ajasatya

@Cocolove go to a place where they have a solid practice already. you're not mature enough to manage your own schedule. look for sesshins in zen centers and vipassana retreats at dhamma.org.

@NoSelfSelf that's what i did when i was where you are, but i didn't have a shitty job. i've always worked my ass of to get a decent job. but the place where i lived was very very simple and humble. anyways, i worked from 9 to 5 and i had lots of free time to live my real life (meditation, yoga etc). if you want your first step to be all comfy, just run to your mom and ask for a hug instead. that's why i said that you'd need to detach from comfort. it's funny. people want to thrive but they want to start from a winning spot

@d0ornokey i cured this with lonely walks everyday. learn to be happy all by yourself first, so you won't need any kind of external validation.

@NoSelfSelf you don't need to buy stuff. just rent an apartment.

@NoSelfSelf hard work and detachment from comfort. get a job and do the math. compute the lower-bound for your monthly costs and create your strategy. find a way to make enough money to cover that lower-bound + 15% and you should be fine.

@JediArron yes. read one chapter of zen mind, beginner's mind everyday after your meditation session. after you finish it, go for other zen books. the zen literature is full of practical instructions that will cover lots of common mistakes.

@JediArron you're failing because you're meditating for achievements. meditation is much more than a play of thoughts in and thoughts out. meditation is a movement towards humility and contentment RIGHT NOW.

documented experience about how to manage self-actualization meetings

@Elisabeth thanks for reporting! i am happy that it is working. i don't have much to add because i've never done something like this. keep it up! why don't you journal those meetings? i think it would be more useful for the forum members (me included)

@non_nothing yes, momentum and position can't be known with arbitrary precision. and i agree with you. we should not extrapolate the results of experiments to fit our expectations. if we want to show something through science, we should design a reproducible experiment with a specific goal. example: notice an intriguing phenomenon design the proper experiment to test a hypothesis i am still trying to design experiments to test metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of Reality. i think it has something to do with information theory. the act of observation seems to make a chaotic system (high potential to become something and high entropy) converge into a range of possibilities with a particular pattern. that is my hypothesis. edit: of course i am biased towards thinking of information theory. i am a computer scientist after all.

@How to be wise True Nature is not something that prevents a flower from blooming. in the end, you're supposed to embrace the life of the character and live it fully. why not? the difference is that you don't depend on material achievements to be happy. being present is sufficient and everything else is a bonus. in other words: you're unable to confuse True Nature with ego. tenth picture: return to society

nah, those are things that impress most men. do those if you want to be good with them if you want to be good with women, work on emotional vulnerability, tenderness, authenticity and motivation towards hard work.

those things are "done for you" the same way that the sun rises and the flowers blossom. you can watch a wound heal your pupil contract and relax on a mirror. you can't see a star blow up nor atoms collide. our level of zoom in and zoom out are limited.

of course you can use in direct experience. how did you learn to read?

we can observe the behavior of a neuron but we can't observe the behavior of thousands of thousands of thousands of them. we've completely mapped the brain of an extremely simple worm (link). think of 'computational power' in the sentence that i said on the previous post as the capacity to observe and map the behavior of a certain nervous system.

not really... the brain does it very elegantly. the complexity of the process cannot be understood yet, though. but it's a matter of "computational power" because we can observe the fundamental process separately.

you can't improve yourself... that makes no sense. you can become better at doing something. the brain adapts and performs better after a while.

this is an extremely naive and egoistical approach because you're not taking the feelings of the close ones into consideration.

@Aaron p as adyashanti said... "it is very easy to smell ego", right?

this was just too good.

@ivory you don't need to say anything if there's nothing to say. instead, ask questions... be truly interested on the other person.

@ivory i don't know exactly what you mean by "developing social skills", but learning to open my heart, listen deeply and make eye contact were three fundamental aspects for my growth. feeling good around people is part of feeling good about Life in general.

@F A B ldrs suck unless both are very mature. good luck.

sure getting a haircut always hurts so bad

@emind do it first and see if it works... then you tell us. exercise the ability to trust your intuition.