silene

@LfcCharlie4 @undeather Right on. Dieting is a multi billion global industry, connected with another multi billion industry of addictive junk food. The basic advice on diet and exercise is available for free from responsible governments, but It’s the psychological habits which are hard to break. We abuse our bodies for years, then expect an instant magic cure from the medics! Yes I agree there's a deeper problem where we are indoctrinated into seeking instant gratification from a young age; stage orange consumerism and marketing doesn't help. It's all part of this spiritual work of seeing the bigger picture, the long-term over the short-term perspective. Broadening our minds. On the breathatarians, yes by all means do scientific research, but I can't help being a little bit skeptical about people claiming special powers, siddhis etc, in case it's just attention seeking by egos. 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.

@Lento @Inliytened1 thanks, this is helpful. I do find my mind having these two distinct states. I have an intuition there is a deeper level which encompasses both duality and nonduality, some people talk like that, but haven't reached it yet. It's ok either way. I'm not striving for anything other than awareness of the present moment.

@Lento I get what you've saying in theory, but in practice I'm only aware of nonduality at 'special' moments, when my mind is in a state of stillness. Perhaps that's just my nature, or state of development or something. Anyway, just curious if anyone here experiences nonduality while thinking.

I have an app called Meditation Timer from http://telesense.co.uk it is simple to use and easy to read without my glasses on. It has a gong which I like better than an electronic bleeper. But there's loads to choose from in the app stores. I also just sent off for a 30 minute sand timer from ebay, I fancy trying a quiet low tec option too.

Speaking as someone who struggles with a strict routine of daily sittings, I find it helps doing daily life mindfulness too, which I can practice in most activities. Probably a regular combination of both is best, but just do what you can and don't add to your worries thinking "I'm not doing it right if I miss a session." It's also probably worth looking at where you got your narrative about "doing it right" from. All meditation teachers say we have a monkey mind full of obsessive thoughts. If you're following the technique you're doing it right. Maybe you are comparing your actual monkey mind with some ideal of a mind without thought. silent, still, blissful etc. So you think you aren't getting the right outcome. I totally sympathise because I was like that too. For a long time. But the paradox is, the more you accept your imperfections, perturbations, turbulence, the more peaceful you become.

My glimpses of nonduality have so far all occurred when my thinking has stopped. Is nondual awareness incompatible with thought? If so, then when we're in a state without thought, cognition, recognition, interpretation, mental map-making, then we aren't having illusions, truthful concepts or anything abstract like that. Just pure awareness of sense perception. Maybe. I'm still looking.

@Rookie I agree with you about how FPTP skews the number of MPs elected. The largest minority by party (we never get proper majorities) wins the lion's share of power. But if Leo & others are right about the inevitably of progress up the SD spiral in the long term, and we keep FPTP. we will eventually reach a tipping point when the old traditions are overwhelmed and locked out of power. I'm not yet convinced that progress is inevitable, but history does give me reason for optimism.

@andyjohnsonman fair enough, I'm not going to quibble about numbers, 3% was only a guess to indicate that there's a lot more blue & orange than green (rather like me lol). Actually I don't have anything to support an accurate calculation, but I think we're in the same ballpark. @Nivsch I don't have enough direct experience to make comparisons with mainland Europe. At a rough guess I'd say the UK is similar to the North & West European average. Perhaps we're more progressive in some ways and less in others, balancing out. What do you think?

If everything is an illusion then: 1. The question "If everything is an illusion why drink water?" is an illusion, so doesn't require an answer. 2. Any answers I can give are also illusory, so don't help. 3. My mind, which is thinking about this question, is also an illusion. It's an illusion having illusions. 4. It's illusion all the way down. Nothing is real. We have no reliable yardstick to measure what's true and what isn't. The proposition that everything is an illusion, is absurd, paradoxical, at least in a conventional sense. An illusion is the mind misinterpreting real physical data. Like real hot air in the desert being misunderstood as a lake. We need both illusion and truth for us to understand either.

