eskwire

Np. I have a total lady boner for a good spreadsheet. Lmk if there are any bugs; I'll follow this thread.

Are you interested in Mindfulness? Have you been trying different Mindfulness techniques (including meditation), but you're not sure if you are making progress? Are you pretty sure you're making progress, but you're not sure what your sticking points are? Where you're not really changing in the practice? Long story short... During research for my degree, I found the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills. This is a questionnaire that helps you see where you're at. Attached, you will find a copy of it. If you look at it, you'll see that scoring is kind of a pain in the ass because you have to "reverse" a lot of the scores. I made an Excel spreadsheet that does all of this questionnaire scoring work for you! It will also track your % change over time. Mindfulness Tracking Questionnaire.xlsx You don't need to look at the original questionnaire, you can just use the Excel file. The spreadsheet has 4 different sheets so you can assess yourself 4 times (maybe quarterly over the course of a year!). It also has a Totals sheet at the end to look at % change. You can use the filters at the tops of the columns to look only at certain types of questions, if you want. I am going to set up a reminder in my calendar to re-take the assessment 4 times over the course of a year. I will also note observations made after the assessment -- like, after taking the assessment once, I noticed, WHOA, I'm often OFTEN judgmental and didn't even really consider that part of mindfulness (for some reason). This is not only helpful for tracking your progress, but it is also helpful for remembering all the different parts of life mindfulness encapsulates. Hope it helps someone! KIMS.pdf

@5thPablo My pleasure, it was fun.

@Marc Schinkel Sweet, thanks! I'll give it a shot. I love using hypnosis techniques.

@Leo Gura This survey appears to be available for public use through the university of the professor who created it. If you'd like to use this for anything, please feel free.

@heisenburger Try a negative visualization. Think about the worst case scenario (being ugly) in serious detail (feel air on your ugly face, water running on your wrinkly hands). Also write down thoughts you have about appearance and its importance. Examples: "I don't want to go bald. I want to be good looking. I have to be good looking." Whatever goes on in your mind. Apply the Byron Katie method to each thought. Thework.com

@STC Attractive traits in men: Ability to write and communicate. Intellectually curious: Reads, researches problems, and teaches me new things. Mature appreciation of women: Doesn't talk about women like they're cars, rating them 1-10. Creative, wacky sense of humor: Sex is great but sex jokes are annoying because they're formulaic and predictable. Strong: Follows through on what he says. Says what he means. Productive outlook on life: A healthy, kind lifestyle so he doesn't lead me into Hell. There are no achievements that I really value, except that I have finally learned not to date someone less educated. It just doesn't work out in the real world. I don't care about how much money he makes. People say that and don't mean it, but I really don't. I also try to cultivate these things in myself and understand that I will attract what I deserve. This includes a mature outlook on men. I love men, what they give to me, what they give to society, and how they balance us. They are different from me and that's ok. That's good. I try to respect them for that.

@Leo Gura Ah same aural concept but different use. Nevermind. They make military folks listen to interrogations using this.

I think this is the same as binaural beats (?). They are cool. It makes some people sick, so stick to short sessions of less than 20 mins at first.

Day 12: Spring Mix, pumpkin seeds, olive oil for breakfast Skipped day 11. Notes: Love starting the day with salad. Focusing is getting difficult. I'm rushing through the mindfulness technique without total presence. Focusing on "see" while the food's on my fork and then "feel" when it's in my mouth helps.

@Emerald Wilkins Very true. She may know what she's talking about, but teaching on such a large scale has serious complications. People with deep wounds like that are seeking compassion. What caused the wounds was a lack of compassion in the first place. They/we are needs deficient. When we are met with, again, no compassion and only tough love from our teachers, it's very painful and perhaps dangerous. "I am seeking compassion. It's not here. I'll seek elsewhere, or I give up ever receiving compassion for these wounds. Maybe I should stop believing in compassion at all." I think you hit the nail on the head about her material turning some people callous.

You would be a good person to discuss this with. I have had something to get off my chest and I am probably seeing something incorrectly. I hate Byron Katie....This is a confession. I've read 2 of her books and listened to some of her recordings. Her story seems like she's a woman who had an enlightenment experience during a midlife crisis, after living a stepford wife lifestyle. I listened to a recording where she "helped a woman see" that her abuse as a child was actually her fault, caused by her meddling in situations with a violent father. She seems callous to me. It's covered up by saccharin additions of "angel" and "sweetheart" at the ends of sentences. Her process does make people feel better because it's hard to feel a sense of injustice or righteous indignation after you believe you are the one who was being an asshole. She said that girl beat herself with her father's hands. Zen monks who beat people up for tossing cigarette butts are masters but people who are upset about being abused or molested as children are unenlightened. Like wtf. Haha like I said...surely, I'm seeing this wrong but I need to be honest about it to get somewhere with it.

