@Tistepiste When you're playing a video game and your character, let's say Mario, dies or gets raped, is it a problem for you? Do you cry over it? Do you get angry? Do you seek revenge on the Koopas?
No, because you're aware it's just a game. If you take the game too seriously, you may get so mesmerized by it that you actually get angry at the Koopas.
Likewise with life.
The only problem is, you don't think life is a game. You think it is very real.
The operative word there is "think". Just because you think something is real does not make it so.
The logic of all this is very simple. The problem is, you're not being logical about life, you're highly biased by your fear of death. So your thinking is highly irrational and distorted by your preoccupation with living. You actually have to be insane to believe that life matters.
The trouble with insane people is, they don't know they're insane. If they did, they'd be sane!
Here's lookin' at you, kid  

@lmfao It has already been verified to death! The problem is no serious person wants to accept it.
Science is not about to admit that their entire materialist framework is a house of cards.
You may as well be asking the Catholic Church to admit it's full of shit. It's not going to do that! Collective ego doesn't give a fuck about truth, it cares about self-preservation.
You accept science as though it were the word of God without realizing that in reality it's just a giant corrupt bureaucracy run by conservative old men who have children to feed and reputations to maintain. Same as the church.
Wake up!
Notice, the only reason you have scientific truths in your head at all is because it has been told to you by some old man in a position of power, whom you gullibly believed. If an old man in a position of power does not tell you it, how the hell will you ever know about it?? Through YT ads? Through CNN? Through Facebook? Where are you getting your information? Have you realized yet that all mainstream sources of information are propaganda channels for the collective stage Orange ego? You've lived inside an Orange echo-chamber your whole life! You are like a factory cow that's never seen real grass or sunshine a day in your life. If you ever met a real cow who told you about grass and sunshine, you'd think that cow was crazy. But of course the crazy one is you.

@Andreas You are wrong.
It does not matter what you believe, the issue is: investigate your direct experience and discover what's true.
Whatever ideas you have of God, they are false.
You cannot trust anything your mind says. It's all lies.

Palo is a type of yoga that stretches your muscles based on positioning your joints, allowing the muscles to be squeezed like a wet sponge rag. This is a game changer for those who are interested releasing deep body/mind tension. 

@How to be wise Paper, paper, paper. You can do it on paper, 100% focused, Jed McKenna's style.

@Lauritz Bewer The ego-mind will create all sorts of resistance to inquiry, including tiredness and sleepiness.
Try to do it when you're sharpest during the day, not right before bed. Inquiry is really good after a short nap.
Inquiry requires strong focus skills. You could try doing it using a journal to help keep yourself on track.
Yes, eyes-open works best for me. Closed-eyes tends to put me too much in my head and fall asleep.
When inquiring you want to be in a very wake, sharp, calm state of mind.

@ULFBERHT
A) It ain't easy. Takes lots of practice.
B) Start small. 60 mins is too long. You need quality, not quantity. Try doing 5 minutes of laser focused concentration, like a hawk. Do that for a whole month, then move up to 10 mins, and so on.
C) Being addicted to media and smart phone kills your concentration. Realistically you need to disconnect a lot. You're not gonna hit access concentration while binging on YT videos and dicking around on Facebook.

I have a feeling you'd enjoy reading Jed McKenna.
http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/McKenna,Jed/SpiritualEnlightenment-DamnestThing.pdf
 

@Rinne I dont have the book right next to me, but check out Manoj the Yogi on YT for more info, he gives lessons from the book.
Also, refer to the pictures in the book.
IMO, Nadi Sodhana is the most potent technique out of the first 6. 
 

@Rinne Check this out when you have the time 
 

@Rinne Remember Leo's blog post about Scaffolding?
You should check it out when you can.
All of the material things we have are just there to help us with the actual work/practice.
For example, I have this meditation chair with some very nice pillows and a zen cushion on it.
Its very neat, however i started to treat it as if it was magically better than all my other objects. Glorifying it, if you will. 
But a couple days ago, i was cleaning my room and had to take the meditation chair outside. Thats when i realized that its no more special than my bed or this desk i am currently using. I remembered its function. 
So be careful, try and keep buying things to a minimal, and spend a lot of time using the things u got.
Talk to you soon

@Hafiz Don't wait, make it happen!
You are God after all.
Making shit happen is part of the movie! If the hero in the movie just sits around patiently waiting, nothing will happen. See? It will then just be a boring movie of a dude sitting around waiting.
This paradox arises because you are both the watcher of the movie and the actor in the movie. You must learn to act, but in a detached way. Which is tricky and takes some practice.
It's a newbie mistake to interpret no-free-will as an excuse for inaction and laziness. What no-free-will really means is that hard work happens without free will. It does NOT mean: don't do hard work or don't put in any effort. Effort is very necessary. Just realize, that effort is not really coming from the ego but from God/Spirit/Infinite Intelligence working through you. Become a channel for Infinite Intelligence and it will make you work hard to do its bidding. But it will be an enjoyable, free-flowing kind of work.

