Consept

@UpperClassWhiteBoy Just to say, whenever you do something new and you see the positive result of that being something you highly desire, then fear is inevitable as youve built up that thing in your head. So get out of the habit of thought that says to do pick up i need to get rid of fear first, you cant get rid of fear so you have to work with it and accept it. If you go out for a night and approach 10 different woman, by the time you get to the 10th one youll notice how much your fear has gone down, because now youre no longer living through the concept of what you think it will be like you wouldve done it.

Great post!

@DimmedBulb 1. Think of it like this do you love your mum because of her achievements? Is her worth to you based on her achievements? The answer is probably no you love her because of her, well you should extend this unconditional love to yourself. Your worth is based on your bringing your true self to the world no matter what that entails. How would it be worth anything to be a fake you thats just trying to be successful to look like theyre worth something, it defeats the purpose of you. 2. You can realise youre true self is the only thing thats worth anything 3. I guess its both but its not something you can do its more of a realisation that you dont need to be anything more than what you are in this moment. In fact you cant be anything more than you are in this moment you can only get stressed about it

Yes literally all language, writing etc isnt the direct experience, essentially its our best attempt to communicate our thoughts and feelings to another human or humans and as such will always be limited to a concept. Having said that its the best we can do as we may want to learn about others experiences and explore concepts that we havent experienced ourselves, however limited this might be its better than nothing. The problem i feel with science is that it states a lot of things that people then take as fact, a lot of science is theory as in this is a thing that could have happened. To base our idea of reality around this as an absolute truth would be misguided. So i dont think theres anything wrong with science or language its just how you take it, always question and never accept anything outside your own first hand experience as an absolute truth

Ok well first of all stop comparing, like literally notice when you compare and learn to let this go. Even if youre friend wasnt around there would always be someone who you would compare yourself to, youre never going to be 'better' than everyone in the world and you dont need to be. Secondly your need to achieve something seems ego based so its not because you necessarily want to do these things its just because you believe your self worth to be based on your achievements. Imo this is backwards, you need to accept yourself and give yourself self worth and realise you dont have to do anything to accept yourself (love yourself unconditionally) when you do this youll find its easier to achieve anything because anxiety abd desperation isnt invloved. Anyway good luck, im assuming youre quite young but a lot of this will pass in tine so dont worry too much

@Dodoster the whole point of hedonism is not to plan what gives the most pleasure over a period of time but just to live with complete abandon and do what gives the most pleasure at any given moment. Ok lets take heroin out of the equation, if there was some drug with minimal negative side effects but which gave you maximum pleasure, would you take it? Keep in mind you would only ever want to do this drug

I dont know why everyone is arguing with @Frogfucius, his point is that if you believe in a hedonistic lifestyle ie achieving the most amount of pleasure possible then the logical end would be something like heroin. This is an argument against hedonism as heroin has a massive downside and therefore hedonism as a philosophy doesnt work if heroin is the end goal

I agree that you should go pursue your life purpose, but i would say you should go with what you feel at the time. What i mean is that you may work out what you think is your life purpose at 21 and put all your eggs in that basket and thats fine but you should leave room for the idea that what you think is your life purpose now may evolve or even switch directions into sonething completely unexpected. If youre too hard headed about sticking to what you think is your purpose youll miss the opportunity to arrive at what your actual purpose was.

Its like in the matrix where he says 'i know its not a steak but its still tastes great' or something along those lines, there will always be that niggling feeling of trying to find truth but if youre happy not finding it thats cool

I think its really a case of training yourself to not buy completely into one type of thinking or set of ideas. A lot of the time people go into different modes of thinking and by doing that disregard everything ekse because they've found the 'truth'. If you can be independent of this method and be able to read anything and seperate the benefits from the dogma then i think that is a fantastic way to grow. It's like if you want to get fit they'll be loads of diets and work out plans that people will want you to buy into because they're the answer to all your problems, but if you can pick and chose the parts that work for you that would make more sense than just following one blindly

OK yeah that makes sense, I wasnt really sure what the op meant but reading the other comments it's a bit more clearer. So awareness is limitless as it is everything, as a human it's like we are drop of awareness out of a vast ocean. Or think of it like this we are a bit of water from the ocean put into a glass, we take the form of the glass and view the world from this glass but we are eternally always part of the ocean. The view that we're separate is an illusion as we think we are the glasses and in most cases we are not even aware of the water

Thanks for sharing, but does seem a bit weird paying to meditate and also I think a big part of the meditation is learning how to sit quietly yourself, this seems like even if it works it would become a crutch. Just my opinion but if it works for you then cool

@philosogi Very true, I hadn't thought of that, but yes it makes sense that our ego would include them in its identity, probably more so with them seeing us as part of their ego, which would account for why they always want us to follow a certain path which will reflect well on them. Once both sides take ego out of it and just appreciate the other then real progress can be made instead of trying to change the other we see fit

