ajasatya

hello, @Gull . i think this topic will be moved to another section soon. anyways, i could sense that you need very foundational content and practices. and you need them urgently. i highly recommend that you read a book called "the power of now". i think you can find it in pdf in your mother language. or maybe even buy it. i don't know. but that book should help you a lot. study the buddha's 4 noble truths. they will give you guidance for you to understand what suffering is, why you suffer and how to extinguish suffering from your life. start a meditating routine. start slowly. 5 minutes per day. resuming: book reading: the power of now study: the four noble truths practice: daily meditation

meditating for world peace without achieving internal peace is hypocrisy. the only way to achieve internal peace is by learning how to shut mental voice up. in order to learn how to shut mental voice up, you need to practice silence contemplation to realize what the mental voice is. and all this lead to a sincere pursuit of enlightenment.

2016, oct 21th healthy meals happiness sharing meditation bike rides deep talks reading self-inquiry & dharma contemplation spent the morning and the afternoon with my girlfriend. we experienced a deep paired meditation. it felt extraordinary. we were not following any given technique. we were just doing as we felt like. probably some tantra practice in the end. then i came back home and read some tao of physics. after that, i went to dragão do mar and listened to some seminar about chakras, meditation and enlightenment. the course is taught by this group. i was facepalming internally with almost every sentence the woman wold say. i went to talk with her after the end of the seminar and she was very stubborn saying that i had to study the infinite amount of books they had to be able to understand enlightenment. they said that it had something to do with plenty of knowledge, mystical powers etc. oh well... then i came back home and made an special pasta with matu, another resident here in the ashram. now i'm finishing the journal. good night!

2016, oct 20th healthy meals university career time investment self-inquiry & dharma contemplation happiness sharing reading yogasanas meditation deep talks revisited this video and realized how accurate it is! damn, it's been so long. i could not grasp his words back then. i'm going to read his book Spiritual Enlightenment - The Damnedest Thing. watched this steven norquist's video, which was really good in the beginning but then it became boring. i was curious about his book but i noticed it's too abstract and not very practical. it's full of ideas. i want jed mckenna instead! i read a bit more of the tao of physics. it's going very well. yoga class was a bit frustrating. too many postures that are hard for me. i had to deal with a lot of pain but i know its for the best. then i went to my girlfriend's. we had an amazing dinner.

@z2ludgfyyxnz permaculture. plant your own food. take care of your own trash. certainly there are some communities like that in the usa. it's one of my possibilities, but here in brazil. healthy food, healthy work and yoga everyday.

i don't know that book, but sadhguru is trustworthy.

2016, oct 19th healthy meals happiness sharing reading self-inquiry & dharma contemplation deep insights meditation yogasanas zen passo a passo time investment ashram duties woke up a little late and read some tao of physics. as a computer scientist who studies the development of intelligence with biologists, that book caught me up. some ramana maharashi's videos inspired me and i was able to practice some self-inquiry and attain profound insights! the yoga class was SO GOOD! we practiced some vinyasas. i think i'll practice ashtanga yoga after healing my lower back completely. the zen passo a passo session was awesome. the sangha was really into it. everyone was so connected on the experience sharing moment. then i had a good moment with my girlfriend. it's been 3 months since we started a long term relationship and SO MUCH already happened. we decided to break celibacy for now because it's being too much for her. she recognized that it was turning into a sexual repression so we're going to slow down a bit. then she went to sleep and i cleaned the meditation hall in a refreshing solitude atmosphere. stillness...

i transformed my life into an eternal zen practice. the four noble truths worked for me.

no. it's possible to have amazing sex without ejaculation. and even with ejaculation, sex with a partner is the best way to practice the art of surrendering.

@Xpansion it's not that people think that they're thoughts. they just find themselves being victims of thoughts and meditation teaches them to detach from the train of thought. so they go like "wow, i've been suffering because of thoughts all this time but i didn't notice they're just thoughts".

@rush if you're present, your needs will start to fade out. "letting go of desire", "resignation"... the sages talk a lot about this attitude. zen + yoga did the job for me. i can very solidly imagine myself saying "thank you, life" on my deathbed. this is the most sincere and profound gratitude i can imagine.

@SaynotoKlaus

be present and truly sincere in every instant of your life. there's no other teaching. do you have the courage to live?

nice! now you're able to throw away any piece of guilt/judgments (about "yourself" and "others"). shall we let life be?

i liked his 3 videos about enlightenment. they made me understand that the Truth is silent and purely experiential. since then i've been practicing reaching the state of no-self. nowadays i can reach it very easily and it lasts for quite a while.

i was going through too much suffering and then i really accepted my defeat. it was a very sincere resignation. i said to myself "i give up". since then i live by resignation letting go of egoist desires. there's much more here. you can see my daily life there as well.

hello, @Zane i want you to know that i love you. please, listen to this song whenever you suspect that you're lying to your feelings. also, let us know if you start writing a book or something with your stories. all this suffering you face will turn you into the strongest person you'll ever meet.

