Eph75

We're constantly adapting and picking up patterns whether we know it or not. I'm guessing that there was something about these things that they did that resonated with you and that is why you remember that. Being social creatures we are pre-programmed to fit in socially, being accepted in a social setting. So adopting features that we ourselves find compelling, straight off carbon copy or modified, knowingly or unknowingly, is not a strange thing. I've done the same. It's harder to do the same when you are conscious of it, as it comes out as a bit ridicules, and we tweak it to be more our new behavor than mimicing someone elses behavior. Have you ever notised someone else copying someones behavior and thinking "oh she/he is totally copying him/her"? Happens all the time. If you have a poor self-image or low self-esteeme I imagine that you would be more prone to do this as you have greater a need to fit in/be accepted. The line between building a facade and an actual behavior shift can be hair-thin. Adopting behaviors isn't bad, facades usually are. Facades not to be mixed up with roles, we can put on a role at work that essentially is a kind of facade, but that facade is purpose driven to fulfull a function more so than hide something that we've made "ugly".

@EternalForest Do you see that you argue that the stage you are in is the best stage - which coincidentally is a trait of the teir 1 stages. You don't have to transcend-transcend-transcend. It sounds like the words of the achiever, the orange stage, with a need to succeed. Well, you don't need to anything. You don't transcend stages, each stage is building on the previous stage. So you won't end up waking up one morning feeling like "you" have been lost. You're not losing anything, you're gaining something new. Of course you're losing limitations in making sense of things, but you won't miss "not being able to make sense" or "making less sense" any more than you probably don't miss wearing and pooping in diapers. Your reasoning sounds like it is coming out of fear of what's not known and it manifesting as a defence mechanism that is working hard at convincing yourself that the best thing would be just to stay where you are at. The beaut is that you don't have to convince anyone, just do what you feel is right at this very moment. There's no twisting of arms. But you're probably allured by what's on that other side, otherwise you wouldn't be here. The problem is that you can't convince someone for whom doing his business in the toilet makes sense to agree to it making more sense to regress to "pooping in diapers". The example is ridicules, but it is really the same mechanism at work.

Personality is a set of behavioral scripts that is based on the belief systems/paradigms that the ego has attached itself to, so that it can assess, judge, accept, reject ... and operate autonomously without mindfulness. I.e. a figment of your imagination, ignorance, that keeps you away from the discovering that you're not who/what it has limited yourself into thinking you are.

Well, no, we're all the same with the same inherent capabilities but some of us have strayed farther away from the path, building stronger defensive mechanisms and walls - and - it is probably harder for them to let go of their paradigms in order to tear those defenses down, so that they can open their eyes and see. Externalizing problems is a very effective defens mechanism as it removes you out of the equation - but also away from any solution.

