Deep

Sure, you might be fun, but maybe you didn't express your personality fully during the date. How would the girl know you are fun if you don't express it? I'm not berating you because I feel anxious and insecure sometimes as well. I'm just helping you toughen up.

@Jordan wang I got bored reading your post, your personality is boring. Imagine how bored a girl would be around you. Your goal on the date should be to increase sexual tension. Being nice and boring doesn't increase sexual tension. You should've asked for her number instead of Facebook. It would be better to keep the date short, like 1-2 hours max.

@Joseph Maynor Yes, Atman is always the same. The body, mind, and ego are different. That's why we think and act differently from each other. Somehow Brahman is able to divide itself into infinite parts. The parts are able to act independently. The mind and ego create an illusion of separation. The sages who have experienced it will say Brahman is the only reality. Which is true, but Atman is also a partial reality from the mind's perspective. I think they invented the word Atman because we all become enlightened at different times. Atman doesn't mean soul even though it's translated like that in English. It means you're not what you think you are. All of us are the same God, but our minds are different. That's why we are at different levels of consciousness; but that's an illusion.

@Himanshu Success requires logic, planning, and hard work. Sex requires turning the mind off. Success is based on mental capacities more than a physical act (unless your job is physical). Libido is something we feel in our bodies (erections). A person with a high libido can be poor because of previous qualities I mentioned. Personally, I can be satisfied with 1 woman my whole life. If I have to sex with more, I can be satisfied with that too.

I don't think men are sexually restricted. I think men (and women) are culturally restricted. Culture affects our mind. The body and mind are connected. If culture says have one partner, the body/mind will try to do what is "respectable". We don't want to be seen as less respectable, right? Human relationships are more complex than animals because they don't have an ego. If animals feel like mating they just do it. Human males have to be good at interacting with the opposite sex. They have to have game to get laid. Some rich men have game and some don't. Some poor men have game and some don't. A high libido doesn't guarantee sex. I don't think the desire for success is correlated with gaining more sex partners. I think people want success because they have to survive. An asexual person can be very creative and successful.

No, Krishna was telling Arjuna what reality is. I don't think he was trying to enlighten him. @Prabhaker Krishna and Arjuna were strong, wealthy, courageous, intelligent, wise, compassionate, etc. I know Krishna was ego-less but his personality showed signs of a healthy ego. For a woman it would be different. A person with an unhealthy ego would run away from life out of fear.

@Prabhaker The ego taught in Indian culture is collective. For example, in Indian family structures most people will do things just to keep the peace in family. Then they become hypocritical. In western culture, the ego is individualistic. The person does what they feel is best for them. Are either of the ego types healthier than the other?

@Shanmugam Thank you very much!

I don't think eastern spirituality teaches unhealthy ego. For example, Krishna tells Arjuna to kill his relatives for the betterment of society. That's a healthy ego. I think Indians didn't understand their spirituality properly in the past (and still don't). That's why they became passive. I've never read any spiritual teaching that says one has to be passive. It actually teaches us to have a healthy ego so it can dissolve easier.

Hello, I was meditating and introspecting recently. I thought to myself about my birthday. On my birth certificate there is a date listed. In my experience, I don't recall ever being born. My experience has always been here in the now. If I say I wasn't born before a certain date, that is just a thought. There was never a beginning or an end to my experience. Therefore experience is not finite. The word death implies the end of experience. The only thing we know is our experience in the present. For us to know death is real, we would have to have an experience of "no experience." That is contradictory. How can there be an experience of "no experience"? That's impossible. That means even after physical death, experience cannot end. I also realized everything I "think" I know about reality is wrong. By wrong I mean outside of my experience. Everything I learned in school is wrong. It makes me feel happy and sad at the same time. Experience is the only reality.

@Prabhaker The west also has an unhealthy ego because they teach political correctness. It means being nice just to please people. Some people in the west have a healthy ego but not everyone. Same thing is happening in the east. The whole population can't be generalized.

