Cathal

the truth is just this moment. taking a shit is the truth as much as when you realized your infinite nature taking lsd last year. that's why Buddha only spoke about ending suffering, are you suffering or liberated in this moment? that's all that matters, all that is true and what needs to be investigated

@Basman lol you will never get rid of thoughts. you just need to stop disliking them and understand right effort. you are putting to much wrong effort in from a basis of hatred (aversion) it's just a matter of understanding. only meditation is the answer. @UnbornTao is on the right page > abandonment of unwholesome states, cultivation of wholesome states, preservation of pre-existing wholesome states. that is correct effort

@Molaric these games are designed for you to be absolutely hooked as much as possible, they are not designed for your mental wellbeing the real struggle is learning new things, adapting and changing. so we take the path of least resistance and fall back to old habits that provide a sense of comfort and security. investigate what league of legends is really making you feel, it's not just about pwning noobs is it? you have a group of people you get to work together and feel a sense of belonging and contribution, like what you do matters, that feels good. you get to accomplish something, you beat another team, although that's not so important - the real importance is, you are accomplishing something and dopamine is being realesed, it's fast acting, it's happening right now and its easy to obtain. when you outclass someone else and beat them, it feels good, when your team praises you for doing a good job, that feels good. but the reality is it's fucking meaningless, that's what you're suffering right now, the reality of what you do is catching up, video games work in a sense, they realese chemicals in us that make us feel a certain way, but they are fucking meaningless and that bites your ass sooner or later. you get nothing out of it but your own little momentary lapse of entertainment and that is really sad and empty. so, the truth of your statement isn't really the video games but your meaningless life. i understand you, i played LoL hardcore in my teenage years and I was seriously depressed realizing I was in my 20's and had never learned what life is like outside my computer and how I had to face my incompetence and anxiety, it's just the way it is, it's the result of our actions and we have to just accept it, smile with it and enjoy learning new things. the thoughts can be heavy but just play life as a game, you will be uncomfortable, you will experience unpleasant feelings but at the end of the day you're going to be seriously far more fulfilled and happy with your actions than just letting your little inner child monkey of wanting to feel good all the time drive your life

yes you're doing it right. understand letting go just happens, it's not something you actively do or really have much control over. as you noticed, those sensations are just changing on there own accord and they will realese on there own accord, so if you accept that then you won't suffer your own doubt towards the method, dislike towards the sensation and impatience to get to some point faster than the point will actually arrive. another thing to reflect on is we often give these sensations certain labels, we cognize feeling instead of just feeling as feeling, we give them almost little entities like 'here is the pain from my ex-gf, it's in my throat' but these are most often really delusional as to why you have tension in specific points in your body, it may provide intellectual satisfaction but the best way to go about it is to understand how intricate those sensations may actually be, so you just let go and just feel them as feeling. the point is to reduce the suffering we create for ourselves through unpleasant feelings and just experience them. all our suffering is our own perception of what we're experiencing, so just experience things as they are, things will let go when they let go, the grass grows when the grass grows

If you truly investigated cause and effect there wouldn't be this judgment but just an understanding, once you evolve from judgment to understanding how things arise logically, the way you feel doesn't influence your thinking as it's doing now and once you're aligned with your understanding those delusional thoughts (which are conditoning these emotions) stop making sense and you just let go

not to disregard practicing vipassana, but a shamatha-vipassana practice is going to benefit you immensly. see more here (timestamped)

I would highly suggest understanding shamatha before you jump directly into vipassana. This is usually the biggest mistake westerners make

Or I guess we call it digital nomads. To me things are very simple purpose wise and all I need is to be able to sustain myself financially, I am a very frugal person. That is my entire goal, to take care of my needs so I don't need to depend on other's. What are good ideas or areas to work on? I am 26 now, my biggest issue is not having a bachelor's degree in the sense of teaching English because that's what I had my eye on, I want to live in Thailand mainly for the Buddhist culture, I could go to college next year and it may provide a lot of security and possibility, but man I really do not want to do that for 4 years. I could go into social media/content creation/private tutoring, Any input on possibilties from reading this? Any answer is a good answer

