Connection

Thanks, I'll check it out!

I just thought I would share my experiences here. Hopefully they might be helpful to somebody on here who’s trying to understand what they are going through. So enlightenment? I watched Leo’s video about spiritual enlightenment. He talked about how it is such a rare thing, maybe only one in a million could achieve it. So, yes, that sounds daunting. It seems like some people have a tendency to lose their minds on their way to enlightenment. So I thought a somewhat different perspective on the subject might be helpful. I think my own experience perhaps isn’t enlightenment but just a stopping point along the journey. I don’t know. Everyone has their own way of labeling their experiences and this is how I see mine. This may be something that is easier for you to wrap your head around than enlightenment. Maybe it is just a story that I tell myself to create drama in my life. You be the judge. Life has no meaning until you give it meaning and all of that. I think my experience is somewhat rare but perhaps not as rare as what Mr. Gura describes as enlightenment. If I’m going to put a label on what happened to me I would say it was me developing my own morality and sense of ethics and where that ultimately led me. I think it is something that a lot of your teachers have experienced, especially the ones that you liked really well. It is perhaps not such an unattainable feat of the mind. So I was a quiet introverted kid. I lived in my own head a lot. I liked to read books. I would find myself lying awake at night thinking about things like – What happens when we die? Do we just disintegrate into nothingness? Can I be okay with the belief that I will one day just disintegrate into nothingness? That’s sort of sad and disturbing to me. What does it all mean? - My mom took us to church I think more to socialize and have a community to fit into rather than through any real need to instill faith in God. My dad had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, who was very religious, and I think that made him jaded about God and religion. He used to read passages of the Bible and make fun of them. He did not go to church with us. Eventually I started to hate church and began to refuse to go. It was just boring. All through junior high and high school I thought about these types of topics a lot. A lot of the time I would be going about my daily business on autopilot with thoughts like this in the background. Hey, I likely could have spent thousands of hours on this. I don’t know. It was automatic to me. It was just something that I did. I didn’t feel the need to share these ideas. I just thought them. I read a fair amount of the classic books because I had to for classes and some on my own. I liked authors like Mark Twain, Jack London, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, etc. Lord of the Flies comes to mind as an important book in my thoughts. At any rate, what I now realize is that I was drawn toward books in which the characters faced moral dilemmas. If you look at any famous classic book, it probably revolves around some big moral dilemma that the characters are experiencing. One of my teachers would talk about God a lot and I thought he was kind of kookie, but I liked him. There was another teacher who I now realize seemed to be sizing me up on the moral development scale. I remember him asking me “What would happen if you turned in your assignment late?” As I was always waiting until the last second to turn things in. So the year was 1995, I was in college and taking a couple of history classes and a class about the philosophy of morality. I was an introvert and never fit in to the college scene very well. I was more immersed in my studies than the average college student I would guess. But I was studying all of this stuff, Greek and Roman history, Socrates, Charlemagne, World War I and II and it just seemed to me that everything was starting to make sense and come together cohesively in a meaningful pattern. History wasn’t just a series of random events but almost seemed orchestrated and moving in a direction of greater freedom and social justice. Political systems were becoming less and less authoritarian as people gained more and more power. I felt so inspired and uplifted by these ideas and couldn’t sleep at night. I was just thinking and thinking about all of these ideas and trying to put all of the pieces together. The philosophy of morality seemed to fit perfectly into the paradigm that I was forming. I remember reading Kant and his ideas about why human beings should have value. Why should we have human rights and a respect for life? Because human beings were endowed by their creator with these rights. If there is no God than human life has no value and we’re just a bunch of sacks of meat. I’m sure you could argue against this all day, but this was my uplifting realization. During this time I was thinking a lot and just didn’t feel like eating so I think I lost 20 pounds, and I wasn’t heavy to begin with. At any rate, I was thinking all of these thoughts one night and it just hit me that there must be a God and I felt this shift in me like my ego and the part of me