jjer94

What I see on the Internet are a lot of fantastic resources on dieting and nutrition. What I also see are nuanced scientific studies, messy dogmatic debates, and lots of general confusion. What if there were a holistic method that encourages you to experiment with many different foods and diets to tailor to your individual needs? A method that is more of an open-minded, flexible approach, rather than a rigid step-by-step directive? A method that mixes secondhand knowledge with direct experience? And most importantly, a method that allows you to stick with a healthy eating plan for the rest of your life? I gotchu covered. I call this method Sustained Healthy Eating, or SHE for short. Here's the gist of it. There are two basic subsets of eating: Input - flavor, texture, and other qualitative aspects while eating the food. Abbreviations: Input = I; High input = HI; Low input = LI Output - satiety, comfort level, energy, concentration, and other qualitative aspects after eating the food. Abbreviations: Output = O; Low output = LO; High output = HO All foods and food combinations you eat give you an I and an O. What's considered "unhealthy food" often has a very HI (amazing flavor and texture), but a terribly LO (gas, bloating, brain fog, lethargy, food coma). What's considered "healthy food" often has a very LI (bitter, flavorless, weird texture), but an amazingly HO (satiated, comfortable, energized). A common mistake I see people make when starting a new diet plan is that they introduce too many isolated LI/HO foods while cutting out all of their delicious HI/LO foods. It becomes so unbearably tasteless that they inevitably revert back to the HI/LO deep fried twinkies. The simple trick to SHE is to mix LI/HO food combinations to create HI/HO meals that act as substitutes for your HI/LO meals. You will be much less tempted to go back to your old ways if your new I is just as high (or higher!) as your old I. Stack that on top of the fact that HO foods make you feel really good, and you won't even need a cheat day. Here SHE is, distilled down to two fundamental equations: The Fundamental SHE Equations: I(new healthy meal) ≥ I(old unhealthy meal) O(new healthy meal) > O(old unhealthy meal) Here's an example of SHE in action: Traditional Pesto. Olive oil, basil, pine nuts, and garlic alone are all LI/HO in my experience, but combine them together and I get a HI/HO combination that is so savory and satisfying, I'm wondering how I missed out on it for so long. Marinade an otherwise flavorless LI/HO humanely-raised boneless-skinless chicken breast with the pesto, and I have no problem eating this delicious HI/HO chicken as a substitute to the factory-farmed deep-fried HI/LO mcnuggets. With the SHE model in mind, you can experiment endlessly with different HI/HO combinations without having the temptation to revert back to HI/LO. You can try all the different fad diets out there (e.g. Bulletproof, Primal Blueprint, GAPS, Slow Carb, Paleo, Keto, 80-10-10, Raw, Vegetarian, Vegan, etc.) and pick whichever foods/diets you feel gives you the highest O. I and O are mostly subjective, so don't blindly settle on what someone tells you are the best foods to eat. Test them all out in your direct experience and see how you feel after eating them. In addition to creating HI/HO meal substitutes, discover what foods give you a LO and eliminate them from your diet. This may be difficult to discern if your body is used to eating junk food, but as you continue with SHE you will get better at observing your O. Here are a few possible starters with which to experiment: milk chocolate, cow's milk, foods fried in polyunsaturated oils, pasta. Remember, any HI food you eliminate must be replaced with a substitute that matches or exceeds that I. Possible replacements for the above examples would be >70% cacao dark chocolate, almond milk, foods sautéd in grass-fed butter, and spaghetti squash, respectively. To those of you who already think SHE sucks...I understand why. Yes, SHE has a cost: you will have to set aside more time for cooking. However, you'll find that this actually benefits you in the long run. Not only will you spend more time creating art (yes, cooking is an art form!) that would otherwise be spent surfing the web or masturbating to Sesame Street porn, but you will also begin to appreciate your meals more, become more present with the eating process, feel satisfied about putting good fuel in your body, and develop a skill that will inevitably attract the opposite sex. You will even find that cooking gives you valuable insights into the nature of your other creative ventures. There is also the monetary cost; SHE can be expensive. Anybody who does a lot of dating knows this very well! Jokes aside, in the long run, you'll be saving money by paying more for high-quality foods today rather than the piles of medical bills resulting from years of sustained unhealthy eating (SUE). The initial transition from SUE to SHE may be difficult as your body curbs its physical addiction to junk food. Again, make sure you have good HI/HO substitutes to replace the HI/LO junk. Within a couple weeks, the cravings for HI/LO foods will recede completely. For those of you who also have a psychological addiction to food, I suggest working through your neuroses with professional help and doing inner work as you commit to SHE. As you can see, SHE is not rocket science, nor is it a directive. It's just an active way of approaching healthy eating that's tailored to your body type and preferences. So, SHE in summary: -Do your own research on what's considered healthy and unhealthy foods. Starting with a fad diet is your best bet. -Eliminate the unhealthy meals in your diet and substitute them with new healthy meals, keeping the above equations in mind. -Observe your O. Keep eating foods that personally give you a HO (Hehehehe). Don't rely solely on hearsay (although hearsay is necessary)! -Look on cooking blogs, this forum, and read books for HI/HO recipe ideas. -Continue to tailor your diet to maximize your O. Stay open-minded to new foods and diets that have the potential to increase your O. And most importantly, have fun with it! As you continually increase O, gain more energy and concentration, become more cultured and creative with your cooking, and gain a newfound appreciation for food, you will wonder how the heck you spent so much of your life with SUE feeling so painfully sluggish and depressed. You'll never want to go back down into that tepid sewer ever again. Even if you do break the lifestyle here and there (which I strongly encourage), how crappy you feel after the fact will naturally drive you back into SHE. Let me know what you think of this guide. It's in alpha stage. Feedback is welcome. If you test it out, let me know how it goes! Remember: SHE's the way to go, and SUE's a bitch (for those of you who are actually named Sue: you're still a bitch). Cheers!

