vizual
Member Apolitical-
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Everything posted by vizual
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Typing yourself as a certain personality while you are still a victim of circumstance(which most people are) is just throwing oil on the fire. Most people are bounced around by their fears and their false desires and call it life. People lead their lives dancing around the fire in stead of going through it, fixing your personality or whatever you think you are is useless. Overcome your fears, stop chasing ghosts, become your authentic self. Then you can see what personality type fits.
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vizual replied to Donald's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
It planted the enlightenment seed in me, that's all I can say about it. Before that I thought religion and spirituality was a bunch of hogwash invented for stupid woolly people. -
I'm curious to what the OP is doing to help the world stop suffering, and what his idea is of stopping the suffering.
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The point of a strong determination sitting is not the amount of time you sit, time is irrelevant. It's the physical discomfort and all the thoughts that arise with that what it's about.
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vizual replied to Juan Cruz Giusto's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
The funny thing is that everyone who speaks with 100% conviction that their words are truth is full of shit, no matter what it's subject about. If you think your words are truth, it's shit. Even if you are a decorated master in your field and you think you have all the knowledge there is about it, when you speak about it as absolute truth there will still be a tiny little voice in the back of your head saying you are full of shit. The ego of course tries to suppress this, since it has become his identity. The best thing is to become Truth. And when you do, you will choose your words carefully. But I'm probably full of shit anyway -
vizual replied to Juan Cruz Giusto's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
The question shouldn't be what the benefits of enlightenment are, the question should be what the drawbacks of having an ego are. -
Grateful for the beauty of the rain, for the fleeting gaze of a stranger, the accidental bump of the shoulder. Grateful for the text message of a lost friend, the smell of a fresh book and the moment I lie in bed in the evening and the thought arises: It was a good day
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Science tries to measure something which is unmeasurable. It tries to put a ruler to something which is zero and infinite at the same time. Science can keep measuring to amazingly small to amazingly large but it can never measure infinity or zero. Everything which is not zero is made up by ego, another story. Science is like art, except science deludes itself that its somehow more truthful than art. I'd say art is way more truthful than science ever was, it gives a more representative picture of reality(whatever that means lol). But I guess there is fun to be had in at least trying to get as close as possible to truth with science, and that definitely counts for something.
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I think you should honestly ask yourself first. If you'd make chasing enlightenment right now your number one priority in life, is that something you really want to pursue the most, or do you simply use it as another excuse to run away again. If you use it as something as an excuse you are going to undermine the results of your efforts. Your spiritual work will be way more effective if you can authentically focus on your spiritual work without your "true" desires lurking in the background. The best way to find happiness is still to follow your deepest gut instinct and see where they may lead, and it's probably saying that you should go for your dreams. Of course you can still do enlightenment work in addition to you working toward your worldly goals in life, it would probably even be beneficial. There are 24 hours in a day, you won't spend all of them on one goal, probably.
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As long as you are pursuing things in your life you won't be optimizing your happiness. Because you only pursue things if you think your life will be better when you attain the thing you are pursuing. But I will say, pursuing things is surely a big step up from running away from things in regard to being happy. The pursuit definitely gives you a sense of power and purpose when you are engaged in it. So if you are currently running away in your life, go follow your goals/dreams/whatever.When you have eaten enough cake you will probably be looking for something 'more' anyway. Which might be enlightenment, or it might be becoming a big time philanthropist, or both, or something else.
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I always strived for minimalism in my life. The less junk in my life the better. But the most important aspect of application is the minimalism of mind. We want to use minimalism to declutter our lives, our lives start with our minds, throw away all the useless junk in there. I think one of the reason I looked for minimalism outside of myself is because it was such a damn cluttered mess inside of myself. Once I fixed that(or at least lessened it) my outer life went to a more balanced state, as opposed to as minimalistic as possible.
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That's the ever present story. We go on this amazing journey to find happiness only to realize the happiness was at home all this time and we didn't even see it. In a way you don't have to go on the journey since the realization is there up for grabs, but no one actually comes to the realization this way. Most people go on their journey, set up their tent somewhere and try to defend the tent with all their might. Because along the way they forgot, they forgot what it's about.
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When you become enlightened/truth-realized your world inside the illusion probably won't change that much for you except the perspective. Even if you dedicate your entire life to enlightenment from this moment on, there will come a point in which you will want to come back to the illusion anyway. And even if you indeed dedicate 24 hours a day to seeking, the seeking itself will become the obstacle. Think about the Middle Way of the Buddha. Try to avoid the extreme stuff if you are a seeker. Remember that at the end of the day all the obstacles are an illusion. Having a job is not an obstacle to becoming enlightened.
