Vercingetorix

@100rockets If's it's meaningless how come you take your thoughts so seriously? aren't they meaningless either? can you see the blind spot of the ego? It thinks what's it thinks is true, even when it contradicts the thoughts it is thinking themselves. The irony is that only through the mind division to good and bad, beautiful and ugly the world becomes such. that is to say, only if you are thinking the world is ugly, it becomes so. drop the thought and the world becomes beyond ugly and beautiful, which is quite beautiful How can you see this for yourself? Notice that every external situation that you judge creates a sensation inside of you. Together the sensation and the thought create an emotion. through observation of what's happening inside you, you can gradually see that the problem is not in the external situation but in the internal sensation that you are sensing and you were conditioned to resist. When you see that for yourself you can stop trying to solve the external situation with your mind and focus on the sensations. Then you can also become aware that the sensations themselves don't have the characteristics of "good" or "bad", "painful", "hurting", but rather more neutral traits as "pulsing", "itchy", "strong", "sublte", And the only thing that causes your pain and suffering is the resistance to the sensation. the resistance comes in two forms, mental activity of the brain, trying to solve the sensation (again cunningly the brains tells you it try to solve the external situation) and resistance in the body - contraction of muscles. If you understand this you can start to develop concentration and awareness to the bodily sensations and see them for what they are. Paradoxically, when you stop resisting the sensations and accept them as they are, they tend to vanish as if never existed (But if you watch them in the hope of making them disappear you will be still resisting them so it won't work, from experience ). And then when you stop seeing the sensations as good or bad, you will also stop seeing the world as good or bad, but just as it is. which is quite beautiful

If you have lots of experience with other girls and you are sure what you want in a girl and she fits this then go ahead and be with a "relationship" with her until you meet. If when you meet her you continue to be sure about this then IMO you have to live with her as soon as possible for a period of time to really know her. If you have to wait years before doing so then it's a big risk! If you haven't been in a lot of relationships before it's a big risk! Careful not to "live for the future", if you enjoy the distant relationship you have right now, it's good enough for you then fine, but don't think ok I'll sacrifice my present for the future, because this future may never come. Another option for you is, for now, to just keep a good friendship with her and start to know her better, meanwhile having other girlfriends and gaining experience, and then when you finally meet her you will know much better if it's "worth it".

It is also my experience that health problems are deeply connected to emotional states and resistance, but how can you explain stuff like children/babies dying of cancer or other horrible diseases? Does it come from the emotional state of the mother?

@Whywolf @Peace and Love Thanks for the confidence boost I wonder in what social circles equivalent women hang around?

@Scholar my opinion is just continue to be with the experience, try to see it for what it is without concepts and thoughts, any trying to reach it and hold on to it will only bring you suffering, enjoy while it last and enjoy when it ends

@ElenaO maybe something like " are you sure this is best way to do this? in my opinion/experience it's better done this way". It's true that it's tricky to be sincere without bringing the ego/judgment to the equation, but it can be learnt with experience. I also work in a place that everyone look at me like I'm an alien when I mention meditation, but still when I say what I think, even if everyone laughts at me or think I'm crazy, I'm not withholding what I wanna say and it makes me free so much that I don't really care about others opinions.

@ElenaO if you would be 100% sincere at work, and continue to do the same work, would you still feel that it lowers your consciousness? You think it's the work itself, or all the psychological/ego/social aspects/pressure?

Being yourself at work Is paramount in my opinion, other wise you literally live in a lie, worried and anxious. I found that developing sincerity is crucial to developing peace of mind. Start being sincere with yourself, then with your close friends (about anything! ) And family, after your learn the gist of it you can also apply it at work. Sometimes it can be really emotionally challenging but the reward is so so worth it. ( I'm still working on that...But see a big difference already). Meditation can help uncondition the mind from its habit of always choosing the emotionally momentarily easy option;)

@Martin123 for both of us

Right now most days I have at least 3.5 hours to dedicate to consciousness work, I divide my time as follows: 1 Hour meditation 1 Hour self Inquiry 1 hour "research" (forums, youtube, mainly exposing myself to new teachers, ideas, questions) 1/2 Hour reading (mostly Leo's spirituality book list and zen stories) I feel that I need to change the balance, focus more on self Inquiry and reading, maybe something like: 1.5 hours Self Inquiry 1 hour meditation 1 hour reading of course anyone, depending on his/her circumstances and place on the path will have a different balance, but IMO it would be fruitful for all to know what other people's balance is, so please share Also some days I have more free time, like 10 hours a day: I would think 5 straight hours of Self inquiry can be really powerful, have any one tried? gonna try it in my next free day. what would You do if you had full free days dedicated to consciousness work?

