Lento

Letting go is the most difficult thing there is, but it's the most rewarding thing as well. Some things simply aren't meant to be, no matter how much you want them to be. "It's the things we love most that destroy us" Life goes on, and it's time to move on...

Reading the new post from @Serotoninluv's journal.. I should say I'm amazed! He is definitely a great man! I like his style of breaking things/thoughts/reality down in very simple, yet clever ways. He seems to always be on point. Anyway, so he's talked about his OCD and ADD, both of which I've experienced, while having the former completely cured, and the latter improved. I'm not really an intelligent person, so I don't always have the luxury of being able to articulate my thoughts. I do have depth, but I don't know how to demonstrate it like he does. I usually go with my intuition, and it's working fine. My OCD began to form unconsciously, it was hygiene OCD. Not that I was afraid of germs or disease, not at all. I used to be a Muslim, and I used to have certain beliefs regarding hygiene. Like for example, washing up for prayer should be done this way and not some other way. More specifically, I would go into looping excruciating thoughts, especially with washing the feet, because when I would wash one foot, the water would splash on the other foot. I used to believe that that water wasn't clean (according to the Islamic standards). Another example, if I touched a dog, I should wash my hands seven times. So, as I had been trying to get those things done, I lose focus because I would get stuck in my mind thinking about them and about other things, mainly sins. I know that this seems irrational, perhaps even ridiculous, but I used to be like that. And I'm not ashamed of that. I actually am proud to have gone through it and finally found the root cause. It was fear! Fear was underlining every move I used to make. In my case, that fear had two main components, fear of letting go of my beliefs, which gave rise to fear of the punishment of Allah. I had to work through them both, and I am not a Muslim anymore. I started to question my beliefs until I've realise that Allah is not evil and will not punish me. And eventually I've basically got rid of all of them. Still, it wasn't that simple, and not at all easy. There were other components that were involved. I had to face my fear head-on. It was about two and a half years ago, I was doing my regular OCD activities, when I suddenly got sick of it all. The suffering was so much to handle. I couldn't take it anymore. So, I said, you know what? Fuck this! Fuck everything, and every God if they're that evil! I don't want anything. I just want peace. At that moment, something clicked, and then after that, things started to change. It was a moment of complete surrendering, even though it may sound like the exact opposite. At that moment, I actually surrendered to the true God, the only God. Reality! I was not afraid of the imaginary Allah anymore. Goodbye OCD! See you never. Of course, I wasn't magically cured spontaneously, but something at the core changed, and then change in my external reality started to manifest. Also, after about two months from that event, I've experienced an ego-death, which lasted for quite a while. Besides the fact that I limited my exposure to water for a very long time (most of a complete winter). And when I got back to the normal life again, I came back with a new awareness. So, I guess those were the components that helped me get over my OCD. My ADD is a different matter, still. I haven't been diagnosed with it because I haven't even checked with a doctor (I haven't checked with the OCD either). All I can say is that it's getting better, although not sure how. I meditate a lot, so that's curing me from every illness I have, I guess. I have no experience with anxieties in general, although I think that's virtually impossible. What I do know, though, is that Serotoninluv is a great person. I honestly find it difficult to believe that he would ever harm anyone. I've had many encounters with him, and he has always been a good person, showing all signs of maturity and empathy. If you're reading, all respect and love are due to you, my friend ??♥️ .. So, yesterday, I've had this feeling, and I went with it. After work, I felt like walking, so I walked for two hours straight. During that period, I've experienced levels of equanimity I haven't experienced in a year. Everything seemed silent and serene. My mind was focused, yet very calm and relaxed. I walked by a garden back and forth, and then through a park. The atmosphere felt familiar, and with ego-death fragrance, I died. It was amazing! Today I felt very energetic, and went on with my daily routine. Right now, I'm going to watch this video: and then I'm going to chat with my best friend. It's our sacred ritual!

