ZenMonkey

God says "I am" as well as the devil says "I am"....your real self says "I am" and ego says "I am" You were born with the feeling of "I" but you attached things to it when you grew up.

@BHL_20 So why not just go for it and taste those things? If you get happy good, if they turn out to be empty and shallow come back to seek fullfillment on another level. Just be honest with yourself.

You have to ask yourself if you already tasted enough from life as a person. Some people might not and go for success and ego etc. There is a time to experience life as a person and there is time to wake up to the truth. But also remember: you will eventually all lose what you gained as a person. If you had enough you start this spiritual journey. All your reactions above are reactions of the ego. You can continue soccer, but maybe not to be the best but because you love it. And you don't kill the ego because it's nice to be less egoistic. You see through it's illusion because it is not real and you suffer from it. Until now you just replaced a concept with another concept or a beliefe system with another belief system. That's not it. It's still just some blubber-mouthing in your mind. When you are genuinly interested I would recommand you to invest more into it so that your ego and mind just doesn't catch you all the time. Read some books of teachers on your own. See who fits you. For me it's Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Zen, Jeff Foster and Rupert Spira. But there are many more.

There are quite a lot I think. You just don't hear of them because they don't know that they are awake. They just sense this peace but don't know what happend to them because they never heard of any spiritual concept. Eckhart Tolle was like this in the beginning.

Buddha, Ramana Maharshi and Eckhart Tolle for example woke up with only life as their guru.

Okay. Just wanted to know then we could have met. "I" love Mooji too!

Chances are probably not but are you in Rishikesh?

@Anaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Try to find that, that is already aware of thoughts and feelings. You try to observe from a person, but you are awareness itself so it should be effortless to be aware and observe. Without awareness there would be no thought and no feeling. Also who is overtaken by emotions? And who is aware of who is overtaken by emotions? Could one be the idea you have of yourself? Hope I could helppppppppppppp

Maybe it's because of language. When our parents adress us with "you" and we start to refere to us as "I" our mind creates a idea of ourselves. But does it matter?

@Simon Zackrisson Now as far as I see it you only linked to the Diet Doctor Website. So wether it is true or not they will only have onesided information on their side. I could ask you the same. One explantion I posted could be this: So you say the science that is up to date says High Fat is healthy. Well I think you just repeat what you read. You said by yourself that you are "usually way too retarded to interpret studies" so this information is second hand. Maybe from your website? Well let's see who else has some information about diet. What about the World Health Organistaion? Let's see... So with the recommendations of the WHO you could perfectly eat a vegan High Carb Low Fat diet. They write "less than ..." and point most of the time to high carb vegan foods. But maybe they also have outdated studies? Well...that seems pretty new to me. But let's stop talking about studies for one moment. Because as we both know you can find out everything you want to if you have the needed money. And neither of us will see the difference. Let's talk about what we can see: results. The results I can see is that one can prevent and reverse chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes on a High Carb diet. There are many patients who could safe their life by the dietary advice of Dr. Esselstyn. He is a cardiologist and his "practice took a dramatic turn -- from performing surgery to promoting nutrition. For more than 20 years, the Cleveland Clinic doctor has tried to get Americans to eat like the Papua New Guinea highlanders, rural Chinese, central Africans and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico." His promoted diet is a vegan diet that includes "no meat, no eggs, no dairy, no added oils." So how does it come that patients as for example Anthony Yen (to name a name) safed their lifes on a vegan high carb low fat diet if it isn't healthy? Personally I saw my grandmother getting cancer in her nose. The doctors said they have to cut the nose. But most likely her cancer would have returned after a few years. So she decided to go on a very strict vegan diet. And today she still lives and still has her nose.

You should be present and aware when it happens. Observe what happens and how it happens. You should check out "Eckhart Tolle and painbody". He explains this very well!

Porn can become problematic. Otherwise there would not be such a huge subreddit called NoFap. NoFap is about quiting porn. Also if he goes overboard with porn he can be less turned on by you. Because the brain imagines him having sex while he watches porn. And he can choose thousands of hot women. Who can compete to this? Now that said he could easily get offended by you telling him to quit porn. You know your situation so you know if you can talk about this. Maybe just wait and see if it has an impact on your relationship or sex life. For further information on the impact of porn google NoFap. Then you can better tell him what concerns you. But the reason why you want to change this shouldn't be egoic ones. It should be your love to him and your relationship. But it's really hard. Most men will get angry when you tell them something like that. I think I would just wait if something changes for now.

Judging yourself for thoughts is like listening to a song on the radion in your car and judging yourself because the songtext is bad. You didn't write the song!

@Phocus Very good post! @otoumie One thing I encountered with willpower: Phocus showed that it's unhealthy unless you only eat small amounts. I always find it way easier to eat 100% vegan than 99%. You just need much less willpower. But that's just my experience! Also one more thing about B12: There are different forms of B12 and our body can absorbe some better than others. The one absorbed best is Methylcobalamin. Make sure you get that one. Either as lozenge or injection or some other form. And vitamin D: a bad mood or getting ill very often can be a sign of a deficiency.

That's great! Meditation is really good. And also try to actively work with your problems. I found Noah Elkrief very helpful on my journey to disbelieve thoughts (the first video I post). So if you work with whatever causes the problems, may it be thoughts or concepts or something else, these problems can guide you and you can relief your anger, depression etc. on that journey.

