Monkey-man

happiness is simply platform to be able to do other things

its just many nondual teachers regardless of enlightenment have variety of answers on why formless consciousness manifests in forms and its usually something like: consciousness wants to know itself, god wants to amuse himself, god wants to test himself, god wants to love himself and many other theories, so i was curious whether realized ppl still continue to think about the first cause with the sense of lack of knowing it, and i guess they do but its without sense of lack, which is one of the key differences between enlightened and not enlightened questioning i suppose.

can we use guilt as a tool for nofap? can it really stop you from doing so

i dunno what do you mean by neutral state, i dont think such thing exist. @Barbarian Number 8 neutral state is when you cannot move internally or externally at all. any emotion trigger motions, and motions cannot be neutral i guess peaceful happy is the most neutral kind of state

Laughter is a relief from too much endorphins, isn't it

@Nahm i guess the most non-dual possible answer for why is 'because its good'

@Barbarian Number 8 @Psyche_92 i guess i mean not 'high' happy but more like stable happy or peaceful happy. like when you always or most of the time have enough of serotonin, but not necessarily high on endorphin. @Sunchild I'm glad to hear that there are such people in here, so my hopes for humanity are not lost, do you think it has to do more with your healthy upbringing as a child or with being so from birth? @Slade thanks, i'll check it out. I've listened to his ted talks once. I think tibetians dig the deepest into 'science' of spirituality.

I just thought that enlightenment is also the realisation that there is no intellectual answer for this question but only existential one manifested in form of good feeling, in particular feeling certain or feeling that you know. Seeking starts from lack of good feeling in right brain, question formed in left, and answered in right brain again when 'good feeling' is reached and established. Meaning of life is to feel good, and thus reason for creation is simply because its good ('god created world for his pleasure’ = existence is there coz it 'feels good'). For realised human being this understanding is manifested in feeling absolutely good or happy and thus seeking has ended. Its ended because of this emotional relief (in a sense). Coz imagine realising absolute oneness and still feel suffering? You will start seeking answers again. Enlightenment assumes feeling good. And you wouldn't pursue truth if in the end it makes you suffer until the end of your life, right? Irrational feeling is what pushes us to wake up, while intellect is there just to know how to wake up. So if we think about first cause, the answer to why is because its 'good'. The answer to how its created is that you can think of different kind of theories. There are many ways to tie your shoes, but what pushes you to do so? Coz you wanna feel good. Every action is about feeling good. And there's nothing else that push us to do anything. Even suicide is about getting rid of negative feeling, and negative is simply lack of positive. So as anger, fear or sadness are all tools for now to feel good later (you are afraid of something so you can survive and feel good later). Even self-destruction is about doing something that you think can make you feel good, even if you think that you are mistaken in the end. Haha even masochists harm themselves and sadists harm others because it feels good for them. So I thought since enlightened ppl finally feel good then they no longer think about reason for existence because good is the answer. Its also kind of universal answer: not all living organisms are asking why verbally, but all trying to feel good in one way or another. I think this very simple answer is often overlooked among enlightened people of West who are regardless of their enlightenment try to explain answers for 'why there is creation' in rationalising and come up with some ambiguous thing like 'there is no why, there is no question' or 'god wants to know himself' or 'its a huge laboratory and we are experiments'. For every question there is an answer, but its not always found in thinking. It can be just as easy as 'because its good', but its so often not enough for intellectual west. @cetus56 to say nothing exist is to say that everything exist

@MisterMan i have such thoughts and such desires, although its much less now. i'm just wondering whether leo can shoot a video on this matter coz its interesting phenomenon and many people here are struggling with it

Why do we feel suicidal? Why we just want to die sometimes even when life seems good?

@DocHoliday there r many for example lobster, bowhead whale, hydra, one kind of tortoise but the number one star among scientists is naked mole-rat coz he's mammalian as we are, the dude is forever young and resistant to cancer

Lal it’s us who try to learn how not to think, but for real Masters it’s no longer relevant problem, they already risen above thoughts and have capacity to think anytime without being overly deceived by thoughts. Hehe as Sadhguru said: ‘it took millions years of evolution to create such an amazing thing in your skull and now the only thing you care about is how to stop using it instead of trying to learn how to use it’.

