Dragallur

54th day: Enlightenment work Once in the days I did very good meditation without single movement, even my eyes stayed on the same stop for full hour. It was very cool. Otherwise I did basically simple sessions, as to why, see below. Physics I did not do any Khan Academy. Math and physics in school are very boring I will have to bring my own work next time.. the teachers are completely sad. Mindfulness I am keeping quite nice level of mindfulness in school but when I get home I get distracted by other stuff that I do. What am I really doing all this time? From the last friday to yesterday's friday I was reading a book. It is epic fan-fiction on Harry Potter. I quite like Harry Potter even though that I know it so much that I see mistakes all around. This guy named Elizier Yudkowsky wrote fan-fiction called Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality. I already started to read it once lets say year ago or so. It was cool but then about in 70th chapter I gave up because there was part that did not interest me so much. I decided to give it a go again and started from scratch. Mind you, it has 122 chapters and something like 660 000 words. This is like two parts of longest Wheel of Time put together, which is a lot if you have seen Wheel of Time.. this is probably reason that it took me 7 days to read it (6 actually since one day I did not read it). Why am I telling this? Well it was quite interesting. I have basically spend all the time after school until late evening reading it except meditation. Cool is that when I was getting about 6-7 hours of sleep I felt very good in the morning which I think has to do with sleep cycles that do not normally match exactly with the hours I sleep. What is this book about? Well it tells one year of Harry being in school though since it is fan-fiction there are quite a changes. Harry is a rationalist and the whole book is very logically consistent. To match Harry's inteligence most main characters are extremely smart too. Now since I was and actually probably still am, a rationlists it very interested me. On this forum people like to rant rationality quite often, no problem with that, maybe it is because of Leo's video or maybe not. The thing I realised after reading this book which is from guy who is high level rational is that when most people say that they are rational they actually are not. Harry, kind of representing the author is well above anything you might have seen and rationality is really about seeking the truth, questioning beliefs and so on. It uses mind of course where lies the fundamental flaw. Perfect rationalist is aware of this, he is aware that all of this is fundametally wrong anyway, he is not attached to his beliefs that would limit him in the rationality and he is aware of maya. Rationality does not lead to fundamental truth as far as I know of course but if you read this book you will realise what is a power of rationality, if well done, in "physical reality", it will help you understand people, understand yourself, understand science and then it is tool and there is nothing wrong about it, and tools do not need to be used all the time.. you do not want to take tree down by hammer. So what I have learned? I think I am quite integrated with my rational part of myself. Before I was kind of throwing it away since I realised that it can not get you anywhere, but ther truth is now.. I know it and I love rationality anyway, it is beatiful what you can do with your mind if it is properly trained. Dragallur

It is "strong determination sitting" which means that you do not move, at all. Basically. You can be in any kind of sitting posture enduring all emotions, pain and so on. Try it out it is pretty cool and easy, Leo has video about it called something like "meditation on steroids".

49th day: Enlightenment work As usual 1 hour of self-inquiry and SDS though SDS was interrupted because of people I need to start to meditate in the morning again because that eases self-inquiry a lot. Physics Experiments did not went good today and later I had a little time. Mindfulness It seems that base level of mindfulness is quite often a small bit higher. Otherwise weekend sucked and I am eating very fast and thinking about future a lot. Negatives Quit 5:00AM waking up for quite few days after about 4 streak. Today I am going to try again and I am going to sleep at something like 21:35 which is very very good. Positives Quite some dreams. Low level of procrastination. In last week or so I played games only once and it was planned and then I just quitted and this is very good. If I have lot of things to do there is not way I would waste so much time. Also I executed some good intuition, I will watch the video soon enough again. Dragallur

43rd day: Enlightenment work 1 hour of SDS when I woke up at 5:00AM. I think I even felt asleep for a moment, I hope my body will adjust to this new schedule. Total of 80 minutes of Self-Inquiry splited up. Also another 65 minutes of SDS without break. During second SDS I realised that pain is just a pain, quite similar to ANY other emotion. I realised that there is no reason to feel hurt when you feel pain. That was cool. During self-inquir I was able to replicate the feeling and I wondered what is touch, What is touch really? It is so strange when you think about it. Lucid dreaming I will let it rest before something interesting happens. Writing dreams of course but I will see how I decide with LDing. Physics Had 1.5 hours of physics and math at school, cool.. in math we are doing integrals which is a bit ahead of what I do in Khan Academy but I understand it no problem. (This is only because I have two weeks with higher class, otherwise they just begun calculus in my class) Mindfulness In the shcool I was very mindful of my beliefs but then over day I was not so mindful. Negatives Little bit of procrastination.. I wonder how the elections will result. Positives SDS is great positive. I wrote with one of my REAL best friends with email. Its funny how he is basically on quite similar path discovering similar things as I do. Dragallur

What was its topic?

