SkyPanther

I have noticed the same thing; I used to go to sleep at around 10 or 11, and got up at 9am. Now I get up at 5:30am; I meditate about one hour and thirty minutes, sometime two hours a day (except weekends).

Life, no matter how seriously you take it, will end in death, so enjoy it and do not take it seriously, but sincerely.

@Augustin I think in general, do not take life, the ego, etc, so seriously; You won't make it out "alive" no matter how seriously you try. So make it a game, and see the ego as a character in a play. The queues you get are from everyday life and from other people that take themselves and life too seriously. Observe it, and have a laugh at the absurdity, and beauty of it all. Ideally it should be about sincerity, not seriousness.

Heh, do not take it seriously; laugh at how silly the mind can be, and "release" the idea/thought, by not paying attention to it. Like you do in meditation.

That you recognize that is good. That is pretty much the point; your ego, the concept of the self you have constructed, will do things that it thinks are beneficial, or good for it. All you can do is observe and recognize that/what is happening. Once you get good at it, you can see if the things that come up are ultimately going to be harmful or not. Once you get good at the "wisdom" portion you can start picking the concept apart, and see it for what it is. That is why this is a path. It is steps that culminate, ultimately, at a realization. And even after that realization you still have a ways to go. At some point, you will surrender and lose "yourself" and find the peace you were looking for. But at the cost of the "self" you constructed in life upto the moment of the realization.

Pride is a delusion. There is no "pride" in self actualization, it is just realizing what you really are, deep down, without all the concepts that proliferate in our society.

Wants and desires come from the concept of self, your genetics, your upbringing/social programing. It is a cause and effect chain. You see, hear, taste, smell, touch, remember something and you "want" something based on earlier pre-conditioned states.

*nod* I think the last part is kind of a perspective thing. What is living, what is dying and what is "rebirth"? Living is a concept, why is some matter in a certain pattern "living" and a rock is not seen as "living"? What is dying? Homeostasis stopping; The chemical reactions that drive "life" in an organism. Rebirth is just existance using matter to create a pattern that we call "human", or "life". All the matter in the universe is ultimately the same, it is energy. Most(except hydrogen and helium) of the matter in you, I, your cat (if you have one) is the same; star dust, made of dead star stuff. Rebirth is just existence taking on a new pattern (a body), based on an older pattern. Existence is a never ending process. An end is just a start of something new (every end is a new beginning). Here is something I think is pretty interesting:

Just a thought and question. If you knew that you would return over, and over again, as another human, animal, "thing", etc, would you value your current life as much? Would you strive for things? I think this is why fully enlightened people become sublime, and detached from modern living; the "drive" for life goes once you realize this reality(as opposed to knowing it intellectually). Some people are inclined toward worldly life. Some are on their way out. Neither are wrong, just like it is not wrong to be full or hungry at a restaurant.

@fdrakely I have had the same experience. It started not too long ago, I did not think anything of it because it went away a few minutes after my meditation. But it has become more pronounced, and I also started to research it. It is called "meditation induced tinnitus". There is more info on it here: http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/clairaudience.htm I have also been using it as a focus, and it also gets louder when I do that (for me it seems like it's inside my head). It sounds like a high pitched hum, like the sound of an old TV set turning on/warming up. As I get deeper into the Jhanas I can hear/tell that it is a very fast/high frequency wave. I asked a friend that has been meditating for a while, he did not have any info on it. He has heard of it, but has not experienced it himself. I did find this video about it though: Hope this helps some; but I don't have anymore info as its new to me as well. I meet with my Sangha Teacher (Theravada Buddhist) this upcoming Monday, will ask him; hopefully he has more info.

"Now, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them." Source: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.than.html Practice meditation, quiet the mind, and see for yourself. As for ethics, lookup Secular Humanism, or the Buddhist Sila.

