caspex

I want to get into OBEs as well, I have induced the starting stages a few times. Judging by them it feels like it'll be quite hard to keep them practical and connected to current physical world. But I have heard that it's possible to train practical type OBEs

Actually the field work is quite rewarding. After all, it feels good to be good. What you said seems more of a mechanical process. I tend to stay within my limits in what I can tolerate when it comes to things like this. I am very vary of exploitation. The reason I asked you to develop other aspects of integrity is because having a strong character gives you confidence and courage into who you are and what your life truly is. Surely what I said is not the best way to go about it, but the solution is having a strong character, however may you achieve it. It may seem unrelated to your problem but feeling that safety and certainty in your heart actually makes you so much more honest. I have experienced it many times. I see this as the only permanent solution and speculating about what lies are and why we lie is a waste of time. This is because it's such a nuanced topic that it's way better to simply develop a strong character. Deeds make the person. 'Person' not in a societal sense, but in a self-esteem sense. If your deeds are such that you believe on ALL levels of your being that your deeds are 'pure', then you have unparalleled confidence akin to a mountain. Because how we view ourselves is based on our deeds. And whether we like it or not, we all know deep down how pure the deeds we did were. This is why I think one should start purifying their deeds if one wants strength of character.

Please, can you explain how violence is romantic? I want to understand.

You still need to dissolve your identification though. You misunderstood what the self is and started destroying things essential to your psychology. Sit down and contemplate who you are before you try to surrender anything. Of course what you think is the self right now will still remain, and it will evolve and get better at withstanding the energy and openness of higher states of consciousness, but there will be no self.

I have never traveled outside my country so take my advice with a gain of salt. But I believe, and what I want to personally do, is to visit the country and stay there for a good while soaking the culture. I seek the same thing as you in the post and I believe that to truly understand and soak in any culture you need to actually be present there for some time. Visiting a mimic of the actual place would not influence you as much as the real deal. When you physically travel, your mind really says that you are truly in a different country and not some copy of the actual culture. I don't think that it is possible for a copy of the culture inside another, to remain unaffected by the larger country. Although just traveling inside your country with many different cultures would still open your mind, I see traveling the actual globe as far more superior.

You know all the moral stuff like helping others, being kind, being considerate and compassionate, donating, etc.? Do some of those things out of the goodness of your heart. Like start helping others more often, go out of your way to help out homeless people, donate to charity. These are very physical tasks so you can just go and do them without thinking much. Keep doing such things, all the while comparing yourself to the most compassionate humans in history, noting how selfish you are in comparison. (Do this for humbleness.) What this will do is build character and integrity in you. At some point, you would literally feel as if you are an immovable mountain. With such strength and courage within you, being honest would be child's play. You're scared about being honest because internally you are not strong enough, you are not brave enough. The solution is to build character. Which also means slowly leaving all the petty shit you do everyday. Honesty is just one of the good values to have. But these values don't come individually, they always come in a bundle because they are all interdependent on each other.

There is definitely some truth to your critique. Leo's teachings seem to not put forth the dimension of 'action' and 'doing' in the listener as much as they do with 'mind'. While Leo's teachings not working for you has to do with who you are, it's not merely that. People here should be less biased and see that maybe there's some truth to what you say.

Don't practice this shit if you are not doing spiritual practices, it's a lot more harder that way. Bhramhacharya would give you the same benefits + more. If you are going to leave ejaculation, might as well get over sexual attraction altogether. Bhramhacharya done properly(with spiritual practices) is nearly not that hard. Semen retention seems like constantly dangling your favorite food in front of your face while you are on a water fast. It'd be easier if you remove the food. Counter-intuitively, letting go of all orgasm opens you up to even better states of pleasure. (Through spiritual practices)

Krishna or Rama are my top picks. If they don't exist then Mahavtar Babaji. If he doesn't exist then any great yogi

I mostly use the world 'realization' instead of 'awakening' because that's more accurate in most contexts. I only use 'awakening' when the state in question literally feels like waking up from a deep sleep, becoming more lucid. Awakening seems to me like a very literal word. Using 'awakening' to describe simply peering through some relative illusion, or discovering a new way of life, is not using it literally, which I think one should. In such cases 'realization' is more accurate.

I have a habit of doing the same during contemplation, when I am at peak concentration and about to generate an insight. I think it's very interesting that focus does that to your breath. I never saw it as a bad thing though. I see at as the body withdrawing energy away from other tasks to employ that energy into focusing.