@future@bazera Yeah I think he stated somewhere that he will delete all links to the interviews.

42nd day: Enlightenment work I woke up at 5:00AM as planned and did 1 hours of SDS without basically single move! I also did 30 minutes of self-inquiry in school waiting on train and then when I got home I did the same time again. Just 20 minutes back I have realised that I was fooling myself about enlightenment. As somebody here said, it is way more tricky. I thought I was on the right path, doing my inquiry, meditating --> enlightenment coming soon! But its just belief system that I build up. Way better than normal ones so you can not see it so much but it is still ego delusion. So all the self-inquiry I did was leading up to this, it had to be done and I am back on the infinite crossroads after I checked one of the wrong ways. It is hard not to fool yourself in this matter. It is really all just belief system. Lets break this system down. Lucid dreaming Many times in the morning I almost caught the dream but it slipped again and again... Physics I did some experiments today and I wrote physics exam though I did not understand it and it was too hard for me anyway since I was in higher class. Mindfulness Better than on weekend but not good anyway. Negatives Mindfulness, LDing. Positives Otherwise quite well spent day, not much time at home on actualization but rest of the week will probably be better though tommorow I am going on workshop on some engineering stuff so that is going to be interesting. Dragallur

Good job with the lie video, I can relate to lot of these points you wrote down. Most of the time I just manipulate people to say what I want to hear or what I want them to ask, ego is master!

41st day: Enlightenment work I wanted to do 3 hours of SDS in the morning but I woke up late again so after I started I was interrupted because of breakfast after 2 hours. It went just about fine and I feel like I can do 3 hours, mind you, this is with changing positions. So after 2 hours in the morning I did 1 hour of self-inquiry afternoon and then 80 minutes of SDS again, this is record! After today, and some discussion here I will try to do more hardcore SDS. No moving whatsoever. I was today twice able to do 1 hour of nolotus position without break which is basically record and it is very good. I will use that to do super SDS tomorrow. Thanks for all of those that participated in my realising this Lucid dreaming I got up quite quickly so though I had dreams I forgot them immediately. Physics I did more Khan Academy, one tutorial plus something more. I also finished finally math olympiade except one task. Mindfulness Ok, I have just realised that I was not mindfull at all today. Negatives Watched part of movie but at least it was planned. Spent lot of time on forum well what can you do now? Positives No games. I was inspired to try to visualize what would happen if I played games and after one second of visualization I decided that I do not want to play it so I did not Nice productive day anyway! Dragallur

Makes sense then. The time for me is something like 40-45 minutes. You do motivate me to push it further

So you do it without a single movement? Do you quit SDS if you move? I got today basically for the first time to 60 minutes in the same posture though I moved couple of time definitely. I do this on the advice of Marc Schinkel (1000 hours of SDS journal) where he said that it is ok to move after long time or change position and after some practice you can finally do it without those little break. Amazing

@Huz No, you still have your personal life and there is nothing wrong with going to university. Just be aware of the culture, what it does to you and other people. Culture is not a bad thing, it is just a thing that you might want to know about and want to get detached from during your self-actualization journey.

I just finished my first one about culture and it is great indeed!

Not so different. I talked about it with some friends and they are quite similar to what is going up here (ok fine, it is lower level ). I was surprised a lot about how often the people here use laundry machine.. many times a week.. while in Czech my family did that once a week and it was great. Probably in Czech you will just find more people that stayed behind on this new hygienic movement.