@Marc Schinkel I like the way you describe the "momentum" of getting older. The external pressures telling you what you should do. It takes a lot of willpower to overcome them; some never do. Well said. And thank you for introducing me to some great music! I like the yodel quality in her voice. It brings out the emotions. Cheers.

Macro and Micro "My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it should be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady." - Ralph Waldo Emerson I can see all the voices in my head duking it out with my previous post like nitpicky internet trolls. "No life purpose? So I'm just going to sit around all day and cater to my lower self like a glutton? I may as well take some low-end job so I can masturbate and play video games for the rest of my days." "I'd be a complete floater, just going with the flow, utterly directionless, letting the river decide where I want to go. Doesn't sound like a very fulfilling life to me." "But I want IMPACT. I want to change the world! How the heck can I make a difference without a life purpose?" To those reading who have a life purpose: awesome! In a way, I'm kind of envious that you've managed to pinpoint an overarching mission to your life. But for those of us who have spent YEARS deliberating incessantly about what mission statement we should adopt, any more thoughts on life purpose will be sure to cause spontaneous combustion. And it makes sense why that's the case. The universe is without purpose, plain and simple; it is what it is. But we humans seem to have this mind-made capacity to paint the otherwise blank canvas of life with brush strokes of meaning. We LOVE to interpret, to try to find meaning and purpose in this rather uncomplicated survival game. It's ingrained in the psyche. If you don't believe me, what are you doing right now when you read these words? Problems arise when we take our interpretations too seriously. As I've found with deliberating life purpose. I've spent so much time trying to figure out the macro, the big "fireworks" moment in my life, when in the process I've almost completely overlooked the majority of what life is: a series of microcosms. We spend our days slaving away for some huge moment of impact, when we forget that every day is a chance to be impactful. Maybe not in the way we imagined, but in a way that's actually realistic. And who knows? Maybe all of these little microcosms will add up in the end to make a "macro" moment. In response to the trolls in my head: In my experience, I've found that deliberating about the macro has brought about MORE of the gluttonous behaviors like masturbation and video games, MORE procrastination than action. Thinking too big has created choice paralysis, produced limiting beliefs, and has made me run away from the things I feel so inclined to do otherwise. I've found that my addictions are a utility of avoidance, perhaps avoidance of the fact that life is without purpose and "this is it". As for being a directionless floater... Isn't that life? Minus our interpretive overlays, isn't that what we're all doing? Just winging it? If I'm not mistaken, this is your first time being alive, right? Isn't that fulfilling enough? I mean, otherwise, where would you be? Tomorrow literally does not exist. It's a thought. So what can you do TODAY that gives you meaning, makes you feel purposeful, gives you a sense of impact or contribution? Is it practicing your instrument? Taking a photo? Spending time with a loved one? Cooking a splendid meal? Giving money to a beggar? Making a birth chart? Volunteering at the local animal shelter? Why not keep doing that until you change your mind about it? And if you aren't, why not? Is it because you're too busy planning your macro moment?

