LastThursday

To sharpen the sensation of impending death, just look at life expectancy in your nation (thanks Google). Plenty of nice graphs and maps there: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

Never mind about @Leo Gura. What are your personal biggest flaws, especially when it comes to using the forum? Here's some of mine: I don't post enough questions. I don't always bother to read all responses in a thread. I get irritated when someone misunderstands or twists what I'm trying to say. The non-duality this and that are the same, and everything is relative non-answers drive me insane. I use too much flowery language. I'm sure I have more of them.

I went through a phase over a decade ago where I would cry at the drop of a hat. I would be in the car say listening to some music and I would have tears streaming down my face. Some would say that I was having a nervous breakdown, which is obviously not a DSM recognised condition, but it would have summed me up nicely at the time. In my insanity at the time, what was making me blub? It was really about feeling an intense beauty in everything. It was like electricty coursing through my body which I couldn't subdue, sometimes it was overwhelming. I've always been more sensitive to music than other modalities, so that would often tip me over the edge. Obviously, socially, it's not the done thing for a grown man to start crying for no reason, and the worst place was work. I would be working, and suddenly I would just be overwhelmed. I often had to leave the room and just walk and breathe to keep myself under control. At home I would just let loose. Films especially were bad. It was intense and awkward at times. What was going on? The flipside is that I also had a real drive to both fill my environment with beautiful things and to create beauty in my world. It was the only time I bought prints of famous paintings and had them framed. I still have them hung up. In hindsight I was having some sort of enlightenment experience. The side effect of that was that my emotional body was re-calibrating. Before that point I had always been very controlled and distinctly un-emotional, it simply wasn't in my repertoire to feel or express strong emotions. I was confused for a long while, like suddenly the emotional lights had been turned on and I was dazzled by them. The crying and the desire for beauty slowly faded over time, and the re-calibration had run its course. Occasionally I still cry at films or an emotional tune, but it doesn't overwhelm me any more. And I've become a more balanced and caring invididual than I was in my twenties and thirties. I can also see that the world is still a beautiful place, you only have to look.

@modmyth what a gorgeous death that would be. You can nearly taste the stillness and gloom. If I know that death is coming, shouldn't it be simple and beautiful?

This made me think of this painting for some reason (Ophelia by Millais): There's a kind of surrender and serenity to it. Anyway, not sure what I was trying to convey other than my spontaneous thought.

@Nahm thanks I take the compliment. I'm just practising some altruism and trying to hold up a non-judgemental mirror. Or something like that! Thanks to everyone so far for your wonderful open and frank answers. Keep 'em coming.

I don't think there's anything wrong with either short or long responses, except at the extremes. Single word or three word sentences are probably useless and 20 paragraph responses are probably not going to be read in depth. But hey, that's just my judgement.

@fridjonk what? Not use the forum? Now that's something I definitely need to go off and contemplate deeply.

Sounds like a useful technique, something like the Neti Neti method.

No matter how fast you drive, someone will always be able to drive faster. You can only know what you know I guess. I'd say I don't understand about 50% of what's said or being pointed to: I'm just not there yet or been bothered to do the practices.

You are 100% right. Although, if I'm going to use the forum at all, then the forum beast needs feeding. If I'm only doing half a job (by only posting comments), then what am I really doing on the forum? Dunno, feels like it's a flaw, but maybe not?

Not a flaw lol I think it comes from my belief that the onus is on the person doing the explaining to make themselves understood, not the other way around. But I try and keep in mind that it's easy to be misunderstood, especially in writing. Still drives me nuts though - that's the flaw.

Man, I've worked against impulsiveness my whole life - and it's got me in trouble many times. Definitely up there for me.

What you are reality pointing to is entirely different paradigms for knowing the world. Each has its problems, some of which you've pointed out. It seems like materialism is the default view for most of us. The number one problem it has, is that there is no space in it for the raw experience of consciousness. In other words, it has a lot of trouble explaining non-material experiences. The other paradigm which is Subjective Idealism (SI - the default view on the forum), has it's own issues. The main one being if consciousness and subjectivity is all encompassing, then what is the purpose of form (material objects)? And what happens to stuff outside of consciousness? If there is nothing outside of consciousness, then where does stuff disappear to and reappear from? Also once you go into SI deep enough, there is this notion that really the experience of it is no different from a dreaming state. Unfortunately, this has two unsavoury connotations: anything is possible and without rules, and everything is an illusion or false in some sense. You can see how mismatched to your everyday (common) sense these two ideas are. You could look for a middle way in the hope that two shonky paradigms make a good one. Start by looking for commonalities. The main one that jumps out at me is persistence. Persistence of form (objects) seems to underpin materialism. You know, conservation of mass and momentum. In materialism stuff doesn't just disappear, at least it takes time for objects to change, normally under the abstract force of increasing entropy. Persistence is also present in SI. Yes, stuff is discontinuous in actuality - you stop directly experiencing the beer left at the bar - but it can come back again. So materialism has a kind of smooth persistence, and SI a staccatto persistence. The other commonality is time. Or in the very least the notion of change. Under materialism stuff is subject to change, sometimes spontaneous (radioactive decay), but mostly due to one thing impinging on another (Newton's laws of motion, Navier-Stokes fluid flow) - this is just good old cause and effect. But SI also has a notion of change. It's very clear that the conscious experience is under constant flux, some of it smooth and some of it discontinuous. In fact this seems to be one of its primary facets, nothing is ever really static. TLDR: I don't have an answer, but I suspect there is a way out of the conundrum.

