Carl-Richard

Some people just don't have a very active mind like that. But what I find interesting is what happens when you take somebody who has an active mind like that and then make them meditate and give them the right wisdom and tools to get their mind in a functional state. What does that produce and in what ways is it different from the "naturally" inactive mind? I think the answer is basically intelligence (or sheer information processing, sensitivity, intuition, conceptual thinking). Like Sadhguru says, your intelligence can either be working for you or against you. If you have a lot of intelligence but it's not working in your best self-interest, that is when you get extreme self-sabotage, neurosis, anxiety disorders, nihilism, etc. A rock doesn't have these problems, but it's also a rock. It can only roll downhill if something else lets it. And there you have an analogy for group-think, dogmatism. Also, a rock doesn't have "control", as illusory as that control is from an absolute perspective. In reality, control is as illusory as any appearance in reality, which is all appearances.. The problem is ironically enough only if you're controlled by it — if you're the rock rolling downhill to the conception of control.

I actually sort of understand what you mean. Still a bit abstract, but seemingly coherent 👍 Can you give one concrete example of living subjectively?

More funny than weird 😂: Both funny and weird 😌:

That sounds like the "stare at a single point" meditation methods I contrasted the zooming method to earlier, which I've also tried, and they do make your vision cloudy and trippy as you're doing it. That has to do with your eyes getting dry as you said and the desensitization of receptors in your retina as you're keeping your eyes fixated and not moving (as well as the usual visual snow/static interacting with these changes). The thing about the zooming method is that you're not necessarily keeping your eyes fixated at one point, but you can be actively moving your eyes as you're trying to find the finer details. In a sense, it's like a form of moving meditation, where there is an explicit goal and often a dynamic behavior to reach that goal. Also, the effect of the vision becoming clearer that I was referring to is experienced afterwards as you end the meditation and go about your normal tasks, not during the meditation (although that arguably by definition happens during the meditation as well).

Stare at a grainy surface under decent lighting. Pick one area, lean in if you like, and try to see smaller and smaller details. Pretend that you're zooming in and trying to see the atoms of whatever you're looking at. Try to find the smallest detail you can find, and then zoom in even more and find an even smaller detail. Posture is not that important, although pick a posture that is relaxed and allows you to keep your head decently still (even when you're leaning in). When you feel tired, simply switch to meditation with your eyes closed (do nothing). It works well as a concentration exercise that you can do before your normal meditation routine. I do think it's superior to more bland concentration exercises (e.g. simply staring at a point), because it has a goal-oriented aspect to it and even creates a sense of progression, which motivates you and sharpens your focus. One major way of how it works to induce a meditative state is that in order to see smaller details, you have to keep your head more still, and in order to keep your head more still, you have to be more relaxed. It creates a feedback loop (kinda like biofeedback): when you see more details, you can track what your body was doing as you saw more details, and this makes you more aware of what makes you able to relax and thus see more details and thus become more relaxed, etc. This feedback mechanism is technically how the progression of all meditation works, but the visual nature and relatively complicated but also simple nature of the task makes the feedback immediate and high-fidelity and thus more efficient. It might have some drawbacks, like posture, but it could serve as a useful variation to a stale meditation habit. You might notice your vision becoming clearer, which is a fun side effect (and not surprising, as you're essentially training yourself to pick out details). I use it before I read, as I feel that it speeds up my reading. If you only care about the meditative benefits, it could create a synergistic effect with other meditation methods by sharpening your focus.

Reality is change, and thus you suffer.

Bro you're literally psychotic I'm laughing too hard to be able to write a response.

@Schizophonia Also let me echo the CATS model mentioned a few pages earlier (and basically every modern model of stress worth their salt): Truly harmful "stress" is largely dependent on cognitive appraisal (mental frame). So if you're in a "stressful" situation and you feel like you're coping, it's generally not going to lead to harmful stress. I'll give an example that is a bit more technical than the previously mentioned parachutist example, but I can't be asked to repeat it: You put a cat in a box and expose it to a stimulus that causes pain if it doesn't move in time, effectively teaching the cat to avoid the stimulus. Over repeated exposures, as the avoidance behavior is mastered, the initial stress response gives way to a relaxed "coping" response. Crucially, it's not that the stress response first arises and then is replaced by the coping response as the avoidance behavior removes the cat from the stimulus. Rather, after mastery, the stress response never actually arises. So there is something within the cat that has changed how it interprets the otherwise stressful situation (cognitive appraisal). The same is true for anything else you might consider stressful, including working out while screaming your balls off. If you find working out to be stressful, maybe you're just not very good at it. Maybe you're just a pencil-necked individual (sorry, I love Bugezism ).