What's the Rush? "Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have.... for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has." -Walt Whitman I've been flailing around lately trying to figure out adulthood, and in the process I had a simple mind-blowing insight. There was a job I interviewed for recently that seemed like a good idea at the time, but now just leaves this bitter taste in my mouth. It was a kitchen staff job at one of the busiest breakfast places in my city. "The work is non-stop," the executive chef interviewer told me. "There's basically no breaks. You need to be open to criticism. Shifts are eight hours or more." Lordy lord. I needed to know more. I asked him how he got into the cooking business. He told me that the job of chef saved his life. He used to be 200 pounds overweight until he took a chef job at a low-tier chain restaurant, and he's been cooking ever since. Sounds to me like a textbook example of someone who's signed their life away to their neuroses from which they're desperately running away. Everyone's so busy, and I'm no different. I've been into psychosomatic healing lately, digesting all of these books on psychology and bioenergetics and self-help. I've also been obsessed with the idea of a life purpose, considering just caving in and buying Leo's course. There seems to be this nagging programming in the back of our minds telling us "This isn't it; not yet; you just need to do this one thing here; you have to do this before you do that..." I can feel it manifested in my body. Even though my diet is extremely clean, I still have digestive issues, always had. There's that tension in the lower abdomen, telling me, "You're not good enough. You need to do something more to define yourself. You need a calling! A purpose! An IMPACT on the world!" Then it hit me. I have food, really good food at that. I have water. I have shelter. I have clothing. I have a few good friends. Survival's pretty easy. Do I really need a purpose? Do I really need to slave hours over deciding how I want to PRECISELY make an impact in an otherwise zero-sum game? Isn't it kind of self-manipulative to say that you have to have a mission? Isn't this whole idea of a purpose just a construct in a Type-A capitalistic culture where people give away their happiness to achievement? Am I interested in life purpose because I want to be remembered? For people to revel in my presence? To win approval under the guise of "helping others"? To be special? Am I being as neurotic as the executive chef by running away from the fact that I'm not special? What would be left if I said "fuck it" to the whole idea of some grand purpose? Well, just this. This is it, then. No fireworks, no KABLAMO! MISSION COMPLETE! No more trying to be a special person. No more trying to be remembered. I can finally learn to relax. I have everything I need to survive. I have meaningful connections. I continue to nonchalantly practice stuff that I enjoy, like making music and cooking. I leave time to sit, be, contemplate, cry, and heal. I can do stuff that I've been putting off because of "purpose," such as spending time with people I actually like. And in fact, without "purpose" I can learn to be more helpful to others without subtly asking for anything in return. Instead of constantly trying to be somebody, I can finally re-learn to be nobody in particular. And what a relief that is.

