Bodhitree

@tatsumaru Not everyone’s meditation is the same, the word describes a range of different techniques. It is also not appropriate for everyone. Some people walk a different, non-meditative path — its like the story of the rice washer who suddenly became enlightened, and who was later said to have turned rice washing into his practice. From what I have seen it takes a special talent to truly achieve the peaks of consciousness, and that most people who try only get a few glimpses or insights no matter how much meditating they do. Those glimpses often arrive in periods where they are decompressing, where they have given up their effort, which supports the notion that enlightenment is like relaxing a long-held tension.

There are tests that doctors use, which gives an outcome on a scale. Being clinically depressed is no joke, it can be a life-threatening mental health condition. Medication helps many people get through the day, it has its uses. Of course everyone is a little depressed from time to time. It is a moment where you have lost the connection with your joy that usually sustains you. It can be good, if used as a spur to do some introspection, and usually it goes away on its own after a good nights sleep.

In a way, these kind of considerations are about the mind’s understanding of processes that are beyond the mind. You can choose to learn from the words of others, and repeat a variation of their knowledge, but this is just acquired knowledge, The real knowing lies in doing, in lived experience beyond words.

Each persons concepts originate from their understanding, which is formed by the sum total of their experiences. As such it is a unique lens through which to view the world. If you are lucky, and sensitive, you can pick up on those parts where some else’s understanding is more complete than your own... the sum total of the crowd’s wisdom may be greater than any one individual.

You realise some of these things contradict eachother right? Saints are usually poor and very mortal.

It varies widely from person to person and from job to job. I know people who do what they love, creative work in making illustrations on the computer and they effortlessly work every day from 9 am to 9 pm. But for me anything more than about 8 hours a day has its effects long term, you eventually break down after a few years. It’s important to stay relaxed and at peace.

It seems to me you need more time spent in plain awareness. You do feel emotions, they just come when you are not so aware. So practice looking at yourself, looking within. You will find that as you go through your day you can become aware of the feelings that you encounter, noting them “I feel anger”, “I feel anxiety”, and so on. Once you can note them you will see that you start to become aware of the root causes of your emotions. Meditation helps with this as well, if you try and do 20 mins of just sitting every day, it will help you unwind your thoughts. When you are tense internally, focussed on doing things, it is hard to accurately see what happens within. It helps to feel at peace, relaxed. That you feel that your life isn’t good is a natural consequence of your life not being in balance with your development. Once you start getting a feel for the things that make you feel good, the areas in life that speak to your passion, you can turn the sense of your emotions into a real benefit.

I thought @integral ‘s approach was pretty good. You could certainly introduce them to SD as a leadership topic, by showing them the benefits of having a clear understanding of each stage and how to approach people at a given level. Trump for example was gifted at communicating with certain portions of the spiral, and you could argue that by convincing a lot of people of his ideas he proved he could lead. Biden s approach on the other hand appeals to mostly to different parts of the spiral. It certainly seems to me that any kind of team leader would benefit from understanding models of people’s development, once you can classify where on the spiral team members are situated it helps you understand their motivations and what would appeal to them. Hoever, there is a danger in thinking a model fits all the people you’re going to come across. Some people may be in between, or have elements of earlier stages in their makeup. It’s only a model, to be used with care.

Realisation is not a sprint to the finish. You don’t have to do everything now. Remember to take a break, relax, be creative, celebrate your life. Being able to be at ease, and spontaneous, is important too. Life flows, and if you are continuously bearing down on things and focussing on working at it, then you may end up missing the point.

The Complete Teachings of Ajahn Chah For those who like a little buddhism, this one is freely available as a pdf on the internet. Ajahn Chah was a Thai Buddhist monk who was said by many to be enlightened, some of his favourite teachings concerned how one should learn about one’s own heart instead of the sutra’s, and how life was about letting go and then more letting go.

