nbolt

Why do you think this would happen in the first place? My social circle has only increased.

We've doubled our registered users . I think we'll be able to hold scheduled discussion topics soon. Anyone have suggestions or want to brainstorm?

In a technical sense, yes I would say the statement is mostly correct, but I'm not sure this has to be viewed in a purely negative light. All the people in your life that you described cared about lower consciousness and selfish values. But what if what you cared about, what you are fighting for in life, is something else? Something like, "I want to see more compassion in the world" or "I want to see more people around me happy". Sure, in a technical sense, these are personal, kind of selfish goals of yours, as there will always be something we are looking to achieve something with every action we take, but if we can associate with the right people we will be able to find more congruence and happiness in our lives. You are very right to discard every toxic person in your life. Everyone you described above, you don't need them. At the same time, though, and I've said this point at multiple points throughout various posts and conversations on this forum, but I'm just going to say it again: we can only hold around 150 meaningful relationships in our lives, and there are seven billion other people on the planet. The unfortunate part of this is that a lot of these people aren't really people you want to associate with. The fortunate part is that you don't need to find very many with whom you do want to. You touched on another important point, which is that you need to figure yourself out first before really focusing on your relationships with others. You do need to take 100% responsibility for the life you want to create, and when you have more of a grounded, confident grasp on who you are and the values you care about, you can start taking steps to fully embody them in your actions and persona, and will naturally be attracted towards other people who are doing and care about similar values. From an enlightenment perspective, I would define unconditional love as the realization that ultimately we are no different from one another so love of yourself becomes love of everyone, and you go on to fully embody that in your life. From a more mundane, practical perspective, I would define unconditional love just as normal folk intuiting a bit of the above, and striving towards becoming a better person, and attempting to realize these higher consciousness values in their lives, replacing lower consciousness ones. Sometimes we mess up; sometimes we aren't perfect. But if take life as a moment-to-moment experience, and focus less on the judgement of others, and more on internal, personal growth and what actions we can take to live a more fulfilled experience ourselves, I think we can all start working towards a better outcome for everyone .

We just had a forum member from Italy join, and now we have an #italy channel for local meetups! If anyone else wants to add language or location specific channels just head on over and let us know.

Welcome Psycho! Now we have active people from norway, poland, canada, thailand, india, and america (off the top of my head). Let's expand this further people!

bump

Confession of a Buddhist Athiest Promise of a Pencil

The amount of meals you eat per day or which hours in the day you eat doesn't matter, I'm not commenting on that, I'm just saying that if you want to lose weight, simply removing calories from your diet is not the way to go. You need to make sure you're still getting all the nutrients you should be getting. Whether those nutrients come from one meal or ten is up to you.

I said be specific. what do you think I think enlightenment is and what do you think I'm regurgitating from what books in place of actual experience? who's even to say books aren't a legit experience in of themselves, that's how we learn and grow in the first place. You learn something from someone else, identify with it, and decide you want to start exploring those concepts and putting the lessons you come up with into practice in your personal life. There are so many assumptions happening here. what is it you're trying to prevent exactly? nobody's getting on your case about anything, in fact this thread is the opposite. Many spiritual leaders as well as people in this very thread would agree with these above statements, so I'm really not sure what you're trying to protect or argue for here.

and what specifically is this garbage you are supposedly preventing yourself from taking in?

that ego you're defending doing ok?

This is not about repressing anything, it's about acceptance. Accepting the actual reality in front of you instead of getting lost in the stories your mind generates.

"and therefore alone" seems like an unnecessary addition to the statement. Leo emphasizes to take practical approaches to everything and practically of course you are not alone, there are seven billion other people on the planet. This is more of an internal philosophical framework to live your life by.

Skipping meals is never the way to lose weight.

damn eight hours? report back with your experience

Hey guys, maybe we can try this http://timezone.io/join/6f8adbfb503292e2

personally I'm a bit of a nomad and like to switch it up

13 people registered so far! Let's keep it up.

Yes, absolutely no problem at all.

That's exactly the point lol, we all have different passions. Leo is realizing his and hopefully you can yours.

I listen to di.fm all day

fyi- with services like www.myus.com you can get yourself a US address, have things shipped there, and they will forward it anywhere in the world. I used it while travelling across Europe and Asia, works very well .