bazera

Why do you think that being fit, looking better and having better health are spiritual things?

Yes, he wrote it exactly for people like us who wanted to know more.

No he goes in-depth on both actually. He describes his insights and awakenings in great details, to the point that I almost teared up reading it. One thing to note is that what he describes is tainted with Hinduism, but I think beneath that he was just going to the Truth itself. It's a great account of what serious meditation can do.

Couple years ago I read Om Swami's book "If Truth Be Told", and it affected me in a very deep way. I just stumbled upon a book that he wrote last year that I want to share, where he documents his sadhana in Himalayas in great detail, he describes his routines, techniques, obstacles, experiences, realizations, and much more. It was an amazing read, for those who've read the autobiography and wanted to know more about what he actually did in those thirteen months, don't miss reading this one. It is very inspiring. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/221033478-thirteen-months-in-the-himalayas Want to know what real hardcore meditation looks like? Read the book. Dude was concentrating on God for 16-22 hours a day for weeks and months until he literally met with God. Nicely dovetails with Leo's recent blog-post on meditation: https://www.actualized.org/insights/awakening-is-not-a-different-place

I chose Kobo for that same reason. I always buy a physical copy of a book if I read it for free and liked it a lot.

I feel ya

@Natasha Tori Maru Do you easily import your own EPUB's or PDF's into Kindle? What I liked about Kobo is that you connect it to one of your Cloud accounts, for example Dropbox, and you import whatever you want. I think Amazon even restricted downloading your own books from Kindle, so now I have many books that I've brought from Amazon on Kindle that I won't be able to import in Kobo 🤬

I'm also trying audiobooks lately but I feel like I retain much less, as some of you guys also noted. But still, it depends on the book. What e-readers do you guys use? I used to read on my laptop or phone, but I wanted to reduce white light 1-2 hours before bed so I ordered Kobo e-reader, waiting for it to arrive. I chose this one over Kindle because I didn't want to be locked in to Amazon ecosystem and I've read good reviews on Kobo. Have any of you used Kobo?

Depends on the degree. Also, don't overlook the socialization aspect. You can learn socialization skills there, and you can build a nice network of people, friends, etc. All the jobs I had was through the network that I built in university. Also great friendships. It would be hard to meet people outside of uni for an introvert like me. Going there forced me to become more socialized. That has it's pros and cons, but just something to keep in mind when considering a university.

Amazing. This is a really good use of AI.

That's nice. By avoidance I didn't meant something negative. Actually, some degree of avoidance is healthy and necessary when you are grieving, as I said, going through memories, photos, chats, stalking on social media, etc can feel like picking a deep wound that hasn't healed yet. For me personally, I needed to avoid picking that wound for some months before I was emotionally over with it mostly. If the breakup was intense, I think deleting would be a smart move to give yourself space to heal. Blocking them feels too much for me, but deleting / ignoring (there's that feature) them on social media was enough to have my own space and re-anchor my life from "us" to "me" again. And if you can't control yourself from messaging them, or you know that they might message you, it can also be a smart move to block them. Again, for creating some space before you let go to a degree that it doesn't bother you anymore.

Also depends on the breakup, how it affected you, how painful it was, if you broke up with her, or if she did and you were forced to do it, etc. Maybe some people don't give a shit about their partners after breaking up and seeing their faces all over social media don't affect them, but for some people seeing their ex (maybe with other people) it's like messing with an open wound. Sometimes you need to completely detach from him/her to help the nervous system stabilize and deleting helps, but be careful if you do that, don't turn into an endless avoidance. All that is relevant when the breakup is fresh. After a while, after couple months, it kinda becomes irrelevant if you delete them or not. After attachment wears off, it doesn't mean much for most people.

What do you mean? Do you think it's a matter of belief? Can't a western rational scientist develop siddhis (at least to some degree) without believing in them, just doing the practices?

Of course, and the happiness that ideology produces is like a house of cards, it has to be maintained all the time, and can be easily taken away and turned into a horrible suffering, if they ever realize their deluded ways, as you mentioned with a slave-owner example. They seem so busy with all that stuff, it seems very important to them, all the meaning they create, and existencially speaking, makes me wonder how is that different from the meanings that I use to derive happiness from in my life. I find it funny that women wear beautiful wigs. Like, they shave they heads because long hair is seductive to men as they say, and then, they use even more seductive wigs to cover their bald heads. Ridiculous, lol.

https://www.actualized.org/insights/orthodox-jewish-conformity @Leo Gura Do you truly believe that being under ideological illusion to such comical degrees can really produce happiness? If so, how would you even define what happiness is? Just meeting your survival needs?