Mal

@ProblemSolving So, just to reflect back to you what I hear you saying: why "THE HELL" should you learn to be independent of the people in your environment while they are not living upto your expectations?

@cetus56 My friend, I'm sorry, but this has gone slightly over my head. I have no clue what this is about, and I wouldn't like to address it either. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that you're not the only person who uses the terminology of "no-self" Till next time... Mal

@ProblemSolving Hi there... I'm not sure what the problem is here. This sounds like regular family dynamics. I'm also not sure why you can't offer to pull your weight a little and hep out? It might be good for you to learn to tolerate members of your family while keeping everybody happy and smoothing the politics like an adult. You used the word blame. That's a bit strong isn't it? Are you sure you are being "blamed" for something? Or do you think your mother is just voicing her opinion? When your mother said "wait till you're in the position where you will need help from others" it sounds to me like that is something she should be saying to a 7 year old. But you are doing your Batchelors, right? Why is she treating you like a small child? Are you possibly behaving like one and your behaviour and attitude is provoking her to treat you like that? What will it take to keep everybody happy for a while? It's no big deal a short trip for groceries.

No... Enlightenment is the source of the highest amount of happiness Not meditation itself

@governor Who says we don't feel the need to change stuff? My thing is that I stay out of things that don't concern me. Yes I feel what I feel, but life has taught me that some people don't even want our help. What would happen if we did help somebody? For example, some people are not ready for help, don't want it, wouldn't know what to do with it anyway, go and make the same mistakes time and time again... Nothing is to be changed, even our willingness to try to change it. Life is happening and it needs to happen. Now ,not everybody will agree with this because everybody is at different stages in their development and some are still fighting the "good fight" whatever that means to them. The rude cashier has their karma to deal with. It's their business that they are rude. They need to do that because that is what happened. Imagine if you never made a mistake in your life, would you learn anything? So I let people make their mistakes. It's part of their growth and development. How do you know the kid getting bullied at school isn't going to learn and grow from his/her experience? Emotional maturity is being able to let life do its thing while feeling it all, the effects of it all and while, yes, wanting to change it at the same time. Some things I do try to change: If I do something to stop somebody it's because I let life live through me. Other times I hold back because life holds me back. For some reason I know intuitively some things are best left alone. Some things are not "bad" even if my mind labels it so. Some things that appear bad on the surface turn out to be justified when examined closely. Just the other day I saw a guy getting aggressive at his better half in a public place. Years ago that kind of scene would have disgusted me. But it turns out that she was provoking the situation and ended up paying her karmic debt in front of a crowd of people. So who am I to get emotionally involved in life living life? My point is, when we learn to just let go, get out of the head and come to our senses a different kind of wisdom takes over. I'm relieved not to be such a humanitarian anymore, because in retrospect the days where I got angered at every human rights violation were a real drag, and in all honesty I was a bit of a moralistic control freak. Thank God for spiritual awakening! Mal

You're welcome. Hang in there, yeah? -Mal

@Teags Yes, it's interesting how distancing from the self gives us more insight into how it's the self that is creating the problems, rather than the symptoms themselves. If it resonates with you give it a go. Lots of people have had huge life changing psychological shifts during Genpo's Big Mind retreats. He recommends working with it for 5 years and then moving on to more advanced practices. Big Mind Big Heart

I tell Him to go fuck himself about 3 times a day. Minimum!! If you are interested, this is Zen Buddhism teachings

LOL It's better! (If there is such a thing better than cheesecake?!!) No, you can't think of everything as a manifestation of your True Self until you have had an experience of the Absolute. This is why we must taste it first. This is why I said it won't make sense to you at the moment. However, the reason I dropped it into my original advice for you is that you were struggling to accept reality, but accepting reality first means we accept that we don't like certain parts of reality! Because our resistance is also part of reality! Always work with your inner reality first and as you develop you will be able to integrate more of the outer reality. I made these distinctions so that you can see how acceptance of reality unfolds in stages. We don't have to be at one with the universe now, we can only be who we are, so we start there The you isn't testing you, the Divine does not discriminate or answer prayers like the God of our monotheistic religions. It could be said that growth is a process of becoming "one" with reality gradually and learning to co-operate with it. For example, at our moment of death it could be said that we have grown and developed sufficiently if we are at peace with the inevitable. If we're sorrowful and full of regret we are still immature and resisting and didn't really grow up during our lifetime. From the perspective of the Absolute everything happening on this planet "is as it is". Grace is being able to co-exist with reality even if it hurts like hell. There is no escaping reality, a lot of teachers try to hide in the Absolute bliss states. These people are not enlightened according to the wisdom traditions. Maybe you have some cultural conditioning about what the Divine really is? This might sound crazy, but if you think about it, it's more real than trying to create a utopia: Consider this: How do you really know, as an individual ego, that the suffering and separation on this planet is always completely negative? Some suffering helps people grow into better human beings. Wars have been fought and countless lives destroyed for modernity and freedom of speech. How can we as people decide what is best for the world? We don't. We only have our limited perspectives. And even if we all got our wishes granted, it would never work, because one persons idea of heaven is different to another persons. Doesn't this sound more Truthful than a utopia?

