caspex

It's really nice. It really feels like this much awakening should be prerequisite before you enter the world lol. Sets a nice foundation, for whatever you want to do from now on. Whether it be further spiritual growth or be it enjoying the material world. I know these two aren't strictly exclusive but they become exclusive at advanced levels especially because we have limited time before we die.

I have had Obsidian since the beginning of this year and I wasted a lot of time taking down notes for my academics for the first few months. It was a waste of effort and time because the purpose of my notes were to be remembered and to be recalled in the exam, not to be used in further thinking. Something like flashcards would have worked much better in this regard, and it definitely did during my exams, while the notes I had so painstakingly prepared proved almost completely useless aside from helping me create my flashcards. I know this was really dumb on my part and I am willing to admit it. In retrospect, I see now that something like Obsidian is supposed to be used for development of projects, articles or books, efficiently. I want something like this to prevent from happening again. So I thought about how I could Obsidian to leverage my growth, and personally I don't find the idea of a Commonplace book to work. I am still very young (19M) and I don't require a Commonplace book to manage my very simple life and my even simpler mind. What I do require Obsidian for is to increase self-awareness and somehow use it to create. Those seem like the most practical applications to me and the notion of a 'second brain' is simply stupid because Obsidian doesn't organize anything, nor does it think for you, you still do that all yourself. It seems like such a powerful tool but I literally can't use it. I kept thinking of the best ways to maximize Obsidian's potential, but that was stupid, I have decided now to focus on maximizing my own potential instead, and it's not that complex to do. However, I do not know all the use cases of such a powerful tool in context of my two mentioned goals above. This is where I need your help. If you use any sort of advanced note taking app, and have similar reasons for using it, I'd like you to share how you use it and why it works for you. I posted here because Actualized.org is really the niche I fit into the most on the internet, advice from here usually works really well for me even on non-spiritual matters.

Thanks a lot! That's an amazing suggestion!

@Thought Art Ill take your suggestion for forming goals. I am thinking of putting in weekly and monthly goals and completing them. I have been searching, and Journaling and Habit Tracking in Obsidian seems like the thing for me. The setup allows for much opportunity for self observation and finding patterns in your day. It seems boring but it's honestly what I need right now. I don't need Obsidian to think, what I need it for is to perform actions and form actionable plans to move forward. I really want to use it to learn but, I am so chaotic in my life and in my mind right now that I'll give up on whatever I decide to learn. I have been trying to integrate Blue casually for a few months now but I am so far gone that I have made negligible progress on my own. This is why I require an external aid such as Obsidian. The reason for my post here is so that if anyone has overcome similar problems with or without note taking I would enjoy guidance. I apologize if it wasn't clear in my OP.

This forum

I read the whole thing. I thank you for this. It directly answered some of my major doubts I had during my contemplation just prior to opening up this post on a whim.

Using the internet since I was 10(now 19), and being young, it has now fried my brain with all the dopamine and stuff. I quit the internet for the most part two days ago, I feel like I can focus now, and it has only been two days. If I open up a YouTube video, I can quite literally feel being sucked into that dopamine trap. It's really fucked me up and I am not planning to go back. I am sure this is a new gen problem. Mind you, I never even watched shorts or tiktoks since they came out. I fear what the internet will do to Gen Alpha, being handed phones at 2 years old.

It's frustrating searching about yogic concepts, a lot of it just regurgitation. I think it's insanely valuable knowledge but also dangerous as it deals so much with the physical body and it's workings. Even if you go at your own pace, there's no telling what might happen, your knowledge will always be incomplete after all. A genuine Guru would be nice if I could ever find one. As much as a lot of people here hate the idea of finding a Guru and adhering to his rules, we are talking about physical and energetic practices here, it's dangerous and warrants proper guidance, like with psychedelics.

That's how most people achieve discipline

Whether you say it's the character that awakens, or that it's the awareness/consciousness/God/Reality that awakens, the problem lies in that you assign individual-ship or credit to someone or something. If we assume the awakening you talk about it to be anything similar to NoSelf, The proper way to think about it is that identifications regarding the character were dissolved, which occured due to many chain reactions and random occurrences. But for embodiment reasons, there is no benefit to think this way.

I doubt you'll need to worry about being ungrounded. You're in your forties, I believe it's a great time to be spiritual. Especially after your kids can stand on their own feet. Take your time but also be emotionally invested. The path that the people of Actualized.org walk is usually just that of contemplation and truth. Therefore, what you need most is knowledge and time to contemplate and meditate. Once you start grasping things and things start clicking (it'll take some time), you can work on embodiment. Do not concern yourself with contemplating God and such now. First try understanding who or what you are in there.

