lmfao

I'm not saying that IQ=Intelligence, but IQ is a very useful measure of you ability to competently take in mathematical or verbal information and apply that information in complex ways. It's an advantage to have, especially if you're heavily interested in academia. I'm not an idiot but I'm certainly no genius either, and I don't know my IQ. The online consensus is that IQ cannot be increased, and that playing any "brain training games" only improves your competency in that particular game and in very similar games. However, this improvement stays limited to the task you practiced and has no effect on your baseline cognitive abilities. I found one random article claiming that IQ can be raised by meditation, but I have no opinion on this. Meditation certainly improves your focus and attention for studying. I'm not gonna remain depressed and bitter that I wasn't born with an IQ of 200, but having a high IQ is certainly a bonus.

@Elisabeth cool article, I'll probably check it out. It is unfortunate that I can't decipher sections 4-6. That most that can be done when you don't understand the maths is to just read the verbal descriptions of the equations and see what verbal conclusions they draw of those equations. Even a verbal descriptor like "wave-function" is rooted mathematically though, lol.

@Nahm I haven't taken psychedelics, although I plan to at some point in the future. Have you taken psychadelics before? When meditating you can get really attuned to the present moment and feel connected to "God"(or whatever you want to call it). You become aware of the fact that all your thoughts and feelings come from a "void" in the sense that you don't know where these thoughts and feelings come from. Think about how you can't control what you think, because that requires being able to think a thought before you think it. Your whole reality "just is".

@Outer @MM1988@Leo Gura (I'm on mobile and the website won't let my delete the three blue usernames) Well this thread's been fun to read lol. I've only seen part 1 of Leo's Quantum Mechanics videos, but I'm pretty neutral to his assertions about the implications of QM since I don't know much about QM. I think materialism is an ultimately a groundless assertion about reality, but I don't see how QM can be used to debunk it. I think QM can (perhaps) be incorporated into a materlistic paradigm. A materlistic point of view asserts that our reality just consists of matter and energy (although, matter is a form of energy according to Einstein). A better way of describing materialism would be the belief that all phenomena in reality is the result of energy/matter configurations in space and time, although it is possible that there are "higher" things in which space and time are nested in. Whether scientists will try to explain away space-time as another form of energy itself, who knows. In terms of QM experiments, although the traditional layout of the "double slit experiment" is very simple to understand and is very mind boggling, it is not the best experiment out there at showing just how awesome QM is. In the traditional layout, a person can argue that it is not "observation" that collapses a wave function, but it is the way in which we physically interact with said photon/electron/whatever to make the observation that causes it to act like a particle rather than a wave. But the "delayed choice quantum eraser experiment" really eliminates that doubt, and once you hear about it it raises so many questions. This experiment seems to indicate that human knowledge/awareness alone of the possible paths that a photon can take affects how the photon behaves. The intracaseis of this discovery is something I do not know. Human consciousness is linked in some way to all of this. However, if consciousness is in essence a particular matter-energy configuration as is the behaviour of a (photon) /(anything), then there can be some properties of consciousness which we do not know of that are affecting the behaviour of photon. Perhaps a materlist could argue that there's some hidden form of energy beyond perception in the universe which is responsible for all these phenomena, and this hidden form of energy is linked to our consciousness. Such a thing would be pointless though. The way in which a materlist could defend his position given the fact that human knowledge/observation and the "external world" are linked in such a strange way would depend upon the very specific details of these phenomena. If I was studying this, I would try to think of loads of creative ways to study how human observation plays a role in the behaviour of the external world. Without knowledge of the specifics of these QM experiments I think it is unknown whether QM can be incorporated into a materlist paradigm. Finding the specifics necessary is perhaps not too hard, but I myself haven't done so. If there's any take way from what I've wrote it would be to look into the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, it's really interesting. Don't take my explanations of QM too seriously, Im just using this post as a testing board for some ideas.