"All views expressed are my dad's." I love this - when I was about 40 I realised I was turning into my dad. Little phrases, attitudes, mannerisms, even his vertigo. It was a bit shocking at first but I've grown to accept this development in me. I just hope I am being a good dad myself.

I known that development was historically speeding up from purple to red to blue, but realistically we are looking at hundreds of years for the whole society to progress and move on. The UK is frankly still in progress from blue to orange at the moment, with a small percent, maybe 2 or 3 % spearheading into green. But it's ok, we are where we are, it's more important to learn our lessons thoroughly than to try and rush through.

I'm not a big fan either but he did do some good things too. He brought in the minimum wage. Devolution for Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. Civil partnerships for same-sex couples. The Good Friday Agreement. I wish this election could have been only about Brexit, I'm actually in favour of it, but we need another general election in the Spring, after we leave the EU, to discuss properly all the other issues. We have an SD split here which divides the main political parties so Labour, for instance, has a lot of orange and green activists in the South who don't really understand the blue heartlands in the North, that swing to the Conservatives.

I love the clarity of your writing style, you express so much in an accessible and succinct way. Makes it memorable, inspirational. Best wishes with following your path.

Great and amazing - yes sometimes. Other times life is just a pain when I'm resisting what needs to be done. But I'm in a place where I can feel the deeper sense of ease, effortlessness, a gentle bliss beneath my surface layer of turbulence (amazing and horrible). You're right there's wisdom in changing what needs to be changed. Also wisdom in not changing anything, infinite acceptance. Relative truth is just as important as absolute truth.

@Inliytened1 more likely just the footprints I wish there was a more 21st century version of the Oxherding pictures, or jhanas etc for today's postmodern world.

@Inliytened1 Thanks, that makes sense, I just don't follow gurus (or at least anyone who calls themself a guru) so I'm not up on what they claim. I can try to describe what happens to me. It's like I flip over from my 'normal' dualistic framework of me the observer, feeling the feelings in my mind (or hearing sounds, seeing sights etc). To there being no me, no observer, no mind, the feelings are awareness, the observer is the observed, the sounds are pure awareness. To say there is no mind is the same as saying that everything is mind. Then pop, back comes the me. When I think about it (like now), I'm still in duality because I'm trying to remember what it's like.

Hi @Raptorsin7 I'm a bit confused here. "gurus always claim that they can't actually point to the non-dual nature of reality." "They say they can't actually show you it, they can only point you in it's direction. " So can they point to it or not? You're already immersed in reality. Or part of reality. You don't need to point to reality, it's everywhere (including the pointing finger). It's the "you" which they can't point to, which thinks it's separate from reality. At least that's my interpretation.

@Raptorsin7 good call, yes I've started reading it, a great resource. You're right about making the path compatible with our life; the other choice would be to make our life compatible with the path! Perhaps I'm underestimating the value of mindfulness in my worldly life, and expecting too much from monkish meditation.

12-dec-19 MEDITATION This week I'm doing a concentration, navel contemplation, as a break from 'just being' meditation. I was getting an issue with the being though. What to do about thoughts, music etc in my mind? The question arose 'Everything is being so I shouldn't be excluding anything. That's a division, dualism, splitting the mind into what is allowed and not allowed in meditation. This type of meditation is not about concentrating on an object, but opening up, surrendering to the whole of being. So, if my mind starts an intentional activity like thought, do I let it go (letting go meditation), or let it be (like Leo's do nothing meditation). Something to return to next week. WEIGHT LOSS I'm still stuck on a plateau and haven't lost any more weight, not helped by it being the Yuletide season (I baked a fruit cake today!). Also personal circumstances limit my exercise at the moment I'm off work. So I'm working with the psychology of eating less. How an empty stomach and hunger causes an automatic thought and feeling pattern "must eat, fill myself up to get rid of this hunger" . Then I mindfully observe and let the hunger be, after a while it passes. Drinking water mindfully helps too. OTHER THOUGHTS Some in the forum say that full awakening is a long and arduous process, I should meditate at least an hour per day, do other practices, go on long intensive retreats etc. But I'm a family man, a husband, dad, employee. I can't be a rock to my family while I go on retreats or other solo practices. My strong intuition is that I am where I should be right now, this is my life purpose, vocation, calling. Love/Being wants me to be what the Buddhists call a 'householder' or family man rather than a monk, even a modern secular monk. How to be a good parent, to embody morality, spirituality, self-esteem etc without imposing my made-up religion on them. Maybe parenting would be worth a thread on the forum.

