Removing Should-statements And Eventually Reaching Enlightenment

[JKG]

Habits:

I think I will not continue this "Habits-Transformation"-thing. I found out that the key to all these habits is consciousness. Consciousness alone. Bad habits are an indicator for low quality consciousness and the only solution is raising your consciousness. I found that visualizing the consequences and listening to this quiet voice inside is helpful.

Quote

Whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer.

If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well – and when I say eaten well, I don’t mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift from the divine.

Hindus say, Anam Brahma – food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is a prayer. It is an existential prayer. You are eating the divine and the divine is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don’t stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body. It is the other pole.

There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance. A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.

Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body, to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.

http://www.osho.com/read/featured-articles/body-dharma/the-art-of-eating

This will basically be the solution to my overeating.

The solution to my excessive internet time is sitting on my couch, meditating and doing exercises from the books.

[JKG]

Never expected this to happen. Crazy shit was going on.

[JKG]

Spontaneity:

Well, on Tuesday evening my best friend called me. I was sitting on my couch and just started reading and contemplating. Right away she asked me something like "Do you want to skip school tomorrow and come with me to [big city in Germany]? Tomorrow there is a information day at the university for people who consider studying there. We could drive there with my car in the morning and back in the evening".
My first reaction was no. Why should I do this? Why should I skip school? I don't even consider studying there. And it would also be risky. My best friend only got her drivers license last week. And the city was like 4 hours away from home. And my parents would never allow this.
So I challenged her to convince my mother on the telephone. Astonishingly she said yes. Then I had to ask my father and he also said yes. Never thought that this would happen.

So the next day I had to wake up at 3:30am. My best friend picked me up at 4:20am with her new car and we went on our way to the city. This was risky. She has not much experience with driving on the highway, especially not sleep deprived, in the dark, on wet streets and for such a long time. I had look after her a lot. On multiple occasions a hard crash could have happened. Multiple people have hooted her and she has cut multiple people off in traffic. I am very glad that nothing has happened. As we got closer to the city there were multiple traffic jams. And in the city there was trouble with getting a parking spot. We finally arrived at 9:30am.

At the university there were hundreds of people at my age. There were places where you could talk to people about majors who could give you advice. I even talked to a guy about computer science and that I could not decide between maths, physics and computer science. There were also 45 minute lectures about different majors. I went to one about computer science, physics and astronomy. The rest of the day I was at other lectures with my best friend and two other people from my school.

At the end of the information day it was already 4pm. That day I only had eaten one slice of bread and I was so tired. I have nothing about not eating for a while. But eating nothing together with sleep deprivation is horrible. No energy, no attentiveness, I hate that. I also was very unconscious all the time. So we went to eat something in a cafe. I ate something very unhealthy just because my blood sugar level was so low.

Eventually we got on our way home. I was very worried about the drive back. I didn't trust my best friend at driving carefully considering her lack of experience, exhaustion and sleep deprivation. It was very possible that a heavy car crash could have happened. Happily we arrived safe at home at 9:30pm. I stuffed food into myself and just got to sleep.

Looking back on this day I am glad I went there. It was very very spontaneous and definitively a huge step outside of my comfort zone. It feels like so much different stuff is happening in the last weeks. But on the day itself I just wanted to be home. I hate big cities, crowds of people and just want to be home by myself, consciously.

I am in a struggle between maths, physics and computer science. Over the last years my opinion on these majors is changing so often. Now I am rather for physics. The lecture about astronomy was cool and got me into the feeling which I had at the beginning of this year.

This morning as I woke up I was still so tired. But I had to go to school. I didn't wanted to, especially because I'd have 10 classes this day until 5:30pm. But as I looked at the homepage of my school I became so happy. My German and social science classes got canceled. So I only had 6 classes today from 10am to 4pm.

Edited November 17, 2016 by quantum

[JKG]

Idea for thinking more positive:

In the last two years everyday I have something like a check-list in my mind. Everyday I want to do meditation, exercise, study something and eat well. I could not really relax and shut off as long as I have not completed these tasks. And if I have not completed all check points I have this voice in my head telling me that I have failed.

But what about thinking more positive about this. I don't have the duty to do anything any day. I just have possibilities to do these things. I don't need to do them.

This will enable me to act more intuitive, spontaneous and to be more present.