Sort of The more you develop the more you will understand that those acts are manifestations of your own True Self. It will hurt more, but bother you less. In Zen there is a path to full Enlightenment called "Tozans Five Ranks". It explains what full enlightenment is, which is not Absolute Truth bliss state, but an integration of the Relative and Absolute - which means that this relative world with all it's separation and suffering IS a manifestation of the Absolute, or Divine, God Head (whatever you want to call it). It also means that there is nothing outside of you that can truly harm you. It's all "you". But first we need to taste Absolute Truth

@Vishal Do you fancy doing a review for us?

@Taurus Hi, In a psychological sense having strong personal boundaries means being clear on what your preferences and values are, what behaviours you will and won't accept from yourself and others, and being able to effectively communicate all of this without crossing another's personal boundary (hurting them) if they happen to cross a line. Personal boundaries can only really be communicated through assertiveness. If we try to use passive aggressiveness we, by default, violate our own and other people's boundaries. Mal

Accepting "reality" means accepting that you don't like something. We don't have to accept everything that is going on outside and that is not in accordance with our values. That stuff is for later on in your journey. Right now, if you cannot accept what is, accept your non acceptance. And stay away from nonsense that you don't resonate with. There is no utopia, there is only a situation in the future where we can change our relationship to what is because ultimately we are both light and darkness. This won't make any sense to you now, or to any of the "no-self" people trying to get rid of their ego's, but it is the truth. Take your time and follow your heart, you are developing wisely. Mal

@cetus56 Pardon?

@cetus56 The words I use to try to articulate the realization is: "This" Possibly not even "this", maybe "One Taste" is better? It's big from the perspective of ego when I remember the realization. However you have made me aware that size is just another concept. How about "Eternal"? Even "Eternal" is tainted with the idea of a never ending stream of time. It's not even that! I personally don't like "no-self" as it's not a very useful pointing out instruction in my experience. No self is only obvious from the perspective of the transcendent. It's pretty useless to say to a self that they don't exist. There is always a self, it's just a matter of which self we identify as.

@Huz88 Well yes, healthy skepticism comes online at orange, in my view. I'll draw broad generalisations here for the sake of discussing ego development, but blue just wants somebody else to give it answers, doesn't it? Organised religion is very blue. The problem here is Actualised.org is a Youtube channel first and foremost, so it attracts a lot of us looking for quick fixes, tips and techniques to get some kind of control back, or to feel better, shift a philosophy around to make one feel a little better. Nothing wrong with that and many people stop there. We don't really know what causes development through the stages. Integral suggest a cross training system, like I mentioned to you before I have a cognitive practice, a spirit practice and a shadow practice. Add physical practice's to that and we have a better chance of developing faster and more efficiently. Although practice's are helpful I believe that the crux of it all is just good old fashioned life experience. What's not working for us? And a desire to grow. It all starts with trying to find quick techniques, but dont you find that reality has this nasty habit of chipping away at us by reminding us we don't really know anything and that we have to start again with a new strategy? There's a great description for the Turquoise stage and how it views its life purpose: "Peace in an incomprehensible world" Seems to suggest that Turquoise is done with fighting the good fight and has just learned the hard way to co-operate with inner and outer reality as it is. There's a lot more to it than this, but my advice is just to stick with what you are doing and follow your heart. Go with what resonates until you're done with it. Transcendance happens in those moments where our old ways of coping and evaluation reveal themselves as obsolete and tired. P.S. Never let anybody tell you what to do, as in the lifestyle minimalism for example, never let a coach decide for us how to live our lives. If we prefer the rat race then do that until were done. Not that you would, but this is advice for anybody who thinks that Leo or any coach has all the answers.

