askdfjnak

Hack your brain's default mode - Dan Harris

It is all pointless.

You could spend thousands of hours in gruelling meditation to get enlightened. OR Jesus could make sweet, sweet love to you this Sunday. ... Just sayin'

"Real recognise real" -Generic rapper

From a scientific perspective, we are just biological robots. This is only sad because you believe that there is a box to escape. What exactly are you going to break out of? Thoughts? Emotions? Body functions? These are only traps if you believe they are. You will struggle to stop things that are inevitable. You are a robot after all, you have no free will. Ultimately it is the struggle that you want to stop, not thoughts, emotions and body functions. On their own they are completely inert phenomena arising and passing away. The self is just a confluence of these forces. They each have their own confluence of phenomena that give rise to "their" experience. But all of these phenomena are occurring in nothing. The box we are trapped in is nothing. The box we are trying to escape is nothing.

Yes, some of the most amazing meditative states I've entered were lucid dreams. When I do an sds for longer than 2hrs I sometimes can enter a state where my mental images are very realistic. I'm talking like 4k HD video as opposed to this horrible 8bit mental imagery that I normally have. I tried to enter that state and then sketch faces but I lost the clarity within 1 minute of opening my eyes. Indicating dreaming. I did my first vipassana retreat a few weeks ago and I had a lucid dream at the end of a day. In the meditation hall all men and women are kept separate and there is a male and female teacher at the head of the room. I entered a dream where I thought I was attending the teachers wedding and all the guys were on the grooms side and all the women were on the brides side. I was completely aware, sitting in perfect posture but I was clearly dreaming. It was funny when I "woke up". These are just states though, I don't think they have much to do with enlightenment.

@Falk That's an interesting thought. I think you have it backwards though. Nature is always trying to increase entropy and it takes energy to decrease it, like an air-conditioner uses energy to lower air temperature by decreasing it's entropy. Our thoughts/beliefs are constantly pulling us (as a collective) into higher entropy and it takes energy to decrease it. We are already doing tons of stupid stuff, building shit, burning coal, wasting energy due to limiting beliefs. If we were free of them we'd probably just sit around all day watching the clouds until we starved. We wouldn't be avoiding death because death is just a belief ultimately. I like how well entropy dovetails with spiritual concepts though. I mixed this track a few years ago with some experts from poems and physics discourses that I like. Entropic Mess.mp3

@vizual apologies some relevant content from bill:

@Psychonaut I know exactly what you mean. I don't know what to do either. It's a weird paradox. >you become more comfortable in your own being >sexual desire diminishes >confidence and compassion radiate out of you >all of a sudden, women everywhere are looking at you with starry eyes Do you ignore them? Do you help yourself to sex? What happens to your own ego? If I sleep with egoistic women, how badly is it going to hurt them when they realise that I'm not playing the same game? How badly will it hurt if I ignore them? I guess this is just the next problem my mind is creating. It's tricky, though. Monk lyfe: 1. Ignore bitches 2. Deny money

In my own experience, I went through a phase for a few months where I felt like I was developing alzheimer's and I was lazy and I felt like I was getting way stupider. I might have just been realising that I already was stupid as @Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj says . But as I started to clear out of that "ego fog" ,as Leo calls it, my mind became much, much clearer and focused. You no longer spend so much energy worrying about your image and how people view you and you stop over analysing irrelevant shit. Your capacity to handle life just sky-rockets. So I wouldn't worry about it too much. Listening to these two videos it seems like the brain sort of rewires itself for some time and after that it gets better.

Oh my god, a talking head!

