RossE

@phoenix666 Be open to the possibility that the past exists right now

@Michael569 You've definitely raised your awareness! Keep going. You're going in the right direction. That judgement will turn to acceptance, for various reasons

I eliminated dairy and meat 4 months ago (I eat a whole food plant-based diet) and it's one of the best things I ever did. A tiny bit in your diet won't cause any harm but if you currently consume a lot I think it's best to dramatically cut that down.

@SFRL Okay, that makes sense. My desire for financial success is fairly non-existent. I could be working in a big company right now earning pretty good money if I wanted to be. It is important to me that I have enough money to be independent and to do the things I enjoy, but having excess wealth doesn't appeal to me. I could get along fine making ~£30k per year (around $50K). Thanks for your response. I think I'll be pursuing this now.

@HII Thanks for the advice my friend. I like your style. I agree with the increasing popularity of meditation. Slowly it is becoming more mainstream, more accessible and less hippy/new age. The more research that shows the profound benefits of meditation, the more its popularity will sky-rocket. And yes, the more studies the are, the less I have to rely on anecdotal evidence to convey the benefits I could just be entering the field at the right time. I somehow know that these doubts are very superficial and there is this passion within me to do this, and is willing to go through the emotional labour to do so.

@SFRL You seem very sure - what lead you to say that?

What do you study? Do you study in a city or a well-populated area? I can help.

This. At first it's a pain, or was for me, but after a month or two of daily meditation there's a good chance you'll have seen some benefits and will want to stick with it. I've now done 427 days in a row and don't plan to stop anytime soon

TM is a great meditation practice in my experience. I find it different to other techniques. With TM, I reach a state of deep relaxation and peace quickly. During this state mind is sometimes still chaotic but it's easy to let it just do its thing and remain as the background. There's no resistance to unpleasant things. The background can certainly provide a "base" for insights or spiritual realisation. Only way to really know is to try it for yourself. I highly recommend that you do

@Echoes You really need to experience this first hand, which is very do-able. When you have the experience, the thing you're trying to describe becomes an obvious feature of how reality works. You will see others in that way naturally, and all the above questions will be irrelevant. There is a silent understanding, with no real need for intellectual categorising. Keep up the practice.

@K-light--orb You're getting lost my friend. What you experienced is not the truth. It's not about going anywhere, being elsewhere. I hope clarity finds you some day.

Listen my friend, it seems as though you have many deep issues which are rooted in childhood and family events - your past teachers, your relationship with fellow family members, your inferiority complex etc etc. You should put these at the forefront of your attention for now and try to get to the bottom of them, begin to clear them from your life. It may take time, it may take therapy, it may take hours of journalling. But I can see they are causing you a lot of pain. If you begin to resolve these fundamental issues, you will notice a big shift in your attitude towards your career, your family, your life in general. Leo has a lot of videos geared towards understanding these issues, go check them out. There are many books on these subjects too. Start there. Look into therapy for your suicidal tendencies. Good luck.

I want to say that you don't need to go to university. In fact, if you do, you will learn a lot of useless things. I only graduated a month ago, I did very well in my degree grades-wise, but now I realise it was all a bit of a sham, and that I won't use a lot of the knowledge ever, ever again. Study on your own: read books, do courses, go to seminars, get experience in the field, join forums, go talk to people, go to classes etc etc etc. You will save yourself a lot of time, and money. Universities are now, in my opinion, mainly concerned with getting good university ratings and sending people onto corporate jobs - the real meaning of university is being lost. If you want to be part of something deeper and more meaningful, go solo.

@Annetta What is anticipation anxiety?