@Martin123 I agree on theory, but my experience is that yes I can meditate and self inquire doing other activities which is great, but to really become aware of all the subtle sensations and strains of the body I must sit still. And the quality of self inquiry is different while sitting still, I actually think it's necessary to inquire both alone and when we are interacting with other people! Celebrating life is great, but if you are avoiding boredom be careful to not to avoid part of yourself, your true self may be hiding behind the boredom

@Oneness pain in ass is the way I'm sure it will be so worth it.

@ElenaO first step is to understand all external situations that trigger negative emotions in us can be mapped on the body. When you think that you are lonely and you are sad about it, you are not really sad because you are lonely, but because the thought of you being lonely triggered a sensation in your body. then you react to this sensation, you are sad because you sense an unpleasant sensation. This is super important to understand because then instead of trying to solve the external problem you can work on the sensations level, which is much much easier So I say that this fear is just an unpleasant sensation and thoughts. If you can observe this sensation and accept it, be totally with it, be equanimous to it, then you will see that after a while it just disappears! awareness alone is curative So all negative emotions consist of just sensations and thoughts. we resist the sensations because we perceive them as bad. The way of meditation as I understand it is to learn to accept what is instead of the normal way of the conditioned mind - to resist and avert unpleasant sensations and to crave pleasant sensations. You do it by putting your awareness on the sensations instead of the usual attempt of the mind to think of solutions to the external situation that is causing the unpleasant sensation.

basically the fastest way to grow spiritually / dissolve your ego, if this is what you want (and I believe anyone wants this (to be happy) if you claim you don't you don't understand the meaning of it ) is to face your fears, face anything that scares you, anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, anything that angers you, anything that makes you even the slightest negative feeling and to be in contact, to observe the sensations those feeling consists of. If you watch and accept those sensations they will suddenly disappear and you will become free from them forever! So my advice would be, if right now you are single, explorer all the aspects of being single, anything that you dislike about it is a clue where you have energy caged that you can release and use for growth! Then after you free yourself from all the negative feelings that being single brings to you, go be in a relationship and do the same, explore all the areas in a relationship that bring you suffering and transcend it. And after that you won't be afraid anymore, you won't be any longer a slave to your emotions, and you will be free to choose what you really want.

I would love to do the apprentice program but It's just too expensive for me right now. Hope Ralston will stay around for a few more years.

@Kazman regardless of the book being good or bad, If you want to make the most of the situation, start investigation why do you feel upset that the book doesn't live up to your expectation? every negative emotion is a trace of the ego Hint: it's about control.

wow thanks a lot, gonna check that stuff. Listening to tony parsons, he's good!

@Steph1988 emotionally, I feel that I am much less effected by negative emotions, I am much less afraid to enter situations in the past I would fear and constantly think about how to handle, now I trained my self to know nothing can really harm me. I still have a lot of work to do in this regard but I see a big improvement. Also I have many more moments of feeling peace and love. I am much more honest and communicate with much less "ego", In the way to mastering being sincere but in a way that does not upset others or triggers their ego. So life feels more harmonious and free. As as see it, meditations teaches you to Be with what is, there in no end goal, no way to succeed, you just learn to accept and enjoy what is in your experience and the mind slowly weakens. So in that regard meditation teaches you to live your life much more harmoniously. But It's true that ultimately you have to take action and mediation is largely a tool for that but I feel that even an hour per day is not enough. maybe A zen master with 30 years experience don't need to sit silently to meditate and can take action all day but for most people even one hour is barely enough, our monkey mind is so strong @Maorice cool, any "must watch" videos that blew you away?

@Callum A thanks, Am reading the Book of not knowing just now @Dodoster what I found very helpful is on the free days to wake up early and do straight one hour of meditation and an hour of self Inquiry, treat it like work.

@Callum A Thanks I'm in a period that I don't have much work so I try to make the best of the free time that I have.

In Zen as I understand it, they say and I agree that good and bad is only in our mind. Take the person that suffers the most in the world, and if you can magically make him drop his mind all he will have is an experience, maybe very strong body sensations, but without thinking you can't say it say good or bad, it's just an experience like all other experiences. Also when you don't thing you don't resist so the suffering diminishes tremendously.

