Torkys

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj Awesome joke indeed

@Shin I LMFAO-d, thanks! I think it is. Chill! He released 3 videos last week. If this was the Sunday video, he's just taking a little break. If he releases another I would be very happy but I doubt this.

Surrender. The suffering won't pass if you distract yourself. Don't wish your death. It won't make it happen because you are holding on. It's a catch 22 because if you desire to not desire your death, you won't die because you desire. Sink into it. Meditate. Surrender.

Yeah, it's just a nature of nihilism. There are different levels of integration. You need to go through them: 1) OMFG, the meaning of life does not exist. 2) Well, there is nothing to do. I will do nothing. 3) OOOH! This means that I can create whatever I want. Doing absolutely does not make me happy (which is not to say that doing nothing or being happy carry any significance). Experience it and contemplate it. You need to chew on it in order for it to liberate you. Trust the process and be mindful.

This was my third time facing an existential crisis. This one wasn't really a crisis because it wasn't painful. Sink into it. It may be painful, but it's so liberating to integrate. There are no absolute rules. This means that you can create anything you want. Design your life. There is no wrong way. The passing away of objective meaning doesn't mean that creating a subjective one is a sin. Lastly, this is Leo's comment on another nihilistic post which I absolutely love:

WHY? Why do we as a community praise high consciousness values? Values are inherently absolutely relative. Your values can be whatever and they depend on the goals an individual has. Cruelty, closed-mindedness and low consciousness are values to a mafioso. Why does it need to be high consciousness? Does this serve our agenda? "Well, but sure, you don't want to suffer in your life, want to live a dissatisfied life or be guilty on your deathbed!" - yeah, but these are choices I or you make. Even if I don't want these, this doesn't prove that these are absolute. Even if the human machine has "preferences", it can "sabotage itself" (which a majority of society does by pursuing success, but it doesn't make it lesser or lower level). My mind abused this realization, I started playing video games again because my subconscious values are guiding me and there is no reason to change anything if I don't want to design my life - which I intend to. This and the "value" of valuelessness makes it so that I can't say this without being a heretic of my own "faith". Back to the design table, starting from square 1.

@star ark Nope dude, I had a direct experience of subconscious values and it ended with me stopping to moralize about video games. If there was no objective to follow in the first place, it won't ruin my potential to get a win in Fortnite. @MDMD @aurum I would say the exact same thing as to @Truth, but I realized that this is a stupid argument to make. If I settle for whatever, you could always make the objection that "Oh, I got ya! You value a preference more!". How stupid of me. @Faceless@Joseph Maynor (if you (will) see this) I decided to finish doing Steve Pavlina's life purpose exercise tonight. I already did it for around 80 minutes and got to the point where I read my latest "guess" and almost start crying. Gotta do exercises, create my mission statement and set my life around these.

And it still isn't .

@Slade The ego wants to survive, therefore it wants an easy life, therefore it wants comfort, therefore permanent happiness. Spirituality is a search for permanent happiness - a quote from my earlier contemplations. You make a decision because you have a better reason to do it than any other option. This includes values. This requires contemplation though. Thanks! That's a preference. Not more valid than other ones. I bashed video games earlier and moralized against them, after trying them again - hey, that's enjoyable! After starting to do LP work, those justifications came back.

I have this too. It's "negative" energy coming to the surface. Especially if you have a consistent meditation practice. Keep the balance between repressing and experiencing. Don't repress it because it will bite you in the ass eventually. And releasing does not mean that you think "Now I am angry!" and generate actions that match your emotion. Allow and let it flow through you.

Woah. This makes me miss the Thumbs up button

Continue meditating Have a breakthrough experience Observe your mind not wanting to meditate Repeat It's already a great thing that you notice this problem. Awareness alone is curative. If you observe your mind long enough with higher levels of consciousness, you will experience so much tension and conflict within yourself that slacking off will be impossible for you.

I have never tripped in my entire life, but I can tell that LSD - and pretty much all traditional psychedelics - will affect people differently. You can watch and read trip reports (there is a trip report mega-thread on this forum) and make sure you trip safely.

As I am struggling with similar problems, I got the insight that there is an unconscious motive behind doing "useless" things. Your system of values somehow values low-quality entertainment more than deep and meaningful work. Explore that. Find a meaningful life purpose. Face your inner demons.

Creating a meme because I want to feel special program. Make this a meme .

Hey! This isn't actually that bad! But still; I would still prefer to reform reputation. I can see it's potential benefits. Maybe I will change my mind later. The water is still a bit cold. @Lorcan gets my +1. Reason: Good system. If it could be programmed in a Reddit-like fashion with a maximum 1 depth, other users could comment, correct and rate at the same time. Adding a comment would be optional. Maybe combine with the system that I proposed earlier. I would still support the removal of post count, signature, and view count.