There are animals that never age and only die by accidents

Same here, I used to try to get rid of it without much success, and then one enlightened teacher said that you got to follow derealisation, it’s good sign for enlightenement work, you can have self-realisation faster with derealisation

I can't really grasp whether reality is causal or not? If its not causal then what is it? It seems like my actions are pre-determined by what happened before. But Rupert says that there is no causality between answer and question, between one event and the next one, which I don't really understand.

Dude these are so relatable to myself, I had same situation over 2017, and still having it although its less intense now because I see hope in spirituality. I'm idealist, so whenever I have some picture of reality in my mind I assume my life should be similar to this picture. Whenever my life loses its romantic hope I just want to end everything, I became depressed and suicidal. Last year my life lost its romantic flavour like never before, so I broke badly, was few centimetres away from ending it all. So your situation is relatable to me, especially about parents, and about getting old, and about not having matching spouse, and about making mistakes of the past that I only recognized now. Especially these past mistakes that affect my hopelessness now bother me a lot. I also think that if I only was more conscious before and think about my future 10 years ago or at least 1 year ago, I would be in different situation now and that because of these mistakes I cannot have same passionate and romantic flavour in life anymore and cannot have my desirable career anymore because I got older although I'm 23. So these are true for me too, and probably the biggest concern for me as well. Well for my self-image. By now, I'm trying to get rid of identification with self-image through spiritual work. I'm trying to die existentially instead of physically. Thats what everyone here is trying to do. I'm afraid that physical suicide will only add suffering to you in after-life if we assume that it exists (since reality is a causal stream). Suicide is desirable because we are lacking wholeness, complete order, our true state of being. How old are you? What type of career do you want to have? And what mistakes of past bother you most of all?

You discovered fundamental nature of life, Love and Death always walk together. Eros and Tanatos. Eros - desire to achieve Love as an object or basically the main desire of life, desire for life itself which is manifested through desire to reproduce. Tanatos - desire to die which is (as usual) the other side of the coin. This is one of the most fascinating themes in life. I think its all about mind trying to establish homeostasis and equanimity or our natural state of being. Love as Eros (as well as pursuing any desires) makes you high and unstable until you achieve it, BUT when this love is actually achieved and at its peak you still feel unstable and high subconsciously, therefore your mind is sort of 'she is here! i achieved her! but i still feel high and unstable', SO it pushes you to desire Death coz Death seems to be last instance, last solution to get rid of every desire. Either death of object of love or death of yourself. Coz high and unstable mind is considered as dangerous state for our life because living organism is naturally closed system or ORDER which is by definition has its perfect or stable state when it can properly function and continue to be living system. Therefore, living system try to achieve state of higher and higher (better and better) order (lessening entropy) coz better order is more productive way to continue to be living system and thats all is evolution. Eros pushes us out of order to act, to achieve higher order. BUT the problem arises when you fulfilled the key desire which is object of Love and surprisingly enough your mind is still subconsciously unsatisfied, it fulfilled its main task in life that supposed to put it in order but it didn't. And death seems to be the last thing to achieve this stability. As long as we pursue eros in life we might be ok, but once you achieved eros or you had re-evaluation of life you suddenly realize that no desire can stabilize you and put you in homeostasis! Then you think either consciously or subconsciously about Death as the only and last solution for all this. Eros is passionate or lustful love, its origin is instinct of reproduction. Therefore, I think the key, as Sufis said, is to develop from metaphorical love (Eros) to Agape (unconditional, divine, true love or love to god=reality itself). Because Agape is source of every other thing including life and our instincts of reproduction and thus Eros. Agape as a need to be in our natural state of being is actually what is main force behind everything! Why because your natural state is realization of perfect order or oneness! Its not even force of reproduction behind life, its Agape that makes reality to stick together as one. So desire to death and kill is desire to expand to unity with oneness of reality, and reality is unified by love.