I've been on the whole foods plant-based diet for 5 weeks now and I will be staying with it. It's amazing. The food is great, my body feels great, I feel alert and clear. It has boosted my meditation practice. It was primarily a health decision thing for me, but slowly I am becoming sensitive to the animal suffering aspect. I realise that we don't need to sacrifice so many animals - we could get by without animal products easily and let them all run free. I can also see the other side of the coin though. It does bring more overall awareness to the situation which I think is good. The amount of garbage that is removed as a result of following this diet is incredible. Things that I used to perceive as being "quite healthy" are now obviously unhealthy - loaded with salt, sugar, sat fats, chemicals etc. Problem is that most Westerners have been consuming this food for so long that they actually think it's good for them. When evidence comes along, even something as large and comprehensive as the China Study, they won't listen.

@Ilya Read the instruction I provided and really try to grasp what it's pointing at. There's only so much that words can do.

@Leo Gura What has been your number 1 tool for personal growth?

@Space Of course you're aware! If you're sitting there lost in thought, you have to be aware of the thought This technique is different from many many other techniques. It seems ridiculous but it's immensely powerful.

I disagree with you on some of these points although you do make some very good points @Joseph Maynor, which would apply to most forms of meditation, but in my opinion NOT the Do Nothing technique. Do Nothing is the simplest technique there is if you really listen to its instructions (this is straight from Shinzen Young): Let whatever happens happen. As soon as you are aware of an intention to control your attention, drop the intention. This even means dropping the intention to be aware. There's nothing in the technique that says you will be aware or able to differentiate between different phenomena, whatever. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say you need to be aware of what is happening. Really read the instruction I've provided and contemplate the scope and depth of the instruction. @PetarKa You're expecting the session to be a certain way. Let go of that. As long as you're following the instruction, you're doing fine. By all means, if you do it for months and notice nothing has changed, drop the technique. But keep at it for now. It's an immensely powerful technique.

@Norbert Somogyi That's why I posted my friend You will notice the difference going from irregular to daily practice.

