Viking

@Alien I went on a single day meditation retreat and that problem of "mechanism" was completely gone. this process is not supposed to be done intellectually, but intuitively! that's why in zen they give koans to participants to tire the intellectual mind and use the intuitive mind. long sessions of meditation help immensely with this. you become so intuitive and answers just flow to you.

@blazed thanks, im considering to buy it anyway

Im reading right now "so good they cant ignore you" and the first rule there is "dont follow your passion". Basically the concept is that what we're passionate about doesnt necessarily will get us the most fulfilling work. on the other hand there's Joseph Campbell that says to follow your bliss into the hero's journey. I never really understood the follow your bliss part and how do you know what your bliss is, but on the surface it seems like it contradicts the "dont follow your passion" rule. is there a difference between passion and bliss? It happens quite often that different sources of information give out opposite answers and you never know what to believe. ("believe" because a lot of this is counter-intuitive and cannot be really contemplated alone without falling into some traps I think)

@blazed did he review them in the booklist ?

who told you that you will go into infinity when you die? wtf is infinity anyway? And I didnt understand what you're asking. did you ask if enlightenment is an ego distraction? what isnt in your life an ego distraction?

@blazed lol sure, this idea just helps to know what to do. you will never be free of suffering except if you have no desires though habits help

such as eating unhealthy food, watching tv series, youtube, etc. what will one gain from abstaining completely from that if he will at all gain something? or do you think one should allow oneself enjoy that stuff in limited amounts? or should one work on his understanding that there are better things to do with that time gradually?

@blazed I came to the conclusion that when you have a decision to make if to indulge or not you should center yourself (like being mindful of your breath) and see what you think is the best thing long term to do that will bring the most happiness. you might find that you dont have enough wisdom to not abstain from a pleasure, therefore by all means indulge in the pleasure. a rule of thumb is do the thing that makes you feel good about doing it. for example I want to eat pizza, but I know I will feel weak afterwards, so I will feel good about the decision not to eat it, so I dont. However if I dont associate pizza with weakness afterwards and I didnt think deeply how eating pizza might affect my health, if I was just told not to eat pizza "because it's bad" I would feel bad or disappointed about not eating the pizza. it's all about wisdom and consciousness.

@egoless follow your bliss. what feels like the best thing to do? also what do you mean by "hardcore spirituality" and how do you quantify spiritual advancement? and obviously personal development includes spirituality (why would you do it then if it wouldnt develop you). what do you define as "personal development"? life purpose? if so, if there is a conflict between your life purpose and your spirituality, probably one of them is inauthentic, I think you got a bunch of limiting beliefs there that you are not conscious of. in conclusion, i think that you bullshit yourself somewhere and you gotta unravel that net of bullshit. (I might be wrong though, you decide) you could always try some psychedelics to get that bullshit to the surface.

@Ether you got it backwards, by being happy and living in the present moment there is a realization.

@Ether exactly! enlightenment doesnt change shit!

To answer the question, I would guess doing the same as without "achieving" it, living my life purpose. though probably my need for contribution would increase dramatically. a great video about the achievement of enlightenment:

@Ether lol why emotions is a requirement for enjoying the moment, they are rather a distraction.

My only interaction with people is during weekends a little bit with my family and during the week a tiny bit mostly through the phone for university homework assignments and so on. absolutely most of the time I dont interact with people. I feel great about it, I got used to it and I never feel lonely. Most of my time goes to studying and self development. is that ok? my social skills are not great but not too bad. I cant imagine doing anything more worth the time than self development work like studying, contemplating, reading etc. Im aware that social interaction is included in self development but I feel like the things I do are more important. Maybe I lack the wisdom to understand otherwise, please enlighten me if so.

@Privet lol the first good answer i've seen, thanks man! im 1.5 weeks in btw (im a good boy)

actually a lot of people do know about general concepts like "we dont know who we are" or "other people dont exist", it's just that their understanding is too shallow therefore they arent interested in that. for example I talked about meditation with my friends and they have a bunch of concepts about it and most of them said it's bullshit, until I explained what it actually is and then they were like "holy shit it's actually pretty legit". it's not that they dont know, they dont know enough. they categorize all this as "philosophy" which is linked with "boring and useless" so here you go..

@Privet but I cant control fantasizing and my staring, though I try to be mindful of that. so are we talking about addiction or abstaining from ejaculation? why do all this? im so confused. Its so hard to tell if its a placebo or not. is the end result self control?

omae wa mou shindeiru NANI?!

@Alien I think from the perspective of the one who dies it's exactly the same, though after you "die" you cant compare it with physical death because people who died cant tell us how it was.

I do think that im doing the right thing but the mind is a tricky thing, I would like to get as many points of view on it as I can. why so?

as you progress with consciousness work, you will be able to control whether to dissolve something or not, as long as you dont quit. this too shall pass. look at sadhguru for example. first all your meaning is destroyed which is a good thing, because then you can build a meaning which is much better. just continue putting in the work. dont start to be lazy and half assly nihilistic though if you notice yourself being lazy thats a trap. passion will come as you progress, watch leo's latest motivation vid, he talks about that.

Dont believe the article, dont believe bentinho, dont believe the buddha, dont believe in yoga, dont believe in meditation, only believe in yourself (aka nothing). I read some of the article and a lot of the stuff that is said , is said from the materialist paradigm. I know that some of bentinho's teachings are great, the guys clearly knows some stuff (or doesnt know ). I can see why ordinary people flip their shit because of some of the points that are made in the article, but if you would write an article about japanese zen it would be even worse. that's why you have to have a lot of teachers. I personally prefer teachings with the least amount of belief required, and as I see bentinho just says stuff that might be true to him, but other people may just misinterpret that stuff and he might not realize this. he's young afterall.

@Joseph Maynor great answer, you helped me a lot, but one thing I dont understand, why being an ideological ascetic is a trap? dont buddhist monks and the such do this all the time?

you were clearly not ready. in my opinion dont do psychedelics for another few years. you have serious work, practice meditation and learn sober. you have to learn how to surrender.