I'm curious as to whether raising one's consciousness is directly related to empathy increasing. I've naturally been an unempathetic person throughout my life, although that may have a significant chance of changing since I'm 17. Although I'm unempathetic, I still see myself as someone who's relatively moral compared to the people around me. I've been practicing mindfulness meditation for a couple of months now, and whenever I'm in a state of higher consciousness, I will feel more connected to the people around me. This connection doesn't really feel as though its based on love and emotional attachment. The enhanced connection I feel is similar to the enhanced connection I have to the raw sensations in my body. I simply appreciate other people for the experience they give me. During states of higher consciousness I've felt happy and blissfully, but doesn't make me anymore "caring of people". I sense there is a lot of shadow work I need to do, as I think I have some sociopathic traits. I'm not a fan of manipulation and acting fake however. If I was to speak in terms of the Big Five Aspects Scale, I'm 0th percentile conscientiousness and 1st percentile agreeableness (I got an official test). Would it not be for the fact that I'm high in "openness to experience" (97th percentile) and like to discuss interesting deep topics with people, I would likely have zero value to people. The only value most people see in me is my interest in academia and topics like maths or philosophy. If one or two things were different, perhaps I would have engaged in criminality. I have a family history of mental illness and personality problems, and I think that plays a role. Or maybe I'm just playing the victim when I say that. Even if my natural temperament is geared towards low empathy, I still need to orient myself better to be happy. My question What have your experiences been with consciousness work in relation to how you feel about others? I'll say it again, just to highlight my experience. I'll feel more connected to people, but it's not because I've become more emotionally invested with their well being.

@Leo Gura sounds like good shit.

I will not be lol. I live in the West Midlands so it's out the way, plus I'm not hugely into politics. Muslim communities and non-Muslim communities in Britain have different interests and different ways of seeing things, and this has led to some problems. When you have large numbers of people from different cultures entering a country of a different culture, it is fairly obvious that this difference in culture existing between people in a country will lead to conflict. This conflict can be physical, political, religious and etc. What I'm not saying however is that western countries should stop immigration. I've found this good video on YouTube, it presented a lot of facts

@MarkusSweden A white genocide in Europe/America is extremely unlikely to happen within the foreseeable future, so there's no point in worrying about it. This trend of anti-white racism is not going to evolve into genocide. Look at societal attitudes towards human rights and violence. You may get a significant amount of racial violence, but it wouldn't be "genocide". But racial violence is still a problem. So you want to know what to do if someone tries to kill you? You use force to defend yourself, or run away. Pretty simple, no?

@Amit Try meditating before you go to work.

As far as consciousness work goes I've just been meditating for a couple of months now.I decided to read a bit of the Quran recently out of curiosity, since I'm a non-believer who was raised in a Muslim family. I'm also relatively familiar with the Quran due to having read it at various points in my life, with varying beliefs I had at the time of reading it. I'm just gonna talk about my thoughts on my own "non-dual" intepratation of the Quran. The Quran likes to talk about how those who commit themselves to God are ultimately on the right path and will be rewarded, and those who reject God will only find misery in hellfire. If we take "God" to be the "absolute" (or whatever word you want to insert here) , the nothingness from which everything comes from in your perception, then a take away from reading the Quran might be the idea that those who make a commitment to connect to the absolute (whether it be through yoga, meditation, devotion and etc) will reach heaven, a peaceful state of mind. However, those who are not mindful of and are ignorant of God will ultimately end up going through unbearable suffering (hellfire) as a result of them not connecting to the absolute. People will be trapped in suffering as a result of them not connecting to the absolute. I don't have many thoughts as to what the morality preached could mean. Perhaps the Quran is also trying to say that being charitable and doing other "good deeds" is a way to connect to the absolute, whilst doing "bad deeds" like adultery distances you from the absolute. However, the worst sin you can do in Islam (from a non-dual intepratation) is to not acknowledge that the absolute is there, and to not try to connect to it. A fundamentalist would call this sin "shirk". Shirk is the rejection of the fact that God exists, and that there is only one God. You could interpret this as meaning that the chief sin you can commit is to not recognize that all is one and that there are no boundaries between things, an ultimately non-dual teaching. Provided we are going with a "non-dual" intepration of the Quran, then we ultimately find the Quran is just repeating the same message, over and over again, since it keeps on talking about heaven and hellfire.The Quran likes to emphasise heaven and hellfire to tremendous degrees, more so than the Bible on a whole in my opinion (depends on which part of the Bible as well as though). Whether or not my intepration is separate from the authors' intent or not is unknown to me. Whatever the case, it was entertaining to read. My take away from the Quran is this: those who make the effort to connect to the absolute will find peace, and those who don't try to connect to the absolute will find misery. This is why it's important to set practices in place to connect to the absolute (Muslims like to pray for instance). So what do you make of religious scriptures? I feel as though that the Bible and Quran can only be seen in this light if you already have non-dual ideas about reality. The word "God" has different meanings to people, and it's ultimately a verbal semantic game when it comes to what you make of it. Given the fact that from a non-dual intepratation the Quran repeats the same message over and over game, it perhaps stands to reason that the Quran was written to be interpreted in the way that fundamentalists do so. But an argument about that would ultimately require an examination of history. Anyway, thanks for reading. And if anyone has a non-dual intepratation for what "Judgement Day" (the day when the world ends and every is either thrown into heaven or hell) signifies, I'm all ears.

