blankisomeone

What book would you recommend for someone that wants to learn how to use their mind for their own benefit rather than being controlled by it?

correction: the problem IS your mother She’s acting like this towards you because of a bunch of problems in her she hasn’t resolved, so don’t make it about yourself

I read this book after becoming conscious of the fact that the root cause of most of my self-destructive behaviors was boredom. I might come back later to edit these notes or add more to it. I still haven't added into these notes the benefits of embracing boredom, which are wondefully described in the book. These notes are helpful to contemplate so you can become aware of the subtly different ways that boredom can arise. In the opening of each chapter in the book there are also many nice little quotes that are good for contemplation. "The power of boredom - Why Boredom is Essential to Creating a Meaningful Life" by Mark A. Hawkins What is boredom? Boredom is the lack of any stimuli (internal or external) that is engaging Boredom is the space that allows us to see through all the distractions of our modern busy lives and into the true nature of our existence (an empty space full of potential) Boredom is life’s workspace. A place and time when we can examine our lives Boredom is a survival instinct that tells us to keep working towards improving ourselves, according to societal norms and expectations Boredom is a dark basement. It can be scary when you open the door and a bunch of creepy things can be in there, but deep down there’s a treasure Boredom is the fear of the self. The self that doesn’t live up to expectations Boredom is a spiritual practice Boredom is meditation Boredom is the absence of diversion Boredom is the discomfort of restlessness As soon as you feel a twinge of restlessness, stop and do nothing Boredom is the mother of the creative act Boredom is a never-ending spiral of personal and philosophical discoveries that can be used to create a great life Types of boredom Situational boredom: mild form of boredom when we are doing an activity that we don’t really feel like doing (like sitting in a boring class or doing repetitive work) “Full” boredom: felt when we get tired of doing a particular activity. This type of boredom is eliminated by moving on to another activity that engages us. “Empty” boredom: felt when we’re doing nothing (waiting to go to a party, waiting for a game to start on TV, waiting at the dentist’s office) Intense “empty” boredom: when there’s nothing to do in a long period of time (like weekends when there’s nothing to do, lazy Sundays) Existential boredom: very common in our society. It is bubbling under the surface of all our activity “Full” existential boredom: when we are busy with our lives, but there is very little that interests us or engages us about it (aka. going through the motions of life, being on a hamster wheel, there being no point to any action, withdrawal of meaning from everything in our lives in a negative way) “Empty” existential boredom: the most painful kind. Linked to depression, anxiety and destructive behaviors. Felt a lot in retirement. Sunday neurosis: the free time that we have worked so hard all week for becomes too painful. Here, we actually want so badly to go back to work because it will distract us from the nagging feeling that something is missing. Society's view on boredom “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” Boredom can be associated with laziness, lack of direction and even criminality Socially acceptable addictions (escape from boredom) Society can even reward you for these addictions, among others: Shopping Workaholism Addiction to exercise Compulsively filling our time with people Compulsive travel (wanderlust) Engagement in risky behaviors (bungee jumping, cliff diving, sky diving) Creation of drama Going on ideological “crusades” – defending a cause Limiting belief boredom reveals to us Happiness is controlled by external events (The discomfort reveals how much we’ve been relying on external events for our happiness) The world is a competitive place (It can also be a creative place) Every moment of life should be pleasurable Also some other personal limiting beliefs which are specific to what societal ideals (or personal ideals) affect us more strongly personally Filling space vs. necessary activities for survival Filling space: Watching TV Shopping Surfing the net Playing video games Having a couple drinks Reading Cleaning the room when it doesn’t have to be cleaned, etc. Needed for survival in the modern world: Going to work School Making food Having shelter Pursuing a goal, etc. Boredom vs mindfulness Mindfulness: increase awareness of our avoidance of the now, bringing mind back to present moment Boredom: complete lack of engagement, a complete lack of meaning. Nowadays we must make a conscious effort to allow moments of boredom in our lives

