lmfao

@John West I don't meditate for as long as you lol so my advice might be useless since you could already have a better posture than me. Whenever I meditate I try to get as large a surface area of contact between the sides of my legs and the ground. This distributes my weight over a larger area and decreases pressure. And intense pain is part of the point of SDS lol, although intense pain which is prematurely induced by bad posture cant be good for your body in the long run. Do you mediate for 150 mins regularly? Does the long period of time of meditation feel more effective than like a 60 or 90 minute session? Because I'm considering increasing the time I meditate for. Because I think that it takes me a long time to enter the zone, and perhaps I'm ending the session just before things get good.

If anyone here has looked into it I'm interested what you have to say. As far as scientific measurements go for changes in state during meditation all I've looked at is this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation "Recent studies have shown heightened activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, frontal cortex, and prefrontal cortex, specifically in the dorsal medial prefrontal area during Vipassana meditation. Similarly, the cingulate cortexand frontal cortex areas were shown to have increased activity during Zen meditation" Areas of the brain close to your forehead have increased activity, so maybe this is why you have tingling on your forehead? Even so, it's a weird phenomena and I'm not sure whether there is an explanation. As far as spinal tingling and other weird sensations on back go I have nothing to say.

@Roman Edouard I think that most people on this site would give you the perspective that it's the "ego" which doesn't want to be happy all the time, and that it's possible to reach a new form of permanent happiness once the ego is gone. Its a happiness which goes beyond what your ego deems as "pleasurable" or "painful". I don't necessarily know if this perspective is right but I'll elaborate a bit. Our consciousness is an amalgamation of sensations, feelings, colours, sounds, thoughts and etc. There are certain sensations which are deemed pleasurable and there are other sensation which are deemed negative. I've come to feel from meditation that the raw sensation of something "negative" isn't actually negative, its just a different flavour from something "positive". Saying that the raw sensation of tasty food is superior to the raw sensation of fear might be like saying " blue is objectively superior to red", when these things are just different from each other and are equal in value. But for some reason unbeknownst to me, our mind at a subconscious and conscious level will cause some sensations to be seen as bad whilst other sensations to be seen as good. But is it perhaps possible to change the way your mind processes these different sensations through mindfulness?

@Roman Edouard true, money will give you more opportunity to do cool shit and also develop yourself. By luck I have been born in the west, and wasn't born to a poverty stricken family in a third world country where everyday I would be struggling to even sustain physical survival. I would have never learnt about mindfulness or conciousness work at all. Mindfulness is something people of all wealth levels can engage in provided they've learnt the basics, and I believe its theoretically possible for somebody in even the worst possible life environment to be happy if they are fully enlightened and in the present moment. Money is an enabler for happiness, but it won't fix a rotten psyche which is miserable and depressed. That's the way I see it.

@now is forever @Leo Gura (for some reason I can't get rid of the @Leo on mobile) Quite interesting what you said about mirror neurons. I agree with you that autistic people don't lack love. My post was following on from what Leo said about some people, e.g maybe Peter Ralston maybe in the context of "Love" , having a reduced capacity to accessing certain "dimensions of reality". The existence of "Love" as a dimension of experience is fuzzy and hard to point to, as you've mentioned. I was just trying to use Love as an arbitrarily chosen example dimension, although it was a bad choice. So for now, let's forget about "Love" as a dimension and just imagine that there are other dimensions though. Despite the fact that I cannot give a concrete example for the name of one of the dimensions of measurement in the reductionist model I made up earlier I still think that the model just allows me to clearly articulate my thoughts. The main point I was trying to focus on can be demonstrated in this hypothetical situation using the model I made up earlier. Person X has a score of "3" in one dimension whilst Person Y has a score of "2". Let's assume this difference is due to there being different nervous systems between the two people. What I'm wondering is if the fact that Person Y has a lower sensitivity in this dimension than Person X means that it is likely they Person Y "makes up" for this "disadvantage" by having a higher score than Person X in a different dimension of measurement. To be precise: if we imagine the set of all possible ways in which person Y's nervous system is different from Person X I wonder whether more than 50% of these possible ways would result in Person Y compensating for the deficiency through an increased score in another dimension. I was using autism as an arbitrary example of a different brain type to say that there are probably gonna be some dimensions of measurement they are lower in, but it is probable there are other dimensions they are higher in to compensate for this fact. Yeah the actual knitty gritty details of such a model are absurd. The things it wants to measure are impossible to determine the identity of and its also impossible to quantify them.

@Roman Edouard Money can get you a bunch of material goods and services. Saying that money will keep you happy in the long term is the same as saying that hedonism will keep you happy in the long term. I feel as though adressing your claim that money will keep you happy alone just requires adressing the hedonistic mindset. The idea that purchasing whatever you want will make you happy. I think the biggest advantage of money from a happiness point of view is the fact that wealth is gonna be correlated with your social status and position in dominence hierarchies, but that will not keep you happy if you get obsessed with it and pursue it at the cost of authenticity. Do you have any sort of hardcore addictions? Have you ever done an activity again and again and found it leaves you unhappy? Because if you do, I think looking at that is one way to see through the illusion that hedonism will bring you happiness. Imagine a person who who starts to indulge in unhealthy food. For simplicities sake suppose that person starts to eating burgers and pizza every day. For the first week or so, it feels amazing. However, the pleasure from the activity starts to get diminished. 2 weeks into the thing, they probably don't even enjoy eating unhealthy food. In fact what has started to happen is that they consume more and more food because the pleasure has become diminished. If they don't have access to the food they enter deep suffering, but before starting this habit this person would not have been in deep suffering with no access to the unhealthy food. In fact they'll eventually reach the point where they're in deep suffering whilst they indulging themselves. This just doesn't apply to food. It applies to sex, having power over others, watching television, watching porn, video games and etc. I said that by indulging in unhealthy food too much the pleasure received from the activity quickly deminishes. From my experience I have found that not only does the pleasure diminish in the particular hedonistic activity you repeatedly do, but pleasure diminishes across all other hedonistic activities which you might not have even excessively indulged in. That's because by being hedonistic with just one bad habit (e.g. Sex) you destroy your brains chemical system and the joy it receives from other things (e. G. Food).

You can't be sure, I agree.

@kieranperez Sam Harris got me into spirituality as well with that meditation. I listened to the short version of the meditation he gave in a lecture but it felt amazing cuz I'd never done it before. If it wasn't for Sam Harris and Leo.... Wew lad I wouldn't be in a good place.

@NoSelfSelf In what sense are you looking for a fast way to move out? Are you looking for a fast way to find a new place to live? Looking for a fast way to become financially independent? Just a few sentences explaining your situation would help people answer your question. I may not be able to help you as much with advice as other people but take this free thread bump my brother.

@Charlotte Ive had this before when my mind is completely and utterly absorbed in a long thought story. 20-30 mins of my session will fly by and I'll forget I'm even meditating.

@Ampresus yeah I've had a similar insight. The thoughts in your head have no more truth value than random colours or sounds in your consciousness.

@Jack River You right. It's very hard to try and implement this (although I don't think there is another way besides what you said) because when I cease trying to be attentive I will slip back into my old unconscious habits.

@Moreira the way I see it, even if it old people are nicer many of them are still stage blue. From the old people I've interacted with the hold stronger traditional and cultural values. I don't think agressivity has changed. I might be wrong but if anything violent crime rates in western countries have decreased compared to what they were in 1960's,70's,80's... I could match you bringing up fucked up individualism by mentioning fucked up collectivism. You've obviously noticed how people right now care about their individual ego, but people back then might have cared a lot for the collective ego. Not saying that old people didn't do some things better. But let's not forget that western society used be more racist, misogynistic, dogmatic and judgemental. Yeah addiction is a fair point you've brought up about low consciousness since every young person is basically a technology addict. Level of consciousness isn't identical to your stage in the spiral so we might be talking past each other to some degree. The whole thing about a low vibrational state, I see what you mean. You've obviously noticed some bad stage orange excesses in society. Current society still has bad problems but I think that the problems arise from dysfunction at a higher stage in spiral dynamics on average.

@Yog most of the blue in society arises from the older individuals in that society. Old people dying out in conjunction with new people being born into the world is a mechanism through which society would move up the spiral. This mechanism is probably applicable to all cultures at every stage. The environment that successive generations are being raised in become gradually less toxic. One generation slightly improves the environment and culture for the next generation, and that next generation improves the culture and education for the generation after them. The cycle continues. Of course regression can always happen. For an individual at any given stage in the spiral, the ego will foolishly persist in their folly until their current way of being has caused so much destruction and the ego accepts this and moves on a stage. The collective ego could roughly be approximated to the sum of all the individual for egos and so the same mechanism would be in action. I think a discussion around how a collective ego would move up the spiral is just a more complex discussion of how an individual ego moves up the spiral. And moving up the spiral as an individual is a whole topic in of in itself for self-actualization. Unfortunately I don't know anything about to Odin to follow what you said at the end.

Does anyone here have any opinions on the different effects of differently pitched binaural beats? I've tried listening to theta, delta and gamma waves when meditating recently. I've tried googling online what the supposedly different effects are of these different frequencies but I just wanted to ask if anyone has actually noticed or felt these differences. Random question I thought: Does increasing frequency at a possible frequency always yield the same result as increasing the frequency at another possible frequency (e. G. so would going from delta to theta have the same effects as going from beta to gamma)? The answer is probably no since the complex effects and mechanism of action of binaural beats has, what is judged to be in my mind, a low probability of being linearly scaled with frequency.

What works for me is looking at my current state of happiness. I'm miserable and frustrated. A question that works for me is asking myself "Why aren't I happy right now?" or "What is wrong with now?". Why can't you be happy with a shitty meditation session? Why can't you be happy with shitty willpower? Why can't you be happy with these "negative" feelings inside you? Another random tip, don't overly force yourself to resist thoughts. Pay attention to the sounds on your head mindfully in the same way you would pay attention ally mindfully to the sounds in your external world. It's a quick way to see the non-existent separation between what is voluntary and involuntary. Your awareness in meditation should not originate from the intent to fix yourself, it should originate from the intent to just see what's there. I think permenant effects from meditation is a gradual process. Suppose an complete newbie does meditation for the first time and reaches a slightly higher level of consciousness. However, 15 mins after the session they are very quickly regressing to their old state. It might not be until a year a later that you're getting lasting short term effects, and then even longer to get lasting long term effects. I've been meditating for 11 months now (missing about 50-60 days) and have noticed subtle long term effects. Even though I don't know you personally my mind believes there's a high probability that continuing meditation is the right move for you.

@SQAAD Past 90 minutes of meditation and my mind gets tired. If I try to meditate for too much longer than that the session gets too intense and mentally draining for me. Meditating for longer might be inefficient and I should be fine by just trying to retain subtle mindfulness throughout the day. You meditate for longer than me and are probably more experienced with meditation than me lol. The only thing I'll say is be careful not to burn yourself by doing way too much. I speculate that you can meditate for extremely long sessions so long as you don't let the repressed negativity which surfaces up consume you.

Amen

@moon777light You don't know if it is a trick or not, true. One can never know for certain that they aren't under the guise of self deception. No entity (like the the god in christianity or islam) or organism can ever be sure they aren't deceiving themselves. I agree with that quote you mentioned. You talked about how humans have imagined entities in their mind for things. Many things that we take to have a concrete existence are just concepts/words. Human rights, laws, religion, nation, money, it's all an abstraction. The author talked about these things being something you can't directly see and they were concocted in sense. What I see being pointed to by what you type is the difference between the map and the territory. I see meditation and mindfulness as the "best" attempt you can make to avoid these concoctions. All meditation is about is paying attention to the raw data in your consciousness. Paying attention to the raw data in your consciousness will probably "break down" the existence of even simple thing like "a tree" , and would probably go even deeper with the idea that the author is mentioning. I personally think of concepts being rooted in words, with words being rooted in thoughts, and thoughts are just a conglomeration of different noises in your head that have no inherent meaning in the same way that random colours and sounds you experience in the outside world have no inherent meaning.

This is probably the wrong site for this type of thread but I feel the need to type it anyway. I fell asleep 90 minutes ago, and those 90 minutes since then have been packed with the most emotional distress I've ever experienced in my life. I woke up screaming. It was literal hell, I've never experienced so much negative emotion in my life. Those 90 minutes of sleep literally felt like two weeks of lived experience, so much time dilation. I'm at a loss of words of how to describe my dream, other than simply being hell. After having woken up now, Im literally crying if I try to remember my dreams. The whole things feel so cerebral and unreal. I've never taken psychedelics, but for a short part of the dream I was experiencing what you could probably say is the most negative and suffering filled drug trip in all of human existence with hallucinations and negative perceptions reaching to depths of negativity you never even knew existed. Hallucinations and emotions that I felt in the dream was extremely scary and honestly feels like some borderline supernatural shit. Anyone here had similar problems?

@Dan Arnautu According to understandmyself.com , I'm 1st percentile agreeableness when I took it over half a year ago. This might be inaccurate, I'm not really sure. I think I'm below average in agreeableness for sure though. I just took the test from the site you referenced, my agreeableness score is 2.5 ( which judging by eye on the scale they give since they don't tell you an exact number) would make me 25th percentile agreeableness. I've definitely changed a bit since I took the test half a year ago, plus the test half a year ago was somewhat inaccurate. I'm not really sure what I can say to you, since I think my low agreeableness arises from the fact that one of my parents is a manipulative person (although the manipulation isnt directed at me) and so it is that I have a tendency to just look for signs of bullshit in other people. Another thing to realise is that your high agreeableness might partially be a function of anxiety; you might be excessively nice not because you're being authentic but because you're afraid of the consequences of not being extra nice. If you see something being done inefficiently around you, don't be afraid of saying it. People should have a thick enough skin for you to criticise what they do without them thinking you're criticising them as a person, provided you're nice and polite about it.

@Leo Gura Yeah there is no such thing as typical, I understand what you're trying to say. There is no such thing as typical especially in the context of absolute infinity and in the context of what a persons exact conscious experience is like, although typical does exist for individual particular aspects of the psyche when we take averages of certain traits in a human population. For arguments sake we could conceptualise the nervous system as having Y (with Y just being any real number) elements where each element has a numerical quantity for a person. The numerical value would represent "sensitivity" for that particular aspect of first hand experience in consciousness. We could have a Y-th dimensional co-ordinate system where the exact, precise numerical quantity across each dimension of measurement is needed to define the exact state of the nervous system. I suppose I was also curious about the particular cause of autism ( and also other cases like maybe psychopathy or whatever other deviations you can get from the average). In the reductionist model I proposed in the second paragraph, autistic people would have relatively low numbers in some dimensions of measurements. But I also wonder whether someone autistic would compensate for it with an increased number for other dimensions of measurement. Supposing Peter Ralston has a decreased sensitivity to "Love" ,idk if he will compensate for it in other ways. Ignoring neurological conditions, we could just look at personality types such as the ones in MBTI. My question is kinda unanswerable, but I was just wondering if certain types of people are capable of a more "rich" experience than other people by nature. Need it be said that the "value" of this consciousness couldn't be reduced into the sum of numerical quantities across each dimension in the reductionist model I stated earlier. My current speculation is that 99.9999...% of people have a equal capacity for a rich conscious experience since all beings in reality come from the same absolute. Some people might be "talented" in fulfilling their capacity, but everyone should be able to I think.

@NoSelfSelf idk maybe they just mediate for the lols. Maybe the mediate because they're bored and there are perhaps few things more enjoyable. A passionate , master level athlete will keep doing his craft for fun even if he won't make progress and even if he can't enter any competitions .

When I was younger I discovered a stretch I'd use in an attempt to fix my bad posture. I made a post about this months ago, but I just want to make another post because: 1) I've slightly changed how I do it now and 2)its feels amazing. After a very short time of using the stretch today I accidentally made my left arm numb and tingling (and it hasn't fully gone after 45 mins) so be careful lmao. I have no experience with yoga whatsoever, I just do this stretch when meditating randomly. Sit down (not on a chair) cross legged (or with whatever sitting position you'd use for meditation) and put your hands behind your back. Introlock all your fingers, including your thumbs. Keeping your hands interlocking with your back straight, try to raise your arms and hands far up vertically whilst other trying to maximise the horizontal distance between hands and back. You don't have to strain yourself too much here. KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT. If you are looking straight ahead of you, tilt your head 90 degrees to left or right. The previous sentence is simply being written down to precisely give you a visual perspective from which to follow the next instructions. You can separate your thumbs and then from the current perspective of your visual field rotate your hands anti clockwise. Your fingers are interlocking (except thumbs) and your palm is facing away from your back. Keep your head in a normal position now. Keeping your back straight, stretch your hands and arms far out horizontally from your back whilst keeping your arms raised vertically. Put a lot of effort into this stretch, even if it's uncomfortable. After straining yourself for a bit you should start to feel a huge stretch across your entire arms and and shoulders. If it hurts and is uncomfortable, it's a good sign. Keep going. Remember to keep good form and symmetry. After you've finished, if you've done it right with enough intensity, your arms +shoulders will be tingling and relaxed. For a few brief moments my consciousness felt extremely elavated and amazing. It felt like I ascended to the 8468th dimension. Be careful, for me the stretch is very potent and caused numbness and tingling for me quickly. Do it at your own discretion. But if you're of normal health, and are not a pussy who doesn't mind numbness and tingling, go for it. Im typing about this just because it felt so orgasmic, idk if it will be the same for everyone. I did the stretch 70 minutes into meditation (so my shoulders and back were slightly loosened up for the whole things) and maybe it felt so good just because of the numbness and tingling I induced which persistent over an hour after. It might just be a combination of all the right factors which made it feel potent. --------------------------------------------------- Extra info which is not needed: After doing it and putting your arms in front of you, your body might have the natural urge to bend your arms and flex them towards your body. To explain what this urge is, you might know of this little experiment. Completely submerge your hands in the pockets of your trousers ("trousers" is the same as the word "pants" for you filthy americans). Have an uncletched palm. Push both your hands outward from your body as hard as you again, straining your muscles. Your hands are fully submerged in the pocket and hence will not escape. Do it untill you're extremely tired. Take your hands out of your pocket and your hands will experience a funny urge to move outwards.

@Leo Gura Supposing we grant the existence of brain types and personality, is it possible that an autistic brain and personality type would give someone access to new/different dimensions of high consciousness to a neurotyoucal, or is every deviation from a neurotypical result in exclusion of something rather than inclusion.