FinnishJon

My vision board is so damned lame, I guess it sums up how badly it's all going for me with my life purpose course. I started back in 2016, and I mean, I have watched all Leo's videos, and a couple of my ideas felt good at first, like getting into neuroscience, but I think it wasn't long after I finished watching the videos that I started working part time restaurant work where instead of my old office job with computers, I went down the ladder of success to washing dishes for a living. Today, I still have those restaurant jobs but I am in an IT course for foreigners in Finland and it does not inspire me currently. I did make a vision board at one point, and it has some eminently achievable goals, one of which is to have 6 pack abs. I am getting closer to it, but I still haven't even achieved that goal. I also still can't do a handstand for longer than 20 seconds, and I don't have 10k € in the bank nor do I even have a fitness tracker. I would have put other things into my vision board, but if I can't even achieve these easy targets, it's really hard to add the grandiose ones. Anyway, here's a snapshot of my pathetic vision board on the wall in front of my bed. Is my pessimism shining through today like the September rain here in Finland? I did read Martin Seligman's book about learned optimism and even that hasn't fixed me. I feel like Eeyore.

Where the streets have no name still rests in my heart from back in the late 80s https://www.u2.com/media/player/102/16

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I got it without any help... it seems that paypal requires you to confirm your credit card, which costs $1.90 I would have used my credit card directly, but it didn't work from here... I live in Finland but my card is from the USA, so it seems they have some bugs in this system, which naturally are subject to Murphy's laws...

I have been trying to pay for the course and get access, but PayPal won't take my debit card, and my bank says it is a problem with paypal. Can I pay some other way than through PayPal? There's really no help or support provided for this circumstance that I could find. Maybe I am blind, but that's why I post this question here. I cannot do the life purpose course because of a stupid web/credit card page. Talk about stuck in life... I'm such a failure that I can't even get into a class for people who are failures, and it feels like nobody will help me with any problems. I am really tempted to hate my life :-(

OK, thanks. I will look into this.

Dr. Amen has some other really incredible videos about ADD and the brain that are worth watching.

I'd still like to hear an opinion from somebody who can objectively have an opinion about Dr. Amen. Here's a provocative article about him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/daniel-amen-is-the-most-popular-psychiatrist-in-america-to-most-researchers-and-scientists-thats-a-very-bad-thing/2012/08/07/467ed52c-c540-11e1-8c16-5080b717c13e_story.html My own still amateur opinion is that Amen is right, the anti-SPECT advocates seem like a failed establishment pov when some revolutionary new idea shakes their paradigm.

I am doing a similar cold turkey for facebook. Just eliminated all my friends, all posts, all likes, all everything except the account name since it can be useful for security verification. Feels like addictions of today all surround facebook, so my idea is to start living the real world more and less in virtual space. Same applies to these forums, when it's otherwise not a relevant topic.

Anybody have experience with Dr. Daniel Ames? He sounds very credible, and he bases his discussions of ADD on brain scan images, plus understanding of the emotional functioning of particular parts of the brain. I didn't know that one can have more than one of the 7 types of ADD until I started watching his training videos.

Several factors in my life have led me to the same kind of enlightenment experience that everybody is describing here. Amazing shit! Thanks! The epiphanies keep coming in. Last night, before falling asleep, I wrote down the following profound conclusions. 1. Enlightenment feels like a brain software upgrade. 2. The ADD mind which I have, until this month, never been aware of before has a weak empathetic signal, i.e. in this frame of mind, I only just barely feeling emotions. When I took my first medicine for ADD, the emotional signals in my life all got amplified like crazy. Now, I see the difference like black and white. 3. My good friend introduced me to the book, the Power of Now, and Eckhart Tolle, last Friday night, one week ago, and I realized that what he was talking about with presence was the opposite state of mind than the ADD mind. My ADD mind has almost entirely been captured by thoughts and rationality. I was a Mr. Spock in the extreme, but when being in presence, I've learned why I cry, fear, get mad, jealous, and happy. 4. With respect to ego death, here is a tip that might help others find it. Watch Leo's recent video about constantly comparing yourself with others. Now take the urge to compare yourself on a thought experiment. What you should do is compare things which are symmetric. Ask yourself how it feels. Then compare things that are asymmetric. How does that feel? I think the terms better, best, worse, worst are merely a comparison of asymmetric things in a single dimension of measurement. If that measurement stick is your ego, than this is what constant comparison of egos really is. Nothing that is worth living or dying for. 5. Eckhart Tolle's advice to replace self-valuation or ego and the external form with internal presence fixed my biggest problem in life. You can see by my username, 8 language stud, which I created only a few weeks ago, that I was still stuck in egoic mode attached to my egotistical beliefs about myself. I did that just recently when I joined this forum. Now that I am enlightened, I'll keep my name as it is, as a reminder, and I can laugh at it for as long as I am in this forum. Now, I'm okay with whatever happens to me for the rest of my life. I hope to experience another enlightenment, one day! This was awesome!!! No better feeling that I have ever felt since I was born.

