softlyblossoming

Spot on. Meditation is not a means to an end but the end of all means... it's not something that you do but something that makes you realize you're already done. I'd love to know how long it took you before your meditation started to feel like this, and how often it does. I've been meditating for 3 years and still barely get any states like this. Do you know of any special techniques for sustainably cultivating that type of feeling toward life or meditation? Thank you, @Bazooka Jesus

That's a really cool observation. Why do you look at the mind like this? Thanks, @BlueOak :-)

@Akos Your videos are really cool to watch while I meditate

I've also been in a totally bleak place today, but thanks to this thread, I've started to reframe my dark night as another toy to play with. I been playing with this situation by imagining up ways that my dark moments are helping me see how my attachments are ultimately unsatisfying, for example: life was so great in God consciousness, but now it sucks, so even God isn't a source of satisfaction that lasts, so now I have another reason not to cling to it so tightly by idolising it as an escape from the present moment, which is all that truly is and all I really ever have. I hope this helps you see that all of the moments in our lives can become fuel in our awakening rocket ships. But more importantly, that when we can find some reason to see a silver lining around the grey skies, it can help us rest.

@BlueOak @Tim R @Salvijus Thank you so much, these really wonderful replies are super helpful. @This I'm sure you're doing it right. From what I've heard, you're not supposed to find a real self during self-inquiry!

I have no idea, I hope so too.

@Baum after making aya banana smoothie

Well I took you seriously, so too bad, @BenG. I think it was a great answer because it reconciled a paradox in a way still in fitting with common sense. When 19th-century inventors and engineers started using bug as a synonym for defect, they were talking about mechanical ­malfunctions, and mechanical malfunctions were always bad. The idea that a bug might actually be something desirable would never have crossed the mind of an Edison or a Tesla. It was only after the word entered the vocabulary of coders that it got slippery. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature is an acknowledgment, half comic, half tragic, of the ambiguity that has always haunted computer programming. In the popular imagination, apps and other programs are “algorithms,” sequences of clear-cut instructions that march forward with the precision of a drill sergeant. But while software may be logical, it’s rarely pristine. A program is a social artifact. It emerges through negotiation and compromise, a product of subjective judgments and shifting assumptions. As soon as it gets into the hands of users, a whole new set of expectations comes into play. What seems an irritating defect to a particular user—a hair-trigger ­toggle between landscape and portrait mode, say—may, in the eyes of the programmer, be a specification expertly executed. Who can really say? In a 2013 study, a group of scholars at a German university sifted through the records of five software projects and evaluated thousands of reported coding errors. They discovered that the bug reports were themselves thoroughly buggy. “Every third bug is not a bug,” they concluded. The title of their paper will surprise no one: “It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature.” INABIAF—the initialism has earned a place in the venerable Acronym Finder—is for programmers as much a cri de coeur as an excuse. For the rest of us, the saying has taken on a sinister tone. It wasn’t long ago that we found software ­dazzling, all magic and light. But our perception of the programmer’s art has darkened. The friendly-seeming apps and chatbots on our phones can, we’ve learned, harbor ill intentions. They can manipulate us or violate our trust or make us act like jerks. It’s the features now that turn out to be bugs. The flexibility of the term bug pretty much guaranteed that INABIAF would burrow its way into everyday speech. As the public flocked online during the 1990s, the phrase began popping up in mainstream media—The New York Times in 1992, The New Yorker in 1997, Time in 1998—but it wasn’t until this century that it really began to proliferate. A quick scan of Google News reveals that, over the course of a single month earlier this year, It’s not a bug, it’s a feature appeared 146 times. Among the bugs said to be features were the decline of trade unions, the wilting of cut flowers, economic meltdowns, the gratuitousness of Deadpool 2’s post-credits scenes, monomania, the sloppiness of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, marijuana-induced memory loss, and the apocalypse. Given the right cliché, nothing is unredeemable. The programmer’s “common catchphrase” has itself become a bug, so trite that it cheapens everything it touches. But scrub away the tarnish of overuse and you’ll discover a truth that’s been there the whole time. What is evolution but a process by which glitches in genetic code come to be revealed as prized biological functions? Each of us is an accumulation of bugs that turned out to be features, a walking embodiment of INABIAF. —'It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature.' Trite—or Just Right?

That's so sweet and wholesome. I'm so sorry about what happened to you, @Baum. Lot's of people with beautiful intentions end up on scary trips, you're not alone. I hope you're feeling much better now and someone helps you understand.

@AlwaysJoggin I think the door never moved and you imagined the whole thing

@mw711 That's so deep. How do you choose something other than another delusion? Is it possible?

@AlwaysJoggin That's actually genius I really feel like the only power we have over our lives and world is what we can do with our imagination.

Look and see for yourself how all of the things that happened and are happening are thoughts, and how thoughts never stand still. Look in the same way to see that your self is not a physical body or mind, but thoughts about a physical body and mind. Then try to notice that the whole world you live in is not made of real things in a real world, but thoughts about real things in a real world. Next, notice that anything you think is real is yet another thought, and so this continues with all 'real things' in an infinite recursion. It's just thoughts in the only present moment, all the way down. Isn't it great how much more control over our life this new perspective brings us, @WokeBloke?

I'm not enlightened, so I feel like I wrote it. However, from a non-dual perspective, it was never written. We can reference the past to survive as humans, but the past (literally/existentially) is just a thought. When there's no thoughts, there's just the present moment, because things only happen in the present moment. Furthermore, because the past only exists when there are thoughts about it, there's no real/fixed/unchanging past.

There's a thought that's saying you wrote the post, but it's just a thought about a past. Thoughts always arise in the present moment, even thoughts about a future and past. Interestingly, our sense of identity only exists in our thoughts. By paying close attention, we can notice that our thoughts are always changing, and therefore can conclude that there's no fixed/unchanging self. A thought is just a thought, but have to look at it really literally/existentially to see this.

The real you can't (do any of those things because it's doesn't exist), but the illusory you (who you think you are) can. Real (non-existent) you doesn't, illusion you appears to. You didn't write this post, that's just another thought. You, the post and everything else are all just thoughts happening in the present moment.

There is no real self. The one you directly experience now is illusory. You don't exist. You think you do.

@AlwaysJoggin How? Thank

Thank you very kindly, and yeah I'll keep an eye open for goenka retreats. Have you done one, @Michal__?

@Michal__ Do you have a good tutorial, or your own other top tips that some people don't know, for body scanning? Thank you <3

Ego is going into the test and doing guesswork, failure is bringing the cheat sheet. Thank you for making this, @The0Self. I'll be back here again <3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SniI1RjTaL8 It gets privated in 2 days, so check it out now. Saw someone post about this a while back, so if any of yas were in that thread here's the movie they were making. Warning: It's pretty dull and they don't even do the 5MeO till like 45 mins lol Just incase anyone cares <3

I'm starting to think this whole path is a multi millennium cash grab

@OBEler Yeah it is boring tbqh hahahaha

So cool, @The0Self, thanks for elaborating on this from your direct experience. The journey hurts so bad, but I will keep pushing thru to the good bits, whatever it takes!