@Leo Gura I'm glad you're making a video on this. Although there is a lot of misinterpretation as to what the plausible (plausible by the standards of "science") intepratations are of Quantum Mechanics, I trust you won't botch the job of explaining its findings and implications. I was looking at the "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment the other day and it blew my mind. I'm hopefully gonna be studying physics next year at university, so I really enjoy this stuff.

@Nahm yeah I agree. The description of God in those texts is not an attempt to convey non-duality. It's your typical "there's an invisible man in the sky who cares who you sleep with" depiction of God, a belief which many people vehemently cling to at the expense of their spiritual grow. Stage 4 in Spiral Dynamics might ring a bell to you. There might be some wisdom to extract from these books, but the way to do it would be fundamentally different to the way how most people do it. The way in which these texts "teach non-duality" is very indirect, and is arguably completely wrong at times. Thanks for the advice to not get attached to one school of thought or one method of consciousness work. I should really be expanding my horizons. Funnily enough, I think I did Yoga accidently when meditating, cuz I was doing this stretch I made up for fixing my shoulder posture whilst meditating. After holding the stretch for a minute my arms were tingling with strange, but very pleasant, sensations. At that same time my mind quieted down a lot, and it felt really good.

I take the perspective that the desire to take a break from consciousness work can be simplified to be a function of your unconsciousness. Although I don't know whether at times you will make more progress by not doing consciousness work rather than by doing consciousness work. The only possibility that comes to mind for me is that perhaps after a lot of intense draining consciousness work, you need to take a break to let everything you've experiences be better assimilated into your psyche, and you need a break to rest your "mindfulness muscles". If you push yourself too far with consciousness work you might get an "ego backlash". Even if the desire to take a break is a function of unconsciousness, that doesn't necessarily mean that taking a break isn't sometimes good (? /.)

So I've been meditating for 2 weeks now for about 20 minutes every day, and I did 1 hour yesterday. I'm trying to address my internet addiction through being more mindful to cut down the amount of hours I'm using it (although I have a porn addiction which has possibly gotten worse recently). At the start of today I was feeling relatively normal. I have depression, but the extremely painful aspects of it have been negated through medication. After going on Netflix for an hour when I woke up, I stopped myself from using and I then meditated for 20 minutes. After meditating however, I was suddenly swept over with my depression with full force. I felt a perception shift (not in a good way). Articulating and verbalizing exactly what I'm feeling is very hard. I feel very unresponsive to my environment, and my mood is very low. I've had a lot of problems around in my mind which have only been growing whilst I distracted my mind with the internet, and they're starting to all surface and hit me hard. After that depressing feeling swept over, I've spent hours and hours on the internet . I went on an intense porn binge, and the aftermath has left me feeling much, much worse. When I want to direct my attention to my feelings and sensations, I cant focus and my mind just resists because paying attention to the feelings inside me would be very painful. When I'm feeling depressed like this, should I meditate? Even if it is extremely painful, and I can't focus well when I start my session, will pushing through be of any benefit in the short term and long term?

During meditation, we like to focus our awareness on sensations and thoughts flowing through our consciousness. But what really is awareness? Is it a type of thought? Is it possible to become aware of awareness? Or is that impossible?

Hey guys, I was just wondering whether you meditate when sleepy. Whenever I'm sleepy and trying to meditate, my mind gets lost in thought much more easily than it does than when I'm alert. Is it possible to completely overcome the sleepiness by being mindful of it? If you meditate with enough mindfulness, does your body natural become alert? Are the most hardcore meditators immune from the effects of sleepiness when meditating? I remember Leo talked about monks who could meditate for 7 days straight without sleeping.

