Viking

make humanity woke again you gotta get over that stage too

@Nahm https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lovetwoo-Restraint-System-Bondage-Straps/dp/B00K73JZTM

@Sirius glad to hear that keep going

bro.. I had this nightmare a few days ago and it was the most terrifying thing ever, I woke up in the middle of the night. I still was dreamy so i heared sounds and i thought someone was coming to kill my family. The funny thing is I kinda realized it and 'surrendered' so much i was aware of my whole body shivering a couple of times, basically i guess i was aware of my emotions. I was unmoved by anything, i became super aware and just didnt care. I feel cocky right now as if i can face any fearful situation. like no matter what will happen ill be ok with it.

by saying that you're "willing to go insane" you had to first have the thought "i might go insane". answering that objection of the mind is already a mistake. whatever happens, happens. if you're willing to take any psychedelic surrender to whatever happens. you surrender by being aware of what holds you back from surrendering and not thinking "surrender surrender surrender". I think you have to be developed enough to take psychedelics. by that i mean a daily meditation practice. a daily meditation practice entails not believing your thoughts and detaching from them. if you ask questions like that you're probably not ready. but if you do decide to take psychedelics and you manage to go through you might develop yourself a lot. it's a skill to surrender.

@Sirius your highest value is health because if you achieve health more because you will be fulfilled, or more because if you dont achieve health it will be shitty? positive or negative motivation? if it's negative motivation it wont hold for long. I see a lot of negativity in your post, which probably means that you want to escape, rather then advance. motivation to escape (or negative motivation) doesnt last very long and is very weak compared to motivation to advance (or positive motivation). ask yourself honestly if you're running towards something or running away from something. if it's the latter, it probably wont work. also monk life is not necessary at all for spiritual purification and enlightenment. you can spend your whole life abstaining and not achieve shit. read "if truth be told" it's about a guy who was rich and gave up everything and got into monkhood. gives you a little perspective on what it takes to become a monk, it's not such a nice fantasy.

I watched Leo's vid on what foods to eat and not to eat. My diet was pretty clean already, I just had to drop wheat, dairy and sugar. In the morning I eat 3 eggs sometimes with avocado, later if im hungry oatmeal with salt and water with an apple, on lunch a bowl of rice and for dinner a huge salad. inbetween I eat a lot of fruits. its been about a week since the change and I have mild belly cramps, mild diarrhea and mild sickness sometimes. everything managable. I wonder if its caused by the fast change in fiber intake. what do you think? It was pretty easy for me to change my diet (though i miss cookies with milk) so I thought I would change it right away, and not over a long period of time. I did that because I thought the long period advice was to get used with the mental game, and not that much with the physical game. will this pass?

@DefinitelyNotJack no, i eat rice, oatmeal, vegetables, buckwheat edit: realized the question wasnt directed to me lol

to me, what I define here as "blissful" is a nice atmosphere, not too intensely joyous but not stale too. I dont know if this is how everyone dreams, but since i was a kid I remember that many my dreams were very blissful. its not that the dreams themselves were good or anything, its just that the overall feeling was interesting and nice. usually when i woke up from such dreams for the first few moments after waking up i kept having that blissful atmosphere but then after those few moments, it went away into the stale usual world. I remember I even have fallen in love because a random girl from my class was in such a dream, and just because of the beauty of the dream i associated her with that blissfulness. I think most if not all of my blissful life aspirations in my adult and teen life came at their source from a dream or a movie (I also experience blissful atmospheres during some movies). what I mean by that is when I think what I want to achieve in life it all comes to that blissful state. The sad thing, however, is that all of my aspirations in life came from dreams and fantasies, and not from my real life, where all of that supposedly has to happen. When I think about my life all i can feel is dullness, I havent experienced anything really in my life yet. This makes for example the value section in the life purpose course extremely hard for me, because it seems almost nothing is important to me because i havent known any of that, theyre almost all equal in my eyes. and in the values i did choose, most of my congruence ratings are between 1 and 3. (that is, how much i embody the value from 1-10) What do you think is the reason behind dreams having such an interesting and blissful atmosphere? why isnt it like that in my daily life, or at least sometimes in my daily life? it saddens me that when i ask myself what would i rather do, live my life or watch a movie, i am genuinely answering to watch a movie.

@sgn lmao my thought too

honestly we're REALLY lacking in the first option and there are a ton of people who do option 2. it will be really hard to think of something unique for option 2, so thats a thought. I think in our days there is an overabundance of information but little application. for example for your second option there are a ton of sources for nutrition, health, etc. but still people are fat and unhealthy. there's a lot of information about marketing but people dont bother. basically in our age creating information is not fruitful but delivering, distributing and actualizing information are really needed. see if that helps you somehow.

Lately I read from a TON of places that enlightenment is not possible without the help of something external, like an enlightened guru or a certain deity, or some divine power. Have you heared about that and what do you think about it?

