Angelo D

This can certainly be a legitimate life purpose

I recently took a Vipassana 10 day course (S.N. Goenka's) and now I have made vipassana my daily meditation. It is much harder to focus while practicing at home, and I even find it hard to pass my attention through every part of my body more than once in the full hour. I am wondering if it is worth keeping Vipassana as my main meditation or switching to another. What is best for the one hour daily in your experience, and what benefits might I expect? I love the idea that vipassana makes you equanimous, I'm just wondering this question because it is quite difficult outside of the dhamma hall. Thanks!

Cool stuff, Thanks all.

Is causation a law or just a tendency? I have been assuming it is more of a tendency and a choice thing.

If so, why do you think this is?

mmh. I'm planning on trying psychedelics soon if my intuition permits. On one level it sounds too good to be true, too easy, that one might have an equally life-changing awakening on psychedelics as off. This is why I ask. It seems like from what I hear, there is no difference. Thoughts?

Let's say a young Peter-Ralston goes on an enlightenment intensive and has an awakening. His life is never the same afterward as his ego seems much more vastly diminished. If he had not done the inquiry sober but popped a psychedelic and had an awakening, would the long-term results be the same?

When will you be interviewed by Joe Rogan?

It seems like a lot changed for you upon beginning psychedelics, What was the biggest change for you on this journey upon stepping into that world?

How do you integrate deep insights from things such as psychedelics or awakenings?

How did you know which books to read if you read mostly the right books?

It seems the buddhist perspective is that the perception of beauty is a defilement based on delusion. Certainly this is not a commonly held opinion amongst most non-buddhist truth-seekers, who tend to see the perception of beauty as a high-consciousness thing. What it the proper conception of beauty? Is it fair to say appreciation is of higher-consciousness than the perception of beauty?

So maybe it is that there is an intrinsic beauty in all things, but to say that one thing is more beautiful than another is something like a judgment and therefor false. So a pretty woman is not more beautiful, in truth, than a paperclip. Tell me if I understand.

Okay, I found this quote from another source which seems to clear up the confusion for me: "In Buddhism, beauty is an intrinsic quality of all things, not a subjective attribute restricted to a few. Seeing beauty subjectively values some beings or things over others, judging some to be more beautiful. Beauty, the Buddha taught, should not become the basis for individual likes or dislikes, as this leads to attachment—rather, we find joy in the beauty around us without attaching external value to it. Buddhism recognizes that all beings are part of a whole, and the whole is beautiful. Beauty is without any specific form, and in effect could be called formless, yet it also serves as a unifying force. Because all beings are interconnected, all beings have intrinsic beauty." Source: http://what-when-how.com/love-in-world-religions/beauty-in-buddhism/#:~:text=Buddhism recognizes that all beings,all beings have intrinsic beauty.

I'm thinking of ordering ingredients and making my own ayahuasca. I was researching when I ran upon a website telling me not to attempt this unless I were already well-acquainted with Mother Ayahuasca because there will be no expert Shaman around to create a cleaner energy space without dark spirits. The site said I would run into these dark spirits if I did not heed the warning, and therefor I should go on a shaman-led retreat to do ayahuasca. That is not an option for me now, though. I was planning on taking minuscule doses to start and slowly ramping my way up, since I am inexperienced, hoping this would protect me from bad trips or psychological or physical injury. I was planning to do it on my own in the woods, since I live with my family. Looking for opinions or advice?

Ah. Some places have sell resins made of containing Ayahuasca ingredients. Any thoughts on this? because it looks simple

true, but I have no connections to dealers and would prefer to do it using legally obtainable ingredients.

If you know any trustworthy books or teachers who teach authentic flirting, not cheesy or manipulative methods.

How can we live from a place of experiencing our greatest insights to be true in daily life

It seems to me that meaning is always relative to ego. If this is true, then when one transcends ego, is that meaningful? What creates the meaning?