Leo talks about how you can meditate without moving at all. Does that include not moving your throat to swallow saliva? I feel like if you don't swallow saliva you get a gag reflex which can't be controlled. Perhaps the gag reflex is there to prevent slaviva from entering your lungs.

I'll take that as a yes.

INTP master race.

@Leo Gura It is my opinion that you should remove the ranking system, it serves no utility if users already have an observable count of total reputation points. Whether you keep the profile records of total reputation points over time or not comes down to whether you want to maintain the current "social" hierarchy established on this forum. By keeping those records, you've created a forum where some people's opinions gain value not for their merit, but for the source of the opinion. Herd mentality is a powerful psychological trap. I think you should remove the record people have of total reputation points. And then there's the issue of whether you should remove reputation points all together for individual posts, even if a cumulative record isn't being held. I believe that you should remove reputation points all together, as herd mentality will mean that opinions will be valued by their popularity rather than by their merit. The popular opinion is almost never the best one, even on this forum.

The Bible does not teach non-duality. In fact it emphasises duality. It teaches that there is a greater good you must orient yourself towards, and a despicable evil which you must defeat. The Bible dichotimises reality in its fundamental teachings of metaphysics. There is good and there is evil. Even if such a man called Jesus Christ existed, and was enlightened himself, that does not mean the Bible points you towards enlightenment. Jesus Christ did not write the Bible. Take a look at the most hardcore Christians, and then take a look at the most hardcore Buddhists. Which group do you think is more enlightened? The idea that there is a greater good you must orient yourself towards is a good teaching in the sense that it motivates you to get off your ass, and to change yourself and then the world. You can say the Bible is inspirational in telling you to sort yourself out and do what you need to do, even if the process is painful (you can look at the amount of suffering old testament prophets went through to see this). But none of this ultimately points towards enlightenment, in my opinion. Jordon Peterson is a person I recommend you listen to if you want to get an idea of what some of the metaphorical messages in the Bible are. He has a series of Bible lectures which is called "Bible Series".

So I was just meditating for 20 minutes, and the weirdest things were going on. The nature of my thoughts were completely different. All my thoughts were extremely colourful and vibrant, producing strong images in my mind. My thoughts were filled with bizarre images and scenes, filled with horrendous gore at times but also filled with everything happy. All these thoughts just came in a continuous stream. Sometimes I imagined that these creatures I envisioned were touching me personally in real life. I was imagining myself to be surrounded and touched by colourful and freaky creatures. Near the end of my session, I felt some force was controlling my body to uncleanch my hands and then raise my arms. I felt as though I was being controlled to move my arms around in the air, but then the control lifted. I then ended the meditation session out of being confused. Do any of you guys know what's going on? Has my mind just gone tippy, although I haven't taken drugs? It's an extremely weird experience, and I don't know what to make of it.