Yo Martin, For more than a decade now, I've had the same exact problem. Through lots of introspection, what I've realized is that this mentality has wrapped its tentacles into every aspect of my life. It's not just the social life that's been affected; it's also career path, physical activity, familial relationships, general well-being, and pretty much everything else. All of these areas have been tainted with the idea that I somehow need to receive validation from others (external sources) in order to feel loved and not be abandoned. I don't know you or your situation, but you may want to look a little deeper to see how far down your people-pleasing rabbit hole goes. You may find that you still lie to yourself in many ways. Some questions to contemplate: Is your desire to be a "positive force" in the world less about helping others and more about wanting to be loved and appreciated? Do you have a tendency to try to "fix" other people? Have you ever considered that this is a method of masking your own perceived deficiencies? Do you isolate yourself (usually for spirituality purposes) and avoid conflict at all costs? Have you ever considered that is is a method of hiding perceived flaws and avoiding disapproval from others? Do you perform physical activities that you hate doing? Have you ever considered that this is because you want to look a certain way in order to receive approval from others? Do you believe it's selfish to put your needs first (spiritual belief of selflessness)? Have you ever considered that this is because you believe you are somehow defective or undeserving of love? As you begin to dig yourself out of this mess, as you've done, you'll find that most of your friendships are not real friendships; they are covert contracts. You've been using them for validation, and they give it to you, even though you may not even actually like these so-called friends. As a result, you've felt generally alienated and unsatisfied. I have two book suggestions for you. One is No More Mr. Nice Guy! by Robert Glover. If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, this book will read like your autobiography. It's uncanny. In it, you'll find tools and action steps to transcending what the author calls the Nice Guy Syndrome. The second book is Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. This one will give you tools and action steps on how to be more honest with yourself and with others. As they always say, the truth will set you free. A fair warning though, when you begin to cultivate honesty, it will feel as though you are committing suicide. In a sense, you are. Lastly, some food for thought: "You can't have social anxiety if you don't want anything from other people." --Benjamin Smythe Cheers.

You dug yourself into a linguistic hole with your first sentence. Life is not suffering. Life is not beautiful either. Life just is. Words can never approach life itself. Suffering, beauty, and all these other interpretations are just the stories told in an otherwise undescribable book full of black ink. You also dig yourself into a linguistic hole by asking the question, "Is life worth it?" Which wouldn't be an issue if you also saw that worth is just another interpretive overlay. Do you think your heartbeat has any questions? Do you think breathing is confused? Realize that life has no questions; only thoughts do. Cheers.

Based on your previous posts, I highly doubt that, Froggy. I felt compelled to come back on here not only to respond to this, but to talk about a general trend I've noticed here on this forum. Of course, I could be totally off, but because of the fact that I fell into the following trap, I thought I'd describe it, just in case anyone is ready to start digging themselves out of it. That includes you, Froggy. If you've been on this forum for awhile now, you may notice that the main demographic is typically male, ages 17-25. This particular demographic of people have been discontent with their life circumstances, especially with their relationships with others. Based on my observations, they are often introverted people pleasers, and because they need to constantly put up a front so that nobody disapproves of them, they often prefer to isolate themselves. Enter Leo, who combines self-help and spirituality and eventually ditches self-help altogether for Sage University®, where he advocates ditching relationships to meditate and snort some powder and research all spiritual traditions and contemplate in your room all day in order to attain this elusive achievement called enlightenment. Do you see where this is going? This is music to the ears for the aforementioned demographic. Meditating and contemplating and being primarily in solitude allows these introverted people pleasers to avoid relationships and their social anxiety altogether. Then, stack that on top of Leo's advocacy of spiral dynamics, which categorizes people on a sort of spiritual hierarchy. Then, stack that on top of the fact that at first when you think you've "waken up," you look at everyone else as though they are "asleep" and therefore inferior. Yet another reason to avoid real-life relationships: you're too superior to everyone else, so it's not even worth talking to any of them. Then, stack that with the ultimate distraction: the forum. This is where you get to hide behind an avatar where you're safe from real verbal abuse and pretend to be in company with other people, when really, you're just masking your own loneliness because you don't actually want to hurt anybody's feelings and instead want to protect your own ass. It's much safer to live behind a computer screen than to actually have a conversation with someone and pour your heart out and run the risk of hurting their feelings in real time. My point in action: I'm not saying that meditation, taking psychedelics, contemplation, or any of these introspective activities are fundamentally bad; they can all be quite useful. I'm just saying that just like any other introverted activity, these "spiritual" activities can also be used as an excuse to run away from your social neuroses. So, for Froggy and for anyone else reading, give yourself a truth serum and see if you can be totally honest with yourself. Are you using spirituality to run away from the real work of having to deal with your neuroses? Are you reading countless spiritual books and not taking any action? Are you using the awake/asleep/enlightened/unenlightened/green/orange/yellow stage distinctions to categorize people as a way to isolate and protect yourself (in the end, these distinctions don't actually exist)? I've sure as hell have been doing all these things, and it wasn't until I took a long break from the forum, started traveling and meeting new people, and doing lots of lots of crying and punching shit that I realized this. Anyways. Just some food for thought. Self acceptance goes a long way. Cheers.

