zazed

Votes on individual posts: Provide feedback of quality to me Allow me to give feedback without posting an actual reply message He who shouts hardest is often deemed right in society, voting is more Democratic. Total post count - Does not serve any purpose. Total reputation count - encourages reputation trading and clique forming.

It doesn't matter, there is no duality in doing/enjoying worldly things. If you are enlightened should you be sitting like a vegetable all day, doing nothing? The neurotic need to exercise will go, but you can still choose to work out constantly. There is no reason to, nor is there a reason not to, so you might as well if it is beneficial to you. If you make a conscious choice to be buffed as an enlightened person, i believe you will be unwavering from that goal.

Enlightenment is the dissolving of everything. More and more things appear that i didn't realize existed, which i can then let dissappear once more.

Yes, not due to addiction, but instant gratification i think. I think it is rather more than attachment. It's poison for the mind, attached or not. Even these forums can be. Too often have i been distracted during meditation by a thought like "I shall share this on actualized.org", or "I shall write this in my journal", visualizing what i would write, having to fight the sudden urge to get up and do it instantly. But i never do post that stuff, it usually makes no sense later, lol... Its the instant gratification, the push to share our every thought, to have our desires fulfilled on a whim by the power of our fingertips.

no, it is not strange. you are asking interesting questions and have an open mind.

'Nonsense, nonsense,' snapped the owl, 'there is no "you" to be anything nor any "thing" for you to be!' 'Pity,' sighed the rabbit, 'I have always thought that there was.' 'Thought! Thought!!' deplored the owl, swivelling his head through ninety degrees. 'A futile habit, universally condemned by the Sages.' 'What are the Sages, then, who cannot be bothered to think, and how do they sage?' 'Those who apperceive,' explained the owl shortly, 'present a further dimensional extension.' 'And what may that be?' 'A further direction of measurement - of vision,' explained the owl. 'And how does that work?' asked the rabbit. 'Conceptualizing is thereby excluded,' snapped the owl; 'split-mind is then whole.' 'And what is the effect of that?' inquired the rabbit. 'They see directly, of course,' the owl answered, swivelling back his head and fixing the rabbit with his luminous eyes, 'and then, of course, "they" are absent.' 'So what?' mused the rabbit uneasily. 'I mean, what is present?' 'Present?' asked the owl. 'Why, everything, of course!' 'Everything?' queried the rabbit, skipping with surprise. 'How can that be?' 'In my conceptual absence,' hooted the owl, 'everyone and everything is welcome HERE, where I AM, - and where they will be Absolutely at home!'

Unworldly Wise; As the Owl Remarked to the Rabbit, 1974, Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 0-85656-103-7

I enjoy running as a meditative practice, tho i do not run so much or fast as you. First, let me say, normally when meditating the mind becomes very still eventually. The mind going crazy while meditating is usually only the first couple minutes for me, or after I hit a wall in time duration. But experience in meditating will lead to an almost non-thinking state eventually. Breathing exercises, like focusing on the breath during meditation, can reduce thoughts succesfully. When running, i fully try to be aware of my body. Like i am doing a body scanning technique. I especially focus fully on any muscle that is burning, i also focus on my running form. I try to feel it harder, to feel it more, i bask in it. Sometimes while wondering "what is pain exactly, why is this sensation unpleasant?" After a while, the pain becomes abstract and i disassociate it as being unpleasant. So I become joyful, filled with the wonder of being alive and able to feel all these sensations. There is no thought at all anymore, and i am running with this goofy smile in pure bliss.

I don't know the exact reasons why culture makes you unhappy, as this was not mentioned. Society and culture sure can be crappy. But you have to figure out why it makes you unhappy, is it about culture, or about how you value/experience culture? And what is that experience exactly? Unhappy is a broad term. I had a similar issue some time ago, which may be totally different from your situation . But some time ago i had convinced my self i disliked society and people in general. So i became more reclusive as i did not enjoy, nor saw the need for most human interaction. I saw it as a waste of time. Later, when working on myself and digging deeper into my core values, i realized i actually have some anxiety . And was using avoidance as a solution. The problem was, due to me being reclusive, this issue was getting worse. It was a harsh realization for me, as I had been using spirituality as an excuse to avoid the unpleasant situation of going out in society. Visioning myself as becoming some kind of hermit sage. I had to realize spirituality did not give me an excuse to allow myself to have this fear. So i started working on it, going more out in situations i would never have gone in the past. I am starting to enjoy it even, allowing myself to be in the moment with other people.

Yeah, Enlightenment is about unlearning how to be unenlightened. Depending on how good we have trained ourselves in being unenlightened, this can be a lot of work to unlearn.