I agree. It's the case that one must start to see things clearly before one can start letting go. Whether it be mastering/accepting/letting go of the human condition or be it the true exploration of what reality is, it's all about seeing clearly, the truth. In my experience, I have only been able to let go and accept things, when I have seen the broader picture, many many times. Only then does my heart and my mind yield. Seeing the bigger picture just once is not enough.

The human mind works the most, and the best, productivity wise, when in stressful situations. In dire events, you'll find you're capable of things you never imagined. Only those, in the past, who had the energy and strength, both mental and physical, to spare for intense situations, made it out alive. So aside from your daily necessary chores, it becomes essential to save your energy up from stressful situations, which were quite unexpected and frequent in the vast majority of humanity's evolution. Cut to modern society, where daily chores are minimal and dire situation are almost null for many people. Your body-mind keeps saving up for that tiger attack that'll never happen. That's laziness. Your mind doesn't think past a season or two, because there no need to think that long term to survive. This is my hypothesis.

Judgement is necessary. It's a necessity to judge people by their appearance. Just be aware that you're not omnipotent, and do not know everything about the person, or the archetype, or the subject or field that you put them in or group them with. Awareness of your ignorance while also udging someone really shows in your behavior, and provides for a more neutral and accurate judgement. You also end up playing safer. It's a weird and fine balance. It takes time to learn to do that.

It's simply your nature, do not deny your nature. Instead, what you need is to become more aware. Breathe slower and more deeply in the day, no matter what the circumstance. Especially in emotional situations. As for the oversharing, you'll simply learn what to share and what not to as you gain more experience interacting with people. But make sure you are aware while you do so. It's not going to be very easy. Ideally, you'd want to change your habits in your life that make you less aware and more impulsive. This include certain people as well. Since I do not possess that information, I can't say anything in that regard. I must say that change doesn't usually happen only in one field of your life, it requires change in multiple areas at once.

Accept yourself for what you are, let go and give up on changing yourself to something else. It will indeed lower your self esteem, but you'll accept yourself. Accepting your feelings of unworthiness and untalentedness would mean crying about it, feeling pathetic, etc. Once these emotions are settled, you'll find and build up self esteem regarding some other field naturally. Since you are stuck not being able to accept your inferiority in a particular field, you cannot see where you are indeed superior or on par. It's simply not possible that you are inferior to the average person in every field.

It's how my mind works as well. But instead of memories, it goes to the sensation of those memories. Let me explain. Let's say I had experienced a new sensation when entering a large body of water for the first time. My mind would detach the sensation from the memory, and use it as an anchoring point for concepts and thoughts, and connect it with with other anchor points, for easier contemplation. Your mind probably just uses the whole memory as an anchor. Anchoring is good, it develops your capability of thinking more abstractly as it anchors the abstract for you. It's probably something your mind just does as you contemplate a lot.

Being God is entirely logical, just not in the traditional sense of logic(which refers to the common way of thinking, not truly 'logic'). It's because you logically see that you are God that you feel you are God. It makes sense, it's not just something to feel. God makes sense to itself. When you see that you are God, your functioning at a higher capacity of connecting dots which explains to you why you must be God. The way you explain it here seems as if you are making yourself believe you are God. It might be wise to reconsider your conclusion.

I believe that I can do it. It'll be hard, but not impossible. I don't know to which degree it is but I can enter 'No Self' in seconds on a good day and in minutes on a bad one, hence my belief that I am capable of embodiment. It has been maybe two years since my first understanding into No Self but I have never really tried to embody it, but to only take it deeper everytime. It's about time that I tried. The rules are simple, I'll meditate after releasing this post and try to go as deep as possible into No Self and maybe beyond if I am capable. Once I am there, I'll attempt to stay in it for the next twenty four hours. My prediction is that as I interact with people my state will go down, but after several dips back into the ego, I'd learn to keep my head afloat, a low degree of No Self. My goal is simply embodiment, even if it means the shallowest possible degree of No Self, but not a fake idea of No Self and the real deal. I welcome anyone else who'd like to try out this challenge. It doesn't have to be No Self, but the highest possible state you feel that you can reach. I'll post my results after 24 hours of this post.