Who says your current state isn't nondual?

Driving Down a Scenic Byway You're driving down a scenic byway in New Hampshire, taking a car trip. The trees are turning red and golden hues. Your car zips past them in an effortless fashion. You quit your job. You left home. You have divested yourself of most human connections, including friends and family. You stare out onto the blank canvas of the scenery ahead. You are working towards some lofty goal called "spiritual enlightenment" and are worried that you will lose the progress you have made by deciding to take this car trip. You worry about the monkey mind, about falling back asleep, about returning to "low level consciousness," about becoming unconscious again. All these bullshit ideas swimming and floating around in your head like soggy alphabet soup. And then it hits you like a bolt of lightning. Death. Its claws begin to strangle all of those ideas out of your head, replacing them with ones of meaninglessness and despair. Life is completely, utterly meaningless, you think. Nobody will ever remember you or what you did. Anytime you help someone or contribute in some way, it's only temporary. All is vanity and a striving after wind. Experience is a fleeting dream that is passing like clouds on a midsummer's day. The human race is running around in circles, pretending it's going somewhere, pretending that all their problems matter, when in fact they're going nowhere and they all matter as much as a dead, decaying rat in an alleyway of New York City. Everyone thinks they're a special enlightened snowflake while the truth is that everybody is a nobody, including you. You pull over on the shoulder and scream bloody murder. Tears withheld for many years come streaming down your face in a torrent. You think of all of your struggles, your worries, your goals, and your dreams over the past year and how utterly ridiculous they all were. You think of all the other people out there, living their lives in that dark cesspool of the mind. You think of all the spiritual seekers out there, replacing all their egoic bullshit with spiritual bullshit. You have suicidal thoughts. You think, may as well just die now. It's not like it matters either way. This futility is too hard to bear. It's all so uncertain. Fuck Truth, fuck enlightenment, fuck all these concepts. Nobody knows jack shit. It's just me, all alone on this desert island of perception. When the purging stops, there is a very bearable silence. Relief. That's it! Relief. Like you just took a massive dump you've been holding in for years. Like you've been lying to yourself for so long, and your brutal honesty let open the floodgates. What now? You think. Then, laughter. So much laughter, up to the point of even more tears. You stare ahead at the gorgeously meaningless scenery and the passing cars. Ha, what a joke! You think. What a colorful, beautiful joke this place is. And it's so...big! You may have no reason to live, but you have no reason to die either. So here you are, where you've always been: in death's waiting room. In the land of the knowing unknown. You have some time to kill, so you figure, may as well do whatever I want to do... You're hungry, and decide to make yourself a peanut butter jelly sandwich on the shoulder of that road.

@Dodoster You're very welcome. The very fact that you can read these words is incredible. You are so perfect as you are...If only you could see that. <3 Oh, and by the way, there is no "we." There is only You, in your utter magnificence.

