Emerald

It sounds to me that you're using masturbation and sexuality to avoid your negative emotions. Masturbation, in itself, won't keep you from enlightenment but an attachment and addiction to it will. I would wager (although I'm unsure) that you may have been looking for validation through sexual pursuit of women. It can temporarily mitigate feelings of low self-worth to feel that you are wanted by many women. If you then relate the sexual response of orgasm to the desire (but perceived inability) to be wanted, it makes sense that you would have jealousy and cuckhold fantasies. It's possible that you don't feel worthy enough to be the main character of your own fantasy. So, you put a stand in man there. But this exacerbates the feelings of unworthiness and you get jealous. Assuming that my assumptions are true, my advice is to look for the hidden beliefs which make you label yourself as being unworthy. Then realize that they aren't true. They are simply the meanings that you've placed upon yourself at particular times in your life that have just hung around. You alone control the meanings and values you place upon everything.

I recommend choosing a point of focus and using this to anchor you from getting swept away in thought. Thoughts are impossible to stop. So you pick something in your reality that isn't a thought to anchor your attention on. So, you can choose a sensation to focus on and just bring your attention back to that sensation when you find yourself getting swept away by the content of thoughts. Many people focus on the sensation of the breath on the outer rims of the nostrils, but you can choose any sensory focus that you want.

Well, you could say that you create the ego in the same way that you create a work of art. You make conscious and unconscious decisions and end up with a seemingly solid creation that has a particular tone and attributes to it that yourself and others attribute a certain meaning to. However, I don't recommend trying to suppress your ego's drive to create a separate sense of self. This was always disastrous when I tried to do this because resistance of any kind goes in the opposite direction of enlightenment. Instead, watch the ego as it spins the self concept with full acceptance of this drive and full knowledge of its falseness. Watch the ego, don't suppress it. On the same ticket, continue to create art but never mistake it for yourself. Don't add "artist" to your self concept. Usually, the latter is more obvious though and you don't have to worry as much about conflating yourself with your art. It happens sometimes though. But in creating ego or art always be mindful.

I came to this thread, and didn't expect to see my face. It's always jarring to see your own face when you don't expect it. Haha. Thanks for sharing my video!

I just made a video about enlightenment misconceptions. One of the points that I addressed was the enlightenment is only happiness idea. I don't want to spam but I just posted it on another thread about destructive tendencies if you want to check it out. But using my enlightenment experiences as a frame of reference, I was feeling my emotions much stronger. So, happiness, fear, sorrow, anger, were experienced in a more intense way. But I had no resistance to them and I didn't make them bad. They were all beautiful and they all had wisdom to communicate to me. They were only there for a short period of time, only long enough for me to get the wisdom from them. So, they would essentially move right through me. But the emotion that was default was unconditional love and peace. So, the negative emotion was a passing phenomenon meant to communicate something to me, but positive emotion was what I resided in. But enlightened people probably don't get self conscious, because self-consciousness exists as a protection mechanism for the ego. If you transcend your ego, self-consciousness becomes irrelevant because there is no ego to protect from psychological harm. They may experience doubt, but only because some things are doubtful. Beliefs can't understand the existential nature, so neither one's belief or non-belief in God would relate to their enlightenment. It would just be a difference in opinion and interpretation. This wouldn't nullify their enlightenment, it just comes as an outgrowth of the limitations of the human lens (whether that person is enlightened or not). You can't really know anything, but you can believe anything.

I was talking about two warring impulses that I discovered during my second enlightenment experience in my most recent video, which is all about what enlightenment is not. It is toward the 18 minute mark of the video where I talk about how enlightenment isn't moral perfection. I noticed that I had altruistic and destructive thoughts which were almost having a chemical reaction between one another, but I was just able to accept both of them and watch them. They didn't mean anything about me. They were a force of nature. The only difference between those urges and a thunderstorm was that one was happening in my internal experience and the other in my external experience. So, I'd imagine that when a person is unconscious to the destructive thoughts that they can take hold of intentions, because the person has lied to themselves and made themselves unconscious. A person could also consciously identify themselves with the negative voice if they feel that it gives them power, or they have made an unconscious rule against listening to anything but the bad voice in a given situation. I consider the former a lot more likely than the latter though, in most cases. I hope that it's helpful.

