thenondualtankie

@ChrisZoZo I'd love to hear more about this. Should I just watch The Man Who Knew Infinity?

Is this megathread still active? What I'm wondering is: for the J.C. Stephens book, are you supposed to discard practices which you feel are not working? Are you allowed to invent minor edits to the suggested routines? For example, I'm currently at the Om Japa lesson, and the Talabya Kriya part of the routine has proven difficult for me. I can't get the suction effect with my tongue consistently and therefore the frenulum does not stretch as much as I want. So I thought I could do the tongue-stretching first, along with some other exercises presented in this video: https://youtu.be/MC-Cn9H6CQE (a few other stretches to help reach Kechari Mudra). The problem is that this would change the order of the suggested routine, but I feel it would be beneficial as I would get the most frustrating part of my routine out the way rather than slapped into the middle. Another question I had was: what if I just skipped out on the tongue stretching in the first place? Is Kechari Mudra actually worth all the hassle? Based on the stuff I've seen, it seems quite powerful though, so I think the answer to my own question here would be no, don't skip out on Kechari Mudra.

This is Nadi Sodhana. Ujjayi Pranayama is the one where you constrict your throat. I'm glad it's effective for you. I've also been feeling random cool breezes usually on my face during meditation / yoga.

What is the easiest way to face your fears? I understand that at some level, facing your fears involves literally experiencing that which you fear the most, but what are some ways we can make this a smooth process?

Most hardcore Marxist-Leninists are also... hardcore materialists. I'm curious to discuss in what ways spirituality and non-duality can help advance the communist movement in general. Is it worth trying to explain that dialectical materialism, the epistemological foundation of Marxism, is limited? What aspects of the work studied by Actualized.org should be applied to the Marxist movement? Therefore I'd like to know if there are any other communists, especially Marxist Leninists in this forum that have actually considered philosophies beyond materialism. Note to moderators: I am not trying to push my communist views here, just looking for a specific kind of person to have discussions with.

To act selfishly causes suffering. It is ultimately this suffering that leads to selflessness. How is this not God forcing us into being selfless?

Let's say I want to avoid the suffering of being crushed by a boulder. Then I believe there are two ways of going about doing that. Namely, complete acceptance or complete denial. If I completely accept the possibility of being crushed by a boulder, which comes with the possibility of death, injury etc, then this possibility will no longer make me suffer. At the same time, if I create a life where this possibility doesn't even exist, then I have avoided the suffering by avoiding the scenario altogether. The thought of being crushed by a boulder doesn't phase me, because I don't even remotely view it as a possibility. I call this scenario "complete denial". I've virtually completely avoided this "bad" scenario. From this perspective, suffering can only happen when you're between these two cases. That is, when you haven't completely avoided the boulders, but you haven't completely accepted them either. The reason I bring this up is because it's common spiritual wisdom to say that avoidance is what causes suffering. What I'm trying to argue here, however, is that if you can completely avoid something, then it will not cause you suffering. In my life, I believe I misinterpreted what it means to completely accept reality. I had a trip where I would neurotically conjure up and imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios happening to me. This had been happening for a few trips before, but this one it really got unleashed. I've been doing the same for all my trips since then. My mind justifies all this by saying "You need to accept all of reality! You need to constantly think about all the worst things that could happen to someone and act as if they're happening to you!" At the same time, in a sense I understand that this is the most direct path to happiness. Just accepting everything as a whole. So how do I reconcile these two things? Should I first create a life where I don't need to avoid the bad, and then accept everything? But is that really the acceptance of everything? I hope I made some sense here.

From what I gather, women prefer men who are more mature than them and I feel like this means older than them. I'm a 19 year old dude with zero sexual experience so I'm literally in the opposite end of the spectrum. If I have a night out then most women will be older than me. Even if it's an event hosted by my university most girls will be 1-2 years above my age. How should I deal with more mature / older women than myself? Should I just approach them the same as anyone else and therefore eventually build up that maturity? I just feel more awkward about approaching women older than me haha

@Leo Gura Holy shit I really need to think about how I apply your teachings to different things that you don't explicitly mention. I remember you making this point and agreeing with it blah blah but it never even registered for me to apply it to this example here.

@something_else I think that's the answer I needed.

Most people talk about how it took them hours of walking around to finally gather the courage to approach one girl. For me it didn't take that long. I just saw the chick and went in. I said hey, called her pretty and then I made a god-awful attempt at making conversation. Literally all my awareness was sucked up into my head. I acted like anything she told me was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. "Wowww!!". She told me she'd been dancing since she was 2, so I immediately jumped to the conclusion that "oh, you must be one of those really good dancers then!!". Even if this were true, I feel like it's just a cringey thing to tell someone. I wish I could have said something like "yeah we're gonna be dancing a lot so that's perfect." She eventually managed to slide in that she's got a boyfriend, so I said have a good evening and left. I didn't realise how I was acting until after the interaction. By after I literally mean seconds after the interaction had ended. I felt this wave of embarrassment and shame which lasted for hours. It made me realise how emotionally painful this is going to be. After a while, I actually felt some relief that I was able to let these emotions come out. This relief was short lived though, and now I feel the lingering embarrassment of that interaction, which was a few days ago. I haven't been able to do a second approach, and I feel like until I do, the embarrassment is gonna keep on lingerin'.

For me, LSD trips are at least 12 hours so I feel that planning what I'll eat during my LSD trips is crucial. There are a few complications though. FIrstly, I don't want to be in the kitchen cooking while I'm on several hundred ug of acid. I can barely cook while sober. Ideally I would prepare all of my food beforehand and then have it easily ready during the trip. At the same time, the food should be easy on the digestive system. My question: What foods do you guys normally eat during an LSD trip and how do you prepare it? Do you just eat a bunch of fruit and snacks for the whole 12 hours?

@Kundalini Cataclysm Oh my goodness I know exactly how you felt when you ate that. It's like as soon as one bite touches your mouth you realise holy fuck.. I needed this.

Thank you for the response. I like these suggestions. I've never actually made soup (not a soup person haha) so I'll have to look into what to make

Let's say I'm afraid of spiders. What would propel me to actually face my fear of spiders? One thing I'm confused about facing your deepest fears is that they're literally your fucking deepest fears. What I mean is that even if I managed to conceptually convince myself that I'm going to face such a fear, I may well not be embodying any real desire to face that fear. Because it's such a deep fear, I feel that you would need an immense source of determination to actually be able to face the fear. My question is as follows: where does this determination come from?