Forestluv

@DrewNows I started watching some j. krishnamurti videos this week. Great stuff. Thanks for the suggestion! It really hits the spot.

I don't think I know what this means in the digital world. . . Are you literally saying to discuss nonduality with hand puppets? Or does the phrase "hand puppet" mean something in online terms? Although nondual performances with hand puppets kinda sounds cool to me. . .

Duuude, I can do that??!! That's spiritually legal??!! Oh man, it's time to saddle up. . .

I don't think this is a unique situation. I only have two people in "real life" that I can talk nonduality and one of them is a bit unstable, so really just one person I can talk with on a regular basis. And that is after about a year of searching. . . I spent two years with nobody to talk to about it in real life. Just people online and I traveled to Peru to live in a high conscious community for a while. The question about personal identification is hard to answer. I would say about 70% of what most people consider the "person" has dissolved. For example, in the past when I went out with people, I would talk a lot about me and my story with an underlying intent to serve self needs - to look good, get approval, get the gal to like me etc. I was really immersed and identified with the story. Now, it just kinda feels like a movie I watched or a book I read. Somebody might ask where I grew up or what I do in life. It just sounds differently to me now, like I am talking about a movie character. I also don't have all the opinions and beliefs I used to have. There isn't such a desire for things to go "my way". I'm much more fluid with the flow of life. Yet, I talk about "my" story often in spiritual contexts - yet it is more like talking about a movie I watched. I tell "personal stories" as examples, because I know them best. They can be useful for human interaction and connection. Letting go of the attachment and identification was really hard for me. My mind-body experienced a lot of anxiety and fear. Especially about the unknown. Yet walking through that and letting go, is sooo much more peaceful and easy-going. Trying to protect and maintain a psychological self is sooo draining and causes so much suffering. I would say that the personality is still around in a sense. I used to think that I needed to get rid of anything "personal" and I needed to be like some empty no-self monk that was in a state of empty bliss all the time. . . That isn't my experience. My mind-body still gets grouchy. It still gets annoyed. It still experiences fear, love and sorrow. It is part of the human experience. Yet the attachment, identification and desire to meet self-needs and wants has greatly reduced. This opened up a whole new realm I never new existed. I should also probably add that my environment is pretty calm and peaceful. I have a steady job and feel financially secure. I live alone in a quiet house and neighborhood. I don't have the responsibilities of being a parent. So, in that respect it may be easier for my mind-body to relax and go with the flow. Who knows, I'm just following intuition and "winging it" at this point. . . It's just getting created out of thin air and I don't know where this train is heading. . .

Who let the dogs out Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof

Perhaps try what I did. I got exhausted and asked for a break from the thought stories. Not all day long, just some breaks. Like I would do yoga and ask for the next 20min., can I just get a temporary break from the thought stories? For me, it helped. Once I started seeing what comes prior to the thought stories, I liked it. It felt right and I wanted more of it. There was still resistance, of course. It's step by step. It took me three months of practice to reduce thought stories by 50%. And it's really just the "me, me, me" thought stories that caused my mind-body turmoil. When I walked through nature, I would get curious about how all the beautiful nature exists in harmony. I would admire dragonflies and get curious about what consciousness is like for them and whether we can connect. I'm sure some thoughts arose, yet those don't cause my mind-body problems.

I would make a distinction here between self-centered, self-need based pleasures and life's pleasures. They are on two different levels for me. My self did not want to give up self-need and self-centered pleasures. Yet when it did and life started pleasuring itself through my mind-body.. . yowzers. Batten down the hatches cause things get magnificent and magical. . . It's like the universe having sex with itself. No words. . .

@Mu_ That rascal @Nahm started me down a cowbell rabbit hole. . . It's actually been really helpful though. I didn't realize how loud the cowbell guy was in my mind. . . Reducing the volume of cowbell from 99 to 50 is amazing. . . It always space for magic to enter.