Life goes on.

No. You did it right. It's in finding a new relationship to the discomfort that the benefits come. If you learn to notice your discomfort separate from your thoughts about the discomfort that will help you make progress. If the discomfort and thoughts about the discomfort aren't distinguished between, strong determination sits will be torture. But if you're able to see those two things working separate from one another the discomfort will be completely manageable, and your awareness of your urges to control things will shift more into focus. Now notice how you're trying to control your meditation practice by doing it well.

I'm pretty sure you can get parental permission for the S. Goenka one. It's been a while since I looked at it though. And given the fact that I'm an adult, that information didn't stand out to me or stick in my brain very well. So, I would check it out. Here is the link: https://www.dhamma.org/en/locations/directory

Now, these are beliefs based upon two experiences of oneness that I had 6 years ago. So take this perspective with a grain of salt. But here is my take: Love is real. But, contrary to popular belief, love isn't relational. So, it isn't something that we receive, give, or do. The word love is another attempt to describe the essential nature of reality. You could say that the word love is synonymous with the word God, in many respects. The only love that exists is the love that existence has for itself. Because everything in existence is one thing, you could say that the very nature of that one thing is love. However, because people have an ego with beliefs, assumptions, complexes, and thoughts about reality... we become very unconscious and desensitized to this love as we progress through life. This is why children typically feel more emotion than adults do. We think of ourselves as separate from everything else, which blocks us from seeing our true nature... which is love. So, when you feel wholesome positive emotions like love, it is your body's way of communicating to you that you are stepping closer to your true nature. But make no mistake, love doesn't come from an outside source. An outside source can help shift you into greater alignment with your true nature. But the love is already there to be experienced. Love isn't just an emotion... even though we associate it with an emotion because that is the way that we experience it. The phenomenon that catalyzes the feeling of love is all there is. When we experience that thing firsthand, we feel an emotion that we call love.

I think that observation is a big part of it. Sort of like checking your emotional email. You can't delete it until your read it. But I think that psychologically, you have to change your beliefs relative to the situation that the emotion stems from and find approval for the emotion, the thoughts that the emotion causes, and the traumatic situation. This has to happen before you can truly check your emotional email. For example, if I got fired and made it mean that "I'm worthless and I'll never find anywhere to fit. I'm going to be homeless in the street." that's going to continue to cause me pain because worthlessness will become part of my self-concept. But if I make it mean that "I was wasting my talent at that job anyway. They just didn't see my potential." I might reinterpret the situation to mean something positive about my self concept. So, the pain and low self-esteem won't be an issue. Also, with regard to emotions, you can do the same thing. For example, if you think "Why do my emotions do this to me. I just want to feel good. Why can't I just be normal and feel good." It's going to cause resistance to that emotion. But if you focus on the emotion and seek approval for it by saying "Emotions carry wisdom with them. All emotions are good because they are my body's way of imparting self-knowledge and wisdom to me." That's when focusing on your emotions just as sensations in the body can be helpful to you. So, you have to change the meaning that YOU ASCRIBE to your emotions and the events that cause your emotions in order to actually be receptive enough to do the thing that Teal Swan talks about in "How to Heal the Emotional Body" and Leo talks about in his video about "Dealing with Strong Negative Emotions." Only then can you be a superconductor for emotion when you've let go of all conscious and unconscious resistances and negative meanings associated with certain emotions.

It's not a matter of understanding. It's a matter of 'being' before concepts are placed on top of being. No explanation of the mind could get you there. So, don't try to understand. Try to empty yourself of understanding. These processes are subtractive and deconstructive process, so any understanding placed on top of the phenomenon is going in the opposite direction. The "I" is a thought story, that keeps you believing that you are a small separate person in a large universe. It's the way God convinces itself that it isn't God or at least that's my rational explanation of it. Take it with a grain of salt, though.

