Removing Should-statements And Eventually Reaching Enlightenment

[JKG]

Self honesty - a frightening realization:

Yesterday evening I got the opportunity to be honest with myself. My ego somehow identifies with being a more advanced or intermediate student of self-actualization. It things that I have already transcended the newbie stages and don't have to work on stuff like relationships, money, emotions... Enlightenment work is enough. I could skip stages of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and just work on Enlightenment like yogis. But once or twice a year this belief of mine gets shattered. Then I get the sense of being a really unsocial person with very poor social skills and no friends. If I just imagine applying for a job or asking for an internship I am so scared and resisting.

Right now I am even resisting writing this down. "What could those people on the forum think of me? I should have this image of being a bit more advanced and into Enlightenment. I shouldn't write this down. Then they would think I am a total newbie..." That's going on in my mind. That's the ego. That's okay. Awareness is curative alone...

So what happened yesterday: Actually nothing serious. I went into the kitchen to get myself some water. My mother was there and said that my hair looks really oily (I only wash my hair with shampoo once a week to make it more healthy, so at the end of the week it looks pretty oily). She talked about that the people in school could think bad things about me and that I could get bullied. I answered that I don't care about that because in 9 months I will never see most of the people ever again. My father heard the conversation and also came into the kitchen. He supported my mother by saying that I don't know what real bullying looks like, bla bla bla. All my arguments about shampoo (the people before civilization didn't use shampoo...) would be wrong. I should care about my physical appearance...
Because I am not good at arguing, especially not with my narrow-minded dominant father, I went back into my room and continued watching useless YouTube videos. I tried to not care about this conversation but it didn't get out of my mind. I had this feeling of being attacked, of being vulnerable, not being strong in social situations. I had doubts and thoughts about starting to care about my physical appearance again.

This feeling of vulnerability comes from being identified with the ego. I have this identification with being more advanced and above this social thing. But this identification got shattered. I saw again that I am socially weak and that it hurts me. Maybe I am not as advanced as my ego things I am. It seems like I still have to work on newbie things like social skills. I had this realization quite a few times. But I never really acted upon it because I am simply to scared of uncomfortable social situations.
But I see how it is the right time now to work on this. Next year I will leave school and might eventually need a job and get into contact with new people in university. I need social skills in these areas. I depend on other people and cannot live life on my own.

I got the booklist and in less than two months is Christmas. I can wish myself from relative quite a few books from the booklist about social stuff with is not too controversial. Yeah...

It's time to take action

[Dragallur]

4 hours ago, quantum said:

(I only wash my hair with shampoo once a week to make it more healthy, so at the end of the week it looks pretty oily). She talked about that the people in school could think bad things about me and that I could get bullied. I answered that I don't care about that because in 9 months I will never see most of the people ever again.

Funny, when I went to Germany for one year I decided to upgrade my hygiene a bit because here everybody showers and uses shampoo every day.. I made some compromise but still I would just love to let it be

4 hours ago, quantum said:

Right now I am even resisting writing this down. "What could those people on the forum think of me? I should have this image of being a bit more advanced and into Enlightenment. I shouldn't write this down. Then they would think I am a total newbie..."

Hey cool, thanks for mentioning this, I will have to think about it to find out if I am not in that trap!

 

[JKG]

1 hour ago, Dragallur said:

Funny, when I went to Germany for one year I decided to upgrade my hygiene a bit because here everybody showers and uses shampoo every day.. I made some compromise but still I would just love to let it be

Almost everybody I know here does it. Questioning this system is for them totally unhygienic. It's a part of this western / German culture, especially for the younger generation. I didn't know that this is different in Czech Republic.

1 hour ago, Dragallur said:

Hey cool, thanks for mentioning this, I will have to think about it to find out if I am not in that trap!

I think that there is a lot of stuff going on in your mind that you are not conscious about and which is trying to manipulate you. The ego is trying to repress this 'bad' stuff about yourself to retain the self image. Radical self honesty and questioning is probably the key. 

