Saarah

@DizIzMikey We can't really stop ourselves talking so maybe! I think it'd be useful to say "I don't know" to everything because in order to reverse our beliefs we need to understand that actually we don't know them to be true The other two are probably just as good, especially since awareness is a way to see what's really there so that phrase may help you to stop thinking and start just seeing

Just watching over the sky from my balcony, I realised the sky to be so still, calm, and yet so beautiful. Watching from Earth, it looks as though the clouds are a part of the sky, but that is not the reality. Both light and dark clouds pass by, but the only thing that does not change is the stillness of the sky. Clouds are superficial and temporary as sometimes all we have is the clear sky. Can we not compare the sky and it's clouds to our mind and it's thoughts? Does the same not apply?

@jes I remember a really rough patch from late November till mid February I went through, and I listened to Alan Watts "There are no wrong feelings" video, a 10 minute snippet of his talk, you can YouTube it, also this was the time Leo's video of dealing with strong negative emotions came out. Both these helped me to be fully acknowledging my emotions, i realise I cried so many days and so hard so I felt like I was accepting my emotions The only problem is I also remember thinking constantly, when is it going to go away? I've cried and cried and the more I cry leads to more crying! But what I think is that having this expectation that it has to end at some point hindered me and delayed the feeling for longer. The more I was expecting it should go away some day, the more I was actually saying to myself "this feeling shouldn't be here, one day it will go right?" And that was therefore not really accepting it. So don't wait for it to end, imagine you had to live with this emotion forever, what would you do instead? Hope that's useful

Can someone point to the types of things we do in our daily lives that strengthen the illusion of the ego? I think if you were doing enlightenment work, it'd be important to find ways to weaken all the pervasive ways this illusion exists in all areas of our lives, not just during that sitting of self-inquiry Im thinking of things like making judgements, all the neurotic behaviours, lying, moralising etc., would improving yourself in these areas aid in weakening the ego, since they are about accepting reality more? Thanks!

@Falk thanks! I just wonder why the grip onto the map is so strong :')

@jes feel the hate, it's not going to do anything to you, it's not the painful element in this, only the resistance is painful So it's important to acknowledge resistance when it appears and let go of that You might go into a story about the feeling, complaining or debating about anything related to it, you might try to change the feeling, deny it outright, ignore it and not do any work on it (but you're doing the work so happy days), and when such resistance arises then you can be reminded to stop and just feel, be aware and curiously observe. It will run its course and eventually be gone, no friction to your being

@Toby That's a nice way to use it, I'll check them out thanks! Then I guess with whatever I discover I'll just practice more awareness and perhaps I'll begin to notice everything in real time

@DizIzMikey I think everyone's questions are personal, that one might work for you better

@Toby the personality thing?

@Mal Alright I get it, thanks for your input I AM ALL THOSE THINGS maybe you should make the video if it's getting to you so much

@Donald I see, use the ego to move forward, definitely! @Andre Thanks for sharing! I like his message of simply being aware of the ego and using it as necessary @Mal Ok, I recognise I have no control over it

@so here we are Thank you! Yes, perception in its very nature is perceiving It does itself and doesn't require a doer

@dboyle I don't have one but recently I reorganised my goals and associated them with specific actions to take, every morning I read through my goals and carry out the actions that are to be carried out there and then So I'd advise creating a morning routine that aligns with your goals, have you set goals for anything? There's no point having a morning routine if it doesn't work towards something because then it'll feel pointless and not as compelling, and you may give up easily on it and not gain the benefits you say you want. Morning routines in and of themselves can be used to get you into a great state, but will you want to get into a great state if the rest of your day has no drive to it? The rest of your day's drive is created with goals and you already mentioned you want to live a life that is inspiring. So start with your goals.

@Flower My mum has had diagnosed depression for more than a decade, every day I notice in her certain dysfunctional attitudes and mindsets, victim mentality and lack of responsibility, focusing on external solutions to internal problems, she has been through many different drugs to help, and these have an effect in calming her, but, they have not made her any happier, she still struggles with negative emotions, feeling lonely, anger, addiction, dependency on people, ineffectiveness in relationships. I laugh inside when my dad tells her all she needs to do is pray, and my mum says she's been praying loads and eating her tablets but still feels this way.... i can't express myself with the "there's no god" part and when it comes to talking about the deeper psychology, I don't think my mum is willing to receive it, plus it would take a tremendous effort. When it comes to biology and genes, long story short I don't believe they're the cause, and the medicalisation of depression is largely flawed imo. I'm not in the slightest bit worried about 'contracting' depression from my mum. I notice very very very strong environmental influences, I see the pervasiveness of the issues that lead to strong mental states such as depression in her whole family, my aunts and uncles. I also notice how she passed on certain dysfunctional beliefs to me, a subconscious process, which I've consciously weeded out throughout the past 2 years especially with the help of Actualized.org. We live in the paradigm of science and medicalisation. Psychology has to work within this paradigm to be taken seriously and to work on a bigger scale. As long as it does so, it will not be helping anyone. People like my mum, are failed all the while.

@Neill @Donald @charlie2dogs Maybe this is a good opportunity to demonstrate how we must look at reality as reality instead of adding assumptions, Charlie's question simply asked for Donald's motivation to telling his parents, but both of you assumed the question to be hinting at some other message of "chatting to your parents about this isn't necessary" its what we do with our conditioning and mind stories all the time!