2016, oct 18th healthy meals university career time investment happiness sharing reading yogasanas meditation dancing master classes are finally becoming easier. the professor will start demanding coding homework. coding sometime sis easier than doing complicated math. lunch was DELICIOUS! i read a bit more the tao of physics. this book is amazing me! i wrote a zen koan and did a drawing to go with it. here it is! it says "if the leaf becomes the soil, when exactly is the leaf no more?" the yoga class was cool, even though my muscles hurt a little right now, which is normal. after that, my girlfriend came here and we danced kizomba. we're getting better! then we talked a little about her family. we also created new possibilities for the future and made ourselves friends with them. i find this a powerful exercise. training the mind to adapt easily to situations.

reality (i like this word because it's well known here in the actualized.org community) continues assuming conscious forms (me, you, frogs, whales, beings from other areas of the universe etc) to explore itself. why this happens? well, it could not happen. if this did not happen, there'd be no experience to be experienced nor "experiencer" to experience anything. it might have been that way for a while. we can't know. but this phenomena DOES happen and now there are sentient beings. kamma continues like a wave traveling through reality. but a karmic wave is not infinite, of course. for instance: if i become a bad parent, my son will grow up with a wounded heart and it's very likely that he becomes a bad parent too. his son will suffer the consequences of my acts. but "i", "my son" and "his son" are just names. there's just reality experiencing this kamma continuity through these sentient beings we gave names. when a sentient being dies, it dies completely but his kamma continues. "good" or "bad" kamma are just labels because the sensations that the consequences of that kamma are pleasant/unpleasant. in this case, the sentient beings of this small story experience lack of love, which feels unpleasant for human beings. so we call it "bad" kamma. as time passes by, that kammic wave tends to fade out.

@Paul EMD light on yoga, written by b. k. s. Iyengar. here's a link to a pdf file.

@Prabhaker i don't experience astral things except for this present moment, seeing, touching, feeling, thinking etc. it's very strange to put it in words, because there's no "he" who can come back nor even go away. there's just buddha nature assuming forms, reality being conscious of itself. in reality, there's no ego-identity that dies nor is born. ego-identity is an illusion, even though it's needed to keep us alive. the historical buddha never spoke of an "i" that dies and comes back. the buddha only spoke of the dhamma, which is the path to attain nirvana. and nirvana is not a mystical thing. "nir" means "no". "vana" means "fire", "passion". so nirvana means no pride, no greed, no hatred, no attachment, no sexual desire, no narcissism etc. i have attained nirvana and it's not something too special. it just makes your life easier. absolute freedom and happiness. be careful with what people put in buddha's mouth. if you really want to know his teachings, go for the suttas. if you want to know his deepest teachings about the illusion of ego-identities, read the diamond sutta. there's nowhere to go. there's nowhere we came from. we're simply here and that's how reality is. that's how consciousness feels. right now, as you read this, reality is reading its own words about itself.

2016, oct 17th healthy meals happiness sharing reading contemplative walking yogasanas meditation ashram duties woke up at my girlfriend's. we had a very happy breakfast and then she went to university and i came back home. i started reading the tao of physics. it's being amazing. very rich book! i went out to take a walk towards the beach. i sat there for like 30 minutes just hearing the sound of the waves and feeling the wind on my skin. that felt GREAT. then i came back home for the yoga class. today we performed some asanas that are painful to me. but i do my best. progress is slow but it's solid. after yoga, i took a shower and went to the daissen-ji sangha for the zazen practice. it was quite crowded! it's beautiful when there's a lot of people, even though they suffer a lot it's important for them to get in touch with all their suffering without being able to run away from it. the reading was quite dense but it was profound. now i'm here on the computer writing this journal. i still have to clean the meditation hall, which i'm going to do right now!

@Prabhaker a better word would be "rebirth" instead of "reincarnation". also, it's impossible to get out of the rebirth cycle, because there's nobody to get out of it. reality has an urge to experience what we call "being" and we're consequences of it... even siddhartha gautama himself said that he was not leaving reality. you can check this out on the Lotus Sutra, chapter 16: Since I attained Buddhahood the number of kalpas that have passed is an immeasurable hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions, trillions, asamkhyas. Constantly I have preached the Law, teaching, converting countless millions of living beings, causing them to enter the Buddha way, all this for immeasurable kalpas. In order to save living beings, as an expedient means I appear to enter nirvana but in truth I do not pass into extinction. I am always here preaching the Law. I am always here, but through my transcendental powers I make it so that living beings in their befuddlement do not see me even when close by.

this is false.

@dude what's the link to your video?