that it may or may not be true. Either way, I find some of the information still useful. Most recently, I read a part where it says that ego and materialism is not to be overcome to become enlightened, in fact it is highly discouraged because it creates imbalance or whatever. But rather that one is to experience, understand, analyze and accept the experiences from ego and materialism. Whatever is unnecessary falls off on its own. That's it for today. I leave you in the love and the light of the one infinite Creator. Adonai.

@Gabriel Antonio You are projecting your own ideas as to how higher-consciousness is actually like. I've never been to a Buddhist monastery before but I suspect that there is good reason why you are , for example, not allowed to speak up against the Zen master or question the practices. I don't think it's for the same reason why you are not allowed to speak up when being indoctrinated by a religious group. There's just a little more nuance that is found when you go deep and examine non-duality vs dogma. They may look similar in the surface but the small details and connections can show a world of difference. Also, take into account the fact that only low-consciousness loves to argue.

I dunno, I just want to make comics based on random stuff I come up with. http://extreme-z7.deviantart.com/gallery/60967327/Laughable-Comics

@Leo Gura . . .

I would peg myself on a transition between Stage 1 and 2.

It's a classic David Wong article, I must say. Read it back in 2014.

<12-27-2016> Glimpse of Heaven I failed to do my 60-min self-inquiry work today. Quite a shame but it's not too bad because today felt (relatively) pleasant. I'm not sure if it is because of the practice but if it is the case, then this is so far, the most effective practice for increasing my level of happiness than any other practice I've had so far, even better than meditation. But it may not be. So far, I've only done the practice 4 times so I don't have much experience as to where it really leads. Well, it leads to enlightenment but I mean where does it lead me psychologically. Anyway, I think the most likely reason why today felt a lot more pleasant than my other days is because I wasn't in the mood to work on my university projects today. I spent the majority of the day drawing the comic below. (You can find my other comics in my deviantart page, linked in my previous entry,) So I guess I just felt really in tune with how I truly authentically wanted to live today. (Well, to an extent) I'm getting pretty tired of having to work on projects that I have no passion for that is eating up a lot of my time. Can't complain too much, though, because my situation isn't permanent and I'm bound to graduate on 2017 which a major life shift will have to occur for me in the near future. Now that's something for me to ponder.

@Soulbass Maybe a good plan is to make sure you're posting on the right thread first. Hehehe. . .

Enlightenment Rookie Here: Just giving a report on this practice because I happen to want to, I'm Day 4 into this practice and I am still on deep confusion as to what I really am and who is aware of reality. I am trying to resist settling with an intellectual answer but doubts keep arising. Worries about how I may be wasting my time fooling myself working on something that may actually lead nowhere. I try to sit and accept the negative thoughts and keep my eye on direct experience and direct experience only. I want to know what I am in direct experience. Today, during the practice, I began to realize that my idea that I am this body is a deeply held belief that is so deep that even after hours of contemplation and reaching some conceptual understanding of enlightenment, I still live daily life based on the paradigm of "self and other". I felt truly open to turning that around. But still. . . . . . no enlightenment. My mind then started pondering who is the one experiencing the frustration of not being able to find who is the one experiencing the frustration. (Try saying that 3 times fast) Who is doing the enlightenment practice. Hell, who is writing this sentence right now? Body and mind is typing and reading this but who is experiencing? Anyway, back to the practice. I eventually had the thoughts "Do these thoughts even mean anything?" "What's the point of trying to think my way to enlightenment?" So I decided to sit calmly for a while and just observe. . . . To communicate this via metaphor. . . Maybe me roaming around the lake is scaring away the fish. . . I should maybe just stay where I am and wait for the fish to come to me. . . . . Still, no enlightenment. The last 5 minutes or so of my practice was pure irrelevant monkey mind before my timer rang. So that sucks. . . oh well. . . I've got like many more hours in my life to spend more time with this practice. I'm 19 years old. by the way, if that holds any importance to you.

@Alicja_ There a lot factors that can lead to an inability to feel happiness in life. I think it's good to embark on a deep study on yourself and your surroundings in order to get a big picture understanding of why you are where you are and what action steps can you do to fix it. Some things that are important to think about which you may or may not have already considered: Your Environment Whatever Addictions You Have, Soft or Hard Your Beliefs and Worldview Your Self-Image Or Possibly Even Your Unique Physiological Make-Up There are a lot more to this, obviously. Just keep digging deep and be open to new or radical perspectives. Who knows? You might discover something you haven't thought of before.

