silene

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Everything posted by silene

  1. Hi @electroBeam you mentioned in another post in the Serious Emotional Problems subforum ("I feel like I cant trust anyone") that you have been feeling suicidal too. Your emotional state may be an ego backlash from your spiritual work, or response to your situation. Just a thought, but considering your 'manic' episodes you describe here, have you considered the possibility of bipolar disorder (previously known as manic depression)? May be worth getting it checked out. When we're doing serious spiritual work the backlashes we have can appear similar to mental health issues - eg sometimes I can't decide if I'm having a nondual experience or depersonalisation / derealisation which are psychological states too!
  2. Crosses occur in several religions, one meaning is + represents the I crossed out, ego death. But in Christianity it started off as a pagan Roman method of torture and execution, onto which we project our wisdom and spiritual meanings. I like the fact that we can start with some random image like a crucifix, wheel or whatever and attach meanings to it like this.
  3. Still practising 1 week contemplation and 3 weeks (being) meditation per month, it's starting to settle down into a more routine practice now: is that a good thing or a rut? Still only about 30 mins sitting per day though. I'm spontaneously moving between what I have just named self-centred and centreless awareness. I know my spiritual practice is still very lightweight compared to what's recommended. But then as the saying goes 'comparisons are odious'. On the other hand I have a hunch that I should put more into it than dissipating myself with entertainment. I have just seen Diana Winston's session on 'The spectrum of awareness practices' on Worldwide Insight, fantastic, a good context for me, similar to my direction of travel (but solo), and I've sent off for her new book 'The little book of being'. Comes at a good time. Will read it after I've finished my current book of Beliefs, a fairly academic tome including religious & non-religious beliefs. I've also got on my bookshelf 'Being vs becoming (experiencing awareness beyond the relative mind)' by Paresh Jivanji. Which one to read first? I'm such a slow reader it makes a difference! Perhaps keep up the momentum with Diana Winston's approach? Centreless feels a better name with me than emptiness, because there's still lots happening but with no self, or centre, or subject, from which I objectify it. Also the 'stuff happening', is happening without any boundaries, apart from what my cognition is projecting onto it. Meaning that I create 'things' by defining the border between one thing and the next. My mind is what carves up the universe into separate things. Even saying that, my mind vs the universe, is fragmentation, I have the abstract thought of the universe in my mind until I stop thinking about it: when the universe and my mind both vanish into This. On another topic, I'm doing an online Python programming course which is reducing my time for reading and posting in the forum. It was on my New Year's resolutions list so I've not forgotten them yet
  4. "Wish you were here, on the journey to nowhere (now-here)" Starting a journal today to share and reflect on my ongoing spiritual journey / practice / philosophy. I'm due for a review of my meditation practice. 'Wish you were here' by Pink Floyd was the first album I ever bought, still spellbinding today as ever In November I am doing a Body Scan meditation, in order to beef up my concentration and get more body aware. It goes like this (sorry if this looks like excessive detail but I just want to get the exact practice down on paper for the record). Maybe one day I'll put this in a picture. Top of head, crown. Face (any tension here?). Right side of head, ear. Back of head. Left side of head, ear. Inside the head, brain. Lower head, jaw, chin. Throat, adam's apple (any emotion here?). Right side of neck. Back of neck. Left side of neck. Left shoulder. Left upper arm. Left collar bone. Left elbow. Left lower arm. Left wrist. Left hand. Right hand. Right wrist. Right lower arm. Right elbow. Right upper arm. Right shoulder. Right collar bone. Top of chest. Upper chest, heart. Mid chest, solar plexus (why is it called that, 'network of the sun'?). Stomach. Navel. Lower abdomen. Genitals. Left hip. Upper left leg. Above left knee. Left knee. Upper left shin. Lower left shin. Left ankle. Left foot. Right foot. Right ankle. Lower right shin. Upper right shin. Right knee. Above right knee. Upper right leg. Right hip. Base of back, tailbone. Lower back. Mid back. Upper back. Shoulders (any tension there?). Back of neck. Back of head. Top of head, crown. There are one or two duplicates in this route, I don't find that a problem. I usually sit cross-legged Burmese style, right hand over left, like the Theravada Buddhists, though I'm not a Buddhist. But it's one of my influences. The other important issue is the quality of awareness. I prefer to call it awareness rather than attention, because it's a simple passive awareness, more like dropping awareness of everything else, and what remains is the particular part of the body. Like it's self-aware, I don't need to direct awareness towards my knee, for example, in a controlling way. The whole nervous system is awareness already without paying attention. Anyone else here use wikihow.com? There's some useful spiritual and meditation resources there in the 'how to' format. It's beginner's level mostly, but more independent style as it's not part of an organised religion or in-group. More to come soon.
