snowyowl

Yeah, I've had a sleep and think I get it now. Conditional happiness (ie pleasure) is what we chase after (or run away from unhappiness). Unconditional happiness is, like nirvana, already here, we don't need to go anywhere apart from uncovering it from the layers of our psyche which are obscuring it. Including the seeking which is just another cloak over the naked reality

Eh? You're saying that happiness is what makes me happy - how is that an insight? What do I need to do to get there?

These two quotes seem to contradict, is it the 'thing in the world' which creates our relative happiness (unhappiness), or our attachments? Maybe I've quoted you out of context? But I agree (in theory) that non-attachment = unconditional happiness. BTW, who or what does the attaching? I thought there's no-one there inside with free will to attach to stuff anyway? Or, it's all imaginary. illusory? Edit: why is this your last insight you're sharing with us? I love your posts here, but if you've decided to stop it'd be good to know why

I like this analogy, and I've never been comfortable with the perspective of 'illusion', non-existence of ego etc. Any analogy is limited of course, we can just as well talk about height, breadth and meta-perspectives too. I'm not keen on the word 'reality' either, which creates (for me) more confusion than light and clarity.

I don't think this is only a feature of 'western' society. In the 'east' too, from what I've heard, serious spiritual practice is done by a minority, there's plenty of Buddhist monks even who don't meditate much. But it's okay, if stage orange is where most folks are at, meditation is a good tool to help with progress until we're ready to move on. In fact, meditation can be a constant in an uncertain world, staying with us whatever stages we're going through.

Just call it Being, Absolute Reality, or Infinity, then you can still be an atheist if you want. Why are these labels so important anyway, when it's the nameless awareness which matters?

Hi and welcome to the forum! Let's see if I get this. You had a glimpse of infinity at 10, then spent 35 years living a regular life, followed by 5 years of spiritual research. Well, that's pretty awesome, but you don't mention if you have a practice apart from your peyote trips. You seem to know a lot of theory, and has any spiritual path and practice appealed to you to commit yourself to daily practice?

I remember that Ajahn Sumedho of the Theravada tradition used to teach about a background 'sound of silence' - mentions it here in the introduction (p14) https://cdn.amaravati.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Ajahn-Sumedho-Volume-4-The-Sound-of-Silence.pdf

This may be true, I don't really know. But what's your reasoning why a socialistic economy would be less prone to a severe recession?

@SamC is it high or low pitched? I get both myself, but the low pitched is also known as the Worldwide Hum (or Taos Hum, or just The Hum) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum which isn't necessarily Tinnitus but there's various theories as to the cause. Another thought - have you had your ears checked for ear wax recently?

Sorry to hear you've been going through this, and welcome to the forum. Please take care of yourself and your health, that is the most 'spiritual' thing you need to do at the moment. Give the detox time to clean yourself out, engage with the professional help. Try spending time with nature, start an exercise routine, healthy diet, good sleep routine and daily meditation. Slow down a bit and relax. Learn to have regular friendships and relationships - remember that females are whole people too, not just for sex. At 18 years old you are beginning your adult life, don't worry about awakening etc, look at Maslow's Pyramid and focus on where you are at. Please try to find peace in the moment you are in, rather than chasing after sensations and experiences to get happiness somewhere else.

@Danioover9000 sorry to hear you've been depressed, but good that Crysty helped you with it. Much love to you both

Rupert Spira made a comment once which made sense to me. I forget the details, but the gist was that for most people, nondual experiences are beauty and love. Beauty is when you forget yourself in something impersonal, like some art, or nature like a beautiful sunset. Love is when your ego merges or expands into another person. Basically you realise the boundaries of self are relative, change according to the situation, not fixed to your individuality.

@Moksha Interesting ... I've re-read both out posts, and although there's a difference in vocabulary, but there's a similar structure. One centre (feeling or truth), with a diverse collection of types (specialised feelings or body/mind/perception etc). Not so far apart after all.

@Moksha I'm intrigued ... how can there be a hierarchy of truth like this? A sensation is a sensation, a feeling is a feeling, I don't get how that is anything other than the absolute truth? Thought can be untrue, I get that, if it's not pointing to the 'right' thing. Thought can interpret a feeling accurately or inaccurately, but the feeling or sensation itself is, well, just itself.

This reminds me of a revelation I had the other day. "It's all feeling." Emotions, yes they are feeling. Sense perceptions too, are feeling the energy vibrations we receive from outside the body. Even thoughts are feelings running inside the brain/mind - more specialised feelings, but internal types of feelings made from the sensation of memories circulating in awareness, specialised because they are structured in language. In fact, awareness = feeling = matter/energy sensitive to itself.

Sport is rather like a sanitised and ritualised version of violence; a safety valve in society to express emotions in a safer way. Also, I've often wondered why violence in popular media is more acceptable than sex. I mean, there's plenty of films, detective stories etc about murder and other violence, but sex is much more heavily censored. I'm all for protecting children from inappropriate content, but there does seem to be an inconsistency.

@Daniel Coulson hi and welcome to the forum! I'll agree to differ on the definition of war. At any rate they are a different type of conflict to country-country wars, they have governments on one side and something else on the other side, like organised crime or terrorist groups.

@Yog ha ha didn't cross my mind! @Osaid yeah, Samadhi is the name. On second thoughts the meditation object can be something internal too, like the breath, your body like a hand or your navel. or a mantra and you can become one with it too. It's got two approaches: concentration practice on the object, and insight (into no-self) which is samadhi.

@InterruptReQuest Hi, I've experimented a bit with this as a meditation technique. but not in the sense of my consciousness separating from my body and moving into another object as you describe. Its more like starting from a state of me observing the object as an external separate thing, in a subject-object relationship. And moving to a state of unity where the duality collapses, the observer merges with the observed. So there is no longer an object 'in consciousness', just pure consciousness. There's a description of a technique like this called Dhyana here: https://www.wikihow.com/Do-Dhyana (wikihow has a good section of meditation techniques for beginners https://www.wikihow.com/Category:Meditation ). Have you tried anything like this, or doing some research first?

By my count we're up to WW6 for the next world war (WW1, WW2, then the cold war, war on drugs, war on terror, all of them very bad). But no I don't think Trump will start a war. He's too busy with recounts, court cases, and fundraising right now as far as I can see. Somehow I ended up on his mailing list and I've had hundreds of emails begging for money. Isn't he running out of time to overturn the election?

This subject of the public filming the police reminded me of the furore not long ago about the increase in police CCTV surveillance of the public. We lap up footage of the police but hate being filmed ourselves! And of course we rarely take film of the police behaving well and doing a good job, so it gives a distorted unrepresentative perspective of police, hence the silly campaign for defunding.

Nice, we are one in essence

@Danioover9000 interesting insights. Conservatives are a mixed bunch too, approximately between SD blue and orange. In fact the whole reason we had the 2016 referendum was to deal with the internal battle which was ripping the Conservative party apart. Actually, Brexit could make immigration easier from non EU countries, especially from the Commonwealth. Depends on what policies the govt decides.

Why the anti-western and anti-British bias in the original question? Lots of empires in history have looted their conquered subjects. Also, how do you know which artefacts were stolen vs purchased? The Elgin marbles are an interesting case of the complexity: although taken by a Scottish aristocrat, Greece was under Ottoman occupation at the time, and with looting and fighting they were arguably safer in Britain. But now, there's a good argument returning them; the point is, each artifact needs deciding individually rather than a blanket approach.