BornToBoil

Please don't give up. I know it must be really hard and painful for you right now, but you can get trough it. What if in 10 years you will have a life so great that you can't even imagine it right now? Everything will pass eventually no matter how bad it is. And you are 100% lovable, please get this stupid thought out of your head.

I have been meditating on and off for a couple of years now so I am not a total beginner, but I was really inconsistent with it. I want to get more disciplined with my meditation habit and do it on a daily basis. And I am torn between meditating twice a day for 30 minutes or once a day for 1 hour. On one hand, I really feel like I am able to go much deeper and the experience is much more profound if I meditate for 1 hour straight vs just 30 minutes. I can feel that I am actually in a different state of mind after I meditate for so long. On the other hand, it's more difficult for me to actually sit and start meditating for 1 hour and it's not as flexible. So I think doing two 30 minute session would be better if I want to build a strong habit. Another plus of this approach is that it's easier to be more conscious throughout the day if you meditated twice vs if you just meditated in the morning. Which approach do you guys recommend?

Bias and guesswork Anyway, this conversation can last forever and even though I really like it, I want to go to sleep already, so lets stop it here. Thank you for the great discussion.

@LastThursday I mean yes, you are right. But I would prefer to live nowadays rather than 2000 years ago, so I would say that those strategies are actually working and it's not the same as expecting water to run uphill. By advancing society I meant something like decreasing suffering and increasing our capacity for love. But yeah, you could as well say that advancing society means creating as much suffering as possible, lol. The issue with that though is that it makes having a constructive conversation impossible since you could do this trick with every word and term in our language. Meaning of the word "word" is arbitrary. Also, before I was thinking that those types of videos may be fun, but don't provide much value besides entertainment. I have just realised that it's not really true. I now think that they can be quite useful if done in a conscious way. There was a similar kind of youtube channel in Russian with two guys who were doing all sorts of interesting social experiments. For example one guy would pretend that he is beating up another one or pretend to get sick while walking on the street and see if people would do something to help or just ignore it and walk pass them as if it's not their business. I used to watch it a lot when I was like 10-12. Mostly for entertainment to be honest, but I also believe that it had some positive effect on me because it made me contemplate what is the right thing to do and how I would like to behave if I was in that situation.

@Preety_India I hope you don't mind it, haha I am not really arguing, just being curious (or at least doing my best not to).

@LastThursday wow, yeah, that actually makes sense now. But still it only works if we are talking about philosophy and spirituality. But in practice our society needs those arbitrary degrees to function properly. Also, couldn't you make an argument that we were created in that exact way (having an ability to draw nuanced arbitrary distinctions) by universe/god which means that it is what we are supposed to be doing? For example to advance our society which would increase our levels of consciousness which would ultimately make us more loving and in tune with higher intelligence?

@integral oh, come on. You know what I meant. Don't get so literal just for the sake of argument. Tell me, would you have enough guts to steal 50 bucks from a blind man? @LastThursday What I am trying to say is that there are degrees of dishonesty. By that logic a judge who lied to his kids about Santa Claus has no right to judge a politician who stole millions of dollars.

@LastThursday @LastThursday I actually posted it without reading your edit. Again, yes you are right about the viewer getting a kick from being morally superior. But I don't agree with how you compare a thief being decieved to stealing from a blind person. And no, I don't think any normal person could to steal from a blind person like that.

@LastThursday @LastThursday yes, that's completely true. As a viewer that's 100% what's happening. But I meant your comment: "A man pretending to be blind telling off someone for not being honest." I just don't see much of an issue here. Him pretending to be blind doesn't harm anyone so it definjtely shouldn't be equated to stealing imo. And telling a thief to be honest is not that big of a punishment as well.

@integral @LastThursday @Preety_India can someone explain to me why what he did was bad? Obviously it is a social experiment/prank sort of video so you can't expect some sort of higher spiritual truths from it. He didn't even create any drama after confronting those people who took money. No insult, no threats, just saying "please be honest next time". There are much more trashy videos of the similar genre on youtube. Also, there are degrees of dishonesty. Yes, he was pretending to be blind, which might be considered as a bad thing. But his behaviour didn't harm anyone and I think everyone would agree that it's not in the same league with stealing money from a blind person. Imo, the moral here was that they would steal money from a real blind person as well. How else are you going to conduct such an experiment? Find an actual blind person and put him in potentially dangerous situation? I would love to hear another side of an argument.

@Preety_India I have this exact thought sometimes. I often watch Leo's videos when I am down, they are the best antidepressants

It's really hard already, what if I challenged myself and made it even harder? Hmmmm...

Yeah, it's really tough right now, but it will all pass and I will become my new better version!

I need to develop my voice to sing better, I wish I learnt to sing as a kid. But no, I was a Dota playing dumbass back then...

Do you have any ideas of what your life purpose could be?