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.

@Huz88 You can think whatever you want. It will allways get you somewhere.

Is listening to someone talk about things that dont matter to me and not registering (hearing nothing but "blahblahblah" really) so strange to you? I doubt you never talked to someone and felt unable to pay attention because it was so uninteresting...that is the sensation i get from TV, films,commercials, politics, sports, opinions about stuff i dont care about, personal dramas etc....i make no effort to ignore it, its more like im unable to focus on it really. Try listening to someone talk about something that bores you and tell me if you found it hard to think about other stuff during that time -Im not proposing a fix to anything. That was your interpretation. I said if he was unable to ignore the TV it is because he is actually interested in it somehow (because its easy to disconect from "boring" stuff). So instead of forcing himself to get away he should inquire why he cant ignore it. Once he is above it he will not care about any TV being on or off because it will be just sound. I suggested thinking about this as better exercise than running away from anything, being so vulnerable to his surroundings and letting them dictate how to feel and what to think. I never said he should watch TV or sit everyday in front of it, only not to bother so much about it and other people watching it. -Im not exposed to "low consciosness information" because it goes through, it doesnt stay, doesnt polute me. Low "consciousness information" is abundant in school, Internet, friendships, work, music, one must be above it not resist it, not give it importance. To discard "low consciosness" information one must think about it first, otherwise better go live in a cave because without knowing what you are discarding and why, you will be doing nothing but running away from unsolved thoughts. -i dont have amazing concentration skills and i dont think being able to write this while my dog is barking an amazing concentration skill.No amazing concentration skill is required to ignore something boring. But, if someone is interested in something but at the same time feels bad about it, the answer is not to run from it but to extinguish it in thought. Right.I like this paragraph. Im not mentally imperturbable. Some things do bother me. Try watching something you dont care and see for yourself that it will not stay with you. You will not even remember it afterwards because you were not paying attention. About subliminal messages, yes they exist but not only in TV. With time as our thought gets more flexible we start thinking the subliminal before the message itself, therefore we are also able to ignore it, it will not stay with us. Anyway, these are my thoughts only and i never believe im right or wrong. Tomorrow i may think things differently because i wasnt born this way too.

In case you seek it: What do you expect from becoming enlightened? What do you think you will do after becoming enlightened? What is your motivation?

@Isle of View To me there are thoughts behind insight. Thoughts are beautiful, good luck surfing yours.

@Philip When you are on a train or at a restaurant i supose you are aunable to ignore people talking around you.TV does not afect me and it is not a big deal and not because im special. My wife asks me things about what is on TV and i either agree blindly or pretend i fell asleep for a moment because i really am not paying attention. i dont understand how you find so hard to ignore a TV show. Bet you saw some film in yor life that was so bad you couldnt pay attention to it.....that is the way i feel all the time. Really doesnt stay in my thoughts ever and i only think about TV when my wife calls me to sit next to her and watch some TV. I sit next to her like a father with the son while the kid is watching cartoons. Dont know if you have a kid, but do you believe a father is really watching My little pony with the kid, paying attention to it and thinking about it? some may do it but most, me included, jus sit there day dreaming, sleeping, looking out the window, waiting for the thing to end. Also i dont know if TV is poison or not, that is your thought and you are being petulant about it. You are not better than my wife or more special than anybody for not watching TV (ok i understand in your thoughts you are). i think you are much more poisoned by TV than me because it affects your thoughts much more than mine even if unlike me you dont sit next to it. Another detail about my TV viewing is that i cant see, its all blurred if i dont have glasses and i dont use them when "watching"TV. People dont care they just want me to sit with them, same as when they are reading a book and call me to sit next to them. But even with glasses i would ignore it the same.Its been years since i last went to the cinema, i dont listen to music either but music i cant ignore and if someone is listening im forced to listen but only when it brings memories. If its a new music not related to any thought i had in the past i ignore it too. I dont think im better than TV viewers. I just dont watch it even if its in front of me, the same way my attention doesnt get stuck in surveillance camera monitors, women clothes shop windows, people surfing when im at the beach or playing with a ball or whatever i ignore everybody there, when i was a student i listened to the teacher and ignored other kids talking and playing behind me, etc etc etc. No effort is needed to ignore what you dont find interesting. I bet you are able to ignore a white wall in front of you, to me the TV is like a white wall, not interesting, i dont have to tell myself dont look at the wall, dont think about the wall, ignore the wall, because i dont care. I remember times when i did find TV interesting and i would watch it and nothing would distract me. There could be 4 people arguing in the living room and i would still be focused on TV without a clue about what they were talking about....same principle only opposite. I do accept the possibility that some cant ignore it (and i know some) but thinking everybody is unable or able to do something because you are is thinking inside the box too much. TV is bad i agree but there are many things worst than TV and Facebook affects my thoughts much more than TV. People around me taking photos to post on facebook, asking me to take photos to post on facebook all the time takes effort to ignore because i need to move, take photos, pose, wait for them while they look at their phones.Then they have this endless river of useless information they gather on facebook and feel eager to shove down my ears. Ignoring TV shows is peanuts compared to ignoring the show people themselves, around me, put daily i an effort to impose their thoughts on me.

What you call a faculty, spirit, intentions, conclusions, are all your thoughts and mine too when i think about them. Just thoughts, everything you write.

Perception is thought. Optical perception is subjective, illusory and it creates thought . Thoughts can come from wherever you think they come. Thoughts are made by whoever you think is behind them. On a physical level thoughts dont exist even if you think brain is where they come from. Empty space is a definition created by thought and you can define it in as many ways as you can think. Matter, one third, those are all thoughts. The rest is thought. You are confined to whatever you think you are confined to. This reality is whatever you think it is. These were my thoughts.

Guy in the video is as right now as he ever was. Thinking or/and speaking differently then back when he wanted to be enlightened but his thoughts are no better than the ones he had back then. He is trying to create his own thing based on his past delusions, twisting and adding to what he tried to learn back then, still wanting to feel special. That is his trip and is as valid as anyone else trip.

It is all just thoughts. Everything. If they work for you keep them (whatever that means), if they dont, discard them (however that means). As simple as that. Advaita Vedanta works for you, keep it. If it doesnt discard it.Same with anything else. Anything and everything is thought.Use it however you want and say whatever you like, it will always be your thoughts and illusions because they will always be contradictory to someone else thoughts and illusions and there is no judge to decide who is right or wrong. Nobody will ever be right or wrong. Things simply are the way they are no matter how many names you invent for them.

@Franko Don try to supress thoughts. Dont try not to think because it will make you think even more. Using any technique you are doing somebody else thing. Discover what you think is better for you. To stop thinking you must think about it first and tame it before it loses importance. You want to tame useless thoughts not the usefull ones, those i cherish and welcome....i think. About overeating i can give practical advice. I have to stay slim because of joint pain from past overeating and training and i use intermitent fasting and it works for me. Every 24 hours i fast 14 hours. For the 10 hour eating period i eat mostly clean food but i eat all i want. If my last meal was 7 PM i only eat after 9 AM the next day. If i eat at 11 AM i only eat after 1PM next day. At first you will probably feel bad fasting 14 hours (as i did) but then you get used to it (i did). I keep my weight down this way.