Wow! This is so dark. No offence to anyone, but I think that anyone who thinks like that is taking life way too seriously.

Observing the dynamics of other members here on the forum, it's an interesting thing! Everyone is locked in their own little perspective trying to make it universal. I've been there, and I can empathise. So much stage Blue goes on all around here. Ironically, most of them claiming to be Yellow or above, whether frankly, somehow frankly, or not at all. I fall for this trap from time to time, and that's why I almost completely refrained from wasting my time and energy on discussions that I know won't bare fruit for none of the participants. Right now, I like to think of myself as someone who's above such childish behaviours. I have more important things to worry about. I have my own life to take care of. It's beautiful to have someone whom you can trust. It's beautiful to know that someone is not scheming in silence to stab you behind your back. It's beautiful to know that you actually have a friend! I'm digging into the Enneagram model. It's very interesting so far! I don't think it's enough to read a model once. I need to let it sink into my subconscious mind for it to become of value. It's not a lens until you've stopped thinking of it as a lens. You have to put it on.

That variety will eventually merge again into one (non-duality), two (duality), and three (trinity; the totality of one and two). ?

Perhaps a better inquiry would be more on the structural level. Go meta on the question. What is honesty? What is knowledge? And what is a question?

I don't want to journal today, but I will. It's not about discipline, not even about extracting some value. It's just about journaling. I feel so much energetic, I could go for a run right now, but I won't because of the cold and rain. Instead, I've done about 100 push-ups and about 30 pull-ups, and I'm looking forward to doing more until the end of the day. There's a lot of energy in my body right now. It makes my mood go straight for this: I'm experiencing the epitome of awareness right now. I am aware and of control of every single move/choice I'm making. It's such an amazing experience! Flow at its peak! I've spent most of the last two days meditating, perhaps that's why. I wonder how I should direct this to get the best outcomes possible. I certainly should leave work. It's been an obstacle for my growth, although I've grown a lot through it, particularly in the social domain. I've, somehow, overcome many of the blockages I used to have. I used to not be comfortable talking about my sexuality in front of the opposite sex. I'm now completely comfortable. That's amazing, because I've never planned on solving this issue. It just worked itself out. Sometimes, you don't need to do anything except being patient and ready to learn. You never know what God is doing behind the scenes for you. Awareness is the most important principle in life. Without awareness, you're lost. Of course, you can't be without awareness, but you can have low quality and/or low quantity of it. This will make your life extremely superficial and highly driven by others. It'll make you a slave, and never a leader. Leadership requires the highest levels of awareness. The more aware you are, the better leader you will become. It's all about awareness, so don't be "aware-less".

Time to wrap up the first page of this journal; Balance is a dynamic; you can't force it, it will happen on its own when you have proper levels of awareness. Working out is a must, whether at the gym or not. Phone and internet addictions are entangled with each other. Both seem to have gotten eliminated for the most part. I am happy, but I am not successful. Or at least, not to the same level of my current happiness. There is a gap, and I should be working on it. Raw egg is great for health. It's become a habit for me to have two raw eggs every morning. I mix them with chocolate for a better taste. Stay strong during the most difficult times. The rewards will be amazing. You can only truly appreciate things when you truly know what their absence can bring. Be grateful for everything you have. Discipline isn't hard to create or maintain. Take the pain, embrace the dark, and then rise like a phoenix. Infrastructure for creating habits; time, willingness, and attention. Look for the value that anything you're doing is generating in your life. Have no agenda and learn to judge things with a pragmatic lens from a self-biased position. The more selfish you are, the better impact you will be able to make on everything around you. Learn to be selflessly selfish. .. I decided to leave work on February 1st. I need to focus more on college. I feel much better today, I was more productive in general, and more focused. I still am far from my best state. Psychological disorders are far worse/malignant than physical ones. At least with the physical disorders you detect most of them early because of the pain. With the psychological disorders, you don't know whether the suffering is bad or not. You don't even know whether you are ill or not. Besides, most physical illnesses behave in similar ways and unfold in certain directions. They're well understood and covered by doctors and researchers. It's completely the opposite with the psychological disorders. I've been depressed for about 8 years and I didn't even know it. It's crippled almost all of my abilities down. And now after healing it, I have started working on building my life again. I'd struggled so hard with everything. Now, everything seems clear to me. I'm flowing with life almost seamlessly. And I'm back on track with everything. I need some more time to catch up, though. The best part is that I don't regret going through the darkness. I cry sometimes when I remember those days (actually dark, dark nights) where I used to wake up every night and cry fearing death. I used to experience sleep paralysis on a regular basis. I can say with confidence that it's been healed now completely. I'm very grateful for where I am now. Perhaps this gratitude is the ultimate prize for my suffering.