I watched Leo's video on what is death but am a little confused. When the physical body dies is it that A) there is void; B) there is still the current perceptions of my perceptual field just as there always was; C) The entire idea that there is a physical body that can die is delusion and there is only the current perceptions in my perceptual field forever; or D) Something Else?

So am I the empty nothingness that is pure awareness or am I the perceptions in my perceptual field? Or something else?

It's also important that they know you are interested in them. I am not sure if you have experienced girls often not knowing you are interested in them, but by what you've said, I'd expect that. You can speak to that though.

@7thLetter Great to hear you are learning about how you are worthy of love and connection exactly as you are, even without elaborate tricks. Releasing the pain beneath the surface will make this clear to you experientially. I'm guessing plenty of girls have liked you, but your hurt made it so you could not just be open to letting them come into your life and see you as you are. The work you need to do to date successfully is not to improve your life... it is to heal so you can release your self sabotaging behavior patterns. Keep following that road and your reactivity will go away in dating, and in your psychedelic trips. I'm glad you are looking to take action and I appreciate your honesty and willingness to learn the hard truth... INTPs are good at that

I am 22, quite good looking with a good personality but have always struggled with women, which has affected my confidence and my feeling of belonging. I did a year of pickup but had not achieved much success and seemed to have stalled. I realized my university offered free therapy to students and was just barely wise enough to think I might benefit from looking a little deeper at what was going on. I had the awesome luck of being assigned to a therapist who was a former pickup artist. I got from him that it is common for men who have the raw materials to attract women but mysteriously struggle endlessly with the endeavor to be averse to true vulnerability. I thought that by walking up to strangers and hitting on them I was being vulnerable but learned that you can be invulnerable in anything you do, including pickup. I would suggest most men doing pickup and getting nowhere are operating under an illusion of vulnerability. Invulnerability is caused by fear of hurt and feelings of unworthiness, and this goes back into our pasts. I was able to release a lot of the hurt that I was hitherto unconscious of and shed tears many times in the process, something I totally did not see coming but was very healing. Successful dating is much harder with massive fear of being hurt, so releasing it has done wonders; and dating can be as simple as being yourself, but if you have blockages to being authentic, such as fear of being hurt like you were in the past, you either need to heal or need to get really good at seductive tactics. To date successfully, you clearly don’t need superhuman seduction abilities, you just need relatively decent social skills and the openness to be yourself without that gnawing feeling like something is going to go wrong really soon when you’re “talking” to a girl. And if you have this, you know what I mean, it says “you remember what happened last time you were talking to a girl… it got ugly and painful… oh god, I hope this one doesn’t turn out like that.” If you have decent social skills and mysteriously suck of with or are shy around women, or self-sabotage opportunities, I recommend exploring this via therapy. Pickup is a valid route too but eventually you are going to have to come to terms with the hurt you have felt, and let’s be honest, it’s there. Therapy seems to be much more effective, much more quickly at healing hurt than using pickup to “fuck it out of you” I guess. I personally will take lessons from pickup, like that I can practice flirting (a good and useful skill), that I can talk to pretty women, and its optimistic attitude that I truly can create a successful dating life; but no longer feel the need to develop some RSD Tyler style personality. If you have poor social skills, you may need more of a boost and a long list of pickup lines might help you get on your feet a little better. You won’t be able to attract every girl anytime anywhere if you are being yourself, and honestly not if you are a solid PUA either, this is sort of a fantasy. It seems to me a much better approach to realize what exactly is holding you back, become aware of it and your patterns, consciously choose something else and then have the freedom to choose what your dating life should be. It will likely end up unfolding in a way that is more in line with your authentic personality, and you are in for many more surprises if you appropriately apply this to your life, to the point where you can throw your current ideas of what your dating life should be out the window, because they were likely created by you from a place of hurt. I think this post is relevant to many of you on this sub-forum, and so I recommend a therapist, not just thinking about this for ten minutes and then moving on. what you think of my perspective?