Meditation is one of the most engaging things I've ever engaged in, and it consists of moving as little as possible. But sure, I agree that team sports is in some ways more engaging than some forms of weightlifting, but weightlifting is not 0% engagement/enjoyment. If it was, I wouldn't have been doing it non-stop for 10 years. And there are many exercises you can do that are not simple. For example, there is a reason why deadlifts is an infamous exercise for people doing it wrong. The type of flow state I get into at the gym is unmatched by anything else. When you get really good at your routine, you become like a well-oiled machine: every exercise, every movement, every drink from the water bottle — all of it runs like clockwork. That is something you get less from team sports because it's less predictable, more probability for error, which can also be a source of frustration. Also, if you're really invested in the outcome of the game, winning or losing (or even the prospect of it) can be hugely stressful. But we can spend hours over-analyzing these things for and against. It's clear that you can derive enjoyment from almost anything, as long as you're good at it. "Just stressing" is just wrong. That's just psychotic. And I can assure you, Rick Bugez and Jujimufu are like that all the time ;D Btw, videos like this show how "working out" can blur the line with competitive (maybe not "team") sports (although here it's intentionally playful and creative): Also, are you really saying only team sports is fun? What about non-team sports (which weightlifting is a part of by the way)? Why would top athletes spend their life getting good at something that is boring? Just because something is highly structured and "simple" (try doing snatch) like weightlifting doesn't mean it's not fun. People find golf fun for God's sake >:O What about the average gym goer? (careful not to confuse going to the gym with bodybuilding )

Horsecocking heavy weight is hella engaging. Wtf are you talking about?

Why?

There are some food items with added sugars that I use, like Sriracha sauce, Barilla basilico tomato sauce, etc. These either contain little added sugar or I use them only in limited amounts. Let me put it this way: I only eat during my 3 meals that only contain "real" foods (proper macronutrient profile) and I only drink water. The only exception is one fruit during my gym workouts. I avoid sodas, juices, cakes, sweets, snacks, caffeine, alcohol, etc. I also mostly avoid foods like pizza where the main ingredients are flour and I avoid eating too much bread (it makes me feel bad).

That's the main reason why I do it. But I don't do it mainly for the "high" (hedonic pleasure). There are many highs I avoid (sugar, drugs). I do it mainly for the increased functionality, which makes life in general more pleasurable (eudaimonic pleasure) and not least more meaningful. The problem with hedonism is that it's experienced as quite meaningless and causes degeneration. When you go for functionality, there is inherent meaning in that, and there is growth rather than degeneration.

Now, libido (or testosterone) is one thing that certainly does not correlate squarely with longevity 😂 Neither behaviorally nor physiologically. Or rather for the physiological aspect, it's a bell curve (too low T and too high T is probably not good). Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass (I know little about the subject). I wonder if OP will react to this 😄

John Vervaeke calls himself a Buddhist Neoplatonist. Rupert Sheldrake is pretty much a Christian Hindu. Most contemporary nondualists integrate concepts from different religions (e.g. Sat-Chit-Ananda = The Holy Trinity = emptiness-form-energy).

It was partially tongue in cheek. I would be hard-pressed to ever use Spiral Dynamics as an ad hominem in any serious way in any discussion. If anything, refusing to quantify your statements (which would introduce some nuance to your statements) would be considered more "linear" than the alternative.

Do you ever notice how beautiful plants are? Sunsets? Mountains? Birds? Open skies? People laughing? Children playing? Go for a walk in nature. Feel the difference between standing on the forest floor and flat stone tiles. Feel the difference between standing next to a tree and the concrete jungle of your home. This is the world you were born into.

I could agree with that if "regularly" implies the type of numbers I've discussed above.

What I meant by empirical fact is just a piece of information that you've gathered from observation. I was not implying that an empirical fact is an undeniable truth. Empirical facts are probabilistic (except the fact of existence itself). Anyways, I'm more concerned about your lack of statistics. I don't consider a perspective that excludes basic scientific observations very holistic, but you do you. Which factors? That's stage Purple reasoning at most. How much more likely is a wild child to die than a lazy child? So longevity is the same as non-longevity? Yay, now I can work out as much as I want.

