Henri

@Biomech I can knock you down with rational arguments here, but that`s not going to help... My suggestion mate; take an integral treatment. Take care about your body, your emotions, your feelings, your will, your heart and your soul. Close to you, in the Black Forrest Germany, there is a wonderful Ashram where you can have it all. The most incredible Ayur-Vedic treatments you can imagine together with an astonishing cleansing breathing technique. Next to meditation, healthy food and stunning Satsangs it will level you up to a state of happiness and joy. And this together with warm and loving people surrounding you. After this I`ll bet your question above will no longer exist. (by the way, Ayur-Vedic has some good effects on your disease). Check it out when you are interested; http://www.artofliving.org/badantogast/welcome-sri-sri-ayurveda

A good one. A topic very few understand here. Call it Seva or karma yoga.

@MartineF Sure you are right on everyday stuff, though many times it is not necessary to talk about all the thoughts, emotions and feelings. The best relations are the ones where just a few words are spoken. When you are happy and loved, so much of this simply disappears.

This one you have to be total honest to him about your feelings and so on. That`s for sure going beyond your own ego. This situation requires a skillful action so that in the end you`ll never going to regret yourself by having not made any action at all. Long distance is not the issue here. Let love and honesty be the issue. Those remain in your life, whatever will happen.

Hahahaaa, I am hoping with radical honesty you are not meaning to tell everyone your truth??!! Sure they are fucking scared... Better to tell no one and be silent most of the time.

Meditation has different meanings to me. I meditate on a problem when I am stuck with something. But when I am on retreat or have a few days off I go `all in`.

Hi friend, can you talk some more about Muslim-meditation? I have no knowledge about it. In what way it is different from the more known approaches? Blessings

All this is due to karma. Strange are the ways of Karma. The more you understand it, the more amazed you become. It brings people together and also separates them. It causes some to be weak and some to be strong. It makes some rich and some poor. All the struggles in the world, whatever it may be, are the bondage of Karma. Karma cuts across all logic and reasoning. This understanding will lift you from getting stuck to events and personalities and help you in your journey to the Self. The Three Types Of Karma Good or bad things happen based on Karma. When times are good, even enemies behave like friends. Sometimes, people for whom you have done so much good become your enemies. And there are people who help you whom you have not done any good for. Time has its role to play. Only humans have the ability to change the effect of time and be free of Karma. And only a few thousand aim to be free from it. Some Karma can be changed while others cannot. The first step towards this is to know the different types of Karma: Prarabdha, Sanchita, and Agami. Prarabdha means "begun"—the action that is already manifesting. Prarabdha is the Karma that is yielding its effect right now. You cannot avoid or change it as it is already happening. Sanchita Karma is the "gathered" or "piled up" Karma—what we have brought with us. Sanchita is collected Karma that can be cleared by spiritual practices like meditation. We can also eliminate our Sanchita Karma, which we have as stored tendencies, through prayers, service, and sharing our love and joy with people around us in nature. Satsang (the company of the truth – essentially the company of the wise and compassionate, in whose presence we feel uplifted and joyful) burns the seed of all negative Karma. "Agami" literally means "not come". Agami Karma is the Karma that has not yet come: one that will take effect in the future. If you commit a crime, you may not get caught today, but will live with thoughts of the possibility that you may get caught one day. This is the future Karma of the action. Certain impressions, strong impressions in the mind, remain, and they form future Karma. Some Karma can be changed and some cannot. When you prepare a dessert, if sugar or ghee (clarified butter) is too little at the pre-cooking stage, you can add more. If some other ingredient is too much, it can all be adjusted and repaired. But once it is cooked, it cannot be reversed. Milk can become sweet yoghurt or sour yoghurt, and sour yoghurt can be sweetened. But neither can be reverted to milk. Prarabdha Karma cannot be changed. Sanchita Karma can be changed through spiritual practices. Getting rid of Karma means getting rid of impressions. Sanchita Karma manifests as a tendency or an impression in the mind. As human beings, we have the ability to erase impression and fear through meditation. Meditation is there to rectify painful Karma, at least reduce their impact or effect. The inward journey (of meditation) nullifies our negative Karma. You are just washing out everything when you meditate. Then there is nothing. You become so hollow and empty that whatever fear is there will just dissolve and disappear and thin down all that is laid on the self. This is very precious. Through meditation, bad Karma can be washed off right now, here. Before the body drops, get rid of Karma and erase the sheets of ignorance that surround you.

This question is somewhere on the forum already mate...

When you do pranayamas you`ll lower your breathing and your heartbeat. Natural implication is patience. Than you meditate.

A lot of stuff, though it is a means and not a goal in itself. Suppose you are looking for a gas-station and someone tells you which way to go. When you believe him you`ll follow that way and when the advice was a good advice you`ll end up at the gas-station. At that moment you can forget about the belief because now you know. And it`s the highest knowledge because it is out of experience. So you understand the warning to watch out for false prophets; you might end up without gas!

A master and his disciple are on a journey. They reach a river were a woman is waiting because she is not able to cross the river by herself. The master takes the woman on his shoulders, crosses the river and places the woman safely on the other side. The master and his disciple continue their journey. After 5 hours the anxious disciple asks his master; `Master please, can I ask an important question?` Master; `Tell me your question.` Disciple; `Master I do not understand. You took a vow never to touch a woman in your life but at the river you have carried a woman on your shoulders?! I do not understand this?!` Master; `I just took a woman on my shoulders but you are already carrying the woman for 5 hours in your head...!`

Just a belief of yours mate... And yes, you are right when you say; to my mind... And you will feel pain off course, YOU are just not suffering...