What's interesting, just reading these responses, is that everyone has an issue with their mother and/or father (I include myself in this). So the impact they have is so great and I think what it comes down to is our dissapointment in them. At one point they almost seemed superhuman so to see them just as normal or even worse unhappy, neurotic etc is quite hard to take, but I think it's really a test for us to accept them as they are, obviously if they show signs of wanting change then help them. But bottom line is you absolutely can't help anyone that doesn't want help, it almost seems illogical if you're on a path because why would someone choose pain when there is an alternative? But it is what it is

I think what has happened is romanticism has taken over, this started in a period about 150 years ago, which was the foundation of what we call 'love' today. So because we're fed things like 'you need to find the one', 'other half' 'soul mate' etc etc, once this is bought into you will feel a defciancy if you dot have this, truth is this doesn't really exist in this form, so the aspiration is flawed from the start. A lot of people when in relationships constantly question whether this person is the 'one', this type of thinking sabother relationships because the expectation is so high. This is not to say 'love' doesn't exist but for you to have any chance you'd first have to drop all these assumptions and expecations, which difficult as we've been brought up with this.

Hey man, sorry about this confusion you're going through but trust me it will get better just from the fact you're trying to do something. I think your issue is a couple things - one is that your completely focused on results, most of your worries seem to be worrying about whether you'll make it, whether you'll be a success etc, the fact is you don't know and can never really know the answet to that, what you should try to do is enjoy whatever it is you're doing now. The reas on why you want to pick something you enjoy is so you enjoy it regardless of what the outcome is. If you have this mindset then you'll truly be able to create something. Second you're looking for definite answers to everything, there are no definite answers! You could get everything you want and then lose it the next day, this is life. Once you accept that you can never know what will happen next you get a certain freedom. Think of a butterfly, it just floats around, never knowing where it's going but some how gets everything it needs to survive or it doesn't, either way it doesn't worry about it. Anyway good luck man, also you're young you probably won't have everything figured out yet and that's fine accept that

Summed it up quite well there. No free will doesn't make sense if you're identified as a separate ego and free will doesn't make sense if you realise ego is an illusion

@JustinS If the witnesser of thoughts had thoughts, who is then witnessing the thoughts of the witnesser?

I'm reading a book in which the Dalai Lama shares his thoughts on a range of topics, I thought this passage might be useful to some- "It's important to make a clear distinction in your mind between your ideals and the standards by which you judge your progress. As a Buddhist, for instance, you set your ideals very high: full Enlightenment is your ultimate expectation. Holding full Enlightenment as your ideal of achievement is not an extreme. But expecting to achieve it quickly, here and now, becomes an extreme. Using that as a standard instead of your ideal causes you to become discouraged and completely lose hope when you don't quickly achieve Enlightenment. So you need a realistic approach. On the other hand, if you say, ‘I'm just going to focus on the here and now; that's the practical thing, and I don't care about the future or the ultimate attainment of Buddha-hood,’ then again, that is another extreme. So we need to find an approach that is somewhere in between. We need to find a balance."

If they work for people that's good but personally I've not really liked them. It kind of feels like coming from a baseline of lack, so if you say 'I'm great' over and over then the initial assumption is you aren't great. For any kind of thinking like that to work you really have to believe whatever it is deep down, not do affirmations as a way to make up for that lack of belief. I think having a general positive outlook is good as in seeing the positive side of things rather than the negative, that's a choice that we make. If you think negative or worry a lot then affirmations are a good alternative to that as thinking negative is just doing negative affirmations

Yeah look everyone will most likely think you're crazy for doing it and talking about it. Its the same as if someone close to you said they've joined a particular religion and then start telling you how it will save your life, exactly the same thing. The urge is always there when you find something that resonates with you to pass it on, one to validate your new ideas and two because you think it might help people. But everyone is on their own journey and if you come to at someone with something outside of their current understanding, they just won't get it. Best thing just be with them in the moment, use it as a practice

Personally I can't see how there is free will. When a thought pops up, when did you decide to have that thought pop up? Similarly when you 'decide' to watch your thoughts what was the pre-cursor to that, did you decide to think of watching your thoughts? At some point if you look at the origin of your thought, youll see you didn't 'do' it, although it does feel like that.

Hey man, thanks for sharing. I think a big thing is just being aware of what you're doing as much as possible. You shouldnt just assume something is bad, you should try and just non-judgementally witness everything, if you can do this you'll soon work out what to drop and just do it as a matter of course. A lot of the time with addictions you do it to become unconcious so the best antidote is to remain concious. Personally my habits are definitely food, although I've cut out a lot of stuff, but I do get sugar craving's, sometimes fruit doesn't cut it. Also I used to get ocd thoughts where I literally can't stop thinking about a subject I don't want to think about. I still get them but I'm more aware of what they are rather than thinking my thoughts are me. Its tough but that really is the goal just build up that awareness

-worrying about traps

Yep High Wycombe originally from south London