If you just want to have another (artificial) language under your belt, then Toki Pona. It has 120 official words, so it forces you to articulate concepts in simple words. It's interesting to think in Toki Pona but it's not practical otherwise. mi wile e ni: sina kama sona e toki pona.

Even if that's the case, it will make our job easier. The deletion of people's overall reputation doesn't bother me but I miss the thumbs up for individual posts/topics. If @Leo Gura decides to bring it back, he should add a way to see how many rep points a certain topic has from the sub-forum page itself. This could make it easier to spot quality posts. Other than that, I have a suggestion to resolve the "but rep points don't show quality" issue: find the common reasons people upvote certain posts/topics (because they agree, think it's insightful or funny...) and have separate buttons for these. With this, you can enforce the values of this forum because anything that can't be rewarded with these buttons and therefore won't get much attention. But with this, joke and non-insightful threads (Enlightenment Jokes, Enlightenment One-Liners, Share With Us Your Art, etc.) will die and the forum will get hyper-serious. So even this option has its pros and cons and self-defeating from a certain perspective. #MuchNonDual. And of course, a huge downside of this system is that it doesn't have a way to deal with old reputation points but this can be solved by just showing how many reputations did the topic/post get in the old system. Great idea, still, people can show gratitude for a multitude of reasons. Any idea of x posts/ y time period it total utter bs because it's abusable. In the worst case scenario, people will create mass mega-threads and they will discuss multiple issues is a single post by editing a single post over and over again. And if you ban these mass mega-threads and editing, you have the chance to make kiddos confused for y amount of time because you didn't explain it well enough. In either case - a flawed idea. (This is my fourth time editing this post. How ironic.) Also, it would be awesome if we/certain people/moderators decided this issue with a poll.

Thinking may occur while you are aware, but the word to pay attention to is "you". If you think, you aren't aware.

I started taking notes using a variation of the outline method in school 2 years before it became necessary, so I think this amount of practice may have helped me alot. I don't usually stop the video while taking notes, usually, Leo just talks about the topic in general after saying a main point/topic. I think taking notes increases my watch time by 15% at max. As I said earlier, Leo's way of presenting information is almost designed to be taken using bulleted points. A new topic usually starts when he says: "the next one is...", "let's talk about..." and generally saying something that you can't link to any previous thing he said. It would good for you just to look for these. After that, try to stop at the end of every single topic/sub-topic, and write down the essence of what he is saying. Other than that, practice... Edit: Just took notes on a video and observed myself while doing it, there are some tips: Don't write down anything general about the video, the series of videos a video is in if it is in one, or a topic within a video. If something is important in it, it will be mentioned later nonetheless. Don't write down double negatives. Develop and add words and synonyms to definitions. Don't care about the grammar as long as you can understand it later. After the last one, I stopped writing tips because I got the essence of efficient note taking. It is to record the video in the simplest form possible while containing everything important. Actually, no special note-taking method is needed, if you got this down, you are good to go. My notes being easy to read is just a nice little feature to me.

Here are things that I do that make my notes shorter and better Focus on his main ideas and center your notes around these ideas. Look up the outline method of note-taking and use bulleted and numbered lists. As you start to do this more and more, the more you will start to notice that Leo's videos are centered around certain ideas. Remove the fluff. What you think isn't important and is self-explanatory, just don't write it down. In some way highlight some things that are important to you. It may be some food for thought, super-duper important points and insights. Go back and add new definitions of / points about a certain thing. Review your notes after taking them. Copy and paste the link to the video in case you need to watch/review it again Explain things using your own words. Quotes can be useful but only if you understand them and if they are important. Here are some of my notes so you can have a clear idea of what I am talking about: These are notes I took while listening to Advice For High School & College Students - The Keys To Mastering Life:

In one post, Leo mentioned that 100% (divine) free will is the same thing as determinism. I would love to hear about the other side of the free will and determinism coin.

On the last day of 2017, I had a huge insight. The sun was going down, and all of a sudden, I heard a petard exploding. I became angry and went outside. How can these people be so fucking ignorant of the pain dogs face with every single explosion they are exposed to? How can they place their own well being over others' well being? After a while, I went outside to comfort my dog, and then it hit me. How can I be so fucking ignorant that I place my own well being over others' well being? C'mon, my desire for the well being of my dog is a selfish desire in itself. I named this phenomenon meta-ignorance. Ignoring the fact that you put your own desires over other's ignorance to put their desires over yours. Maybe I am just scratching the surface, but this is where victim mentality, projection and flat out psychopathy comes from. At least try to become conscious of it if you haven't already. Is this rabbit hole going deeper?

Look at the thread above. My advice would be what @Spiral said, literally. All growth should be natural. If you are not 100% sure that this path is good for you (ultimately, we all could be just deluded, you can never know for sure), go back but watch yourself doing what you do. This is the only way you can deeply realize if society's values and actions will lead to a happy life or not. Investigate for yourself in direct experience.