@Gligorije How old are you? If you're between 14 to 22, you're still basically a teenager and will require more sleep than an adult in their 30s or 40s.
It also very much depends on how you use your mind and body, how much you work, how much you study, etc.
It's also a good ideas to optimize your sleep environment by lightproofing your whole bedroom, getting a good mattress, and eliminating noise.
Diet also affects your sleep a lot. Cut back on carbs, wheat, and junk food.
You might also want to get your thyroid hormone levels checked. Underactive thyroid is very common these days, causing fatigue and sleepiness.

@Cody_Atzori What if the mind is deceiving itself that it is the body, in the same way that a religious fanatic deceives himself?
How do you know what you are supposed to be?
Where is it written that you are supposed to be a body? Why can't you be omnipresent consciousness, and the body is just another object like all other objects?
Does the body really have any special boundary around it? Is it really any different than a coffee table? If the body is really you, how is it possible that you can perceive the coffee table? After all, the coffee table ceases to exist if you close your eyes. So clear the coffee table is a creation of your mind. As is your body.
Why are you trusting those bodily sensations as evidence of your identification with the body? After all, you have sensation of the coffee table (you see it), but you do not identify with it. Who says that bodily feeling is more real or determinative of your identity than colors? Why are feeling superior to colors? Who said so? Why are you blindly trusting your feelings? Who said feelings have any meaning whatsoever?
Who said the feeling of a body = you? How arbitrary is that?

Nothing is pointless or wrong or it wouldn't exist - The Universe

For growth, for balance, for creation.
You cannot know good without bad, you cannot know light without darkness, you cannot know positive without negative ect.. You cannot imagine non-existence if it wasn't vital for creation it wouldn't exist.

Quote by Patrick Rothfuss from Book One: "The Name of The Wind", Chapter 18, page 134.
Thoughts❓
 

I really like Dean Radin. He's such a rational scientist, but also extremely open minded, and his research points to some pretty paradigm-shattering stuff - if it's correct. Maybe he's just a kook. His conclusions are definitely against the grain of most scientific understanding, and his research is certainly not accepted by mainstream science. But maybe he's correct. Anyways this is a really good interview with him on magic:
Makes me want to read his new book. His old one "Entangled Minds" was really good.

There is nothing scientific about this. This is utter nonsense based on cherry-picking, confirmation bias, and deficiency-needs perception.
When the ego-mind's survival agenda is threatened it will distort its perception of reality to see reality in whatever way is helpful to getting its needs met or identity validated.
To feel like a victimized man and maintain that identity these Incels and MGTOWs bring forth all sorts of stupid bro-"science" and rationalizations to justify themselves. But it's just an illusion based on fear, anger, depression, and ultimately very low levels of consciousness.
As soon as you hear people citing science/logic to justify their political or identity positions, you can pretty much be certain it's bullshit. This is what JP loves to do. He cites science in a cherry-picked way to valid his ego-mind's narrative of life.
The ego-mind always appeals to "facts", "reality", "objectivity", and "fairness" because that's how it creates its subjective reality while denying that it did so. The reality is, the ego-mind does not give a flying fuck about truth or fairness. It is always distorting reality to get an unfair advantage.
Online dating dynamics are highly biased. Online dating is not like real life dating because in real life a woman can get to know your personality (which is what primarily attracts women) whereas online all that really matters is physical appearance.
Via online dating I could never attract a 10. But in person I have done so many times. You don't need to be a physically attractive guy to attract the hottest girl in the club. You just need a very strong personality, which of course these Incels do not have and do not want to do the hard work to develop. They just want to sit around and rationalize why they are victims.

@Lorcan No, you don't understand.
YOU ARE JUST AN IDEA!
YOU DO NOT EXIST!
So there is nothing you can personally gain from spirituality. Therein lies the ultimate Goodness.
Goodness is NOT you getting stuff. Goodness is the end of you. Then, once you're dead, nothing can bother you any more and all becomes perfection.
The reason you cannot understand this is because you keep assuming you exist and there is stuff you can get.
Spirituality it deep counter-intuitive. Happiness only comes after you surrender your entire life to the Truth. You do not surrender to the Truth to get happiness. No! You surrender to the Truth believing that you've killed yourself and everything is fucked and destroyed.
THEN, and ONLY then, do you discover something beyond.
Almost every fiber of your being hates the Truth. Right now, you only care about the "truth" because you think it will get you something positive. But this is not Truth, this is falsehood.
You have to realize that YOU are the problem. And the solution will the elimination of yourself. Spirituality is a form of suicide. Which is why hardly anyone does it.
Imagine surrendering your entire life such that you didn't care any more what happened to you. That's what we're shooting for. For example, you don't care any more if you die or if you go to prison or get raped. You have completely surrendered your life to the universe's whims.
By surrendering EVERYTHING, you will gain the universe. And then you will be happy. Because you will be dead inside.
Truth = Death
You have to appreciate how serious this is. We are not talking in metaphors or playing word games. We are talking about your ACTUAL death. And you have to be wise enough to realize that death the best strategy. It is the only way to escape the maze.
You have to be wise enough to say, "Okay, fine. Death it is then. Let's do this."
You do not want this. It is impossible for an ego to want this.
Eckhart Tolle died the day he became enlightened. What you see now is a meat bag walking and talking which you call "Eckhart Tolle". It walks and talks, but it is just a zombie.
You are also just zombie, but you are in denial about it. All enlightenment is, is realizing you were always a zombie.

