Azrael

I personally meditate with eyes open for more then 10 months now - I don't really track - but I can tell it's a good idea. That way you can really practice "just to sit" without trying to do something. Not even closing your eyes, getting lost in it - but just sit and be. And personally from doing this - I experienced the most normal, pissed-off, bored, highly spiritual, fucking transcending to completely loving sits. If you do this for some time all of these situations will present them to you. And first-off you will try to go for the "spiritual", "loving" nice ones. Because you really think that's the meditation you want. So one does that for a while until you find out .. the hard way .. that there is just nothing you can really do to provoke a good meditation. It just seems that it really doesn't matter how much you want it but that it always decides for itself whether you are in flow or not. So you begin to lean back, understand that and finally just take what comes. And the storm will just go further: good, bad, random, mediocre. But you will sit there knowing that this is exactly the flow they call .. life, Tao, it, nature. However you call it. And that's it.

"When tired sleep, when hungry eat".

Dude, chill. When you get into deeper states of meditation a lot of auditory and visual hallucinations will come up. I hear these humming sounds a lot, it's just your brain making this up. In Zen they call this Makyo. It's nothing special, just ignore it or use it to get even deeper.

Basically you'll encounter a lot of strange things on this journey because you - the ego - will begin to break down and more layers of bullshit get cut through from month to month. The game between being in peace and going back to sleep is one that will follow you through for some time. I have whole phases of like weeks and months in which I feel completely enlightened and I have other ones in which I am completely asleep and suffering a lot. Having this for some time basically tells you that neither the phase of peace nor the phase of sleep is something you want to constantly manifest or get rid of. Because this doesn't work this way. Life is peace and sleep, terror and love. What will change is that awareness will develop around these things and you see how they "play with each other" - so you transform to a state of seeing through this and this calms you down a lot. So, everything normal here. Just go on. Have fun!

Yeah, I've had that experience. Nowadays, I sit completely still. The only times I'm moving is when my body unconsciously does so a little bit. But this develops over time.

Yeah, basically you can straighten it a little bit. But don't do it every two minutes or so. When you meditate for some time your back will stay in the right position or you have to adjust it just once or twice a little bit. The main pain with strong determination sits comes in my experience from your legs, hips and lower back. And your body feels like a rock if you don't move for some time. So try to move as little as possible.

joined

@Jan Odvarko epic video, dude. I binged-watched last October-November like every Shinzen Young video. He presents you with a good framework that one can use to understand and progress with the practice.

Yes, I'd agree to that. If you have a math / engineering background computer science will fit if you like it. Do what you love!

@Leo Gura What is your deepest carnal craving you struggle to get rid of the most when it comes to detoxifying ones lifestyle?

1. The goal is not to move for a certain amount of time. By doing this, physical discomfort and a lot of mind chattering (negative thoughts) will come up. When his happens, you should transcend that pain - meaning try to be really with it. Go into it until it disappears. When that happens, it at least feels like your nervous system cleans from unconscious programmings that you have. It's powerful. Sitting cross-legged will speed up the pains coming a lot. 2. You can do anything you like. There are different strategies. When the pain comes up, your main job will be to get along with that. Do whatever you have / want to do. From personal experience, I'd try to really join the pain. Go right into where it hurts the most and get a real good taste of what pain is. 3. No, the goal is to transcend the pain and mental reactions to it. Meaning, you can reach a state in which the crudest pains come up and you just sit with a smile on your face because for you it's just a tingling sensation and no suffering is attached to it any more. Cheers

I study computer science in Berlin, Germany. I love to connect my field of study with understanding psychology. This way I can bring the frontier of human intelligence, human patterns and the way our consciousness works together with mathematical, strictly defined and deterministic approaches to develop better algorithms and have a lot fun mixing both.

Perfectly fine. Just go on. There are days at which it is not easy to get time, I know that myself. If you have to cut minutes because you can't organize it any other way, totally fine. I do that sometimes, everyone else does. It's way more important to develop the habit. You can add minutes to the clock when this is all set.