If you think that you’re wrong. Think about it. You’re part of reality, right? Right. Get in touch with the fact that you’re part of reality. It’s not obvious for the scientific mind!!! Now realize: a part of reality (you) is capable of KNOWING ITSELF. A part of reality conscious of itself! Incredible incredible incredible. Miraculous Now grab a pen. Look at the pen. Now here’s where it gets tricky! The process of YOU knowing YOURSELF is the same as YOU KNOWING THE PEN. It’s not like one part of reality (you) is knowing the pen. It’s more like YOU AND THE PEN are both part of reality and the KNOWING PROCESS embraces both you and the pen! Reality is ALIVE, it KNOWS ITSELF, it’s capable of amazing things like KNOWING ITSELF. It’s not merely a clockwork machine devoid of life. The objects around you are not DEAD. Everything is vibrant with life. YOU knowing THE PEN isn’t like there’s an arrow coming from you pointing to the pen! And, since the pen is dead it isn’t capable of knowing you back. No! That is just a MODEL reinforced by language when you say “I know the pen”, the subject-object structure of language reinforces the illusion! And I’m not saying the pen can know you back! I’m saying that YOU ARE THE ONLY THING DOING THE KNOWING OF EVERYTHING?? It’s not a knowing that comes from you to the pen!! Reality gets much more interesting, vibrant, alive, miraculous, when you get in touch with that! I keep slipping in and out of that realization throughout the day. My scientific model of the world, the “everything is just dead stuff bouncing around, and I’m just this thing looking at stuff” paradigm is still strong; it’s quite a depressing way of looking at life. Good thing it’s just an illusion

By the way, if you just read this and just add this to your mental repertoire of knowledge, that’s a quantitative growth what happens when you understand this new way of looking at life is a qualitative change! Something deeper CHANGES in how you view reality I understood this clearer than ever after looking at a pen for an hour? Boring as FUCK I’m on vacation now so I’ll spend the entirety of next week getting more and more in touch with that realization to hopefully really drive it home. It gives life to everything!

Whatever your answer is to that question is wrong.

I would end all of it All around the world Everyone For ever ever ever ever And I’d never let it happen again If I could I wouldn’t even have allowed it in the first place

You are you. You do exist. There is being. Being yourself is being who you are. If you have millions in your bank account, you are a millionaire. If you don't, you aren't a millionaire yet, but you can use future visualization techniques paired with action in the present and open-mindedness to become one. Oh, so here you're defining being a millionaire as being happy? And you're also defining happy as having a wife and three kids? Are you playing around with word definitions? What is your game here? Well, if you don't have a wife and three kids, you don't have a wife and three kids. If you don't have a million euros, you don't have a million euros. And that has nothing to do with happiness. When you say you're God and God is everything are you just parroting what you've heard spiritual gurus say? Because I'd assume that if you understood that you're God and God is everything, you wouldn't be so confused. Not a lot, no.

Oh you’re doing it deliberately. I just feel like it’s easier for a teaching to be turned into ideologies when the answers are just delivered on a silver platter. I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about Edit: but then again, Jesus’ teachings were very zen and still turned into ideologies.?

@Leo Gura I really like these videos where you guide us through an exercise. However I feel like you try to explicate things too much. You just give out the answers and there isn’t enough space for us to discover something on our own. For example, I don’t think it helps anyone to just tell them straight up that “you don’t exist”. They have to be guided to that realization slowly. It can’t be explicated like that. Hope you get my point. A lot of people like your style, though! These are just my two cents

I was mindblown when he said “at some point someone said to you that you’re a human and you just believed it like a sucker”? Very enlightening But I didn’t go too deep because I couldn’t concentrate. I got a lot of shit going on

“Overall the rape was a great experience, and I'd recommend rape to everyone” - electroBeam, 2020 ????

Last night I was watching a debate between the two candidates for mayor of Rio de Janeiro and today I woke up with my face sore from having cringed too hard. The entire debate was based on blaming each other. The population got NOTHING from that stupid debate. Do you guys think that in our lifetime we will see two candidates with good systems thinking and talking about love, etc? Haha

Why does the ocean look blue? Water isn’t blue... lol

This is so interesting!

