lmfao

I've noticed theres a difference in how energy feels in your first hand experience vs how science has chosen to define energy. Like in your first hand experience, it feels as though theres just this spontaneous happening that you did nothing to create and yet exists anyway. It's as though theres energy coming from nothing. But in physics, energy is described by saying the work done by a constant force is equal to the magnitude of the force multiplied by the displacement along the line of action of the force whilst the force is acting. As a student I've wondered why this definition has been chosen for energy. It's interesting. One thing though, whatever standard you choose for defining something you create an entire framework with circular definitions and you might forget there are circular definitions.

https://www.amazon.com/Kriya-Secrets-Revealed-Complete-Techniques/dp/1479109517 this book for kriya Yoga is the one leo reccomends. Just do both sds and yoga man. I tend to do just a little yoga before normal meditation. Yoga is good, I just don't understand the hype of it relative for Leo to have said in the past he thinks Yoga is more effective than regular meditation. But that's just me.

I have liked Joe rogan, Sam harris, Jordan peterson from this list. Rubin, shapiro, molyneux? Nahhhh.

@Leo Gura @Nahm@mandyjw ?, thanks for the responses

I've often bought into the idea of unconfitional happiness being at least theoretically possible. I was travelling aboard recently in Africa and was/am extremely sick whilst doing a lot of moving around. This was a source of suffering. I was in the sahara desert on a camel, being very cold and at one point my tiredness from travelling with illness made me delirious to the point where I thought I was literally going insane and had lost my mind completely. My sense of reality was stripped away in the most negative way possible, I had an emotional breakdown from all the fatigue of travelling with a painful illness. I slept it off thankfully. The experiences I had were so painful, I find it hard to believe that I could have dissolved all of it. And another thing, I see these beggars and poor children in the street and just wonder why there is just so much absurdly amounts of suffering. How is this infinite love? Maybe when you're suffering is mild and you have an OK health you can sense the beauty of reality and see through the illusiveness of thoughts but how is someone less fortunate to be happy? Has God just destined some people to be born in lives of absolute misery? Is all of this suffering supposed to be good?

@mandyjw the sickness has made me more grateful for my health. All in all I would probably do something similar again, I did have some fun. Looking back it was a funny experience I suppose.

weeeeeee. Even though I've never taken a psychedelic this must be what its like.

@moon777light I'm sure you've had glimpses, everyone does. Everyone progresses at different speeds and its all about what you want from the practice that matters. It's a saying in zen or something that satori can take 3 seconds or it can take 3 decades. I've been meditating daily for more or less 14 months, but I've probably missed at least a 1/3 of those days maybe more. I had my first non-dual glimpse meditating on a cold bus strangely enough. It was my third or so time meditating, but it was still profound to me because of how much of a shock it was to me. I would move my arm, turn my head, blink and realise that it wasn't me who was doing all those things. I haven't had many glimpses from meditating, but it does feel like purification. Probably a handful of "glimpses" but there are more muted monkey mind and higher consciousness states.

@zunnyman Kriya yoga and normal meditation, you know how it is. @Inliytened1 @Shadowraix @pluto @Hellspeed @moon777light ?

Is there some complex mechanics to it worth understanding? From my perspective, regardless of the situation in regards to whether or not you know what your trauma is, being mindful and surrendering to your emotions its the solution. The main thing I wonder is, should people go out of their way to try and dig into what their trauma is? How would you go about digging? Obviously there might be some trauma you're quite conscious of. But I wonder, is there such a thing as hidden trauma that you've completely forgotten about? As I understand it, trauma may or may not be similar in its expression to PTSD. I know that PTSD forms of trauma cause you to be anxious. And our definition for what the traumatising "event" is can be quite broad, such as a set of life experiences spread throughout a period of a few years.So with all trauma, something unexpectedly negative happens to you and since your brain does not want to consciously explore your feelings and thoughts, your brain adopts a bunch of neurotic circuits out of a primal low consciousness fear? So is all negativity and neuroses caused by trauma? Is this all shadow work is about? Trauma, Karma, neuroses, body memory, the shadow, all these terms seem to basically mean the same thing. Ofc we're using a very broad definition of trauma. I suppose the real reason I made this thread was to see if there was a get rich quick scheme to finding trauma.

@Leo Gura Thanks for the tip. I can tell about at least a few trauma I have.

