UnbornTao

@Something Funny Enjoyment seems to be a relationship or disposition towards events rather than a reaction or effect dictated by pleasurable circumstances. Take a look at your willingness to let this negative pattern go. If you're not willing, then enjoy it nevertheless, since you want it. You get to be a victim and to defend your position, or whatever it gets you. If you're generating it--experiencing it--it means you want it. Become conscious of what that's about and drop the assumption/s underlying the motivation to act in such a way. I hope this helps, good luck.

Your logic is foolish. To start with, don't take yourself so seriously. Enjoy life without needing things to be different from how they are now. You'd first need to allow things to be themselves, even one's resistance, and from that love and beauty come more easily to the forefront. So, it's fine—whatever you're going through is just a state. Let it come and pass. Then, you'll experience something else, and that is life for everyone. Enjoy the ride.

No point in keeping this thread up anymore. I suggest you first look into your own disposition to see what you can discover and transcend.

Your habitual impulses lead you down the same roads. Discipline is stopping that movement, creating a result that wouldn't naturally arise for you as a result of your habitual patterns.

I'd suggest there isn't a shift in perception because it's absolute. What shift would there be? Perception likely would go on as it is now. As a side effect, likely, but they do not share the same purpose, one is aimed at consciousness, the other at growing and healing. As the Buddha said, I'm paraphrasing, "I didn't gain anything by becoming enlightened". In a way, I also take that to mean "my experience didn't change." Afterwards, there might be a different relationship towards one's experience or a recontextualization, but I wouldn't know.

A whole week of crocodile meat for lunch.

Scene from The Last Samurai:

Yes. Even pursuing pleasure has a component of pain behind it.

I see healing as pertaining to the domain of transformation, but metaphorically, I guess you could call it that. I prefer becoming absolutely conscious. I'd imagine that even after direct consciousness there'd be some healing to do. So, we're talking about two things, not just one.

turn it on when needed.

It is foundational so definitely worth exploring.

Not even us humans are conscious.

I've heard that the word "meditation" originally comes from "med-", which means to heal. Therefore, the way I think of meditation is as a healing process, generating positive states, controlling one's mind, etc; it is not about direct consciousness. That'd better be called contemplation, which is intending to discover what's true about anything, with no particular ritual or cosmology behind it. That's the distinction I like to use. At the risk of oversimplifying: Pain is at the root of suffering, although the latter can more easily be seen through and to some degree, transcended Pleasure and pain are part of the same dynamic Bliss could be regarded as freedom from the pleasure-pain dynamic, so it could be a "natural state," although it is rarely experienced Understanding can be interchangeably used with insight, breakthrough, enlightenment and consciousness, depending on how you hold each of them

@Princess Arabia Disgusting.

Why would they think in ways similar to ours?

It is becoming conscious of your nature, what you absolutely are prior to knowledge, perception and mind. Could also be the nature of other, life, space, now.

I take that quote to mean that what you focus on, you end up becoming. What you create with your mind, you'll turn into. Always being angry will turn you into an irascible person. Meditating daily will greatly influence your physiology, mind, and character over the long term. As a result, you are being shaped and formed by your particular "thought" patterns. On the other hand, there's the matter of your nature, which has two aspects: Being: your nature--what you are before artifice, knowledge, and mind Your self: this might as well be essentially a "thought", although not a commonly held one. Such thought is lived "as is" rather than recognized as conceptual in nature. This is why you can transform as a self and still be you in essence. This is a dynamic construction that is also largely socially, and language-, influenced In any case, this is hearsay, so you tell me after you've had a breakthrough into your nature.

I can get an idea of what you mean by "not-thinking" which is basically a state of calmness, relaxation, and focus. On the other hand, try to stop thinking for 10 seconds, and then try again. There's a non-random dynamic at play here.

Going through the motions vs paying close attention.

Be careful that while we're partaking in scintillating discussions and debates about the nature of morality at the riverside, a crocodile doesn't snatch you.

Be honest and keep your word, even if given causally, both to yourself and to others. "Giving your word" isn't limited to language and applies to actions, too. For example, you may buy a set of dumbbells for your home gym but never use them. Contemplate what integrity as a principle is.

They may not want to kill them but like eating them and will continue to do so regardless. Again, it ultimately seems to be a matter of opinion. Some people habitually eat junk and drink soda. Is it "ethical" for them not to consider their own health? What about the ethical implications of coffee drinking, when harvesting coffee grounds is detrimental to third-world countries in various ways? And yet, it is widely consumed; most people don't mind it. "Food comes from the store."

It seems to me that people adopt nihilism, or "fuck it, it's all meaningless anyway" as an ego defense mechanism in order to justify laziness, complacency, and cowardice. It's disempowering and unnecessary, and just intellectual. It is an activity you're doing. Better think of what you want to create in life, then go do that.