silene

Hi @Codrina , I think this subject may be better placed in another area of the forum, but here goes. "Just do the work" is a common phrase, (I don't know which article you read but the phrase is common anyway, I've used it myself). As we grow up and mature, get older etc, life throws us into many challenges whether we like it or not. This "work," whether you call it Personal or Spiritual Development or something else, is to help us find and grow into the truth of life. It doesn't have to be Leo's methods particularly, just what works for you. It's on a spectrum from practical things like helping with finding the right career or education path, helping in our relationships, all the way to deep mystical awareness. It may be a mixture of several dimensions. Just having the self-knowledge to know where to begin, what is the right stage and path for each of us to follow, is as important as doing the actual "work".

My current meditation could be called Being with 'let it be' as the technique and 'awareness of being' as the result. I remembered that in the Abrahamic religions the word Amen means 'So be it'. That's very similar to let it be, so I could say I'm doing Amen meditation How about, after saying saying a few minutes of prayers, the Christians, Jews and Muslims spend 30 mins doing silent 'Amen.' It's usually quite effortless doing Being meditation, but sometimes it's hard to know if I'm drifting off in thoughts, etc, or if that is just part of the process to let it be. When I realise I am thinking, do I do anything about it, or just let it flow? Whether to get involved in a decision-making processes to control my mind? If I were to do that, it assumes I have free will to make a decision and action it. There is an 'executive function' in the mind, which makes decisions and I suppose, corresponds to the will (free or not). But it certainly feels like I can make an effort to move my thought in a particular direction, or stop it (let it go). The current challenge with my meditation is what to do with my intentional activities, rather than the automatic processes.

Mon 30-dec19 New Year's Resolutions. 1. Physical. 1.1. Diet. Reduce: hydrogenated, trans, saturated fat, refined carbs , sugar, salt, artificial sweetners, processed food in general. Acrylamide. Caffeine. Increase: fruit, veg, unrefined & unprocessed natural food, water, herb tea. Reach BMI =21.5 and waist/height ratio = 0.48. 1.2. Exercise. Mainly walking & gardening. Also Hatha yoga for physical suppleness, preventing backache. 1.3. Regular sleep routines. Decluttering, sell or give away old unused stuff. 2. Intellectual knowledge, broadening understanding, education. 2.1 Spiritual videos for theoretical knowledge, 2.2 Follow up new leads on spiritual teachers (see later post). 2.3 Pick up on learning Python programming, build some simple apps eg a calculator, a meditation timer. 3. Meditation and mindfulness/awareness. 3.1 Meditation. Improve my daily routine to ideally 30 mins morning and evening, but aware this is a tough challenge, especially in the mornings! 3.2 Mindfulness/awareness. Practice what I am learning from books etc. If more support needed, look for other material. 4. Service to others (eg karma). 4.1 Voluntary work. 4.2 Blood donors. 5 Devotion and love (eg bhakti, worship, prayer) - not applicable for me. 6. Energy work (eg kundalini, tantra, chi kung, reiki) - not applicable for me. 7. Nature connection. Gardening, wilderness, environmentalism, rambling. Prudent living, crafting, DIY. All of these, as time allows.

Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia. Dictatorships where very bad things happened. But when the dictators were overthrown, the forces which the dictators were keeping in check were free to create their own havoc. This is also the West's dilemma in Syria: do we support the rebels against the Assad regime, only to face many years of a bloody "peacekeeping" mission? Yes dictators are awful but we need to understand the culture well to know what are the likely alternatives.

I get a feint greenish colour when I close my eyes, mostly noticeable in bed at night which moves around - I haven't noticed a link with meditation but I'll try and find out. I don't often have complete utter blackness when I'm in a dark room. I just assumed it was a background visual "white noise", like an optical tinnitus or what the Zen people call makyo.

God doesn't exist, as an entity in existence. God is existence itself. Or Being, Reality etc, if you're an atheist and prefer a different name. What is prior to existence? Not Nothingness, emptiness, because those need existence to exist as well (that's a riddle ).

I know this is a dualistic perspective, but the physical aspect of gender (organs, hormones, DNA etc) doesn't always align with the psychological aspect. As when some people feel from a young age that they are the 'other' gender in their mind and feelings, from their physical body. Some components of the physical body can be changed - organs, hormones, although not currently DNA. I wonder if this issue gets resolved at SD stage green, which has less of a problem with grey areas, changing and relativity of categories such as male and female.

I was given the advice if sitting cross legged, to have my hips higher than my knees and create a stable tripod effect. So I use a firm support under my cushion like a yoga block or bolster (Tibetans call it a gomden), as a cushion doesn't give me enough height off the floor. It's a case of experimenting till you find what's comfortable for you.