Something that is aware of qualia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

"Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology" - Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili "Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information" - Vlatko Vedral "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" - Alan Watts "Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness" - Roger Penrose "In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Teachings of the Buddha)" - Bhikkhu Bodhi

The two recommendations for when this happens is either doing walking meditation to get your blood flowing then sit down again, or visualizing white light while you sit:

When AI becomes conscious there is no difference. Right now, the only "difference" is that life is conscious, and AI/robots, as far as we know, are not.

The Dhammapada is great; I also liked "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts; And In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Teachings of the Buddha) this is all the essential teachings from the Tipitaka. Learning about Panpsychism helps as well: http://www.iep.utm.edu/panpsych/ And Process Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/

What he is saying (in a kind of roundabout way) is that acceptance is what you need to work toward. Accept yourself, warts and all, and accept other people. That way there is no comparison, which is what self esteem tends to do, it is ultimately about conceit/pride in yourself. But "yourself" is a concept. From a Buddhist point of view, pride/conceit in yourself is born of delusion(+greed) of a self. And low-self esteem, is born of delusion(+aversion) of a self. If you have neither like, nor dislike, you come to accept the way things are. After you come to acceptance, you can choose to change, or not, the things in your personality/ego that are making your life harder than it should be. Being prideful of a quality in yourself, which may in all likelihood change sometime in the future, can bring you pain. It can also make you think other people are inferior to you. Disliking some part of yourself does not change that part. Some things may not be changeable, for instance if you go bald at 15, but getting upset and depressed over it will not change the fact, so you accept the things you cannot change, and change the things that can be changed (like, say if you are a smoker). There is an affirmation/prayer that sums this up: Only "god" can be your higher self, or your "true" self, which is not your ego.

No, noticing is basically the awareness spotlighting that you are not on your object. Releasing is dropping a thought, feeling, etc, in mid thought, and focusing back on the object of meditation. You are not pushing the thought/feeling away, you are letting it be and moving your awareness back to the object.

Look up willful paradigm shifting. http://www.spiralnature.com/magick/paradigmshift/ It involves putting on, sincerely, beliefs, and worlviews, till you understand them, and than drop them for some other belief or worldview. It is utilized by Chaos Magic practitioners, and Discordianism (sometimes). But you will realize after doing it a few times that throughout this, one thing remains the same; awareness. Beliefs become like clothes, you can choose to put them on, or not. But awareness of qualia does not change its only how you color the qualia with the belief you put on. Beware though, it can drive some people insane.

Maybe the future, or the distant past, or maybe completely mad theories based on concepts that come out of absurdity.

Look up Boltzmann brain.

I agree, and this is what I mean by people take concepts too seriously (in science, philosophy, and religion). In my view religion -> philosophy -> science are all tied in a process, one came out of the other. And none of them are "true" because all three deal with conceptualized thoughts, ideas, emotions, and observations (using the six sense bases)tied together by the mind.

Look up Penrose, Orch-Or and Panpsychism. There are very celebrated physasistes trying to tackle the question, but currently they are being ridiculed by other scientists for it.

I think they can be compatible. However after a while, and depending on the path, you won't actively or consciously pursue material gain because you might come to the realization that it is irrelevant. There is "need" and "want", and people tend to confuse the two. You need food, water, shelter. But the food can be a few cups of rice and protein a day, and shelter can be a foot of a tree or a shack. It is no coincidence that a lot of fully enlightened beings become ascetics and later take the vow of renunciation. It is not so much a denial of things you want (though it might be for people that just start on the path) it is that you realize that you don't need the things you think you need to be happy. And, in fact, you are happier when you are not worrying about your stock portfolio, paying the mortgage on your house, and meeting deadlines at work. That's just my sense though.

I had a spontaneous awakening (or at least the description of what I experienced matches other peoples experiences that have gotten the first step of awakening) Tolle explains it here: But be mindful that this is just the "first" phase of four (though it depends on the tradition, in Buddhism it is four). We actually had a discussion about this video here: