lmfao

@Jordan94 whenever I meditate (I just do 1hr a day) there's always plenty of shit for me to focus on and work on. Emotions, pain, mind wondering, monkey mind, etc. If you're looking to spice things up, you could maybe meditate when you're slightly dehydrated and/or hungry? Meditating upon new flavours of suffering and misery might work.

If I have the feeling that everything in consciousness is perfect and that the existence of everything in reality is good and amazing, is that what is pointed to by "love" with a capital L? If that's the case, is "Love" just a mode of being you can reach at high levels of consciousness?

@Tony 845 I'm not enlightened, but I intuit that's its possible to get rid of anxiety and depression. In your consciousness you're experiencing all sorts of sensations, pressures, emotions, different senses, and etc. For some reason, we ascribe a positive meaning to some sensations and a negative meaning to other sensations. This ascription of meaning happens at a subconscious and conscious level. The raw sensation of something negative, e.g. anxiety, isn't inherently bad. You could perhaps say that "objectively speaking", a negative sensation/feeling/emotion isn't inherently bad. To say that the raw sensation of fear is worse than the feeling of (insert arbitrarily chosen pleasurable sensation,e. G. Sexual stimulation) is to say that the colour red is objectively superior to the colour blue, when in reality both these colours are equal in their "objective" status. I was meditating earlier today and felt I went deep. I was at first blissfull, then depressed after meditation ended, and now blissfull again. And I was feeling extremely down earlier, but through being mindful it's gone. The only way for you to get rid of a negative emotion is to fully accept the negative emotion and see it for what it is. Right now, there are negative sensations for me but I have equanimity and optimism about it. Your depression might get temporarily worse for short periods of time from doing meditation since your old neurotic motivational structures can abruptly collapse. The whole process of purification through mindfullness is essentially outlined in this video. You let the negativity engulf every cubic centimeter of your body and it is then that you'll realise that it ain't all that bad: At the deepest levels of enlightenment, you're probably gonna be in a state of peaceful of bliss. I think that at that point, the fact that there is existence at all feels beautiful beyond words and all contents of your consciousness feel good.

@Preetom @Outer Thanks for the good advice. @Angelite ?‍♂️

@Akuma I know its bad but ive started to struggle bothering listening to materialists talk about anything the same way I struggle bothering listening to religious people talk about anything. That said though, this particular talk seems interesting. He seems intelligent for an 87 year old lmao.

@CreamCat You seem quite interested in the area of psychopathy. Have you read what self proclaimed psychopaths say about themselves online in places like Quora? https://www.quora.com/topic/Psychopathy-and-Psychopaths It appears that psychopaths are born the way they are and that isnt their fault, but they are as far as one can be in wanting sympathy for that fact. Because from what I've read of what self proclaimed psychopaths say, their emotional dial is muted in sadness and anxiety in combination with being muted in empathy. I find this answer to the question "What is the definition of a psychopath" quite interesting. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-definition-of-a-psychopath/answers/51259476 Im about to goi off on a tangent. In regards to monoamine oxidase A, I remember reading an article https://mad.science.blog/2018/07/12/serotonism/ which essentially stated that theres a hypothesis that groups of people which have faced oppression and subjugation (on a large enough scale to have an effect, im assuming) will select for genes which code for low MAO-A.

I've recently wondered whether theres a "reason" for why certain things are deemed pleasurable and why certain things are deemed painful. From meditation I've come to feel that things like negative emotions, muscle pain, thirst, are in of in themselves just sensations in the same way that warmth, tasty food and sex generate another set of sensations. There isnt anything inherently wrong about the raw sensation of fear, its just different from sexual gratification in the same way blue is just different from red; none of the colours are inherently superior. But despite this, my mind has a natural aversion to certain sensations which are deemed negative and ive come to notice only during meditation that this aversion happens at a level that is subconscious but I never notice this in my day to day life. I think long meditation sessions are the best way to see this. Maybe there is no reason for why we have an aversion to certain colours, and it is just the way it is. I'll read whatever thoughts you have on this. A really good short video on this topic: There's also Leo's video on strong negative emotions:

@now is forever Good question, politics probably does go deeper than that two dimensional compass.

@Outer Everything just is the way it is, nothing is done by you in creating this moment. Reality is always in a situation you did nothing to make or control.

@Ampresus Good

@Outer Just took it LET THE POLITICAL JIHAD ENSUE. I agree with you that libertarianism is just voluntary ism. Please don't purge my dualistic egotistical ass Leo, I'm sorry for posting political compass ?

@Outer I like libertarianism but I just feel that taking it to its extreme in implementation in society wouldn't succeed, I think Leo articulated it well. I personally think that voluntaryism is a nice ideal, but maybe government is a necessary evil. The ideal government probably has some conservativism there, liberalism here, a pinch of authoritarianism, a dash of libertarianism and etc. For a long time I have and still do resonate with libertarianism, but it just seems extremely unrealistic. To paraphrase something I heard from Stefan Molyneux "At the core of every law is a gun pointing at your head telling you to comply", and whilst that is an emotionally compelling reason to hate government, I think it's something to accept.

Enlightenment is paradoxical in a way because your desire for enlightenment is what causes you to not be enlightened, although that might be a crude way of phrasing it. The way I see it, it's the intention behind your effort to increase consciousness and mindfulness that matter. If you try to forcefully "raise" you awareness into accepting something negative in your experience, you'll fail. If your awareness has the intent of "fixing" or removing something, you'll fail. Rather your awareness should come from a "desire" to just pay attention to reality as it is. In order to stop thoughts "The first rule is: Don't try to! Because if you do you will be like someone trying to make rough waters smooth water with a flat iron"

@Ampresus Because I have not reached this potentially existing point where I need no further theory whatsoever for the rest of my life I cannot answer your question. But I'm not sure why you would be so focused on this question and why you are not solely focused on what you should be doing right now. Things change in life, planning ahead 40 years is pointless. Just wonder what you should be doing in a much smaller time frame in the future. Like as I am right now, I feel like I've done too much thinking and mental masturbation in my life that for now and for the foreseeable future I'm done with taking in non-duality theory. Theory helps to a degree but you MUST practice. I don't think I'm done with theory forever, but as of right now I am done with it because I can sense it is the right move for me. So if you're deciding whether to take in more theory or only just practice for the next few weeks/months/years, the answer should be clear to you deep down.

@saffron In a very pragmatic and simple outlook, the quote is pointing towards the fact that those who take action in the world are the ones who will prevail. "Evil" will prevail if "Good" is passive. Does it even need to be said that the quote is meaningless in the context of absolute truth.

I might be going about my daily business and become mindful of the fact that nothing is in my control (not a negative way). For all waking moments of your life you're a situation which you did nothing to create. In some sense existence is effortless because you never have and never will have to do anything. The problem I have is that whenever I try to maintain my awareness for long periods of time or I try to break bad habits I have I'm met with huge emotional resistance and I'm probably met with what you'd call ego backlash. Even if I get glimpses of non-duality there's still a massive under current of emotional shit which seems impossible to get rid of without an extreme amount of suffering. I feel like I can spend a few minutes in no mind voluntary, but it always dissappear for me. Besides mindfulness, what solutions exist for low emotional maturity?

Open the door, we need to have a little "talk"

@VioletFlame ooo la la good post. Pretty inspiring.

@Emerald Good posts. A view I have about paradigms is that the defining properties of a paradigm are the baseless axioms and assumptions in that paradigm. For example, mathematicians have spent loads of time writing down extensive lists of all the assumptions they hold about abstract objects and these assumptions are necessary for the use of logic and deduction. Trying to go deep down into how assumptions and axioms are formed is mysterious. For me to even try to understand this issue and conceptualise the existence of axioms and assumptions requires that I use axioms and assumptions. Everything I've ever typed including this sentence is based on assumptions. In the end it all just comes down to "absolute infinity".

@Roch I wouldn't get too hung up on IQ. I've taken two IQ tests on the same day before and it honestly feels like a bit of bullshit tbh. They give you barely enough time to even look at a question, let alone properly take in the details. It honestly felt like a guessing game because of how time restricted it is. I didn't feel like I even had the chance to think because I was too busy just trying to rush through it all. Maybe I have an overactive DMN or am dumb, who knows. Like I walked out of the test just thinking that I didn't feel anything being tested because I had no time to think. Maybe that's how its supposed to be, idk. Even though in real life I'm terrible at English compared to maths (which is backed up by my academic performances), I did a good deal better on verbal sections than non-verbal reasoning sections which makes zero sense to me in the context of my real life experience. Other than that though I think @Serotoninluv 's advice is good. @OuterI like your simple no thoughts explanation of non-duality and mindfulness

@NoSelfSelf You're not wrong @ivory You right

@Michael569 @Michael569 If I had to take a guess I'd say that maybe the yellow person realises that each perspective about something has no inherent truth value to them and it is because of that that someone who is yellow acknowledges and can use multiple perspectives. I like what Nahm said about different perspectives just being different shoes. Maybe the yellow person doesn't actually "believe" in any of the perspectives, he just sees the perspectives. Maybe in life he is just acting out on different perspectives he knows he cannot be certain of to be true but he's stopped worrying about because theres no point in worrying. Another random thought I have is that this might be related to strange loops and the fact that certain things are hard to verbally articulate. Things which can be viewed as being completely in opposition to each other can also be more similar than you think.

@Quantum_fluctuations the way I see it, suffering isn't optional because nothing is optional. But once your awareness/consciousness is heightened and you become aware of the fact that nothing is optional then your suffering will dissappear. Being aware that nothing is optional is to become aware that you live in this uncaused present moment. You did nothing to create this present moment at all, it is just the way it is.

@Emanyalpsid Alan Watts said that in his view of the world which is "semi Hindu and semi Buddhist" he said that all the different parts of reality are expressions of one god. In whatever ways you choose to draw boundaries and distinctions in reality so as to allow the existence of objects/organisms/events, all of these things are simply god playing different roles in reality. It's like God is this actor playing different roles. Another level to this anology is that a a good actor gets lost in their role and forgets what their "true self" is like. In the same way, God is losing awareness of himself in playing these roles.