This kind of thinking also has released some pressure in the last days. I have not exercised for three days now. This happens very rarely and I don't feel as good physically as when I exercise everyday. But thats okay. Tomorrow I will have the possibility to work out again.

[dude]

2 hours ago, quantum said:

But what about thinking more positive about this. I don't have the duty to do anything any day. I just have possibilities to do these things. I don't need to do them.

I love your journal man, keep the good work up! Great insight if you still do things that you want to do and don't get distracted. Like you said the key is consciousness, but your still not enlightened so don't fall in the trap of your body: "The least amount of effort." and just sit on the internet all day.

Edited November 17, 2016 by dude

[JKG]

Freedom:

Ever since I started figuring out my values freedom has been one of them. Many other values have changed and became unimportant but freedom has always stayed at the top. I just came up with the reason why freedom is such important for me.

When I was in 7th or 8th grade I started counting how many years I have left in school. The answer of 5 or 6 years didn't seem very nice. At this time I hated school, had massive tics, was in the middle of puberty and probably the most unhappy in my life. Through my best friend at that time I got into playing video games, watching thousands of hours of stupid YouTube videos by people playing stupid video games and sitting in my room all day. I also wanted to play certain video games but I was only able to play Minecraft. My computer was not good enough for better games, nor I had the right operating system on my computer. I dreamed of being able to by myself computers, hardware, cool computer games etc. My parents never allowed me to get Windows on my computer nor buying much stuff. I just wanted to be old enough to get myself what I wanted.

With the time I got less interested in computer games. In the course of 9th grade I discovered veganism and sports. Now I didn't wanted to get gamer stuff. I rather wanted to eat what I wanted. I wanted to eat fully vegan and very healthy but my parents were concerned about my health. I also wanted to go running but here my parents were concerned, too. I could get lost and kidnapped. Eventually I discovered some running routes in the near of my home and was able to run there. But still I rather want to run in the forest in nature. Just a few kilometers away is a beautiful big forest with hills and great trails. Where do I run? I run at a street...

Another aspect where my parents are limiting me is minimalism. I don't want to have all this stuff around in my room and in the house. I don't need soooo much useless stuff. It is occupying so much space which I could use so much better. I don't need twenty pairs of socks although I only wear like 5 pairs regularly. I don't need a bed. I never sleep in this bed, I always sleep on the floor. I don't need this huge shelf in the middle of my room. I could sell so much stuff. But my parents are always telling that eventually in a few years I could need one of those things.

There are many other aspects I could list in which my parents are limiting me. Meditation, buying books/products, school... After all these years of limitations I just want to be free and independent from them. I don't want to have obligations. I don't want to be limited by anybody. I want to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want and wherever I want.

Once in a while I get a nice sense of freedom. Last summer on a weekend without much school stuff to do I was working out in the garden. I was running barefoot around while it was raining heavily. I just didn't care. I had so much fun, jumping around, making rolls, handstands, weird animal moves and picking up cherries from our tree.

All these years I have been basically waiting to get done with school and turning 18. This "goal" isn't so far away anymore. Only less than four months until I turn 18 and less than less than eight months until all the school stuff is done. But what's next? There maybe will be some months where I am relatively free. But my parents and my whole family expect me to get into university afterwards. There I will be more free than in school but it is like getting imprisoned again with much more obligations, harder tasks and less time.

This was just a rant about my parents and society. In comparison to many other people I am much more free. And not being free is just a concept inside my mind.

[JKG]

Autism:

In the last two days I watched three reportages about Autism / Asperger syndrome. Quite interesting. I admire their honesty and authenticity.

I recognized how much I am criticizing and judging people. I don't like the social norms but I judge people who don't fit into the social norms. Why? Because I also don't fit in and want to feel better by making other people down in my mind?

There is this one girl in school who is really strange. She behaves very different, she is kind of annoying and nobody likes her. But she somehow does not recognize this and tries to make friends. Some of us assume that she has kind of "disorder" or a weak form of Asperger syndrome.
I have a few classes with her. I am not as mean as everybody else to her but also not very friendly. Because of that she often came up to me when we had to form groups or had to play volleyball in a team. But I dislike working with her because she is so annoying and really really really bad at sports. Everytime that I am a little bit mean to her I feel bad. I can emphasize with her a lot. I can imagine being in her situation. Maybe I should treat her a little bit better now.

