Wind

You talk with me, you are ok. You will improve if you learn. Biological-perspectives tend to create a limiting illusion of no control. But mind over matter. If a fully paralized dude on the wheelchair can build 1mil company controling desktop coursor with his eyes! then you can improve at anything. The question is how much results would make you fullfilled? You might not need as much as you think. And expanding comfort zone socialiIng, getting rejected, getting intimate with people, observing emotional triggers, creating something beautiful together is an ultimate self-actualization and spiritual journey.

Oh I see what you did there

Westworld is great. You know what else is about Enlightenment? Dragon Ball Super. Really. Especially the recent God form - Ultra Instinct - that Goku has achieved last week, which is a state of being where his body moves without thinking, state of instinctual movement. In this form he improves and gets more energy as he fights, which comes with interpretation that he becomes 4-dimensional being as he taps into the infinite energy of the universe and can draw as much energy from it as he needs. The more I study enlightenment and do consciousness work, I see hints to enlightenment everywhere

That's interesting. Yeah it happens from time to time. It becomes more frequent when you experience it few times, because your mind learns the neural-pathway, and then you can access it through concentration - I noticed it usually happen as my mind shifts to "access concentration". But now I don't care about this sensation, because chasing it could be a distraction.

Meditated for 20 minutes. Intention was to practice concentration by bringing back focus on breathing sensation. I found that bringing my perriferum awareness to a point in the visual field helps me to notice when my mind starts to wander (as thinking usually happens in imagery). So I smoothed out breathing with visual field. It was difficult to keep focus on the concentration object as I would try to experiment changing it within the session (focusing just on breathing, or adding perriferum awareness of other senses, or adding image of light coming in my body as I breath in, and so on). But this is ok as long as I just observe the automatic patterns of my mind and come back to my primary intention - breathing. Perriferum is secondary. In about 10 minutes, as I was focusing on breathing with more accuracy and observing distractions with extreme carefulness, I got into a state of what I call "exoanded-body sensation" where my body becomes heavier and the sensation of body boundary expands outside the body, it felt as if I'm wearing a heavy (although very mellow mellow) armour on top of my body, and the focus intensifies and becomes more effortless. I've been getting into this state quite often recently, and it follows with access concentration, so I consider it being high-level meditative state. However, I'm aware of the danger of getting hooked on this sensation, so I look at this just as the signpost that tells me I'm progressing. What is interesting is that this is something I used to feel when I was a kid. I remember in childhood when I was laying on my bed and was about to fall asleep while looking at the ceilling, I would feel this sensation and wonder what is it, how to describe it? It was really strange. The focus was intense and I remember it once or twice followed with contemplation about my existance and questions like who am I, how can I exist, how can I be before being nothing, what I was before, what defines me? And I would get the glimpse of understanding that I'm infinity, but back then I didn't even have vocabulary to describe it or even understand what was happening. Have you felt something similar in your meditation sessions? How do you make sense of this "expanded-body state"? Is it just random sense, or it goes along with access concentration?

Entrepreneurial environmentally conscious chauffeur - a.k.a. pedicab driver ?

The analogy of the brain being a radio and consciousness a radio waves that the radio tunes into, always made sense to me.

Very on point. I noticed that the quickest way to the Truth is to really get in touch with the authentic intuition and use it as the main guide.

1) Is it possible to get enlightened purely through Vipassana technique? 2) What are the limitations of it in this work, towards the Enlightenment? What are limitations in contrast to other techniques, like self-enquiry? I asked a teacher of Vipassana about it during the course, and he said the technique goes to the cause, and is "self-inquiry" in itself. Through my observation and practice I can see that it indeed goes to the cause, altough I still feel that the con of it is that it doesn't focus on observing the "thoughts". Let's discuss the pros and cons of this topic here.

Thanks for sharing. But Leo! If you get enlightened through Vipassana, ego dissolves in itself, doesn't it? Because as you sit there observing the sensations on your body as a primary focus, the pheripheral awareness is still there to observe the structure of the "I" and the existencial insights about who you are start to bubble up. Plus, as you keep detaching from the physical sensations, you are detaching from your physicality as well. Or are you making distinction between people who do only Vipassana and don't focus on questioning existencial nature that much VS people who do Vipassana and question their existence, e.g. when one's mind naturally leans towards that direction on a daily basis?

And how this thread without a: https://youtu.be/LeG-6bpeUkA

This ^^ Last year I experienced both of these loves with two different partners. It was like two opposing extremes. Possessive vs non-possessive. Conditional vs unconditional. Way of feelings less alone vs way of expressing yourself without wanting anything in return.

Just go for a kiss when you are alone, or do or say other naughty thing, and let the mind-blowing sex roll out from that. Guys are highly sexual and we base our choices very much on the quality of sex. Other practical thing you could do, like Emerald said, is to simply ask him out. I remember my ex, after our first meet-up/date, texted me this one day (and this is an exact quote): "Ok it may be embarrassing for me to make a move and u can turn me down! But, do u have time this weekend by any chance?" And I was really excited when she told this. We men like when girls are proactive. More women should do this. Also, this women dating coach seem to have some good points:

It seems to me that you're over-thinking. Age is not a thing to focus on. Just meet girls you find hot and interesting, girls you find connection with. If it's mature women, focus on that. Age doesn't define maturity. Some are pretty mature at 21, some are still pretty immature at 30. Focus on meeting any girl as long as you have connection and you will answer to your question.