  5. I have made myself a donut shaped cushion to avoid piles etc when sitting for long periods. I believe doctors prescribe something similar too. But you could experiment with other postures too such as lying down.
  6. I found this to be a helpful article which came at a time I started working on the observer/observed duality. https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/escaping-the-observer-trap I still find my mind flipping between different states, the work is ongoing ...
  7. I agree with you that unemployment benefits are intended as a short term income until the person can get their career back on track. I've been unemployed myself for a long time. In most countries unemployment benefits afford a pretty basic lifestyle. But how to create more jobs presents us with the classic right wing vs left wing versions of economics. Right wing says, we should free up the entrepreneurs and business from the constrictions of tax & govt rules so they can expand their business via the free market and create more jobs as a 'trickle-down' effect to the poorer in society. Left wing says that govt should keep tax high so they can invest in public sector infrastructure which creates jobs and public assets. I don't have an easy answer except to say that extremes of either approach are unbalanced and we need a combination, the best of both worlds. @Annoynymous "an unemployed person can get unemployment benefits as the society takes responsibility of that person. It can also be problematic because then there is a fear of rising dissatisfaction among employed people because they have to take the indirect burden of unemployed person." People may think this but actually benefits are just a nationalised insurance scheme. You pay your premiums while you are in work and receive benefits when you aren't. If my car is stolen and I need to claim on the insurance, am I being a burden on the other customers of the insurance company? Hardly, if the insurance actuaries have done their job well there should be enough money in the pot to pay for the risks. Yes, the economy is changing, developed countries are becoming more service oriented and mechanised. Production shifts to cheaper wage countries. Jobs get lost and we need to get creative to make new jobs. My own country can't grow enough food for all our people, as we're so urbanised and highly populated now. So we have to find other jobs and export enough stuff to buy food. Same with energy. @Hatfort "My take is simple. Share the work, let people work less and have more leissure time, we will live better and the money spend in leissure will make more money to the creators and business owners and will produce more jobs for the people. It would be a good catch 22 situation." Interesting. On the one hand, there isn't a fixed amount of work which needs doing, apart from our basic survival needs on the Maslow Pyramid; we can create as many goods & services as we can find customers for. On the other hand, if we are content with what we have there's no duty to carry on working just to feed economic growth for the sake of it. But I regret that society becomes ever more monetised and privatised, we have lost much of the old bartering and sharing. You need an ever higher income just to get by. I have a shed full of tools produced in factories for money, many of which I only use occasionally, my neighbours have the same. We could all save money, work, and jobs by sharing them but we don't because we are so individualised. As an aside, I used to have a friend who was happy being on the dole, he said he was fining society for being so corrupt! A joke perhaps but I never had a good argument against him
  8. Unemployment is indeed a serious problem - for employees. However many businesses actually like a certain level of unemployment because competition among job applicants helps keep wages down. Also business starts worrying about skills shortages when employment is high, and start lobbying the government for more immigration. I'd say when there is more than about 10% unemployment there's a risk of social unrest as people excluded from the economy lose faith in the system and protest. People start supporting more 'populist' parties for example.
  9. @Neph How is it going against you? Just not working at all, or some negative effect? It could be your ego resisting the spiritual process, because it knows you're onto it. What are you doing for your practice, maybe you need a change.
  10. It's a paradox of this work that as newbies, we listen to more advanced and awoke practitioners who describe what's in their direct experience, and as we haven't experienced it for ourselves yet, tend to build up a belief system around it. This can then create a layer of expectations on top of our own awareness of the present moment. There's nothing wrong with this as such, having faith in the process is necessary IMO to keep us motivated. But it's also important to sometimes let go of all beliefs and thoughts and just "knowing myself as the experience in the present moment" as you are already doing, to have that direct awareness for yourself. If your present awareness is limited and not yet the full absolute truth which you want, then note that gap between what you want and what you've got, compassionately, without resistance. Otherwise it can be another source of suffering, not getting what you want. Patience, acceptance, gratitude for what we already have is the way. That creates the fertile ground for mystical insights (so I keep telling myself LOL).