@Pudgey Indeed, i'm 26 now so i'm trying to plan this out for my 30's, so i don't mind sacrificing this comfort i'm in to get to financial independence, throughout everything i've experienced so far i feel like unless you're going to live in a commune or ordain, it's the bedrock in which everything is built off and now i feel incredibly responsible to give myself a good life in terms of comfort and convienience so spiritual growth may more and more blossom, so to the extent i can develop my ability to teach and have a stable income through doing that really depends on like you said, getting this skills support skill thing going on, probably like web-dev/marketing/seo/social media and so on. i've began that, have a squarespace website, started posting on tiktok/insta/fb - but i do want to be a good teacher if i'm going to be teaching people. but yeah i'll see, i am particularly interested in finding a niche right now

@WalterM thanks for sharing your experience. yeah I know it's quite possible, the main message I've gotten is get a bachelor's if you want to live in Thailand for a long time, which I do, but I know Vietnam and Cambodia are a little different, but i've seen trends across my reddit posts that make me really consider getting a bachelors and actual teaching experience and understanding how to teach properly - but if I could get an position online, even making 700-1000$ a month I would have 0 concern going to college. Thanks for your advice, i'm extremely frugal and can stick to that no problem, I am basically going to just put my head into the book's of learning and get some experience, i want to be competent and not too full of shit , online-teaching sounds very attractive for me because the main reason's why are having access to wats (buddhist monasteries) i don't have these existential issues, i am merely trying to get financial independence so when I go out of retreat, i'm not stuck or dependent on my family. i have 0 interests with careers or ambitions to get a lot of money, i just want to sort myself out to practice as much as possible while having a place to go back to when i need a break from monasteries, i've ran into this problem staying at them for the last 7 months too often, so i'm here tryna sort it out

@WalterM I've looked into that, actually Thailand is exactly where I want to go for other reasons but it's actually a huge issue to do without a bachelor's degree. So I have this kind on my mind of okay, bite the bullet and spend 3 years get a degree, get experience, and get a decent paying job where I don't have to work so much or subject myself to unstable conditions, longer hours less wages and more hassle - no luxuries of the work permit and so on. I want to live in Asia. So, in Asia, they want you to have a bachelor's degree at least. I actually don't give a shit what I do so much, but in my country Ireland, 3 year is the minimum. Man 3 years though lol...

Thinking way back when I first started to doing psychedelics and experiencing a glimpse of higher levels of consciousness I stumbled into this community looking for guidance, so lost in confusion and emotional pain, although i'm not so active anymore I deeply honour all of your contribution to sharing your mind with me and the world, answering my questions and talking directly with me. For all those who are progressing through your consciousness. Thank you. No matter your development, you are exactly where you ought to be, much of the time we want to be somewhere else or in some higher degree of consciousness, but even that thought makes you realize how far you've come along in your development in this present, now reality. You are alive and still breathing, you are a part of the universal ever-changing reality singular reality and consciously choosing to develop towards that is absolutely astounding, perhaps it is a great blessing to have this human form, despite the immense suffering one can go through to end the dissatisfaction of conditioned reality, here we are. Don't forget that, what you do every moment truly matters and infact, it is the little things that we often overlook that contain the deepest and most insightful keys to becoming more conscious, even the Buddha said look to the simplicity of your breath and all you seek can be understood, anything, even taking a shit could enlighten you if you were attentive enough -- and those who realized that to the potential have deeply impacted all of our lives right now for our own freedom. Thank you for doing this for yourself and the benefit of all other beings, in our seperateness many of us are in circumstances unable to see past the illusion and suffer greatly for our ignorance and you reading this working on yourself consciously even for 10/20/30 minutes a day is benefiting all those around you. Thank you. Happy New Years and I wish 2023 brings you into watersliding into Bliss and freedom from suffering. Woooohoo