that wanted to be selfless came together and something entered my heart. I don’t want it to sound like another BS religious experience. It was a profound shift in me. Unfortunately, I was still very much me, an awkward introverted girl trying to navigate my college experience and not really doing a very good job of it. I felt like wow, I need to do something and take action on this. I tried to talk to people about it and of course they just thought I was nuts. I dropped out of school and pissed off my parents royally and made a whole slew of strategic blunders. I tried to find someone to give me guidance, but I realized I was on my own. I had to figure out my own path and I did a piss poor job of it. I didn’t really heed to call to go on my own hero’s journey, as they say, and wound up going back to school. I didn’t have the skillset to deal with my experience and didn’t find anyone to guide me to a better path. So this became a big source of shame for me. This experience I had and couldn’t really relate to anyone I knew about. I felt like I was failing the world in a sense. I wasn’t ready to be Gandhi or Martin Luther King or anyone awesome like that. I’m not going to relate my whole lame life story after that point. It is not impressive. At some point I started to learn about the dark side, conspiracy, 911 etc. and then my life took on a whole new level of effed upness. I’m not going to relate that story here. But this phenomenon is something that is understood and studied in the psychology field. I’m no expert on the topic. I do recall one of my high school teachers handing out a worksheet about the levels of moral development and moral reasoning. Lawrence Kohlberg is a psychologist who spent a fair amount of time studying the subject and breaking down the various levels and what type of moral reasoning is behind them. You can size yourself up on the scale. So thanks Mr. Leo for your videos. I am started to see the light I think at the age of 40, yikes. Yes, we all need to grow the fuck up and meditate and figure our shit out. So enlightenment sounds like an attempt to bliss out of reality. What I experienced is not that. It is something that ultimately created more suffering in my life. I still had a lot of layers of crud over my shiny authentic self as Leo would say. I’m finally finding ways to lift those layers of crud. It’s a slow process and the hero’s journey still seems like something I still don’t really want to take on. I have to or I will remain miserable and un-actualized. That’s all that I’m going to write for now. Hopefully this will give you something to ponder on your journey to enlightenment. Anyway, here is some info about moral development Levels and Stages of Moral Development Level 1: Preconventional Morality The first level of morality, preconventional morality, can be further divided into two stages: obedience and punishment, and individualism and exchange. Stage 1: Punishment- Obedience Orientation Related to Skinner’s Operational Conditioning, this stage includes the use of punishment so that the person refrains from doing the action and continues to obey the rules. For example, we follow the law because we do not want to go to jail. Stage 2: Instrumental Relativist Orientation In this stage, the person is said to judge the morality of an action based on how it satisfies the individual needs of the doer. For instance, a person steals money from another person because he needs that money to buy food for his hungry children. In Kohlberg’s theory, the children tend to say that this action is morally right because of the serious need of the doer. Level 2: Conventional Morality The second level of morality involves the stages 3 and 4 of moral development. Conventional morality includes the society and societal roles in judging the morality of an action. Stage 3: Good Boy-Nice Girl Orientation In this stage, a person judges an action based on the societal roles and social expectations before him. This is also known as the “interpersonal relationships” phase. For example, a child gives away her lunch to a street peasant because she thinks doing so means being nice. Stage 4: Law and Order Orientation This stage includes respecting the authorities and following the rules, as well as doing a person’s duty. The society is the main consideration of a person at this stage. For instance, a policeman refuses the money offered to him under the table and arrests the offender because he believes this is his duty as an officer of peace and order. Level 3: Postconventional Morality The post-conventional morality includes stage 5 and stage 6. This is mainly concerned with the universal principles that relation to the action done. Stage 5 : Social Contract Orientation In this stage, the person is look at various opinions and values of different people before coming up with the decision on the morality of the action. Stage 6 : Universal Ethical Principles Orientation The final stage of moral reasoning, this orientation is when a person considers universally accepted ethical principles. The judgment may become innate and may even violate the laws and rules as the person becomes attached to his own principles of justice.