[Dragallur]

18 minutes ago, quantum said:

Almost everybody I know here does it. Questioning this system is for them totally unhygienic. It's a part of this western / German culture, especially for the younger generation. I didn't know that this is different in Czech Republic.

Not so different. I talked about it with some friends and they are quite similar to what is going up here (ok fine, it is lower level ). I was surprised a lot about how often the people here use laundry machine.. many times a week.. while in Czech my family did that once a week and it was great.

Probably in Czech you will just find more people that stayed behind on this new hygienic movement.

[JKG]

Habit-Transformation - Day 14:

• visualizing internet usage
  worked out well, just 2 minutes seem like a lot of time

 

Mindfulness:

Meditated for 2 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon, including 70 and 48 minutes of sds. Already a long time ago I have recognized that I have this limiting belief that I am unable to meditate much longer than 60 minutes or 90 minutes. There have only been a few instances where I did one session longer than 90 minutes and only one session longer of them has been sds. I think that I don't have the willpower/mindfulness/equanimity to deal with this pain. 60 and 90 minutes are these magical borders where it becomes emotionally more challenging just because of this belief. So what should I do about this? Maybe being mindful about this limiting belief and watching what the ego is doing with this belief. Sitting and watching.

 

Nice Routine:

I love Sundays. On Sundays I have the most free time and the new video comes out. Today I had a really nice routine, just with a bit too much internet. I think this would be a good routine for the time after school or in the holidays.

• waking up at 5am
• meditating for about 3 hours
• studying / working
• working out / moving outside
• eating
• meditation
• inner work

 

Quick calculations:

I just had a thought. There are 177 books in Leo's booklist. I am 17, Leo is 31 years old. There is a difference of 14 years. If I want to read all those books until I am as old as Leo now, I would have to read 12.6 books year, so about one book a month.

60 of those 177 books have a 5/5 rating. With this reading speed I would have read the most important books in about 5 years.

But some of those books are uninteresting for me, like the categorys life coaching or sex. For me currently interesting are the categories...

• Emotional Mastery (14)
• Happiness (6)
• Life Purpose (7)
• Dealing with People (7)
• Consciousness & Enlightenment (34)
• Metaphysics & Epistemology (3)
• Paranormal (3)
• Psychedelics (5)
• Science & Life (14)
• Biographies (17)
• Physiology (1)
• Philosophy (4)

That are 115 books. I could read them all in 9 to 10 years.

But Leo has read much more books than those on the list...

In 10 years I will already be enlightened

[JKG]

The Feynman Technique:

I found this great technique and tried it out in the last few days. Today I studied for 2.5 hours history and chemistry although I have my exams only in two or three weeks. It even was kind of fun and enjoyable. I will probably use this technique for all of my next exams and especially for my final exams next year.

I've made a little cartoon about Hitler and how he has built the dictatorship in Germany. (I know I cannot draw )

 

 

[Dragallur]

12 minutes ago, quantum said:

Meditated for 2 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon, including 70 and 48 minutes of sds. Already a long time ago I have recognized that I have this limiting belief that I am unable to meditate much longer than 60 minutes or 90 minutes. There have only been a few instances where I did one session longer than 90 minutes and only one session longer of them has been sds. I think that I don't have the willpower/mindfulness/equanimity to deal with this pain. 60 and 90 minutes are these magical borders where it becomes emotionally more challenging just because of this belief. So what should I do about this? Maybe being mindful about this limiting belief and watching what the ego is doing with this belief. Sitting and watching.

So you do it without a single movement? Do you quit SDS if you move? I got today basically for the first time to 60 minutes in the same posture though I moved couple of time definitely. I do this on the advice of Marc Schinkel (1000 hours of SDS journal) where he said that it is ok to move after long time or change position and after some practice you can finally do it without those little break.