I see zero reason to speculate about coral and incorporate it into the model. Spiral Dynamics is best to be used to understand individual's and collective's value systems. You can predict a lot with it. You can secondarily use it for your own development but understand it's a limited and biased model in that regard. It's even worse when it comes to incorporating spirituality within the model. Spiral Dynamics is not the only line of development and people develop in wildly different orders, and depending on their context, don't even need to integrate major parts of certain stages. In our world where even turquoise is so rare, what use is speculating about coral? If you want to do so for personal growth, why waste time in theorizing? Reach Turquoise and keep pursuing truth from there, at which point, why is there need for a model, a stage coral, if not for mental masturbation? I say drop this bullshit and pursue truth. You can't draw a map of a place you have never visited. If you are so concerned about losing way than you have no choice but to ask someone who has already been there. Your only other option is to just head in. And even if you ask someone who has 'been there', how do you know that's the only place in coral? Maybe the development branches off into multiple lines after turquoise. Or maybe it already did in the earlier stages, you just had too narrow of a view. What this seems like is people care more about "my evolution" than knowing the truth, even though they are not exclusive. See the subtle difference in values. All I am pointing out is the limitations of Spiral Dynamics when used for self-actualization after a point. Attempting to describe some coral is mental-masturbation, because it doesn't matter as the best use of Spiral Dynamics is understanding value systems of collectives and individuals, and you for sure as hell are not gonna be finding coral collectives or individuals(commonly). It's a cool project to figure out coral and add an extra stage. I am not saying coral doesn't exist or that you can never define it. All I am saying is that if you think you are pursuing truth by defining coral you're not.

I think most people get into consciousness work believing they can end their suffering. I think there's only an end to needless suffering, but you can't truly end suffering altogether. After a while though, your spirituality slowly evolves from wanting an end to suffering, to wanting bliss, to wanting understanding, to experiencing truth, to becoming/dissolving in truth. The spiritual journey goes through loads of evolutions. Your spirituality becomes about truth rather than suffering or bliss

Of course, that's a given. I was stating that it could be fed more specialized knowledge regarding questions asked by students. It could be fed data that explains the same concept from many angles. Imagine if an AI was trained on all kinds of questions regarding a concept or topic or a subject, and tons of quality answers for those questions. ON TOP OF your usual specialized knowledge of that subject that it could also pull from. I am sure there are problems with my approach, but regardless of that, my point is that while I am not quite sure how, I believe it's definitely possible to create an AI that is great at explaining stuff. Especially as AI advances. It's not wise to think that AI's teaching capability is maxed out in ChatGPT.

It's like how ChatGPT is shit at math stuff but WolframAlpha, which is trained for that, is much better. I'd imagine AI trained for teaching particular subjects would be much better at answering questions and explaining nuances than ChatGPT, good enough that I think they can teach you the basic concepts very well. I'd still suggest studying intermediary and advance concepts from humans though, but I think AI should take off some load from the professors when it comes to the introductory stuff. ChatGPT is taught basically everything, it can mix up views and easily contradict itself when it comes to technicalities. I'd assume an AI trained in a very narrow range of subjects and nuances (questions), will be able to teach much better. When the questions delve too deep into higher concepts, the AI can simply be trained to say that it's a higher concept that it's not equipped to explain. It could then give sources to learn about those higher concepts. It could also be trained to tell you what's relevant to the syllabus at hand and what's not. The possibilities are crazy. ChatGPT was never made to teach you stuff, of course it's bad.

well chatgpt is a bad example because it's not trained to teach, nor is it trained in a narrow subject to have very specialized knowledge. If an AI was also trained, in addition to teaching, on the kinds of questions students ask for that particular subject, it'll be a godly teacher.

For the basic stuff AI can do a good job if specifically trained to teach for a particular subject... even better, for a particular syllabus in a subject. You could supply videos with an AI trained to answer questions regarding that video/topic. Humans can then focus on teaching more advanced topics.

This is why being honest is important to remain whole. Lying fragments you. This is why honesty entails integrity.

I would like to add the nuance that Self-Actualization goes hand in hand with solving your inner issues. Hence all the different sub-forums. No one is really doing spirituality or actualization after being perfectly healed inside.

