seeking_brilliance

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Everything posted by seeking_brilliance

  1. So I guess the chimp paradox perhaps isn't going to teach me much about feelings, despite what I thought I read in the free preview... Maybe it will but haven't gotten that far yet. So, @seeking_brilliance (oops phone bug) So, @Telepresent , you are the one to ask me what are feelings. I could give you two types of answers. I could say what i believe feelings are based on how I was raised to believe them I could say what I'm tempted to say which is I don't freaking know what the hell they are. But then where does that get me? Do you know of any books that could at least get me a basic understanding of how to put into words what feelings could be?
  2. @Shin maybe perhaps read a section in the book, or watch a video, and then rephrase it in your own words and understanding. These will be more powerful when you go back to read them, and perhaps make a note in your rephrasing about where this comes from so you can easily go back and read/watch the source material as needed.
  3. my other argument is that this could be correct, but forgetting that you already have millions of "you's" in las vegas, perpetuating it's existence, without @Gligorije actually needing to be there.
  4. but when you say that, what about 'my' experiences over here in central florida? do they cancel out @Gligorije 's experiences, wherever 'he/she' is? Or are they one experience, so to speak, happening in two different places? Then you have to determine if I'm actually in a different place than you, or does it just feel that way? when zoomed into the earth, they appear to be separate, but if zoomed out to the perspective of the universe, they would appear as a single dot in space, or perhaps even no dot at all because it can't be conceived as a point in space, depending on how far you zoom out. (I'm not saying this is correct, because ultimately I have no idea and I'm such a newbie. Just trying to work it out on this end too.)
  5. How to spot the misinterpreted preaching? Without you having to name any of them? How do I try (put on trial) the preachings with my own direct experience? Or must I experience no-self first. Well I may have answered myself.
  6. @Recursoinominado yeah try it... It took me a while to get to a week and lately I've reverted back to every other day or so, but I also use very little per day. It also helped me through some tough shit... But it's like a two egded sword because it can sometimes hinder as much as help. The best method to use it is to get the insights and then make yourself apply them while sober. Even if you've lost the motivation, make yourself do it anyway. (unless it's the insight of something like "I should run around the streets naked to make a huge blow to ego." yes, there's ultimately nothing wrong with doing that, but you will end up in jail and scare the neighbors.) One should also attempt to get in touch with insights you get while sober. Sometimes I think it's a matter of paying much more attention to them while intoxicated, as if they didn't exist while sober.
  7. @MM1988 hi, I have never been able to bend over and touch my toes my whole life. My hamstrings are just super tight and rigid. But this would be an excercise for Maha mudra to help loosen those up. I also can't do maha mudra without bending the knee, but the theory is that if you do it enough even with bending knee, the body will eventually respond correctly. Another stretch I do is throw one leg up on a table, the higher the better, and then lower your butt slowly and stretch all that out while your opposite leg bends.