Where I live there is a national register in which every citizen is registered, and by default you are assumed to be an organ donor. However you can opt out and choose not to be a donor, and I have done so. My reasoning is basically this, that the point at which they decide you are dead just corresponds to the end of electrical activity in the brain. But there are an awful lot of body processes which just carry on, including in the brain. But the doctors take you to the operating theater immediately to harvest viable organs and tissues. Now let’s assume you believe in a soul. How long does the soul take to exit the body? How long is it still aware of the body’s death process? The Tibetan book of the dead says it can take up to 49 days. You want to give yourself the best chance of a natural death, and not of being cut up when you are still in the process of leaving.

Great idea, I’m sure it will be very popular.

Highly ambitious dreams I’m wishing you good luck, but for every one that makes it there’s 10 others that try and fail. Best have a backup plan.

If you think about it, a lot of games teach you that in order to make progress you need to go on a directed killing spree, and that killing intelligent beings is just fine. Not a very spiritual message.

Journey Flower Inside

Well, perhaps take a break from everything. Try not doing any spiritual activity, except maybe a little ‘just sitting’ meditation to clear the mind, and see where you’re at in a couple of weeks. Digital detox at the same time would also help.

It is a bundle of thoughts caught in memory and triggering emotions as awareness wanders through them. Occasionally a new thought comes along, but not often.

What I like about that quote is that it plainly says the action of trying is what keeps you from realising. Very nice!

Suffering is mostly in the mind. The mind discriminates between pleasant and unpleasant experiences, and you’ll find that even living in America as a billionaire you would find things to be unhappy about. Conversely, it is a hallmark of spiritual advancement that you start seeing the positive sides of things, and that you would be happy, even if you were poor and living under a bridge somewhere. If you look at it dispassionately, say you were a Syrian fresh from the war living in a refugee camp in Turkey, what is there to be unhappy about? You eat one meal in a soup kitchen every day and sleep in a tent with ten others, but you have food and a bed, and all your memories are just dreams. Yesterday is no longer here, tomorrow may not come, there is only the present. All the things that would make you unhappy — thoughts of having had a house and a garden, a family, loved ones who have no idea where you are — are just thoughts. So live in the present, and beware of the tricks your mind pulls on you. One of the best skills you can develop is the art of letting go of what is no longer necessary, it is a big step towards inner peace, and that imperturbable inner peace is an important part of enlightenment.

I think it’s an interesting approach to say enlightenment is 95% genetics. Most of the teachers you see are very exceptional individuals, and even they, when they talk about their experiences, often talk about just a few special occurrences. Not many seem to be able to enter these states at will, as the Buddha was said to be able to do. Most people who are interested in enlightenment states can eventually achieve some kind of glimpse, I think, unassisted, with enough perseverance. Psychedelics can be a shortcut but if you haven’t done the serious introspection, the work on yourself to get ready for these experiences, then you won’t be able to process them. Even the Indian veda’s, scriptures many thousands of years old, said that one of the paths to enlightenment was through ‘light-filled herbs’.

Challenge yourself to do six months without sugar and find out.

There are disadvantages to goal setting in a diverse, open environment like human life. It tends to blinker you to opportunity, and it leads you to existential cliffs when those goals are achieved, to name just a couple.

Are you sure? Life purpose seems very much like goal setting. I think it’s better just to live your passion, without necessarily setting any goals. Do the things that give you joy, would be my general careers advice. But if you want to help the world, we could do with more passionate, articulate exemplars who are not in it for the money but for principles.

The key skills to invest in are the soft skills: public speaking, erudition, debate, language, writing. The best areas where you can contribute to the future of society are in showing people the way.

A few techniques I have used from time to time... Setting a good example: use anecdotes from your own life to illustrate how to do the right thing. Being polite: being very polite to people and asking leading questions. Presenting quotes: presenting a quote by a famous or respected person in which they show the way. Selling the advice: talking about the good results people using the advice have had. Often before you can actually give advice, you have to engage in a little relationship building. This establishes trust and gets people to take you seriously. It helps if you can build authority, by talking about training, position, that kind of stuff. You might want to look into marketing and sales tactics.