No, it basically took me one to three months to get into the cool parts of meditation. Meaning, that I began to enjoy sitting and being. However, after these first three months the psychological cleaning really got going and from then on I was shot into a lot of cycles. As I said, a lot of very, very hard ones but also phases of complete unity and being - if you wanna call it this way. However also, as you meditate from month to month you are being presented with new levels of mindfulness, awareness and so on. What I experienced after one year of meditation would seem to me one year ago probably like mind-magic. Wouldn't believe that such a development is possible. And I'm just even beginning to see where this leading to. This whole journey, once you are in it for some time, is really nuts. I love it. Before I started meditating I was very successful in life if you look from an outer perspective. I have and had everything going, moved to Berlin from my home town after I did my a levels starting my computer science studies at one of the best universities here in Germany and so on. If I'd tell you all the things I've done in such early ages, you probably would be impressed. HOW fucking ever, I was completely neurotic, smoking 15-20 cigarettes a day, had a no stopping monkey mind that was worrying all day long and I still was struggling from some unresolved troubles because of a woman. So on the inside, I was completely fucked and I did quite an impressive job not to let anyone know. I'm now, a little more then a year after all that in a very relaxed, calm, good mood. Stopped smoking a year ago, have a lot of fun, my grades went even up, I moved into a very nice place and do my thing. I'm focusing a lot on my studies and enlightenment. I love that. I still struggle with a lot of things now when it comes to realize even deeper truths and connecting to that, but it's a whole other dimension if that is like your hobby and not your way out of misery. I basically don't have a lot of positive thoughts. My mind is really crazy. Also in meditation, I have thoughts I wouldn't even share with you guys here. What increases though are phases of being where you are completely in flow with the present moment and as awareness builds up, it feels like another dimension comes into the picture that frees you part by part from the attachment to your negative thoughts. As this proceeds it seems like you watch the most marvellous theatre in the front row. So you don't care what thoughts arise and by that they get a lot better. Keep it up. This is by far one of the best means to unhook and get healthy again. If you experience a lot of negative emotions while doing all this, maybe there is a very hurt side in you that screams for attention for years because it had to protect you from this mean, mean world when you weren't psychological stable enough to deal with it calmly. If that is the case for you, don't hate your negative thoughts and emotions. Listen to them and connect with them. They were and still are your safety shield that is maybe rotted in some ways - but that's not a reason to try to get away from it. Love it and listen to it, then it will naturally dissolve to a very relaxed, calm and self-confident shield. Trust me.

You still suffer under the illusion that there is more than one it, nothingness, field of awareness - however you wanna call it. Think about this: How many things are in the world if you don't have your abstract thinking faculty to analyse it? If you just sense, just look. Without naming anything and without categorizing anything. What remains is it. The one big wiggle that is you, me, Jesus, Buddha, the door next to you, whatever. All these things were ever present and will be always here in one form or another. As your body dies and you go down, another body will grow up and trick himself into believing he is separate from this world. You don't have to prove anything here. Just observe. People die, people get born. That's the proof. So as long as there are people, there will be you in that form. Just like you are the wind, the dogs, the birds and anything else that happens. There is no soul to go from one place to the other. Show me that soul, and I show you the soul the reincarnates.

As if you had a choice here. Can you be completely w/o thinking whatsoever, or the opposite: Can you not be? If you are meditating and you are sitting still for some time you are doing it right, if you ask me. And here's why: Doing that for over a year and for a minimum of one hour per day I found that I had weeks and months in which my head was literally screaming 60 minutes throughout the meditation, leaving me completely doubting whether I do this right or not. Other times it was boring as fuck and I couldn't do something about it. Still other times it was highly spiritual and I had life-changing experiences. Now what did I do better when I had the life-changing experiences in my meditation? Nothing. I did exactly nothing but what I was doing all of the time. Just sitting, doing nothing. And one day it just strut me: If you take a monkey that is literally addicted to heroin and put him in front of a wall for some time every day, he will freak out completely in the beginning. After some time he will calm down and see that this is one of the most pleasurable experiences, but to realize that he first has to get off his addiction, or at least lower it. That's the same with us. You cannot do something wrong here, you're just fucking sick, we all are. You cannot be more aware on purpose. It will come naturally if you sit every day and meditate and investigate these things. For me I basically had one year of a complete roller coaster of ups and downs, good and very, very fucking awful phases until one meditation a few months ago, where I firstly had the sensation of thoughts arising w/o having the sensation of speaking them myself. So I proved to myself that I actually do not take part in the equation of what I think or do. From then on, a lot of crazy shit happened and it deepens and deepens and puts me into new situations. But I didn't do something to get there, I did nothing long enough to come to this stage and I will get to other ones if my body is ready. So is yours. So chill down, everything is fine.