@Loreena In reality there is no such thing as healthy or unhealthy ego. There is only God's will running through us. If God wants someone to be a serial killer, that's what they will be. They don't have choice in the matter. To answer your question, a healthy ego is living in alignment with your values. What are you desires? What do you want in life?

Okay I will try.

@Shin Maybe the correct word is "imaginative", instead of "wrong".

It frees me up to follow my heart. I don't focus on survival anymore. I still have limiting beliefs about what I can and can't do, which I have to overcome by taking action. We are co-creating our reality with God every moment. We're a lot more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

It's unnecessary to say this because enlightened people came up with the concept of Vedanta. They had experiences similar to the one in my previous quote. You have to experience that to know for sure if the world is real or not. You can't just get it by studying Vedanta. I was saying the average person is trapped in the fantasy but enlightened people are not. For enlightened people, the body, mind, and world are unreal. They experienced God that's why they know.

The universe exists but our perception of it is flawed (maya). We see everything from our egoistic perspective. Enlightened people discovered that Brahman is real. People in the dream state aren't capable of that. This is how enlightened people perceive the world: “How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd.” Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. Spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. Swami Nikhilananda. Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (Kindle Locations 1884-1887). Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Inc.. Kindle Edition. Swami Vivekananda thought enlightenment was delusional, until he me Ramakrishna. lol

People don't like how others behave, so they hate the person for acting obnoxiously, violently, or immorally. Their ego forms a concept in their mind of how the other person's behavior goes against their sense of morality. The ramifications are there can be negative behaviors towards the thing being hated. Example: Some people might assume all Muslims are terrorists so they'll say nuke the Middle East. lol

Everything is NOT God, but God appears as everything. Egoic experience is God dreaming. Non-duality means you become one with the universe, in other words no-mind. Non-duality means you experience yourself as God, not just intellectually know. @LetTheNewDayBegin In Hinduism, Brahman is defined as the following: formless, eternal, timeless, infinite, without attributes, but at the same time aware of itself. What this means is there no words that can describe God. You can't understand God through the intellect. Many people also like to think of God with form such as Shiva, Vishnu, Laxmi, etc. That is because meditating on the formless God is very difficult, so they gave God attributes but in reality God has no attributes.

Life is an illusion created by the mind. It's an ego game. We can speculate till the moon turns blue, but we'll never know why consciousness adopted the form of life.

@Ritu It sounds like you're a people-pleaser. You have to get in touch with your heart and stop looking outside yourself for approval. Not everyone will like you, even if you're the nicest person in the world. Be okay with that.

@Loreena The Loreena God has spoken. I am going through an awakening right now. It will take a few years to complete. All of the resistance in my body is fading away. I no longer feel like I have to survive. I don't take life seriously, but I still work hard. It's disturbing for people who don't about it, but I know, so I love the way it feels. My mind is slowly being destroyed.

@Stoica Doru I look at the ego as the character God is playing. We are all different characters in the movie. We suffer when we don't realize we are God and not the character we are playing. If God wants one character to be miserable they will be, because the character is not as powerful as God controlling it. Playing the character is a lot of fun, that's why God forgets itself.

I think you're the one who is holding onto concepts because you feel the need to correct people whenever they say spirit. You just have another type of ego that hates the ego. The ego has to be fully embraced before it can be dissolved. No spiritual teaching says you have to go against the ego. Maybe you should do more research on enlightenment and how to attain it. Be careful about believing everything Leo says, he's not enlightened. I don't think you understand what the ego truly is. Forgive me if I'm wrong. What difference does it make if people call it spirit/God/consciousness/infinity/void/Self? Our true nature is always going to remain the same, regardless of what words are used to describe it. Let them believe whatever they want.

@electroBeam Maybe your purpose doesn't involve having a degree. I dropped out of university once I realized that. The education is materialistic and doesn't provide any growth. Society lies by telling everyone they have to go to college. I'm now working on starting a business as an astrologer. I want to help people with my spiritual wisdom.