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@Akeberg I'd call that progress. The mind can be a lot like a closet that needs to be cleaned out of old emotional memories. Usually lots of junk in there you forget about until you start digging. Let it come out. If there is emotion involved with a particular memory, observe both the memory and the emotions it stirs. Don't cling to them, acknowledge them and release them as they arise. You will find doing this very liberating and a lightness will remain from the acceptance and release. Be kind and loving and to yourself during the process. Remember, emotions and memories only have power when you give it to them.

@Beam I just looked this up. Thought it was interesting. It seems to fit here. Mental model[edit] Further information: Mental model, Representation (psychology), and Cognitive model In cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, a mental model is a representation of something in the mind,[10] but a mental model may also refer to a nonphysical external model of the mind itself.[11]

@Beam So true. Enlightenment exists only in the conceptual mind.

I was under the impression it's not that easy for a heroin addict to get clean. Doesn't the physical body get addicted to the drug also and that is the toughest part of quitting? Not true?

A heroin user can explain it better than I can @29:00 I'm not passing judgment. Just facts.

You asked "what do you mean?" so I answered you with my opinion. * I believe if you asked most heroin users what their idea of pleasure is, they would probably say, "living clean again". Is it pleasure you seek?

@Frogfucius Forget about the heroin for a moment. Where is it said that life's purpose is to maximize pleasure? Sure, pleasure is nice when it comes your way, but always fleeting at the same time. Needing to be in a constant state of experiencing pleasure is an endless trip. What brings pleasure today, will be same old same old tomorrow. Think about what is pleasure to you. Now think, how long would you appreciate the pleasure in that if you did it all the time and knew that tomorrow you would be doing it again and again the day after? Where is the pleasure in that? So just needing to sustain a state of pleasure is a never ending pursuit, no matter how it's attained or what it is. Seeking pleasure is a need of the hungry ego. Once you start feeding it, it's never satisfied and only wants more and more (exactly like heroin). If it's the pleasure of power, sex, drugs, money, excitement ect. any of these can become an addiction and the satisfaction that they bring is only temporary. Life's purpose is to become free and liberated. That only happens through surrendering desire. When there is no desire, there is nothing that is needed. Nothing is lacking. That is fulfillment. That's not to say stop fulfilling your life. You go on living through intention. But intention without personal desire or attachment. Attachment to anything will eventually cause suffering. * BTW-I watched a documentary a couple weeks ago on heroin addicts. Their life was a living hell! They couldn't even function or feel normally without their morning fix (forget pleasure). They started their day by going out on the street and trying to scrounge up enough money so they could pay for their first fix of the day. Of course they couldn't hold a job with steady income b-c their life was in shambles. Usually they would feel really sick because they were crashing. Mostly prostitution, stealing and selling, or pan handling, day in and day out 24/7. They asked one addict if he was hoping to get clean someday. He said "heroin has me so bad, the least painful way to get out would be to end my life". Does that sound like pleasure to you!

@Frogfucius That's endless nightmare. Your joking, right?

Pure consciousness is a lot like a focused laser beam. When the mind is involved , it acts like a diffraction filter. It creates an interference pattern.

@Yang Noctus I got the same exact impression when it first happened to me. It was as if awareness had suddenly come to a point of hyperfocus. I remember thinking to myself "I never knew my mind could do this". It blew me away! Like it tuned to a higher frequency or something. @comp13 Same here again. My eyes were open but consciousness was in a totally different space. The experience first started when I dropped the sense of body/self. Suddenly consciousness was no longer restricted to the usual body location but in the surrounding field in front of me. At this point I'm still seeing the room around me and experiencing this happening. It freaked me out and I withdrew for a moment. I never experienced anything like that before. Than I thought, something is presenting itself. Let go and go with it. And I did through complete trust and surrender. That is when conscionseness seemed to enter into a different dimension or something. I was no longer in the room. For a long time after that experiance I thought. "what was that?" "what happened then?" "where did I go?" "what did I become?" I realize now what the answer to all that is, Pure conscionseness. It has no location. It has no thingness to it. But yet all this owes itself to it. It does seem like switching channels on a radio. If your tuned to mind, that's the station you'll recieve. If you switch the mind to pure consciousness, you get that station. You can't have both tuned in at the same time.