@Jonty What you are really objecting to is not the physical manifestations of this issue but how it makes you feel, the suffering it causes. How you feel about a situation is definitely created by the way your mind evaluates or interprets it. And this you can definitely change with lots of consciousness work.
You may not be able to change how your son behaves. But that does not matter because the key is to change how you feel about how he behaves.
If you were more grounded in yourself your sons action's -- as bad as they might be -- would not bother you nearly as much, and you would also be more resourceful at finding an external solution, like for example, helping him to pinpoint the root cause of his problems.
What consciousness will teach you is to let go of control and to surrender and accept terrible things gracefully.
The idea that you can always control every bad thing in life is foolish. It just cannot happen because fundamentally the ego is not in control of anything. Control is one of the chief illusions which consciousness work tackles. You have to learn to accept things more. Counter-intuitively, this will make you more powerful, not less.

@hgill There is no difference between the one and the many.
One = Many
Many = One
The Absolute reincarnates infinitely as EVERYTHING. That's nonduality. Not only that, you are ALL beings at all times right now! You just aren't conscious of it. There is no need to wait for an afterlife as you are ALL beings already right now.
There is nowhere in the universe you can go where you are already not. You are the whole shebang!

@Scholar There is no reason to avoid anything. Rather, you are being invited to become conscious of how you are creating suffering. That is all.
Don't turn consciousness work into some sort of normative morality guilt trip.
You don't have to do anything. If you want to kill yourself, you are free to do so. There are no shoulds here. It's a question of how you want to live life.
It would be pretty stupid to live life kicking yourself in the nuts everyday. But of course you are free to do so.
Just think about how stupid what you are saying is.
If you had to power to stop your own suffering, you would do so without hesitation.
It sounds like you live a cushy life without having suffered deeply. One day, you will face suffering so deep you will rethink your compacent position about it.
You have no good sense yet how deep humans can suffer.
Let's see how you will feel after you get into a car crash and half your face burns off in the fire. At which point you post your whiney victim story here and we will respond with: "How is this any different than joy? Why is suffering bad?"
Then you will rethink your position.
The ego loves to talk shit and act aloof while it is safe and comfy. But then, as soon as it gets a scratch, it cries and whines about how life is terrible and unfair.

Strong Determination Sitting is a good way to work on consciousness of pain.
This isn't easy to do, but try to sit for so long that you get to the point where the excruciating pain of your sit turns into pleasure. It's a very distinct inflection point that happens during long, serious sits.
As you sit there in pain for an hour or more, you have ample time to contemplate: What is pain? What is suffering?
With pain and suffering it's very important to try to contemplate it WHILE IT IS HAPPENING, not after the fact. This cuts through speculation and theorizing.
My guess is, you'd have to be pretty deeply enlightened to be able to deconstruct pain in the way Ralston talks about. Because so long as the ego is intact it will bitch and whine and moan and resist too much. A deep surrender is required.
Ralston is talking about super-human levels of consciousness. So don't be discouraged if you can't get it fast.

@MadisonAlyssa Well... sit down and contemplate why you are so attached to vanity and appearance.
When contemplating this stuff, you must probe beneath the stories and excuses like, "My Dad caused this", or "It was because of my childhood" and get to the root of why you are still attached to it. Attachments like this are always rooted in your survival needs.
So what do you fear will happen to you if you let go of vanity and appearance?
What would happen if you became ugly and everyone thought you were a cheap nasty whore?
How would that hurt your ego/survival? Why are you giving people that power over you?
What is vanity/appearance REALLY giving you? Love? Happiness? Success? Self-esteem?
Hint: it's giving you something positive, otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it.
What if your self-esteem was completely independent of your appearance? What would be bad about that? What if you were ugly and yet you still loved yourself just as much as when you were pretty?
Sit down and really contemplate all that in a brutally honesty manner.
Also, get very specific and clear about what you mean by "vanity" and "appearance", as these are very vague notions.