Extreme Z7

I would peg myself on a transition between Stage 1 and 2.

It's a classic David Wong article, I must say. Read it back in 2014.

<12-27-2016> Glimpse of Heaven I failed to do my 60-min self-inquiry work today. Quite a shame but it's not too bad because today felt (relatively) pleasant. I'm not sure if it is because of the practice but if it is the case, then this is so far, the most effective practice for increasing my level of happiness than any other practice I've had so far, even better than meditation. But it may not be. So far, I've only done the practice 4 times so I don't have much experience as to where it really leads. Well, it leads to enlightenment but I mean where does it lead me psychologically. Anyway, I think the most likely reason why today felt a lot more pleasant than my other days is because I wasn't in the mood to work on my university projects today. I spent the majority of the day drawing the comic below. (You can find my other comics in my deviantart page, linked in my previous entry,) So I guess I just felt really in tune with how I truly authentically wanted to live today. (Well, to an extent) I'm getting pretty tired of having to work on projects that I have no passion for that is eating up a lot of my time. Can't complain too much, though, because my situation isn't permanent and I'm bound to graduate on 2017 which a major life shift will have to occur for me in the near future. Now that's something for me to ponder.

@Soulbass Maybe a good plan is to make sure you're posting on the right thread first. Hehehe. . .

Enlightenment Rookie Here: Just giving a report on this practice because I happen to want to, I'm Day 4 into this practice and I am still on deep confusion as to what I really am and who is aware of reality. I am trying to resist settling with an intellectual answer but doubts keep arising. Worries about how I may be wasting my time fooling myself working on something that may actually lead nowhere. I try to sit and accept the negative thoughts and keep my eye on direct experience and direct experience only. I want to know what I am in direct experience. Today, during the practice, I began to realize that my idea that I am this body is a deeply held belief that is so deep that even after hours of contemplation and reaching some conceptual understanding of enlightenment, I still live daily life based on the paradigm of "self and other". I felt truly open to turning that around. But still. . . . . . no enlightenment. My mind then started pondering who is the one experiencing the frustration of not being able to find who is the one experiencing the frustration. (Try saying that 3 times fast) Who is doing the enlightenment practice. Hell, who is writing this sentence right now? Body and mind is typing and reading this but who is experiencing? Anyway, back to the practice. I eventually had the thoughts "Do these thoughts even mean anything?" "What's the point of trying to think my way to enlightenment?" So I decided to sit calmly for a while and just observe. . . . To communicate this via metaphor. . . Maybe me roaming around the lake is scaring away the fish. . . I should maybe just stay where I am and wait for the fish to come to me. . . . . Still, no enlightenment. The last 5 minutes or so of my practice was pure irrelevant monkey mind before my timer rang. So that sucks. . . oh well. . . I've got like many more hours in my life to spend more time with this practice. I'm 19 years old. by the way, if that holds any importance to you.

@Alicja_ There a lot factors that can lead to an inability to feel happiness in life. I think it's good to embark on a deep study on yourself and your surroundings in order to get a big picture understanding of why you are where you are and what action steps can you do to fix it. Some things that are important to think about which you may or may not have already considered: Your Environment Whatever Addictions You Have, Soft or Hard Your Beliefs and Worldview Your Self-Image Or Possibly Even Your Unique Physiological Make-Up There are a lot more to this, obviously. Just keep digging deep and be open to new or radical perspectives. Who knows? You might discover something you haven't thought of before.

<12-23-2016> I'm Lazy Meh. . .not in the mood to really want to talk about my day today. It wasn't bad, it was actually quite pleasant. All I want to do is just post the drawing I made today. Oh and if you didn't know, I have a daily drawing habit. You can find my other drawings here.

<12-22-2016> Suffering From Materialism I came to a realization today that a large majority of the suffering and lack of fulfillment I have in my life is due to my attachment to materialism. Not a surprise, considering that it's Christmas where the materialistic tradition is rampant so I did think about it a lot but I was surprised to the extent as to which I realized the depth of my suffering from materialism. I would say about 90%~99% of my suffering is probably due to materialistic desire. And by the way, when I talk about materialistic desire, I'm broadly speaking about all kinds of attachments towards external circumstances. I really feel like I sold my soul to the Devil many years ago in my childhood and didn't even know it. The battle is going to be tough and even though it isn't the whole war, something tells me some blood is going to be involved. Not literally, obviously.

Kick, Punch! It's all in the mind! Wise words from Chop Chop Master Onion

<12-21-2016> Second Day Of Leo's Enlightenment Practice When Leo first presented his Step-by-Step Self-Observation Practice for achieving enlightenment, I was hesitant at first because it would mean having to allocate to time for yet another habit that I'm not yet willing to have. But when I did decide to try it out yesterday and even today, both times I felt like it was completely worth it. I don't want to talk about the results I got yet because I want to do a little more of the practice to see how deep it can go. Who knows, maybe I might even reach enlightenment? Oooh. . . that sounds really cool, I'm so inspired to keep going. . . I'm going to go play some video games now. . .

@Leo Gura Would I be correct in guessing that when the term 'Healing' is used by Ra, he's referring to enlightenment?