  11. @Buba I feel for you, 14 years is such a long time to be in pain. To suppress a part of yourself and have an inner conflict about it. I'm glad to know you're getting therapy for this, and that it seems to be helping. I remember Leo talking about expressing the repressed part of ourselves in his videos - it might be the mini-series on 'How Fear Works', perhaps someone here knows. If you have inner gay feelings try to acknowledge, accept and love them, as a valid part of yourself, even if you don't go and actually have a gay relationship. It could be you are bisexual and capable of loving both men and women, but your social conditioning has caused this inner conflict. If you are bi you can still have the life of your dreams, perhaps with a woman, once you have been through the transformation of self acceptance and self love. Although I live in a country that's fairly tolerant of LGBT, not all places are, so that could be an issue too. I don't know about actual life after death, reincarnation, heaven & hell etc. I rationalise these stories as states of mind in this life, in the present moment. For example, realising that the sense of self, I, is reborn moment by moment from the energies of the mind.
  12. @Buba bro, it sounds like you're in a bad place, are you asking this because you're feeling suicidal? If you are, please seek professional help urgently rather than expecting reincarnation to solve your problems. We need to start from where we're at, and make gradual steps in real life to find happiness, instead of thinking the grass is greener somewhere else.
  13. Yes it's a long road, even though we know the truth is already here. Yet we still need to walk the path to find it. I have drifted away over the years but always been drawn back to the spiritual path by an inner intuition. Second thoughts, third, fourth, fifth thoughts are all just fine you can keep questioning and reviewing where you're at and keep it fresh.
  14. There's a coincidence that I was also thinking this exact same question this afternoon I had a thought that we learn language and ideas as we grow up so therefore thoughts spring up from our memory somehow, there's a process going on stringing together ideas already held in memory. I remembered that J Krishnamurti used to teach something similar (another memory from reading his books!) and then I also spent some time simply observing the now without thought. I felt perhaps I could see what Krishnamurti was getting at, there was a vivid contrast between thinking conceptually from my memory banks and just being in the here and now, free from the past. What this process is, which picks up bits of memory and strings them together into a new thought stream is a bit mysterious though. Maybe the 'executive function' (part of the brain).
  15. @CreamCat ah yes that makes sense, in the current system politicians need a lot of cash to get elected so end up owing a lot of favours in return. I think Leo suggests in his politics videos, state funding of political parties & election campaigns to reduce this problem, which sounds a good step.
  16. I don't get it, are you saying the Russians are pulling the strings behind the Middle East conflicts and the US govt? Is anyone controlling Putin or is he the top dog? This sounds like a conspiracy theory, what's the evidence?
  17. The Canadians may well blame Trump, in the sense that consequences are not going to be predictable or controllable in such a volatile situation. They are innocent victims. Equally we don't know the consequences if Trump didn't assassinate Soleimani, who Trump claims was plotting more attacks on Americans. It could turn out to be a strategic blunder, or not, who knows what the new general will do to prove himself. "in a place where we really don't have any business being in the first place anyways. " This is making me think too. The US is supposed to be supporting the Iraqis against terrorists until they can fend for themselves. Presumably that's why the Iranians are there too. What's the alternative to foreign assistance, to avoid being overrun by Isis, Taliban etc, like Syria & Afghanistan?
  18. I don't understand why feminism gets blamed for the issue of child custody in divorce anyway. It's patriarchy which traditionally says women's place is at home looking after the kids. The feminism I know about says it should be equal decision making on roles, not fixed roles depending on your gender.
  19. @SerpaeTetra Hi, are you referring to this theory (copied from BBC news website) "US media have speculated that the timing of the crash suggests the plane may have been mistaken for a US warplane as Iran prepared for possible US retaliation for the strikes." Iran is denying they shot down the Ukrainian plane with a missile. I don't know what to believe yet, it's early days and of course the evidence obtained by secret intelligence agencies will never be published. Maybe it comes down to who you trust more to tell the truth. But, if you're creating a principle that retaliation is (at least partly) the responsibility of the previous offender, then we need to trace it all the way back. Trump's action was retaliation against Iranian general Qasem Soleimani too, wasn't it? And so on back in time.