@Meave Your body will do all kinds of weird stuff when past tension is coming up. I experienced pressure inside my skull when I started too. It could be muscles spasms (like if you are clenching your jaw for long periods without realizing) also if your head is not balanced you might fatigue some neck muscles during long meditations. I've been reading about yoga recently and I've found this very interesting. I've experienced every single one of the "symptoms" described under the "descriptions" section. Pressure in skull is one of them. I don't really know too much about it though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini

@All_Around_Me Hey, this has happened to me many times. From a scientific perspective you're going into theta brain wave states with full awareness. Usually these states are only experienced in sleep unconsciously. You go into REM (rapid eye movement sleep) when you are dreaming usually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep Read the section on what it does to you circulation and respiration. Your body can tap into massive amounts of energy. The only way I have been able to calm down is to go for long walks/runs in nature and meditate while moving because it feels like my body will explode if I sit still. This is supposedly an aspect of the "flow state"

http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html

"that which stands in the way is the way" I had this exact same problem a few months back with self inquiry/neti-neti (to me they're the same thing). As my mind was realizing that there was no self to find and yet was unable to escape whatever was appearing in front of it I got extremely angry and frustrated. I would literally scream and punch walls after meditating. I also started to feel really claustrophobic in my body and mind, even after meditation stopped. I felt like this cat: Everywhere I tried to escape to the same truth was there and there was nothing I could do about it. I had practiced "comfy" spirituality before that and had some nice experiences but it wasn't until I really put the pedal to the metal that I actually started to change deep inside. Somebody posted this video on here and it really spoke to me: https://youtu.be/QVyv1uJ6Rd0?t=19m25s I realized I could just exhaust my way into truth. I started sds/inquiry. If I was still angry at the end of a sit I would immediately repeat the same time. There were a few times where I sat for 8 hours before I finally broke through an issue but once I had broken it, it was finished forever. My psyche got cleaned up really quickly doing this. It wasn't fun. But totally worth it. This is what I continue to do. I practice the technique that I hate the most, because I know if I hate it I have resistance to work out. A lot of people would probably disagree with this though. Its just my 10c. Do what you're gonna do.

@Huz88 I put down all my past drug use (extensive resume) and I got in no problem.

If you relegate happiness to the future, you will only know pursuit.

@zer0 Put a cup/box of apple juice next to your bed. Drink it the moment your alarm goes off. It works like magic to wake you up.

@stephanie If you took an EEG, all you would have is an EEG, you would have no idea whether that person was actually experiencing nothingness.

The realization is not a thought/feeling/word appearing. Thoughts/feelings/words appear in the realization. That's why it's incommunicable.

@charlie2dogs Yes, the Tao te Ching covers all that. @reflectivist Coming back to your question about effort and permanent realization: "Free from desire, you realize the mystery Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations" Desire is a product of living egoistically. Right now you view effort as a kind of burden right? That's why it's quite off putting to be told that constant effort is required. You desire non-effort so you will only see the manifestations of effort. That is, you will be all consumed by the psychosomatic response your body and mind goes through when you are engaged in something that requires effort. You will be constantly preoccupied with the outcomes of your effort as well. Let's say you sit down for a 5 hour strong determination sit. It will be hell for you because your desires will become all consuming when your legs and back start aching, or you get hungry and bored. After full enlightenment, when there is no longer an ego and therefore no longer any desires the sit will just be a flux of impersonal experiences (manifestations) and you will realize the mystery of the invisible immutable substrate (the Tao) in which all these manifestations are arising and passing. So after enlightenment there is effort but there is nobody left to suffer the effort. Realization is permanent but effort can arise and pass. There are in between stages. I'm interested to see Leo's video on the stages of the enlightenment. I like this video. Work, for the sake of work is a fantastic way of grinding down the ego.

The effort you are talking about is a manifestation of the Tao to recognize itself. This is only realized after the realization though, it's a paradox. I love the Tao te ching.

"I" am a concept created by the brain, is also a concept created by the brain. ^this is also a concept You have to move out of the infinite regress of concepts into the realm of experience. ^this is also a concept Do you see whats happening here? Once you are in the realm of experience you can search for the beginning and ending points of experience. When you find it is nowhere you will "understand" that you are nothing. But this "understanding" won't be just a concept.