Shin

@LfcCharlie4 How could you be how you are now without everything happening the way it did ? Would you even be you if just one percent changed ? How do you know your past isn't the best that it could ever have been for you to be as peaceful as of now ? How do you know those people aren't exactly where they are now so they can later find whatever will help them to find peace ?

Think about you 10 years ago, do you feel sorry for your younger self ?

Let them be, only explain how good you feel if they ask themselves, and explain how you did it without anything that could be interpreted as dogmas or beliefs. Otherwise you're not doing anything fundamentally different than a priest trying to convert a non believer. Accept them how they are, and this will become a non-issue ☺

But Leo ...

I guess you mean being truly awaken, in that sense, I suppose that may be true. In the other hand, you can, as a self be aware of yourself all the time, and that has huge practical value. Can't suffer if you have constant distance from your thoughts and emotions, and if you experientially understand that all thoughts and emotions comes from beliefs you hold. You can let go of anything in a matter of seconds ☺

The difference is that it requires a lot of responsability to be conscious all the time. Way easier to blame the meditation technique you are using for 1% of the day that you are still utterly dissatisfied with life. ?

I see Bentinho, I press like.

It feels so real isn't it ? ?

I've got the path in my hand And space to roam I follow maps in my head And tore them up instead

If you really want to know: Sit and ask what is beyond death. Don't listen or care for any of your thoughts that may appear. Focus on your will to know what is true, no matter what it is. If you do this everyday for at least 30 minutes, you will know at some point ☺

You know that your avatar is false advertisement ? People expect the bald monk and then see that you have hair ! Thanks for everything you're doing Mu_, thanks very much ❤

It's a method when you think as a newbie: "I'm doing my daily meditation to be more conscious !" In a sense that's great to do that, but in another sense it makes you think that being in a meditative state 24/24 is not possible or realistic. If you really want to be conscious, like really conscious, you can't just "sit and do my daily meditation", it has to be 24/24. You must have the will to stay conscious all the time, all day, all month and all year. If you do that for a certain amount of time, without quitting, you won't do meditation anymore, it's gonna be your natural state, you gonna realize it's your natural "state". That's what monks do in a nutshell, their seated meditation is a tiny part of the day where they train themselves to be conscious, it's the rest of the day that really matters, all the activities you normally do mindlessly daydreaming about anything and everything. The seated meditation become more like a "time of the day to relax even more" rather than a "time of the day where I try to finally relax my mind". This is maybe one of the most important insight to have, because until then, you can meditate for decades and still be highly unconscious and dissatisfied with life (it's not that uncommon). That is essentially because people think this way "Meditation is an activity that I do at a certain time of the day, and being conscious is not possible all the time, it is an experience that I can only reach in "meditation"" No, you can be conscious 100% of the time (by being conscious I mean being aware, not having a blank mind), you won't even be able to stop once it's the case, because that was always the case. You just were too invested and attached to the voice in your head, creating an illusion of unconsciousness

My concepts and beliefs are the TRUE ones ???

Do colors disappear when you take out your sunglasses ?

Reality vs reality ! Only one is real !!! ?

You're drawing conclusions/assuming things that aren't in your direct experience. As long as you do this, you'll always be confused.

Meditations from Marcus Aurelius

@arlin Technically speaking, there is no way to know if anything has consciousness (from the scientific paradigm we live in). How would you know if a rock has consciousness or not ? You could say "it hasn't a brain, so it just can't", that would be assuming consciousness comes from the brain (what about animals without brain ?). This is an assumption that comes from science telling us that consciousness must come from the brain, even though they can't prove anything about it, and still struggle to even define what consciousness is. Do you ever had a dream where you weren't anything in particular ? Where you where just spectator of experiences happening ? Or perhaps a dream where you could be a woman one second, then the man you were fucking the next moment ? What about the one where you were nothing in particular, then realized you were an object ? Not drawing any conclusions here, but maybe consciousness is something that isn't really anything in particular, or maybe it is something that encompass everything in itself. Can be a lot of things if you're open to it and just sit silently without trying to "get it" in your head, but just really open to what the answer might be. If you really want to be open to the truth, whatever it might be, that implies that you really don't know the answer yet, as in really have no clue whatsoever. Would the answer of your question even be an answer if "consciousness" is something that transcend everything (even your own mind) ? Or could it be something you're already experiencing right now but aren't paying attention to it, because it is too obvious and mundain ? Don't try to "get it" with your head, just read those questions and sit silently. You'd be surprised how much you can discover by doing nothing at all

When you use any kind of langage, it is naturally dualistic. Langage ist what we created to explain experience and communicate what we want to each other (and by each other I mean everything). That implies two experiences. So in other words, as long as you speak, write, or even use body langage, you can never communicate consciousness. And yes consciousness is an arbitrary word I just used to describe what you (oops I (oops ...) did it again) are. ?

Typical pluralist ? Right Charlotte ? ?

☺