Sorry, I struggle with the length of my posts. This got even longer than usual. Also more personal than usual In meditation, things don't mean much and it's a bit of a trap to try to put meaning on things. We love trying to make meaning out of things even if there is no meaning to be found. We create meaning. But it is only adding distracting and preventing us from going further. Meditation - well this form of it at least - is about doing nothing so that nothing can do its work on you. With that said, there's your question "when" this happens, and you're perfectly right. It happens when you manage to reduce your mind straying about. The absolute best is to try having "no thought" but that is extremely hard. For me I get the sensation of falling into a blackness when that happens and usually I get pulled right back out due to reacting/thinking about it. When I manage to let myself stay there for a while time is lost, it's like sleeping but not sleepy. Although - and as of yet - I can only manage short bursts of this state. I'd love to be able to stay there for hours. While "no thought" is hard, "less thought" is easier but still the mind wants to stray. By focusing on one single thing, it doesn't matter what that is, it can be a hand, a finger, foot, forehead, "third eye" , pulse in arm, sensation of passning air at the base of your nostrils, and by being strict on not letting mind wander at the same time as minimizing thoughts/analysis, you will reach access concentration. I myself put my thought into the void behind the blackness of the visual field and find that more "no thought" can be found there. But whatever works works. So in short, access concentration is when you've calmed the mind so that it doesn't do thought-hopping. It is just the first stage of increased concentration and you should allow yourself to go further. This is where it gets tricky, as it feels amazingly good beyond this point, and the acknowlegdement of this sensation is thought, and thought takes you out of it. So you need to learn to not let the occassional thought interfere with the process, let it go. With time that occassional thought will interfere less. And with time those occassional thoughts will be fewer. It's difficult to say that you have no thought, that's probably impossible but they can be let passed without attention. When staying in access concentration for a while, the next pleasure challenge will come, the "rising and passing away". They are probably very individual so this is highly subjective, and for me it is usually (99% of the time) one of a limited few differnt forms of the same type of lightning effects. The absolutely most common is that a black/blueish-metallic void appear in the visual spectrum (eyes closed) , rather large and it moves away getting more concentrated. As it gets smaller it grows an outer orange/firey glow around the edges and as it grows the void shrinks down to a glowing electric dot and then down to nothing, at the same time as the organge light grows up to 100% of the visual field. At the same time as it reaches 100% it turns into a new black void that shoots off into the distance. That cycle is repeated over and over, sometimes a very short while, less than a minute, sometimes maybe 15 minutes (time perspective is problematic when you get to this point), but usually somewhere inbetween. Sometimes the orange is circling around the void and end up exiting right, never left. You know when you get here, these phenomena are not subtle, they are absolute. Why does it do that? What does it mean? So what does it mean. Nothing. Just be along for the ride and don't react when it ends. Place no thought or meaning to the intensity nor length of the phenomena, it's distraction. Also don't try getting here, that's also distraction. Do nothing. With time you get to this state quicker and quicker. Currently I'm there somewhere between 3 and 15 minutes into the meditation, wholey depending on how much peace of mind I've had during the day. If I'm having good days I even get here when awaken, when going to bed in the evening, after being to the restroom in the night or during my meditative morning walk. This got very personal, I try not going personal but since the meditation experience is fully subjective I felt it might be helpful to hear what it can be like. Also, these two states are the easy ones, they are more of switch-on states that defines the start of the meditation session, you will get through them and you will learn to get through them quickly. Key is "do nothing, think nothing, just sit". If you want some reading, I'd recommend Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram. It's free both as audio book and pdf. Audio book only first edition though, I think. https://www.integrateddaniel.info/book Also Ten Happier podcast by Dan Harris Ep. #187 Is Enlightenment Possible for Regular People with said Daniel might also be interesting. Dan Harris has more podcasts on the topic that might be worth looking into.

That's reaching "access concentration". Just don't let it distract you and don't try to make sense or reason with it and you will move on to other states. With time you get there really quickly, within minutes.

My theory is that some people have a more or less inherent ability to awareness and consciousness through introspection but not having awakened those abilities becomes tools that instead of helping transcending ones problems actually work as excavating tools, digging the hole one is in deeper in every possible way. At some point the bubble of ignorance is popped - typically through crisis - and you suddenly gain a lot of clarity as a result of all that contemplation work you've done without realizing it. Other people have little or no ability to introspect and are externally focused around their problems and it makes it very hard as no solution is found "out there". ...it's a theory, that matches my experience.

Yeah sure but if you think about it, competition is usually about achieving excess and not just enough to cover the basic needs so that you can focus on being happy. We're products of a world in which we need to win, earn big, make success, be liked, having others look up to us, be beautiful, have the perfect poster-life and so on. Oh all that distraction...

To me success is to effortlessly live in the current moment. I meditate in order increase my concentration levels, have better focus, have space of mind and a calmness and clarity that makes me see what I wouldn't see otherwise. It reduces mental chatter and as a result productive ideas seem to appear from nowhere when not even trying. It's a help in consciousness development. It does not make you happy by itself, but it helps creating a setting in which you can work on yourself from a creative perspective. It brings you closer to new insights.