15 minutes ago, quantum said:

In 10 years I will already be enlightened

Amazing

[JKG]

15 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

So you do it without a single movement? Do you quit SDS if you move? I got today basically for the first time to 60 minutes in the same posture though I moved couple of time definitely. I do this on the advice of Marc Schinkel (1000 hours of SDS journal) where he said that it is ok to move after long time or change position and after some practice you can finally do it without those little break.

Sometimes I have to swallow all the liquid in my mouth and my back gets rounded after some time unconsciously. But I don't change posture. After about 50 to 60 minutes my legs start to hurt. This is the main challenge for me in sds, sitting through the pain for longer time. This is the time when I have to practice harsh equanimity and use the most willpower. If I'd change posture I could to sds probably much longer, maybe 3 to 4 hours.

[Dragallur]

1 minute ago, quantum said:

After about 50 to 60 minutes my legs start to hurt.

Makes sense then. The time for me is something like 40-45 minutes. You do motivate me to push it further

 

[JKG]

How I lie recently:

• "I am more advanced. I don't need to watch this video. I know that I lie to myself probably but its not such a big problem."
• Ge got grades in chemistry today and I got 12 points. There is one girl who is better than myself. She also got 12 points. On the inside I was kind of happy about that because therefore I had the best or the second best grade.
• I didn't do my math homework properly because I didn't wanted to, I was lazy. But I told them that I didn't understand the task properly and that the text of the task was stupid.
• I didn't tell my best friend that she had bad breath.
• I didn't tell my best friend that I do not want to go with her to a theater and rather want to spend the day at home meditating more.
• I am often holding my belly in.
• "I don't make myself doing stuff that I do not want to do intuitively. I am not neurotic at all."
• "I am not deluded. Enlightenment is the right path!"
• "I don't need to re-listen to this video. I already know this."
• "I don't have time to help my mother."
• I didn't tell my parents that I know where my ankle pain comes from. I did a wrong exercise.
• Everytime that I don't understand something directly in math class I feel kind of stupid. But I don't let other people recognize that.
• When we watch a funny film or something like that in class I withhold my laugher because everybody else isn't laughing as much as I do.
• "I am totally honest writing all of this. I report all of the facts."

I could write more but I have to go to school again. I don't want to go to school again. Negative people with bad self images and self agendas. Projection. Judgment.

[JKG]

Habit-Transformation - Day 15:

• visualizing internet usage - Streak 2
  works out well. I intended to use the internet after waking up but I didn't

[Dragallur]

Good job with the lie video, I can relate to lot of these points you wrote down. Most of the time I just manipulate people to say what I want to hear or what I want them to ask, ego is master!

[JKG]

Progress:

Normally I have this feeling that time is just flying by. Days and days go by and nothing special happens. I don't even remember what exactly I have done the other days. But the last 20 hours of my life have been very eventful.

So yesterday I had school until 6pm. I ate with the family and intended to do some meditation in the evening. But my intuition told me that I don't want to meditate right now. I started listening to music and actually listened to the lyrics. Normally I never do this. But it just happened. I listened to this song like 10 times, danced, sang, acted crazy, laid down on the ground...

Somewhen eventually I just sat down on my couch with a pen and paper and started analyzing my web of beliefs, how culture is influencing my everyday life and how I am lying all the time...
Then I came to the conclusion that all these norms of society have so much influence on every active member of society. By norms I now mean stuff like punctuality, order, diligence, kindness etc. But when one person is not fitting perfectly into this system of norms, society tries to pull one back into the system. An example could be school. A kid is not behaving like it 'should' or doesn't do his homework. So the teacher contacts the parents and tells them how the kid should behave... Society does this to preserve its own growth. Society wants the economy to flourish.
This is all okay, but the problem with these norms is that they don't look after your own happiness.

I had the urge to tell this my best friend via WhatsApp. So it happened that we chatted for like 2 hours and eventually it was already 11pm. Normally I go to bed at 9. My ego told me that I should go to bed earlier but the intuition lead me staying up. I was full of energy and totally alert.
We didn't just chat about society. We also talked about honesty. I told her some stuff that was going on in my mind yesterday. 'Normal' people would never talk about such stuff with other people. I for example told her that I was envy on one friend, or that she had a bad smell. I learned so much in just these two hours.