So I understand that self-observation is the key to more awareness, through meditation and mindfulness for example I wanted to know, is it just pure observing you have to do without perception/analysing anything, because I get this feeling that if I only observe without thinking I might not notice or pick anything up and that I have to pick stuff apart that I observe to see more. When I simply observe I just know that I'm oblivious to everything so I feel like I'm just taking the observation in based on all the premises I've already got so ingrained in my mind. Then I think I'm not going anywhere. But I know I'm not thinking long-term enough. I know thinking just gets in the way, and is not the path to awareness so involving it will slow me down. So, simply exercising the muscle of observation without involvement, will just that help me over time with persistence pick up all the subtleties I'm unaware of about myself? Will it happen in a way where subconsciously I might pick up stuff and over time all of it will start coming to the forefront of my mind? Should I give it plenty of time before I'll notice anything?

@Ajax thanks! I rewatched the video about step by step process to enlightenment, even though the intention of my question wasn't about achieving that, I realised the same principles apply with being mindful in everyday life, so it makes sense to me now what you say, particularly about becoming the effect of them and using consciousness I also understand why now why you mentioned enlightenment @vizual

@Andre Right now, the entire universe is inside you, its so powerful and strong, and you haven't even acknowledged it, it sits there waiting with a little beam of soft light surrounding it, waiting for a force to INFINITELY EXPAND it... and yet you want to walk around feeling like a dormant potato was sat inside you by living the average potato life? You want to take your inspiration from a potato that you can't do anything with? When right now, you have the power to fly, you have the ability to be so magnificent, that no matter where you were, you'd feel like you were the universe's all encompassing sun beaming into the milky way, and every person and thing you saw, felt like the milky way was staring right back at you, that level of ecstasy, all the universe's energy, just beaming from within to outside and from outside right back into the heart and soul of you, like being shot in your heart with a gun, but instead of killing you, it gives you sharp, real, unapologetic LIFE! and you want to be... a starchy, energy crashing POTATO!!? BE THE UNIVERSE'S UNLIMITED ENERGY You should be so motivated, you just want to run for miles just to expend the level of intense motivation you feel inside, I feel like i'm building the world's infinite internal riches right now, it's so exciting, it never ends, it breathes life into you where your whole life you'd been in a desert just desperate to quench your thirst with the water from the pool of life, subconsciously I feel this is what every life is seeking, in all the activities we do, this is path we were searching for all along, and now you have the DIRECT route, you just started walking... Why just stop all of a sudden and backtrack? Was your potato more comfortable and easy?

A lot of the times I tend to think about how my actions are selfish or when people talk about functioning from a place of non-ego how then you're selfless and that that's true compassion etc. 1. But if I am a piece of life just as much as any other thing or being and this organism happens to take an action that helps itself, then I am not being selfish because I'm acting for all of life itself 2. And from the other perspective if I was some enlightened person taking action towards maybe world hunger, even though I don't have an ego and I'm not acting from it, I'd be serving life and life serving itself is selfish anyway, ego or not So really selfish and selfless are just redundant and all action is both and neither Maybe that's why the person with the ego is still said to be enlightened this very second as their actions are all neither good or bad, neither for themselves or for others, it's just that they don't see it and that the enlightened person can actually see both perspectives that's why they're 'realised' I think this can help people who have self-compassion issues see that anything they do is just fine and they are just fine, and maybe it can help people see morally that all action is neither selfish or selfless, it's just another way of saying there's no good or bad, with the ego or without, whatever a criminal does, it's just life serving life And now I see why you can be at any level in moral development or in terms of spiral dynamics and enlightened at the same time, since regardless of whatever place you function from, when you're enlightened all action is just action anyway Just seeing it from this 'nothing is selfless or selfish' perspective has helped me understand better

@Mal haha! Yes, the first few times I read it I understand most of it now except those last two sentences

@Phrae i'm ok when it comes to meditation I can just sit there and not get involved with my thoughts It's just the act of mindfulness of my actions throughout the day, like trying to be mindful of any feeling that arises or watching what i'm going through when i'm interacting with others or doing any activities, people say to be mindful and just watch, and if you do that you can get a better understanding of yourself, but I have the feeling that if I just leave it to observing/mindfulness will I even understand anything without picking it apart? I only know about the types of things that come from the ego by watching Actualized videos and exposing myself to material about it, but supposing I had no idea about this stuff, and only implemented mindfulness, would I have picked up these things about the ego eventually? But I know what you mean about awareness not being volitional, that's the difficult thing to grasp practically!

@vizual The tiniest eensiest bit, I'm trying to hold down the basic habit of meditation first, gotta start with the basics! But what I'm trying to do is to start being more mindful and observant to cultivate over time a better grasp of the illusory nature of me to witness all my lies and nature, at some point self-inquiry will begin but that time is not now, being more aware has just been something I've been thinking about lately cos I feel so blind and ignorant when I think about times where I've been so engrossed in everyday life, over the past few weeks my schedule has been whittled down, and now I'm faced with less moving and more stopping to notice What are your thoughts about this?

Maybe you're addicted for help because you're using it as a distraction from doing the important stuff, the mind likes distractions to avoid being more aware You could leave, but make sure you don't run to another distraction like this, being off the forum will not stop you from distracting yourself in the millions of other ways that it's possible

@Kath @DizIzMikey Just remember it's all about the distinction between thinking and awareness! focus on the way you are rather than the result and then maybe the results will come, when we aim for results, trying to reach a goal, the thinking mind gets initiated which can lead us to not getting anywhere in the end

@joegarland one way I can think of that you can express both your desire to teach and draw at the same time is through YouTube videos where you can record yourself drawing on screen using a graphics tablet and attach your message to the video so that your art can have the impact you're looking for take a look at Michel phans video, this is both being artistic and sending a message, she starts the drawings around a minute in http://youtu.be/Ken5BrbrgDQ