 

The Truman Show:

I just watched this movie because of recommendations on this forum. Actually I wanted to continue reading the book of not knowing but I had this intuitive urge to watch a film.

It is mind blowing and so relatable to Enlightenment. Society is telling me like all these actors that I should pursue normal things and behave well. Everything is fine in this world of delusions, why should anybody question it? People give so many excuses for not pursuing higher things and not questioning. I will have to keep this in mind and rewatch the movie. At the moment I have many inspiring intuitive things in mind to do but I am resisting it so much. I am resisting it so much that I don't even want to write it down because I could be hold reliable on doing it here.

My higher self knows that every earthly pursue is unimportant. But all the time the ego is in the background of my mind saying that I will still pursue those things. "I will finish school, I will go to university, I will get a job. Pursuing my life purpose is not possible for me." The ego is so influenced by society. How can I know that these things are even true, that reality exists???

 

Neti Neti Meditation:

I received this book about two weeks ago, read it and have not really acted upon it yet. I remembered this and tried it out today. I did 87 minutes of meditation and after about 40 minutes I started negating. I explored my body and saw that I am not it. Still I have to investigate in each of these body parts much further because there still was this sense of self there.

This meditation session was also nice because it was a proper session after quite a few days of no proper sessions. Sometimes I just ended the meditation after 30 minutes and continued reading the book of not knowing because this is more comfortable. But through reading and contemplating I don't get the same sense of relaxation, detachment, stillness.

[JKG]

Detachment:

I am currently studying for a chemistry exam tomorrow and procrastinating a bit. But one thing that I recognized is that I don't care about the results of the exam at all, at least at the moment.

There is so much more that I could study. But I feel confident that I already know enough. I think my intuition is telling me the same.

I will read one more text, do one more exercise and review my notes tomorrow morning. That should be enought.

I feel relaxed and happy. I love Sundays.

Edited November 20, 2016 by quantum

[JKG]

Painting:

In the past I always thought that I couldn't paint. Everytime I tried to paint something realistically it looked stupid. I remember how in 10th grade in one music lesson I was really bored. So I sketched something on the back of a paper. It looked very different than everything that other people normally paint. But I somehow liked it.

Some people find my drawings very strange, some people like it. I like it, my best friend likes it, my mother likes it.

Yesterday and today I felt like painting a little bit. I tried to do it very intuitively.

 

Edited November 20, 2016 by quantum

[JKG]

I know what Zen is! I am a fraud!

Zen is not-knowing like Peter Ralston talks about it.

[JKG]

 

[JKG]

I didn't feel like writing much here in the last week. I started journaling daily in my private journal again. I wrote down some positive aspects of each day, something that I could improve, what I have learned, what my intuition is telling me and stuff that I am grateful for. Each morning (except for today) I reviewed the last journal entries and visualized stuff. Now I will sumarise what I find important:

What I have learned:

• Visualization is powerful! Through visualizing and meditating for a few minutes multiple times a day I will become more consciousness about my actions. My actions and habits will automatically change to the better. Visualization is one of the most important habits. Building this habit is more important than just changing my eating of internet habit. Visualization is a keystone habit.
• Not-knowing is the natural state of being.
• My intuition is the voice of my subconscious mind. My intuition knows more than I do. I should listen to my intuition more than to myself.
• I am able to understand, write and read English well. I often even think in English. But I have to little practice of speaking English actively. Having a fluent conversation in English seems harder to me than I thought. I need more practice.
• I am scared of moving away from home but it would bring me much more growth and new opportunities. It is a risk but it has a lot of potential. Change is important.
• I do not have to spread non duality and become a spiritual guru to have a positive impact on humanity and to make humanity at least a little bit more conscious. The impact statement "raising the consciousness of humanity" is to general. There are so many ways in which I can do that. I have to look which way I am most passionate about.
• I could work at McDonald's as an enlightened guy and still be happy. At the end nothing is important at all.
• It isn't a good idea to look at WhatsApp and this forum right before I am about to meditate. This is just fuel for the monkey mind.
• Don't tell the devil that you are killing it.
• We live in a time full of risks. I cannot be sure about that I will still live in a few years.
• Money is an illusion of security. An economic crisis could always happen. Money could lose its value. Authentic deep relationships are more important.
• I do not want to have to persuade people by argumentation. I want my actions and achievements to speak for themselves. I want them to be inspiriting and making people act upon this inspiration.
• I want to live in peace with nature. Not just in near future. I can now begin to realize this and help the environment.
• Neti-Neti meditation is soo powerful.

