starsofclay

@krazzer Have you seen Westworld? Such an amazing show... touches on these themes that you pointed out... Hopefully AI won't decide to destroy the human race Maybe in a hundered years after it's birth they will start holding civil rights rallies and marches for equality.

haha, I guess it was off topic... but I only have limited time, so I practice things that interest me the most at the time. Getting some very interesting results with image streaming, but it's not for everyone. Let me know if you would like any tips on getting started. Its a great way to learn to communicate with yourself/"subconscious", which is bit taboo on here I'm sure... some folks may say its just mind candy for the ego, but I don't care... my ego has a sweet tooth. Work is going great though, I am being very mindful of my choices and actions. It feels good to let people in. It's not that I was completely shut off before I made that previous post, but was only commenting on things that I noticed I am having issues with, as part of my self-development.

@HII Well, I do feel like I am opening up more to people... just making myself do it seems to help a lot haha. Fake it till you make it, as they say. I am looking for a therapist, because I think it will definitely open the door to opening up. I have already contacted 2 in my insurance network, but neither of them have gotten back with me I have tried listening to environment as you mentioned, it is pretty relaxing. have also been practicing mirror gazing a few times. It's a form of scrying but can also help to calm and quiet the mind, so I've heard, and teaches the eyes to stay focused yet relaxed. I'm getting really interested in image-streaming again... I tried this a few times last year before moving on, but it seems to be pulling me back in again. have you heard of it? they say it can raise your IQ but also improve visualization skills ten-fold. It's supposed to be really powerful stuff.

Don't worry, I give a lot of unqualified advice around here. Yes, a lot of times it feels like you are just stating the obvious, but part of the human condition is that the obvious isn't always... obvious... until it's pointed out. The first thing you mentioned sounds like a meditation that I never got around to doing, where you become completely absorbed in the object with no other thoughts, and then there's a variation of this where you quick-fire adjectives about the object over and over and over without ever saying exactly what the object is.

@HII You've given me some good things to contemplate, thank you What would happen if you showed your true emotional state to your customers? Nothing bad, I'm sure. To clarify, I have good days and bad days, and it all depends on my state of mind that day, as you said. I am not as I described every single day, but even just a few months ago, there were more bad days than good. My personal development has worked wonders with this. Now there are more good days than bad, or it is at least even. I have wondered if I am bi-polar, but I don't exactly get manic on my good days... Have you experimented with consciously directing your attention outwards? I will work on this... any tips? Could it be that you are afraid that they will not like you or see you in a light that you don't want yourself to be seen if they find out who/what/how you are? Or that you don't want to show to them your struggles? Or could there be a connection to your period of being bullied? I may have to meditate on this, because it could be something deep in subconscious. There is definitely a fear of not being liked. I have a somewhat high voice for an adult male, and I've noticed it even gets higher when I get nervous. This goes all the way back to being bullied for my voice in school, and even to this day I get called ma'am on the phone or at the drive-thru, which always takes my confidence down a few notches. I am also stuck on people not finding out I am gay.... and my entire family on both sides think I am going to hell and pray that I change, because they love me and want to see me in heaven. My mom is the only one who excepts me in that regard, she denounced her faith after splitting from my dad, who is a preacher. My brother is also a preacher lol, so I am the black sheep. I am ok with myself, and accept myself, but yet I don't want my customers knowing. A lot of them are christians, and my ego tells me what they think about such things, and hides it instead of letting nature take its course. This is all stuff I am working on. Slowly but surely.

@Pure Imagination do you ever get random thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere, while in the middle of a mind conversation? those are trippy...

we are all fools... even the smart ones!

@Empty I love to meditate and journal with marijuana! It is NOT (for me) for meditation that requires clearing the mind though, and in fact makes my mind race. I use the mind racing to dig deep and pull out some subconscious stuff that is usually hiding. like @zunnyman said, it does make me beat myself up for all of my fuck ups, so I only take the ones seriously that still seem important the next day. So, in my opinion- good for subconscious work and development- not so good for stilling the mind with meditation

@HII I have been an introvert since 6th grade. I am now 32. Before 6th grade, I was a happy, outgoing, talkative kid that annoyed the shit out of everyone. And then 6th grade hit (possibly pre-puberty) and everything changed. I became very self-conscious. It didn't help that I was bullied starting from 6th grade until I left in 10th. (The bullying started because I was in choir, singing soprano because my voice hadn't changed yet, and I went to a very backwoods small country school) Even after I quit choir, the damage was done, and I suffered through 5 years of constant bullying and no friends. Luckily, I was not too socially damaged, and by the time I went to college I made lots of friends and was really surprised that it was so easy. I broke out of my shell a bit, but still remained somewhat introverted. Fast forward to today, and now I own a business in the service industry. It's definitely not the most ideal thing for an introvert, and it broke me down the first couple of years. I would go home completely drained, unable to even move off of my chair. I could do nothing on the weekends because every second was necessary to recover from the previous week, only in order to take one the coming week. It was a miserable, miserable cycle. I did pinpoint a lot of my draining from dealing with customers, good and bad. The bad customer interactions drained me for the obvious reasons, but I was so screwed up I even shied away from the good interactions. It was and still is very draining to try and stay positive and have to come up with some small talk, even though my customers are really in my shop for no more than 5-10 minutes at a time. I think there are different layers of why this is draining for me. 1. because of all the negative programming that I am currently trying to unravel takes too much energy to switch to a positive state when needed. The answer that I have found for this is that the positive state needs to be second nature (or even first nature) This is going to take time, and I have already been working on if for at least a year. At least if I can achieve this, I believe that I can reserve the energy that would be drained for this reason, and use it on other things. Actually I have hired someone to run the front end part time, and am already noticing a huge difference in my energy levels and psychology. 2. I also find it draining to come up with words. I spend a lot of time in my head, but putting thoughts into words is kind of difficult for me. A lot of times a customer may say something witty (or think they said something witty), and all I can do is smile and say... "yeah.... heh...". And then beat myself up later for not making a good connection. This leads me to my next layer: 3. I shy away from connecting to people. This is another one that I am working hard on. I don't know exactly the source of this, but hopefully I will get to the bottom of it one day. Meanwhile, I have been trying to force myself to do it (which is draining ), but I also want to want to connect with my customers and people in my life. The desire is there, and yet I constantly self-sabotoge. I often go the easy route and just avoid. With all of those combined, you can see that it is not particularly good for business, haha. I am really hard on myself though, so I don't think it is nearly as noticeable to the people around me as it is to myself.... that's the paradox I see with self-development. In order to do it, you must be hard on yourself, even though everyone else is telling you that you are too hard on yourself. Also, I have wondered if introvert/extrovert is a mix of nature and nourishment. Some believe it is one or the other, but I think even if the brain was born wired a certain way, it can be changed. I am my mother and my father, and yet I am neither of them.