@Pharion nurture yourself more. you are safe now, in this moment, that reality no longer exists, it's not real

don't look for any particular special state that you feel free from conditions in and you will understand what letting go means far more than what you're describing your experience here not trying to be savvy, but it's so simple and ordinary

just let go of it, why is that a problem? it's just a habit you have of self-defeating so you don't have to face the feeling of being a failure and remain in the comfort of a limited belief system. you state you've learned through enough experience that egoic pain avoidance activies always backfire and never work in the long term, so there you go. just embrace it and let it arise and pass away, observe it and understand it's just an old habit coming up, be gentle and understanding about it, no need to trip to contemplate it. just understand an intention to do something with an unpredictable outcome > the habit to avoid potential unpleasant emotions appears > identification as 'mine/I/me' dictates whether or not the action of following through with said intention or falling back into old habit patterns. just keep being mindful and let it go, resistance is normal, it's okay, we love being miserable and complaining so we don't have to do difficult things

1. complete financial independence 2. move to asia??? 3. live near a good wat/monastery/retreat center 4. make more like-minded friends 5. experience a relationship 6. profit??????? 7. total liberation from all suffering

@Giulio Bevilacqua psychedelics have been great for me, life-changing and getting a glimpse at my spiritual potential, i've done lsd/dmt/mushrooms/2cb, ket, and a few other lesser known things like lsa. but ultimately seeing the limitations with them made me stop using them, i absolutely honour them with all my heart

