Forestluv

@Everyday Each brain is wired differently. For my brain, direct translations did more harm than good. Pimsler's translation style did not work for me. I needed to learn new words and phrases with images and sentiment - not direct translations. Also, I got too attached with proper grammar which was a hindrance when trying to speak with natives. For me, I spend 80% of my time on listening comprehension and 20% on grammar. Lastly, I would prioritize my goals. Are you primarily interested in conversations with Dutch people? Or reading / writing in Dutch? Speaking, listening, reading and writing are different skills and brain processes.

Parents have issues too. They are products of their genetics and conditioning just as we are. For me, this helps me have understanding, empathy and compassion for my parents. Yet, it doesn't mean I have to participate in what I see as their unhealthy ideology and behavior. I moved 600 miles from my parents and have limited communication on common interests (e.g. sports, travel, movies). I don't engage in political or religious topics with them. Nor will I engage in ruminating in the past, blaming and guilt trips. . . It took me years of personal development work before I was grounded and confident enough to set up boundaries and communicate with my parents like this.

Two months of yoga reduced my upper and lower back pain by about 80%. I average 45min. a day, six days a week. I started noticing improvement after about 1 month.

Peeps, be aware of the human tendency to make assumptions and expectations. As well, be aware of "all or nothing" thinking. I.e. "Good or Bad". "Moral or immoral". It's more nuanced than that.

For example: You are in a cafe and reality becomes a computer simulation. Not in a “cool! Life is like a simultation! Fun!” kind of way. More like omg this is *real*. I don’t know how to deal with this. The waiter comes and looks deep into your being. He is the only one not part of the simulation and he knows you are also not part of the simulation. Yet you don’t know if he is a friend or an adversary. You don’t know your role within the simulation. Your realize your friend that you came to the lounge with is also a simulation. Only you and the waiter are real. His gaze is so intense, he can see all of you. Not a single visual, yet an intense lesson on how reality is a dream. This happened to me in a cafe in Colombia. I was within inches of panic and freaking out. I ended up walking out of the cafe and sitting on a bench in a small park.

@Socrates I would bump up to 150ug. I’ve taken 1p-lsd many times. It will get you there. I would also let go of expectations and wanting a certain something to happen. That just makes surrending into the ego death zone harder. For me anyway. As a novice, I always had a benzo or etizolam handy to kill the trip if needed. Most of my anxiety came from uncertainty of what was to come. Anxiety could turn to panic that I can’t make it stop. Knowing I could stop a trip reduced my anxiety/panic by about 80% and allowed me to reach deeper levels. Other people let go easy peasy. Not me. My ego wants to maintain control.

Yes. And more shall come ? When I started having experiences like that, my mind would try to dismiss it as irrational or “whoo whoo”.

@Andreas Have you ever been so in awe of beauty that time stopped and there was no “you”? There was only the experience of beauty. Have you ever experienced love so deeply that you seem to dissolve away and there is only the experience love? That is just the tip of the Turquoise iceberg.

Emerald is so skilled in this area. ?

@MarkusSweden Rising to yellow is an expansion beyond tier 1 thinking. Yellow is not a rejection of green. Yellow is built upon green. A key feature of stage yellow is “meeting people where they are at”. A healthy stage yellow person can help a person transition into whatever is their next level.I imagine healthy yellows are better at helping people up to green than greens themselves.

@emind It’s an acquired taste. My early revelations were very unpalatable to my ego. Yet once I went far enough, I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen.

If you haven’t read the spiral dynamics textbook, I’d start there.