Cool, you're way ahead of me about the reading Concentration. I do mindfulness of navel (body awareness fixed at the navel, sometimes called 'navel-gazing' by cynics), previously mindfulness of breathing. Insight. I do what I call being meditation, which I'm currently learning, following on from my previous practices of choiceless awareness, letting go and body scan. I've tried various other techniques in the past, like mantra meditation, visualisation, self enquiry, loving kindness and its related types. But those didn't gell with me, or perhaps I'm not ready yet.

'Letting go' is the meditation practice which life gives me around kids. As in, I want to do X, but have to let it go and be present with the child. God laughs at my plans

This is like pure poetry.

I suggest the opposite is true: the stay-at-home, non-working woman is a minority lifestyle mainly practiced by middle and upper income families. We mustn't forget that housework, childcare, care of the elderly etc is still work, but reading between the lines perhaps you really mean paid employment. However, I've seen plenty of examples of working class women, toiling in the fields, mills and factories. Then I saw this quote from Wikipedia on hunter gatherer societies: "One common arrangement is the sexual division of labour, with women doing most of the gathering, while men concentrate on big game hunting. In all hunter-gatherer societies, women appreciate the meat brought back to camp by men. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'.[30] Recent archaeological research suggests that the sexual division of labor was the fundamental organisational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe.[31]" So both women and men have always worked and contributed to their families and tribes. What's newish is challenging the traditional types of work allowed, especially for poorer men and women.

Quote from Mindfulness for Dummies 2nd edition by Shamash Alidina. P. 315. Book I'm currently reading, this paragraph relates to the direction of travel of my meditation style. "Mindfulness is about letting go of doing. It is about simply being as you are. Being yourself, whatever you think of yourself. Being yourself isn't a technique. You can't do non-doing. Non-doing means letting go of all techniques with their desired outcomes and just being."

Third memo for journalling work. From thread "Is meditation useless?" 9 hours ago, LfcCharlie4 said: "my personal favortie is Pure Awareness meditation or Resting in the absolute" Me: Can you recommend any good writings or videos on this please, or 'abidance as primordial awareness'? Sounds like what I am working towards, although at this stage the names get a bit fuzzy. Is it like Leo's Do Nothing technique? I'm trying to move on from Choiceless Awareness, which has been a step-change eye opener for me. But when I look into the more unstructured techniques (non-techniques might be a better term) it's a bit difficult to be specific and distinct about the various types. Posted 7 hours ago · Report post _______________________ @silene Defo, Check out any of these Adyashanti Rupert Spira Ramaji They all have ebooks on amazon you can get for <$10. ------------------------------------------------

Many thanks for these names, I have seen a couple of Rupert's videos but not about this topic. Don't know the others yet but I'll check them out too. More raw material for the journey

Well if he isn't suggesting an alternative, better approach than spirituality (however you define that vague word), then what are we left with? Stage orange rationalism or what? He doesn't come across as a rationalist in the quotes above.

Can you recommend any good writings or videos on this please, or 'abidance as primordial awareness'? Sounds like what I am working towards, although at this stage the names get a bit fuzzy. Is it like Leo's Do Nothing technique? I'm trying to move on from Choiceless Awareness, which has been a step-change eye opener for me. But when I look into the more unstructured techniques (non-techniques might be a better term) it's a bit difficult to be specific and distinct about the various types.

I I wonder if this is linked to the fight & fight response. I recently learned that f&f has been renamed as ff&f: fight, flight and freeze response. It's a short-term survival strategy. If there's an underlying anxiety or fear we are avoiding, then procrastination to avoid the issue could be (emotionally) like an animal curling up and playing dead, or burying their head in the sand until the threat goes away. Except that usually the problem is still there tomorrow, but the primitive "reptile" brainstem area of our brains which controls ff&f doesn't think rationally.

I would suggest upping the time first, and/or sitting twice per day, because you probably haven't sucked all the juice from your current technique on 15 mins per day. It can sometimes take me that long just to settle down lol. By all means try another technique, it's a good idea to have several techniques available for you. But I wouldn't get too hung up on how 'advanced' they are. It's more about what works best for you at the moment. Eg I use two methods, for concentration and insight. Also read a variety of books from different traditions (or online research if that's your thing) to get a good grounding in the breadth of this big subject. That should help you in deciding what general direction you want to take.

Acting on immediate impulse doesn't always lead to the wisest choices. Sometimes you don't know all the facts, or haven't delved deep enough into your feelings, to know what to do for best. So waiting for a while can be a good idea. It's not necessarily laziness. On the other hand, you may know perfectly well what needs doing and still procrastinate, because you are in a mechanism of short-term gratification and survival at the expense of long term.