Thanks. It's not super hard to find the energy exactly because contemplation and other deconstructive mental activities similar to that have always been a big part of my life, even when I was a child. It's practically a compulsion of mine, at this point. But the uninterrupted quiet time is practically non-existent. So, my meditation practice or anything that's more mentally quiet suffers for it. But I'm trying to find something that I can stay more consistent with. I think a lot of moms could benefit from meditation. If you've ever hung around the moms of small children, there are some pretty negative social dynamics... sort of like competitive parenting. There's a tendency toward negation of all interests that aren't child related that's sort of echoed by older social norms that have survived into modern day. It's easy to get pressured into and caught up with if someone's not careful. So, meditation or any consciousness raising activity could be used to get more awareness of how this dynamic effects emotions and actions.

My obstacle is primarily having small children (1 and 4 years old) to attend to constantly. My husband works and I've been a stay at home mom for a little over a year now. So, we're currently pretty old-school in our family structure: very 1950s. When I was working; child-rearing, work, and housework were a bit more evenly divided up between us. When I do my meditation practice, it's sort of at the generosity of my husband to take some of his time off work to attend to the kids. So, I feel a little guilty if I take longer than 30 minutes. He also lets me do my filming for my Youtube channel kid-free for a couple hours a week too, which is more time from his time off. Sometimes if I tell him early enough, he'll let me do an hour of meditation but I normally don't ask because of guilt. This whole dynamic is very discouraging to me and I currently have a very inconsistent meditation practice in general. I'm trying to remedy this by waking up at 6 am before everyone else gets up but it happens often that son wakes up while I'm meditating. That's why I tell everyone who's serious about enlightenment work who isn't tied down with a family, to take time off of life to do a bunch of retreats or a long term residency where they can dedicate the lion-share of their time to meditation. It's exactly what I'd be doing. But I'd imagine that once both of the kids are in school, I'll be much better able to keep my practice consistent and catch fire with some longer sits.

Thanks! Well, the number one reason that we lie in the first place is because we believe ourselves. So we don't actually know that we're lying. We just don't see it because we're used to believing our thought stories. When we're mindful enough to see the process of lying and identifying with falseness, it becomes almost comical that we could have believed our self-lies in the first place. So, the lying drops away naturally as we observe it because it doesn't have the effect that it used to. We don't believe in it anymore. Just like, when you were five years old you might have been excited when your parents told you that Santa was coming. If your parents told you that Santa was coming now, you'd look at them like they were crazy. It's because you're aware of the falseness and untruth behind Santa Claus. It's effortless to see through the falseness and you waste no more thought on it. So, mindfulness is key. So part one from your post above is what is necessary, and parts two and three are methods for achieving part one. Here is an example of a self-lie that I used to tell myself. I used to tell myself "I'm an honest person." Notice how I'm making a generalization about an "I", when there is no "I". It could have been true that I tried to only speak the truth, but there is no me to actually be labeled as honest. Plus, this generalization only existed to fortify the ego. Or another lie, "I'm open-minded"... but was I open-minded to close-mindedness or was I just using it to paint this "I" as a good guy by contrasting it with people I had labeled as closed minded, and thus the bad guys? The reality is that the statement "I am open-minded" was only there to assert my ego's dominance over closed-minded people. It was there to serve a self-concept. Certainly, there were things that I didn't feel right about: murder, rape, incest, etc. If I were to believe the concept, "I am open-minded" in a dogmatic way, I could care so much about painting the "I" in this way, that I lose sight of my feelings regarding the harmful actions of others. This would cause a retraction of consciousness to my own personal experience just to keep the "I" superior. So, the first place to look for self-lies, are in your generalization that you make about yourself.

I've only ever done 30 minute and one hour sits. The one hour sits are plenty intense for me. I haven't tried any longer sits yet.

Thank you! Shinzen definitely practices Zen. I think Ralston did too, if memory serves. He is a martial arts expert, and I recall him writing that he spent some time at a Zen Buddhist Monastery which helped him improve his awareness of what his opponent might do next. I'm pretty sure it was Zen Buddhism, but it could have been another school.

That's awesome! Very inspiring!

Wow! How long was your longest SDS before that? I'm very impressed by your resolve.

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.