The best way to see Love is to understand fear. Let go of what you fear the most, and you will see Love. What are your worst fears? That's the sacrifice you need to make for God for Its Love to unfold before you.

Thank you! I agree with everything you said. And I think you've captured the essence of that balance very well with the duality adapting vs. organising. Still, I'm a bit vague or unsure about how to go about this. How to create that balance and maintain it? This is very critical for me because my environment is highly unstable and changing very quickly, sometimes even drastically. This problem makes it difficult, and rather pointless for me to create habits because then I will need to drop them and replace them with something else every now and then. I keep coming to the conclusion that I need to become more aware, both in quality and quantity. What do you think?

This question may sound weird, but I'm asking with all seriousness. Reality is changing all the time, and at the same time it's just the present moment. Flowing in the present moment is easy, and it doesn't require discipline. Discipline is easy too, since it's a bunch of habits. So, when reality changes but your habits don't, you fall out of flow. For the most part, discipline seems like a tier one quality, like rigid unconscious discipline without being connected to reality or to what actually needs to be done. What I'm aiming to discuss here is discipline at tier two. How does it look like? How to achieve it? Would it still be discipline if it became flexible? Are flow and discipline opposites? Is discipline even necessary at the highest levels? Lemme hear your thoughts guys.

I believe the word "can" expresses possibility, not predetermination. Dude, why are you doing this? Besides, assuming that conflict is inevitable, why are you trying to avoid it? Interesting questions.

@Serotoninluv Hmmm, well, in this case, I think it's easy to be aware of both dynamics and to shift from one to another. I understand that the example you provided was for the most part for illustrating the concept of how awareness works, but I think it gets messier and way more complicated than this, especially when your environment is changing all the time. From my experience, I could create a bunch of habits which obviously would be difficult to maintain at first, but then with practice and time they'd become part of my conditioning, so as you hinted, the word discipline would be more appropriate in the beginning, but then when the discipline becomes effortless, we could start calling it a habit or a conditioning, whether conscious or not. That makes sense. However, what I'm specifically interested in here is if it's possible to skip the difficult part, and to shift from one effortless habit to another in short amounts of time. That is when you hold many projects simultaneously and try to make them all work together fluidly and effortlessly. Like for example, let's say that I have to live among people who aren't vegetarians, and it's difficult to communicate that concept with them like you illustrated. On the one hand, when I'm on my own, I could discipline myself to become a vegetarian. On the other hand, when I'm with them, I'd need to act like I belong. You can already see how difficult it is to create a habit in this case. Oh, and by the way, for something to become a habit, it has to become somewhat permanent, but what I'm asking about is if it's possible to install habits and remove them selectively, on a daily basis (or even on a real-time basis), without having to worry about maintaining them. Like making my default mode a vegetarian, while at the same time having the luxury of dropping it every single day, without the latter becoming my new habit. And that's just one habit, think about ten or more habits at once. How is it possible to be that flexible?! I don't know if it sounds bizarre, but if the environment is highly unstable, then how is one going to be able to become disciplined and remain flexible simultaneously. It seems possible theoretically, but I find it really difficult practically. It probably requires having extremely high levels of awareness in every single moment throughout the day. I hope there will be further discussion. Thank you. @mandyjw Welcome to the club!