A Terrible Dream I slept for maybe 2 hours right after waking up and talking to a few people in the morning. In those 2 hours I had a dream in which my parents (who don't live with me), and some fairly old woman with white hair tied back (felt as if she was some divine energy, at the time I thought it could have been Hanumana), were seen entering my home as I stood at the entrance. I was happy to have my parents back at home, and apparently we were moving in a bunch of new items for the home such as furniture and such. It was being done by some worker men. When entered, in one of the sections of the home I saw a woman, looked like in her later 20s and slim, standing behind a counter. (We have that counter at home.). Behind her on the wall were the days of the week and above each day was placed a statue of Hanumana, except for Friday on top of which was Krishna. We were deciding where to place something I can't remember, on the days so to make them lucky in the coming future. I could remember my real life by the way. We all have a mental map at all times that maps out what you think will happen in the near future, for example you know it'll be your friend's birthday in 3 days and that's on your mind. I had not forgotten that mental map of the future unlike my other dreams. That's when one of my tooth became loose and I asked her what this could mean. (I was semi-aware this is a dream). She said it's a sign of death, your death. It's a bad sign. My mom was visibly worried and so was I. I asked for a solution and what to do. She said to simply to not think about it and wait till she visits me in real life. She said she'll have to drive, in real life, all the way to my place, and take me to Vrindavan (a holy place in India) for rituals and bathing. That's how I'd be able to escape this. My father was in the kitchen at the time, when he came out the woman told something like "Your power is around 307.". My father visibly confused, said that his age is only around 50. As they kept talking I could feel my grip on the dream losing and I very, very smoothly transitioned from the dream to my sleeping body, at which point I opened my eyes. Shocked, I searched up the meaning of having a loose teeth or breaking teeth in a dream according my culture, and low and behold, it means very bad luck. Some sort future attack, spiritual or material. It's suffice to say that I was very worried after that. Especially because I had a similar vivid dream a week ago where I shot and killed, in a very realistic way. In that dream I even saw my soul leave my body. I don't have these kinds of dreams often so I am very spooked. I believe this is somehow connected to the Bhakti practice I am doing. I contacted someone I know about this, a close friend of my family. She asked her Guru about this who is into deity worship big time. He told me to do a few things around the house, but overall said there is nothing to worry about. It's just that some deities are little angry at me. He gave a reason for why and a simple solution, which I can't disclose here since it's too personal. Anyways, this made me really tensed and paranoid. I had already decided to do a 100 Hanuman Chalisas for today's pooja and promised Hanumana yesterday, so I followed through with the promise. In today's pooja I asked Hanumana to destroy any sort of trouble on me or my family is there is one, or if there any trouble headed our way. What I Realized from Today's Pooja (3.5 Hours Long) Today I changed my outlook on Hanumana from simply a guru to also a big brother. I also brought in a sense of independence within my Bhakti today. Result was that I was flooded with optimism with proper logic backing it. Hanumana has a soft heart, yet I kept imagining him as some stern guru. I realized that I need to bring optimism and energy in my mindset. I am way too paranoid and irrational. It's like I have given up all sort of rationality and sense of individuality since I started Bhakti and that has let my inner fears gain more existence within me. It legit feels like I am going Insane. What I need to do is to become more Sane. Bhakti is not about becoming irrational. That's surrendering the wrong way. You need to maintain a sense of individuality even if you connect no-self realization to Bhakti. Bhakti makes you more SANE. Atleast Bhakti of Hanumana does. It makes you so SANE that others seem insane by comparison. Bhakti is not about complete dependence on the deity. It's like any other relationship. You maintain a sense of individuality and independence yet you love them dearly and have great reverence. My second realization was that doing 21 chalisas a day is wayyyy too weak. At least when it comes to personal and spiritual development. The whole process I described earlier connecting Spiral Dynamics with Bhakti of Hanumana will only really work when you do at least 51 - 100 chalisas a day. It imbues you with so much energy that you can't resist but destroy all the negativity within you. I have heard that you need to build the capacity to be able to hold the power it generates doing so many chalisas a day, and I am all for it. Tomorrow I'll do 21 and that'll complete my 11 day sankalpa for doing minimum 21 chalisas a day. I am thinking of simply starting to do 100 a day again and take a sankalpa for 41 days. But I'll need to think on it before I make such a commitment. But this dream has made me so paranoid, I might as well do it, because such a Sankalpa will easily curb the effects of such trouble. But I am worried, such massive Sankalpas invite tests and trouble to prevent completion. It wouldn't be a problem if it was just about sitting 3.5 hours a day and reciting chalisas with love. You also have to abstain from Onion, Garlic, Non-Veg and Alcohol. You have to visit Hanumana Temple every Tuesday and Saturday as well. All while abstaining from masturbation and sexual thoughts. I have already been doing all of this since I began Bhakti, but I can imagine myself fucking up during the 41 days.

How you deal with distractions depends on what it's distracting you from. If your goal is to simply learn as fast as possible allot a good chunk of your day specifically for learning and another for exploration. Learn in a different environment than the one you explore or distract yourself in though. Maybe a different desktop on your pc or a different device altogether. But these external changes are only an aid. The main solution is internal. If you take anything seriously enough, nothing can distract you from it. Notice how you take other things in your life seriously, and apply that mental process to what you want to learn. Do not allow your mind to develop rationalizations as to why it's not that important/serious, and that you are devoting too much emotion to it. Your mind could be right, however it doesn't matter what it says. There's a mind behind your thoughts. Therefore it's possible to control one's thoughts. You'd have to be strict with yourself, but it is possible to direct your thoughts towards a certain task by not letting any other thoughts interfere. I wish I could describe to you how, however you can figure it out. I am talking thoughts all the way back to the thoughts that you simply 'sense' before it becomes non-verbal then verbal. You can control even that. There's this sort of 'direction' mind before the 'thinking' mind so to speak. It spans the whole body rather than just the head. I think the better way to call it is the 'vibe' that you are feeling in your body. You have the ability to directly control that vibe and direct your thoughts and energy anywhere you want. If you ever feel "I don't feel like it today", you have the ability to directly change that vibe to "I feel like it today". You don't need to do anything external or think any thoughts. It does depend on the strength of the vibe if you can change it or not, however you do get better as you keep practicing this direct control. I don't know how much of that made sense. This is the first time I am verbalizing this process. Well, hopefully this helps.

The period where you didn't fap was probably so different from your normal life of fapping that when you came back to fapping that period of nofap didn't seem real.