Emerald

My one year old son might have a knack for mediation... who knows. It sounds like a great idea to try one out to see how it suits you. I'm not too familiar with particular schools of Buddhism. I know that Zen Buddhism has a lot of structure and traditions built in to it. So, there might be some degree of belief in dogma woven into the culture surrounding it. But it seems, from my very limited perspective on it, that many Zen Buddhist monks are quite open and non-dogmatic.

That sounds like an amazing idea! If I didn't have a family to attend to, that's exactly the type of thing I'd be doing. I'd be constantly going to retreats, at the very least. I don't know of any actual monasteries, but here is a link to a place that has long-term Vipassana meditation retreats in various areas. It's completely free with room and board, if memory serves. https://www.dhamma.org/en/locations/directory

The present moment is always a projection of the past. So, you only remember thoughts from a projection of the past. You don't actually have first hand experiences of them.

Thanks!

Weight loss always occurs relative to body type. So, if you store more fat around your waist naturally, the only way to actually decrease this in proportion of your waist to the rest of your body is to get liposuction or something of that nature. There is no way to target weight loss to a particular area. This is because (and I can't remember the sources of this, so do your research) you don't lose actual fat cells when you lose weight, they simply shrink or grow. So, you still have the same amount of fat cells in the same areas. So, body proportion remains relatively the same regardless of how much weight you lose or gain. The only way to actually remove fat cells is through liposuction or surgery. Otherwise, fat is lost in a way that is distributed based upon body type.

In a way, this is true. But try focusing on the present moment now. You'll find that no matter how precisely you try to train your awareness to the present moment, you still can't quite get it because a moment involves time and time doesn't exist. So, the present moment comes directly after past awareness and directly before future awareness. Because past and future are only thought stories, the present moment occurs in the infinitely small (and infinitely large) empty space in between those two thought stories. You can't focus your attention on one "frame" of awareness. Once you get the present moment, it will always be the memory of a past moment. So, the present moment doesn't exist only a series of memories of past moments. This is why Maya is an illusion. All you have of reality is the present moment, and that present moment truly doesn't exist. It's all a projection.

There is no solution to this problem. You can try to increase your sensitivity and awareness to the thoughts that come up (and you should) but this can only ever take you so far. Just notice the not noticing as a phenomenon. Don't judge and say "I should be realizing when the thoughts come up" or something of that nature. This takes for granted that noticing the thought as it comes is a possibility. The reason why you can never be aware of thoughts as they arise in the present moment, is because the present moment doesn't actually exist. By the time you've realized something (whether it be a thought, sight, sound, smell, taste, or sensation) it is already in the past. So, the present moment doesn't exist. All the present moment is is a mental projection of the past. So, the present moment is the past. The past is a thought story. Thoughts are the past. So, being aware of a thought can never occur in the present moment because thoughts can only be accessed through memory.

I would make it a practice to pull apart your values and examine them. This will enable you to see their illusory nature, and they will no longer have a hold over your self-esteem because they'll no longer be a realistic metric for your personal sense of value. (You could also deconstruct the idea of value too, as value doesn't actually exist) If you grew up in a conservative area (or even if you grew up in a very liberal area) certain dogmas and beliefs about you and your worth are bound to creep into your worldview even if you disagree with them and don't want them there. Society is like the water that we've all been boiled in. It's hard to tell what's there. So, if you feel bad about yourself, ask yourself why. For example, is it because you're not living up to the standards of masculinity/manhood set by your particular social group? Figure out what those qualities are. Then you can see that other societies have a different view of manhood/masculinity, and that these traits that you hold to be so important don't have much value if you change your location. Or if you see yourself as a poor student, consider that there are a limited amount of subjects offered at school and that any subject could just as easily be taught there. It would be a potential possibility that if different subjects were taught, that you would be amazing at them. So, deconstruct your idea of what makes a person valuable and see it for the illusion that it is. Then you can see how your father's strictness and high standards for you come from a place of fear. He's afraid that you will suffer social scorn and that he will suffer that same social scorn with you as well as the suffering of having your child be unhappy. You could call this abusive language he gives to you a very misguided attempt at showing love and avoiding pain.