Greetings kamekat and welcome to the forum Sometimes it's hard to know if the struggles we all experience are just part of the process, or a sign that we aren't on the optimal path or technique for ourselves. It takes time to build up that experience, especially if we are following a solo path, rather than belonging to an organisation. But as a rule of thumb, there's no need to be judgemental about your meditation sessions. If it feels like a struggle and you can't keep your attention on your meditation object, that doesn't mean it's a bad or unsuccessful session. Likewise, a focused, relaxed and blissful session isn't necessarily better. You develop and make progress either way. Me too. I have a basic theoretical understanding in my mind, but only enough to get bogged down in paradox. But that's kind of the point, the spiritual side of nonduality (as opposed to the philosophical side) is trying to point us beyond the intellectual understanding to direct awareness. Hence the promotion of practices like meditation and yoga. So the moral is, don't worry if you don't understand nonduality. Feel free to treat all the ideas here as purely provisional until you have built up your own experience to the level when you can find out for yourself.

A lot of forum members appear to subscribe to something similar to the Buddhist Two Truths Doctrine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine ) - I do more or less myself - which posits there are relative and absolute truths or perspectives (or conventional and ultimate, or a similar description). I have seen many debates like this which hinge on a mixup between the two types of perspective. Most of us are firmly established in the relative perspective with little awareness of the absolute, so we interpret the narrative from that side; someone like Leo is presumably spending more time in the absolute perspective. But we don't have a good language to describe the absolute, often people use the same name like 'morality' for both relative and absolute, so unless you are pretty familiar with this subject, it's very easy to get the wrong end of the stick. I don't have a good solution to this problem, with written text sometimes people use an uppercase when referring to the absolute, eg Consciousness vs consciousness, Truth vs truth, although this isn't very consistent. Also that doesn't work for the spoken word. My hope is that this will work itself out over time.

This reminds me of Enoch Powell and his infamous 1968 'Rivers of blood' speech ... what's that saying, the more things change the more they stay the same.

This is a good discussion, it's helped remind me how negative and fear-based most politics is. We end up with a situation where the 2 most powerful parties have no interest in changing the system so we get locked into an apparently minimal choice for the voters. It requires a powerful disruptive energy to change that, but I'm doubtful if even Brexit is powerful enough, perhaps climate change (if real) will do it? The other consequence is that the alliance and deal making which goes with proportional systems, has to occur within the political parties, in a FPTP (first past the post) system. This is why we have such internal party wranglings in my country (beyond the reach of ordinary voters).

Would you say enlightenment is a sudden binary thing, or a gradual development with degrees of enlightenment? I'm curious that we talk about spiral dynamics for psychological development, but I've not come across a good modern equivalent for spiritual development. Some ancient religions have them, like the oxherding pictures. Perhaps I've just missed it in my reading.

Maybe this is your ego or inner self (inner child) feeling threatened by your development work, and its resistance is manifesting itself through a thought pattern of skepticism. Just a guess, you need to look into yourself to find out really. I suppose your therapist has a point, the quickest way to overcome fears and anxieties is to face them directly, mindfully. But it's not easy is it, otherwise we wouldn't need all these therapists, counsellors, life coaches etc to help us through it Are you committed to a particular meditation style? If not it may be worth trying a different one, or starting with a shorter time and building up slowly. Or meditation plus another practice such as art to get used to observing your feelings and expressing them. But I don't want to interfere with your therapy process either, so maybe it's best to talk with your therapist about it again rather than just accept their view that 'it will be fine'. If you feel it's not working, there's no harm in telling them is there? You're the client after all.