I like how all of you guys described it. It takes practice, though, to unwire the old patterns.

Simply put; insights emerge when you confirm the thoughts you were holding about reality, through your direct experience. A quick example would be if you heard stories and watched documentaries about Australia, that would be your thoughts. The insights in this case are the experience of the actual Australia by going there. So, why are insights reliable while thoughts aren't? Well, that's a question that needs to be questioned instead of being answered.

You did not become a devil. You were always The Devil, you just didn't know it. The devil is eternal just as much as God is. They're one and the same. But you'd need to go beyond 'knowledge' for you to 'know' that!

So, it's been a while since I have written anything here. I'm procrastinating again, falling into my unconscious mode.. The good thing is that I've worked good over the past few weeks so I am accepting the negatives better. Although, I think that leaving the gym wasn't a wise decision because working out made me really aware and disciplined. It's been ten days since I've stopped going, and I can tell; I'm having an ego-backlash, even though I'm still exercising at home and doing some push-ups and pull-ups. I have a theory, I think that the people you interact with always affect you, one way or another. Like they really affect you. If they're having an ego-backlash, it'll be transmitted to you. If they're unconscious, then your consciousness levels will lower down as well. However, this seems to be like a dynamic. So, when their ego-backlash is transferred to you, they become cured. When your consciousness level decreases, theirs increases. It's like a dynamic for balancing things out. But the problem is that if someone has a generator source for egoic/low-consciousness life, that is their mindsets. The mindsets/beliefs you currently hold are the generator source for your current level of consciousness. Really, it seems like all the levels of consciousness are equal after all. From nothing to something, from formlessness to form, all creations come into life, and the levels of consciousness are merely one form of this life. The only difference seems to be in the frequency that they are summoned in. It now appears to me that it's completely ridiculous to claim to not have a point of view/paradigm/ideology. This just seems to be impossible, although this itself is something of a point of view/paradigm/ideology. Back in strange-loopery! In my culture, there is a saying about the effects of other people on a foreign individual. They say: "whoever stays for 40 days among our tribe, they're us". So, I'm kind of thinking they're right. I think 40 days is enough time for losing oneself for the "tribe". Anyway, and on a more practical level, if my theory is correct, how can I utilise it for my own benefit? How can I attract positives into my life from the people I interact with? What kind of people should I be befriending? How can I become an infinite generator for positive energy? How can I stop others from dragging me down, and actually rather start dragging them up along with me? The questions are many, but they share the same core; what is the most harmonious/flourishing way to be? Maybe it's balance, maybe it's something else. I think it's presence, but that alone does not seem to be enough. Perhaps it's the balance between presence and illusion, and that balance comes in the form of consciousness. So, the more you learn about the external world (reality and others) and the more you learn about the internal world (yourself), the more conscious you will become. And the more conscious you become, the more balanced you will become. And the more balanced you become, the more in alignment with God you will become. And that will probably be the epitome of life! You will become God itself! The ego creates false divinity. For example; there seems to be a halo of divinity towards celebrities, for some reason. I don't think this is just me. I think everyone falls for this trap, and actually I think a lot of people fall so hard and fail to see that. I've realised the mundane-ness of everyone! It was an insight about Trump. I don't know why I thought he's (or anyone famous for that matter) somehow special or divine. Not that he's a good person, not at all. Just that he didn't seem earthly, so to speak. I realised that politics is all just a game, a lot bigger than any other game, that's for sure. Trump is affecting my country the same way my boss affects my decisions/powers in the workplace. It's much more complicated than that, but the essence is still the same. That's the main insight. Falling in love is not easy, but the right person makes it so. I never thought that I would meet someone I would like this much, I never thought that I would meet the perfect girl, but I did! She's smart, humorous, positive, passionate, compassionate, caring, supportive, open-minded, strong, strategic, mature, independent, committed, fun, disciplined, and so on... And she happens to share a lot of my interests and opinions. We've had great discussions so far, and I'm looking forward for more. She's definitely the one! Oh, yes. I've finished working on the graduation project. It needs some tweaks, still. I will dedicate one hour a day starting from tomorrow for reading whatever I can from V-8. I don't want to read his posts on a surface level. I want to understand everything he says, even if it'll become a lifelong project (it sure won't). And I still haven't read anything about the Enneagram model. I should dedicate 30 minutes a day for that. Just thought the journal wanted to hear my thoughts today, my monkey-mind seems to have calmed down, and I feel more relaxed right now, I think I should do this more often. I should get back to studying now.