Whoa. I’m a college professor and this is way off base. Most professors have spent tens of thousands of hours studying, discussing and researching their field. Do they have more to learn? Yes. Can they expand their consciousness to develop complex system modes of thinking? Yes. . . Yet, the idea that students and professors are on the same level and the only difference is a few letters is incredibly naive and ignorant. One of the most challenging aspects of teaching for a professor is meeting a student at their lower level of thinking and knowledge. Go spend 40,000 hours of intense study and research into any topic and see for yourself how your perspective changes. Regarding debates: I’ve found open-minded discussions are MUCH better for learning than debates. Debates tend to get ideological, defensive and contracted. I’ve found that students who want to debate are generally locked into either / or thinking (stage blue) and are unable to see more complex, nuanced modes of thinking such as rational thinking with shades of grey (orange level) or relative modes of thinking (green and yellow levels). As well, students motivated to debate with professors often lack awareness of how little they know. Blue/orange-level debates are like drinking gutter water compared to the juice at yellow-level discussions. Seriously, you have no idea what you are missing.

Very nice. I’ve used a variation of this. During meditation, a thought may arise that I engage with. For example, the thought “I need to pay my credit card bill”. I may engage with the thought and get immersed into thinking - when is the payment due. How much would the late fee be? And on and on. I can get engaged with any thought. Yet, other times, I’m aware of the thought arising and let it pass. I became fascinated by the question “at what point do I get engaged with a thought proces?” I got really curious and started waiting for a thought. And when a thought arose, I watched if the mind became engaged”. I looked for the “switch” between letting a thought go and engagement. It was as if I was observing with a microscope. Or, how a cat waits for a mouse to appear out of a cabinet. Waiting for the next thought, then what happens? When I waited and wanted to observe thoughts, I found out the thoughts became fewer and I became engaged much less often.

Whoops, my comments on ideology were directed toward the burning man video. I should have quoted that post. You raise a really good question that I’ve contemplated a lot. I advise undergraduate students and I find it challenging. I often ask myself: “Am I guiding someone to discover their “true self” or am I steering someone toward what I think would be best for them?” (Even with good intentions). For example, many students I advise are pre-med. Many have been conditioned to think they should be a doctor (e.g. pressure from parents). Many pre-med students have not contemplated what they want in life. What their life purpose is. Often, pre-med students have inner conflict. As their advisor, I strive to guide them to discover their life purpose, rather than steer them toward what path I think would be best for them. I may ask them about their passions, what they love to do. I may encourage them to contemplate their life purpose and to listen to something deep within - perhaps they could contemplate their values and the type of work environment they would prefer. I don’t advise students that are questioning gender, since I’m not professionally trained in that area. Yet if it was a friend questioning their gender coming to me for advice, I would try to guide them toward discovering their personal “purpose” similar to above, rather than steer them toward what I thought was best. I do have some experience in this area. I grew up in a fundamental catholic environment. I was raised on a simplistic either/or binary gender system (male or female). As well, I was conditioned with a social construct for man/masculine and female/feminine. For example, I’ve always liked pastel colors, yet I was not allowed to wear pastel colors because they were too feminine and for girls. I struggled for a while with my own gender identity. I discovered that gender identity and sexual expression is much more complicated than a simple male or female binary system.

I did an Ayahuasca retreat in Peru. It was anazing.

Try keeping it to simply “I am”. Anything added after “I am” is a mental construct.

@Cortex And how do you know those two different realities are not both within one higher holistic reality? Another way to look at it: one of your skin cells is experiencing a reality that would seem different from the reality experienced by one of your liver cells. Yet are not both realities within cortex’s reality?

