Telepresent

I've been toying around posting this for a few days because a) I'm not sure how to say it, and b) I'm not sure what the point of saying it is. So I guess I'm posting this to get it out of my system. I hope it's of use! I've spent a long time fighting with the question of what a thought is. Whether a series of words, or sounds, or images, or a combination, what the fuck is going on there? I've spent a lot of time deconstructing my mind, to the point of recognising it as an intricate, complex, and super-fast pattern-recognition and future-predictive mechanism, which loves to define and make rules, because that's what it needs to operate. So how does that tie into thought? Well, what relation do I have to thoughts? I have the sound, the words, the image... And BANG, there it is: My mind is just another sense. My mind is not and cannot be 'me', if it is recognised by 'me'. Like sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, propreoception, temperature, everything else: my thoughts are merely the manifestation of a pre-existing mechanism below (or possibly within) some form of conscious awareness. They are, in other words, smaller than the consciousness awareness. And as all my thoughts are the only thing that constantly speaks, defines, and affirms "I... I... I..." over and over... that gives me some food for consideration.

Thanks for this response. A lot to dwell on

NO! Fuck that shit I don't give a shit about what Leo considers an 'appproptiately' considered the fae Your asking means That you need to pay attentiont to what the routines and rituals around you are and ask why you're playing them out

@awareemptiness Have you ever hear of the phrase 'Kill the Buddha'? The idea is that you should not treat the teachings of the buddha as sacred. Instead you should try to find the things the he was trying to find. In the same way, Leo is offering a perspective. It is limited, it is filtered through his particular life experiences, his particular cuture, his particular all kinds of shit, before it even reaches your computer, at which point you start to filter it through your particular life experiences, your particular cuture, your particular all kinds of shit... So, in answer to your question: fuck us and fuck us what we think. It's meaningless. Do what you need to do, pursue what you need to do, and if that contradicts a video Leo posts, so the fuck what?

Nice. I'm playing around with and exploring this at the moment: so if you don't mind, I'd like to play with ideas of truth for a little bit. What is your perspective on what truth is? Mine is very direct-experience based, even if it involves uncomfortable and difficult emotions, but it feels lie you have a slightly different perspective? I'd like to toss the frisbee around if you're game?

@philosogi Perhaps, I don't know. I've never tried to masturbate myself into higher consciousness. BUT I feel like some responses here are a bit 'guilty pleasure', which immediately means people are filtering both their experience and their expression of it Personally, I've read books which have suggested orgasm should be the gate to some enlightening whatever, and all they've done is made me think, worry, and judge more; and experience less.

@Grant6 You've just listed all the problems and all the questions you know you need to address Breathe Let yourself listen to them, rater than be overwhelmed by them. I would also consdier addressing them through writing. Just write the question, and keep writing whatever response your mind come up with. Then keep going.

Hello Spicy Pickles! I hope you're not too freaked out by this interview. I basically want to point out that you're wrong. You know you're wrong. People may talk about their 'moment', but nobody actually has an out-of-nowhere-sudden-success thing happen. There's certainly no exam where you're expected or asked to justify the cost of your degree. So even if your family cares, and even if it's very important in your day-to-day life, let me promise you that we are thinking bigger-picture. Play the long-game with us. Nobody wins. Nobody fails. We just keep playing the game. And when we feel defeated, we pic ourselves up, and somehow find reserves we didn't know were there, and put them on the table But back to @spicy_pickles: what situations to you want to appear confident in, and where do you feel least confident?

@Lorcan Hello! I'm sorry, the answer I wrote below (while relecant to you) was more about me. What a boob. The only answer I can offer right now, reading your shit, is that no, you are not procrastinating longer. Procrastination is important, so long as you know when you are doing it and for how long it should last. What's been talked about above is really useful. But if you haven't explored it yet: have you asked your parents this question yet? Because they are probably in a better position to help you work out how to maximise your time, and I imagine they will be thrilled with a teen who wants to work out how to split his time effectively between health/family/& mental health. It may just be worth telling them you're conscious of these things. I expect you parents will be thrilled you're thinking about your ongoing relationship with them

@SimpleTruth Hello Peter! Nice to hear from you - great to hear your story! How do you think we can help/support each other? Is there anything you want help from from us? As someone who is playign around with ideas of self-identification, I would love to hear about any radical shifts you're willing to share over the last 24 hours!

Right. Ok. Everyone's having a big laugh on this thread (and so have I, reading it) but there's an important underlying suggestion Most of these comments seem to come from embarrassment, or escalating a joke that is based on implicit embarressment. Of what? There are actually a lot of ligitimate questions raised on this board. Yet most of the responses feel emotional, not considered, because it's a laugh. And I agree, it's been very funny to read. I've laughed out loud several times. But... I'm here for a purpose. There's stuff here which is useful for our purpose, if we can get over our childish responses. Let's have a go. Sex and spirituality: what do we think?