What does "over working your heart" mean? Elevated heart rate? If so, how elevated? And for how long? The problem is that you're not quantifying your statements, so they don't mean much. "Doesn't seem logical" is only a feeling you have. It's not an argument. Again, your statements don't mean much when you don't provide quantities, numbers, statistics. For example, "drinking water is lethal" can be a true statement when you add a clarification about the lethal dose (6 liters in 3 hours), but on its own, it's not necessarily true. Exhaustion is not a problem if you rest at the point of exhaustion. If top athletes were unable to rest, they would probably be dead with the amount of strain they put themselves through.

The 50% statistic can be deduced from the fact that vigorous exercise is usually defined as the zone between 70-100% of your max BPM, which for me would be 136-194 BPM. For simplicity's sake, let's assume the average BPM of my workout is 150. Let's also assume I have 50 BPM resting heart rate: If I were to work out 50% of my life (12 hours a day), half of my life would be spent at 150 BPM and half of my life at 50 BPM. On average, my heart rate would be (150 + 50) / 2 = 100 BPM. That equals the resting heart rate of the unhealthy person (100 BPM), so it perfectly adds up: if you work out 50% or more of your life, you'll start to decrease your longevity based on the assumption of the amount of heart beats. It's an estimate, sure, but it's not pulled out from thin air. But exactly how often do I have to work out before I qualify for the description of "my life revolves around being extremely active"? You seem to be making statements that are not grounded in any statistics or empirical facts. "Death by exercise" is not a leading cause of death as far as I know. Do you have any statistics on that? Funnily, most of the leading causes of death are positively impacted (reduced) by regular physical exercise.

Are you thinking through what you're saying? If you're working out 50% of your life, that is 12 hours every single day, 84 hours a week. Nobody does that. The most extreme top athletes work out maybe 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week, 30-36 hours a week. I'm not denying that some top athletes could be running up against the limit where their maximization of functioning "here and now" could be decreasing their longevity (although whether or not they're actually crossing that limit is not so clear). But if you're a normal individual just wanting to be healthy, 3 hours a week of vigorous exercise (intermixed with some low-moderate intensity exercise like walking) is most definitely not going to decrease your longevity. Even if you work out considerably more than that, it's not going to decrease your longevity (based on the assumption of heart beats as shown earlier). For example, I lift weights 3.5 times a week and sprint 1.75 times a week (I lift every other day and sprint every other non-lift day). That is 3.5 * 60 to 90 minutes = 210 to 315 minutes a week of lifting weights (3.5 to 5.25 hrs), and 1.75 * 30 to 45 minutes = 52.50 to 78.75 minutes a week of sprinting (0.88 to 1.31 hrs). That is 3.5 + 0.88 hrs to 5.25 + 1.31 hrs = 4.38 hrs to 6.56 hrs a week of working out. That is only 2.6% to 3.9% of my life spent working out.

Based on the assumption of amount of heart beats, unless the athlete or gym rat spends 50% or more of their life exercising (which nobody does), I severely doubt that.

I guess I have to spell out the earlier calculation then: Let's assume one person is decently healthy and is physically active 60 minutes 3 times a week and another person is never physically active. The physically active person works out 60 * 3 = 180 minutes every 7 days (and 7 days = 60 * 24 * 7 minutes = 10080 minutes). That adds up to 180 / 10080 = 0.0179 = 1.79% ≈ 2% of their life spent working out. Let's also assume the physically active person has 50 BPM resting heart rate while the inactive person has 100 BPM. Now answer me this: how can being physically active for 2% of your life while having a 50 BPM resting heart rate for 98% of your life, be worse for longevity than being physically active for 0% of your life but having a 100 BPM resting heart rate for 100% of your life? This is impossible if it's the amount of heart beats that is bad for longevity. If it's not the amount of heart beats, then you would have to make the case that it's the "type" of heart beats associated specifically with physical activity that is bad for longevity.

Depends how you define "jogging". I'm a decently muscular individual; I measured my heartrate at 95-115 BPM while walking outside for 10 minutes (at a slight incline and after a large meal in the middle of the day), which is completely normal. But I get your general point. However, less muscle mass requires your muscles to work harder, so when you walk, your heart will beat "as if you're jogging". Both statements are true in isolation, but they're only parts of the story. It's all about balance. However, my point is that this balance is not maintained by being a 21st century sedentary couch potato. It's simply the case that some exercise makes you better at handling everyday life, and that impacts your health and longevity. Besides, it's really hard to put on an amount of muscle that is systemically unhealthy without taking anabolic steroids and eating like 6000 calories every day. Building and maintaining muscle is an expensive activity that your body does sparingly. It takes a lot of tinkering with the system before your body decides to crush itself under its own weight in muscles.