@Quizzer I guess "you" were being serious? Ok, ironic or not, let's give it a shot. Please feel free to take my ramblings with a grain of salt. For the logical brain, the truth is a (double blind) verifiable story. A rational concept of objective reality that can be hypothesized about, and strengthened or invalidated with evidence, facts, or predictions. In other words, rationality is akin to the scientific method and worldview, based on hypotheses, reigning paradigms, measurements and verifiable claims or predictions. Murder trials and physics problems are subject to logical truth. There is also another qualitatively different kind of truth, emotional truth that seems completely subjective and accessible only through first hand experience. The same events, seen by different people can be simultaneously sad, happy. Outrageous or laudable. Ecstatic or depressing. Amazing or boring. And many other emotions without words to describe them. For example, if the language is any indicator of origin, then the experience of "deja vu" was first labeled in France Previous to these latest experiences, I was highly visually impaired, limited to seeing only logical truth. The world of emotions has been opened like a genie out of the bottle in this experience. I previously had a logical conceptualization of emotions. In other words, a logical depiction of emotions with labels. Now all of a sudden with this new, more focused and amplified vision that I am feeling, I see a lot more nuance. I was sure that I could comprehend everything logically, eventually. Just had to work harder in order to really understand it all. But it seems that I was wrong. Can't remember that. I don't have a ton of friends or family in my life. Probably something mundane like, "I'm going to the grocery store." I think the proper epiphany to use as a milestone was when I was preparing for a public speech where the topic was myself. I had a very egotistical speech lined up. Then I had a serendipitous combination of events that helped me reach this peak. 1. Started to get familiar with Eckhart Tolle and his ideas on presence and egocentric valuations of self. 2. Had an argument over chat with my sister about some stupid thing. I felt that I was right (a logical truth right) but she disagreed with me in an angry manner. I wanted to figure out what triggered her anger, and found that it was my arrogance with which I wrote to her. 3. Then I got into wondering about the relationship between arrogance and relationships. I realized that this was one of the social cues that everybody meant when they talked about how people with ADD and Aspberger are unaware of how they make people dislike them. I rewrote my speech, trying to be more authentic. Deleted as much of the bragging and apologies from my speech as possible. Then when I gave the speech, I really went full throttle with being present in front of a room full of people. Do you mean to criticize this story? Offer advice? I still don't understand what you are offering to this conversation.

@Quizzer My question may also sound sarcastic. I'm curious to know, is this really what you wanted to contribute to this conversation? How about if you take a turn at enlightening me, what do you really want to say? Or was that all?

I was hoping to get advice about how to be a good parent or what kind of family values to have. In my case, I'm a father of two, and I would like to get tips on how to become more involved in my children's lives. How to guide them toward their own actualization. then on the other side of the coin, you could talk about how to be a good child. How to relate to your parents. Is it okay to be best friends? How active should you be in their lives? And what is a good balance between selflessness towards family and selfishness to be honest with ones own needs and wants. Also, maybe a few words about why and when to have children and how to cope with a life with no children. Death of a child. Death of a parent. Topics such as adoption, step parenting, foster parenting, and being a big brother or sister could be relevant to this discussion. Even something about grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the extended family.

I would like to hear about this topic from the perspective of a parent with a child who is already addicted to video games. How to get out of this situation?

I agree. Leo has a good grounding in the logical mind in addition to his spiritual understanding. I had a little insight last night that the third eye was what you see when your eyes are closed. Somehow, you still have a sense of spatial awareness when your eyes are closed. I am rather skeptical about psychics and clairvoyants, but perhaps Leo would have some better insight. Generally, I also don't know whether to take all this talk of "Chakras" seriously or not. Some guidance could be good.