perhaps development is the process, and actualization is the goal? I have to admit when I first started on this forum I thought actualization was used interchangeably with enlightenment, but honestly didn't put much thought into it. (and no, I haven't watched any of leo's videos, I'm sure it was all explained at some point.)

@Ariel From your first post I am getting that you are more interested in self-development than self-actualization. I'm not in the circle enough to know exactly what the difference is, but I do believe it's two different things, right? Right now I only practice self-development, because I was tired of being miserable. Perhaps one day I will be ready for the next step, and honestly this doesn't bother me that I'm not ready yet.

@Cesar Alba Short answer is I don't know, because I don't know anything... I have had some paranormal experiences though. Can't be 100% sure they weren't fabricated by my mind.

@DavidBorja You should make more, you have a real talent for this! The animations are good, your comedic timing, voice-over, etc. You could maybe make them half the length, so it is not as time consuming to produce, but I think we would all like to see more of this

https://universaltruthschool.com/syncretism/raising-the-chrism/ here's something I found on what he was talking about (from a google search, I have not been to this website before and can't speak for it's credibility). I have never heard this talked about before... is this really a thing?

@Ryan_047 Number 1- look up any self-love or self acceptance techniques you can find. If you don't love yourself you can't be confident. There is no fast pass to do any of this. Find a few techniques and try them out, no matter how corny they seem. If you want to love yourself, you won't care if the exercises are corny. Get a journal and write out how much you want to love yourself. It doesn't matter if you don't feel it yet. Just write it down. Imagine that it is like the movie "Delirious" with John Candy, where everything he writes comes true. When you meditate, use a mantra that has to do with what you want to achieve, so you can say "I am awesome" or "I love myself" or just "Love". Luckily, the word "Love" encompasses all, since love is all, and we are all cut from the same fabric. Some of us have just gone through the wash too many times. Number 2- this sounds like flight or fright kicking in, or oxygen depletion. How long do you hold your breath before you feel this sensation?

@Blue is the sea there are websites and youtube videos explaining how to do it. The book is probably more thorough though. Everything I have seen says you need a sitter if you do it at home... must be some really powerful stuff

@Visionary You should look into channeling and automatic writing. Channel your higher self. A lot of the crap that comes through will be ego and your analytical mind, but there will be a few golden nuggets every now and then that you won't be able to explain. After a while you can learn to tune your ego out, because the answers from ego will "feel" or "sound" different (I think, I'm still learning)

@aEOf hahahaha probably because they put a few holes in it along the way

Oh lord I tried it last night.. couldn't even keep it up for two minutes, how could someone possibly do it for the suggested 2 hours? holy crap.

@Berjohansen I would be interested to see if there is a non-stop release of Dmt throughout the day, instead of just while sleeping/upon death. But as far as I know there aren't any studies on it. (and I don't know much)

@Nahm I'm using "you" and "I" subjectively, for clarification purposes. Perhaps nahm doesn't require clarification, but starsofclay still does. Even though he's(it's) just an illusion.

@Nahm ok, this is actually what I have picked up on, is that the entity is in a dream. I have heard you talk a lot about nothing exists, but never knew in which context you meant it. I do agree with everything you said. I have also wondered if the "entity" is just a vibration, and it just happens to be the vibration of love. Maybe that's a little too out there. Funny you mentioned the matrix, because last night in meditation (and a bit of marijuana), I heard the words "red pill". Also heard the word "mcdonald's". Now that I am re-reading that, why did you even mention it? You aren't from Illonois, are you? (just another word I heard in same meditation)

@Nahm so by this explanation, do you claim to be the same entity as dodo, or are you your own separate entity, alone in the most literal possible sense, inside of your own dream? Or do you not exist? Did you actually type that response to dodo, or did it only happen in his dream?

Isn't this what happened to Paramahansa Yogananda? I don't know much about this subject, but I don't think you have anything to worry about. Even if you were to slip out of your body, it would probably be no more than an OBE. I think you have to willfully do what you are talking about for it to happen. And the prerequisite would be defeating ego first, so that it doesn't put up a fight.

I only started writing in a diary a month or two ago. I'm not too interested in enlightenment right now, but use it more for self-discipline and self-discovery. It's like meditating, with words! haha. (I know, I know, there is no self... or whatever...) I have spent the majority of my life repressing emotions and trauma, and once I started writing I couldn't believe I had waited this long. I have more energy now. I'm happier. I deal with stressful moments better. And this is coming from someone who still hasn't learned to meditate properly, so in my opinion it is a very good practice to have.