Interesting, I tend to go in the same direction. As awareness builds up polar thinking develops that basically lets you in on the secret that you can't have up without down, colour without shape, feeling bad without feeling good. They are by their nature one thing playing hide and seek with each other. When you discover that, one ends up with your attitude @Salaam. Even though you might be hurt in some situations or feels very uncomfortable, you get to know that this really is the ground that it takes to swing back to a state of pleasure and happiness. Experiencing this for a while detaches you from all of that and you will feel in any emotional situation as if an orchestra plays inside your body. You will be astonished by how powerful fear, how shining love and how deepening relaxation is and you never go back.

I'm sorry dude but there is only one true decision in the self-actualized way of life: To take this fucking thresome like a man.

Good. Just go on.

I've been doing nothing now for - I don't know - maybe 10 months in combination with strong determination sits and I can report to you that it completely fucking increased my concentration levels and the ability to concentrate for long hours like nuts is responsible for me getting even better grades in university gives me the opportunity to merge even more with my life purpose, studies and life in general cured and cures all kind of neurosis like double-checking, being overly critical, smoking, .. gives me way more fun when I go partying, having social obligations or whatever comes This is be far one of the best tools I've used to get in contact with my intuition and by that to flow with whatever I do. It is the cure for your over-stimulated life.

A peak experience definitely opens you up or puts you in direct contact with what is, but you have to see there is a clear distinction between a peak experience that connects you with being to the fact that every experience by its nature is and can only be being in its way. The peak experience just lets you in on that. They also can open you up to a realization that can then - after the peak - slowly get your new standard of seeing things and the world. I often experience peak experiences for typically 1-2 weeks after having a few weeks of real brutal monkey mind terror. It then sets a new standard of understanding until you come to the point at which even every negative experience is seen in its totality and as the flow of things that is natural. So basically you calm down.

I basically spent the evenings working on the course. I highly recommend to follow exactly the structure of it - because Leo put some good thought into it - and maybe don't binge to much on it. I am highly guilty of taking in too much, put especially in the later chapters of it one needs some time to really think about all the assignments and where to go with all of that.

Basically by slowly opting out. Look Leo's last video on minimalism, it is certainly the unhooking and transcending yourself from this overstimulated and neurotic society to get back to what really fulfills you - your passion and diving in your own being, starting to understand it. Use the society to give you the resources to go to a place and take a job that really fulfills you and then slowly let go and unhook. Will be hard at times, especially in beginning, but it's really the only way not to end up like them. I have a few friends who started making kids in the last years and I just observed how they - from this point on - are inevitably sucked into the bubble and they will probably distracted by this for the next 20-25 years. So make wise decisions on your part - what you really want.

It's super high quality material Leo presents to you in a structured and determined way, so that it will effect and guide you in the direction you need to go to come clear exactly what you want, starting from your values, to what you are able to to best to ... your life purpose and then how to execute it. Plus a lot of visualizations, you make like a dozen very insightful tasks and you are presented with a lot of cool concepts on how to go about it. Very good stuff. I definitely found my life purpose there, however I kind of knew it in beforehand and I'm working for it for a few years now. I took the course primarily to make this crystal clear, align me to it as much as I can and to be aware of all the resources, tricks and concepts to go about it.

If I really had to strip it down to a month, I would take the rest of my money to buy a ticket to some nature location - like something really epic - buy probably a tent and food and so on and meditate the last month. I wouldn't probably even give a fuck about my life purpose, this would be all stripped away. If you are put in such a situation and you have mindful skills and are on the journey this would probably give you spiritual experiences for one month in a row ending with you ... going.