Wouter

I love this quote: "You can do what you like, but not like what you like."

I agree At the other hand, personally for myself, as it happens that my values evolve, I tend to watch at the ones before as "less good". That is quite strange I think, because I don't see where this kind of judgment could be grounded in.

Wow, impressing that you actually realised it. I don't really understand what you want to say about the notion of wasting your life. Do you mean that every notion of a wasted life is arbitrary, or that the general notion of a wasted life (e.g not contributing to the economy) is "wrong"?

@SkyPanther The video I posted wasn't about being afraid of death but about being afraid of waisting your life. This is very related tothe denial of death in our culture. And when you say that death should not scare you and that there is no you in the first place, do you "know" this as a belief, or is it a realisation you had?

I <3 Alan Watts

@David1 I have lots of questions on your comment But that is exactly what is baffeling me, why does the story has to be consistent? Will every story be perceived as consistent because we just search for the patterns in the given story? What defines "real" consistency? In what way exactly would the story be inconsistent when there would be perceived a fling car?

Another physics undergraduate here

I had a conversation with my sister and we talked about philosophy and physics and that kind of stuff. And all of a sudden my sister she tells "she has it again" and she grasped (literally) the ground with her hands and her face made it obvious she had a scar eperience. And then she told that she sometismes feels that "she is nothing" and that she eperiences an "emptiness" and that it is really really scary and that she then always tries to focus on something different to stop this feeling. When I heard it seemed to match with wath leo tells about the "emptiness" and the "nothingness". And wich is even more, she tells it happens always when she asked "who am I"... She isn't into spirituality so to mee it seems like it is really a realisation she had and not a belief. She always suppressed it until now. So now my question is, whas this an enlightenment experience? And what should I tell her so she can expercience the beauty of it instead of the fear (from the ego). I already told her that such an experience could be positive because she becomes "one with reality" in that moment.. How should she deal with it the next time? What should I tell her to help her as much? I am pretty mind blown actually..

As a curious student I would like to be able study effective. I already watched a lot of advice videos on youtube. But I didn't get massive insight from this, some of them contained very trivial advice like "go to lectures". The things I currently try to do in order to study more effectively are -study as actively as possible (quiz myself, self explaining) -take care of myself (sports, sleep, nutrition, meditation...) -pomodoro technique I feel that there is way more to strategize about studying than wat I summed up. So I am curious to your advice It might be relevant that I study physics and astronomy so i am particulary interested in being an effective student in those areas; but off course I am also interested in other things and advice for other fields might be very helpfull for other people reading this. ps: Leo's video on this topic is -as always- great. (If you haven't watched it and no time to do so: my main take-away was: 1)cultivate internal motivation instead of eternal ("Don't study for grades. Study for the sake of learning) 2) difficult parts of the syllabus can be mastered by brute force repetition, and 3) slow your proces down) Thanks to read Wouter

That is exactly my question. If there is not an external world dictated by physical laws, why are we so sure that "you can't manifest a fling car on the spot". The impression I seem to get from spiritual teachers (wich can obviously be a wrong perception of what they want to say) is that consciousness is more fundamental to reality than we generally asume. But why than does it feel so obvious that "sure, you can't manifest a fling car on the spot". Or do we perceive "the laws of nature just as laws of nature because" we are wired to see patterns. But if you go for the last statement, is it than possible that tomorrow one of these "laws" gets broken?

Damn, now it's way harder for my ego to come up with excuses ^^

I was wondering the same thing, is it effective to "do" this video everyday to raise awareness/ get enlightened?

In what way do you feel meditation is "helping" a little bit?

I am trying to implement a meditation habit (today I did my 23th consecutive day of 20 minutes). But I don't really know after a meditation if I did it "right". Are there specific ways you can tell if your meditation session was "a good one" (with wich I mean: it contributed to one's "merging into reality" as Leo discribes it)

@Falk Thanks for the answer, I will defenitely try a lot of techniques, but currently I am doing the same techniques for 30 conscecutive to gain consistency. How do you judge weather "you like it" after a technique? For example how do you know the ego isn't judging wheather it's comfortable?

In my "opinion"/belief nature can nurture us perfectly, and if we proces our foods they become less healthy. btw: I am currently reading an interesting book that also covers this topic: "the 80/10/10 diet-douglas graham" it is a foundational book for people who think a high carb raw vegan diet is the most healthy. I am not on this type of diet, but the arguments resonate with me.

I think reducing neediness will come as a natural byproduct of being able to love and accept yourself more. This video might be relevant.

I am really interested in neurofeedback. It seems a very promising for analysing your brain. But it also seems expensive. Has onyone expercience neurofeedback? Is it for example possible to buy a neurofeedback device and use it on yourself, the same way we can use a heart rate monitor on ourself. Or does it take lots and lots of experience and knowledge to work with these things? Thank you for reading, Wouter

To monitor acticity of the brain. I compare it with a (very complex) heart rate monitor, but then not for your hart but for your brain. This is a device that seems interesting: http://www.choosemuse.com/ But I don't know if it is worth buying.

What is your biggest regret? (not sure if you still have that kind of emotions/thougts ...)

@Key Elements I guess God has never told you the rule that you can online subscribe to a channel if you watch every video ^^

Are there mental exercices you recommend during activities wich don't require concentration. For example when you sit in the car; you don't have to put mental effort in it, but the situation also isn't ideal for formal meditation. Or are there effect negligible compared to formal meditation? Btw: do you please want to mention if you see (big) mistakes in my englisch. So I can improve, because currently I don't feel comfortable writing Englisch..

Shinzen Young (who is a spiritual teacher) defines meditation as "an(y) activity which "improves" the baselevel of concentration". According to him there are people who meditate (according to this defenition) while doing other activities than formal meditation. But he doesn't tell anything more about it (as far as I understand/know). So now I am wondering if it is possible for everyone getting this "meditation without meditating"-benefits by adopting "the right" mindsets. For example I play table tennis as a hobby, and while I do it, I feel that I am in different mental mode. I could certainly believe that it is possible making this a meditation; if I had more insight in this topic. Is there anybody who can help?

First,,I higly recommend watching this video to many of you In wich Tim Urban models the brain of a procrastinator (he thinks almost everyone is a procratinator) as a rational decision maker is the captain of the ship (at least that is what is what we want). But when things get hard, the "instant gratification monkey" takes over the ship and brings it to "the dark playground" in wich we do the things we don't consider the best in the long term and we also don't really enjoy because we feel guilty. When there are deadlines the "panic monster" shows up and the instant gratification monkey goes away. But (and this is really really important) when there are no deadlines (I think society has no deadline for most of the things you want to accomplisch) the panic monster doesn't show up, so we take no action. And this bites us in the ass (to use Leo's words :-)) later in our lives... I think this is a very accurate description of "procrastion". But how can we weaken the instant gratification monkey? Are there things we can do in order to get rid of the urge for instant grafification? Some of my thoughts about this question: -maybe we don't want to get rid of this proces totally because if we already lose the battle against the instant gratification monkey, we aren't commited enough, so what the "rational decesion maker" would do would be an even bigger loss of time (since most of the time a big commetment is required to reap a benefit) -being aware of this proces already weakens the instant gratification monkey But still I would like to be able to weaken the urge for instant gratification. Are there techniques out there to achieve this?