Be careful with parroting Leo...he ain't enlightened. Sure, reading all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo is great. It clears up a lot of old ignorance. But eventually, EVERYTHING will have to be examined (in direct experience) and thrown in the fire. All so-called knowledge is ignorance, and the only true knowledge you can hold is, "I am limitless awareness." And that requires no maintenance. Don't take my word for it though, as you do Leo's. Get out of what? The Matrix? Where's that? This powerful ego...Where's that in direct experience? What is knowledge really? What is learning in direct experience? Who does spiritual practice? Why am I unenlightened? What if all the reasons were bullshit? What if all timetables were bullshit? What if it's "now or never"? You have a lot of investigating to do. It's up to you if you really truly want to look. Oh, and a side note. I'm not saying that spiritual practice like meditation is pointless and you shouldn't do them. They can all be great tools for developing equanimity and removing some of this ignorance. However, just keep in mind the question of who is practicing. Cheers...

@Dodoster What Ramana's referring to when he says "Silence" is a state of not-knowing, a state that is free of expectation, prediction, and the illusion of knowledge. He's basically saying, "I can't predict or intellectually know anything, so may as well abide in what I know for sure: my Self." Instead, you're equating silence with no-mind and are trying to stop your thinking, hoping for some bliss-explosion that you call "enlightenment." But you'll get nowhere with that because first of all, you can't maintain states of no-mind forever. And second of all, you're refusing to examine all of your most cherished beliefs, which are really what's keeping you from enlightenment. For example, did a "Ramana Maharshi" even exist? How do you know he is the "greatest teacher"? If I were you, I'd take what everyone says (including my words) with a grain of salt. You are the only authority there could ever be on the matter of your experience, because you are it! You are all of it! You're on a singular island of experience. Have you noticed that? There's no such thing as two experiencers. Cheers...

@Key Elements Oy veh....so lost in stories. I'm so sorry my friend. This is all I will say: Be well, and try not to take yourself so seriously. <3

@Key Elements Reason? What's that? Really look in your direct experience for this one. Can you find any "reason" in your direct experience? Can you find "reason"-ness in touching, tasting, seeing, smelling, etc? Or is "reason" just a story like Santa Clause? Just like meaning. Can you find "meaning"-ness in anything? Can you eat meaning? See it? Touch it? Taste it? Or is it a story like Santa Clause? What I think is that you've done too much research and too little looking. Do you realize that your experience is all you have? That nobody can tell you what you're experiencing? How incredible is that? That you're even reading these words?! Amazing. You're amazing, exactly as you are. I don't care if you think you're unenlightened. Your perfection is literally right in front of you.

@Key Elements You could either say: A. Enlightenment exists, because it is "what is" - which is everything. or B. After realizing that there is nothing to realize and no one to become enlightened, you see that enlightenment (of the individual) does not exist. Words words words....they're one hell of a drug.

Women shit!!!???!! Mind = blown.

@Dodoster One of the worst expectations you can have about enlightenment is that it will solve all of your circumstantial problems, and that you'll be permanently blissed out. Sure, you may see on a fundamental level that problems are mind-stuff that doesn't actually exist, but you will still move toward "rightness" and away from "wrongness." If someone was beginning to saw off an enlightened person's arm, do you really think they'd just sit there and say, "There are no problems here, it's all perfect as it is, I won't do anything because it's all so perfect" ?? No, they'd prefer not to have their arm sawed off, and likely try to get out of that situation. You want to stop thinking? So, you'd like to become a vegetable? I mean, if that's what you want, that's what you want. But here's another thing: no-mind is not enlightenment. It's something that may happen during meditation, and it can be quite pleasant. But it can also be quite unpleasant when you're trying to maintain it, because it can't be maintained. Enlightenment requires absolutely no maintenance. It sounds to me like you're not being honest with yourself. It sounds to me like you're denying and pushing away your thoughts because of some fear that they will make you unenlightened or make you consider doing horrible things. Don't believe me though, just look for yourself. It's as if you've turned enlightenment into this online multiplayer game (Halo 2 was famous for this) where your "ranking" can go up or down and you have to keep at it or else it goes down. That sounds pretty miserable to me. It actually sounds a lot like the workings of ego...hmmm.....