So I feel like Emotional Freedom Technique got dismissed a bit here, but I think it has the potential to allow some people on this forum to have some awesome breakthroughs quickly so I'm going advocate for it a little more in this discussion even though I'm just a greenhorn and a newbie to the method. It only takes a few minutes to learn and has the potential to allow people to avoid years of therapy from what I've heard in the interviews with practitioners who use this method. There is really no downside. From my own experience already I can see that just going through the motions of the technique isn't as effective when you don't really connect in with the negative emotions in the moment as you say your statements and tap the meridian points. For instance, visualizing some traumatic memory as you do the tapping helps you connect in with this trauma. When I hit a very raw nerve I find myself crying and releasing those feelings and something really shifting in that moment. The good thing about this is that when you start feeling strong negative emotions, it's like a gift. It allows you to tap into that strong source of discomfort which is probably a big block in your life, and gives you the opportunity and potential to get rid of that block FOREVER. Which brings me to my next point... In response to "it only numbs the momentary discomfort" - from the discussions that I have heard this is certainly not always the case. It has been used to heal deep traumas and phobias that have debilitated people for years very quickly and with permanent results. It is slowly becoming more accepted in Western medicine as a valid and effective form of treatment for psychological issues. So I have been listening to audio recordings of these practitioners that are participating in the Tapping World Summit and taking notes - because I'm a big nerd like that and I love taking notes. It helps me to focus and not surf other web pages. So here are some of the notes that I took which you might find helpful and might be quicker for you to read through than listening to a video. These are notes from an interview with Dr. David Feinstein, an advocate of the method. The first set of notes are from an interview he did in 2012. The second set of notes are from an interview that he did recently and discusses how the Tapping method is gaining more momentum and acceptance in mainstream Western medicine. David Feinstein – Why tapping works – the science and research 2012 interview How does tapping get rid of fears? What is going on in the brain? 3 kinds of energy are involved. Electromagnetic signals are sent when you tap on certain points of the body. What are effects of stimulating acupuncture points? – reduce arousal in the amygdala part of the brain EX anxiety and ptsd – person pulls up phobia or fear that is no longer relevant – bring this to mind and pulls up a stress response – then tap on those acupuncture points – then within a few minutes the anxiety response is gone – body knows that it is no longer a threat – cortisol and adrenalin response no longer kicks in. Tapping is part of a field called energy psychology – chakra, meridians, aura – goes outside of conventional science – these systems have an electromagnetic component – but aren’t as easy to scientifically measure Removed different parts of a mouse brain – it could still remember how to do a trick – information is stored in a way that is not understood – chakras? Tapping on acupuncture points helps improve the health of energy systems – organizing fields are improved – information can be processed – it’s all speculation – cannot be verified like the brain waves This method is instant – doesn’t require all the effort of normal psychological treatments. 51 studies have been conducted – 18 were randomized control studies with placebo – all showed strong effects from the tapping method. Scientists are looking for flaws in the study because this method doesn’t fit inside the normal box of treatments EX – 400 kids lost parents in genocide – many had PTSD – suffering from flashbacks every day – severely damaged people – talking about it wasn’t helping them Asked caregivers to give a survey to give a reading of severity of PTSD these children had Children that were rated the highest were treated Children only given one session – 94% had improved to extent that they no longer had PTSD – one year later – 92% still didn’t have PTSD symptoms Only one session was needed. Notes from 2016 Interview of Dr. David Feinstein 2016 Interview Follow Up and Developments – David Feinstein He’s been pushing his profession in this direction – psychologists don’t want to go there There is a lot more solid research available since the last interview There is greater recognition of viability of working with acupuncture points Energy psychology protocol is becoming more accepted It’s being used increasingly in disaster relief and for veterans with ptsd 2011 American Psychological Association – was banning secondary education credit for energy psychology courses – 2011 they reversed this position Profession is embracing this more – cover of some magazine - didn't catch it He thinks that insurance companies will embrace this – they want techniques that work and are cheap – no drugs needed – they will start to expect their therapists use these cheap methods before resorting to more expensive treatments Children can be taught this to deal with anxiety – problems in school – help them manage emotions Some say children have highest levels of anxiety ever You can download things from EFT Universe Scientifically established? Not quite there yet – no one is funding studies of tapping Developments in last few years EFT sessions given – self reports of improvement, cortisol levels also improved – verifiable as opposed to standard psychology session PTSD genes stop expressing themselves after EFT session but not after traditional session EFT vs. mindfulness meditation – EFT group did better Are statistical measures strong enough? Meta-analysis – journal review Have findings been replicated? Yes – quick effects were repeatable Head to head comparisons of cognitive/behavioral therapy vs. tapping – tapping more effective Do we understand what is going on with this method better? Tap sends signals to the amygdala that decreases the arousal – counteracts the anxiety in the amygdala that is going on – emotional response is shut down Doesn’t explain how tapping reprograms your mind though. Might involve reconsolidation – concept that only received attention recently Emotional memories consolidate beliefs/learnings In reconsolidation window – within an hour – present something new replacing the original consolidation – erase old learning – neuron that hold the memory no longer exist – there is a physiological change EFT accidentally does this – reconsolidates memories EX ) Father was verbally abusive – you go into fight or flight response – visualize old memory and tap – avoids the flight or fight response – the experience contradicts this memory within the consolidation window Hopes for the future? Reassuring to know that you’re choosing an effective technique – there is more research to support it Hopes that children can use Medical and mental health profession can use it Helps people reach goals and aspirations Okay, I'll get off of my soapbox. Hopefully someone will find this information helpful.

Let me know if it helps :-)

I have been dealing with a lot of fears and anxiety that have been keeping me stuck in life. I recently came across something called the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT for short, it is also called "tapping" a lot of the time. I actually heard of it a while ago but thought it sounded kind of dumb and new agey - but something recently told me to finally give it a try and I was pretty surprised at the results. Basically you tap your fingers on the various meridian points on your eyebrow, the side of the eye, etc. and focus on your negative feelings and memories while saying positive statements - "Even though I'm feeling this negative emotion I still love and accept myself completely." I've been feeling a lot less anxiety and negative emotion after trying the technique. There is a lot of free information about it around the internet and on YouTube. There is something going on right now called the Tapping World Summit - which emails you free audio interviews of experts who use the technique to help their clients. If you type "Tapping World Summit" into an internet search a lot of information will come up. One of the studies on this technique used it on children whose parents had been murdered in a genocide. These children were deeply disturbed and suffered from PTSD, night terrors, etc., the technique was used on some of them with amazing results. Anyway, it's free and really easy to learn so I would definitely give it a try if I were you because you've really got nothing to lose except a lot of negative emotions. :-)