Hi guys, I'm a 17 year old male who uses the internet problematically. I will talk a bit about myself so you get a picture of what kind of person I am. Information about me as a whole To say a bit about me, I'm an INTP who enjoys maths and physics a lot. I have depression of some form, and I have had emotional breakdowns where I punch mattresses out of frustration when I'm alone. During two occasions, which both occurred about two months ago, I started hyperventilating and was crying uncontrollably. I've been on medication for three weeks now which has helped me remain stable, and without it I would be even more lethargic,pessimistic and nihilistic then I currently am. I don't fit in at school much. I don't get bullied, but I feel like a misfit in what I deem to be a shallow,fake environment. I'm a very disorganized and lazy person, but I still perform well academically since I focus on understanding things through first principles, rather than directing my focus towards regurgitating facts in the exact manner a teacher or textbook tells you to (although in exams you must write down the answer the examiners expect of you). I hate the fact that teachers wont go through the reasoning that led to a conclusion and then expect you to mindlessly memorize the conclusion. I have a genuine passion for maths and physics, and I try to understand how complex formulas are derived from the most elementary of mathematical principles, to the best of my ability. I'm good at maths and science but I am very far from being a genius. Although I have 6-7 friends I hang out a lot with, I only really feel close to 2 of them, as they are the only people who like discussing abstract ideas with me. People can perceive me as being stuck up and arrogant when I use abstract terms in casual conversation, but that is not my intention, and so I feel misunderstood to a degree. Even when it comes to the friends I do have, some of them are dickish and get on my nerves sometimes, and it's a love-hate relationship with one or two of them. I don't have that much in common with them, and I stick around with them simply because they are better company than my alternative option of hanging around boisterous extroverts who operate on a very different level than me. Since I have a bad sleeping pattern (due to internet use), I'm usually very fatigued and exhausted after school and I scarcely do anything productive outside of school, which makes school take up a large portion of my external world. Time flies when I'm relaxing in the evening, but dilates for me in the anxiety inducing environment for me that is school. I have a problem with social anxiety, I try to avoid crowded areas, as I feel like everyone is judging me negatively. Internet addiction I have a low-self esteem. I am not very physically attractive and I hate the sound of my voice. I am shy around girls, and I think the cause of this is my religious upbringing which demonized sexuality and how I should view the opposite gender (right now I am an agnostic atheist). I am a very neurotic individual who ruminates a lot. I hate myself for all of my deficiencies. I feel depressed. I watch a lot of anime and tv shows on the internet as a form of escapism, and it wastes ridiculous amounts of time for me. To some extent I envy characters like Walter White or Frank Underwood, as they pursue with relentless determination what they want and don't give a shit about what other people think, and I sometimes think to myself that I wouldn't mind living a criminal life which is similar to them. It is a dark thought that occurs to me when I'm feeling frustrated with everything. I use my phone constantly to check social media notifications ( although I barely get any). I waste huge amounts of time on youtube, watching videos with clips of my favourite shows (death note,code geass, dragon ball and etc) or watching videos on politics and philosophy (sam harris, sargon of akkad, jordon peterson and etc) and I also listen to lots of music evoke my suppressed emotions. I have a severe porn addiction, and I've been watching porn since I was 12 years old. The pornographic material I consume has gradually become more and more hardcore,novel, and shocking since consumption of pornography has led to a significantly numbed pleasure response from masturbation. My addiction has only been getting worse over time, despite the fact that I've been struggling to quit porn for over 3 years, where I've wrestled with myself a lot. I am currently in my second week of Christmas Holidays, so I haven't been to school for over a week. I laze around in my house constantly, using youtube and websites to watch a lot of videos of anime,tv shows and youtubers. I should be studying for some exams coming up (luckily they are only practice exams), but instead I fuck around with my life. I've watched almost all of Leo's videos over the span of the last 8 months, but very little has changed for me (which is my fault). I am going to bed at 6am every day, and have fucked up my sleeping pattern. Prior to the last few days, I went to the gym regularly for two weeks. After going to the gym, I felt energized and my mood was incredibly uplifted. I felt normal. However, whenever I took days off from the gym to rest, I would feel as my usual depressed self. For the last week I've kept a mindfulness mediation routine, where I've meditated for 20-30 mins a day. And although meditation feels great and sharpens my awareness temporarily, it has not been enough so far to snap me out of my trance of addiction. I had what you might call an "enlightenment experience" about 6 months ago, where I was hyper aware of the fact that all my thoughts and sensations were flowing through me, and were coming out of a void. It was a profound experience beyond words. Prior to the last week, I have only meditated a handful of times, and this experience was a complete shock to me. I felt extremely blissful, and the memory of that time has kept me attached to the idea of enlightenment. My addiction is also getting in the way of me studying maths and physics, and I intend to study physics to as deep a level as possible in my lifetime. My question So to overcome my internet addiction, should I go cold turkey? Is going cold turkey the best solution for me ( and perhaps my only option)? I've watched Leo's video on overcoming addiction. Will sitting in an empty room ( and constantly meditating) for at least a few hours every day be the solution? How long should I spend sitting in an empty room? And when I'm not meditating, I should just do anything but go on the internet (although I must use the internet for studying)? Perhaps this hardcore solution is the only chance for me, and will be extremely painful. Optimistically speaking however, harnessing my awareness will make resisting the internet more easy. Have you guys got any tips for how I should tackle my internet addiction? How should I go about implementing the advice Leo gives on overcoming addiction? I have probably waffled a lot in what I've written here, so thank you for reading. To be frank, I've typed this post as a form of catharsis, as I feel quite lonely. Any answers are much appreciated. It's 6:30am for me right now, and I'm about to go to bed, so please forgive any grammatical mistakes I've made whilst being tired.