Cool. Great. (remember I am no expert) My suggestion would be that you take several complimentary approaches. A suggestion would be a rotating process of SDS, some kind of embodied meditation (such as vipassina), and some kind of processing (such as spiritual-autolysis or self-inquiry) which allows you to follow up on how you're feeling, and process it with regard to your life and circumstances. We sometimes forget there's no race. It's perfectly possible to spend a little while meditating, self-inquiring, and just working yourself out, before you bother with the bigger questions. If that's what you want to do, do that. Don't feel you have to jump into no-self or enlightenment just because someone else says so. It's your life. It's your experience. Make it what you want. If you want to lay in on Sundays, lay in on Sundays. You're allowed.

@Gabor Bornemissza Hello! I'm not enlightened, so take what I say as assumptions from someone who's been playing in this creek at little longer. What I've noticed so far is that identification and negative-identification change. So I may lose the potential payoff from something that might be the cause of great anticipation, but I'm saved from feeling like shit if it all goes wrong. In exchange, I have a MUCH MUCH greater appreciation for what is happening right now. I can't begin to explain to you how much of what actually IS right here and right now I have sqandered by worrying, remembering, projecting and remorse-ing. I still get hit by the positive, and by the negative: the difference is that I can experience the negative and recognise it as a feeling, and a meaning, without then dwelling on it for the rest of the night. That seems a decent trade-off for not getting excited over things I'm going to anyway.

@RossE You know the film The Matrix? Imagine, once you woke up from the Matrix, that someone inside it asked you whether or not you could return to believing in the reality the the Matrix provides. Even when you're inside the Matrix, you know it is false: you may experience it sensorially, but ultimately you know its falseness. The difference is that the jumps we hit during this exploration are not so extreme as that presented in the film, and also go further that that presented in the film. The movie provides an example of one-jump-as-all. From my experience so far, it's lots of mini-hops, knowing that there are many mini-hops coming, even if I don't know what they are yet! (I'll also point out that, at this point, I have not experienced 'no self', or 'unity consciousness', or anything else that anyone else might call an 'enlightenment experience'. At the same time, I am extremely aware that I have stripped away vast swathes of my ego and, as a result, my perspective on what the world is has permanently changed - in extrememly funadamental ways, and that I don't need to have had a transcendental experience to recognise that my perception a year ago was completely false. So if you're worried about experiences of no-self... don't worry too much. There's more fundamental work that needs doing.)

@rush Hello! Do you have an objective in meditation? Are you aiming to calm your mind, or to disidentify from ego, or to reach enlightenment, or something else? The reason I ask (and I'll point out here that I am definitely not a meditation expert) is that my experience with different methods of meditation suggests that they offer different experiences, resonances, and responses in/from me. So I find SDS incredibly powerful, but in the sense of seeing how fucking relentless ego is in terms of screaming at my body. I find vipassina incredibly powerful, in the sense of seeing how I have no control whatsoever over my thought process. I find embodied meditations incredibly powerful, in noting how much embodied sensory data I usually filter out. I find breath counting incredibly powerful, in the sense that my focus drifts at the drop of a hat. And so on. I'm always wary about suggesting that "x technique = y result", because we're all within our own subjective experience, and I think the great thing about this work is that you get to customise it. Which isn't actually something you read about that much. But look at it this way: you know what you want better than anyone else here. You know what you experience better than anyone else here. You may look to us for suggestions or advice, but you are ultimately always making the decisions. So take a breath and listen to what you think is best for you. Keep exploring, keep learning, but also keep filtering through your own sense of right/wrong, helpful/un-helpful.

Great! Congratulations on recognising this stuff in yourself: it's bloody hard to do, and you've achieve something fantastic, so well done! As you suggest, though, you've hit the tip of an iceberg: if you are interested in keeping moving forwards, all I can say is keep going! You've done good, now keep it up! Question everything, including the realisations you've had, and keep us in the loop!

Hey @100rockets - wondering if you've had any thoughts since starting this thread? You mention having written a plan with more urgent matters: given a few days' reflection, how's that looking?

