Summary: How To Contemplate Using A Journal

[StarStruck]

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How To Contemplate Using A Journal

Leo has a previous episode to contemplate in your head. This video is about using a journal. It is better so you can lose yourself in monkey mind.

• Contemplation and self-inquiry are different
• Self-inquiry is for enlightenment
• Contemplation is for truth seeking
• Contemplation is easier than self-inquiry

Nothing Leo says is true unless you can rediscover these truths yourself. Contemplating is key:

• It is step zero with everything in life, you need to make everything your own by finding out yourself.
• That is the essence of minor- and major truth seeking. Otherwise you make great mistakes
• You can't be good in life without truth seeking
• You get result with contemplation: you get real understanding/clarity, you will make leaps
• You will need to put in the cost.
• Without doing the spiritual work it will be like an athlete who does research and never works out
• You will have to do math to understand it for example. Don't be lazy.

Assumptions: question the assumptions

• You are full of bull
• Nothing your mind says can be trusted
• All beliefs and teaching are false
• Only direct exp is true
• Truth is not fragile: you can't hurt the truth by questioning, you can only make it clear

Contemplation is not there things:

• Speculation and guess work
• Justifying what you already know
• It is not building new beliefs
• Don't build (grand) theories
• Day dreaming or imagination
• It is not building Défense for what you believe: to yourself or to others
• It is not opinionizing
• It is not pursuit of practical advantage or success: happiness doesn't come from advantage or success
• Use contemplation for not what it can do for you, but what something is

What is contemplation:

• Observation: deconstructing/breaking down ideas
• Awareness and going meta: observe observation, and then observe that
• Self reflection: what is your role in understanding
• Think independent: question assumption/teaching/culture(knowing the truth at all cost)

What does contemplation require?

• Open mindedness: be open to be shocked
• Fearlessness: don't run away from fear. Face it!
• Self-honesty
• Careful observation
• Impartiality: step out your role
• No idea is sacred
• Self-reliance: nobody is here to help you
• Genuine curiosity: how is it that you don't know what an object is?

Traps:

• Self-evidence: is for example science self-evident? It is not
• Cultivating system for contemplation is a trap: work towards the right answer: don't go through the motions/system of thinking
• Don't depend on books or videos
• Go outside your culture
• Grand theory is a trap: don't construct
• False skepticism: (go for painful stuff instead, feel loneliness, develop a taste for it)
• Don't bring science to contemplation
• Distraction is a trap (watch distraction episode on actualized)

Technique for contemplation:

• Get a separate journal for contemplation:
• Take 20-30 minutes
• Take a contemplation question: pick 1 question or object (write it down)Start from ground zero,
• accept you don't know it is to open up room to contemplate,
• throw your previous culture/knowledge/memories away, don't use external source.
• Set aside your emotional baggage and prejudices. Don't philosophize/speculate but instead use direct experiences. If you can't figure it out with direct experience, you will never figure it out.
• Ground yourself: use direct examples, don't use what you learned from books or heard from other people

Question the topic: raise a question, begin very basic, bring up a concrete example, Examples for questions:

• Existential questions: what is meaning, science, ego, concept, belief, truth, evidence, symbol, language, fear, identify, thought, conflict, duality, boundary, reason, culture, judgement, value, object, evil, self-help, apple, happiness
• Personal psychological questions: How am I full of shit? How am I lying? Which truth do I refuse? How am I corrupt/evil? What do I fear? What do I whine about? How do I play victim? How do I play victim? What conflict of interest do I have? How am I  self bias? How do I cling to culture? What is sacred? How hypocrite/weak human being?
• let your mind observe the question/thought,
• notice how the thought is arising,

Bring up examples (from your life). Ask what is the common denominator?

• let the question flower into 10 other questions
• key is not to get to the bottom question: find possible answers instead
• Purpose of this work is to grow
• Create traction with reality

keep bringing up the original question and go back to it,

question prejudices (start with: accept that you don't know)

Determine how deep you want to go, keep on the topic though

 

 

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by StarStruck

[Hello from Russia]

Nice stuff, thank you