Rodrigo

@TrippyKate Thoughts dont have to hate or love themselves. Why would you want to think you are happy and feel happy from within? That is being as delusional as you think you are now and will make you think you are happy only because its the opposite to your current thoughts. Once you dont remember the way you think now you will invent some other excuse to think you are unhappy again so that you can think you have something to overcome. Then you will spend your entire life jumping from petty psychological crisis to petty psychological crisis. Others are as real as the thoughts you have about yourself so you are really comparing two fictional characters all the time....and feeling bad for one of them. If you think you are Superman and smarter than Einstein you will be as right about your identity as you are now. Honestly if i started thinking the way you describe and couldnt stop it i would go for a 4 hour walk under the sun or until water was the only thing in my thoughts. You are starting nothing and neither you or the ground or your thoughts is shaky.

@Eddie_the_Eggplant you cant think about something that doesnt exist by using thoughts that dont exist and expect to experience something real because of it. The thought you think you have is inventing problems that dont exist and trying to solve them so thoughts of intelligence and spirituality can arise, originating thoughts of achievement, individuality, thoughts of feeling special or superior to less thoughtfull creatures around you......

@khalifa I think you are doing great. You are dong what is natural for you. Focus on studying. Likes and dislikes are subjetive and will change during our life. Now you may be thinking about how you hate to study that, tomorrow you may think you have a job so you can provide for yourself and familiy. Studying and working are not leisure activities, You dont have to like or dislike them just do them. Engineering is good because you will have tools for many jobs, no only engineering. Lastly being motivated by money is sad only if you think it is. Think about it and find if you really think it is sad. To me is as good motivation as love and happiness.

@Huz88 "Thoughts are virtually silenced" but they are still there in the form of awareness. Awareness is also thought. There is nothing to attain spirtually except the thought that there is nothing to attain Buddha himself is quoted as saying something like this (guess he is quoted as saying something like"he gained nothing from enlightenment" but i dont want to google it now). You can change thoughts and thats all you can do. Everything is as real as you think it is and as important as you think it is. Enlightenment, i dont know what that is but the way i think it someone who thinks he is as special and important as anything in the unverse is someone who is in tune with his existence. About strong sitting meditation i stumbled upon a youtube video of a budhist monk who is a monk since he was 12 or something, meditating all the time duiring his teen years in Sri Lanka. In his early 20s he went to USA and he talked about getting furious on the bus because the bus was full and nobody gave him the seat and in Sri Lanka people stand up for the monks. He said he got so mad he told other monk he wouldnt stay in USA. Took him time to calm down and tame his ego. What i want to show you with the previous example is that you can try to do whatever people tell you should do in terms of meditation but until you understand how useless it all is for thought transformation, it will do more harm than good. The way i think it you are better off thinking about what is meditation and what is thought in its various forms than trying to shut down thought just because of what others think. Write a prisoner with solitary confinement experience about strong sitting meditation and see what he will tell you. Many guys in prison locked up 23 hours a day meditate a lot and get into yoga but they dont become spiritual gurus because of it, or experience permanent bliss because of it. They can think they are out and free through meditation but only for a while. Only the ones who go crazy (crazy meaning unable to function and survive efficiently) will claim they are elightened, special, in perpetual bliss tec etc. I think about how insignificant everything and everyone on earth was before they existed and how insignificant everything and everyone will be after this planet is gone. This thought has always helped me put everything in perspective. Im not special and i will never be. Nobody is. Show me someone who doesnt need to breath to keep the heart pumping and i show you someone unique, special, who has something no mamal in the universe has. Show me someone who claims he never lied or lies and i show you a liar. Here is a video of the monk who told the bus story. One of his videos, i dont know if its the bus one.