Further

Glad to be of help! I've played around with all sorts of systems, and software, and self-management techniques. Most of them I've dropped because they just weren't right for me. But those that did stick have made all the difference. The more you can try out, the better sense you get of what works for you, and what doesn't. That's actually a large part of the battle: people try to sell you on "do this one thing and xyz", but that thing may just not work for you. Work out what does, and you're in a much better place. And you can only work that out by trying as much as you can, and learning from your experiences

@abrakamowse Learning to use Excel properly was a game-changer: it's allowed me to make my own calendars, schedules (short-term, mid-term, long-term), track finances, all sorts. Really good for practical admin. There have been times when I've needed to be really strict on myself in terms of how I use my time, and in those times I've sometimes made intricately detailed personal calendars - down to the half-hour - of what I'm going to be doing each day in the coming week, from waking to sleeping (including putting in down-time!) I find that really helps break down the sense of 'so much to do where do I start?' into something attainable. I'm well practiced enough in that now that I can do 'softer' versions these days (I just listed the stuff I need to do today, in priority/chronological order, in a basic Word document, which is basically the same thing but less detailed). I like electronic formats though: as you get stuff done you can either change its colour, or delete it, which can feel very rewarding. For one of the major projects (4+ years) I've been working on, I made myself a time-sheet in Excel: I worked out how many hours per week I should be doing, how much holiday I would allow myself per year, and then on a day-by-day basis track how many hours I'm doing. That way I can see when I'm doing well, and when I'm falling behind. I'm attaching a demo version with some random figures thrown in at the top of the first sheet so you can see what I mean. And, when all else fails, having a commitment to other people does wonders! Deadlines where people expect to see something, or for you to have produced something, or you need to have a meeting to update your progress, or present your results... depending on the discipline, this may or may not be so easy to incorporate (it's sort of built into the work I'm doing) but it can really light a fire under you when otherwise you wouldn't bother! These things need to be specific and deadlined, though: there's an odd phenomenon where telling people - say, your friends - that you're going to do something makes you less likely to do it, so watch out for that! Lord of Time demo.xls

Maybe

I will also point out that there have been points where one thing is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Such as when I was suicidal, or when I had to stop drinking but couldn't. Sometimes, dealing with one thing supports the rest. But if you feel like focus on one thing is damaging to another area, that's something to keep an eye on

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" - Helmuth von Moltke This is very, very important. Plans are crucial. The recognition that plans will fall apart, and you will be scrambling to hold them together, moreso. Yes, I have plans that constantly need re-assessing and re-addressing on a day-by-day, week-by-week, and so on basis. But this is where the difference between strategy and tactics really comes into the fold. Strategy is long-term, and any approach to it is legitimate. Since I was 14 or so, I knew I wanted to work in the theatre. I'm now 31, and just about at a point where I might be able to make a living as a professional director. Between then and now were multiple education streams, jobs, opportunities for learning and experience, massive risks, and points where I was balled up on the floor crying because it felt like my life and my dreams were over. What has been the one constant, that has held me on track through all that? A target: I want to work as a fully-paid theatre-maker. That shit isn't easy, and it's a whole different thing to say "I can live with that" when you're 16, than when you're 26. Now, for the first half of my years since leaving university until now, I did fuck all to achieve this goal. I had no strategy, no idea of how I was going to approach my dream, just this sense that somehow I needed (and deserved) it. Then, when I was 24, I suddenly had the realisation that if I didn't make it happen, it never would. So I made a play. Since that moment, everything I have done has been based on one question: "how does this help me get there?" I've turned down and left jobs because they haven't helped. I've taken jobs which involve stupid amounts of travel because they give me experience. I've pushed myself through those many, many, many moments of crying on the floor, because I've somehow understood that I just could not stop. And I've made really, really stupid mistakes. I look back now, and I recognise how many of my tactics could have been way, way better. But you know what else? I look back and see a life that 24-year-old me would be profoundly jealous of. And as I've achieved, my strategic goals have grown, and changed. Become more ambitious. Continue to grow. I'm not sure what my point is, other than to say you lament slow results. I know it doesn't help you right now in the 'wanting' stage, but slow results are still results, and very very important. Ultimately, if you feel like you neglect an area (such as health or relationships), I would call that bad strategy. Don't neglect the long term in pursuit of short-term satisfaction, and keep your eye on the goal(s).

I'm not sure that's true (self-depricating humour tends to be based on the mutual recognition of flaws, not other people laughing at your flaws), but even if it were it's not your responsibility to try to deal with other people's ego strength

Since I was a teenager (we're talking a good 15-20 years ago now ) I was in various stages, levels, and interpretations of depression. I've been through many different treatments, and a couple of years ago FINALLY hit the recognition that I was responsible for dealing with this once and for all. So I started looking for all the self-help material that I could, which led me to Actualized.org. I started watching at the point where he was still posting videos of 10-20 minutes, and I devoured them by the bucket-load. The thing that came across from listening to HUNDREDS of these videos, was the inescapable conclusion that this was a lifestyle choice: I was either going to dedicate my life to dealing with my bullshit, or I wasn't. So I did. The thing that's always been critical in Leo's videos, though, is his insistence that you do the work for yourself. That's what really helped me. After years and years and years of looking for a magic book, or website, or therapy, these videos finally made me buckle up and recognize that if I want to change, I need to change.