Quick Note: I have gotten sick again even though I recovered from yesterday's sickness. So I apologise if my explanations are not great. Furthermore, my keyboard broke down so I am writing on my mobile, which I am not comfortable with therefore affecting my explanation. Results: I would call the experiment a mild success. I have learnt a lot from trying to embody No Self for 24 hours, but I can't do it completely just yet. At this pace, complete embodiment should take a week or less. I had some insights regarding No Self when trying to embody it permanently. Which gave me a further insight when I compared it to insights gained when trying to deepen the experience. It was that when you try to embody some truth, you get wildly different insights than when you try to deepen it. Embodiment requires a further understanding of a state without deepening it. While trying to embody a degree of No Self, I gained an insight into the character's relationship with everything else. To start off, let's clear a few things. The character, the witness/observer and the cone of perception originating from the observer are all part of a single experience. Perception is therefore without boundaries or center, and not a cone. This whole cone of perception along with the observer and the character all take a back seat once one sees that experiences don't originate because you see them but that your character, witness and cone of perception originates as an experience with everything else. In fact, the cone is seen to be entirely false originating from the false idea that the witness is the center. Furthermore, the character and the witness actually do not possess any substance since they are also infact just an experience. With no source for experience to originate from, it's simply a hologram. There's no self. If you must call anything a self, it's this hologram. How I term such things is the following. I call the witness, distinguished from the character, as the atma. While I call this hologram as Paramatma. Here's how the insight regarding embodiment goes. The reason one falls back to ego identification is because the Atma habitually takes a major part of the experience. An illusiory center is created which the Atma thinks to be itself. In reality the Atma is a undefined however smaller part of the overral experience and there is no center. For proper embodiment, one(Atma) must practice surrender. Surrenderring oneself means to dissolve, which only happens when one let's go of itself. But what is it that is being held together? It's experience. Atma is dense experience. Once the Atma surrenders, focus(where experience is the most dense) naturally spreads out evenly. This is the state of No Self. So, the key to embodiment of No Self is surrender, which I am sure you have heard for years, but hopefully my explanation can help you understand it yourself. This lead to a bigger insight that if you view reality as a giant muscle, all these different objects, people, your focus, you, are simply a contraction. The degree of density although varies. This also explains why distinctions are always blurry and what distinctions truly are, since you can imagine, there would no clear boundry between where the contraction in the muscle ends and the relaxed muscle begins. All no self is, is relaxing that dense contraction of experience that 'was' you. Interestingly, just like you can't simply decide to relax the density that is a rock in front of you, making it dissappear, you can't do it with the character either. Sure, the kernal is gone, but the character still functions absolutely fine, and this is exactly how 'you' will operate when you embody No Self, without paralyzing yourself. This insight also helped me draw parallels and integrate Bhakti and No Self together, which previously seemed exclusive to each other. I'll write about this in my "Upasana Journal" soon.

To elaborate, being honest and truthful would not mean anything along the lines of giving out your credit card number if someone asks for it. You can deny requests and all that. However, it does mean that if you do choose to say something it has to be truthful and honest, to what you know and feel, to the best of your ability. This also involves no sugarcoating things you want to say, making sure the person you are trying to convey something to really does get what you mean. This also means doing everything you'd say you do. If you say you'll go to the movies a few days later in this period, you will go to the movies a few days later. Meaning that you have be a lot more careful with what you decide to say. This involves being truthful and honest even in writing anything onto online forums, chatrooms, comment sections etc. and not simply speech. If you are not able to be truthful and honest for something, you still continue onward until the period is over. And not doing all the things, that I can't think of, that are in bad faith in trying to find a loophole and such to being truthful and honest. At first thought, it seems bad for the purposes of survival, but I can't help but intuit there is something more to it. It would really test my limits and show me how truthful and authentic I am truly willing to be. I intuit that practicing truthfulness and honesty in your words would infuse them with power. To give an example, if you want to commit to reading an hour everyday until some book is finished, you'd simply say that you'd do so, and magically you'll gain the energy and motivation to do so until you complete the task, simply because your words have become so powerful to yourself. But I don't know if such a thing can happen or not, and if yes, to what extent. This is why I have decided to do this, starting from when I post this, to 24 hours later. I'll post what I have learnt here tomorrow. If the experience wills it, I'll recommit and possibly go for another period of truthfulness. If any of you want to do this along with me, feel free to do so and post your report in this thread.

I forgot to mention it in my report earlier, one key point I have realized is that being truthful and honest as a principal encourages you strongly to not do 'bad' actions in the first place. Since you know you cannot lie about it later, you are better off not doing such things in the first place. It also encourages you to promise very carefully. So far, I have seen nothing but positives.

Sounds pretty backwards.

@gettoefl Much appreciated.

Thanks, just what I needed.