What my intuition is telling me lately:

• moving out or traveling after finishing school
• wwoofing after school, getting out of my comfort zone
• I want to try doing different things before deciding what I will do with my life. I don't want to start studying directly.
• doing more and longer Neti-Neti sessions
• writing my German and social science teacher an e-mail on how she could improve the classes
• studying maths when I want to

How I acted upon my intuition lately:

• playing my guitar after a few years of not practicing it
• painting
• having 'done' two long (90-110min) Neti-Neti sessions
• rearranging my room a bit
• studying maths
• not writing here so often

Baby-steps I will take to improve my life:

• waking up and standing up every morning immediately without spending time on my phone
• reading my last journal entries each morning and visualizing fore 15 minutes
• visualizing my internet usage for 5 minutes before using the internet
• visualizing my eating pattern for 3 minutes before eating or preparing food

[Dragallur]

34 minutes ago, quantum said:

I didn't feel like writing much here in the last week. I started journaling daily in my private journal again. I wrote down some positive aspects of each day, something that I could improve, what I have learned, what my intuition is telling me and stuff that I am grateful for. Each morning (except for today) I reviewed the last journal entries and visualized stuff. Now I will sumarise what I find important:

What I have learned:

• Visualization is powerful! Through visualizing and meditating for a few minutes multiple times a day I will become more consciousness about my actions. My actions and habits will automatically change to the better. Visualization is one of the most important habits. Building this habit is more important than just changing my eating of internet habit. Visualization is a keystone habit.
• Not-knowing is the natural state of being.
• My intuition is the voice of my subconscious mind. My intuition knows more than I do. I should listen to my intuition more than to myself.
• I am able to understand, write and read English well. I often even think in English. But I have to little practice of speaking English actively. Having a fluent conversation in English seems harder to me than I thought. I need more practice.
• I am scared of moving away from home but it would bring me much more growth and new opportunities. It is a risk but it has a lot of potential. Change is important.
• I do not have to spread non duality and become a spiritual guru to have a positive impact on humanity and to make humanity at least a little bit more conscious. The impact statement "raising the consciousness of humanity" is to general. There are so many ways in which I can do that. I have to look which way I am most passionate about.
• I could work at McDonald's as an enlightened guy and still be happy. At the end nothing is important at all.
• It isn't a good idea to look at WhatsApp and this forum right before I am about to meditate. This is just fuel for the monkey mind.
• Don't tell the devil that you are killing it.
• We live in a time full of risks. I cannot be sure about that I will still live in a few years.
• Money is an illusion of security. An economic crisis could always happen. Money could lose its value. Authentic deep relationships are more important.
• I do not want to have to persuade people by argumentation. I want my actions and achievements to speak for themselves. I want them to be inspiriting and making people act upon this inspiration.
• I want to live in peace with nature. Not just in near future. I can now begin to realize this and help the environment.
• Neti-Neti meditation is soo powerful.

What my intuition is telling me lately:

• moving out or traveling after finishing school
• wwoofing after school, getting out of my comfort zone
• I want to try doing different things before deciding what I will do with my life. I don't want to start studying directly.
• doing more and longer Neti-Neti sessions
• writing my German and social science teacher an e-mail on how she could improve the classes
• studying maths when I want to

How I acted upon my intuition lately:

• playing my guitar after a few years of not practicing it
• painting
• having 'done' two long (90-110min) Neti-Neti sessions
• rearranging my room a bit
• studying maths
• not writing here so often

Baby-steps I will take to improve my life:

• waking up and standing up every morning immediately without spending time on my phone
• reading my last journal entries each morning and visualizing fore 15 minutes
• visualizing my internet usage for 5 minutes before using the internet
• visualizing my eating pattern for 3 minutes before eating or preparing food

One of your best journal entries, good job, I can see that you are really moving forward!

How does the visualization of yours look like? Do you do neti-neti form Leo's video or do you have some other source?