@Huz88 If you are a teen or a young adult, i presume you are, you are at a phase in your life when you question society and the world around you because you feel its being imposed on you and you certainly dont feel responsible for all the mess so you start believing older people are/were wrong and dont know what they are/were doing. So you want to improve yourself, fit in the mess around you and at the same time change it because you think there is so much that is wrong. What Leo does in his videos (i watched some) and in this forum is putting out information he gathered in a way younger people find easier to understand. Being a young guy himself Leo has a light and dynamic way of explaining things without becoming fastidious. He doesnt go into boring detail of the subjects he talks about and he puts it all together quite well. He is a good teacher, better teacher than people who know more than him about the stuff he talks about because he is a good communicator. The reason i talked about Leo is the fact that you wrote that something he said scared you, You are doing the right thing listening to videos and thinking about yourself but if you give too much attention to only one source of information (Leo, in this case) you will become a cheap copy of someone, dwelling on his thoughts and teachings and becoming stiff. The way i think it, the right thing to do is watch all of Leo material if you like, than search for the sources of the information you got from him, then study those people who contradict all the previous information and studying you did, Twist and turn every thought in your head because they are all wrong and right at the same time. They are nothing just like every thought in my head, Leo head, Dalai Lama head, Nisargadatta Mahara head, the pope head and so on son....The more you think the more you will learn that the only thoughts that really are worth something are the thoughts responsible for the food you can put on your plate now and tomorrow and even those dont matter for anything or anybody except your digestive system..The secret to be light is dropping the weight not replacing it or adding more weight. The secret for a clean thought is to stop believing it altogether not replacing your thoughts with someone else thoughts. As for strong determination sitting and all meditation techniques, they can be fun and you can even hallucinate but dont expect to ever get clear thoughts, enlightenment or whatever and carry it with you daily because all you will get will be temporary sensations and thoughts. Sure you can convince yourself you are anything you like if you think about it long and hard enough but that thing you will be will allways be nothing more than a thought inside your head.

@zakur0Many homeless people started their "carreer" the way you described. I dont believe acting on emotional urges i good, funny or brave. A job is a tool for survival and love or hate towards boss or coworkers is wasted energy and pointless. Never quit a job unless ou have another job to do....woul be my advice.

@Huz88 Dont worry because people you lied to, lied to you as well. Either for profit or ego everything is a lie. Our society and everything in it is based on lies. Even other animals pretend and lie to each others on a certain more basic level. Are you really feeling bad about yourself because of what someone you dont even know said in a video? Start adressing that vulnerability as a first step to self improvement and growth....and later you will naturally stop telling so many lies because most lying is childish. Telling people you lied to them or trying to make amends is clinging to the past. Don take thinks so literally.

@bracov If you are supposed to be alone you will be alone. Dont think about it, let it happen either way.

@Grant♪ I only red the title. If its a passion you dont have to think to identify it. Dont know if passions are good or bad or irrelevant but thats a different topic.

@JevinR i would write if i could be paid for it. But im not a writer. Stephen King comes to mind...he wrote so much BS and earned so much money effortlessly and enjoying it i guess. Good luck. I think writting is a nice activity if you can get money from it.

As long as you try to be or do as Leo or anybody else you will be trying to think like them and you will inevitably be confused. Listen to Leo or others, learn, study, but always think it by yourself. If you twist and turn other people thoughts you will never be confused.Try to think like someone and you will always be in trouble (obviously it happens that we think like many people and are influenced already involuntarily, so im talking about WANTING to think like someone). Maybe you dont care if you are self agenda driven or not, but now, because someone talked about it you want it to be important to you. That is why you are confused. Trying to think about other person priorities. Think about it.

@mathieu I dont have a facebook account and avoid conversations about it like the plague.Also couldnt care less about other people real lives let alone their imaginary lives.

@Kenya Yes it is. It would be less if there were no rankings, no votes, no reputation etc....to m i think is entertainmente for the ego but it doesnt make me sad, anxious, mad or happy....just something to think about for a while.

@Gavalanche When i was young there was no porn available and i did great. I masturbated imagining i was having sex with some actress or gir i knew and it felt good enough. I masturbated whenever i felt like it without guilt or compulsion....i still masturbate but not nearly as often as when i was a teen or young adult. You are supposed to use it and if you dont you will eventually ejaculate in your sleep (im sure all anti masturbation advocates did it). Never had problems with it or because of it. No premature ejaculation, no impotence, nothing. How to know how much is too much? that is entirely up to you to decide, but dont think about it too much. Sexual problems arise from thinking about sex. You dont think sex except before you do it or masturbate.Dont turn it into a problem. It is peronal, you dont have to do it as often as anyone or the same way as anyone. I say stop thinking. Either masturbate or date, just dont complcate.

@framu Something extraordinary happened to you. It is called thought. Amazing stories, inventions, feelings come from thought and with practice you dont even need drugs to think wilder and wilder....just make sure you come back before being sectioned or starve yourself to death.