bazera

In some ways yes, it will distract you from the feelings you feel now, ones you call loneliness. But if you put all your eggs into one basket (a girlfriend), you'll get attached to her in unhealthy ways that will create all sorts of problems. I'd advice you to work on some other aspects of your life, you clearly crave some socialization so do that, what is holding you back in that regard? What are the ways for you to meet new friends and develop new social connections?

I think also it depends on intentions behind changing your relationship with food. If, for example you want to cut junk food because you want to lose weight to become more attractive and get more sex, I woudn't call that spiritual. Even if you do it for health reasons. They are good for survival though. But as you mentioned, that whole process can become a catalyst for self-reflection if one is cognizant enough to observe the whole process in meta sort of way to see how attachment works (to food in this case), what phases do one goes through when letting go of attachment and addiction (to food), etc. It can be a whole journey of discovery and structural growth, but it's an additional layer of work on top of actually doing work to lose weight and most people don't go that far. Most life experience can be used for those purposes for that matter.

You'll be able to question that after you go through one or two relationships, not before. In my experience, no, not even close. I'm happier when I'm single. But you need to discover that yourself, there are lots of variables that might determine if it makes you happier than you are now. I don't value marriage, kids or having my own family, I don't care about that. So being single doesn't bother me as much as someone who wants to start a family. But you need to actually investigate that in yourself, what you truly want, but again, actually being in a relationship might lead to disillusionments, so keep that in mind, don't set your mind to the answer before going through the experience yourself.

Yes that was also strange to me, as I mentioned his story is tainted with Hinduism a lot, he is a religious person who wanted to know Truth. Even if his realizations wasn't ultimate or was limited (which it clearly was as far as I understand), it's still a very inspiring story worth reading. Especially if you meditate and want to see what hardcore meditation looks like.

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.