When you hit a wall, that's the right direction.

If you know the difference, why not have a little fun with experience of all kinds. When you see it all goes around in a circle and returns to where it started, all you can do is laugh your ass off. All that remains is to play with form, existence and experience. For now it's all that is. Make it up as you go along, it doesn't matter at all. There are no rules or guidelines here except the ones we choose for ourselves. If you want to experience bliss, do it. If you want to experience hell, go for it! Fear, disappointment, love, jealously hate, separation, oneness, a high, a low, an awakening, ect. all the same as being just another experience. Even the negative or positive sensations that each creates within the body/mind is choice created for the experience of it . Edit: Listen to what is said here @7:00

@Dodoster It seems that dreams are just more mind. It's the same in waking life too. We dream within this waking reality. How much different is a thought from a dream? A couple of minutes ago I was dreaming what to do for lunch today. I do have more dreams about enlightenment these days though. While both awake and asleep.

@comp13 That's exactly what I experienced from the perspective of mind that is caught in the middle. A knowing that truth has always been so near, only out of sight. Yes, the ego did put up a fuss. Ego wants no parts of that so I felt as if I had one foot in each world. One of the ego self world and one of truth and unity. Experiencing that unity felt like home. A true home that remains always- changeless. For the first time in my life there was a contrast exposed between the ego/self and truth. The ego self wants to have it all again, like the old days, but that's impossible now. Too bad for Mr. ego, he's viewed as a fraud, a minor player. An illusion with no substance. Or maybe I should say "all that he is, is the illusion of substance".

@comp13 One brief glimpse of truth can expose a lifetime of untruth. The heart of all practice is to remove what is not true. It sounds like you had a brief encounter with Samadhi. Samadhi is a union. An awakening from the individual self that is obvious, loud and visible to something that is much more subtle. See now how easily it can become overshadowed by the egoic self that relates only to time and space? At the slightest sign of any of that it's gone. It will return again like a rainbow when conditions are right.

@Dodoster You mention "Om". I get a nice buzz from chanting along with this mostly b-c it modifies my breathing. I sometimes use an Emwave heart coherence monitor. I use it in conjunction with this vid and get great results and the highest heart coherance scores. It gets me in what they call "The Zone". The Emwave has a breathing coach built into it also. Emwave took the most effective breathing rates from studying advanced Yoga meditators and applied it to the emwave as the breath coach. It is about the same rate as the breath used here in this OM chant. Silent chanting has about the same results as verbal but the vibrations you get in the head from saying it out loud seem to enhance the effect even more. *Sometimes I use headphones and sometimes not.

How can you be sure it was just "sleep". Could sleep be another level of consciousness. Outside of mind?

@Sick Boy "Once you realize your complete, than this life and everything in it becomes a play of form" Comedian Jim Carrey

@Ray That's very cool! Funny, I was just contemplating how emptiness is like a canvas for all of reality to exist upon. -Perfect timing! Synchronicity?

My cup will be empty when I finish it.

Emptiness is the mere absence of a false way of existing

@Happiness I sounds as if you are experiencing ego death. All the stressing is you resisting. Let go of the noise in your mind and rest as awareness. Let what is just be. Think of this as a transitional faze that will all come together if you stop resisting. You'll be fine. In reality, nothing has changed at all.

I never met a man that gave me more trouble than myself.

What is enlightenment? Ask a blind man and he would say sight.

@ShaharA I'm so sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you heal quickly. Only the body experiences pain, but what you are is not the body. You are the awareness that witnesses the coming and going of all pain and suffering. Put it in it's proper perspective. Remind yourself that this to shall all pass with time. Yes, detach from the pain that the body is temporally experiencing. Use this as a chance to explore what you truly are. Get well soon!