  8. I've come to the conclusion that love is at least two things : an idea and a feeling (or at least the body interpreting love as a feeling.) For now I want to focus on the feeling of love. So what is love? It makes me feel something, right? Like a piece of my own heart is divided amongst the things and people I love, and even the thought of them makes the pieces feel more whole. There's a swelling of warm, tingling pleasure in the area that is known as the heart chakra. But is there? Or do I only believe that? If I believed it also made my right big toe ache in agony, would I hobble around every time I hug my mom? It sure would make hiking (which I love) quite difficult. But suppose I had been taught since an infant that the feeling of Love brought great pain in my big toe. I would either feel it every time I feel love, or I'd be depressed, thinking that I can't feel love because I feel the pleasure in my chest but no agony in the toe. And if I did feel it, it makes it true because in my direct experience, those would be the two main factors of the feeling of love. Even if the person who taught me this was just an evil asshole who thought it would be funny. Also, I wonder if agony were a major contributor to feeling love, if I'd even want to ever feel it. But love isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There is a pain in love. Just ask a love sick 16 year old who's been freshly dumped. Or a father who just bailed his son out of jail. This love has several emotions factoring into the overall feeling, but the unique concoction is still love, and a painful kind of that. So it's actually kind of hard to pin down an exact feeling of love, but it does seem to be heart centered and can be a swelling or contracting feeling, depending on circumstances. This I have direct experience of. Although I can't know if I was misled into believing these to be the feelings. Perhaps a feeling of love could be in the stomach, or the left arm. Or the head. Perhaps it pervades the entire body. Perhaps its completely outside the body in some kind of auric field. Perhaps there's no feeling at all. Or perhaps it feels like everything and we mistake it to feel as nothing. Or as something. And something can't be everything, after all. Everything is everything (and something, of course). So what creates this feeling of love? If the feeling even exists? A concoction of chemicals in the brain? Something in between the atoms? Purely imagination? Gosh it would help if I knew what the hell feelings are! But suffice it to say, I do feel love, and my body can also get very tingly like a cool electricity is firing through my skin. Like today when talking to a client about the new season of Doctor Who, and how exciting it was for a new doctor, (who's female!) , and the future of the series. My skin started pulsating like a million tiny fireflies were buzzing around even in my head. It felt good... weird, but good. And maybe it's a combination of excitement and love, because I don't often feel this tingling, but I consider it the feeling of love. Expressing my love for this television series changed something in my body. I couldn't help but smile. I wonder if she felt it too. But I still don't really know what love is. It's got to be more than a feeling right? (not considering the option that it's an idea, which I haven't fully explored yet) But what else could it be? I could easily say it's a learned response, or even gene-inherited response, fueled by lifetime of risk and reward opportunities, releasing an elixir of chemicals into the bloodstream like a special cocktail. How could I possibly know if it is more than that? For all I know it's the shining pinnacle of evolution. A gift from our ancestors to learn to cope with reality. And nothing more. What if? So my question is how do you feel love? Where do you feel it? I'm interested in how much is cultural influence, and how much is a common feeling.
  9. @Jack River It's been a long journey to understand self. I don't know what the confusion is either but hey, I love myself regardless. (oops maybe I don't) And I'm sorry, I don't mean to argue, I'm just trying to understand. Thank you for all your responses.
  10. @TheAvatarState thank you so much for actually explaining this in your own words and it didn't sound like a tape recorder. What you say does make sense. I will contemplate it today while at work.
  11. Ok, so you feel love as a warmth in all your chakras. The first to actually answer my question lol. Thank you
  12. Thank you. Maybe I don't have all the context needed. I have felt this as you've described, usually in dreams, where love is such a strong connection - like a super magnet- and requires no words to describe it. In this thread I'm exploring where we feel love in our body. What sensations do we get, if any, when we notice we are feeling love? I'm curious to know if people around the world feel it in a similar way, or how much it varies. What is good and evil? I can't be sure such things even exist, so why would I put limitations on them? In your own words, could you explain to me good vs evil? Sure, I knew that when I typed it, but it's also a belief that they can't. You claim that it is just how it is, but how do you know that? I don't deny that self denies the wholeness of love, but that doesn't explain why a self can't love at all. Even if it's only a mediocre interpretation of it. Does that make it less real? @pluto so in your explanation, I can love and be loving while being myself, right? Sure I could probably explode in love if I shed the self, but if love is in everything, then it's in the illusion too, right?
  13. @Jack River I kind of get what you are saying but your entire point is based on the belief that fear and love can't be in the same room. How sure are you about that? Does that mean that fear can't be loved? Do selfs deserve to be loved? Your description of them makes them seem completely antagonistic, but then again, they didn't ask to exist. And before you tell me they don't exist... Come on. They do. You know it. They exist, if only to themselves. But that's really all that matters to them- all these selfs running around, some of them posting on this very forum searching (perhaps in vain) for meaning. You say love cannot occupy self, but who needs love the most? Self or no-self?