I have read your other posts too. That`s why I would recommend the Art of Living, they have many places across Europe, including Norway. Check their website. You`ll learn proper pranayamas, an enormous powerful and cleaning breathing technique called the Sudarshan Kriya and much more. Next to it there is Satsang, Seva and good food. It`s an integral approach so nobody is suffering from whatever problems like you have so much with Vipassana. It will give you a stable foundation for all your future experiences and development work.

When you just started recently with breathing from the belly, it means you never experienced a proper meditation (?) You say also that concentrating on the breathing is hardening your mind (?) You are doing something wrong, focusing on the breath should be very helpful with the meditation because you eliminate all other thoughts. And a good meditation should be with a slow breathing through your entire lungs. Everybody is facing some physical problems by sitting for a longer time to meditate. That is normal. You can overcome this by regular practice or, when it is chronic, by some pranayamas because some experiences will stick in weaker parts of your body. My suggestion would be to learn some pranayamas. You will learn proper breathing techniques which will make you more physically strong, your body more prepared for sitting still and clean your system of old impressions that got stuck in your body. Also with doing pranayamas it will be a lot easier to meditate because you can easily slow down your breath to two times a minute which is a must for good meditation. Blessings

A bit Hindu-knowledge, Theosophical stuff, modern science, stir well and there it is; The Truth! Nothing new mate...

He does not like drugs.

@Conscious Encounters I think you have not a clue what enlightenment is about...! Comparing psychedelics with enlightenment is like comparing monkeys with human beings. Move on mate!

All addictions of this planet promise joy, but they never deliver. Let's take the simple addiction of smoking. Smoking does not bring any joy, but not smoking gives you pain, suffering, and problem. How to get over it? There are three things that you do to get over addictions: Fear of disease: If doctor says, if you take one more peg of alcohol you will be dead. Greed. If someone tempts ...you for something bigger. If you stop your addiction for a month you will get a million dollars. Love for something higher. I would prefer love over fear and greed. Love can elevate your body-mind complex and stop the craving. Having a bigger addiction - something that can intoxicate you. This is love for the creator, love for God or love for freedom. A higher ecstasy that you can find through meditation and pranayama.

So my friend, you have had a profound experience that looks a lot like mine some years ago. I`ll try to give my explanation and you can see if it makes any sense to you. First I can sense from your post that the love you have for your girlfriend is real love and not just an emotional and physical one. After the break up you were really heart broken and in pain. True love comes from the heart as they say and when the loved one is away the real problem here is not that the loved one is gone; the real problem is that you lost the ability to express your love. That is important to understand. From there the big longing for the beloved one is happening. The big longing for expressing your deep love. This is in no way different as the bhakti-yogi does, only he does it mostly by longing for a Guru or longing for a deity or for a concept of God. The essence is exactly the same. She came back for her car and you experienced her drive for her well being the next years and in a way she was more living in her mind than in her heart. Your longing for her was a dead end street and the love you wanted to express was in fact a lie. It became impossible for your heart, your love, your longing to express itself towards her. This awareness, this realization, makes that your `love-power` has to take a different direction, and that direction is always inward. You may call this divine grace as the bhakti-yogi does or transforming and re-directing the heart-chakra as the raja-yogi does, it is all the same. And so you experienced a form of enlightenment (do not confuse it with total enlightenment off course) that in a way evolved you a bit and made you capable to move on and deal with your life-experiences. You are the lucky one my friend, it is a rare happening now a days. One suggestion I do like to make; All the experiences we deal with in life, we have to interpret them. This interpretation we can only do according to our knowledge. In that way to deal with all the possible events in life it is important to gain more knowledge, otherwise there is always the danger of misinterpretation. Blessings

You dis-identified your awareness with the ordinary daily thoughts and you have experienced a little relief and peace. After this more subtle thoughts try to enter your awareness. The process is the same, just dis-identify the thoughts again. These are just thoughts, like a movie you watch, just let it go and do not dive into it. These are tricks the mind plays. With a bit more experience you`ll laugh about it.

@Bronsoval Where is earth when your body is dead?

Skillfully. The good people will support you. The hopeless people will make you more determined. And the people in between are the ones to make you aware where you have to improve your skills and knowledge.

The Promise If I had to promise you something, what would it be? I can’t promise that you would always be comfortable…Because comfort brings boredom and discomfort. I can’t promise that all your desires will be fulfilled…Because desires whether fulfilled or unfulfilled bring frustration. I can’t promise that there will always be good times…Because it is the tough times that make us appreciate joy. I can’t promise that we will be rich or famous or powerful…Because they can all be pathways to misery. I can’t promise that we will always be together…Because it is separation that makes togetherness so wonderful. Yet if you are willing to walk with me, if you are willing to value love over everything else I promise that this will be the most rich and fulfilling life possible. I promise your life will be an eternal celebration, I promise you I will cherish you more than a king cherishes his crown, And I shall love you more than a mother loves her newborn. If you are willing to walk into my arms, If you are willing to live in my heart, You will find the one you have waited forever…. You will meet yourself in my arms… I promise. Poem written by H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

@ZenDog Surrender my friend...