Johnny5

You can't really be present until you're absent.... (oh shit I'm doing stupid word games now ? )

@Bulgarianspirit Not enlightened, integrated. ?

I so wish I knew what to say to this. Because I totally get what you're saying.

@Leilani Thank you

@humanProcess It's ok just a little humor

@EmptyVase That's ok, it's just that breathing has a big effect on your overall level of tension, stress, fight/flight etc. I could stand to focus more on proper breathing myself. By relax I mostly mean just relax in the moment and not worry so much. That's what I'm picking up from your posts. Chances are that it's in large part just an old habit from a lifetime of not being able to breathe so well. Hope your improved breathing will help with that.

How is being "spiritually frustrated" not pseudoscience...? ?

Good to hear ?

Famous last words

No worries, it's just food for contemplation. It takes time. No, only if you get stuck in it. But that's no reason not to explore it. Rationality can be a good thing, it's just not the end-all-be-all that many people think it is. By all means go for it. Sounds like you know exactly what you want and need right now. "Those who know how to think need no teachers." -- Mahatma Ghandi

From what I understand those experiments contributed a lot to our understanding of the nature and importance of the bond between mother and infant. Although the methods they used in those days are ethically controversial these days. You can imagine why. They used to be overly rational and assume that the child was only interested in the milk. That's how disconnected we are from our own needs, scientists included. You totally should It's been similarly revelatory for me as well. I started incorporating this stuff into my life a few years ago, and in hindsight it may well have saved my life. That video pretty much confirmed it for me. This one also explains a lot: And this one: Notice in the last one that the baby extends their arms out a few times. It seems pretty clear to me that they're trying to hug the mother, but can't due to being strapped into the chair, which only adds to the frustration. Even the Ph.D. who is narrating doesn't pick up on this, he explains the gestures away as something different and imo kinda random. And even the mother doesn't seem to pick up on it in the very end.

Anything and everything you can come up with to self-love. Physical contact comfort is a big one. If you have a spouse, regularly take lots of time to snuggle up close together. If you don't, use any substitute, whether it's a blanket, a body pillow, a teddy bear, a sex doll, whatever works. Have a dedicated comfort object. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_object I'm not joking either. Works miracles for me. And the best part about it is that it's totally yummie! When you eat lots of yummie shit or do lots of yummie shit, it's usually bad for you. Not so with this. This is a spiritual practice that is as yummie as it is fundamental, and it's also a great way to ground yourself in feeling / somatic awareness. This could be your meditation. This could be your "resting in I Am". This could be your "abiding as awareness". Do it any time you feel like it, as much as you want. Permission to indulge and enjoy. Check this:

Passive about changing them? Effective at changing them? Communicate without triggering them so you can change them? If their reactions against all that is love too, what do you think that means? Maybe they are trying to tell you something? I sure did bother for a long time, even against my own better judgement. It's generally not a nice thing to do. What's more, I haven't been around for even half a century, maybe I should stop pretending to know better than eternity. ?

"You can't script your own enlightenment." -- Kenneth Folk

Nobody can help anyone who doesn't want help. And who is to say that they need it...

So you just completely skipped over my rather lengthy posts about how any finite thing, if it existed, would necessarily be a duality... ? "Thing" and "non-thing" are just more concepts. You can't have a non-thing, but you can't have a thing either, that's the whole point. They were always only concepts, remember? They can never be anything more than that. That's the lie, and right there you already fell for it. Any two opposites that you'd care to conjure up make for a duality, including thing v.s. non-thing. Even if you conjure up only one, you automatically imply the other, for all the same reasons. Whether you'd ever come across a non-thing in your life is moot. At most it suggests that the question is completely irrelevant. And I would recommend that you stick with what's relevant, or you'll fall for that other trap I mentioned about going around in circles forever and never getting anywhere with it. Also, unless you're just playing candid camera here ? ... don't try to validate your propositions, try to invalidate them. See if anything you come up with can withstand honest scrutiny. That's the only way to understanding.

Their reactions against your attempts to change them are also love.

indeed, well then I'm glad to have found someone with similar interests.

Many sports are like that. Chess is spiritual in exactly the same way. How's that for perspective

I'd use the terms concept and mental category interchangably for these purposes. There's no end to them so there's no real point in splitting hairs with them, except as a "thorn to remove another thorn". Other than that you could go around in circles forever and never get anywhere, as most people end up doing. There is no foundational concept, no starting symbol that you don't pick for yourself. There's just a great big semantic web. Just like a dictionary. That said there are some significant ones for the purposes of waking up, some of which might be considered foundational in that sense. Self being the most notorious one. Others examples being fear, time, space, doership, attachment, subject, object, other, etc. There's a great big web of those as well and the distinctions aren't as clear-cut as it may seem. But you find that out by investigating them and trying to pin them down. That's the thorn thing again. In other words you don't engage with them because there's any truth to be found there, but to untangle the mess so you can see it for what it is. For every finite thing there would have to be, or it wouldn't be finite. If it has boundaries, it has definition, shape, form. That is form in the broadest sense of the word, it need not be physical but the principle remains the same. Some ostensibly inherent characteristics that sets it apart from other things. In short, attributes. But no boundary can exist all by itself, it always has two sides. The side that is included in the definition, and the side that is excluded from it. That's exactly what makes it a thing. A thing is always a particular thing as distinct from some other particular thing, or there wouldn't be a thing there. A boundary is always defined and shaped not only by what is included, but also by what is excluded. They go hand in hand, without both sides there can be no boundary. Nothing ever gets a shape all of its own accord, everything is always largely shaped by the environment, i.e. by what's outside of the boundary. So, ironically, that makes the excluded part at least as important as the included part. In buddhism this is called dependent origination. Without an environment for a thing to exist in, the thing can not exist at all. Without a universe, you can't have apple pie. The environment represents the necessary causes and conditions for the thing to arise in the first place. So in that sense the environment is the negative image of the thing. This also means that the thing is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of the environment. You can't have that particular environment without that particular thing in it. They go together, as Alan Watts puts it. And of course the environment itself is made up of things, each of which have their own causes and conditions without which it could never have existed, and so on forever. That is called infinite regression and is one way of getting at the impossibility of objective reality, and of inherently existing things. This is the crux of the buddhist emptiness philosophy. The philosophy isn't truth, it is a device for deconstructing the false. Incidentally, that's why the absolute must be without attributes, boundaries, differentiation, etc. It can never be "this particular way" as opposed to "that particular way". You can already see how that would make it dualistic, i.e. relative. And now you can also see how that would make it finite. What about it? You tell me... ?

There has always been a strong connection between martial arts, spirituality and/or personal development. Although I'd be careful about conflating martial arts with combat sports, even when there is some obvious overlap there. That doesn't mean it's all turquoise of course. Mostly far from it. But I do think people on a "spiritual path" often encounter martial arts along the way, and vice versa. Peter Ralston comes to mind.

You should come to my planet then

That I've been continuously manufacturing my own suffering on the spot, the very suffering I tried to escape.

Oh you mean the visual perception of "the world" no longer seems external to yourself?