Flare

"Why be happy if you could be interesting?" - Slavoj Zizek Sadness is as much you as happiness is. You don't need to be happy. You can be sure, but "to be yourself" you have to experience every other aspect of life such as unhappiness, sadness, drama, fear and any other negative emotions as well as joy, fulfillment and every other positive emotion. Every emotion is as much you as happiness. Being yourself doesn't just mean you're free and happy. Happiness is a choice though. I'm not sure if it's the most fulfilling choice.

Do it Alan is alway great to hear though!

@John68 Seems like you got a classic case of "Oneitis" putting her on a pedestal. Seemingly, just assuming, you don't have any other major woman in your life, that you feel like being able to connect romantically with? For oneitis there are 2 major causes: First, you think that she is the only girl that you will end up with. So the problem here is that you are not independent and need her for giving you female attention. That would be the easier thing to handle. In that case, even if it's hard you gotta find other woman to date. Even if it's not what you want in the first place. It even might better your friendship, or it causes the situation to change since she sees that you are attractive to other woman and she will start getting attracted on another level as well. Second, the more complex cause is that you are seeing traits in her that you actually want for yourself. As an easy example, if you got near to 0 self love you will suffer from oneitis if someone comes in and actually is there for you and picks you up over and over, because your subconscious mind will think that you won't get this anywhere else, not to speak from yourself. In this case, it's a compass, it is showing you which qualities you lack to be in a good relationship with yourself. That will include some serious emotional work, but it's the path to freedom, not a nice one though. Oneitis always shows you your weaknesses and what you lack as a person. It will always get you down first. Note though, that you can only solve the situation inside out. Changing any circumstances won't help, beside taking time off. Trying to work with the state you are in won't get you far. So maybe think about what is actually it that is causing you to feel that way, put aside any story you are telling yourself about "real love" "the one" etc. - be brutally honest, then you shall gain. All the best for that! I know it's hard, we all been there at some point of our journey.

@Dan Arnautu Sorry for that, but I really do have to ask if you maybe just focused on the wrong "western" philosophers? What's about Schopenhauer, he does actually have most of his inspirations out of the Veda, which are actually the root of Buddhism as well as Hinduism and non duality in general. He was the opposing part to Hegel, both lived at the same time, so it's not even nearly far away. Whats about Adorno and Horkheimer, putting Kant down? And to be serious, what is about Derrida? Derrida is actually "better" than anything about non duality, because he is much more precise. Most literature about non duality nowadays is dumbing down the topic. Derrida is not. As well as Lacan - he does implement non duality as well, even if it is just under the surface. The whole Post-Structualism movement is at his core about the exact idea, since they did get Ferdinand de Saussure right. Even Hegel does have some ideas that are in complete line with buddhism. Not to speak of Camus - I mean that is in fact like buddhism, completely accepting one's faith and reality. The Stoics and Seneca in general might even be the superior source to study how you should live in comparison to buddhism, because it is much more practical. If you follow greeks down the road the real genius Heraclitus. Or even the Chinese one's, Menghzi, Confucius, Zhouangzi, Lao Tse etc. - these are philosopher completely demolishing Descartes ideas, which poisend us nearly 400 years. Or even the newest: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a real genius. Philosophy is really full of treasures. But I still get the problem that your teachers might have a narrow mind. I had the same. Maybe the real art lies in transporting your ideas in such a way that they can understand. Which means, basing your arguments maybe not on the Linjii but on Heidegger (what a strange example) to make the understand in some way. I would agree though, that every Platonic philosopher might be a genius, but will be wrong in the end because of his conceptional thinking. But there is so much more.

"The world is full of buddhas, but they are sleeping." - Mooji

At the end of your life you will be able to look back and judge if there was any "best friend" or so called soulmate. But these kind of relationships doesn't work on the terms you try to give them before you get to experience them. But yes there is such a thing.

@Evilwave Heddy oh man...

@Alexandar Edwards I really appreciate that! All the best for your journey!