  14. It was fun watching this little thing build his web. (although this one's a little wonky compared to others I've seen). It made me start thinking about how they even know how to do this. They just know. All this knowledge downloaded into their tiny brains directly from their genes. How amazing is that? They just know. They were never taught to build this web. But they are masters at it. It made me wonder which part of all this "knowledge" I have in my own head was pre-programmed through genes, and how much was learned. We already know about instinct behavior like babies looking for a nip to suckle. Another one is the grasp reflex, where babies instinctively grasp anything that is placed in their hands. As we grow and develop distinct personalities, we begin to assume that any other behaviors are learned. Of course it would be hard to prove otherwise, but I don't believe that all behavior is this way. What underlying instinctual behavoirs do we exhibit on a daily bases that we mistakingly take as learned? If any of them are unwanted, can they be overridden? For example the fight or flight instinct: this gets triggered for me in any highly stressful event that shoots my anxiety through the roof. A large part of that anxiety is based on memories of past similar events, but how much is instinctual? Am I spinning tires trying to get to the root of this behavior or is it best to learn to cope? Can you think of other gene given instinctual behaviors?
  15. @Jack River is it though? That's sounds nice and all but I want to know how you feel love. And I'm sure you'll reiterate that there's no "you" to feel anything but I want to know how Jack River feels love. In the body? What are the sensations, if any? Or do you stand with your statement that you (don't) feel love with no self.
  16. Yep. Just amazing huh? And we readily accept this kind of information passed down in dna but shoo off the idea of memories being passed along because it sounds too woo-woo. But memories are just stored information. And we don't really understand how information is stored, and how dna is fully encoded. We just don't know.
  17. @Equanimitize so, for example, does this perhaps explain some irrational fears, like the fear of heights, fear of deep water, etc.? (I know that's unanswerable but just for contemplation)
  18. @d0ornokey Ive been having dreams of living in larger communities kind of like this and I told my friends at work that I would totally do it if not married but they think I'm crazy of course. Your example of 5-6 people is also a good idea, because with fewer people like a roommate type thing is more feasible to happen without moving to the middle of nowhere. I think it would be great because living with those who even find meditation to be weird is hard enough. So to live in a group that could potentially meditate together as a fun tradition or something along those lines would be awesome. There just has to be one rule : that noone tries to tell others how to do their journey. Help can be given of course, but there can be no spiritual - bullies in this community/home It would also help with life choices like being vegetarian or going green, because most likely everyone in your living space will agree or at least not make you feel weird about it.
  19. @Hellspeed are you into alchemy? It seems to me you have studied it
  20. @Serotoninluv that's interesting. Would you be willing to right something about this and maybe how it affects or interacts with consciousness? And doesn't gene expression change every so many weeks depending on environmental changes and state of mind? If I had a child five years ago and one today, I wonder how different their inherited genes would be considering they have the same mother.
  21. @Equanimitize yes thank you. I think you're right
  22. Yeah I bet they are. We kind of take dna memory for granted. I don't understand how it is not super interesting to everyone. It's one of our greatest gifts passed down through countless generations of our ancestors. I also think that these so called past lives can easily be explained through dna/gene memory. Most likely they are memories of a direct ancestor, and the brain confuses the encoded information as a memory. Any thoughts on that?
  23. @pluto seek and you will find
  24. @Ampresus gosh honestly I thought everyone talked to themselves. Sometimes its the only way to get intelligent conversation (sorry, that was a joke my dad always said) the other running joke is : it's ok to talk to yourself, as long as you don't start answering! but honestly I answer myself too. I guess I must be crazy.
  25. @Andrea Marchetti I could see if I can find one, but honestly I just have one of those brains that soak up everything I hear over the years and then spew it out as if I know its true. HAHA. Story of my life. I mostly likely heard this in other forums, since there wouldn't really be any scientific way to prove it does this energy depletion (that I know of)