Who says you have to become a sage There's a misunderstanding that when being unattached - or less attached - to desires you're not supposed to make money or own things. That's not so, you can still do all of that but for different and more powerful reasons, or even for no reason at all. The things or pursuits won't own you. You don't need to be rich, but it's convenient to be able to buy things. You don't need a luxurious car to travel from A to B. You don't need to buy self-esteem. You don't have to look good in others' eyes. And so on. Being poor, you still need to cover some basic needs, so that you don't suffer in poverty, struggling with food and shelter and so on. But do you need to be "rich" - and more importantly - why do you think that you need to be rich? And what is true success?

If you just want to make money and think that it will make you happy, you're in the wrong place All this work here will move you towards seeing that all of that is what is actually causing the suffering you experience. You think that you need to fix something by adding more. When in fact it happens through reduction, especially reducing attachments to ideas that you just need that one more thing and then you can be happy. It will never happen, it will create more needs and more suffering. Trying to walk both paths and resisting the self-actualization one will create a cognitive dissonance and resulting in even more suffering. The self-actualization path is the right one to walk. But you have to have matured to a certain degree developmentally speaking in order to appreciate it. It's like aiming for being the world's fastest at running 100m but you're stuck thinking that it can be achieved without committing to hard training, healthy diet and so on. And you end up just feeling bad/disappointed about remaining slow.

And so "victims" find "thinly veiled attacks" in anything that is touching a for them touchy subject. It's the very definition of the victim role. But I'm sorry, I won't further side-track the discussion. I'd just like to invite you to contemplation on the subject.

Just a friendly observation. It's easy to miss our blind spots. E.g. you say that Indians don't know how to play victims, but you call out the racist card and want the thread locked while there's no racist content been written, merely observations related to culture and certain humor. That is playing victim.

@Preety_India in a sense, you confirm what was said, taking it too seriously, getting triggered. Making a hen out of a speck of a feather.

Why do you want to actualize? The very reason why is often the wrong reason as to why doing it. E.g. people do it because it seems to be a good thing, want to be like others, have others look up to you as you do look up to others that seem to have their shit sorted. Using it to get rich and famous, get all the materialistic stuff you always wanted. And so on, and so on. Sure you can fulfill petty desires like that, but the underlying drive is about getting away from all of that. Typically when you find your way into self-actualization you've already sorted out some psychological basic needs. But it's easy to just look at YouTube videos (Leo) , finding the way to a forum, call yourself "son of Leo" and then try to be something because it seems neat - that is not a good thing. There are a lot of people here with rather severe psychological issues that needs to be sorted out in order for the rest to fall in place. Without that there's going to be a lot of confusion. The path is thorny because you don't like what you find, or don't understand what you see. And maybe you have not already committed to change, as it's all about changing as an individual. People don't realize that by pursuing self-actualization you have to let go of who you think you are and allow something new to emerge. More likely is there going to be a desire for change - whatever that is you don't know - but at the same time having a tremendous internal resistence toward changing who you think you are. Is self-actualization necessary? No. Developmental growth will still happen to some extent, for different reasons. That can lead towards self-actualization and a different perspective. But fully dedicating your life to transcending your current "self" is not for everyone and can cause more suffering than it would have without the desire to self-actualize - whatever you, at whatever state you happen to be at, think that it means and what it will give you. So, what is your "why"... That why defines the need. When that why is strong enough and the current state is causing too much suffering, then, life tend to find its way into this stuff and you could just happen to find yourself smack-in-the-middle of the initiation of a self-actualizing process without noticing. From that stance it is much easier to accept what you find.

That's tier 1 talking ? there is always more, and it tend to become more and more, and more and more interesting. Even just "nothing" is enormous. What if the ability for understanding complexity in tier 2 makes living even more easy than what can be imagined from a tier 1 point-of-view? And what if you can make the movie yourself? The unseen third option. You can fill your life with complexity but that isn't the same as living a complex life.

