krazzer

@barry Being a very structured person, I have installed a fixed time when to cheat. Wednesday evening I can have a snack (anything like chips, candy, chocolate, cookies, etc). Friday at dinner time I can eat whatever I want (fries, pizza, hamburger, whatever). All other days I eat healthy and I don't eat anything past 19:00. This way I can easily control my urges because whenever a thought arises to eat something after 19:00, another thought kills it saying: "Nope! you'll have to wait until wednesday, then you can have whatever you want!". Whenever the thought arises to eat bad dinner, another thought arises: "Nope! you'll have to wait until friday, then you can eat whatever you want!" This has massively changed my eating habits. My old method was: "I will only eat healthy from now on!" well that didn't work very well I can tell. This method works very well for me, but for my wife (who has more serious eating problems) i'm not really sure.

@PretentiousHuman Have you heard of Wim Hof the Iceman? In the Netherlands where he lives I know of a man who cured his own crohn's disease by applying the Wim Hof method. He wasn't able te work before, now he is. I've seen a video of it some time ago. Couldn't find it now, but if you want I could search a little more see if I can find it again (it's in dutch however). Anyway, this might help too:

Thanks for sharing, I really like the actor/character metaphor!

@Joseph Maynor Yeah I have the same perception, a few weeks ago I believed enlightenment was extremely rare. Now they seem to be all over the place.

@Scarwolf I have played video games since I was a little kid. I would say that video games aren't in and of itself good or bad. When you're young you learn by playing. You can actually grow yourself mentally by playing games. I remember playing the original Diablo back in 1996 being scared to death in the later levels where you walk around in hell. When I got older I would only play games for fun. Sometimes I re-play old games trying to get that feeling back I had when playing them for the first time. Or I would play games with a big ego component like competition or RPG's where you can max-out your character infinitely, where the developers keep adding content once in a while. That's were it got self-destructive. Over the last 3 years i've gradually stopped playing video games. I would suggest to you to try to ingrain positive habits like exercise, meditation, reading, journalling, etc. And the urge to play video games will naturally fade. And good for you finding this out at your age, I was 25 when I realized playing video games (and watching too much porn) was very destructive to me.

@Jonson It sounds like you are very attached to your own life. And you life very much in the past. If you could let that go I believe a huge burden would fall off your shoulders. I would suggest reading the the power of now if you haven't already: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808

https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Smart-Why-Arent-Happy/dp/1101980737 Has theory but is very practical. The book refers also to it's website for practical exercises: http://happysmarts.com

@The White Belt Do you have a daily exercise routine? You might need to ground yourself some more.

@The White Belt Great job on sticking to your meditation habit for so long! Have you watched this video? It explains how meditation has it's up and down effects you need to work though. It gave me amazing insight.

@The White Belt Why can't you split your focus? Why not simply meditate 30 minutes a day (or whatever suits you right now) to advance yourself to enlightenment? The meditation will also help you focus working on your LP and help you deal better with those intrusive thoughts. Seems like a win-win-win to me.

@Jordan wang In my opinion professional sports is useless. There's a lot of ego involved, and you inherently have to compare yourself to others. It doesn't do the world any good. Much energy is invested that could also be invested in helping others. High level sports are proven to shorten life, and causes lots of injury. Sports done recreational or to keep your body and mind healthy on the other hand I would consider good.

@Lauritz my situation was quite similar, and I took the jump. This was 7 months ago and everything worked out great. I earn half of what I did before. But I feel much more in tune with myself. It's also been the best thing ever for my personal growth. Glad to hear you also took the jump.

@Anirban657 I have struggled with social anxiety for years. Didn't matter where, in real life or on forums. This video, and it's exercises helped me tremendously: Another thing that might help, but that's more long term, is doing enlightenment exercises. If you realize you are not your body, you won't care about what anyone thinks, because you are them.

I've come to same conclusion as well. ABSOLUTE nothingness, and ABSOLUTE infinity. It's the same thing.

My mom told me about it. She was also into spirituality and is also a psychologist. Haven't talked about it with her for years though. I might wanna do that again

@Afonso I think you have an advantage. You're younger so your brain is more plastic. Also you have less years of societal indoctrination. The only thing is that you have less years of valuable experience. But since your here, you're on the right path. Don't fall back into the traps of society, and always be critical when people around you tell you how the world works. It was only around 25 that I started to realize how other people's opinions are nothing more than that, opinions. Not something I should always try to agree with.

@faith I believe some sort of universal basic income is going to be inevitable in the future. More and more jobs are being automated, which should be a good thing. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook they all have a massive surplus of money which should not be there sitting in their bank accounts. The payment of taxes should be globally regulated so that big companies cannot move it somewhere. Banks should be replaced by blockchains, which will destroy a huge amount of high profit jobs and greedy bankers. That may all sound a bit optimistic, but yeah, my character is Also check out this recent TED talk about basic income, very inspiring: https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash

@Dodo I never said it was easy, I said it's simple. Simple as in not complex. Just like losing weight is simple. Eat healthy and exercise. Simple. Easy for someone overweight? Hell no. I hope that makes more sense.

@Natasha That's exactly how it feels to me! Thank you that's very helpful

@nightrider1435 it's two fold. Knowing who I truly am now, that will never ever go away. To me that would be like forgetting what country I live in. The extreme awareness of my thoughts and emotions I have since this awakening, that is bound to go away. In fact I am aware that this is already happening. So I definitely need to work on that.

@Tano I believe there are two ways having no doubt at all. One is through pure and true knowing out of direct experience, created by the true source. The other is a structure created by the ego so rigid, repeated and vast that it will do anything in its power to protect it, while being false. But only you can know which it is.

@Tano you seem to have created a very strong identity around this idea that enlightenment is a myth. And it looks like now you're on this crusade to prove to everyone you're right. Clinging to one idea is a very dangerous thing to do. Have you ever considered this? I would suggest watching this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4

Wonderful video. It's nice to see two people talking who are on the same level. I woke up this morning and it's still here. Right now it's hard to imagine this will ever go away. It feels like losing this state is like forgetting how to walk. How to find it: I believe there are many things one can do to create an environment where it's easier to find. One thing that really helped me: Zoom out on everything you know. Visualize some kind of container that contains everything that makes up your life: thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, sights, sounds etc. Now visualize this container floating in an infinite sea of nothingness. You are that sea of nothingness. I might make a video out of this and post it here. Why do people don't find it? Because it's so ridiculously simple, it's very easy to overlook. The mind cannot help itself to think it must be something extremely difficult and creates all kinds of concepts and gets lost in all kinds of methodologies. That's how to mind works. So the mind needs to shut the hell up. But how do you shut the mind up? You can't force it to shut up. That's where meditation comes in. The more you meditate, the higher chance you have to wake up.