Hey fellow self-actualizers I write on the year anniversary of the beginning my DAILY meditation practice. I have meditated every single day since Sunday 24th July 2016. I want to share how I made this possible, my journey, some hints and tips etc. I want to inspire you if you are feeling unsure about starting this habit or if you are currently meditating but need some more inspiration. Feel free to ask me any questions about meditation either on the thread or by messaging me THE BEGINNING So, why did I begin this habit? In May 2016, I was feeling pretty despondent about my life. I found out the girl I had been seeing for a few months had cheated on me multiple times. I had just finished my penultimate year at university, and had no real plans for the next 4 months over the summer break due to the lack of a career-related internship, and my PT job had come to a seasonal end. I liked playing guitar, going out drinking, watching TV, the very common things that a 20 year old loves doing. In hindsight, at that time, I was looking for something. I was lost and uncertain. After flicking around YouTube for a while watching various videos, I stumbled upon videos about meditation - how to meditate, the benefits, the reasons for doing it. I was intrigued. I'd heard the word meditation before, but had never tried it. After coming across Leo's video on how to meditate (the one with 2M+ views), I decided to give it a shot, using the technique he provides in that video. His description of the benefits appealed to me. Over the next couple of months, I did it intermittently, maybe 3 or 4 times weekly. I didn't notice much effect so didn't get serious about it. It was honestly a pain to meditate for even 15 minutes and I'd spend the last 5 minutes of the sit in hell! This pattern continued until a year ago today. Having been out clubbing the night before, I was feeling hungover, and had a lot of negative thoughts coming up. I was feeling rubbish the whole day. I decided to meditate. 20 minutes of active detachment. After that session, wow, I felt fantastic. My body felt all soft and relaxed, my thoughts had subsided, my negative emotions had dissolved. I had a taste of what meditation can offer me. It was at that moment where I finished the sit that I promised myself to do a 30 day challenge. I remember sitting and telling myself I would do it, no matter what! I followed through on that commitment, and I felt pretty great over that month. I decided to just keep doing it every day, no excuses. To keep me on track, I started a note in my phone where I log the number of minutes I do per day. I'm still adding to the same note. THE PRACTICALITIES Over the last year my practice has evolved considerably. I now use a variety of techniques, a variety of postures, I have experimented with 5-7 days of hours and hours of meditation, I have experimented with many teachers, many practices, I've done a week-long group retreat and a few days solo retreat. It has become a huge part of my life, naturally through repeatedly practising it! I aim to do one hour per day, but this varies, and I'm not too hard on myself if I'm, say, 15 minutes under. The main thing is that I sit and do it at least once a day. For example, while I was in Spain for 10 days in May this year, I actually only did around 20 minutes per day. But I wasn't hard on myself - I still felt the effects of the meditation that week and hey, I still meditated every day! I think the trick to sustain the habit is being disciplined enough to do it daily, but not beating yourself into sitting for 2/3 hours every day. I think such a harsh approach is difficult to sustain. One hour per day is the perfect balance for me: it is relatively easy for me to sit for one hour now, and I don't have to beat myself into doing it, but it's long enough for me to know that it will be effective, and it still requires a little bit of discipline. It feels like the perfect amount. I agree with Leo when he says setting the habit is the most important thing. I had some really, really bad days during meditation over the last year. Days where I'd have to squeeze it in after being out of the house all day, days where I'm exhausted, days where I'm feeling moody and annoyed. Meditation on these days is usually pretty tough. It was honestly easier to just not do it and do something else instead. Make no mistake, doing something every single day is not that easy to begin with! But sitting and doing the habit on these days just further ingrains into your mind that you will make this a daily habit, meaning that you will do it for days, months, years on end and will experience the amazing benefits of it, even if it feels like you've plateaued or even regressed. Now, I meditate every day and there's very little resistance. A lot of days it's a pleasure to sit and meditate. Some days I may put it off and go shower instead, then do something else, but I know that eventually it will get done. Even if it's 11pm and I've still not meditated, it will get done. There's nothing I can really consciously do to stop it even if I wanted to. I am programmed now. This is just through repeated practice. This means I can be easier on myself because I know that it will get done! Another important thing to know is not to expect anything from one particular session. Don't go in expecting your mind to be calm, or your posture to be good, or your face to be relaxed, anything. Just sit, do the technique and accept what happens during that 20/30/45/60/90 minute sit. What's most important is your implementation of the technique, and the long-term repetition it. I've almost found that individual sessions are almost completely unimportant now in and of themselves. Even if it's pleasant, I don't care. If it's horrific, I don't really care. The thing I care about is doing the practice and letting the practice work on me, which in my experience and research, is not conscious most of the time. There are a lot more practical things I could discuss, but I think I've said enough. Onto the benefits and effects this has had - the exciting part BENEFITS AND EFFECTS I can't really describe with words the change this has had on me. It's easier just to say "do the habit and you'll see", but for people who are unsure, it's probably best to give some concrete examples. It's hard to strictly categorise or organise the benefits myself, the