@Samuel Garcia Byron Katie's stuff is good for loosening the tight grip thoughts can have and keeping you open minded. That's it. Her material can turn you into a zen devil or doormat if you don't balance it with other teachings, your own intuition, and your values.

@aurum Jeez! @Huz Did you check out Leo's video on this? I think that women understand that our looks are deeply, deeply important from the male perspective. It may just be a fact of life that we have to accept, even if it hurts or disrespects us as whole humans with many aspects. Pickup emphasizes this, of course. Pickup isn't trying to help you get with "low quality" aka not-hot chicks. It's not even necessarily trying to get you something serious or meaningful. If you are looking for a strong connection with a woman, the biggest obstacle you will encounter from pickup is getting your mentality shifted toward the douchey side of life. Advice from an outsider would be to just watch yourself -- try to keep your head on straight through the whole thing. Good luck on your adventures.

Well said. Auto pilot is serious.

@Swede Right, starting too many habits at once is a recipe for disaster. My meditation habit is new-ish and not totally entrenched. This was the concern about doing both. Like you said, food is supposed to be a happy thing!! My relationship with it has always been so unhealthy: love/hate/confused/sad. We'll see what mindfulness does. ?

The body breathes itself, the senses sense themselves, the ego creates itself. The illusion of your ego is experiencing the illusion of self. How can consciousness experience an illusion? Then it would not be conscious. Keep meditating to have different experiences. You won't be able to think your way into understanding what @Aware is saying.

@Swede I definitely think mindful eating is an incredibly important mission for me. Big things are happening in my mind from it. I don't want to drop meditation tho. Is doing both going to muck it up?

Day 10: Salad of kale, lentils, chicken, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, whatever a whole bunch of stuff. I mindfully ate my salad after an hour of meditation. Part of that meditation was the do nothing technique. This was a very positive eating experience. I was overwhelmed with emotion. Notes: It was in a metal bowl and I loved swirling it around, watching the colors and reflection move. It was like a psychedelic food tapestry. It felt good to chew this food. It felt good to look at it. Swallowing only after chewing a lot feels better. It looked so beautiful. I welled up with tears while eating this salad. When I was little, I always thought that one of my 3 genie wishes would be that unhealthy food would taste bad and healthy food would taste the best. I was chubby and felt so sad about not being as pretty as other girls. So sad that I wanted the bad food all the time. Eating mindfully has made my genie wish come true. The healthy food...the live, raw food...god's food...is what I want now. Cooked, dead, starchy, fatty, mushy food is such a chore to eat if I pay attention. It's amazing. If you are aligned with god, everything is so beautiful, easy, and kind. I am welling up again. PS Lifelong atheist here who recently gained an understanding of god. It's so new for me to speak of it and the sincerity of the whole thing...wow. Man.

High quality. Interesting. I'm a female. What determines my quality?

There's so much wrong with this. 1. We are all reaching our potential at any given moment based on what is for real in reality rather than what we believe reality should be. That is basically your advice. And I agree. But you should also apply it to Leo. 2. How is someone who is clearly stoked on learning stuck by reading? 3. How do you even know what he does all day? 4. Is it wrong to want to improve your development from the level of development achieved by your parents? Is that not evolution? Is that not what our parents want for us? I don't think it's necessary to attack personal development or Leo to teach the lesson that accepting yourself is important. In fact, it's part of personal development, because it's acceptance of reality.

@FeelFree Thinking about conceptual models, including science or spiritual teachings, is talking to humans, including yourself. Direct experience is being with god. Both have value. Both are important. You need both. But god's better than humans. ?

@schmitzy Awww. Awareness! Always comes through. ? If your friend brings up negative material you don't want to discuss, feel free to have boundaries and just tell her you don't want to discuss that. Friends have done this to me in the past. It's the truth. And if it's between the boundary or growing apart forever, your friend probably prefers the boundary. Godspeed.

@Afonso I have a lot of crazy stories. That's all I really have from the past decade and they don't make me happy. Meditating does. When I tell these stories, they sound like they made me happy and fulfilled. But no. From my experience, the more you get to know people, you are likely to find out that they are unfulfilled...suffering. Everyone who is unconscious suffers. That's why this work is universal. Partiers are usually escaping their pain via parties.

Day 9: Orange I ate an orange in my car after getting a massage. Notes: It took probably 5 times longer eating it mindfully. It really was like eating one for the first time. The taste seemed new. It all seemed new. I didn't feel trapped this time. I felt happy and enjoyed it as a wonderful new thing. It does seem like mindful eating is the answer to portion control, eating clean food, avoiding foods that cause bad reactions, maybe going vegetatian...all of that. Being conscious changes everything. Tomorrow, I'd like to eat my mindful meal after meditating for an hour and see what happens.