[JKG]

35 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

One of your best journal entries, good job, I can see that you are really moving forward!

How does the visualization of yours look like? Do you do neti-neti form Leo's video or do you have some other source?

Well, I sit down on my couch and close my eyes

I firstly think of what my life will look like if I had a really good eating habit and would use the internet almost never. I try to imagine how good this will feel. Then I visualize what I want my life in general to be like (location, people, environment, activities, life purpose). Mostly then I am in nature meditating with people around me doing the same.

I do the Neti-Neti meditation as described in the book "Neti Neti Meditation" by Andre Doshim Halaw.

[JKG]

 

[JKG]

What I have learned:

• Through visualization, gratitude, meditation, movement, cold exposure and healthy food everyday might become absolutely beautiful
• Confusion is good, it is not knowing
• It is much more effective to learn something new firstly by getting an overview, a big picture about the topic. Only later detailed knowledge is useful. You should be able to summarize a book on a normal A4 page and to explain it in 5 minutes. Otherwise you have not understand it properly. Through summarizing you have to deal with all the topic intensively, so that at the end you will know all the details too.
• The intuition is so powerful. I have to learn to listen to it throughout the whole day to take the right decisions. Even for stuff like what I should eat for lunch.
• Our perception is distorted by our beliefs so much.
• My life is a story. Everything is a story!
• Society appreciates you only if you fit into the societal norms. Otherwise you are apparently worthless.
• It doesn't matter at all what I will do with my life! In a few thousands of years the sun will collapse and "I" will be just matter/energy. All of humanity will just be matter/energy.
• Everytime my family is holding me back from pursuing my dreams, they just care for me out of love. They just want to understand me.
• Every negative consequence will most likely never happen. I will still be alive.
• There is a possibility to combine physics with consciousness (look at John Hagelin, Ph.D.)
• Lower stages (red,blue,orange) will bring up problems (war->refugees->migration->racism etc.) that will catalyse the development of higher stages (green,yellow). People will recognize that ones culture isn't superior to others. People will spread messages of tolerance, peace, love, open-mindedness. So much is happening already.
• It feels like Peter Ralston is just talking about stuff that I have already came up with by self-inquiry/spiritual autolysis in the last months. He is putting it into nice language and concepts, what was for me just vague ideas.

What my intuition is telling me lately:

• more Neti Neti meditation
• making a list of possible plans for the future
• less internet
• this forum is just an ego game (mostly for me), but also a source of great information
• doing shadow work regarding my father
• letting go of my identifications (health, sports, school)
• "self coaching" - imagining speaking to a life coach, telling him stuff about me and coming up with answers he would give me

How I acted upon my intuition lately:

• only taking cold showers
• going outside every morning in light clothes (-5 degrees Celsius), running around, stretching and doing breathing exercises for about 10 minutes
• "getting out of bed" (off the floor) almost immediately
• puzzling
• doing Neti Neti meditation almost every day
• visualizing almost every day

Life Purpose:

My intuition came up with this: I want to make people more open-minded and skeptic. So many people just take the beliefs of our culture, the story of our lives (the song title "Story of my life" now has a very different meaning ), everything for granted. They never question anything about his. But they are not responsible for this, they never get the opportunity to take a look outside of the social matrix.
I want to show people what different possibilities life has and how limited their view is. I want to inform them about Enlightenment, beliefs, the mind, religions, spirituality, ancient times, philosophy, psychedelics, history, consciousness, science, controversial theories, quantum mechanics etc.
I'd like to do this through building a huge website with a lot of sources of information. The only problem is that I dislike writing stuff like informative blog posts. I thought of rather making mind maps, audiofiles, some texts, pictures and links for other resources. The whole website will just be a HUGE mind map where are thousands of connections between all the topics.

Baby-steps I will take to improve my life:

• doing Neti Neti occasionally throughout the day and becoming aware that life is just a story
• 5 minute meditation before every food intake
• getting into a better, loving, visionary mood before going to school to transcend the negative mood of everybody in school
• researching a little bit about quantum mechanics.

[JKG]

 

[JKG]

 

[askdfjnak]

I love reading your journal when I get the chance.

Your posts are always so grounded and wholesome. It's so refreshing to read.

[JKG]

Well, I don't really understand it, but it seems very interesting.

Edited December 6, 2016 by quantum