@Huz88 Yeah, the system I use to conceptualise these phenomena is the "tiers" system. Altruism is a 1st tier perspective that as far as I can see begins at blue when the ego is subjugated in favour of taking a 2nd person perspective or "social" perspective. After that, altruism is then internalised and takes on an individual flavour, in that it is no longer a value imposed on one from the outside, but something that one feels called to as part of their internal moral compass. This is appropriate for these stages, orange exit and green. Yellow sees the concept of altruism is just a concept and feels altruism is actually a ball and chain around ones neck because altruism taken to extremes can be very marginalising. The beauty of ego development through the stages is that if done properly, upon exiting green we have access to altruism as a tool rather than a values system, in order to be able to more effectively speak the language of the first tier paradigms. Obviously my description is based on arbitrary symbols, but it's still a handy way of looking at what's going on in the psyche. Mal

@Huz88 Maybe @Leo Gura should do a video on the delusion of altruism? What do you think?

There is just "this". No time, it's all just one big dance happening.

For now think about this for a while. You might even want to do a quickie facilitation on yourself before you get home. Pick a voice (an energy). Let's say for simplicity sake "fear". You can facilitate yourself by asking to speak to the fear. Now identify as your fear. Own the energy. This means making Teags a 3rd person perspective (objectifying her) and now shifting into inhabiting the fear. Now let yourself say what you want to say from the 1st person perspective of fear. Then switch back to facilitator and ask fear what it's "job" is. As fear you will have to answer that your job as fear is to be afraid . Which it is! Switch between facilitator and fear and have a dialogue between the two of you. Bitch together about how Teags hates you and always wants rid of you. Complain and say what fear wants to get off its chest. What you are doing is integrating an energetic component of yourself while understanding that "Teags" is just another perspective. The more you facillitate and integrate voices the more you can see that "Teags" is just a concept that suppresses the totality of who you really are. Mal

Hi Mikey, I'm sorry to hear this.... Just looking at the words you used here it seems like you're attempting to get to a point where you shine the light of awareness on the whole party going on in the head and will be able to finally uncover it for what it is? The Big Mind method raises the awareness (that it's all just one big party) but does the opposite of objectifying the thoughts or making them "wrong". Sometimes a more effective way is to integrate thoughts and then transcend them. If you're interested, try to identify with a voice: Own the voice and you will be able to consciously become the voice. By doing this you instantly disarm the voice because you immediately understand that there is nothing outside of you that can hurt you. The way youre speaking in your post says to me that there is that there is a "you" and some thoughts are just happening "to you". For example, "you are a hostage of your mind". Generally it's not a problem making some space between thoughts and the observation of thoughts. But when this dichotomy becomes "real" what has happened is that one has merely unhealthily dissociated from the mind rather than healthily disdentified from it. From the perspective of dissociation it's hard to get a grip on the thoughts, because they seem to becoming from nowhere and even "outside". Those of us who suffer from low self esteem, or even episodes of suspicion, might imagine that somebody else is doing the persecuting. When in reality it's our own doing. Nervousness, anxiety happens when we believe something bad might happen in our environment. This is where owning thoughts come in handy. If dissociation has happened It's sometimes better to co-operate with a voice, welcome and take direct ownership of the voice (especially if we are not comfortable owning our own dark and self-punishing / sadistic voices). The illusiory nature of a voice becomes obvious as soon as we own it and understand that the punisher is inside our own heads in direct conflict with our own "positive" self. Maybe this technique will be useful to you as a slightly different way of transcending your own thoughts? If we practising healing the dichotomy between the observer and the observed we will quickly be able to see who in our environment is a hostage of their own mind and who is not. This way it makes it much easier to put ourselves in nourishing non toxic environments and attract better people into our lives. Mal

@jes Jes, I also think trying to apply secular ideas and techniques on top of a devout orthodox religious belief system is bound for failure. The two don't mix. Are there any therapists / counsellors in your religious tradition who are able to help you with these problems? Mal

@jes Hi jes, Your problems seem to be routed deeper than self actualization work. I strongly suggest you seek out a therapist, remove yourself from your toxic environment and work on challenging your fundamental beliefs. There are some issues in life that cannot be fixed by forums and books. Even the assumption that two weeks applying tips from a forum is going to correct a lifetime of personality development and enculturation is absurd. Please take responsibility for your own well-being. Mal

Resistance is the "ego" isn't it? But to co-operate with the ego and get it out of the way you can always identify AS resistance, speak from that voice (it has a voice and an energy) and transcend it. There is nothing in existence you cannot make an object and transcend. Whatever comes up allow it, identify with it, speak from its perspective. Mal