Which video on your channel are you most proud of or stands out to you as the most valuable from your current point of view?

Thank you.

@Isle of View and @Dummy What is Rub and Yawn?

I mean more so that we are the creator itself. It's an illusion that we're subject to some external creator figure or that our experiences come to us externally. Enlightenment is a realization that you are both part and whole of the thing referred to as God, which by its nature is creative. God creates. So, we are paradoxically both the creator and the creation in one experience... but without enlightenment we don't realize it. So, because we are the creator we are constantly creating the reality around us which causes expansion of the creator. The creator is infinite, so it is expanding itself by using an illusory finite existence that you call "I" or the ego to continue expanding on into infinity... because infinity is its nature. It is never complete. So, I don't necessarily mean that we're here to create art. I mean that we're here to create the reality that we're living in... art can be part of this but not necessarily. The higher nature creates this reality, and the lower nature (usually unconsciously) lives the finite experience of that created reality. The way to make this co-creation between you (the lower nature) and you (the higher nature) conscious is to merge the higher and lower self a.k.a. enlightenment. The lower self wants to expand and regroup with the higher self as the natural state of being. So, when you no longer resist what is and you accept everything as it is with unconditional acceptance and love, these two aspects come into resonance with one another and "enlightenment" is realized. The only thing that keeps you from this is resistance to what is... should and should not. So, until enlightenment is realized, anything that makes you feel expansive are your emotions telling you what will bring you into greater resonance with the higher self. As I said before, emotions are the guidance system that allows the higher nature to communicate with the lower nature. It is only our thoughts and resistances that muddle this communication by telling us what we should or should not want and what we should or should not feel. So, don't feel like you must prohibit yourself from pursuing what makes you feel expansive. This is resistance and with resistance the higher and lower nature will never come into resonance with one another. This is why mediation is so effective, because it is practicing non-resistance to the present moment. It allows the lower self to naturally buoy upward like an actual buoy that doesn't have anything holding it down under the water. With no resistance it naturally floats to the top of the water. So, without resistance the lower nature naturally buoys upward and can meet the higher nature.

I just picked up an old contemplation that I used to think about as a little kid as young as 6 or 7. I was always trying to grasp what "now" is. So, I would pace around in my room, watching my feet, trying to wrap my mind around the present moment. I was never able to find it. It was always just out of reach. Back then, I also imagined that time would stop for a million years every other split second but that we'd never notice it because time had stopped and consciousness with it. So, my thought was that time went on as a series of still frames, like a movie. But I assumed this assumption was wrong and that time was real on some level that I didn't understand. This assumption was wrong, and this realization helped me make traction on a 20 year old contemplation. Woo hoo! Here are the realizations 1. Time doesn't exist- There is only the present moment. It is only our memory that gives the illusion of a past behind us. It is only our imagination that gives us the illusion of a future in front of us. 2. Movement doesn't exist- The illusion of movement is only created by an ongoing series of present moments in our visual and tactual field. 3. The present moment doesn't exist- The present moment is always a non-point. As you hone in on it you will notice that you can't really experience it. There's always a projection from a past memory or future fantasy. The present moment is infinitely small. It can never be found because you're always infinitely close to experiencing it but also infinitely far away from experiencing it. Just like trying to count to infinity, you can't actually experience the present moment. Conclusion: Existence doesn't exist. It's all a projection.

The exams only matter for getting into college. Beyond that, they do not matter. So, you should do your best on your exam because colleges do take them into consideration and you don't want to close off possible pathways. But it won't effect which jobs you're hired for or anything like that.

No dimensions and infinitely many/few dimensions? It's sort of like a non-point too, but I'm not sure. Size is all relative. It can be infinitely large and infinitely small. So, size, direction, and dimension don't exist. Well said. I see. So, because thought is the creator of our experience, we could think ourselves out of existence if we're not careful... or think ourselves into a crazy existence. It makes sense. But I'll file it into the beliefs category and use it if it's handy.