@Emerald Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately, branding, production and professionalism are not skills I have - and I don't like it at all. I'd be more likely to just do a live stream, post up the recorded video and hope to attract people by word of mouth. Yet it sounds like that would be unlikely and I'd be more likely to have a few dozen subscribers. You mentioned that there are a ton of Youtubers with low branding, production and professionalism with only about 100 subscribers. Do you think that the "quality" of those subscribers may be higher? If I only had a few dozen subscribers, yet they were really into it and I was contributing to their lives in meaningful ways - I think I'd be cool with that. Like if they wrote questions and called in during live streams. Kinda like a small, intimate audience.

Rather than trying to get rid of you, I've found it more helpful to simply relax the you. For me, it comes back to that darn cowbell guy in the audience. Trying to make him stop playing the cowbell or trying to kick him out of the cafe just doesn't seem to work well. I've found it better to simply ask him to settle down and put the cowbell down from time to time and let the other band members do their thing. For example, a year ago I estimated 99% of my life was spent thinking and identifying with thoughts and stories. It was just too much. It drove me crazy.I had been trying to figure all this shit out and was immersed in thought stories. It was miserable. Yet trying to have 0% thought stories was overwhelming. It was too much expectations and pressure. So, I imagined "What if I reduced the thought stories from 99% of my life to 50% of my life?". This seemed like a reasonable, doable goal. I practiced throughout last summer and felt like I reached that goal (or was in the ballpark). I can't tell you how much of my life changed. My quality of life and health skyrocketed form that reduction. That's just my experience. I'm sure it broke all sorts of spiritual rules and was spiritually incorrect, yet it really helped my mind-body out.

@playdoh A few thoughts and keys about Yellow: 1. The transition to Tier2 has a "trans-personal" quality to it. There is far less attachment and identification to thoughts, ideas and beliefs. It's not so much "my ideas" or "my beliefs". It's just ideas floating around without ownership. This opens up major doors to openness, curiosity, exploration and discovery. Debates become less frequent and exploration of ideas become more common. 2. Once entering Yellow, a mind generally starts to recognize and resonate with Yellow in others. There is an attraction to the open-mindedness, ease, flow, curiosity, integration etc. of Yellow level thinkers. For me, I used to be attracted to thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Then they stopped appealing to me and I became more interested in Yellow-level thinkers. I also started watching Joe Rogan. Not for Joe Rogan, but for his Yellow level guests. 3. Coming up with your own Yellow-level ideas is more advanced. Seeing connections and creating integrated holistic models oneself is more difficult than seeing it in others and having yellow-level conversations with others. 4. There are different lines of development. For example, there are emotional, spiritual and intellectual lines of development. It's common for people to be more advanced on one line of development. For example, you might be Yellow intellectually, yet still Orange or Green emotionally. That's how it went for me. Emotionally, I didn't want to leave Green. I was cool with Yellow on an intellectual level, yet not an emotional level. 5. Another hallmark of tier1 stages is that each stage thinks their way is best and other stages are the problem. Part of Yellow-level is a deeper understanding of relativity and the relativity of perspectives. This Yellow level thinking gets coupled to the Yellow level emotional line and a new relationship with tier1 stages emerges. My sense from your post is that there are a lot of Yellow-level qualities. It's a small sample, yet my intuition tells me that the judgement arising is mostly along the emotional line. Notice how you wrote that you are constantly cringing and referenced anger issues. You associated the judgement to emotions - not to an intellectual rationale. This may indicate that you are further along on the intellectual and spiritual lines of development and not as far developed along the emotional and empathetic lines of development. Yet that is just my intuitive sense. If it resonates with you, great - go with it. If it doesn't resonate with you, ditch it

I've been thinking of starting a channel, yet I don't want to put much production time into it. I don't need it as a source of income, yet it would be nice to reach out and have a decent audience size. It seems like the majority of your production time is to make the video professional. How important is it for vloggers in the spirituality niche to create videos that look and feel professional? What if a vlogger had quality spiritual content yet just spent about an 30 minutes to make themself and the video look decent? How much would you say this would reduce the viewership? And do you think it is equal between men and women - do you think in general women need to bump up the professional feel a bit more than men do? Also, do you think it is important to post consistently - for example, every Saturday morning?