@Alexandar Edwards Puh, I can really feel an honest vibe here and not just searching for attention. I does take some balls to write this down and post this here, at least for me. You have my respect for that. Here lies the problem, beside your circumstances. That's just a plain wrong believe. You ultimately don't want apathy. Or as Mumford uses to sing: "If I only had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won." It seems though that you are searching for apathy and implemented it in as many cases as you could in your life. Let me tell you this: Apathy is not enlightenment - but most of the time is taken for enlightenment. Apathy is either about not caring at all or is suppressing everything. Both cases is nothing to strive for. You shouldn't seek to silent the mind. Let the mind speak, let it silence itself. Otherwise you are trapped. But recognize the following - as you go on with your meditation practice you will at some point enter an point of so called "drunk of emptiness" state. Do not settle their, even though it would look like what you wish for now. Embrace the feelings. In the end feeling and stimulation is what at least our human body does live for. They are neither good or bad. But what you could work on is changing your attitude towards the situation. You always have 2 options, change the situation or change yourself. You used the first one and are trying to use the second one (in a not good way, for my humble understanding). If you wanna use the second one just getting rid of the feelings won't work. You can not replace negative thoughts with no thoughts. You thoughts will eventually go away through detachment and so on but never through changing the attitude. So choose to try to replace them with positive ones. Even though that might sound a little simplistic, most likely you need to fake it until you make it at this point. This is definitely not in line with the rest of your post in my point of view. Do you know about the hero Albert? Albert Camus did say something really eye opening about this. You are believing in live, you still think here is actually more and ultimately there is a big meaning in life. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe life doesn't have any meaning and so does the torture that you are feeling. But rethink this: If life ultimately doesn't your suffering should go away, you'll be able to accept it and you can rise a both is. That's what Camus would recommend. If you don't have the time to read his books, here is a really really good video about it - it's short and it should definetly better your suffering. I my point of view you made some at least discussable decisions, but you can not change that. You did go your own way, that is a good thing. I really find it hard to answer more than what I did, because it's difficult to understand you merely trough the internet and since we are not talking about simple theories but a difficult situation. Just let me consider this at the end: Your suffering always makes you better. It does expose the weak things in your mind, it does make you stronger. It most likely did lead you to to meditate and better your life in some areas. Even if it was just so that you would share your story with us here. So stop looking at suffering like your enemy. It is ultimately your friend, all your negative feelings are. They are always there for you, no matter what. Stop being at war with them, listen to what they have to tell you. They most likely will lead you to better yourself big time. It's not a coincidence that humans most of time follow psychopaths, psychological weak but yet genius and crazy people. Their bad sides, their suffering made them who they were in order to be a leader or to follow their life purpose. So be thankful for your suffering, even though that's easier said than done. all the best mate!

Well your effort leads you to force your limiting beliefs onto others and calling me stupid. Maybe it's worth to rethink your strategy. Don't take being in a flow state, or the so called Wu Wei, for enlightenment. That the reason why Confucius and Lao Tse never really understood each other. The first was searching for mastery the other for enlightenment. Reaching flow states constantly does require effort and might be the end to your suffering. Enlightenment is not about the flow state. They go hand in hand most of the time, that's why it appears to be the same thing. And again, your need for a breakthrough is the exact thing that is holding you back from being so called "enlightened". best wishes

Nothing. The novel that you have to reach enlightenment is the one thing that is keeping you from getting enlightened. Full stop - you already are your true self aka what we call enlightened. Drop the effort. Drop the stories. "If you see the illusion you are enlightened, but if you think that you are enlightened you are in the illusion!" - Papaji Or as Francis of Assisi once mentioned: "What you are looking from is already what you are looking for."