list would be very long and messy. To give some insight into how it has affected me, I'm going to use Shinzen Young's five categories from his video "Why Meditate?", which always makes me emotional when I watch it! The categories are: reducing suffering; elevating fulfillment; understand yourself; improve behaviour; improve the world. I'll go through each and give examples of how meditation has affected me in that category. Reducing suffering: When "bad" things happen to me, for example, breaking a glass, getting rejected by a friend or girl, being ignored, I am a lot, lot, lot less affected by it than I would otherwise be. They just wash over me like a cleansing wave, I actually see these things as an opportunity to open my heart more and keep improving. I see them as an inevitable consequence of living in this world, not as something to avoid. I can sit with physical pain in my body or undesirable emotions and just see them doing their thing, be an observer, without all the attachment to them that I used to have. I am a lot, lot more equipped to experience bad events in my life and carry on without crippling emotions. Elevate fulfillment: Everything I do is more pleasurable and fulfilling than it used to be. This includes going to the supermarket, which can be quite a joyful experience - seeing all the colours, the sounds, the people. Also, nature looks AMAZING. Even a single tree is very beautiful now, I can appreciate it's intricacy and complexity. I am into simpler hobbies such as walking, reading and can appreciate silence and stillness more. When I'm alone I feel complete and can sit in my house quietly without needing to be elsewhere. Improve behaviour: this is HUGE for me. I may forget a few things here. Here's a list of negative things I've dropped in the last year, which I'd put mainly down to meditation: porn, gambling, coffee, fizzy juice, TV (I occasionally watch films or documentaries), chasing girls, chasing sex, binge drinking (I'm moving towards being completely dry), unhealthy food (I'm now on a whole food and plant-based diet), masturbation (I only get urges once a fortnight or so), my ED problem is gone, I've lost weight. I ditched my ambition for a success, money-driven career about 6 months ago. I'm also much more compassionate, gentle and calm than when I started. My responses and engagement with others is being optimised on a daily basis. There is still a lot of behaviour I would like to change though - it's a lifelong process. Understand myself: I'm more aware of how my thinking alters my perception of life and how almost all of it is geared towards creating separation and putting me into unhappy, unconscious states. Before, I was completely oblivious to my thoughts and had no way to process them. This is huge. I have a better handle on why I dipped in and out of depression for about 4 years, and I've identified an inferiority complex within me which, in hindsight, has affected my relationships for years. I'm slowly working on this. I've ridded myself of a lot of inauthentic things and it feels like I'm drilling to the core of who I really am in this world and how I will carry myself. I've had many enlightenment experiences - glimpses of the deepest self-understanding there is. Improve the world: I now have a spontaneous tendency to help others. Even if it's something as small as a cuddle, sending a text, being present during a conversation, smiling at people, I want to help people, and I feel like I'm not using my tools optimally if I'm not. All my future career ideas are based around this. I look around in the world, I see so many people suffering unnecessarily, and I feel sad that they don't know how to overcome their attachment to these problems. I want to help them. I also have much more love for all animals and plants that I see, and even inanimate objects. They have an innocent beauty to them, and I feel obliged to prolong and nurture that beauty. There are many other things which I've noticed change within me that are hard to describe, and I don't want this post to be an exhaustive list of them all. I want you to look at these changes and see the impact this could have in your life. I've realised recently that pursuing this meditation/inner growth/self-actualisation/mindfulness journey is the only way to truly live in our modern world. I have recently dedicated to meditating every day for the rest of my life. There's no option for me. I compare what I'll be like after doing this for 10,20, 30 years, and if I quit today. There's only one choice, and that's to get down, set a timer and close my eyes for an hour per day. That's how powerful this habit is. If you got this far, thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your experiences with meditation, and I'd also love to know how my practice is likely to evolve and change my life over the next year/two years/ five years, and so on.

@Mastral My pleasure! Keep going my friend. @Afonso No problem. That's great that you're getting that, your psyche is being cleaned out, refreshed, purged. Embrace it. Oh yeah you better believe it! Especially about 2 months into my practice when I began self inquiring and then having glimpses of the truth. I felt really lost and confused, and I still do to a lesser extent as my old habits slowly die and are replaced. Super strong inner demons, I wouldn't say super strong. I am working on them but it hasn't crippled me.

@egoeimai I try to deconstruct the resistance into its components: inner thought, emotional sensation etc. Then I just sit anyway. Shortly after I begin the technique the resistance is usually gone.

@Jonson It doesn't matter what time of day you do it at. Just make sure you do it every single day. No excuses. The fact you've come here and posted about asking how to make the habit stick shows that there's still uncertainty, there's still resistance. It's really as simple as just doing it every single day. That's how you make the habit stick. I keep a diary of my meditation sits so that I know I'm doing it every day. Other than that, I don't use a fancy technique other than just doing it every day no matter what. You can't control how each session will be. You will have some really bad days. That's fine, my friend. That's all part of the process. Just do it every day and let the practice do what it does. It will dramatically change your life.

Done