I agree, the perceiver is what is perceived. Like a strange loop. I would even say there is no enlightened mind, as enlightenment and mind are contradictory terms in my experience. Enlightenment is something that is, not something you really can understand. It is not something you really do, it is rather more a lot of things you do not do. It is definitively not a state of mind, nor is it achieved by knowledge or thinking.

Interestingly, they have been able to restore sight to people who were born blind. These people can see perfectly, but cannot make any sense of it. Their brain cannot distinguish people from objects. Or even where one object begins and another ends in his vision. Its just a whole mess of visual stuff. The reason for this is that their brain has never learned how to see, it cannot make sense of this sudden new data. So even the simple act of seeing without thinking, involves a whole lot of labeling and processing in the mind. Similar to how certain optical illusions work for us. But an optical illusion would mean nothing to these people even. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/feature-giving-blind-people-sight-illuminates-brain-s-secrets

@Maxx I am drunk, so a bit too direct, but i love you regardless. It doesn't matter. Your reality does what your reality enjoys. You can turn or take it however you want. You can fight the nature of good taste for billions of years. But nothing will ever change the fact human anatomy is hardwired to crave sugars, fats. This does not mean anything other than the evolution of your biology. A dog shit does not nourish your flesh, whatever illusions you may hold. Dog shit exists, chocolate exist, you exist, eating exists. It all exists in some form. Eat what the fuck you want, chocolate or dog shit, nobody really gives a fuck about what YOU eat. There is no duality, it is all possible, nothing is obligatory, nothing is optional. There is the reality, period, end of story. Whatever labels you want to give, feel free to give them, it only impacts your own mind and reality... You will exist regardless, awareness does not need your labels to do so. Whatever you construct, you construct only for yourself.

At least you know everyone is alone. Even the most social humans surrounded by people, are alone and isolated, interacting only with their own interpretation of others. In this way you are no different from anyone else in your aloneness. Thinking is a dangerous thing, it is double edged sword. It can be helpful in understanding and solving problems. But it can also lead to unhelpful rumination, leading to depression. Don't over analyse such things, it doesn't mean much to realize that we are essentially alone. In fact, nothing essentially has changed in reality by understanding this truth. Reality doesn't change by gaining understanding of it, life as such goes on, it doesn't care what you think of it. The problem is not being alone, the problem is deciding that being alone is a problem. This decision you can make for yourself, and you can make it again and again. https://goo.gl/images/NpHnKK

@Nahm I'm not a scientist, but i believe proving this plain impossible. To prove this they would have to cross into multiple worlds to take a look. To prove the Copenhagen they would have to observe a probability wave which collapses due to observation. As such neither are soon to be tested in any way. At this point it is just science saying "Hey, this idea could explain what we are seeing and also conforms to the math we know is correct" I have no preference, the original topic just reminded me of many worlds theory, didn't imply any agreement or belief by it. This Stanford Theoretical Physicist even says the universe could be a holographic projection Something weird is definitely going on, and science is hitting upon the fabric of creation itself, and they cannot explain or even understand what is being observed there. I've read somewhere totally unrelated, consciousness is the universe experiencing itself trough us, and we are all one. If the universe is consciousness and consciousness is the universe, perhaps that explains why observation and reality are so intertwined. The Copenhagen interpretation is scientifically the most clean solution i think, because it does not try to claim more than what has been observed. The only thing that exists is a mathematical wave function that can result in a dead or an alive cat. Maybe this implies the universe only exists as waves of chance, until someone observes it. As so far as a mathematical function is a real thing, and not rather a construct to help understand reality.

Exactly, its not because they are similar that they explain one another. It's just fascinating that there is certain scientific indication that could perhaps one day prove concepts such as a law of attraction exists. @Nahm As for these theories. They are just theories that are in accordance with the math behind quantum physics. They are not proven because it's almost impossible currently to measure in the field that multiple worlds get created. Much like they can also not measure and detect pilot waves, even if they provide a mathematical solution to the problem. The fascinating thing about quantum physics, is scientists agree on this situation of interaction changing reality. But they don't know how this works, or why. They can prove that it is so, but they cannot currently prove why it is so. I guess it has little to do with the spiritual practices. But its fascinating to me to see how much quantum mechanics is coming close with the spiritual and metaphysical. I think it would be cool if they could really integrate spirituality as fact into science.

