Arman

There are a ton of free books in the public domain on project gutenberg. My recommendation is to just get an ebook reader or use your smartphone/tablet and sign up to scribd.com (or any similar alternatives, but scribd is the biggest that I know) . It's like netflix for books. I think it's like 12 bucks a month but it claims to have "hundreds of thousands" of e-books available that you can instantly read. It's kind of like having access to a huge e-book library. I've been using it for some months now and I love it. It's got a lot of good stuff on there. It's what I used to start a reading habit. If you (or anyone else) is interested, I can send you an invite code to get the first 2 months for free, just send a PM if you want.

The topic Identifying Threats To Productivity inspired me to make this thread. I was thinking of all of the unproductive habits I have and I thought, jeeze, where do I start? I think it can be very effective to pick a few habits and eliminate them, replacing them with habits that are more in alignment with your goals. Then over time keep eliminating more bad habits. However has anyone considered or tried creating more revolutionary change in their life - like identifying and eliminating all bad habits in one fell swoop? Completely change your lifestyle from the start to end of your day. I suspect this probably wouldn't work for most. Going cold turkey on an intense life change is probably really challenging since all of your programming, your emotional safety nets, and the activities that were sedating you from your discomfort would be calling you back. I'm wondering if it's feasible or if anyone has done it. It's certainly happened in certain isolated or extreme cases like if we look at Eckhart Tolle. What about for the laymen? Would anyone care to share their ideas, insight or experiences with creating more radical change in ones life?

You might enjoy this thread as well:

Sure. People can and do overcome. I also think some people simply could use help and there's nothing wrong with that. And even if they could do it themselves, they might find a lot of use and accelerated growth from interacting with professionals or people experienced in mental illness, depression, addiction, or whatever else. Even if you're doing it "yourself" chances are that you're drinking from a wellspring of knowledge that's being indirectly shared by others. So in that sense, you're never really doing it yourself. I think that sometimes the compassion and guidance of another can be critical. People work themselves into emotional and egoic patterns so deep that you could drop all the knowledge, affirmations and methods of subconscious reprogramming you want and it will be of no use. I think we've all had an experience where we tried to help someone who was depressed and found all our spiritual kung-fu fell flat. I think you're sharing a message of empowerment and that's a wonderful thing and I think for some it will be very useful. For others, who knows? Sometimes I'm not even sure if I'm responsible for my own thoughts and intuitions, and if they're not coming from me, then it personally makes no difference whether the message comes from my own voice or someone else. Sometimes you're graced or blessed enough to be able to resolve your own conflicts, and if not, I would hope that grace might come from elsewhere.

This thread might be of some interest to you, though I haven't properly read it myself

ENFP Obviously no personality type is truly any better than any other that being said ENFP is the best and I win

I can't speak for him, though I would personally say that he's being fairly direct in that meaning and that he's implying it in a relatively literal sense. The looseness comes in at exactly what he means by quantum level phenomena, and the nitty gritties like his personal definitions of how it interacts with consciousness. At a certain point, I think some of his words or language do become tools to facilitate a mindset, as you said, but I think it's because it's the most useful and practical way to express them.

Best time to set the precedent is as soon as you wake up because there is little to no emotional momentum built up. You can spend a few minutes practicing active gratitude. (thinking of all the things you are grateful for) .

I would encourage you to check out his stuff yourself. Hating Deepak is an easy and trendy thing to do these days. I think his ideas and messages are sound, though a lot of people have problems with some of the language he uses. Particularly the high priests of science.

C'mon dude, I think you already know the answer to this.

Inner change can often be externally intense. Especially with long stretches of meditation and dissolving the ego. Within my personal experience, if I found myself getting intense emotional flares or sudden fear or feeling a little crazy or whatever, I found it useful to reduce the length/intensity of my practice for a few days or weeks until I was grounded again. Experiment for yourself. Don't abandon meditation/practice altogether but adjust, because you may find that you may be particularly sensitive for a while. All in all it's a good thing. After the extremes balance out, they integrate. Outbursts with the family suck. Fortunately who you are as a person in general will outweigh small intense moments. You might want to apologize and let them know you were having a hard time.