@V-8 "I've not heard of an Awakened Being advocate meditation. (Buddha, Tilopa, Lao-Tzu, Hui Neng, Saraha, Wei Wu Wei, etc.)" In a literal sense of course, we've little idea what some of these spiritual teachers from the ancient world actually said, even if they did actually exist. But in the case of Buddhism, there are meditation instructions in the Pali Canon (early Buddhist scriptures) for mindfulness of breathing meditation (Anapanasati Sutta) and insight meditation (Satipatthana Sutta). And I've only read a handful of Suttas so there may be more. @LfcCharlie4 "You'll know within yourself what is the best path for you, and you should follow that guidance system, " Speaking for myself only, my spiritual journey has been winding and disjointed, several times what I thought at the time was the best path turned out to be sub-optimal although not without merit for me. Insight and intuition are very similar if not the same quality imo, and a skill which spirituality is trying to develop in us. So, it seems like that as an unskilled young newbie, I was in a catch 22 of lacking enough intuition to know the best path for me to learn intuition But over many years I've gradually got somewhere. Looks like I'm on the gradual path rather than sudden! It's ok, I've no regrets, I'd probably do it all over again from the same starting point.

Copied from Meditation forum thread "Am I meditating correctly?" for some further journalling work around how I practice in these categories._ ___________________ We could do with an updated list of categories of spiritual practice, like Patanjali's types of yoga. How about this for a start: Physical activity (eg hatha) incl bodywork, breath work, diet, exercise, sleep, cleanliness, declutteriing. Intellectual knowledge, broadening our understanding, education. Meditation and mindfulness (dhyana?) Service to others (eg karma). Devotion and love (eg bhakti, worship, prayer) Energy work (eg kundalini, tantra, chi kung, reiki) Nature connection. Gardening, wilderness, environmentalism, animals, rambling. Prudent living, make your own things, DIY. Obviously we don't need to practice all of them, or be into yoga, it's just an indication of some categories which are available. And I love a good list Although this is harder than I expected, as there's overlaps eg service and love are connected.

Copied from Meditation forum thread "If everything is an illusion why drink water ? " for research into Dieting subject of my journal. Some useful ideas to follow up. _____________ undeather Quote There is a grain of truth here though, isn't there some good research about the health and life-extension effects of a low calorie diet? I recall reading about some research on animals to do with this. Yes, definitely! If you eat about 20% less calories than you "need", your body will activate certain genetic/epigenetic pathways that will ultimately make you live longer. At least thats the hypothesis most studies nowadays work with. Its not a fun life though. Most people will feel incredibly cold and tired because of it, so not really worth it in my opinion. Also, most of the data is comming from studies with rodents. There are some epidemiologic human studies out there that show a similar result, but the interpretation is quite difficult because of all the cofactors that come into play. We will have to wait and see! What we already know for sure is that a high plant based, high fiber, high good carb diet is a wonderful key for longevity. _____________ silene @undeather fantastic thanks This is a bit off-topic, I know there's a different area for health issues, so I'll not labour the point. But I've been dieting fairly successfully recently, and wondering what to do when I reach my ideal weight. Increase my calories a bit to stay there? Or keep on low calories for good health, maybe activate these genetic pathways and see how it goes? I'll follow up in my journalling. Attachment requires things, but only processes exist. ___________________ undeather Experiment with it! This is obviously a highly individual thing and sometimes really, really counter intuitive. For example, some internvention might make you feel subjectively worse in general, but could also play a big positive role in your longevity. If you really want to get nerdy on that, research the Horvath-clock. Its basically a measurement of methylation processes in your DNA and propably the best predictor of your real bilogical age at the moment. We know that this clock can be influenced by certain epigenetic triggers, so if you want to have any real metric on how your diet/lifestyle is influencing your actual health, this is the way to go! ______________________

@undeather fantastic thanks This is a bit off-topic, I know there's a different area for health issues, so I'll not labour the point. But I've been dieting fairly successfully recently, and wondering what to do when I reach my ideal weight. Increase my calories a bit to stay there? Or keep on low calories for good health, maybe activate these genetic pathways and see how it goes? I'll follow up in my journalling.

This is good advice. We could do with an updated list of categories of spiritual practice, like Patanjali's types of yoga. How about this for a start: Physical activity (eg hatha) incl bodywork, breath work, diet, exercise, sleep, cleanliness, declutteriing. Intellectual knowledge, broadening our understanding, education. Meditation and mindfulness (dhyana?) Service to others (eg karma). Devotion and love (eg bhakti, worship, prayer) Energy work (eg kundalini, tantra, chi kung, reiki) Nature connection. Gardening, wilderness, environmentalism, animals, rambling. Prudent living, make your own things, DIY. Obviously we don't need to practice all of them, or be into yoga, it's just an indication of some categories which are available. And I love a good list Although this is harder than I expected, as there's overlaps eg service and love are connected.