The TLDR is how I define seeing 'spiritual' growth, or the reduction in my own experience of suffering from insight practice is essentially how it is I react to unpleasant and pleasant things that are arising and passing away, that's about it, but to the degree you intellectually understand that as to directly experience that is the discerning factor, that this moment, now, this passing, fleeting, moment to moment, ever-changing now, is the only reality there is, that anything we say that does not conform with now is constructed in the discerning mind and is a delusion for ourselves to ultimate reality, this is it baby. Please spend time reading/reflecting on what I say about Sila and Sangha if it isn't already on your mind. Enjoy your cakes. First of all I wanted to say thank you to everyone on this forum and of course @Leo Gura for creating a space for like-minded people to share this trip with, what i've come to realize is that you are all amazing honestly, one of the rather difficult things especially in the west is to just simply talk about spirituality and about the truth and we experience our own journey are and this forum was a great outlet for that and many other reasons, at one point I decided the best thing for me personally was to join a commune (Buddhist community) for a few months for several reasons, I nearly ended up ordaining but backed out during my last few weeks, and I ended up in 2 different ones for around 3 months at a time + travelling quite a bit alone and so on, I also ended up in a holistic center, went on a few 10 days retreats and eventually wanting to see my family for a while which funnily enough has been one of the most difficult things to confront, so here I am with some time to reflect and hopefully inspire you or some shit. Just to outline there's a lot terminology i'm using that is pali/sanskrit because that's what i'm familiar with. Anyways, I'm going to talk a little about that and try to emphasis certain things here to be of benefit to your journey, the thing about this forum is there is quite a lot of proliferation of the psychological content of the mind (and I know how satisfying that is, how fun it is but it generally it's just a hindrance) and the more I practiced an actual spiritual path and listened to Dhamma the more I realized that what I know I know and what I do not know I know I do not know, that the Dhamma is a kind of onion, there are layers and layers or 'awakenings upon awakenings' to the Truth, even though ultimately there is just Truth, there is also a knowing one is approaching things as they are, eg. there are several stages the Buddha outlined as one goes through from a stream enterer to an arahant. I have utterly transformed my experience of reality, you may even look back at my profile and see how much I was really suffering, I mean I was really fucked up emotionally and wasn't able to handle the patterns of my mind, I had attempted suicide, was a drug addict etc etc etc - most of you can relate to a degree, two things we westerners have in common; we are all suffering the material lust of society and being grasped into a spiritually starved society. Our salvation is only found within our own understanding. The four noble truths are not that difficult to get a grasp intellectually and naturally we like to make things super complex for ourselves and to search for 'the higher teaching's and so on' but what i've realized is that the highest teaching's are contained within the four noble truths of reality, that things aren't complicated - to understand a leaf on a tree is to comprehend every leaf in every forest in the existence - the Buddha infact taught just one thing; Dukkha Nirodha (end suffering), he also taught us not to proliferate too much on what reality is or other realms and so on and to focus on dukkha nirodha alone, I hope this is reflected on many times for you reading this, it is dukha nirodha which the Buddha taught, especially for myself who has tripped out 100+ times - I love to really experience the incomprehensible reality we are within and to expound on the crazy possibilities and thought-constructs we can create, figures like T.Mckena are huge inspiritation to me but in my own experience all I seem to see in the grand scheme of things, the long haul, the cream of the crop is ending your own suffering, to eliminate all dissatisfaction from your life and to attain to Nirvana/enlightenment, that we are all capable of penetrating these insights into reality and freeing ourselves, becoming truly happy and no longer dependant on the senses or objects of the mind - despite our unworthy self-concept of ourselves... The most and I mean the most important thing is to absolutely accept yourself as you are moment to moment, put a stop to becoming something better/more/acceptable - that all you are is a product of conditioning and most of the time getting established in sati is understanding that all of the shit arising in your mind, just is and us westerners have quite a mind to tango with. Things just are, they are just unfolding at the pace they are unfolding, does that make sense? Just let go of thinking. Like really, just let go and be here, that is it, this is it lol. There really is no doer here, that is the core issue to actually being able to let go. There is this constant dance between doing and letting go, that one moment we are in some unwholesome object in the mind and suddenly we remembered. This is what we understand as Mindfulness, but also it is something to practice and there's really never not a time not to do it. The greatest insight i've had is understanding Sila - and that includes getting involved and finding the Sangha. (your spiritual companions/family upon the journey), this is absolutely fucking key. This is where your progress will ramp exponentially as opposed to being by yourself. Here is a picture to represent just how important it is to have a foundation of sila, even if you were to incessantly meditate endlessly, you will get fucked by your Sila. Notice your mind ruminates and causes suffering because it is rooted in 3 things, greed, hatred or delusion - the actions we've taken from our ignorance to this causes this noise in our heads that blocks our ability to enter and abide in jhana in our day to day lives and enter into seclusion. What i've come to understand about meditation is, it's not something you do or switch on and off, until it becomes your every breath you still haven't really gotten what it is. It's not that you have to be aware 24/7, because that's a misunderstanding of Sati, but it's through Right effort that we can literally meditate every moment of our life, through gladenning the mind and relaxing into the jhana we can rewire the negative self judgmental and projective critic, take this to heart and learn what gladenning the mind means. Anyways, I spent 3 months in a forest thai monastery and it completey transformed every perspective and cut deeply into my own delusional perception of reality, see personality development is incredibly incredibly important, and I don't mean that in any egoic sense whatsoever but rather the ability to individuate into your own unique character and get out of the shell of conditioning - conditionings keeps us very competitive, lieng to each other, ourselves, manipulating people around us, endlessly judging and projecting onto each other, we are more or less trapped in an echo-chamber that reinforces these habits and we all do actually possess a ton of potential - and when you go to a good quality wat/monastery that has the noble Dhamma, you get to see this screamed in your face, you will not infact be able to see this from contemplating it nor reading this writing, you have to go and see people who have been practicing Sila for decades to see how absolutely stable, consistent, selfless and unconditionally giving they are to those around them, they influence and touch your heart in ways that has to be seen for yourself - they mirror to your own spiritual potential and you will delight in it, they also mirror to you have defiled you are, your mind is deluded as fuck and you are sucked in that lense of the suffering of selfish actions, it conditions you for you, you just ride the wave. Anyways besides I tried quite a few things, I went out to cities alone and tried pickup, I flew back to my family after 5 years, I talked to several teachers online, I went through 8 months of therapy and joined 4 different therapy groups, breathwork, psychedelics, journaling, inner child, shadow work, charity work, whatever. Like, whatever lol, the whole shibang. I was so intense this year man, I really wanted to transform because I knew my potential and what I came to conclude is what I just wrote about, that many of us are missing this Sangha and Sila practice, this is where we are rooted in ignorance for most people, is found within our Shadow, how our unconscious projects, none of us will meditate that out of us, do you understand? - it has to be confronted and let go of, you let go by not reacting and nurturing yourself, practiced every single moment you see these patterns in you, you have to be willing to go through really difficult emotions and give up your habits of avoiding it and try your best to do the right thing, it's all contained within the 4 noble truths and the 4rth noble truth is the 8th fold noble path the Buddha laid out to end suffering. Anyways, these are just my fucking insights, what I found to be the most valuable and basically to adopt some Jesus into your life - generosity, good will, develop your loving kindness, develop your compassion, your empathic joy and your equanimity to pleasant and unpleasant states my friends, please consider how important it is for you to get into the Sangha, do whatever it takes to find those equal or higher to you and make them your company, reach out, put that effort in, be vulnerable to change, it is so important, sympathetic vibrations can carry you miles along the river alone, your environment is conditioning you whether you like it or not, you should pay extreme attention to making it as good as you can for yourself, because you love yourself. Merry Christmas