This is just my take. . . There is recognition that the self is an illusion and there is no "doer". That's it, end of story. No more thought story. The cowbell guy with the thought story puts his cowbell down and there is simply being. . . Yet, then the self tries to reclaim ownership with a new thought story. . . "Wait a minute, if there is no 'doer', then I can do anything!!". To me, it looks like a self trying to regain control of the narrative.

Yea, I think I've had similar feelings. Part of me wants to hang out with them, another wants to be alone. Is there a middle ground. Perhaps do something simple for an hour or so and still have time to be alone? I found doses of social interactions can be beneficial. If I focus too much on myself and spend too much time alone, I can start to get into my own little world. Sometimes some limited social interaction is healthy for me (even if it also feels uncomfortable). I also learned I need to set up boundaries without over-doing it. One of my concerns is that if I hang out with someone, there will be a bunch of expectations and I will be obligated to spend more time with them and I will lose my independence and alone time. Like what if this new friend starts texting me each day and wants to get together a lot, chat on the phone, etc? I had to learn how to have limited social contact and set up boundaries without being a jerk about it.

Yes!! This is right up my alley! For example, integrating some of Dr. Amen's work with neurofeedback with Reiki masters. This is an area I'd like to explore more. I'm going to see if I can get a grant for a quality EEG machine to use with students at my college.

Yes indeed. I think it's *high* time I shut of Mr. neuroscience and go out to appreciate the natural beauty of the birds. . .

Some fish and birds react to stimuli within communities faster than their individual nervous system can respond. For example fish swarms and bird murmurations. This opens the door into communal consciousness which I also find really interesting. . .

Well someone's gonna be the first, right? My gf is a Reiki master and I have neuroscience training. The other day, she was describing how "energy" guides her to "places" in the body in which there are blocks. Then she uses energy to "massage" out blocks. To me, it sounded like a low-resolution, ambiguous energy guides her to a low-resolution place in the body. It occurred to me that her "map" was low resolution. I asked her, "what if you had a high resolution map of energy and body locations?". What if while you are practicing, we could create a high-resolution holographic image of a brain for you to use as a map? You would have a detailed map of high resolution energy and locations of blocks, so you could precisely go in there and "massage" the block away by guiding energy? Her eyes opened up and she gleefully said "That would be amazing!! Yes, yes, yes!! Can you do that for me?" Now consider this scenario. . . Her son is partially blind and she has been using Reiki on him and some of his vision may be restored. She is looking into stem cell therapy. I have the map of what happens at the cellular level with the stem cells. I have the map where the stem cells need to go and what they need to do. She has the map of the energetic dynamics. What if we could combine these together? What if the stem cells could be implanted and she could use energy to help the stem cells, reach the desire location, differentiate properly and function properly? What if she could use energy to signal to the stem cells "Over here guys!!! C'mon over here!! The problem you need to fix is here". Perhaps she could help guide these stem cells. Unfortunately, Reiki masters and neuroscientists are in two different camps and don't communicate. This is what gave me the idea of being a Reiki neuroscientist. If he does the stem cell treatment, I am going to try and draw her a map of what needs to happen at the cellular level to help her focus her Reiki energy. I only know of one prominent scientist that would take this seriously: Deepak Chopra. And he has been marginalized from the scientific community. . .

Indeed, it's surprisingly slow to me. I suppose evolution selected for higher processing speeds and it's good enough for us. Now I'm curious which organism has the fastest processing speed. I would imagine hawks have very rapid visual processing speeds since visual timing is so critical to their survival.

Neuroscientists have. For example, even the best world-class sprinters need about 0.2 seconds to respond to the sound of the starter gun (yet the subjective experience is that the sound and muscle response or both "Now". And that is humans that have devoted their life to lower this reaction time. These races are often won in thousandths of seconds, so improving this reaction time is major emphasis for sprinters. . . The visual system is slower than the auditory system. And coordinating it all together to give an illusion that it is all synced together takes time. It's pretty straightforward to measure each individual sensory system, harder to measure the time lag to synchronize them all. I haven't read the original research on that, yet an average of 0.5 sec. seems reasonable. I could see highly trained and efficient brains getting down to 0.3 or 0.4 seconds. Yet I can't see below 0.3 being feasible. Now you are getting down to only one or two sensory systems. Simple reflex arcs in the PNS are much faster, because there is no CNS processing. For example, touching a hot stove and pulling your hand away does not involve the CNS, just a simple PNS reflex arc.