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vizual replied to dice's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
Ethics is simply something humans engage in, no different than things as entertainment, business, news, socializing etc. Don't confuse ethics with truth, don't try to get to the bottom of ethics, there is no bottom. Ethics of today are different from the ethics yesterday, the best you can do is to strife for an accurate snapshot of today's ethics with a little bit of personal creativity. The eventual bottom of everything can only be Truth, that does not mean that we shouldn't engage in activities which are not Truth(since that wouldn't be possible anyway lol). -
vizual replied to step1's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
It is not so much that I have been deliberately been eating healthier since I have gone on the path. It's more that I see more easily though the illusion of the rush that sugary/fatty/salty foods give me. The taste of food itself has become more important than the illusive effects they give my body, so there are less cravings for junkfood and more inclination towards more wholesome foods. I really taste the nutritional emptiness in junkfood more now than I used to. Just eating 'clean' foods won't really make you more spiritual, that's just an imagination of the ego. I think by becoming more spiritual you have less cravings toward empty calories which just give you a bodily rush and effect. -
You have an ego which gives itself an image and persona in which it feels safe and unthreatened. As long as this image is uphold your ego thinks it won't be threatened and it can continue to exist. When this image gets questioned by certain events or people, your ego will feel stress. Since its own existence is on the line. This could even be something stupid as someone makes a joke about your hair. Since your ego might define itself where how his hair looks is of great importance. Someone making a comment about your hair might be just as stressful as someone attacking you with a knife. In both instances the ego's continuity is being attacked. When the image gets validated by events the ego will feel great. The validation reassures the ego's existence and this makes it feel all cosy and safe.
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vizual replied to Emerald's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
Let's say you wake up and the only thing that you can perceive are your thoughts, all your sense have somehow disappeared. Your thoughts will probably freak out and wondering what's going on, you would probably still feel you are "you". There is still something perceiving your thoughts. On the other hand, you have also experienced where you did not have any thoughts at all, your mind was entirely blank and only your sensual perceptions were present. In both cases you felt "you" were present. Your thoughts are totally different now than they were as when you were a child, from within the illusion you could say that "childlike-you" is a totally different person than you are now. Yet, something was exactly the same then as it is now, but this thing can not be found anywhere inside the illusion. This thing has been exactly the same in the experience you call life. Maybe you could meditate on that, what is it that has been constant every moment in my life? It is subtle of course, but it's there(or not, up to you to find out ;)). Every single one of your senses can be deceived, awareness can not be deceived. -
Anything by Johann Sebastian Bach. His music is God incarnated in musical notes, doesn't get much more inspired than that(imo)
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Something you can do is to first get clear what you want to get out of Self Help. Why have you joined this forum? What sparked your interest? From there you should decide for yourself if Self Help material resonates with you and your goals. Some of it won't and some of it probably will, it is up to you what you find valuable. There are not a whole lot of people on this planet that are fully happy with their lives, even though they might pretend that they are from the outside. Self Help might show you the way to get more out of life, or not, it's up to you.
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vizual replied to TruthSeeker's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
As long as you believe in your ego you believe in free will, it is the concept the ego lives by. The funny thing is, 'you' will do what you will do regardless. The 'voice' just claims certain things as 'decisions' it made, but it had no part in arriving at that decision at all. As long as you identify with your ego, you will identify with the decisions it is claiming that it made. Now if you say, yes but I feel my ego is real therefor I have free will. In a way you are right, within the illusion of ego you have free will. In the eyes of Truth, there is no one who can have free will since no one exists. -
If you are not willing to find something you are passionate about you are only going to find tips to 'trick' the ego into doing things it does not want to do. You are not going to find a fundamental solution which will end all your struggles in to reaching whatever you want to reach. For example; make a schedule of things that have to be done for a certain time and if you do these things you reward yourself with something. These tricks will only help for a certain period of time so be creative to keep switching it up.
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Acceptance is not something you DO, it is simply letting go of resistance, so acceptance is something you stop doing rather than doing. When you let yourself be pushed over, which is something you clearly you do not desire, you are actually in resistance, not acceptance. You are resisting yourself in stead of accepting others.
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Become passionate and excited by the things you want to do. No more discipline needed. You only need discipline for things you don't really want to do. And when you get so much momentum from the excitement in your life, the small, pesky things like paying bills, house cleaning, doing groceries etc. become a breeze. When you are not excited by things you have to do all day, pure discipline is only going to get you so far. You will not reach greatness
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vizual replied to Pierre's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
Enlightenment is not a thing. Enlightenment is a name for something that can't be named -
vizual replied to Pierre's topic in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
That is the trap of desiring something too much, the thing becomes an unattainable mythical being. But on the other hand, you the ego has to focus on the dismantlement of the ego to reach enlightenment, the initial desire has to be there. When you have made progress then you can make the last steps, which is usually the attachments to looking for enlightenment itself. You can't avoid labeling it, because then no one would look for it. It does not matter since the ego is in a world of labels anyway. So even if you reject the word 'enlightenment'. The ego would attach itself to something else.