I decided to do all the worksheets, today I watched the video about culture. When I was on seminar before I got to my host-family on my exchange year.. they talked about culture a lot and they tried to learn us some food "rituals" in Germany. I pointed out how stupid it is to do all of these things, it was kind of neurotic from me, anyway I was already very aware of culture and I already spend one year in USA so I might consider myself a bit multicultural already, here is the sheet: A Rant Against Culture – Worksheet: Instructions: Contemplate each question and write down your answers in as much length as the question demands. Write thoroughly. Be honest, accurate, and concrete. Which cultural groups, or sub-cultures, do I identify with? I identify with subculture of people on the self-actualization journey, more accurately those who wonder towards enlightenment. I also identify with vegetarians which I guess is culture too. Or rational people. Part of European culture. The benefits I get from identifying with these cultures are… I can learn more from the culture when I am part of it. It does not really matter much. If I would not be part of the cultures and did my own thing it would not change much, probably it would be better. I think that to certain extent rationality helpes in life a lot and I hold it as useful tool. I like European culture (to certain extent) and I think that it is cool that it is more liberal than lot of other. How has my culture bullied me, or suppressed my authentic self? I have to go into their educational system. I have to cling into some direction of beliefs, I do not think that meditation is considered as the best way to integrate in Europe. I have to wear certain clothing and people expect from me to do certain things like politeness to authority and so on. What norms have I picked up from my culture that I take completely for granted? Do not kill other people. You "should" be fateful in relationship as long as it lasts. (I am ok with multi relationships but I think that it would be good to let all the partners know) Cigaretts, drugs and so on are not good at all. When you go to social event you need to be properly dressed. (I do not take it for granted but people around do, this is thing I would like to get rid of competely) People should wear clothes when they go out. Partly even in house. In what ways is my culture limited, closed-minded, or dysfunctional? Rationalists often think that rationality is the end of the world. Vegetarians often think that they are superior to meat eaters. European culture is not enough opened to other cultures, has lot of dogma as mentioned above. In actualization you might waste your time on the culture and create actualization ego. These cultures have lot of false dichotomies, shoulds, and generally think that they are superior to other cultures and opinions, general problem. What values or ideals has my culture mechanically programmed into me? You need to get job. You need to get education. You value people close to you more than others. You love only your cult (family) You need to be honorable. What are all the ways in which cultures shapes my day-to-day lifestyle? I eat this and this for breakfast. I speak these and these things to people. I greet others. I am polite. I am somehow respective to teachers in school. I am trying to be on time. I feel guilty for not following things that people/culture expect from me. My culture believes that reality is the following ways… Physical reality exists I am the mind, body, name. There is no place for mysticism in seriousness. Anything at all exists. Human lives have more value than any other lives. Some things are bad and some are good. In what ways does my culture shape science or knowledge? My cultures influence science a lot and add new concepts into it. They basically rise new people to do it. My cultures go basically in one direction. The cultures I like the most are… Actualization. Zen seems quite cool to me. Some states like Bhutan seems cool too but I do not have knowledge about it. Other open minded or seemingly open minded cultures. The cultures I dislike the most are… Religious cultures. Deniers. (Denying 11th September, global warming, Moon landing, flat Earthers, creationists) Non democratic cultures like China. (What I think about it is not so simple) Extremists How have my cultural influences shaped my identity and self-image? As said few times, I strive for certain goals. I try to match my image some ideals that my culture made. I behave this and this way with people. I still think that I am Dragallur (not my real name :D) I think of myself as rational person. I cling to certain believes and its rooted inside me that they are part of me. How many cultures besides my own have I directly experienced? Big cultures only three. (The thing is that after some experience I know that it actually takes more time then one week on vacation to get to know culture)... USA culture for 1 year. German culture as of now for almost 2 months. Brazilian culture 1 month (that is weekest of them all) How did my culture come into existence? European culture is the culture of local people and I identify mostly with the stuff from 21st century, which means stuff that happened after end of USSR. Vegetarians are here for quite a long time I guess but I am not so connected with this one so I do not know. Rational people came out of philosophy where logic and rationality is needed. (As far as I know) Who would I be and what would my life look like without my culture? If I had no culture at all and did not create my own I would maybe be very open to things that other people do. Did not feel awkwardness for example. Did not care about what others think. Freedom. Wow, this is quite interesting to do, really encourage you to try it Dragallur (I do not read the posts after myself before I publish them so there might be some things strange)

