Viking

yeah and i did experience a lot of fascination about life during and after my LSD experience, but it didnt last

what you suggested 15 min body scan 5 min loving kindness. I dont have a problem with how life is right now, its pretty good relative to 1 year ago for example. im just asking how it could be better. I just havent experienced any "peak experiences" for a very long time. life isnt that boring to me, its just doesnt have very good elements to it like it used to have long ago sometimes. @Preetom Maybe you're right that ive been desensitized but im not sure. im not indulging that much in pleasures. but anyway, regarding both of the ways, the visualization i tried before, i kept a gratitude journal, and i didnt connect well with it, i started to resent doing it after a while. regarding the abstaining, i also tried it and in my experience it leads to neuroticism, so i would rather not experience pleasures than to be neurotic. i think you misunderstood me a little, its not that i dont enjoy everything, i enjoy things, but not that much. my question was how to have extraordinary experiences, and not that my ordinary experiences suck too much. nothing recently, its been like that for more or less 3 years, since i finished highschool, though it started in highschool, where i would have whole periods of boredom in insatisfaction. actually recently ive started to get more joy out of life, since i started taking responsibility for my growth, writing in a journal, going to the gym often, etc. very interesting. actually what ive been doing unconsciously is trying not to find beauty in things because i felt subconsciously that it would be bad because i would be "forcing" beauty. like it should happen naturally and not by forcing it, because usually forcing things brings about a chaotic mind and neuroticism. i remember a period when i tried to get enlightened, lol. Forcing myself to believe i am a chair or whatever. I realized that this will never work because enlightenment is getting rid of beliefs and not adding ones. From there i concluded that forcing things doesnt work, but maybe it just doesnt work in enlightenment work, but in the dual world it can work. i dont know, thank you, i think this will help becoming conscious of the sublime somewhat. another example when forcing it doesnt work is with music, when im listening to music i have no idea what to listen to, and sometimes the meaning of the music just slips. its like i need to be at a lower consciousness state in order to really "hear" the music. i often get lost in thought when i try to "force" things too.

I lack the imagination? I got desensitized? I don't know, im asking you, lol started the routine again, going on 5th day

2 levels I can think of to answer this question, but it depends what are you really asking for. To know reality, or to know practically. The know reality- taking pictures of you, god, everything, there is no camera, a camera is just a distinction your mind creates. The camera, what it's taking pictures of, it's all the same thing, consciousness. There's no really point asking that question if that's the answer you're looking for, in my opinion, because you assume that there's a "camera", you assume there's something distinct from it which the camera takes pictures of, your whole phrasing of the question is dual. you can't answer dual questions with non-dual answers, because they have hidden assumptions. Practical- If you want to know what the camera is taking pictures of "practically", "scientifically", in a way in which corresponds to the level of consciousness you're asking that question from, in other words, that there exists a "camera" and an outside world with it, the answer is light. A source of light like the sun or a lamp emits light, which hits things around you. When the light hits things it gets scattered from that thing into the camera sensor. The light interacts with the sensors, and with a bunch of technology it gets represented in pixels on a screen or on a piece of paper. Now, what light is, is a whole different question. Ultimately you can't answer that question dually, because the answer to "what is stuff" can't come from science, but it comes from nonduality and experiences and wisdom of nonduality. The current theories that try to explain what light is, tell us it's photons. A photon is an elementary particle, meaning there's nothing more basic than it. There are currently around 17 elementary particles according to the Standard Model. So it's not really an explanation, but science just kinda says "It exists, and we don't really know what it is". A way which explains light in a more "explanatory" way and not just says "it exists" is a little old one, but I think it's fun, so- Light is electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves are waves of a magnetic field and an electric field. An intuitive way to describe what an electric field is, is "a force that a charged particle can exert on another charged particle". So if I have a charged particle, it "does" an electric field all the way to infinity, and if i put another charged particle somewhere, that field will push or pull that particle. A magnetic field is the same but more complicated. So basically saying, light is a wave of "potential force" on particles, lol. So we have light, which travels in space for example, and it passes through a charged particle. That charged particle will experience force. That's what light is, pure force You see, there's a bunch of "mental maps" you could make to answer your question, and none of them is the true one. The only truth is the one you can experience and which you can't think about

15 days

it's a fuzzy notion to "expand the worldview", it's also to "gather new perspectives on life", "change your view on life", etc. I want to do that, in order to change or attune my desires, or add more desires. what are some ways to expand one's worldview? The most common one I hear is to travel. If it's travel, where to? what to do? I have a few months now of free time and i want to expand my worldview as much as I can. I dont have much money, maybe ill have a bit more if i work a month or two.

can you give some general guidelines as to what you mean? just to map my existing knowledge would take forever.

yeah most green people i encountered were kinda lacking. and yeah you just said spain so i assumed they werent westerners, a lot of westerners that practice buddhism are very conscious and introspective indeed. and also generally speaking "sit and meditate" could also be dogmatic i think. cool

@Aeris cool, thanks, if you got any more ideas I would gladly hear them. I want like a huge list of things. @Nemo28 cool! thanks for sharing. I would imagine those communities are very stage blue though, aren't they? If you dont know what stage blue means, it's more or less like ideological people that believe in mystical stuff in an ideological way, pre-rational way (as opposed to trans-rational), like orthodox christians, muslims, etc. obivously buddhists are different, but still their culture is less developed than the western one, and so their ideologies sometimes don't go well with the western world, where I imagine most of us want to live. Even green communities could be sometimes not compatible with the western life (green is like hippies, eco-friendly, stage of consciousness type) @okulele I watched Leo's entry on the blog regarding UFO's. it's too much speculation that I feel is irrelevant to my life.