<12-23-2016> I'm Lazy Meh. . .not in the mood to really want to talk about my day today. It wasn't bad, it was actually quite pleasant. All I want to do is just post the drawing I made today. Oh and if you didn't know, I have a daily drawing habit. You can find my other drawings here.

<12-22-2016> Suffering From Materialism I came to a realization today that a large majority of the suffering and lack of fulfillment I have in my life is due to my attachment to materialism. Not a surprise, considering that it's Christmas where the materialistic tradition is rampant so I did think about it a lot but I was surprised to the extent as to which I realized the depth of my suffering from materialism. I would say about 90%~99% of my suffering is probably due to materialistic desire. And by the way, when I talk about materialistic desire, I'm broadly speaking about all kinds of attachments towards external circumstances. I really feel like I sold my soul to the Devil many years ago in my childhood and didn't even know it. The battle is going to be tough and even though it isn't the whole war, something tells me some blood is going to be involved. Not literally, obviously.

Kick, Punch! It's all in the mind! Wise words from Chop Chop Master Onion

<12-21-2016> Second Day Of Leo's Enlightenment Practice When Leo first presented his Step-by-Step Self-Observation Practice for achieving enlightenment, I was hesitant at first because it would mean having to allocate to time for yet another habit that I'm not yet willing to have. But when I did decide to try it out yesterday and even today, both times I felt like it was completely worth it. I don't want to talk about the results I got yet because I want to do a little more of the practice to see how deep it can go. Who knows, maybe I might even reach enlightenment? Oooh. . . that sounds really cool, I'm so inspired to keep going. . . I'm going to go play some video games now. . .

@Leo Gura Would I be correct in guessing that when the term 'Healing' is used by Ra, he's referring to enlightenment?

<12-20-2016> Doing Leo's Practical Guide To Enlightenment What am I? Who is aware of the typing of this message? Am I the one writing this sentence? . . . . . Who is perceiving this computer screen? Does it perceive itself? . . . . . I'm bored, I want some fries. . . crap I got distracted. Who am I? Who am I? I'm very frustrated. . . uggh Wait I forgot, I'm not doing the practice right now, I'm supposed to be writing in the journal, whoops. . .

@Leo Gura Haha, that's nice. Well, that was just a simple joke anyway. Better get back to the topic at hand.

@Radical Honesty I Love You

@Leo Gura Why not start a thread were people come up with the most hurtful insults about each other and everyone just responds with "I Love You"? The Law of One sucks, by the way, and you're stupid for reading it.

@jse A comic I made It may have nothing to with the actual context of the discussion, but hey, I gotta get people to see it somehow. Anyway, I don't think GPS is evidence that time remains constant. Simply because if nature of time does actually change, the input that determines how the device would work would have to change as well in proportion to GPS calculating it. Time could very well just be a construct of the human mind. Sadhguru has spoken of experiences in his life where he sat and meditated for far longer than he thought he did. A few hours of sitting for him once turned out to be fourteen days (allegedly).

<12-17-2016> Slow Down And Just Breathe Just had another relatively strong and focused meditation session today which made the next few hours pretty pleasant today. I find that I'm now going right back down to my "normal" self as I right this, with my "normal" worries, my "normal" emotional issues, my "normal" distractions and I'm still trying to remain mindful of just how most of my life is just a hallucination and why I'm not supposed to take it too seriously. Whenever I'm in a more stable and pleasant state, I'm able to feel more in tune with reality, I don't overwork myself, I don't feel a lot of anxiety, and I'm able to feel joy more. I really hope that I may sometime get to a point where this is a normal everyday thing and not just a temporary post-meditative-state. I have a lot of work to do. Another thing that I like to talk about today is that Leo just made a thread for a free e-book for a book called "The Law of One". Leo presented it as a challenge of one's open-mindedness and I believe it after reading the book's introduction. I don't want to say what it is because it's just so shocking that I want anyone to read it to have the same surprise. That's it for today, by the way, everything you believe to be true is wrong, have a nice day.

@Leo Gura I can't access the book. The link doesn't seem to be working for me. EDIT: Nevermind, I got the book elsewhere.