Hi, this is another self-inquiry.. lets see how it goes: Who am I? The thought says that I am not body, thought, mind or anything I can come up with. Why? Because I can not be something like that simply because these things are not either true or they are not stable. Who am I then? Asking this question only awakes another thoughts. Who does not want these thoughts? A thought says that it does not want them. So I am not a thought? Nope. Aha.. To whom do these thoughts arise? Nobody. There is nobody to be found whom they arise to. Who says so? This is not backed up by evidence much. Those are only thoughts, no other "entity" was detected. Only thoughts, thats why. I can not even say if Self is stable since I do not know what it is like. I can not say anything, because I am not even saying anything. These thoughts just appear on the screen. "I" have seen that many times. Thoughts observing thoughts and trying to get out of bubble in which they are stucked forever. Which is usually only few seconds at most since then they disappear. I thought could disappear like this too. But too many things are seemingly connected with it. I do, I like, I play, I learn... stuff and thoughts. This me is no different than anything else. Anything else also has consciousness. As Alan Watt says, if you knock stone it will answer with noise. To us, primitive type of consciouness but still. Arent humans just answering to things around? Why somebody calls this label, name, the body moves or speaks back. When it touches hot pane it will jerk and make a sound. Kind of predictable consciousness when you take it like this. Not very different from stone. Since there is nobody that would really identify with this body and if somebody exists, he is just everything... STOP Too many assumptions and I am trying to outrun my progress towards something I have heard from others. Who did? A thought. Thought says I. That is ok. It is not true but it is ok. Lost in thoughts. Who is lost in thoughts? Am I? There is nobody to be lost in thoughts. There is also nobody to get enlightened. These are all false. Of course they are. It seems so true but yet, ultimately this is not the way. Who says so? It makes sense so just shut up. Shuted up for some time, then helped cooking dinner. "I" thought all the time that it was "me" doing it. It is ok. I was listening to hang drums at the start of the continued session. I got very sucked up by it. Am I sucked up by what is going here, in physical reality? But I can not step back to somewhere like with the music. It feels like that. Maybe the "I" is not supposed to because it even can not. Maybe it does not exist and it can not do anything. Who am I? Am I asking this question? This question is being asked. To who is it addresed? Me, the thoughts? Which means not truly me. Thats why the question stops working. I have to search otherwise. When thought arises I ask to whom, and who is I. What a plan when I even think I do not exist. I do not really think it. It is just a concept anyway, not of any value, it is not worth to cling to it, not that I could do anything about anything. About clinging. I have to let go of letting go but even that is impossible. Any action is impossible, that is the hard truth of determinism. Truth? So it is part of reality? I think so. What the hell is this all. There is no I existing. It is only so developed consciousness that responds with thoughts to things happening around. This is based on the first self-inquiry insight I had couple of months ago, I thought it is useless at that time. Great. Time. Ego thing. There is no a place for things that happened in reality. Deal with that. I or anyone else do not exist. Yet we cling to all of these things that are here, we hold our beliefs so preciously we feel threatened when somebody does not agree with them. Beliefs, thoughts, memories, these things sum up the thing that we call "reality". Why do I write this? Is it even part of self-inquiry? Ahhh. I am still trying to get somewhere. But there is no road. No way I could actually do anything. Yet I am doing and hoping that the more hours I spent on this the sooner I will become enlightened. Isnt it perfect like this already? What do I need to change? I am looking for happiness, truth, end of suffering. There is nothing bad about these things but I think they are imperfect, which is ok. All is just fine, all is peaceful. Dragallur (I wrote this yesterday and I accidentaly closed the webpage but somehow it survived in cookies or something)

Funny, when I went to Germany for one year I decided to upgrade my hygiene a bit because here everybody showers and uses shampoo every day.. I made some compromise but still I would just love to let it be Hey cool, thanks for mentioning this, I will have to think about it to find out if I am not in that trap!

@quantum There is book about Ramana Maharshi's teachings called Be As Your Are. It is really cool and as Prabhaker said, he is basically the "founder" of todays self-inquiry so there is really nice description of the process. (I think it is available even for free as pdf.)

39th day: Meditation 60 minutes of SDS. Part of it was done in school, no problem. Self-Inquiry Went out walking and it was 90 minutes, quite interesting but nothing I can sum up in words. Basically very mindful and stronger inquiry then days before. Lucid dreaming No dreams. I forgot one. Quite ok with it. Tommorow I will finally try to wake up at 5:00AM. Physics Only had 1.5 hours at school, that is all. Mindfulness It kept hitting me in the morning which was cool but later on I was not so mindful and I ate very fast. There are some moments like when I walk around train station that I always get mindful because I remember that I was mindful last time, that is pretty cool indeed! Negatives I will try to solve somehow my procrastination. It was not so bad today but it simply annoys me a lot. Positives Great teeth routine. I feel proud of myself. Also nice mood throughout the day. People and relationships This is a thing I have been thinking about lately. When I planned to go here on the exchange year I really wanted to get to know new people and be more social. Now I am here and I did not find any friends after 1.5 months. I do not care. It is completely ok for me. I talk a lot with my host-brother who is kind of friend to me but that is all. I do not socialize much. It is also kind of hard for me. If I start to talk with some people I just feel like I would not make a good and deep friendship with them. It is just that I feel different. I think about things differently, think about different things and do not agree on most things people say. That is all ok. I just met some new people and I felt like the conversation was so shallow, I do not want to talk about Trump, I do not want to talk about how the school system is bad. All these things have been discussed 50 times over and over again and everybody just things the same thing anyway. So thats it. I am not really finding some new people here. If I really wanted to I would probably find somebody eventually, but.. others except me to find some friends here, I guess I will disappoint them, or maybe not who knows. Dragallur