Can they? To which extent? Aren't they more helpful than self-enquiry?

How much time does one session take for you?

In Outer Space: Cold Window:

Ever heard about friends with benefits? But if for real, yes. It's the opposite sex you find interesting, cool to hang out, or beneficial in some way, but don't find sexually appealing. Easy peasy.

Get to know one of them. Make a goal to meet and make one or few cool black people your friends.

What's the difference? What's the difference in your direct experience? The best conceptual model I found is that emotions are physical states arising from body's responses to external stimuli and feelings are mental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets emotions. And from what I empirically observed emotions are felt in the body while feelings are something felt as a mental state. Emotions could be: anxiety, fear, compassion, unconditional love, sadness, pain, sorrow, yearning, joy, etc. And with feelings a little bit more difficult: focus, conscious, sleepiness, tiredness, boredom, the feeling of thinking, the feeling of experiencing other sensations in your mind? Could emotion be experienced as feeling?

Watched the Leo's video about the Neti-Neti Method and I tried doing it while on mushrooms. I got some awesome insights, but while I was doing it my mind was constantly objectifying the idea of "You" being a constant. The neti-neti method is all about discarding everything that's not you to find your real you. In the video it's said that "You" is constant, so you discard everything that is not constant until you find constant. It seemed for me like an assumption itself. Where does assumption that "You" is a constant comes from? I also at some point had this insight and experience of me being nothing more but attention. I was meditating on mushroom and during the peak as my mind was going crazy trying to hopelessly figure out where "I" am, got this glimpse of "I'm attention" - if my attention on a sensation, then I'm there, if my attention on a screen, I'm there, if my attention nowhere, then I'm there. Have anyone ever had this?

Heeeeeeey, I'm looking for any kind of online platform where I could, for example, make a 6 separate custom columns (my columns: urgent & important, not-urgent & important, urgent & not-important, not-urgent & not-important, waiting, and done tasks), so I could see them in one page aligned vertically. And where I could easily add, edit and delete tasks from those columns as well as easily move a task from one column to another using the mouse movement. To the same I'm looking it to have an account registration, so it could be accessible from anywhere. So basically it's anything that would be customable enough to create the planning environment I've just described, or at the minimum something that allows to visually organise tasks using "Eisenhower Matrix", although perfectly I would like to include additional "waiting" and "done" boxes, and to have all of them aligned vertically in columns each to each other. Any ideas?

I've just re-watched Leo's video on "What's Wrong With Ego?" and I came up with an objection regarding how ego is related to problems. Leo argues that "The corruption of the government is an indirect consequence of individual's ego". I see that there's two ways of seeing this as true, but the model of "A causes B, B causes C, C>D>E>F and all the way to the Z" doesn't quite make sense if thinking about individual's ego literally causing general corruption rather than causing the identification with the ILLUSION OF IT'S PROBLEM, because of the fact that corruption existed there before the individual was even born. So how can you say that it was caused by it's ego? Can anyone give me an example of how it might work? Unless Leo was taking about corruption being a collective ego consequence, I can't dig it. If taken an example of an anti-government fanatic, would it be something like: "His ego > want to feel special and identify with something to survive > forms an illusionary belief that all government is corrupt > identifies with the problem it created > decides to fight the corruption > government's ego reacts as it gets triggered > yada > yada > yada > it backfires as the government becomes more corrupt as a consequence of the fanatic's ego." Is that how it would work? Because I see that ego is related to the problem not in a lineal cause and effect way, but related by creating the problem and identifying with it. @Leo Gura is that what you mean by that? I see how "The PROBLEM of corruption of the government is the consequence of one's ego" as ego judges everything in terms of value - what's good and what's bad for the ego. And corruption is being seen as something bad and threatening and therefore ego identifies with that problem which causes him to suffer due to resistance.

They transfer the selfishness to others. I get that ego is causing the corruption, especially the ego's that are working in the system of the government. But how my ego is causing that if I'm not working there? Is my ego, who thinks that it has nothing to do with government growing corrupt, is still indirectly perpetuating (=causing) the corruption collectively every time I'm being corrupt in my daily life? And the degree to which ego is influencing the governmental corruption is proportional to the degree to which one is related to (=identified with) the government (hardcore politic first, then anti-governmental fanatic, then random citizen) and how corrupt in general one is? Now I see it more clearly, because I took the word "consequence" as being the ultimate consequence of one's ego, rather than a perpetuating force of the sum of all egos.

"The argument known as “Meno's Paradox” can be reformulated as follows: If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible." I object this statement: "If you know what you're looking for, inquiry (=seeking truth/information) is unnecessary" But maybe I don't understand it? In my view, if I know that I'm looking for the information of when the party begins, for instance, I need to seek information of when the party begins. Right? Or other example. I know that I'm looking for the fact that me as an entity does not exist. But to find out and experience that, I have to do self-inquiry. I can't see how this statement is right, therefore how this paradox is right. How this is right?