@AleksM Sure, it may loosen your perspective, in this sense it may free the mind. It's a fascinating factoid, makes you think "what if". As such its related to spirituality and enlightenment, which has value to share on these forums. A problem i often have myself with these factoids, is that knowledge and mental understanding means almost nothing for my spiritual journey. I may have a short rush of insight and euphoria when learning about such a thing, thinking "how amazing". This may last a long time, making me happy even. But then eventually, when i sit and mediate, i realize it did not produce any meaningful change within me, aside from filling my head with factoids. Which i suppose is some form of spiritual bypassing i am prone to. It's like listening to someone talk about playing the guitar, without owning or ever being near a guitar. It will not help much in actually playing guitar.

Or perhaps every time a particle interacts with another particle, since the dawn of time. It's an accepted unproven scientific theory, that there could be unfathomable worlds, bigger than any number you can think of. perhaps... Not that this knowledge is any useful, other than fascinating. It's not like you can do anything with it.

@Dodo This made me smile

This is a noble goal. Do you have any hobbies, special skills or interest that people might compensate you for? Being dependent on society is hard to escape. Electricity, running water, medicine, textile, food are hard to source from outside of society.

I may have been or am a spiritual ego at times. I think everyone on the path is or has this disease at times. Reading a lot and having a knack for understanding lots of concepts mentally, but not necessarily seeing lasting change or effect on the way i live my life. There is a lot that has been written by many authors, video's on youtube and such. Instead of sitting and actually meditating, instead of seeing what is actually there to find in life, just keeping reading, talking, thinking about spirituality, with the mind. So perhaps a spiritual ego is an armchair guru, one who perhaps has learned a lot about spirituality, can talk about it in great length, but isn't therefor any closer to enlightenment.

you are amazing!

there is no need to understand anything. Understanding is perhaps useful when trying to explain. Existence exists. Be!

Looking purely at the health aspects, whey can be healthy in moderate amounts. Protein is unhealthy in high amounts anyway. I know of no studies looking at only the whey aspect of milk regarding to health, either negative or positive. As others have pointed out, soy protein, rice protein, pea protein,hemp protein are good alternatives, if you want to play it safe. That said, whey protein extraction, is perhaps one of the few exceptions where industrial extraction actually make it cleaner than the source product. Interesting fact, human milk is 60% whey and 40% casein, cow's is 80% casein and 20% whey. Which may suggest according to my bro-science, that we are more likely "evolved/built" to handle whey proteins. Cancer study's implicating cancer where done feeding rats pure casein, not milk, nor whey. 100g quality whey contains: 5g fats 4g sugars (lactose) 82g protein (99%whey) 0.5g salt Since 100g is a lot, and milk is mostly water. Lets compare it to 1litre of lowfat milk: 9.5g fats 50.8g sugars (lactose) 32.9g protein (80% casein, 20% whey) As you can see, these two products don't even resemble each other anymore, you can scarcely call whey a "milk product". Milk contains lots of sugar. Most of its protein is also casein. And even lowfat milk contains more fat than whey. It's so different due to the industrial extraction of the whey. Most of the health risks of milk are in the lactose, casein and hormones. None of these survive the extraction process. Mucus is caused by the casein, bloating is caused by the lactose, cancer is caused by the casein. What you are left with, is basically quality amino's, and virtually no vitamins, sugars or fats. It is why whey is the only animal product i allow in my diet, in very low amounts (10-20g). While my diet is vegan otherwise. This because it is cheaper, more readily available, and mixes/tastes better in my morning oatmeal with almond milk

The only thing that worked for me is this. Ignore your going to bed time for the most part. You can go to bed if you're tired, or to read. But never worry about whether or not you will be able to get enough sleep. It's not even relevant really. Look at your schedule, what is the earliest time you have to wake up for work/school. Perhaps it is 6 a.m. Take that time, and set your clock to it monday to sunday, make a choice then and there to always wake up at the same time. If you go to bed at 3 a.m. -> Wake up at 6 a.m If you go to bed at 4 a.m. -> Wake up at 6 a.m If you go to bed at 6 a.m. -> don't sleep at all If you go to bed at 23 p.m. -> getting better, wake up at 6 a.m. Make it a rule, set in stone, never deviate, never falter, never give up! It may take a week or a month, but eventually you will fall asleep more easily at night. Some days you will be tired. But with insomnia, you will be tired anyway, the net result is the same. But most likely, you will be tired after partying or staying up late on Friday, so you will be tired on Saturday, when you can take it easy. But on a Sunday, you will be able to fall asleep more easily, and be refreshed for work / school. After some time, you will wake up easily and refreshed, even if you had little sleep. This takes some discipline at first, and it's annoying when going out late in the weekend. But it is the only thing that works for me, and i've found i have more energy overall, by doing this. And the few downside's are well worth the benefit.