@Schizophonia i don't see anything wrong with you other than you're still too identified with these conditions in the mind, just let go stop judging them. spend more time with yourself in meditation, invest in the time to make a few good friends and get a bit more grounded outside your head. let go and enjoy being here in reality, you are not a victim to any of your patterns, you are choosing to prolong them or let them die each moment through awareness learn anapanasati

i'm going to shoot you with some quick bullet points. kapow you did not emotionally develop from how your parents raised you but now you are being given the opportunity to do so if you take the time to reflect and stop getting identified with everything thinking you need to fix anything, because you don't, you already have what your mind is seeking, you don't need anyone or anything at all stop grasping at the outside world in your states of loneliness if you want to actually change. because if you go on doing that you will be trapped in your insecurities, trapped in your need to secure it and go on conditioning your own co-dependent tendencies as you say you are out of touch with your masculinity because you have to depend on others to give you what you already have, as i said if you practice mindfulness correctly, you will be able to be observant of how your mind tends to cling onto certain objects to feel safe, but you already 'are' safe, you have to not only be mindfully aware but recognize, you are actually indeed safe right now, and believe that - this is called gladenning the mind in the practice of anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing). watch this - this is actually reconditioning ourselves out of these bad habits these are all habits, understand that, there is no permanent you trapped in this, emotionally it feels like that right now, and you are creating stories in your head about how you feel to be 'you', to be personal, but in reality that's not true and a good meditation practice will make you for yourself realize this and let go your jealously is just your own insecurities being reflected back to you, that you need to fix them by partaking in 'securing' them, but once you understand why you are feeling insecure, you just let go and you won't have to try or stop not caring, you just will not care you need to reflect on how your parent's raised you up, how you were a victim to the way they raised you up, and how you are no longer a victim and capable of developing a ground of being rooted in aloneness and not a scattered fragmented child rooted in his insecurities there's a difference between emotional needs and what you describe here, understand that - it's true you need food to survive right, but you don't need fish and chips to survive, that's what is going on here, you have a lot of things going on in your inner child that are not grounded in your reality but come from your childhood nurture yourself, forgive yourself, love yourself, you don't need other people to do that. let go of believing you need mom and dad to do that, because you can learn to do that yourself now.

