BipolarGrowth

Focus or attention is what sort of highlights parts of awareness. You can actually have attention on a number of things at once, but this is a skill which has to be developed. Most people struggle to keep attention on one object such as in most forms of meditation. Focus is very limited typically when most people start spiritual practice, but it can be increased quite a bit. For starters, you can keep attention on your breath during your daily life to see how your attention will dart around to various things. You’ll inevitably see how you can have attention on multiple things as you get more used to doing this.

It might help slightly, but this is highly unlikely to be enough on its own.

I guess I was maybe too focused on the part where you mentioned a part of your body was paralyzed and you were in bed.

There’s nothing wrong with manipulating the breath. Intentionally taking long, easy breaths has been quite beneficial for me.

The ridiculous amount of experiences which can be “had”.

This follows exactly what I said as well. In one quote, no problems while the other certainly sounds like assessing weirdness as an issue.

What is the chance this is just sleep paralysis in your opinion?

The difference is illness gives you problems and awakening is the dissolution of problems.

I’m happy because nothing important needs to be done. When something important comes up, relax and realize its overall unimportance.

Probably a bad idea. There are so many chemicals more effective and less harmful which can be used for this purpose.

Of course?? The point is you decide the meaning.

There is no meaning to life other than the one you decide fits.

Consciousness cannot exist during an experience of the lack of consciousness. In other words, there cannot be an experience of no experience.

Yes, it is a hamster wheel, but your hamster gets faster doing it compared to other paths.

Try some microdosing first. I have tried larger doses in depressed states, and they always helped me rather significantly at the time to exit depression. This is no guarantee it will go that way for you though. Have a trip sitter.

Then look into jhana and how to access them. Once you get acquainted with the first four formed jhanas, the formless jhanas can come without too much struggle as the next step. Feel free to PM me if you need good resources for accessing the jhanas.

After cessation, I’m pretty confused and a bit worried. Is this really my last go? I don’t see how they could have any solid epistemic ground to stand on regarding this. I thought becoming free from suffering sounded like a good thing. Now I’m kind of seeing how fun the whole suffering game has been...

I got secure. Probably used to be more anxious in regards to romantic relationships until the past year or so.

The self/other or internal/external duality is unfortunately much more than just thought. This is precisely why you can say you already felt to have this intellectual understanding yet had not had the deeper realization of it. Someone can feed themselves thoughts or have them arise spontaneously from having consumed certain spiritual content about the self/other or internal/external divide being illusory, but the thoughts alone actually do very little. What is more fundamental is how perception is occurring in relation to the sensations which are present. Thoughts are in many ways sensations which are more tapped into the mind’s ability to affect meta-shifts in the sensory field though, so they are still very helpful for making useful changes to perception. Almost in all cases, there will be a basis of related intellectual understanding before directly experienced perceptual shifts one might call insight occur. What is most important though is to actually feel the shift in perception which aligns with the intellectual understanding. This is why psychedelics, meditation, and other techniques are so effective at producing insight as they are altering perception and in turn changing the very nature of the sensations which are accessible in one’s experience. When it comes to being sure of one’s own insights, it’s helpful to always remain open to new perspectives and focus on high quality sources of information to temper one’s personal insights. If you know something for 100% certain, this is usually more of a flaw than a sign of a solid understanding IMO as even some of the most time-tested and plausible perspectives around nonduality do not at all deserve 100% certainty. There’s no need to drive yourself crazy over needing to constantly reassess things. Why not fall in love with the exploration process rather than clinging to certainty? Certainty is almost always a clear sign of a bit too much or at times way too much bias.

Makes perfect sense to me.

I think it took me becoming a master of being ungrounded to finally calm down and value groundedness unfortunately. It’s a rather difficult thing to do with bipolar disorder but worth it.

If there is only “now”, how can there ever be an “again”?

Is empty space not filled with sensations? That’s what I consider more.

Yay! I love playing the Oppression Olympics! But seriously, if people are looking down at others who do not practice the same form of spirituality, this is a clear flaw. I would say that being able to explore Truth is a huge privilege. We should all feel lucky that we have our basic needs met enough to have developed a care for such a thing in the first place.

Exactly. This is actually called wise moral shame in Buddhism. Wise moral dread is the outward component of this where one considers how an immoral action would be viewed by someone you respect like a highly developed spiritual teacher for example. A lot of new age spirituality is so focused on self-love that it often ends up encouraging people to be loose with morality, whether this is intentional by those teaching self-love or not. I fell into this trap before. Having no shame at all is actually rather destructive in many instances for both the individual in question and those around them, from my experience with this at least. This is not a reason to turn wise moral shame and dread into neurotic self-hatred though as that is obviously too far. It is a balancing act in a sense which for most people likely takes quite a bit of practice to do well.