Pallero

I finally got the book about a week ago and started practicing. So far I've been doing only the preparatory exercises. I will report back in a few weeks.

@see_on_see Wow, good for you!

@Aimblack Thanks for starting this thread. I'm contemplating on doing a retreat in a few months, so this was very helpful.

Once my book arrives, I'll be happy to post some progress reports! In the meantime have been practicing some alternate nostril breathing and spinal breathing for a month. The only difference I notice is that at the beginning it was a little difficult and now it's a lot easier.

Are you sure about that? What is the subconscious mind? Where in your direct experience can you find it?

It's probably one of those ideas that you cannot understand with your mind. You have to experience it through enlightenment.

The muscles on my legs hurt from squatting. How do I observe the pain in the body?

In my experience focusing on everything at once doesn't work. But what's even more important is to ask yourself why you have the need to fix everything in the first place. Acceptance is a huge part of self-development. When you accept your situation as it is, self-development becomes much easier. Intuition will tell you what to work on. So don't fix. Accept.

@Power OMG, what a mindfuck!

I think he means that there is no your body. There is a body or sensations that comprise what you think or as the body, but there's no you inside the body or controlling the body. Life is living itself. @Joseph Maynor

I just go as far as I can until I get so much resistance that I can't go on any longer. Then I switch.

Probably not enough time. I do it until I feel like I can safely say that it's not working for me.

Me too! I've always been this way but recently I've begun noticing it, because I've become more aware. I don't stop it when it happens. I just keep hoping that all awareness is curative. Anyway, it makes me feel really bad, and I also read somewhere that it's a type of an eating disorder. It's so awful when I see myself experience an emotion so difficult that I cannot deal with it and I get this craving to stuff my face so that I can numb it. Sometimes I've managed to stop myself from eating and what happens is usually I have a panic attack.

Ok, thanks for your answer! I still don't really understand it, but I guess maybe it's something to experience, not understand.

But so what if they get bored? It's not your job to entertain everyone, or is it? Whoever gets bored can just leave. True friends will stay. They won't mind.

@nick96 That's interesting. Thanks!

What others said, and also practice mindfulness throughout your day, no matter what you happen to be doing.

I have an additional question about the video. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what Leo said about waking up being the same as literal death. Can anyone please explain this to me? To me, literal death is the death of my physical body. But physical bodies of enlightened people are clearly still functioning. I understand that their self is gone, but how is that literal death? I previously assumed that enlightenment was more like, well, waking up from a dream! But not death! What am I missing? What have I misunderstood?

Wasn't Buddha a rich kid?

If you start acting as a beginner, you can be a beginner. You're allowed to be scared. You'll get better. So you don't have to be doing any awfully difficult stuff yet anyway. I believe that we should definitely do things that we want to do but are scared to do. Those are the things that really grow us. I had this experience with ballet. I had been wanting to try ballet dancing ever since I was three. But my parents told me that I was too big (boned). That they only let small girls dance ballet. It was true in Russia where my parents are from. But then we moved to another country, and there anyone could basically start almost any hobby at all. Any kind of men and women could certainly try ballet. But that didn't reassure me, because I had a limiting belief. I can't because I'm not small enough. The class will be filled with small girls. Everybody will stare at me and talk behind my back. I'll embarrass myself. I also had another limiting belief. Ballet is really tough and you have to be really strong and in great shape to dance it, and I'm not. I didn't even let myself think about really enrolling a dance class, until I took up personal development and realized that I wanted to challenge myself (big time!) and do something that scared me a lot. I signed up to a ballet class one night in a rare episode of almost psychotic "fuck it" courage. I was 26 years old, after 23 years of wanting and not letting myself. After signing up, for two weeks before it started, I wanted to cancel. I felt physically sick. I was so frightened. But I told myself that I had already signed up. All I have to do it show up. "It's not a big deal, it'll be fine..." Et cetera. I had some ballet stuff to buy, like shoes and a leotard, and I tell you, it was so difficult that I can't even describe it with words. Walking into a dance clothes shop - huge challenge. And when I saw myself in that leotard, I cried the tears of shame. I looked horrible and my stomach wanted to climb out and run away at the thought of other people seeing me like that. Long story short, I made myself go and ended up dancing ballet for a year, before I quit. There were others like me in that class. No one knew how to do anything. I was actually better than some. And I started to progress very quickly. Maybe I threw myself into the practice a bit too much. I practiced in my free time to make sure that I would know all the moves and positions very well. I really didn't want to fail. Inevitably, failure did come my way. After several months of practice, we were ready to dance some choreography, and I was shit!!! I couldn't do it at all. Everybody could keep up but me. And it wasn't the kind of place where I could ask the teacher to show me the dance after class. I didn't dare ask anyone else either. I was good at individual moves but bad at linking them together. It was humiliating also, because I had danced other dances before and never had much trouble with choreography until then. I guess it was my really poor balance that made it so difficult for me. My whole focus went to trying not to fall over when standing on my tip toes. I could not make myself remember what move would come next. Anyway, by that time I had overcome most of my fear and had I really wanted to I could have worked on myself and continued with the ballet. But I ended up quitting, because having danced once a week for a year, the teachers were saying that we needed to up our dance lessons to three per week if we wanted to keep up, and I wasn't motivated enough. Ballet was never about the actual dance for me. It was more like an obsession with something that someone told me that I couldn't do, and proving them wrong. So I was negatively motivated there. Of course it didn't last. That's my personal story. If acting it what you want, I strongly recommend going for it no matter how scary it feels. At age 75, Henry Fonda still used to throw up each night before a stage performance! You probably won't, haha. And even if you do, you really can get used to throwing up. I was on these meds once, that were supposed to make me quit smoking, and I threw up every morning. For the first week, it was disgusting, but then it was just a part of my life.

@captainamerica Not sure, but I think it means that energy is flowing through your 6th chakra. It's opening. Great!

It's a wonderful idea! People in the US are so lucky! I normally live in Europe, but this year I'm in New Zealand. Maybe I could fly to the US to attend one of those gatherings. Who knows? Anyway, rock on!

Boring is cool. Reframe your fear of being boring and you'll be fine. Why is boring bad?

Yes. It does. In a way, I'm very fortunate, because I've been an outcast since I was a child. I was always different, never had many friends. Always enjoyed time by myself, doing my own art and things. I also happen to live in a culture where solitude is kind of a norm so it's easier for me. I don't know where you live, but I imagine it must be very hard. If you want, you can make it easier by forcing yourself to do things alone that scare you, such as going to a restaurant, to the movies, travelling... If you haven't done so already, this will build your self-confidence quickly. But it will be painful anyway. Actually, I find it quite easy to be alone when no one ever understands me anyway. Anytime I try to socialize, people get bored talking to me or whatever, because I'm so different. So I actually end up wanting to be alone!

@Deep Thank you for your insights. I think it's wise to recognize the flaws and limitations in whoever you happen to follow. It helps to put their message in a context and know how to apply the wisdom they provide. I personally wish Leo himself would talk more about his own limitations, to help us make wiser decisions about the messages. For example, in his latest video, Leo said that the path to enlightenment/self-actualization will look different for every person. Depending on their personality different things will resonate. And that his perspective is just one of the many. Having heard that, I found myself headdesking, because how come I never realized that before?! Now I know why I'm not having progress in this particular area in my life, and why I had huge progress in that other area. I wish I had tools to desipher what techniques really work and resonate with me and which are a dead end. Not to say that I don't follow other people apart from Leo. I do. But I find it difficult to understand how it all fits together, and there's SO much material! And most of it is just dead ends.