@Callum A I totally agree I try to be as conscious as I can throughout the day and practice mindfulness. I see meditation just as a training ground for unconditioning the mind from it's usual habits (averting pain and craving pleasure) and transforming us from reactive creatures (slaves to our emotions) to active creatures who can act freely.

feeling stress and angry is great for meditation. It's the ultimate tool to overcome them. If you can focus on your body sensations while they appear and not get caught in the thoughts, if you accept and not resist those sensations, after some time, they will disappear as if never existed. that is the nature of sensations, if you can feel them fully they get stronger and stronger but as they reach their peak, they suddenly drop to zero. Similar to pleasure while having sex.

10 days ago I returned from my Goenka Vipassana retreat. 9.5 days of Silence, almost 11 hours of meditation per day which 3 of them are SDS (strong determination sitting, aka sitting still meditation). The meditation technique is basically attention to the body sensations. In the First 3 days you practice Breath awareness of the nose area and in the rest 7 days body sensations awareness - moving through the body parts in different ways and being aware of the sensations in every part, while being equanimous to the sensations - not craving a "good" sensation and not averting a "bad" one. the concept that helps you be equanimous is "Anicca" - Buddhist term for eternal change, sensing the changing nature of every sensation. In addition there are discourses every night which explain the Buddhist view on life, enlightenment, suffering and such. What i learnt: -The importance of watching the body sensations. Very important to notice that our reaction to a situation is really not to the situation but to the body sensations that this situation triggers in us. For example when someone verbally abuse me I feel angry not because he cursed me but because of the sensation I sensed (in my case heavy sensation in the stomach and/or chest). -seeing the changing nature of sensations - when you can understand at the feeling level that everything is temporary it can help accept what is without clinging. -meditating for 100+ hours in short time can really help you understand the practice and yourself, you see things you won't see when you meditate an hour a day or so. Many insights dawned on me during and after the practice. 5 days after returning from the retreat I took part in an Ayahuasca ceremony. I didn't follow exactly the preparation but I took 1.5 (grams I think :D) of mimosa (active ingredient containing DMT) at first and after 3 hours 1.5 again. (If you take it this way the effect in more gradual than 3 grams at once). The experience: what can I say, It's the most shocking experience I had in my life. after like half an hour from taking the Mimosa I lied down and closed my eyes and It began: Like you wake up from a dream, "reality" broke up and I wake up and this place that feels familiar and i'm 100% sure that my life was just a dream, that's everything, my 30 years of life were just a dream and everything I did and everyone I ever met where just figments of my Imagination. I contemplated how I put clues in reality to help me come back to this place -I thought how clever of me to create leo Than for the rest of my trip I wandered in this place. at that time to me It felt like strolling in infinity but I think It was just projecting Leo's description of being infinite on 5-MeO. After the trip I googled DMT and I was quite surprised that there are images that describe something close to my visuals: (my visuals were much more red with a clown face). also I had this constant eery music playing in the background. During the trip even though when I would open my eyes reality returned to normal I was quite lost in that place and for part of the time I though I would never go back to my old reality (and it saddened me and frightened me a bit), I remember contemplating that I created reality because I felt lonely and wanted to trick myself into thinking that I am not alone but apart from that I didn't really feel any emotions, it wasn't particularly scary just a bit sad part of the time and very shocking. my sense of time (if it existed there) was kinda screwed - experienced lasted about 8 hours but It felts like only one or two hours, and throughout it was quite the same experience. Although it felt so real that I was convinced it's true, that "I am god and I created this",During the whole trip it still felt like everything is happening to ME so I was a bit skeptical about it still, so no "ego death" experience that I remember. Also I didn't feel that I was resisting anything most of the time so probably I need higher dose for ego death experience What I take from the experience: -It changes how I see death, as it seems I can exist without a body (logically it's ridiculous haha) -it made me more appreciative of my life as at some points I thought I won't return - "you can really appreciate something only when it's gone" -now I can't be 100% sure this reality is just another (long) dream and all of you are just a figment of my imagination, it makes me more loving and compassionate for some reason

Leo tackles this question in his last Rant against realism, basically he is saying that "there is no stuff behind the scenes", reality by definition is what is in your direct experience, so their no point to say reality in inside a bubble and and is surrounded by XYZ, it's just another mechanism to try to explain something you can't explain. I think his point is ultimately: there in no point trying to understand such things, calm your mind and and be present in the moment and enjoy the experience, instead of trying to understand it.