cetus

'Bend like a reed in the wind' -Zen saying.

I found this great video about how the brain can be rewired to change the way we experience reality. It seems it has a lot to do with focusing the mind at an elevated level. I found this video interesting b-c when I experienced my first awakening there was a distinct shift that felt as if thought had come to a point of perfect focus or hyper focus. Hard to explain exactly but something distinctly shifted in awareness. I remember thinking to myself afterwards "Holy shit I never knew that was possible". It was as if something that had been dormant was suddenly awakened. So that's why I feel it's important to share this video with you guys. It's a bit long but well worth listening to. I'm going to start practicing "re-wiring" of the brain by putting total trust in the fact that the universe knows way more than I do and in the process dropping my old patterned views and expectations of how reality works so that the doors are wide open to all possibilities. So the question is, can we completely re-invent ourselves through our thoughts? I say, why not? For the most part I invented this "self" that I experience now. Why shouldn't I be able to re-invent it?

@Faceless That's the kind of thought that changes reality.

@Faceless That's a good thought!

@Faceless If you take 100 ppl none of them will have exactly the same experience of reality.

@MarkusSweden What have you done with the real MarkusSweden?

@Applejuice I don't do it as a game just to scare myself. No I have sleep apnea. It's the real deal. If I think about it too much before I sleep i have a hard time falling asleep just thinking about it happening. It started when I was about 40 and has only gotten worse over time. I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night gasping for air and only than do I realize that I had stopped breathing during deep sleep. For how long I wasn't breathing I have no idea. Sometimes it even causes me to have dreams that I am suffocating because, well I really am. I do have that awful cpap machine with the air pump/hoses and mask that forces air down the throat. But having that thing over my face at night makes me feel claustrophobic and also makes my ears 'pop' like when flying in a jet liner. Also I have to lay flat on my back in a corpse position and not move all night. I just can't sleep that way. The bottom line here, I hope you never develop the real thing or else it could become a reality and not just a mind game to play on yourself.

@tsuki The mother of Maya.

Truly understand know exactly what someone else is experiencing

@Nahm Yea one week in and 3 to go! He may find what he's looking for before that. We'll see.

@Faceless A man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark- (Zen Proverb)

"I never meet a man that gave me more trouble than myself"

@Faceless Here's another good one.

@FacelessThis reminded me of something I once heard. "A man stands in his own shadow and wonders why he can only see darkness"

@Nahm @Faceless I guess that's what happens when you get detacheched for the "moment of Now". The mind will do that to ya.

@Nahm @Faceless You guys are the best!!!!!

@Faceless What should I do? Dinner is cooking on the stove and the g-f got pissed off and walked away at something I said. Let it burn? Oh yea!

@How to be wise Very apropos for this moment within my direct experience. The G-F and I were getting into a bit of a tiff just now. Things are a bit "distant" at the moment. I applied what you said here to that situation. What a wake up call! I wonder if I could get her to see this and we could laugh it all off at the nothingness of it.

@Joseph Maynor Maybe you didn't see Leo's latest video? He outlines future plans for the forum here @20:00 and how he wants to take it to the next level. But he most important overall message from Leo was "Start Doing the Serious Work". https://www.actualized.org/articles/going-buddha

@Key Elements @Nahm IMO, Leo is becoming the perfect diamond free of all aggregates of self. I wish him such clarity that his presents can only be known by it's surface reflections.

@Nahm I'll second that! @Shroomdoctor Just to add this. Experience is a great teacher too. Keep expanding/growing in all directions inward and outward and you find there are no limitations to anything! It's wide open and you are it- it is you. I'd like to leave a short but powerful video by Eckhart Tolle that I listen to at least once a day. "Under the surface all things are interconnected"

@Guillem You can easily see at least one aspect of animals that is close to what is considered to be enlightenment. Animals live totally in the moment of now. The concept of past or future, birth and death has no bearing over them in their experience reality. They take every moment as it comes with no personal judgement. So it would be fair to say from that observation alone animals are far more "enlightened" than most humans.

@Moses

@Faceless So glad to have someone to share this with my friend. @tsuki Sure thing. Here's one of my favorites. Human consciousness preoccupies itself with these entities, and virtually ignores their spatial background. We consider it "nothing" in the sense of that which has neither importance nor significance, forgetting that without the spatial field, none of these entities could be manifested or distinguished. There is, however, between space and entity the same polar relationship as between crest and trough, for which reason "nothingness" is not simply the contrary or absence of "being", but rather its ground and origin. As a newbie I remember reading this for the first time at the book store (pre-internet times) and I was totally blown away. It was like YES! What a discovery. Like finding gold. I was searching for something but I had no idea what it was until I read Allen Watts. He opened a huge door for me.

@Faceless This manuscript by Allen Watts was one of the first things I read when I was a newbie many moons ago. I still have that original copy today. https://justpaste.it/TheArtOfContemplation