It feels like I have made a huge step forward into the right direction. My intuition came up with so many things. I followed them and everything worked out perfectly. If I would have listened to my ego, nothing of this would have  happened and yesterday would just have been a usual day. I wrote everything down and will act upon this stuff in the near future.

I had the intuitive urge this morning before school to tell something my mother. I tried to explain to her what I am actually doing here, why am I meditating, exercising and watching videos by strangers on youtube. I started by making clear that the worst case scenario is that we just have this one life, one chance. The purpose of life is it to become happy and fulfilled (I know that this is not true but it was the best way to explain this to her). This leads to the conclusion that our ultimate intent in life is it to become this happy and fulfilled. Then I used the analogy of the human as a machine. The human is this vast complex machine but without a users manual. We don't know at all how to become happy, otherwise we would always be happy. What I am doing here could be transfered to developing/finding/creating this users manual on my own. There are people who are wise and have already accomplished such things. So I am learning from them and applying what I have discovered.
The response was kind of positive. I don't know if that what I tried to convey to her was understandable. She definitely does not comprehend the significance of this, her whole web of belief would have to be shattered. She does not understand what is actually possible and that she should change some of her behaviors and objectives. But I guess she understands me and my actions a little bit better. She is more open-minded than my father. It felt good to tell this to her. I was honest.

I went to school earlier to have a conversation with my best friend there which was very good again. My intuition told me this too. I see how I just have to follow my intuition and everything will work out so well. I am so happy and content in the last 20 hours, amazing. To follow my intuition this well I had to step out of my comfort zone. Otherwise I never would have had to courage to be honest to my best friend and to talk to my mother.

Intuition, honesty, open-mindedness, skepticism and consciousness seem to me like the most important keys to mastering life right now.

[JKG]

Habit-Transformation - Day 16:

• visualization internet usage - Streak 3

 

Mindfulness:

I had only 6 hours of sleep. I tried to meditate in the morning but quited after half an hour because I was so tired. I almost fell back to sleep.

 

My maths teacher borrowed me an old book of her for first semester maths. I could try to understand the book sometimes in the normal classes because its too easy for me. I just tried to understand the first pages. I did it for about 1 hour and got to the third page... I am doing this to look if I really want to study maths.

My tics are coming back again...

One of my book orders will arrive tomorrow (Neti Neti Meditation by Andre Doshim Halaw).

[Dragallur]

2 hours ago, quantum said:

did it for about 1 hour and got to the third page...

What was its topic?

[JKG]

8 hours ago, Dragallur said:

What was its topic?

Analysis 1, mathematical induction and partial integration

[JKG]

Self-Honesty:

Almost right after I woke up, I graped my phone and looked for news about the US election. When I saw that Trump is leading I quickly went into the living room, turned on the TV and was kind of shocked. I was very optimistic that Clinton would win, but I didn't expect this to happen.
With these thoughts in my mind I went into meditation. I again wanted to hit the 90 minutes of sds. I already tried it yesterday evening, but only got to 48 minutes. The ego came up with thousands of good excuses and said that I would try it again this morning. So this morning the same happened. I quited exactly after 48 minutes with the same excuses. Why?? I had the thought in mind that if I wouldn't get it this time, I will probably not get it the next time neither. But still I failed. This scratches at the ego identification with being well on the path towards Enlightenment.

In the meditation I thought a lot about Trump stuff. I came up with the idea that humanity is taking a lot of steps back. I would consider Obama as yellow (spiral dynamics) and Trump as red. This is a HUGE step backwards.
Why do I care about politics now. I never do.
Concepts, concepts, concepts...

Normally at this time of the day I would do something like self inquiry or at least something productive towards Enlightenment. But no, I am watching the news... I think I will just do homework. At least a little bit productive.

Why should I even be productive? All of this makes no sense.

