Steven

In one of your videos you mentioned that you wanted to help your mum buy a house. Just wondering if you are on the track?

I just wrote about a technique that uses visualization as part of the exercise

Spiling beans... I came across this tool last week, and got really excited... I’m going to test it on a learning goal. It is a bracelet with beads, in many ways similar to prayer beads, but a bit different. Its composed of three kind of beads. The blue one is Lapis Lazuli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_lazuli) and the other ones are rose quartz in two different sizes. It’s not really about the beads, I guess, as much as about the method... I can think of it as conditioning for success (subconscious self, I guess). The beads are there (I think) to give you two things – practical meditation exercises and a physical reminder of the goals. Exercises are composed of three parts – visualisations, faith and affirmations Before getting into exercises, some things need to be set first. The Basics: 1. Set The Goal – for example, to win a gold medal in a swimming competition (my goal will be to master a computer science field – for testing purposes – then I’ll go smashing other goals if it works – but I know it will work ) 2. Set visualisation – i.e. you are a champion, then you visualise your ability that you can swim super fast, feel that your body is capable etc... you visualise the medal around your neck, fans cheering, your family proud and in tears...(my test goal will be in coding... so I’ll be visualising myself knowing all the code libraries and lots of routines that i can come up with in a snap) 3. Set faith – here you set the faith mode, you need to set a mantra-like sentence that will influence you to ‘let go and be in a faith mode’ – I made mine to be ‘I have faith in the Truth’. Those who are truly religious can turn on their faith mode, for example Christians could express their faith in Jesus. 4. Set affirmation – this is where you want to have a positive thought about yourself . You want to send yourself a positive signal that will create positive feeling about yourself. My mantra for this is ‘I get better every moment’ . The Exercise: · So once you have it all ready, you start off by holding the blue bead between thumb and index finger. You go through the visualising. You stay on it for a bit. It takes me at least 30 seconds to get my visualisations in place. · Then you move your fingers onto faith stone, and repeat the faith ‘mantra’, while at the same time you try to ‘let go’ – similar feeling to the letting go mediation Leo presented a few months ago · After the faith stone, you go onto affirmation stones with the positive signal mantra. There are five of these in a row. You keep going until you reach the faith stone, which is the smaller one and you can feel it when your reach it, so you can meditate with eyes closed easily. You go round the whole bracelet 5 times per exercise (the instructions say 10 but I think 5 is enough). So the whole exercise first took me 15 minutes the first time... and now after several days it goes much faster. It’s supposed to be used as a daily practice. I’m going to add it to my meditation. Every time after mediation l'll use this for my goals (YES!!!)

Hey does anyone know what this is ?

I've just copied this and created a label in my phone alarm? I was looking for something like this but only came up with "What is the best use of your time right NOW? Hint: Awareness "

...everything else is basically like layers of sediment covering the essence ... I am not enlightened but sometimes I feel like a baloon that is about to explode and leave all these perceptions and learned way of looking

@Vlad Ropotica '' i am doing meditation properly'' Thoughts are NOT reality. You can easily check this. Even from conventional point of view. Wherever you are right now, if you look around, you don’t get a screen in your mind with a stream of thoughts with name of all the objects present, like some kind of robot. If you focus on a object a thought may arise with the name of the object, purely out of habit, but after seeing the object... ie experience. You only have thoughts about PAST and FUTURE... Try thinking of now. You can’t. You can not scan your presence with thoughts. Thoughts only appear in your consciousness, and consciousness does not need thoughts in order to exist. You can not experience past and the future... your experience can only take place in the NOW. Consciousness and mind are not the same thing – and in some languages it is not clearly separated. A lot of people think about the concepts of being aware and consciousness as presence of thinking process. Wrong. It is just a state. In fact thinking can be compared to dreaming. One way of think of meditation sessions is the time you allocate in order to immerse yourself into reality fully (or at least to give it a chance to happen). Making it a habbit helps to tear down all this conditioning we acquired over our lives plus all the beliefs we tend to develop with our thinking. Check out this section of Shinzen Young explaining what to do if you start thinking '' i am doing meditation properly'': https://youtu.be/cZ6cdIaUZCA?t=245

I was like wow ... the whole thing dedicated to narcissism must have had a big impact on her life... and now she fights back!

@Natasha nice video! yours?

@Emerald Wilkins Hey Emerald, what camera do you use to record the videos? have you experimented with neutral backgrounds? ... cool videos

This is a good point. The sooner realized the better, because it does make it harder to let go and they keep reinforcing themselfs.

Exploration Geophysics (lots of Physics) and Computer Science Then Geology as I found it irresistable to combine

Notice the emphasis on STRONG and DETERMINATION.

Highschool prepares you for university

I really doubt this if done with appropriate attitude and without imposing it. For example if Canadian gets a question in conversation like "...and how many girlfriends did you go out with?" or anything that leads to conversations about relationships/sex world, then I would certainly let the truth flow: Of course if he just walks up to her and says that out of blue, well that would be concerning. Now, it is probably wise to look back at the goal of "20-30 girls" and ask the questions - why and pros/cons of that goal when achieved? Frankly, I think it is a pointless goal and has more downside than upside.