@Dodoster Develop an apparatus that allows you to photosynthesize your epidermis so that you always have an accessible food source to eat: yourself! Jokes aside, if you really think you're stuck with your job, you may just not be discontent enough. There's also something called resourcefulness that may be handy for ya if you really want out of your situation. All the best, man.

@Prabhaker I know, right? I am an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent internet stranger. Therefore you should precisely listen to every single word I say. And if you don't, eternal damnation for you!

@Dodoster You are aptly named, Dodo. Not because you can't learn new ideas, but because you have too many ideas in your head and refuse to get rid of them. If you don't enjoy your work, then do something about it! Or are you afraid of what may happen? Are you afraid of losing everything that defines yourself? So then, may as well run away from that and go sit and stare at a wall and meditate all day. The chains to Plato's cave are not locked. It's just a matter of how willing you are to take the plunge into freedom and uncertainty. It's now or never, my friend. Now or never. Tattoo that on your sleeve.

I hate to be "that guy"...and you seem fairly well-versed in all this enlightenment hoo-hah...but who the heck is frustrated? Seriously?! I know that's a common question that the gurus ask, but seriously look into it. Don't reply to this message saying, "well of course there's no me" - have you actually looked? Where is the you? Hint: is it just another thought? And also, where is this so-called "mind" you keep spouting on about? More thoughts? Again, who is the one tired of what mind, and where/what is peace in your direct experience? You may need to read over this a bit, chew on it. What if your desire to be in no-mind is what's preventing you from living in peace? Do you notice that this is just another one of your egoic carrot-on-the-stick games you're buying into? "Once I have no-mind I will be happy." You point out that no-mind is something that can be lost, something that has to be maintained. It sure must take a lot of effort and energy to try to stop thinking all the time, huh? Are you afraid that if you stop practicing your spiritual practices, you will never reach no-mind and therefore never be happy and enlightened? What if I told you that enlightenment is not something that needs to be maintained whatsoever? What if I told you that enlightenment is your present experience? Notice the contraction upon reading that question. That means all of your striving and seeking to become "enlightened" will be for nothing. If I were you, I'd ask yourself the following questions: What am I looking for? Why is it that this present state is unenlightened? Notice how your answers are all thoughts. Passing thought-stories. What are they passing in? Yes, it's really that simple. I'd rather not hear more bullshit stories from you, so no need to reply. Unless you're triggered, then you'll inevitably reply. Oh man, what have I done... Cheers!

Here's another perspective to chew on. What you call "artificial," is really an artificial distinction. Everything could be considered "natural" because nature itself has spontaneously brought about the human race as it is. It is only the human mind that says something is "artificial" or "unnatural". Humans have thought themselves to be separate from nature with their civilizations and cities and such, but it is this very thinking process that is a spontaneous, perfect, natural unfolding. Thus, on a fundamental level, everything is perfect and flawless exactly as it is. So to say that "the city feels like a cage" is likely a projection, reinforced by you saying that when you walk in nature your mind "escapes" from all your issues. It's as though when you walk in nature you look away from the mirror, and when you're in the city you look into the mirror and see all of your apparent problems. But even in nature, that mirror is still there; you're just looking away. In order to get rid of that mirror once and for all, you have to look into it and dive into your apparent problems. But what you seem to be doing is establishing this "City is a cage" belief (probably by listening to Leo ramble on about becoming a yogi) and using it as an excuse to avoid what you fear. A question you may want to ask yourself is: "What am I so afraid of?" Or maybe, "What am I running from?" But what the heck do I know? It's your life. Cheers.

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my own name. I say goodbye. The words follow each other downwind. I love my wife but send her away. My parents rise out of their thrones into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing? Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same. I empty myself of my life and my life remains. --Mark Strand

@Kserkkj I wouldn't say anything is absolutely necessary for self-realization. But if I were to suddenly find out that my entire life up to this point has been a lie, I would be pretty damn depressed at first. As for Benhito...first off, like I said, there are really no real stages to self realization. Second off, how would I know? How could anyone know? It's not like I have enlightenment-radar, although that would be pretty cool regardless. Cheers...