@Pouya One way you might come across nothing would be to say to yourself "Whats creating this present moment experience"? What could be the answer to the question if your entire reality is the present moment? Or maybe you should self inquiry of some sort. Like asking yourself "what am I?". What makes the thoughts that pop into you head different the sounds you hear outside? What are the origin of things you call yourself and the origin of things you call other?

@Cocolove 14 months or so. I hope so

@Jkris There are too many good ones:

@Jkris Yeah you seem to get what to do. I'd say that if you're looking for someone who can best point towards non-duality with words, I'd reccomend alan watts. He has many good videos on YouTube. I can link a few if you want. Terms like "surrender", "awareness", "resistance" can be very important to use when talking about mindfullness/non-duality yet these terms cannot be adequately defined. I've found myself wondering what is "awareness" and what is "attention". I can't tell what exactly suffering and low consciousness is. If you're in a higher consciousness state, it's as though you have an effortless attention (which is almost a paradox) for all the contents of your consciousness. But in low consciousness state, there's some sort of constriction of your attention/awareness or at the very least the feeling that there's some sort of constriction on your experience. And then there's obviously thoughts which are central to everything. The problem I have is this. By very virtue of the fact that I have a low level of consciousness at the times I have a low level of consciousness, it's very hard to "figure out" how low consciousness functions. Figuring out the relation betweenï thought, awareness, attention is confusing and what's all the more confusing is that once you're in a high consciousness state none of this talking matters at all and there are no problems. One good way to think about reducing your suffering, is that you realise that the thoughts which are in your head are of the exact same origin of all things external to you. The origin of everything you do and the origin of everything that happens external to you are the same. If you realise that the external and internal and one, the feeling that life is a drag and effort will dissappear. Reality in its essence is just an uncaused, spontaneous hapenning which literally "comes from" nothing. The present moment is all you have and all you will ever have, and you didn't have to do anything to create this moment. One experiment which might work for you. Listen to your thoughts just as if they were noise in the external world.

@Jkris If you force yourself to do strong determination sitting or force yourself to meditate for a long period of time, there'll be pain arising. If you can sit through the pain and surrender to it you'll train your mind to surrender. You might look at my answer and roll your eyes but it's the truth.

@phllip103 I make sure to expose my retina to as much blue light as possible. I make my sleeping pattern as erratic as possible to make mess with my hormonal balance.

@Harikrishnan If they make the right choices anyone can be successful. Wait I didnt even realise ive already replied to this thread, lol. idk about success but definitely well being. @BjarkeT all is well

Greeeeeeeeeeeeeen

me neither?

@BjarkeT I don't think indeterminism implies free will, not that you were arguing it does. Quantum mechanics isn't total randomness by the mere fact that there are still mathematical and probabilistic models to it. But it is still randomness. To me, randomness is exhibited in a system if the same initial conditions do not always yield identical ending conditions. Lets consider two possible state of affairs for how systems evolve. If it is deterministic, well theres obviously no free will. But if the system is random, how does that randomness mean that your choices were "free"? Is there any moral culpability that can be assigned to dice rolls, or can dice rolls really make free will exist for the ego in some meaningful sense? If something is random its out of control. Whether or not a system evolves deterministically or randomly, it really has no impact on whether you are "free". For the sake of a hypothetical, lets just say that the choice a person will make is determined by how two particles in their brain will react. There are 4 possible ways those particles react, and each different way will result in a different choice being made. The probability of each type of reaction happening is 25%. In what sense is there "free will" here?

This is a question about visualising in relation to a/the body. For example, a kriya yoga exercise says to visualise prana moving though the spine. To do this, do I keep a vivid image of my body in my mind and then abstractly manipulate that image by having prana flow? Or is this visualising done another way. The other way being that I visualise in tight relation to the physical body I am. So what I mean by this, is that I consider the physical location of my spine and the sensations within it in consciousness (theres also the location of your spine relative to your face), and manipulate my attention around that physical location? Or are both these things done at the same time?

@Space Yeah I usually do the second option. Putting my attention on my physical body in this way. But mental imagination is also important, like you say.

I personally find Peter Ralston a little strange to listen to in recordings, even though I can strongly resonate with his book. I think its just for whatever reason something feels a bit unexpected and/or out of place when I listen to him, but it is not at all in a bad way really. He's actually quite charming. If I had to guess, he comes across as someone who's perhaps a bit insensitive of others? Of course this is just a guess.

Hm alright. Thanks for the advice.