@Cuzzo No apologies necessary. If anything, I think of this kind of conversation as an excellent learning experience. Your journey to me sounds like a very honorable path. Wish I had done this in my 20s, too, but a 40s awakening has some excellent aspects to it, too. A lot of people my age are going through what is commonly referred to as a mid-life crisis, but I like to think of this as a mid-life renaissance. Or is that starting to sound overly corny?

@Cuzzo You might be right, I agree that I should try not to make any dogmatically certain claims about what's going on, but I will permit myself to be skeptical of your skepticism. i.e. optimistic. It feels really real. I'm not just happier. When I go dancing, I am able to look people in the eye. Much less self doubt, if any. Are there any better reasons to claim that my enlightenment is false than that sudden jumps are rare? Actually, how would one even know that they're rare? Are you basing that claim on studies or anecdotal evidence? How would one even be able to verify the statistics from such a study? At the very least, I'm now able to recognize the difference between humility and arrogance where I used to be full of unapologetic arrogance that I was honestly unaware of. I didn't have a clue why so many people in my life seemed to disrespect me. Why would I not want to fix that and just be satisfied with a life of no friends? It wasn't just the ego emotion, either. All my emotions were crippled by weak signals. That's what my experience with ADD and it's alleviation through recent events has felt like. Emotional signals are finally available to me. In other words, both empathy of others as well as self awareness of emotion is now present. Though I've been working on self-improvement for a few years now, one cannot really understand a lot of the meaning of emotional intelligence or enlightenment without a strong emotional connection to things. When the medicine wears off, I feel exactly how I used to feel, but there is a new awareness in my thinking mind about the existence of this change in the senses and feelings of my body. It simply goes hidden from view, and comes back when I take the medicine again. Of course, I'd love to be able to figure how to maintain the bodily feelings at the level I have with medicine, through other means. I've been doing yoga for a few years now, and meditation since last summer, but until now, my meditation has been frustratingly fruitless and a huge test of patience for me. It's hard to say if meditation has really helped or not. It seems like it has, but not as significantly as medicine. I sense that you are wanting to support me, and I don't want to worry about whether or not this is all real or a lie. I just enjoy this new life that I am leading... it's a sudden quality increase. I haven't finished with Eckhart Tolle, so there's still a lot of things to take in... Wish me luck?

@adrian284 agreed.

@Cuzzo I would agree with you that my username was ridiculously obnoxious. If you read what I wrote, you will see that I realized how ridiculous it was, post-enlightment, and I made a firm decision to leave it the way it is, as a reminder to myself. Bad judgement? You don't need my pardon for being judgmental. I do wonder, however, if your comments are meant to condemn me for committing this fault? Ask yourself sincerely if starting a discussion about one's personal enlightenment experience can only be considered to be an egotistical act? Isn't this forum a place for free discussion? Like for telling your friends about things that are going on in your life? Would you consider it to be bragging if a friend told you about some new positive event in their life? My old self would have become angered by your, "but to be quite honest"... (am I the only one who considers this phrase to be a sign marker for dishonesty?). But now, instead of anger, I'm more inclined to feel compassion for you. I can see why my post might sound disingenuous, but as you said, enlightenment eliminates the need to sell stories to people. I am offering my story for free, take it or leave it, up to you.

@adrian284 Very tough advice to follow. 46 years of living a life with a misguided sense of self worth yields to a healthier, optimistic view of life and why it has meaning. You have to feel something towards this momentous shift in worldview. Even peace and calm are emotions, are they not? I understand why pride would be the wrong way to feel about it, but emotionless seems like the wrong way to approach it, too. Maybe just the emotion of awe would be appropriate? I will report back to this forum in 4 weeks, i.e. April 19th, and report on my "enlightenment" status. Whether it remained present or disappeared... if you are truly curious, are you?

@Richard Alpert It's okay. I'm not trying to brag or convince anybody. I know that the experience I felt had significance, and it doesn't require external confirmation to be true. Thank you for trying to be helpful.

@zasa joey Here's the sequence of events that triggered my enlightenment experience. Path of self-improvement, self development for the past several years, including exercise, therapy, relationship coaching, and career change. Undiagnosed ADD finally started being treated at age 46. Accidentally running into the name Eckhart Tolle. Conversations with my sister who told me that I was very arrogant. Questions about self honesty... Defining for myself what is arrogance and humility.

@Ayla You mean like, Eckhart Tolle? Can you elaborate a little more?

@WelcometoReality Very good thing to point out. I found myself posting about my enlightenment here and also on Facebook. I deleted the FB post pretty soon after, as I had a clear instinct that told me I should.