Logic and reasoning could only take me so far. . . For me concepts and direct experience go hand-in-hand. If I have a nondual experience without conceptual understanding, I will dismiss the the experience as being irrational and “whoo-whoo”. If I have conceptual understanding without direct experience I’m unaware I am dualistically conceptualizing nonduality. Nonduality cannot be explained through language. Every word or idea is dual - it is not another word or idea. Nonduality can only be pointed to. Imagine someone pointing in space. The arm and hand are words. Logical / rational thinking focuses on the arm and hand (words). That mindset will not “see” that which cannot be explained in space. It can’t take it’s attention of the arm/hand. I find nonduality really hard to talk about because evertime I say what nonduality IS, I would need to say it is also NOT that. Nonduality is oneness and not oneness. Nonduality is dual and nondual. Nonduality is form and formless. For me, once I started having glimpses into nondual experiences, I started to “get” what nondual speakers are trying to communicate. It just is. This is my best shot at describing no duality in a logical framework: We often say: X is Y. You can use whatever words you want for X and Y. . . Yet, how the heck can X be Y? The human mind becomes hyper focused on the X and Y. That is a dual mindset. The nonduality is the . . . IS. If you want to have direct experience on a dual mind in action, try this out. It helped me. . . For 5 minutes: everytime your mind tries to convine you X is Y, replace the thought with X IS X. Examples:: Orange juice (X) is my favorite drink (Y) becomes: Orange juice IS Orange Juice. A thought orange juice is my favorite drink IS a thought orange juice is my favorite drink. She is rude becomes: she IS she, rude IS rude and the thought she is rude IS the thought she is rude. Rudeness is disrespectful can become: the thought rudeness IS disrespectful IS the thought rudeness us disrespectful. The thought nonduality is illogical IS the thought nonduality is illogical. That sunset is beautiful-> That sunset IS that sunset. The thought that sunset is beautiful IS the thought that sunset is beautiful. For me, this exercise was unpalatable to my ego because it could not be fully dualustic. You will quickly see how dualistic your mind is. The exercise is not a nonduality. Rather it is a step away from duality. Look for yourself. For me, it became totally obvious that X IS X is true and X is Y isn’t true. The claim that X is Y is the biggest scam in human history. We fall for the scam because we get conditioned to believe X is Y when we are young children.

@Hamilcar You wrote “there is no experience of myself acting upon stuff” Imagine that you scratch your nose during meditation. Is the awareness passive? Is it observing the hand motion? Similiar to how you observe thoughts, feelings and perceptions? From a dualistic perspective, feeling an itch on one’s nose would be sensory input that is being experienced. The hand motion to scratch the nose would be output. Yet, what might the perspective of the observer be? Are both the itch (input) and the scratch (output) simply appearances that the observer is aware of? I think the concept of input or output is really interesting. It’s a human construct conditioned into our mind.

A perspective of fragmentation I found interesting

@Caterpillar Very nice insight! Value is a relative concept. A construct of the human mind. It’s super cool to be aware of it. In a relative world, personal values seem to be constantly arising. I ask myself, what might consciousness/presence “value”. Perhaps a sense of oneness, unity, gratitude, love and peace.

Healthy green is about inclusion and wellness for all. Unhealthy green is ideological. There is attachment to beliefs. A sense that my beliefs are right - not just for me, but for everyone. It becomes normative. There is often strong emotion and a desire to defend one’s belief’s. This leads to a contracted mindset which can become adversarial to protect one’s ideology. For those wanting to raise their consciousness, a good contemplation/inquiry question is “From where did this belief arise”? This can give a person *space* from their attachment to beliefs and insight into their own mind-body. What often blocks us from expanding consciousness is not so much WHAT the beliefs are, it is HOW the beliefs are held.

Is there a sense of an observer? Like it is a passive observer that is just aware of happenings as they arise? If so, is it just observing external input? Is there a sense of passively observing your own thoughts, feelings and actions?

@Key Elements I agree that there are unhealthy aspects of Green - such as ridiculing traditional monogamous relationships. I strive to be a healthy green with a mindset of holistic wellness and inclusion for all. For me, potential backlashes against traditional monogamy and marriage is a concern, yet not a sufficient reason to prevent new emerging, ethical forms of gender/sexuality to be freely expressed in our society. I also feel it is very important to welcome in new groups without ostracizing traditional, existing groups. We don't want new ideologies in conflict with existing ideologies. I see various forms of gender as relative and equal. I appreciate your perspective. I need to be aware of getting pulled into unhealthy green ideology. I've reflected on your posts the past couple of days and I'm becoming aware that I am vulnerable to disfavoring traditional monogamy with no sex before marriage as a thing of the past (mostly due to my fundamental Catholic upbringing). As well, I support people raising their consciousness level and expressing who they are. If someone discovered they were conditioned with traditional views on monogamy and marraige that doesn’t feel right for them, I would support them in finding inner truth about their sexuality/gender.