I follow you right up to the end, with the smaller living creatures part. If you mean atoms, then even this comes from assumption and theorizing. If you mean actual smaller creatures, then this is nothing that I can actually notice in my present reality. If I'm missing something, please let me know.

Time doesn't exist. It's an illusion that comes from other illusory present moments seeming to pass. Or at least this is a possibility.

That's true. This is a possibility. I've heard similar perspectives to this. It definitely fits well in a very intuitive way. But it is a rationalization, so it also is an assumption. But it's an assumption that makes sense none-the-less. Definitely. I'm trying to boil down what my experiences are beyond the labels that I put upon them. So, down the rabbit hole I go.

That's true. It's difficult. I tend to keep my discussions of this nature to here because other people are thinking along the same lines, and would likely find it interesting. But it is difficult, especially as I get more accustomed to thinking and deconstructing things in this way. It's harder to convey thoughts in a way that other people understand the intended meaning behind, because I'm in a middling stage where I'm taking for granted the way that particular words are used to convey very specific meanings. It's kind of like when jargon from your work or education gets into your everyday speech and it becomes a lot more convenient to use the jargon word instead of searching around for a word that's more accessible to those who aren't involved in the things you're involved with.

I'll go through this sentence by sentence. -It's true that you can't define something without thought but you can sense/experience something without thinking about it. -My experience of the body happens without my having to think about it... if that's what you mean. Maybe this is true in the sense of making sense out of the illusion and seeing the body as a body. -I think the next sentence is true. It's only thoughts that would change with the experience of the not-present moment. I would no longer have the illusion of something there, so my understanding of that experience would change and nothing more because there was never anything there in the first place. -I'm not sure if the next sentence is true or untrue. I've never experienced this in my reality. It sounds more like a rationalization of what becomes possible when the illusion of reality is fully realized. But it is none-the-less an assumption. Is there anything that I'm not understanding?

What is Spacetime or any other place? What is transformation? What is matter? What is past? What is future? Find the now. There are a lot of assumptions in this post. I will debunk them... because I'm arrogant (J/K) but also want to see where it takes me. Transformation- Change- Can there be change? Change denotes movement. Can there be movement? No only the illusion of movement through time. Does time exist? No, only an appearance of time based upon the passing of many present moments. Where is the present moment? I can't find the present moment. There is only a projection of past and a projection of future that are infinitely close together. The present moment exists nowhere. Does the past exist? No, it's only a memory. Does the future exist? No. It's only a fantasy. Where is Spacetime? Is it in the present moment. No, it is only a thought projection about what reality consists of. Where is any place? Place seems to appear within my reality. My reality consists of sights, sounds, sensations, tastes, smells, and thoughts. Place occurs as perceptions that I interpret in this way, only in the present moment. Because the present moment doesn't exist. Place doesn't exist. The current reality exists as a non-point. So, the statement you said could be true. But there is nothing in my present experience that suggests that it is anything else but a projection of the mind.

From the illusory standpoint of existence (Maya) this is true. Creation and destruction are both illusory concepts of the human mind and are 100% impossible. Much like the Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter. However, from the non-dual perspective, we create the entirety of reality from nothing. So, paradoxically, your insight is both true and false.

Very paradoxical.

I'm not asking you to define the body with thought. I'm asking you to experience what the body is. I'm trying to allude to the fact that the body doesn't actually exists because it exists within the present moment projection, which doesn't exist. So, the idea that you posted earlier that the projection is needed for the body to stay alive is an assumption and not an empirical reality about the body. It could be equally true that the projection (including the projection of the body) comes from nowhere and that everything in that projection including the body is false. So, assuming that experience is projected by the physical body is an assumption and can't be verified in reality.

This is why death isn't scary. It's not real. I will think on this more. By the way, is this Rasmus? Or Pinocchio?