<12-20-2016> Doing Leo's Practical Guide To Enlightenment What am I? Who is aware of the typing of this message? Am I the one writing this sentence? . . . . . Who is perceiving this computer screen? Does it perceive itself? . . . . . I'm bored, I want some fries. . . crap I got distracted. Who am I? Who am I? I'm very frustrated. . . uggh Wait I forgot, I'm not doing the practice right now, I'm supposed to be writing in the journal, whoops. . .

@Leo Gura Haha, that's nice. Well, that was just a simple joke anyway. Better get back to the topic at hand.

@Radical Honesty I Love You

@Leo Gura Why not start a thread were people come up with the most hurtful insults about each other and everyone just responds with "I Love You"? The Law of One sucks, by the way, and you're stupid for reading it.

@jse A comic I made It may have nothing to with the actual context of the discussion, but hey, I gotta get people to see it somehow. Anyway, I don't think GPS is evidence that time remains constant. Simply because if nature of time does actually change, the input that determines how the device would work would have to change as well in proportion to GPS calculating it. Time could very well just be a construct of the human mind. Sadhguru has spoken of experiences in his life where he sat and meditated for far longer than he thought he did. A few hours of sitting for him once turned out to be fourteen days (allegedly).

<12-17-2016> Slow Down And Just Breathe Just had another relatively strong and focused meditation session today which made the next few hours pretty pleasant today. I find that I'm now going right back down to my "normal" self as I right this, with my "normal" worries, my "normal" emotional issues, my "normal" distractions and I'm still trying to remain mindful of just how most of my life is just a hallucination and why I'm not supposed to take it too seriously. Whenever I'm in a more stable and pleasant state, I'm able to feel more in tune with reality, I don't overwork myself, I don't feel a lot of anxiety, and I'm able to feel joy more. I really hope that I may sometime get to a point where this is a normal everyday thing and not just a temporary post-meditative-state. I have a lot of work to do. Another thing that I like to talk about today is that Leo just made a thread for a free e-book for a book called "The Law of One". Leo presented it as a challenge of one's open-mindedness and I believe it after reading the book's introduction. I don't want to say what it is because it's just so shocking that I want anyone to read it to have the same surprise. That's it for today, by the way, everything you believe to be true is wrong, have a nice day.

@Leo Gura I can't access the book. The link doesn't seem to be working for me. EDIT: Nevermind, I got the book elsewhere.

<12-15-2016> Slow The FUCK Down! Yesterday I decided to have a two hour Do-Nothing-And-Contemplate session (which ending up lasting only an hour and 15 minutes because I did at night and I got too sleepy to continue). What I learned was that over the past few days I've been pushing myself to become hyper busy by being overly obsessed with getting things done that I fail to put things into good perspective. Some of the things I have up in my list of priorities should have been lower and some things which I put low in my priorities should have been higher. Today I actually procrastinated a lot but I feel like I managed to get more done on the jobs that actually matter more than only focusing mechanically on trying to complete everything,

I just finished today's meditation a few minutes ago and during the sit, my mind pondered about the idea of pursuing truth for truth's sake which I learned from Leo. I thought about how it means that you pursue truth not for the sake of achieving something or as a means to help you, at least externally, in your life. Luckily enough, reality immediately gave me a direct test on pursuing truth: a mosquito flew by my vision and I was about to kill it when I realized that 1.) I was meditating and should remain still 2.) killing the mosquito would go against truth because I would be acting based off my constructed self-agenda. All sorts of worries came up about how letting the mosquito suck my blood would be slightly painful and I could risk getting a disease, a worry which I realized stemmed from seeing people sick of mosquito-spread diseases on the news before. In the end, I let the mosquito suck my blood and I resisted the urge to kill it. I tried to love the experience of it as much as possible but it was difficult. In the end, I felt bad because I started to have all sorts of worries about how the mosquito might have been carrying a virus but yet I tried my best to accept all that. The reason why I'm sharing this story is because I'm faced with a paradox now. I remember Leo talking about how one's human life should be about pursuing happiness and also that Sadhguru said that what you want as a human being is that you just want life to be pleasant, but yet, we also need to pursue truth which means fully accepting reality as it is regardless of the negative or positive outcome. Pursuing truth in this story made me a tiny tiny step closer to truth but it did not make me any happier. So, I'm confused. . . value truth (a.k.a. accepting reality as it is) or pursue the things that directly increase my level of happiness?

I'd much rather you use the word God but I understand why you didn't. It's very well put nonetheless!

Where are we in that picture?

Haha, thanks for reminding me.

<12-12-2016> Becoming More Focused On Reading just about three years ago, Typhoon Haiyan, a powerful superstorm, passed through the place where I lived in and caused a high level of destruction around the town. For two weeks (I think, it may have been longer), I had to live with no power and at one point, to pass the time, I picked up a novel and began reading to pass the time. It was the first time I read a book for the sake of entertainment and it was quite the experience. The book was Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island" and I still vividly remember the events that took place in that book. Despite that however, I was still not completely hooked to reading and even after getting a new laptop about a month afterwards, I decided to spend most of my time gaming and watching cartoons. Fast forward to today, after being a follower of Actualized.org for about two years, I'm proud to say that now I really get the importance of reading and am willing to dedicate a large portion of my future life with a passion for knowledge and imagination through written and spoken word. I still don't know for sure where this will ultimately take me but intuition tells me that it's going to be worth it.