  20. Hi @Sartanion I don't have any more worries than usual at the moment about the state of the world, although there's plenty of dangers around. Is your feeling a general one, or is there a particular subject such as the environment, war, disease?
  21. @Girzo good point. Maybe focus at least some of your goodwill locally where you can more easily see the need & response. Your local children's hospital, hospice, disabled charity or homeless shelter perhaps?
  22. "patriarchy is literally in our DNA" also matriarchy, some tribal cultures and families are matriarchal and matrilineal, even if it's a minority the DNA memory is still there available to be reactivated (if this type of thing is genetic, I'm not an expert). " It was never meant for women to work in. " If that was the intention in the past, it's failing now. Women have been chipping away at it for centuries. Where I work (I'm a man in my 50s), I've had women colleagues and managers my whole working life. Many traditionally male professions like engineering and accountancy are actively promoting yin soft skills these days to complement the yang hard technical knowledge. I'm using yin & yang because I find feminine & masculine too similar cognitively to female & male; it's easier to see that we're all a mixture of yin & yang. " I don't know how practical it is to come up with an entirely new way of survival from scratch." Me too, I don't suggest it I'm not a revolutionary. More like a gradual evolution of the current systems to allow everyone the opportunity to develop themselves and their yin/yang balance to follow their dreams. Eg to keep up in my office workplace I need to work on my yin soft skills such as communication and empathy to be well rounded. I think we're agreed that this is all contextual; it's no good trying to force a society to develop if the people aren't ready. Also individuals who are at a very different stage from the bulk of their society will have a hard time fitting in! " Secondly, equality was never on the table to begin with. Men and women are fundamentally different with different niches in the system." Apart from having babies, why shouldn't women aspire to whatever niches they want, and have equal opps access to training and job vacancies etc, unless there's a compelling reason why not? I would put equal opps as the default position for fairness' sake unless there's a damn good reason to waive it. Although, whoever designs and polices 'the system' will do so according to their own philosophy and beliefs. The old religious authority underpinning the philosophy has largely crumbled away, and we currently have a mixture of rational science, plus whatever sociology you happen to prefer. We are in a stage of rapid theoretical change now. I suppose it's all up for grabs, systems and people don't have to be fixed for all eternity, but even if only a minority of people want to break out of gender stereotypes, why should we deliberately try to stop them? " We really need to get in touch with our masculinity/femininity (both men and women have masculinity and femininity) to clear up these confusions! I have a feeling that the way it'll actually play out is that the more conscious our society gets, the more this current system will get reformed to accommodate for the authentic niches of everyone. " I suppose the system needs to optimise life for the individual as well as the community, and we're lucky if we live somewhere that the system is capable of being reformed without too much backlash. We need to get in touch with our whole selves - this masculine/feminine or yang/yin thing is really a very approximate and limited model, a broad brush to describe something far more complex.
  23. "the patriarchy has been pretty successful in physically surviving the human species for thousands upon thousands of years. " Stages red and blue, with some purple (although tribal societies can be matriarchal too). "All the dysfunctions in it are only because of lack of consciousness" Transition to stage orange, as more highly skilled workers and middle class consumers need to be recruited - women are an obvious source. "Once those get resolved, I can see it working!" Stage green will start to see women as of equal value, but with overcompensation (pendulum swinging too far), this should be resolved in stage yellow? Not patriarchy nor matriarchy but a new -archy incorporating equal opportunities and meritocracy.
  24. @Annoynymous "The world is evolving " It sure is. I heard an interesting programme on the BBC world service this morning, about the geopolitical changes on the horizon as the world transitions away from fossil fuels to green alternatives. It seems that some of the big oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia etc are still in denial about needing to diversify, and how quickly technology is starting to develop. They were warning that further political instability and migration could be on the cards, when oil consuming countries don't need them any more. This is turning into a fascinating century all right.
  25. How about looking at it as a multiple choice, fill in the blanks: It's all manufactured so that X can spread Y around the world. X = USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UK, USSR, Vatican, Apple. Y = Neoliberalism, Shiite Islam, Wahhabism, British Empire, Communism, Catholicism, iphones. Powerful institutions looking after their self-interest. When we get to the root causes, it's not about the particular ideology but something more deep rooted in human ego.