@VeganAwake Thank you ??

Oh-oh, be careful with this one. It might just be THE trap. It just also happen to be "the easy answer".

Spiral wizardry is called for - offer information in a format and depth that is most helpful to the person that holds an inquiry all in order to help that someone in their own path and growth from their perspective. @Nahm I love your posts - ❤ - but they often require a certain level of understanding to be possible to be consumed. If you don't already have a that relative level of understanding, your wisdom would easily be misunderstood or not understood at all.

Sentient being meaning "having an inherent ability to be self-aware and thinking" - i.e. all human beings - where does "without internal chatter" come from/fit into your picture? I'd just like to confirm this; we can easly create emotional states and control the shifting on and off of those. It is a "fun" exercise that gives a somewhat terrefying insight when doing this in multiple sequences.

It's just a state, one of many; wanting to discuss on a down-to-earth way that help making sense of progressing congnative and developmental growth. Perhaps it's not so much the content of the answers provided as it is the format of the answers themselves. Both may tell the same story but the typical "spiritual answer" is oftentimes much to implicit to be helpful when just trying to find "a-or-any" way forward.

Suffering comes from desires, wants and needs, trying to be or get something that you currently don't already possess. Suffering can of course be seen as a calling for you to take action and change - i.e. reduce your desires, if you care to attach that meaning to it, which certainly is near at hand when you've gone through suffering to a point that you take charge and change how your relate to being. Desire is a vicious circle, there is never enough. Desire is addictive. At the same time, suffering has no meaning, it is useless. It's more of a product. Some can't be avoided. A lot we create for ourselves, such as through desire. But with all suffering, we can change how we relate to it. "Just being" helps with this dynamic.

"Just being" can manifest in different ways. Not necessarily sitting in a cave, meditation om being nothing. I do have a normal life, I do normal stuff but focus on "being" changes the dynamics between "you" and "something". Being content with "just being" still means that you can do things. You can e.g. make a career and earn money but the things that hou choose to do are done because you can, not because you need to in order to fulfill some idea that is stuck in your head, in the society, the culture etc. Yes I have, excessively, stuff like this is a journey and not a destination to reach, and yes it has literally completely transformed me and the life I live.

So what you want to hear is that living is meaningless. Not in a sense that it's useless in any way, but it has "no meaning". That's not very inspiring is it, especially when we're indoctrinated that there is supposed to be a meaning. Our existence here has no purpose, no meaning, it's just being. Our ability to be aware starts to look for a meaning so that there's something that we can pursue and fulfill so that we can get the reward of feeling "meaningful". So the point of living is "just being". When we accept "just being" we can awaken to it being the path to happiness/peace and the pursuit for that meaning that we previously were supposed to find, somewhere or in something, was actually the very thing that kept us miserable. But you didn't want to mix in spirituality. That's difficult, because that "meaning" is found within your spirituality. Also, life having "no meaning" doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't pursue achieving things. You can fill your "being" doing things that appear meaningful to you. If that helps you in your "being", that's all good. But we tend to do things for the wrong reasons, because we feel that we have to live up to something or match some external or internal expectations, and that makes "being" more difficult and oftentimes painful. That's why it's so important to detach/let go of such attachments, so that we can "just be".

By not trying to control them at all, having clarity of mind, absolute stillness of thought when you go to bed will give you the most inspiring sleep you can have, meditative in itself, literally. We're generally trying too hard. When letting go, the mind lessens its distractions and processes with clarity and seemingly without effort or attempts. When not distracted, your mind will process by itself, what it needed. When distracted, your mind will process also, what is focused upon, which is the distraction. So, focus on trying to get smarter, intentionally, in a sense your distraction is consisting of thoughts on why you are attached to the idea of needing to be "smarter". Get rid of your mental distraction and you progressively and over time will "get smarter" (depending on what you think of being smart is).