Permission granted.

Check out The Presence Process by Michael Brown. One of the most intense and beautiful practices/books I've read. If you're into Eckhart Tolle, Teal Swan, Byron Katie, etc, then look no further. This is hardcore, clear, compassionate shadow-work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yFC2nJqVog If you enjoy him from that video, there's a handful of stuff on youtube if you search 'michael brown presence process'

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I also wanted to add that using chrome on android, my browsers URL bar turns black to match the board and it looks sexy. Also on my comp, chrome gives notifications if a thread thats open in another tab gets posted in. This board system sure beats vBulletin

Thats a cool idea. There are some decent chat clients out there. One of us should sort that out. I'm on my phone otherwise I might look into it myself. If I remember!

I believe buddha is almost a generic term or title for awakened one. In buddhist traditions there are many buddhas. The fat bellied happy buddhs is one representation of one buddha. When people refer to the buddha, I think they generally mean siddartha.

unfortunately, the alternative seems to suck a lot harder.

yeah dawg, lots of people on this forum. myself included. (to be honest I didn't watch the whole video but it seems like your run of the mill new-age stuff) I'm not so much into ghosts goblins and ghouls but I have heard a foundation of interesting other-wordly/non-physical/astral ideas from enough people that I respect or revere to suspect that there's probably a lot to it. Every year of my life I have had a pile of ideas that I consider reasonable and another pile of what I consider nonsense, and every year a whole heap of the nonsense pile started moving into the reasonable. So I try not to judge anything anymore. After a while you realize that a lot of it is interesting, but not necessarily that useful.

The craziest part about quitting TV is when you happen to stumble across tv programming again in the future and you notice how much of it is advertisement. It just seems insane how much of TV is just mind-numbing ads and that people sit through it on auto-pilot. Even if the show or movie is high quality art, it's constantly broken up with crap! When you stop getting used to it, it's almost like some gross dystopian shit.

I love Teal.

Big thumbs up. for this book. It's also in the public domain so you can download the ebook free at www.gutenberg.org.

Sometimes. However sometimes you can be bound to an awful experience simply because the tides of eternity decide to kick your ass that day.

Lets talk about the old adage 'just be yourself' I think to a lot of people it is something that sounds nice to say out loud but that most don't really believe. Like if you wanted to go to a party and someone said to 'just be yourself' then you might say, 'well being myself would involve gravitating towards someone I know, being quiet, not meeting new people' - so why would I want to be myself? I think the truth is that a lot of our behavior isn't authentic expression. Given any social interaction, there are layers and layers of emotional and social conditioning. What are people thinking of me? How do I look? Am I dressed well? Am I standing the right way? What ideas are appropriate and what aren't? Am I being judged? Does this person like me? Even if people aren't conscious of these things, all these factors are impacting their ability to express themselves. The problem is, that those things don't really have anything to do with you or I. That stuff is all imprinted as a result of the collective and it's really inhibiting. When we become aware of these subconscious factors by becoming conscious of how we feel, think and what we're motivated by, then we have a chance to overcome them. When these issues aren't identified or resolved, even when someone is externally coming off as charismatic, at best it is like a cheap magic trick. People aren't fooled for long and we can sense that the energy is distorted because the fear is still there. However someone who has worked through this stuff can now be closer to their truer self. Authenticity is something that resonates and appeals to us on a deep level. It's attractive and invigorating. I think that's what is meant by being yourself. So I think part 1 of charisma is to become aware of the emotional and social factors that are inhibiting you and working through them. Part 2 is to lead a fulfilling and purpose driven life. If you're purposeless and without any seriously deep core values, then your charisma is going be seriously limited. It's a lot easier to be charismatic when your life rocks. I'd then say part 3 is to take action steps. A large part of charisma is learning to work with social energy and momentum and taking steps to be more assertive and have socialization as something second nature. So practice practice practice.