@SOUL you're right, it is "realizing" at the end, but the question was whether it is necessary to imagine something to realize you're it. it kinda rubs me the wrong way to have to believe in some divine thing, its just concepts, although I see how devoting or surrendering my life to some divine force might help. I just really dont like to believe stuff. one example is Om Swami from the book "if truth be told" where he devoted himself to "mother divine" and at the end of a bunch of months sitting in a cave he had a vision of her, making him enlightened or something like that. in tibetian buddhism it's apparently a 100% necessity to have some god to become enlightened. well, they also say that to become enlightened one has to awaken his kundalini, also necessarily, while I doubt that's true, I dont know. maybe their conception of enlightenment is different.

please share any exercises that will get one accustomed to sitting in a meditation pose. i read that the knees could be damaged if one is not accustomed to sitting in a certain pose. i would guess other damage could be done beside the knees. should one continue to sit if he has pain? (in case also his body is prepared to the position)

@tsuki you're right. I have to use my intuition, thank you !

Yesterday and a month ago I went to a cycle breathing practice (it has something to do with osho). when we breath without any pauses between inhaling and exhaling, weird stuff starts to happen. for me, it was the shaking of my face and nose at first, and then intense energy in the palms. the instructions were "to do what feels right" whether it be screaming or moving the body. the first time i did it, a month ago, i ended up feeling intense love and crying at the end of the practice. It also healed a lot of my social anxiety. The second time I did it, yesterday, I moved my body in a pleasant way and felt intense energy throughout my whole body, shouting. at the end though, this is the most important part, I felt a very strong feeling in my upper neck from behind and on the top of my head. when i concentrated on that energy, my whole body was filled with joy and bliss, I didnt feel that way since I was a kid (while a kid I was unaware of it, that feeling faded away with time as i grew older). then it dissipated after a few minutes. today, during my morning meditation I felt a weird pleasant feeling in my tailbone and it sometimes spread from that concentrated spot for a few seconds and went again into the tailbone. my body feels pretty exhausted right now. you cant believe this shit until you experience it. all of what happened with me i connected theoretically to chakras and kundalini energy. I never really studied that stuff but im aware its a thing, and yoga is the way to go on with it. now im wondering if to study more about it. I have a ton of other stuff to do, like the life purpose course, meditating, consciousness/belief work, emotional mastery, reading books, so its hard to allocate time for it, so i have to choose wisely. I wonder if I have a certain susceptibility to the kundalini path, since just after 2 times of doing "some" breathing exercises having such amazing experiences. I mean maybe im "built" for that path and that path would resonate better with me and would give me faster and better results than the other paths. Im just speculating, I would like to know what are your thoughts on it and whether it seems like im bullshitting myself.

I want to add to what @Nahm said. If you have OK control over your mind, if you aren't addicted to food, porn, relationships etc. too much, thats a good indicator you are not a slave to your mind. to use psychedelics for personal development, you cant have a scattered mind, you have to have concentration ability, you have to be detached enough from your thoughts, to know how to let go, which meditation trains. that's for serious concentrated growth though. If you want to just face your fears, discover what you want from life, just to see what possible, you can do psychedelics without any mind training, though take a low dose.

Sadhguru often talks about "if you could control your state of mind, wouldnt you be always blissful". What are the practical means to controlling my state of mind? im meditating everyday 30 minutes (lately twice a day) already, what needs to be done more? I want to have my happiness coming from within and not dependent on a girlfriend, a life purpose, friends, books, whatever else. what practically should I do? how do i control my state of mind so i will be blissful all the time?

@Chrissy j wow that video was really really good, thank you.

@Saumaya i actually started to read recently "the book of not knowing" @Slade thank you. actually i dont think i ever experienced love to a high degree. never been in a relationship and my connection to my family was always dull. because of that i doubt a little the love hypothesis but i will try to read more about it now. @Preetom thank you

@Saumaya well, pursuing enlightenment is meditation, no? and what do you mean by consciousness work

@Saumaya @Psyche_92 @Shin its so counterintuitive it doesnt make sense to me, even though i heared it so much times. the question then i guess is:how? if meditation is not enough

concentration is the most basic and widespread meditation method. the "no manipulation" technique is a very tricky one and is actually the more advanced one.

it depends on the meditation, but generally, the whole point of meditation is to gain control over your mind, to catch your thoughts and not let them control you. set yourself not to move during meditation even if its uncomfortable and to not check the time. in case of mindfulness meditation or breath awareness, or most other meditations other than "do nothing" really, you HAVE to control your mind, setting your awareness back on the breath or whatever your concentration object is. thats why you're having troubles, you're misunderstanding "let it be". in case you did a meditation which doesnt require concentration, because of your description I would change it to a concentration one, like breath awareness, just to stop being a slave to your mind. a tip: whenever you notice a thought popping up like "i need to check the time" or "i need to rearrange my seat" come back to your concentration object, that's how control is gained over the mind. a book i strongly suggest reading is "conquest of mind", a really good book that changed drastically my view of meditation.

i got the passage reading meditation technique from the book "conquest of mind". its basically i get an inspirational passage (for example the prayer of saint francis) and continuously repeat it in my mind, if the mind goes off, bring it back. what do you think about this meditation? how does it compare to breath awareness?( which im doing right now) what are the downsides/upsides of it? what is your experience with it? its just that just now i feel like im starting to get deeper into the breath awareness meditation and transitioning into another meditation takes away progress, so i wonder if its worth it.