Jordan

Yea money doesn't do much for you if you can already afford rent and food and save a bit of money every month. I wouldn't trade even 5 years of aging for $20 million. Maybe 1-2 years.

I tried strong determination sitting just now. I didn’t watch the video you shared past the first couple minutes but what I did is just make sure I move as little as I can. I set a timer instead of an alarm because I wanted to be able to sit longer without being distracted if I want to. I stopped after 1.5 hours. For me I felt heightened emotional sensations in my heart then in my belly fairly early on. I started dosing off after a while then being jolted back awake when I realized that was happening. During 2 daydreams that I had there would be a phrase one character says to another like “have you woken up yet” and he is holding someone that is asleep but moving trying to wake up. Then that recontextualized to remind me that I am asleep and need to wake up now. I received a burst of energy and became much more focused. I could feel clear sensations in my ribs connecting to the spot just above my belly button. I imagined god saying the same phrase “have you woken up yet?” In a tone like he would not be surprised if I had. I focused on the present moment and responded. “Not yet, but I am ready” I didn’t get much more present from then on, the state eventually started to wain and I stretched and stopped the meditation session.

I have done this several times but it has been probably a year or more since I did it. It was a much different experience for me than doing mindfulness meditation for an hour. There are times where I would feel waves of emotions feeling like they wanted to throw me off my seat. I found some coping mechanisms that helped like counting my breaths when I needed some relief. Usually at the end I felt refreshed like I was cleaned out from the inside. Maybe I will try it again today and see how it goes.

Thanks for everyone’s replies. After sleeping on it I can see how the advice makes some sense from a certain point of view and strategy for living a good life. It may be suited for someone with a certain set of values and survival strategy. It seems a certain amount of having survival figured out, wisdom, life experience and consciousness is needed to introspect and understand when this sort of advice works. I plan to enjoy live as a human figuring stuff out for himself for a while longer even though I am aware there is no self here and it is possible to be content without understanding how anything works.

This seems to work well for me. Breath in slowly focusing on your third eye chakra for 5 heartbeats, then move on to your throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral and root chakra for 5 heartbeats each. Next exhale starting at your tail bone and moving up your spine stopping at each spot at the spine that is in line with a chakra. 5 heartbeats each until you reach the top of your spine. Continue repeating the process around 10 times until uou notice a state change. If you can’t do 5 heart beats, then start with 4 or 3. It should be a bit of a struggle and like you are out of air. I have a video saved somewhere with similar instructions I can add later when I am on my computer. edit: He explains it here at around 1:52:00

I joined a discord group of Buddhists to see their perspective on what makes a good life and satisfaction. If I ask about wanting anything such as wanting an increased baseline consciousness or to plan out a fulfilling life, I get the same sort of answer. The answer I receive is something like: Practice cultivating the feeling of fulfillment in each moment. Eventually those concepts of purpose and long term goals will appear as unnecessary clutter. I am not sure if this philosophy is common for Buddhists or it is just this group but it seems like they are taking this lesson a bit too far. I see how it can be beneficial to reframe things to remove discomfort and be happy now but doing this as a one size fits all answer to everything seems a bit much. It appears they are desiring not to desire anything difficult so they will be comfortable and happy all the time. I don't see this working very well long term although there are many ways people live that are much worse. Does anyone have any opinion on this?

I will probably mostly do mindfulness meditation with labeling as described in Leo’s video. I have a breathing technique I like to do to enter a meditative state before meditating. I also like to forget all concepts for a while like in the guided exercise for realizing you are god video then continuing with meditating. See concepts as oversimplified models of reality and not important. What type do you plan to do?

I am also considering a solo meditation retreat. I was thinking 30 days 10 hours+ per day with some stretching and walking. It might be a challenge being approved at work but I am ok with losing my job if I don't have enough freedom for something like this. I never tried one before so maybe I could do a 2 day trial run on the weekend sometime. I would: -Plan out the food -Make sure your house is spotlessly clean before starting -Make sure the place has fresh air -Define the exact meditation technique you will use and be determined to stick with it without changing it. Include any preparation or what to do if body/emotional pain comes up. -Have a journal to jot down insights that come up when taking a break. -Visualize your plan day by day and how you will deal with issues that could come up then confirm that is what you want to do.

I came up with an Idea this morning. I could make a video series of my growth to show others what is possible if they dedicate time to improving a certain skills. I could do a 10 hour a day for 30 day challenge doing things like: Meditate 10 hours a day for 30 days Learn video animation 10 hours a day for 30 days Move (walk, swim, yoga, tai chi, rock climbing) 10 hours a day for 30 days Public speaking 10 hours a day for 30 days Design websites 10 hours a day for 30 days

Leo's mindfulness meditation video is great. I started out with focusing on the breath but just the concept of it seems so boring and unappealing. I stuck with mindfulness meditation with labeling for a long time because it is fairly simple and more interesting to me. edit: I just saw you asked for tips and tricks and what your goals/expectations should be. #1 When you are meditating you want to forget what your goals are whatever they are. Get rid of any ideas of getting any benefit from meditation and just do it for no reason. This will give you better results because your mind will come up with many ideas on how to reach your goal which will distract your from actually meditating. #2 You can expect to get a higher sensory/emotional clarity, notice more things, lower stress, see things from different points of view more easily. #3 A good goal to have would be just to do 20 minutes every day at the same time for 30 days. See if you notice anything different.

