Leo Gura

Yes. They are no joke. They are inevitable I believe. Get very good at surrendering.

Those puffer fish are the shit! Lol

Yes, I know. Which is why I wrote that warning. Doesn't sound like you're ready to handle an actual bad trip. They can get real hairy and require enormous maturity, otherwise you might do something stupid like try to get inside a car and drive yourself to the hospital and end up crashing the car. Rule #1 for tripping: As soon as you swallow the substance, you commit 100% to riding it out. No doctors, no parents, no phone calls, no running around, no screaming. Just sit and surrender. Don't go anywhere, don't do anything. If you're feeling negative during a trip, play some happy and energetic music and dance around to it. That will change your mood. It's safe and effective. And when all else fails, pray to Jesus

@Charlotte Ultimately, you don't have any control because you don't even exist. But telling that to a newbie meditator is pretty much useless, and will in fact create confusion and irresponsible action. Manipulating thought with thought DOES work. For example: when you are anxious, you can tell yourself "Breathe slowly." And as you do that, your breath will deepen and your anxiety will melt away. As another example: in meditation, when you are having monkey mind, you can tell yourself, "Let go." And that will help you to let go of whatever mental topic you're stuck on. Does it always work? No. But you can certainly manipulate thought with thought. The reason it works is, the thought which does the manipulating is itself originating from a higher source: infinite intelligence. So really, when you tell yourself to "Let go" or "Breathe slowly" or "What am I?" it might feel as though you are controlling thought, but it's really the universe controlling thought, manipulating you toward self-realization. So there's really no contradiction. The universe is in charge. Align yourself with it. Another great technique is to simply let go of all control when you sit down to meditate and let whatever happens happen without any judgment or expectations.

@LiakosN Careful. Psychedelics are not toys. You have no idea yet how hairy a "bad trip" can get. If your reaction to some pre-trip anxiety is to call your Mom and have her take you to the emergency room, you are not ready for psychedelics. Once the psychedelic is consumed, you must commit 100% to the trip. No doctor will help you. They will only make things worse. You cannot remove the psychedelic once it hits your brain. You are lucky the mushrooms were gentle on you, this time.

Has this only been happening for 2 weeks, or is depression and anger something you've faced habitually for years? If for years, then that's a deep-seated issue which needs to contemplated deeply. Meditation alone probably won't be enough. Yoga can help a lot. Those kinds of emotions usually stem from blocked chakras, which yoga will open and meditation won't. If it's just a temporary thing (not habitual), that's spiritual purification, which is normal, so just weather the storm.

I deviate a bit from the book. No, you do not use timers for yoga. With a bit of practice you will know when the 5 minutes are up, naturally, without a timer. It's not that hard to guestimate 5 to 10 mins. You don't want to be interrupting your practice to fiddle with a timer. Become fully adsorbed in the practice and don't worry too much about time. Once you get your routine down, it will be like clockwork.

I don't think it matters much. I put my hands on my thighs, palms up. 3 cycles is what the book says. That finger technique is however good for tracking your Kriya breaths, which will be in cycles of 12. Works great. Definitely a must. Jogging vigorously in place for 1-2 minutes prior to your sit will significantly help clear up blocked sinuses. It's really easy. You just open and constrict your throat and breath in/out through the nose. You'll get the hang of it in a week or two.

Lol

That's not a dark room retreat. That's you tripping balls in the dark.

I have an EEG machine, but it's too complicated to measure things like this. The variables are enormous. Measuring the effects of yoga subjectively is actually far more accurate.

How did they let Trump and his cronies slip through?

@herghly Yes, eyes shut the whole time. You will easily internalize the instructions after a bit of practice. If you have an uncertainty about some technique, check the book BEFORE your begin your session, and then also AFTERWARD. That way you will quickly memorize all the techniques.

@Slade Your routine is one thing. You do it all at once. But you can run that same routine more than once per day. A routine takes 30-60 minutes. So if you want to run it 3 times, that will be 3 hours. Start with just mastering 1 cycle per day. You can always do more later.

That's not going to cut it. "Helps you to live a fulfilling life" is the agenda of the ego, which will be undermined by Truth. So you're gonna have to choose where your loyalties lie. Because you (ego-mind) is not really interested in Truth, you are interested in self-preservation. So you interpret what I say negativity. It's negative and nihilistic because it jeopardizes the ego's agenda. It's not really negative. It only appears that way to you. Which is why spirituality cannot go mainstream and must get corrupted. Because hardly anyone wants spirituality. They want the IDEA of spirituality which will be compatible with their egoic lifestyle. But that is not spirituality, that is self-preservation. Hence all spiritual truths get corrupted. You are asking me to corrupt the truth to suit your ego.

Not only is there no subconsious mind, there is not even a conscious mind. "Mind" is a conceptual invention. You have to understand that when we speak of "mind" or "the body" or "the brain" we are talking about a certain conventional level of reality. This entire level will be shown to be unreal, in the end. But it is still a useful way of talking. For example, atomic thoery tells you there is no such thing as a "dog", there are only atoms. But "dog" is still a useful way of thinking about reality at the ordinary level. How you choose to carve up the world comes with a corresponding set of powers and limitations. And that is okay. The key is not to get rigidly attached to one set of categories. And not to mistake the categories for reality. When we say "reprogramming the subconscious mind", we mean a certain thing within a certain context. You cannot take that phrase and start applying it to the context of metaphysics. It was never a metaphysical phrase.

Lol, such is life. A delicious strange loop.

@UDT That's not dealing with aging, that's dealing with establishing independence and self-efficacy. Dealing with aging is when your body starts to give out and it dawns on you that you've been taking youth and health for granted.

@egoless You're not going to get far in this work if you insist on such a crude and black-and-white way of thinking. Nuance, nuance, nuance...

This is a very subtle topic. It will not be answered well in a thread. I'll shoot a video about it in the future.

Yes, just let go and be open.

There is no subconscious mind. Nothing is hidden. What you see is what there is.

I know you guys love to split hairs about this stuff. Like I said, the things which I said are so extremely subtle that no conversation about them is possible. What I am pointing to is beyond the understanding of most human beings, including so called enlightened ones. Tread carefully. No appeals to authority will work at this level. Only direct experience. There are many degrees of enlightenment, despite the fact that it is all one thing. If you refuse to accept that, then you will become stuck at whichever level you're at, justifying it to yourself as "there are no levels." Yes, of course there are no levels. But there are also levels.

Materialism is the default paradigm of the human mind in our present era and culture. Materialism really just stems from daulity, which the default OS of human beings across all cultures and times. As one becomes more conscious, one moves towards nonduality. The last step Chalmers is missing is transcending theoretical idealism to actualized nonduality, until one's nonduality becomes so profound that even the distinction between duality and nonduality falls away.

@Monkey-man Why is heads called heads and not tails? Why is your butt not your head and your head not your butt?