"To understand the freedom ascesis gives you, think about that it is far less painful to lose all of your wealth than only half of it." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Then stop making the case up. You are creating it yourself. Self fulfilling prophecy, cheers. What an pointless argument. Look up Crusaders. Let's ban the Vatikan. Let's ban Christianity. Logic.... Sharia is a not the islam. Actually the Sharia is not even in line with the Koran. Stop taking the Koran literally in any case, yes it has some dark chapters that are being abused. No reason to judge a whole religion, calling it backwards. A religion is a system of heuristics. It's the people who use/abuse them. Stop being so backwards. Thanks. Straw man argument. Stop being polemic without arguments backing it up. It just exposes your ego. No we cannot take on every world problem, but your fear is still showing your narrow minded thoughts about these problems. Exactly because we can not solve every problem we should solve and care about the problems where we would have the most impact. That's not by discussing about refugees all year long. Visualization for you. The part about german history seems to be highly biased and is definitely not in line with some of the newest discoveries in this field. Still sound like some marxist/hegelian rationalizing of history. Maybe relook that. You don't have to vote for the right wing which is a home for extremists, in order to solve the problem. Or since when is this guy a right wing, just like Wilders is? Btw, just to crush your illusion: You know what dialectic is? The rightwing, "the movement" and the absurd high presence in the media is a huge argument for young peaceful, but mostly poor, islamic people to become extremists. You give them all the arguments: fight against the wester culture, they don't want us, but have forsaken and betrayed us long ago. What do you think would the PR from radical islamist would be made of if not about exactly the movement you are giving your vote to? The right wing is actually the best thing that could have happened for them. Destroy the society. Well, the amount of hate is definitely going up and up and up. We are causing even more harm to us. You most likely don't prevent terror attacks by building walls (you can still fly in from Saudi Arabia, upsi) but by taking away motivation and arguments for such behavior. Maybe take a look at this short video. This might give you a glimpse of what the problem really is. Stop being so superficial please and really get into the problem. Or be proud to just be a plebs who is following their cult leader. No I'm showing the other side of the coin, since you already are showing one. If I have to paraphrase in addition to quote you in order you can understand that, I'm sorry. I'm going to so now. So you said I am breaking my own rules, didn't you? Btw, mirroring is a good discussion tactic to show you your own flaws. But okay I see, you need to make a point here. Did I get that right? Or not? Please help me paraphrasing. No, the right wing is doing this. I don't have twitter and I'm not going to react to such cruel behavior. If terrorist are going to get me mad, they won even more and take a huge amount of times out of our lives, which is actually killing even more people in theory. But just to remind you, the right wing twittered 20 minutes after "Berlin": "These are Merkels dead" - well, the party who you are voting for is doing the exact same thing. Twittering and confusing people before it was even clear what a) exactly happened and b) if it was a terror attack or not. They actually had an PR-campaign planned in Germany based on a terror attack they anticipated, which never happened. But they wanted to be prepared. Absuing dead people is making me sick. On both side, the left isn't better their. But the right wing is living of terror attacks. They feed from them. it's disgusting. So you are telling me you don't know the simplest theories about populations, but are thinking about yourself you are able to judge what is right in the refugee crisis? Congrats. Literally everybody that spent more then 5 minutes on this topic knows why the population is expanding. Just for you, since these are really poor people: they need children in order to be able to live longer than maybe 50 years. Why? They don't get a pension most of us are taking for granted. Their kids are their pension. Poverty is causing that, not enough food is the exact reason. In addition they are not educated or their church (hello christianity is on it again) is preventing them from using birth preventions. Upsi. Just to name 2 of the most popular reasons. Borders are not a long term solution, borders are actually the most fragile thing you can do. I already named you an example in my post before. And yes it's not just that, there is theoretical evidence behind it. I told you, that discussing the flaws in our Gauß made up world, fractals, history theory at large and the economy is not my plan here. That doesn't mean I have to ideas or that there are common good ideas out there, I'm not a saint either. But as you let me get a glimpse of that, since you have some information lacks, this might be not the right discussion for you. Which it doesn't have to be to be completely honest here. No one should be forced to learn about economy, fractals and so on. I don't like that topic at heart too. No one said that and we are not doing that. We are just taking a small percentage, please watch the video mentioned above. You want a pig fight. I won't take it. "Never wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty and the pig likes it" - Bernard, my friend. Bravo, you found that empathy can be ego driven. Do you gave the same amount of thought onto yourself, why you are voting? If I gift some stranger 10 dollars, in order for him to buy food, but I only do it because I feel better after it, is it bad then? No it's a win win. In addition have you seen my Reptiloid? He just look like Clinton, he ran away from fore, 1 1/2 years ago. Please help. Massage me if you found him. Maybe he looks like Wilders now, I'm not sure. No, there is misinformation. Look up deconstruction, by Derrida. Might be a little confusing for you. Good luck understanding it, that's really tough philosophy. But eventually you will understand. I can tell you what I want: In order for you or anyone else to judge, inform yourself on a reasonable level. Second think for yourself, don't follow and paradigm. Third stop listening to dumb leaders manipulating by catching you with fears, inflicting them on you and then make you act on them. 4th keep you integrity. If you could do this, I would be pleased. Socrates called, he want's his thinker guru back. Man you are still identifying with your opinion. That is poison. Pure poison, most likely to yourself. In the first place vote for whatever you want, but please get that fixed. This. best wishes

I think it's the exact opposite. Enlightenment is easy, but we/the monks insist on making it hard. As Mooji said: "The world is full of Buddhas, but they are sleeping." You don't need any qualities to be enlightened. The word itself says it's easy. It's effortless, but we try to achieve it through effort.