38th day: Meditation 60 minutes. I will defintely do longer session soon. Meditation is great. Self-Inquiry Not good again. Did not have so much time. We will see how weekend goes, there will be needed some rewamp. Lucid dreaming Two dreams. Quite good and I have not slept long time. Physics Todays classes were great. Had 3 hours of physics in school, we did some electron tubes and I wrote some things on the math olympiade. Mindfulness Not very good. Just random few seconds mindfulness moments here or there. Negatives I was to dentist today. To put it shortly. My teeth are quite sensitive and Czech dentist system is not very good and my teeth are quite screwed up now. Interesting is how much relief came over me when I found out that it is not completely my fault. Well, what do I do? I have not much of protective layer and I do have places where cavities could very easily form. I got pretty depressed after I found out. Now I am relatively ok. I do not want to have teeth screwed up so soon. I will keep track here of strong teeth routine. 2 times a day brushing as always but doing nothing else during it! Also using dental fluss, making sure to keep teeth clean after food.. man I have done it always, I do not eat sweet much though I eat lot of bread.. we will see. I do not want to have more problems with this. Bad mindfulness and self-inquiry. Positives I survived all of this negative stuff way better than I thought. I already wrote it to my mum too which is cool. I kind of fear of completely dont caring about physical reality and what happens in it. I am not ready yet, but one day it will come. Right now I have healthy fear of my teeth and health, it will work, I wont underestimate it again! I did not mention yesterday that something interesting happened to me, I was just reading journals of Marc Schinkel where he had amazing experience, check it out and the journal of quantum (cool journal too ). I felt very good, Marc's stuff was simply beautiful and then I saw in quantum's journal how there are other people that have basically the same issues as me which nowadays does not happen very often. I felt so happy and in the moment, couple of tears appeared even on my eyes. It was beautifull, thanks. Dragallur

37th day: Meditation 60 minutes SDS as usual though I had to break it because somebody wanted something. I am creating this plan to do long sessios again. Self-Inquiry It is kind of crappy last days. I will do it more mindfully next time. I try to do it through eating or something like that but it is not a good approach at all. Lucid dreaming 1 dream, yesterday 2. Quite nice. I am now writting them in school which is cool since it saves up some time. Physics Some Khan Academy, finished all math olympiade problems succesfully! Now the difficult part, I have to write how I did it in German Mindfulness Quite good today actually. Had some moments with very good mindfulness and it took me a long time to eat lunch .. Positives Good mood. I have realised couple of days back how much I have changed. Nowadays I am basically thinking about the 5 things above, mostly then physics and generally enlightenment. Its like 90% of my time.. interesting. Also I wrote post on my blog today which I am for some reason proud of. Negatives Procrastination. Plans Try out interesting sleep schedules. Start to do visualizations. Think about The Grand Project! Dragallur

Wow, this is beautiful...

I have just noticed that your style is quite similar to that of YT channel Practical Psychology.. I guess you are taking inspiration from it right?

34th day: Meditation 60 minutes SDS before lunch. Another 60 minutes in afternoon! I felt like I really want to do the other 60 minutes so I did. Very steady but I was not able to hold nolotus for the whole time. It was hell, but cool. Self-Inquiry 94 minutes during the play of Settlers of Catan. Interesting how I got caught by the game. Its been long time since I had these reactions. I like how when I do things like play board games I step few months back in my development, but that is ok Lucid dreaming If I want to continue I will have to work more on this. No dream tonight though I went to sleep very late. Physics Lot of math today. Good job really. I figured it out. I will just boost up my math skills extremely as Neil deGrass Tyson says and then I will understand astronomy more. I did some things but I always got stuck on advanced (spherical) trigonometry, integrals, multiple derivations and so on. I plan to learn these things on high level and then return to it! Feeling very good about it. Mindfulness Again, not much. I was quite mindfull during my second meditation but I ate fast and so on, as usually, tommorow is school and I have chance to do it better! Negatives Low mindfulness. Lucid dreaming. Procrastination. Positives Lot of meditation. Math. Feeling good, interesting board game from which I have learned something. Watched 2nd part of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was way better than yesterday. Nice relaxation when you plan it from the start of the day and it is not unplanned procrastination on which you are angry. Dragallur

How long is it since you have started all of this stuff (meditation, enlightenment).. I mean, you are still on university right?