That's quite a deep topic. I can't really explain it completly to you in one post but I can recommand you Eckhart Tolles book "The Power of Now" or any video of him you can find on youtube. You can do one thing. Watch you thoughts and see if you know what the next thought that arises in your mind will be. You will come to the conclusion that you don't know. So if thoughts arrive without you knowing what they will be, how can those be your thoughts? Blaming you for thoughts would be like listening to the radio in your car and blaming yourself for a bad songtext. But you didn't write the songtext! So that's one hint. BUT you actually should start with droping concepts you have. That can give you an instant relief. So one concept would be that a woman can make you happy. I already tried to explain why that's not gonna happen. So if you see that won't work you don't have to get depressed and angry by failing. Another concept is that of a whole person. So the question would be does whole really exist? If I ask you where is your nose, you can point it out and show it to me. But if I ask you where is whole or not whole you would have to go into your imagination. Thus it is not real. It's only an imaginary story in your head. You see what I am trying to communicate? The feeling of lack or not whole is actually a really deep one. Most people think there is something lacking in their lifes. And that's why they try to fill up with food, sex or even drugs. But whatever you do it seems their is still this lack and nothing can really fullfill you. The richest people who can buy themselfes all experiences are often very unhappy. So as we can't find it in the outer world we have to look inwards. And once we do we start to see that what we are looking for was really us and the present moment is perfect as it is. I'll link you some videos about that topic that might help. Could this help you?

@otoumie I am interested and very passionated about this stuff and so wanted to really know what is the healthiest way to eat and did quite some research. And then you just stumble over a lot of facts. I read a lot in the internet and some books. I also find it helpful to watch some vegan youtube channels so you see how they do it and can copy that. If you live in sweden you should supplement vitamin D for sure.

@Tim W In my opinion traveling alone is even better. At least once when you start. You just get so much confidence and experience out of it because you have to manage everything on your own. And you can focus on yourself. Having no concepts is great. You can just follow whatever comes up. You don't have to plan a lot. I love this way of traveling. Just following what feels right in the moment. I am currently cycling around the world. And I do it alone. I am already seven month on the road. And by now I am happy I went on this journey alone. I also don't have really fixed plans. If you want to travel for longer you could also hitchhike instead of using public transportation. That saves money and you experience more.

@otoumie You can find a lot of calcium in sesame seeds, brokkoli, cale, almonds etc. And don't care about where to get your protein from. Protein is everywhere, even in fruits. It's like really really hard to get a protein deficiency. Just ask where elephants get their protein from? If you want to build muscle mass you can go with beans, lentils, chickpeas... Because protein was the first nutrient to be discoverd it got so important. The most important thing is to focus on a whole food plant based vegan diet with some variety in it. So if you do that you don't have to have in mind where to get every nutrient. But inform yourself for sure! That's very good and important! The only thing to supplement is B12 and Vitamin D depending where you live and how much sunlight you get. But those are not vegan issues. Cows we eat that are only inside get supplemented B12 today as well because cows as well as humans would have normally eaten it with dirt. Some vegans do also do a blood test every now and then just to be sure. Just tell your family members why you do it so they understand your decision. If you bring your own food you can also make it a bit easier for them. Maybe you can watch forks over knives with them. So congratulations you took the first step to a better diet! Keep improving, there will be setbacks but what matters is if you can get back on your feet again. If you stick to it you will see soon the benefits and then it gets easy because you don't want to go back.

Actually you can live very easy helthy and cheap. I would recommand you the Strach Solutuion. It is a vegan diet that mainly focuses on starches. You eat a lot of potatoes, rice etc. These foods are cheap and healthy. It has its name from the book Starch Solution which is written by a plant based doctor called Dr. McDougall. There are also youtube channels focusing on that diet like High Carb Hannah and her husband Unconventinall Living and their website rawtillwhenever where they have free recepies and recepie books.

Great work mate!!! Keep it up! You'll soon see all the benefits and be happy you did it!

It is an illusion that a relationship could make you happy. Why? Because what makes you unhappy in the first place are your thoughts! They create your anxietys, depression and anger. They make you believe that where you are now is lacking and so you should persue the future. So you live a life constantly on the hunt never content with what is now. In the end you'll miss everthing you'll ever have. This moment right now. If you want to find a woman who makes you happy you place a huge task on her which she can never fullfill because she can't get rid of the thoughts that make you unhappy. You hand her over your responsibility. Your responibility to make yourself happy. And when she eventually fails you will judge her. There is nothing like a "whole" person. It's merely a concept in your mind. Therefore discard it. A person is never whole. You are already whole. Because you believe you are a person you believe you are not whole. Changing your negative thought patterns won't do it for you. You are still bought into your mind. You still give importance to thought. Mind is clever. It will just come back and bite you in the ass. It's like pulling up weeds. They will constantly grow back. By trying to change negative thoughts you don't tackle the route problem. The route problem is your belief in thought.

Self inquery is like looking into a mirror. Meditation is like watching the clouds passing by.

I sit on a cushion in full lotus. It's just very stable. But I like to have my eyes open and hear everything. In the end some noise coming from outside isn't that much differnt from a thought appearing in the mind.

I like Unconventional Living and his girlfriend High Carb Hannah. They have both their channels and publish recepie books, free recepies on their website and free recepie videos.