@Breakingthewall Liberation dependant on any worldy thing is another prison

@spiritual memes You can apply this story to yourself and all beings whom you come to argument with The Story of the Donkey and Tiger The donkey told the tiger: ′′The grass is blue". The tiger replied: ′′No, the grass is green". The discussion became heated up, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, and to do so they approached the lion, King of the Jungle. Before reaching the clearing in the forest where the lion was sitting on his throne, the donkey started screaming: ′′Your Highness, is it true that grass is blue?". The lion replied: "True, the grass is blue". The donkey rushed forward and continued: ′′The tiger disagrees with me and contradicts me and annoys me please punish him". The king then declared: ′′The tiger will be punished with 5 years of silence". The donkey jumped for joy and went on his way, content and repeating: ′′The grass is blue"... The tiger accepted his punishment, but he asked the lion: ′′Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?" The lion replied: ′′In fact, the grass is green". The tiger asked: ′′So why do you punish me?" The lion replied: ′′That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is not possible for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with a donkey, and on top of that to come and bother me with that question". The worst waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who doesn't care about truth or reality, but only the victory of their beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on discussions that make no sense... There are people who for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand, and others who are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren’t. When ignorance screams, intelligence shuts up. Your peace and tranquility are worth more. Author unknown

@effortlesslumen The timer is great. It's a powerful tool to both not developing getting attached to tranquil states that come into absorption and to diligently sit when we are in difficult terrain and developing a trust that we will commit to the timer and not lie with ourselves. Great stuff, as I linked to that teacher Dhammarato, if ever comes the time you want to talk to a good teacher he talks to anyone on skype freely and runs an online Sangha community that discusses the Dhamma and practice

@ShardMare Hi there, good work to see you're taking care of yourself and working through things we all can experience ruts and depression but we can also be wise to avoid unneccessary suffering. I just want to point out a few things that might be helpful for you, not in the sense of pills or methods or meditation or psychedelics or therapy but a question for you to investigate and see if this is true yourself; Firstly the most important thing is when you said "I should have" a better mood. This is fundamentally how humans suffer so much, by craving what is not in the present reality. And so we are introduced to what is known as suffering. (dukha/dissatisfaction). We think things should be different than they really are, we do all the things we think will make us happy but it just doesn't, so despair eventually arises when we just don't get what we want (back to craving) Craving is the source of suffering, it is the first noble truth the Buddha expounded upon, there is suffering (dukha) but there is also a path to end suffering. (dukha nirodha) So I'm just going to drop a link and if it something you are interested in exploring and testing, go ahead and see does it work, does practicing any of this make you happier or not?, in essence we are refraining from harming ourselves and others, doing good deeds and practicing meditation so we can experience this freedom from being dissatisfied with the way things are, since at some point sooner rather than later, I hope wisdom enters you to see what you are doing that is causing you this pain. Association with the disliked is dukha Seperation from the liked is dukha Not getting what one wants is dukha So where does true happiness begin?

@effortlesslumen So when we say meditation, most people aren't really meditating, they are just looking at there own hindrances for an hour straight unable to relax out of it intentionally and watching a tv show, they are in a basic alert state but it is not meditation and neither having a felt tone of established in mindfulness, it is not that you have to try harder but understand what right effort is. Right effort is just the amount of effort we need to maintain sati and to wake up as soon as possible when we are absorbed into unwholesome objects of the mind and introduce wholesome objects - so really it is absolutely an amazing idea and as you say, rewire you brain, to actively gladden ourselves (a teacher who will teach anyone anapanasati for free via skype) into a wholesome state for 5-10 minutes several times a day so when we go to sit for 30 minutes or an hour we can really enjoy it I myself sit twice 50 minutes a day, and unless I recognize the dukha as dukha and sit 5-10 minutes a few times throughout the day to throw that garbage out of the mind, that later evening sit is entirely different and i find it incredibly hard to stay fixated on wholesome objects. This is how the Buddha taught anapanasati/mindfulness of breathing