No, you make the same assumption again. That I called you a racist or accused you of bullying, neither of them was true. Stop it please. Yes all about you here. I'm so sorry, I just wanna crucify you. Where are we? I mentioned the following: In Germany a high amount of right wings are in a line with most what a nazi would say. Period. Google one of the leaders from the german right wing and what he is saying, his party makes around 1/3 of our right wing. If you can't get the metonymy im sorry for you "my friend". But still, the dutch right wing united with the german one, clearly tolerating these tendencies. Let me tell you what, closing your eyes and just saying: I voted because I want to protest, because I want borders and I completely forgot about these things is madness. By tolerating such ideologies you are actually supporting them. That doesn't make you a racist, but you supporting racists. Maybe something to think about. If you want I can surely sent you some great quotes from some of the most influential right wing guys here, which are real friends with the dutch right wing. Yes, you voted for them, I already mentioned that tolerating ideologies that are willing to do serious harm to others is supporting them. You can actually find an analogy to bullying here if you want. Therefore your actions say a), your comments say b) - well I guess everybody know whats speaks louder. Pure whataboutism, one of the cheapest, but clearly most manipulative strategies to intrigue peoples minds. So sad you have to use this. Let me tell you something, the same day Charlie hebdo happened, the Boko Haram killed 2000 people in Nigeria. Where did you mentioned this? Isn't this important? I'm not saying one life is worth than another, but the problem here is that you are saying exactly this; you are communicating that a human being in your(/neighbor) country is worth more. You are telling me on which people's death I should look at. You are telling me which one is the catastrophe. That pure egotistical behavior. You are only concerned about these dead people, because you get a feeling that it could be you. You are only afraid, because it's nearer than all these other people suffering in the world. You claim to decide which human i worth what. That's really inappropriate - period. Let me ask you a question here: How would you feel if you had to leave your house right now, because there are bombs raining on your city, get in a fucking boat, leave your family behind, risk your life to get away from the war and be forced to flee in a unknown land. Now in this country there are lots of people trying to get you out again, telling you you should die in your own country. Crucifying you and accusing you of being exactly part of a group you just flee from, which is causing the war at home. How good would you feel? Or trying to judge you based on the behavior of your bad neighbor, who already stole stuff in Syria but now is highly overlooked since people want to find causes to make you and your people look like "scum". I hope you will never have to experience such a story. Maybe practice some serious empathy. Doesn't mean that the behavior isn't bad and he shouldn't be hold accountable for that though. No not "and on and on and on", you told us what is true for sure and know you don't know but still are not willing to say that clearly. But you still wanna communicate more whataboutism and make a case where there is even more... Stop these cheap tactics. I am sorry for everyone, mean in my limited ability to articulate myself in english: I apologize to making such a high amount of OT posts. If you try to use that against me, we all know how good your arguments actually are. You are still fighting the symptom not the disease. Refugees are not the problem, what is causing is the problem. That's mostly an economy/Gauß problem. But that's a different thread, or do you see the title how to solve refugee crisis / better our economy system? No it's not, that why I did put my emphasis on your voting behavior/voting in general. What a statement. If you have to use massive force to cling to something, chances are high that it actually rather has to change than to be defended till death. You have problem here, you still think of culture as a fragile system to be defended. Guess what it's not. Study the history of the Libanon and Syria; nationalists destroyed this once so beautifully land living in complete harmony, the made did manage to turn a antifragile land into 2 fragile countries. In a time where you are living in a world with so many factors creating high variances do you really want to be more fragile? You other "solutions" are really shortcuts not mentioning the complex problems you'd have to face. This topic is way to big to be discussed in a thread about democracy. Disclosure: I'm not saying you are doing exactly the same. But, guess what people said after 1933? Are they not to blame? Can you just vote for straight shit, just because you wanna change something? Even if it's not in line with your values and you have to use massive rationalizing to justify it? If you would use less whataboutism, maybe it would. I was really concerned about this answer, because I wasn't sure my ego is pushing me to answer you. I at least hope you can change some of your perspectives.