@Striving for more Ikr?? It’s fine, bluetooth radio waves won’t affect you nearly as much as your paranoia around it will, so chill It’s like living in the jungle. You gotta eat but every single plant around you could be poisonous? And every single animal could outsmart you lol

...so there may be other ways in which I misunderstand EGO. also I’ve heard ego IS NOT ur sense of self Maybe, like with everything, theres a lot more nunce to it than I first thought

I will choose to reincarnate many times until I see conscious politics happening here on the fallen Earth :'D

???

She's been through so much shit in her life She gained a lot of wisdom haha "You know what, I think maybe it's time you put ROSS under the microscope" lol "you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open and this, like, whole mess of crap came out"

@Leo Gura I have those white fillings (resin composite) on two of my teeth. I wonder if they’re different from metal fillings in that they’re not harmful like metal fillings? Edit: yeah I just read something that says they’re potentially harmful. What should I do then? Remove it and live with only half of my front tooth?? (I broke my front tooth in half when I was little by hitting it at the bottom of a pool. Tragic. But the white resin fixed it.)

“How would he go to work tomorrow? ... How would he face the other science guys? ... How– how would he face himself, oh!”?

- I used to always be suspiscious that maybe my parents are a WIZARD and a WITCH and they’re tricking me into believing they’re my parents! - I remember I was like 8 years old and I’d hold a pencil and ask myself “what is it like to be this pencil? This pencil exists, it got created, here it is, so it must feel like something to be this pencil.” It’s so funny how I remember exactly the enviorenment when I was having such thoughts. - I’d also look at my friends and wonder “what do they do at home? I can never know... Unless I’m them... I wonder what it’d be like to actually live through them, ACTUALLY BE them. Not speculate, but actually be them... Only then would I know...” - I can also swear on my mom’s dead body that I saw santa claus flying over my house. Even though I now rationalize to the death that I have not. It must have surely been a dream that I had as child and now my brain remembers it as though it actually happened, which is a crazy thing to have happened in an objective world, where everyone agrees that santa claus is imagination, different from the objective world. OBVIOUSLY!!!! (Or maybe I believe it so strong as a child that I ACTUALLY saw it?) LOL BUT EVEN THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN JUST IMAGINATION, BECAUSE THE OBJECTIVE WORLD DOESN’T ALLOW IT, obviously. - When I was a child my default assumption was that the Earth was actually a ball and we were INSIDE the ball rather than walking ON IT. I remember very specifically being in Geography class and having a little bit of a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we walk ON the earth, and there IS NOT a moment where if we keep walking we’ll end up stepping outside of “the ball we’re in” and fall onto outer space. Like there isn’t a DEAD END. Now it’s OBVIOUS for me how it works. OBVIOUSLY IT’S A GLOBE and we can keep walking around it forever. But it was a bit of a struggle to have the paradigm shift for the first time. - Another thing happened when I was introduced to the concepts of atoms for the first time. I was a bit older now, in my teenage years. I remember my first Chemistry teacher telling the class about the existence of ATOMS. I swear I was the only in class that didn’t buy that shit. I felt like even my teacher had no fucking clue what the hell she was going on about. During lunch break I asked my friends if they were understanding the lesson, I asked them, guys wtf is even an atom? I don’t get it. And of course they convinced me of what it is, by drilling into my head the same story the teacher had told us in class. For many years since that day I conceptualized atoms as little balls floating around, even though I never saw one. I did see Santa as a child though, but never an atom.?? - I also remember very specifically a moment when I tried so hard to ask a question to my geography teacher as a child. I tried so hard to ask her WHY DOES THE WATER AT THE BEACH ONLY GOES UP TO A CERTAIN POINT LIKE IT’S MARKED ON THE TEXTBOOK? LIKE HOW DOES THE WAVE KNOWS THAT IT MUST STOP AT THIS SPECIFIC POINT AND DOESN’T JUST ENGULF ALL LAND? My teacher would just tell me that’s how it is. But obviously it isn’t how it is. Water does engulf the land sometimes with huge waves and destroy cities, the water doesn’t respect the limits of the textbook. And there isn’t a line that clearly separates ocean and land anyways. There’s water under the land, land under the water and everything in between!

Doing more math, more reading, more memory games doesn’t help improve cognition. You need physical exercise, healthy eating, good sleep etc