Actually, you already believe in enlightenment, you wouldn't pursue it if you didn't. Thats how it is useful. If you don't believe in truth then you don't self-inquire but do what other 99% of world population are doing.

check out Leo's advanced tips for self-inquiry video. also check out his 10 days retreat insights videos at his blog. both has very very awesome advices.

today was longest (10 hours of) meditation session ever. i recommend you all must do it. i'm sparkling with insights and a bit of love ----------------------- my mental masturbatorium continues What do you need to simply be right now? You don't need anything, just be aware of this moment! You are already being! And you are not doing anything for that! What do you need to survive? Everything else, every other thing in life are tools of survival. So in a sense, survival and being are two sides of the same coin. Every moment of being is consisted from ever-going survival. Whole evolution is about creating organisms with more successful survival structures. Problem for homo sapiens is that we lost touch with being, so as I see with enlightenment - we are trying to embody how to truly be. Survival isn't a problem, it doesn't produce bad things inherently. Survival is dynamic, changing process of eternal constant being! So survival is all there is in life. Even stars survive. Problem happens when we lose touch with eternal constant being coz once you lose it your survival produces (subjective) problems/suffering for you and for others. If you keep touch with being you might minimise 'bad' aspects of survival. And why is that? Coz purpose of survival is not merely to survive but also to create! Reproduction is survival and also creation! You survive now coz your body recreates itself, your cells regenerate or recreate every second: which one it is then? Survival of body or creation of body?? I guess then main point of survival is creation! The question then arises - what is ART? From historical perspective it is sub-product of mind which is survival tool. But motivation of art is creation. It is creation itself, but it arises from survival tools. So is it not the sign that whole purpose of survival and of everything is to create? Its now so obvious. Then main task is to minimize destructive processes of survival and maximize creative processes of survival. And that can be done if we keep in touch with eternal being! Coz if you realize that you cannot be destroyed, then you relieved from need to be destructive in order to protect yourself, so what's left but to create or to see process of creation around yourself? French and Italians were right with their 'life is art'. In the sense that to reconcile process of ever-going survival with its mechanicalness into something ever-joyful is ART of life. So i guess to recognize random, unexpected process of creation in destruction, survival, causality, mechanicalness is what life is about. And when do you observe ever-going creation in the mechanical process of survival? Think of enlightenment! It is recognizing of dynamic process of creation or impermanence. But final, question arises - then why the hell to create at all? Hmmm observing process of creation of existence is first of all joyful, lovely, beautiful etc. Then is it all about creating in order to love creation? Is it purpose of god? Sounds like it! Think of mother and her baby. Or maybe it is huge laboratory to have fun or to make experiments? This one I don't know.... if it is love then why to love? if it is experiments then why to experiment? Why to have fun? Hmmm no idea for now.

It was good idea to remove it, i can see positive changes we should have less ego-rewarding system in society, why don't we just smile to people or make gifts? This can be better rewards than many other things also, why Leo you don't make separate sub-forums for Science; New-Age staff; Religion, Mysticism and Theology? For example, after meditating for 8 hours and feeling that I can't do it any longer - I like to create big picture of reality in my mind, so I read or discuss theories of how consciousness relates to Bible, Quran, Kabbala or to quantum physics or to out-of-body experiences but I noticed that it would be great distraction to do it in meditation sub-forum. But if there can be separate sub-forum for people who want some distraction (or u can call it theoretical discussion) why not to make it? It will keep meditation sub-forum cleaner and more practice-oriented, so people who dont want to read anything other than direct experience will not distract themselves with topics about parallel realities or difference of Buddhist traditions by scrolling through meditation section.

@StephenK if you are working on enlightenment, then its good thing!!!! enlightenment progresses through undoing things and detachment from desires

before self-inquiry becomes observation you go through this:

there is much better question is thoughts-arising process causal or chaotic(random)????????????????????????????????????? how about emotions, feelings?