@Serotoninluv I really appreciate you man! You've made my week. I think you are exceptional! You seem to be able to, almost evertime, step into other people's shoes. I look forward for becoming more like you. Hey, do you think this ability has something to do with the teacher/student dynamic you're practicing at your work? Does this transcendence come from going full-circle with that dynamic? Have you become both and neither the teacher and student? And finally, do you think it is related to your empathetic abilities? I mean do you feel empathy for your students? And do you feel respect for others as your teachers? How do these feelings work? Have they become more intense? Please keep your journal active.. You inspire me! ?❤️

That's really nice! ?❤️

Don't resist the monkey-mind. Allow it to move like crazy, and be watching over it. Right now, in your mind, there's a separation between awareness and thought. But that separation itself is a thought and is illusory. Ask yourself: why do I not want to have a monkey-mind? The answer is probably because you think the monkey-mind prevents you from being present. But does it really? You have always been present. Otherwise, who was there to be able to describe it to us? ?

Indeed. The best time for any serious investigation/contemplation/inquiry usually comes after meditating the monkey-mind into silence/stillness.

This question becomes irrelevant when you realise more important things. Focus on more important things.

@DeannaDevil Sure. It's a natural part of the path. Nihilism due to overthinking is a quite common theme for most people at some point. What I suggest is more doing and less thinking, more engaging and less judging, more conscious breathing from the stomach and more meditation and less thought-stories. And finally, more exercising and less staying at home.

@Anton Rogachevski That's highly unlikely to happen. Even for us who are interested in what Leo teaches, it probably wouldn't work out the way you suggested. The "illusion" is way too deep for it to unravel that easily. I think it's good to simply have that perspective in mind, alongside being aware of the concerns you've highlighted.

Just started a committed approach for finishing the graduation project. I will strive to finish it all in the next two days. It needs about 15 hours, I plan on getting it done and there will be no mercy. I need to move on and do more important stuff. The Enneagram model has been sitting on my to-read list for quite some time, and so have been V-8's posts. He's still at 80 posts, so it's as was planned. At least, that's relieving. I will stop going to the gym from tomorrow until Saturday, it's been a month and I need to take some rest. I recently realised that authenticity will only get me so far, but not all the way. It's one tool out of many in my pocket. Gotta learn how to use it wisely. Sometimes showing off is good. I won't demonise the ego, it's my friend. Sometimes people can have wrong impressions about who you truly are because you don't care about what they think. That's fine, but if you want to become a successful leader, you gotta learn how to be detached and yet still take feedback from others. Most people, especially stage Orange, will judge you according to your success and achievements, regardless of who you actually are. They're not completely wrong, though. I mean who wants to be with a loser? Even I, the least judgemental person on earth, don't like the company of losers. I was very successful throughout my entire life, it's just the last few years that things went out of control. I will reclaim my powers and get back to where I deserve to be, a true leader and a very successful person. I will use the judgement of others to my benefit. Don't believe me, just watch. It's quite rare to meet people that you just know they are the right ones for you. These people are worth sacrificing the entirety of yourself just to be with them. Everything else pales in comparison. Without a second thought, you just know they're the right ones for you.