There isn't even a "present moment". That is also part of the illusion. The brain's visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and motor systems all work at different rates. For example, the visual system is slower than the auditory system, since the visual system is more complex. The various systems are out of sync, yet create an illusion that it's all happening in one "now" - this has practical value to help the human function within the illusion. All that coordination takes about 0.5 seconds, so what you perceive as "now" actually is already in the past. "Now" happened a half second ago. . .

@zambize Yes, I think my pendulum swung from hard-core logic to hard-core "woo woo" and then started to become balanced. Yesterday, a student entered my office to "talk". His girlfriend is sensitive/empathic and seems to have some paranormal abilities, yet she occassionally drifts into places in which sinister beings and demons arise that try to possess her. Last week she had a traumatic incident and ended up in the hospital. He didn't know if all this was "real" or not. I didn't know whether she was in touch with other realms or whether this was psychosis and schizophrenic symptoms. We explored this together for three hours. At one point he said, "I can talk to people that are immersed in mysticism and I can talk to people immersed in science. Yet, you are the only one I know grounded in both mysticism and science". That made me smile. (yet I didn't spill the beans and show they are the same thing. . . ) Lately I've been thinking about training to become a Reiki Neuroscientist master. . .

The human experience of emotion and timing. . . Last month, a student entered my office. I immediately could tell she was in turmoil. A mixture of self-doubt and frustration. She had failed the first two exams, yet was putting in a lot of effort. She pulled out notebooks full of notes - color-coded with many colors. She was spending hours a day studying was still failing. She didn't know whether to drop the course, change her career or what. She oscillated back and forth between frustration and tears. We decided to have private tutoring, just the two of us. My role was to tailor-fit teaching to her optimal learning style. And to recognize any blocks she had. Her role was to show up every week on time and be fully present (she has ADD issues). We both played our roles. Last Friday was the next exam and . . . drumroll. . . she scored a 96%!!!! I have never seen a turn-around like that in my teaching career. This morning she came to my office to pick up her exam. I had been looking forward to giving it to her. She was super nervous. Whether or not she would drop this course came down to this exam. The stakes were high and I knew the result. I couldn't resist letting the suspense grow (since I already knew she aced the last exam), so I played it cool and took an extra minute or two to find the exam to let the anticipation build. . . As I handed her the exam, she reached out and I noticed her hand shaking as she reached for the exam. It was like she was radiating nervous energy. As I handed it to her, I smiled - a little bit at first then a big smile. She looked at her grade and there was a complete energy shift. . . there was a wave of relief and joy. I loved watching this. There was a moment in which there was no "her", there was no "exam", no "career", no "being good enough", no "what this means". There was a moment of nonduality in which simply joy existed. A few seconds past and then I blew it. . . I said "see what you are capable of?". Now, I meant this in the most empowering, loving, supportive way possible - yet it pulled her out of that beautiful nondual moment of pure joy into the story of "her". She popped back into the story line and the energy completely changed. I knew right away, that I spoke to soon. . . What I learned was to let that nondual magic just be. Flow with it. Let it swirl around the room like beautiful colors. Wait until her character reappears - and it would have. Eventually she would have popped back into character and said something like "Does this mean I could get a "B" in the course?" Or something like that. Then, I can play my role again and be supportive and empowering to her.

@zambize The underlying fuel was a yearning. A yearning for a "something" that I didn't quite know what is was or how to get it. Other people could see that yearning in me. Once I started getting a "taste" of that deeper emotional experience and connection, it became solidified. To do so, I had to relax the mind and surrender thought control of the narrative.

Once *knowing* reality = illusion, the "me" dissolves. There is nothing to anchor the "me". It's one thing the cognitively think it, it's another to embody it.