@Megan Alecia it's normal to doubt ourselves and abilities, it's a flaw a lot of us have. But at least honesty and authenticity are not flaws.

@VeganAwake the mind manipulating the mind? Yes, why not. Although dare I say that spirituality is not just about austerity and puritanism?

I would take a long walk in the countryside, talk briefly with friends and family in person if I could, and really enjoy that last meal. And if a had a wife or girlfriend I would want her to do all those things with me.

I enjoyed your authenticity and energy. You have an interesting story and for the seekers out there there is hope and a reason to continue on the spiritual path.

Truth is that which persists. Is there anything in direct experience which persists? How about direct experience itself?

You don't have to die to end your suffering, you just have to realize that you are more than your conditioned body and mind. You are a soul, on a journey, and your ultimate destination is reunion. Ultimately, there is only Consciousness. Relatively, there is you and me. Both are entangled in reality. The secret is to love the story, while remembering that it is only a story. I meant "die" in a very general sense, although this would include physical death. If suffering is caused by a strong attachment to something, then when that attachment dies (i.e. stops), so does the suffering. Ultimately, being alive itself is one big attachment to maintaining life, it's an active process. The only way to stop the attachment of being alive is to physically die. So the only way (conventionally) to stop all attachment, and hence suffering, is to die. But, enlightenment would offer a way out of (all) suffering without physically dying. So in that sense, enlightenment is a type of death or release from all attachments. But because you're not physically dead, paradoxically there is still attachment to being alive. However being enlightened you are not attached to this attachment of being alive! It doesn't matter if you're dead or alive, it makes no difference. In fact, the duality of alive/dead is collapsed. Enlightenment in this way is very radical. It let's you have your cake and eat it.

@levani I'm not enlightened, but my intuition tells me you don't become enlightened, you discover it or uncover it. So you have to lay the groundwork to increase your luck. That's what Leo's all about.

You have to sit down and work out what motivates you to do stuff. Everyone's different though, so I can't give you a specific answer. But here are some pointers: 1. Money. 2. Recognition and status. 3. Doing stuff now, to make things easier in the future. 4. Staying alive: eating, bathing etc. 5. Reward of any sort (after doing it) / making people happy 6. Relief - from worrying about not doing it. 7. Threat or stigma from other people for not doing it. 8. Deadlines. 9. Structure and timetables. Any sort of framework for working. 10. Actually starting a task. 11. Interaction with other people or sharing a task or being on a team. Here are some things that are non-motivating: 1. Being unhappy or depressed. 2. Physical illness (or being unfit, eating junk food, brain fog etc). 3. Having too many things to do. 4. Having too many options. 5. Reward without working for it. 6. Too little time (deadlines!) 7. Too much distraction, either thoughts or environment. 8. Underdeveloped executive function and/or attention span 9. Previous negative experience in doing the task 10. Too much effort for too little reward 11. Working in a negative environment. The point is to work out what does motivate you and put those things in place; and work out what doesn't motivate you and fix or remove those things. It's a mental game you have to play with yourself.

In the old days you would occasionally be taken over by the need to rummage in old drawers and garages, just to see what you could find and be nostalgically surprised by the past. Nowadays, it's the electronic paraphernalia of the past. In a cascade of internet dominoes where one thing leads to another, I was reminded that I'd recorded a version of me playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata many moons ago. If remember rightly, at the time I was going to make a series of these videos as and when I learnt the pieces. But it ended up being a passing fad. Anyway, here it is: It's not bad. It's a bit fast and too legato, but it has a certain momentum to it. I wish I'd recorded the second movement. The third? Forget it, beyond my skills. The point of this post, other than showing off and exposing my identity to the world? Well, it's that it's often good to go over the things you did in the past, even just to remind yourself where you used to be and where you are now in relation to it. And also it can be quite surprising how good you were at things, and how much you've learnt since. It's an uplifting experience. And that, can only be a good thing.

@Preety_India yeah that's the joy of this place, it's like an international bazaar of ideas and viewpoints - exciting. Of course even in ancient times there were great philosophers outside of Greece. It's an odd thought, that some of us may even be talked about in 2000 years' time. You never know eh?

The idea of free will is really one without an answer. There is one activity we all do that sits on the boundary of free will: breathing. Is breathing under control of our free will or not? It's good to contemplate this deeply. If you ascribe to a consciousness-is-everything-time-doesn't-exist paradigm, then the question of free will is actually meaningless. Free will implies causation: you made the thing happen. But in terms of the paradigm, consciousness unfolds itself moment to moment, no cause and no effect.