@ExploringReality Thanks for sharing Kundalini Breathing - you just explained the inhale and stopped. I am guessing you don't just breath in once and you are done. I will see what applies to me. I want to take care of my knee pain before I spend too much time on martial arts. Right now I get pain on the outside of both knees when I walk downhill for 30-60 min or if I run for around 3 minutes. I went to a physiotherapist and he gave me some exercises and stretches to do. I will start out doing those and maybe add more stretches and self massage. I will also see what I can find out online about the causes of my pain and solutions. my training right now is bouldering 1x per week for 2-2.5 hours, 5 pullups 10 pushups alternating as many as I can do for 10 minutes 3x per week. I sometimes do the physio leg exercises but haven't been very consistent with those. I will start doing them every day from today. My diet is the same everyday. rice, broccoli, zucchini , carrots, yu choy(Chinese leafy green vegetable) lamb, butter, salt all chopped up and mixed together. I usually mix perogies in it for dinner which is probably not ideal for health. Making some smoothies might be a good idea to add to my diet. I just bought Leo's Life Purpose course. I will spend a lot of time seeing what advice is in there and follow whatever exercises are in that over the next couple weeks.

@aurum I was impressed several years ago when I saw a Chinese healer take my girlfriend's kid that injured his leg from soccer and couldn't walk and just crack his leg and he was fine after. I said back then that I wish I knew how to do that. It seemed pretty cool. The problem I see is if you do a good job, you have no more patients

This is a great video. I haven't watched it since it just came out. I will start some stretching and yoga and see if it helps. Notes: Pillars of falling in love with life are falling in love with consciousness, health, growth, learning, investing in yourself, execution, creativity. Consciousness- meditate, be inspired by / see / connect with the beauty in art, connect with your present experience, see potential in everything you experience. make your life a work of art. Health - holism and wellness. Make a choice to avoid health traps. Respect your life. Food, exercise, relationships, work, self image, mindfulness, focus, attitude, integrity. Growth, investing in yourself - vision of reading many books and connecting the info is fulfillment, how are you going to grow today in social skills, Learning, behavior change, making distinctions. put yourself face to face with an experiential problem. Execution - self esteem tied to this, feel strong, joy from execution, reading, meditating, working, going to the gym, Creativity - life purpose The reward is all the steps it takes to self actualize. Deliberate practice. Visualization. Doing something new. Facing your fears. Not giving up. Everything you do is something you want to do because it is part of your purpose. Saying no to things that doesn't align with your purpose. Integrity. Find your top values, connect with the joy of looking at beautiful things. Have a super sober life. Build momentum. Living like a sheep, following the path of least resistance is the biggest sin. Set a high standard, take action, just start. Stop doing actions that make you disillusioned with life. Appreciation for things that take hard work. Face/going to battle with your demons. Start now. Live life consciously. Deconstruct reality in a way that leaves you in a state in not knowing and radiant beauty.

I feel like I am coming to the end of a 4.5 year phase in my life where I have been comfortable working 40 hours a week, meditating every now and then, enjoying playing video games, spending time with my girlfriend and rock climbing 1x per week. I would like to make big steps to increase the amount of learning and insights I have every day. I want to have work that is much more creative, help people enjoy their life more. I would like to increase my baseline level of consciousness and develop a much deeper understanding of my mind, emotions, relationships, selling products, psychology, insight, learning, life purpose, my own personality my strengths/weaknesses, my body, my health. I would like to take better care of my body eliminating aches and pains I have. I have enough money to last around 3 years of my regular expenses so if I put all my time into focusing on this, I could take 1.5 years off having a regular job without risking being broke. More specifically I would like to understand and heal my knee pain, back pain, strengthen my body, increase my energy levels, cultivate inspiration/fulfillment, learn how to sell a product, learn how to create my own product and continue learning and having new insights every day. I would also like to spend large portions of time meditating and contemplating. I would like to alternate between trying many new things and contemplating and making new connections about those experiences. I plan to give my 3 weeks notice to my job in around a month after I use up my dental benefits and have a more well formed plan. Anyone have any opinions or suggestions of things I should consider as I start making these changes in my life?

@CosmicExplorer I listened to this episode and I do mindfulness meditation as described in Leo's video. They explain that mindfulness is a brief event and not a continuous thing but mindfulness meditation is not the same thing as mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation is done continuously and you ideally will have many moments of mindfulness. Leo is not saying to sit around being partially mindful. The idea is to be fully captivated and have 100000x higher sensory clarity and focus on the object you are savoring not just labeling it and having a light attention on it. I don't really like the idea of constructing an auditor and a meditator to check if you are being mindful. You should be able to tell if you are doing it right if your sensory clarity and focus is increasing a lot. If it is not then maybe you need to look closer into why that is with a technique like they describe in the podcast.