bazera

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

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.

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?

What's your day-to-day diet like? Like for 80-90% of the times, what do you eat? I try to lose weight while building muscle and here's what I eat: protein pancakes (protein powder, banana, egg) chicken breast + rice / buckwheat eggs cottage cheese tuna salad some fruit That's it basically. 1900-2000 calories and 160g protein. And on the weekends I might switch and bring in some variety, but still stay in these caloric range. What about you?

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?

@Monster Energy It's really strange that some of us who got addicted to porn earlier in life, share the experience of this being the most difficult thing to break out of. People who just casually use it can't understand the struggle of it. But also, it's an opportunity to truly look at the impulses and see through them. Not acting on the urges feel like turture sometimes but only through that suffering can it be solved.

@Monster Energy Thanks for sharing 🙏🏻 will check it out.

Thanks for sharing, I'm struggling with that at the moment so I can relate to everything you said here. It's really tough.

@Monster Energy How did you overcome it? 4 times a day for 10 years doesn't seem easily breakable, I imagine you had many relapses. What exactly happened 3 years ago? What did you change after your last relapse?

How would you define a true friend? And what is lacking in your current friendships that would make them true?

I remember couple years ago I was on one new-age holotropic breathwork retreat, where you breathe heavily for 1-2 hours and then talk about your experience with a group of people. It was that new-age conformist environment where all they talk is about chakras, and magical healing. Most of them told amazing stories like how they had mystical experiences, out-of-body and healing experiences. I didn't experience shit, it was just monkey-mind and blackness. And out of conformity, I also came up with some bullshit story of what I experienced and what it meant, to conform to what all the other people were telling. At the end of the event, I was disgusted with myself. Later I was wondering if some of those people also exaggerated their experiences just to conform.

I always cringe on watching those. Wearing a white dress at a wedding. Couples cutting cakes together at their wedding. Basically, any wedding tradition

Not really, no. Just in theory. Spirituality seems to be an area that provides you with an ability to simply just be without chasing some endless cheese and be okay with that. But I think that only comes after lots of suffering through life and training yourself and your nervous system a lot.

@OBEler Yeah my friend who was also there told me there was definetely something to those temples, Dhyanalinga made it easier for him to access altered states through meditation. Interesting stuff.