 

Internet Cleanse:

My intuition told me yesterday evening that it would be a good idea to make a little internet cleanse again. Maybe until Sunday. Maybe not. We'll see. My books will arrive, so I will be able to read more. And do my 90 minutes of sds again...

[askdfjnak]

On 05/11/2016 at 5:48 AM, quantum said:

The Power Of Habit - Applying to the Internet Habit:

(you can download the pdf here from the authors website if you want)

Step One: Identify the Routine:

Cue: currently not doing a particular a task, slight boredom, wanting some input, ego wants distraction from existential emptiness

Routine: turning on the computer/phone, looking at WhatsApp, looking at this forum, watching YouTube videos, distracting myself from emotionally more challenging tasks

Reward: ego feels appreciated by occasionally getting reputation or being mentioned on this forum (why??), being "up to date" about what is happening at school or on this forum, getting new ideas and being inspired

summary: boredom -> getting information -> feeling appreciated, up to date and being inspired

 

Step Two: Experiment with Rewards:

What could I do instead of using the internet to still get the same reward?

This was useful for me. I have a lot of free time now that I am limiting my internet but I didn't plan anything to fill that time.
I just sat there and did nothing for the first few days lol.
My ego is was so confused.

Now I have some clearer objectives it's easier to be offline.

[JKG]

Following the Intuition:

At the beginning of the week I had this sense that I should write my former best friend (grade 6 to 9) a letter. I wanted to tell her that I am grateful for our friendship and everything that I have learned from her. As a 12 year old I was very naive, very shy and new almost nothing about the real world. She confronted me with different perspectives (different music, depression, anarchy, other views on society, drugs, relationships etc). She made me more open-minded. That was probably how I got open-minded enough to get interested in this work.

Throughout the week I observed how much resistance I feel to write this letter. I just watched the resistance coming when I thought about it. A few days ago I watched a video by an inspiring guy about how fear is holding us back. So true:

I thought about this and questioned by I am fearing writing this letter. I feared it because of my former best friend, what her response would be. I know her pretty well from this time and that she could be really harsh to other people. But then I questioned by I am caring about this. This is a belief from our culture, that we should be liked and should not do weird things. So I remembered this picture:

Resistance and fear were still there.

Yesterday evening I just sat down in front of my computer and began to write this letter. Just to write this letter, without the intention of sending it her. Then this morning I wanted to send it to her. Then the resistance was huge. I opened the letter. Questioned the fear. Saw how fear is holding me back. I copied the text into WhatsApp. Questioned the fear. Saw the potential of following my intuition. Even more fear arose. Put my courser onto the sending button. Fear rose through the roof. And just did it.

I turned my computer off because I was afraid of her response. About an hour later I saw her response on my phone. It was actually quite positive. I was so proud that I did it. That I conquered my fear. That I stepped out of my comfort zone. I was pretty happy.

A step into the right direction. A step towards becoming a diligent executer of the intuition.

This evening I talked with my current best friend about life. I need to build my communication skills. I need to become more authentic and honest. No, I don't need to, but I want to. Now I have a new challenge for myself. I want to talk to a current school friend and admit that I am/was jealous about her grades. I will do this in the course of the next week.

I see the potential of following the intuition. And the potential of stepping outside of the comfort zone. Empowering.

[JKG]

Books:

Like I said earlier I have received the book "Neti Neti Meditation". I have already read through it (just 50 pages). It is a pretty precise explaination of the Neti-Neti technique. I will have to work with this book so much and there is so much to learn from it. Neti-Neti is very powerful. But simply studying it will not be enough. I will have to apply it. This is hard. It always has been kind of hard for me to do self inquiry because of the monkey mind. I question something and almost immediately the monkey mind is coming up and is distracting me. Patience will be the key here.

The next two books I received are "The Book of Not-Knowing" and "Zen Body-Being" by Peter Ralston. I began reading the book of not-knowing. Very very very very powerful and good, full with wisdom. This will be a life changer.