I was lazy my whole life until I was around 17, then I tried to build discipline, tried to force myself to read books, meditate, but I became very neurotic about it, blaming myself if I fail, etc. it also didn't work that well, for example i barely learned anything from the books i've read. I stopped trying to be disciplined and just went with the flow, having kind of a backlash and going to the other polar extreme. Right now I do basically what I want, I do manage to do the things I have to do, sometimes. I manage to read books (rather enjoyably and more productively) and study for exams, but just a little, much less than I would actually like to, so I'd like to find a way to be more disciplined without being neurotic. My proposition for building discipline is this: Force yourself to do the things you have to, but not too much as to be neurotic. Find the balance. I think with time, the amount of work you can force yourself to do will increase, or even better, you won't need to force yourself (the ideal case). I presume that tactic will work, because I think the reason we don't want to do things is due to fear of emotional labor. The more we get accustomed to emotional labor, the less we fear, the more discipline we have. Also, when we think to ourselves "i'll work just a little" instead of "I have to work ALL OUT" the way we approach the work is much lighter, less neurotic, which makes the time working more enjoyable, which makes us associate work with more positive emotion, hence we want to do it more. Have you ever tried that? Has that worked? What's your way to discipline yourself? Do you even believe in discipline?

1. even if i do something I enjoy, after some time ill get tired of it and drop it. 2. how do i learn to enjoy what I do? whenever I do something, I feel this compulsion to stop whatever im doing and do something else, distract myself, i feel as though its not worthy enough, whatever im doing, to spend my time on. I do get excited sometimes to do a certain thing, i start doing it, and the desire to stop arises. The thing is it happens with everything i do, even things i "enjoy". It's exactly like during meditation (for me only when the meditation exceeds 20 minutes) you want to get up and stop the meditation, that sanskara arises again and again but it never goes away. i try to accept it but it keeps coming, and its force doesn't diminish.

lol the goal of meditating hours on end isn't happiness

obviously, but will it improve my discipline?

i meant physical activity, sorry

like physical exercise? i go to the gym is painting or playing the piano considered a mental or a physical exercise to you?

even if i find a certain purpose or a mission, i almost immediately discard it, because it doesnt matter whether i achieve that or not, it feels pointless, it wont matter in 12417291827 years etc. etc. so why should i work and suffer so much to achieve it? after i realize that even if i had a desire to pursue something it disappears. i feel more and more like life purpose is a hoax. theres not really a thing that i should be striving towards. Maybe i would settle for mastery, do something which I just have fun doing, but life purpose i feel is total crap. The idea that theres a thing i should achieve is crap. But still, just settling for mastery, only doing stuff I like feels empty and meaningless, I need somewhere to aim at with that stuff, but then again theres nothing worthwhile to aim at (except survival i guess, but is survival even worth it if like is meaningless crap?). im stuck in loops.

yes it seemed to me like it was, but you people convinced me otherwise. yeah

ok i watched that video and i think youre right, i just dont have any reference experiences so i just gotta wait with LP i had that when i was younger but now nothing blows my mind. idk how to find these things

i dont understand how that statement connects to what i said then I dont understand the quote. in order to live in modern society I have to make plans and goals, and then to execute them. The execution is the "path" and I agree that the path is more important than the goals themselves, but I can't have a path without setting goals for myself. Being a hippie that does whatever comes to mind in the moment just leads to suffering, I know because I observed people like that. That's a powerful sentence for me, thank you, I've been doing a lot of stuff which didn't make sense to me, trusting it will lead me somewhere but it never did.

the first one im working on daily, the girlfriend thing i tried for a couple months now, still no result but came somewhat close a few times. the third thing ill start in a few months so i cant do anything about it right now.

i have things i do care about, like i wrote just above your comment

ok, now i understand a little better, so apparently some books and courses are just not for my level yet? like with the life purpose course, i dropped it for the reasons discussed here, couldnt find anything i cared about, the top 10 values i found felt inauthentic. 1. working on my sides that need therapy and knowing myself, i journal daily for that 2. finding a girlfriend 3. ill be starting a new job soon, so i want to grow in it. im afraid that ill start to be lazy and not do my best like it happened during my degree.

though there's no path without a destination, right?

But theres the whole problem!! i want to fulfill my basic needs but in order to fulfill them i need to have them already fulfilled! what i mean, is in order to find a girlfriend i need to have a purpose in my life, as it was said in the book "the way of the superior man". but in order to care about purpose i need to already have my needs met, including belonging. ????????? in order to get financial freedom i need to find my life purpose, where ill want to devote all my time into, but in order to care that much i have to have my needs met, be already financially free. ?????,?? whats your definition of the word "enjoy"? for me its to be happy in the moment, in direct contradiction to what u just said.

maybe it's not the time at which something occurs, but maybe i just cant find something that i care enough about. i dont care about people killing each other, i dont care about people starving to death, i dont care about global warming, i dont care about humans surviving or becoming an advanced high consciousness civilization, i dont care about people living better lives, i wish I could, really, but i just dont, maybe im not mature enough and havent experienced enough of the world.