MutedMiles

@Wilhelm44, I have checked the youtube channel based on your recommendation, I had a good initial impression but then i noticed the subtle rather cruel marketing tactics he was using, which totally turned me off and i couldn't watch his videos anymore. For example, he said something along the lines of "Do this shadow work (that's what he calls it), since i don't want you to be miserable in your 60s." Invoking fear to sell his larger course, there were other similar subtle marketing tactics which i didn't like. It doesn't mean his stuff isn't useful, he shared a series of 10-12 ( i found couple of them useful), but book recommendations are totally unnecessary. Since I don't see why accumulating alot of knowledge about the theories of sub-conscious, architypes, inner critic, inner child, types of inner critic and all that stuff will help someone. It's very easy that one will end up rarifying these things once one has accumulated concepts and knowledge around these theories. This can further lead into making the issue even more complex and subtler and harder to fix. Instead of saying i'm unhappy they could say my inner critic is killing me and all kinds of other complexities. And the person can end up building another subtler and complex layer around his emotional issues. That's general issue with most of these kinds of channels. I don't think there is an easy way to fix these issues, it requires serious hard work with some practical tools. Note: I had no channel to vent out so giving feedback here, since someone may find it useful.

@Santiago Ram I wish you all the best and I have following advises for you, purely based on my own experience of life: 1. Make sure that you are not trapped by your faith and religion, specially when you are born in a religion it serves a purpose in ego boosting since it's your religion so it's part of your ego, and enhancing it or fighting on behalf of it is simply ego boosting. To be truly religious you have to get rid of that. 2. Understand that religions may have been created by those who had direct experience of divine but they have been shaped by those who didn't have that experience so, it's basically divorced from it true source to the level of becoming meaningless. 3. Last but not the least, let your own experience guide you don't seek any guru, savior or Messiah. Understand that these are concepts that you acquired during your life and they will leave you with it.

Though his overall analysis is interesting, but in this video his take on Trump's interests doesn't look convincing to me. One thing is sure that he isn't underestimating his "stupidity", but he quite possibly be over estimating it. Thanks @Clvp for the share, I enjoyed it, will probably watch the whole series.

It's true from observation too, life ends abruptly and stories are built in the minds of survivors only. We don't know what story the one who died was telling himself. He Just disappeared along with all the stories he kept telling himself for entire life. However even after seeing this clearly mind doesn't learn.

Sadhguru is mainly an entrepreneur, who sells products from "beyond". During his appearance he is mostly directly or indirectly promoting his products. He'll say something witty or intelligent and then immediately promote "Inner Engineering" his main product that anyone can buy online (Edit: i didn't watch the video before writing this and he starts promoting "Inner Engineering" in first 5 seconds ). It's not that the product itself is not useful, but it's not for everyone and it shouldn't be one's only source or practice, and the secrecy around "Shambhavi Mahamudra" (the practice that you will finally be allowed to do after multiple sessions with Sadhguru) is purely an old age way of piracy prevention. I would argue that his method of piracy prevention is better than UFC . In a sense @Leo Gura too is an entrepreneur, However, a big part of his life is "truth seeking", he is kind of truth seeker in public. Sadhguru is not a truth seeker, he claims to have already found it I mean (Sometimes from birth and other times at a young age, but somehow he is above and beyond everyone.), there is a story in one of his books which is very telling in that sense. It basically ends with his mother touching his feet like a disciple, and that too when he was very young. Which makes me believe that he does have illusions of grandeur, the toned down version of his voice is for the modern audience. He talks differently to his own people.

"Life purpose" is an assumption and an Idea, which gained momentum in last 40ish years. It's not hard science, not even a soft science. It's just got popularized by Guru culture. I won't take it so seriously, you got to do what you got to do, it's life. What one can choose in life is the combination of three things, your interests, your capacity and what's available in your current circumstances. Nothing is fixed in life it's a dynamic thing and you can keep evaluating and making the choices and risks that work for you. Don't underestimate the options that are available outside, I mean if there are no practical options available for what you are thinking to do, what's the use of that Idea?

If job is 8 hour and you are able to let it go after 8 hours it's not such a big problem. In my case job always have occupied all of my free time, in the sense that my life was organized around job. And it was difficult to let it go after job ended. It required a kind of thinking which stayed with me for rest of the day. I started meditating spontaneously during commute and free time or breaks, or whenever I could, I just started by contemplating on things or became very aware of all that was happening around and inside me while resisting nothing and welcoming everything, with time i realized that i was already welcoming everything, resistance was just a thought ( a kind of sense making that i was used to.) Other important thing was my walks which i liked long, it was a kind of meditation for me and which gradually turned into running and walking sometimes and sometimes only running.

How about looking at your background, the socio-cultural background and content which is creating these kinds of thoughts in you? Who needs to be at peace in you with being a man? And what is the context in which this individual came into being. Personally these questions don't elicit any kind of response in me, they simply don't matter to me. I would recommend following two practical things for you: Don't focus on abstract issues or questions, Actual issues (if any) are always specific. When we deal with those specific issues, these abstract questions and issues loose meaning and importance by themselves. Go easy on yourself, give yourself as much (or at-least) love and care as you will give to any decent human being, we all deserve that much care at-least. If there are 100 specific issues, go at it one by one the same way you'll advise your friend to whom you care about.

It's a matter of taking the right decision every time that you want to eat something. The fact that you made say 10 correct decisions, doesn't make 11th decision an automatic thing, you still have to decide the right thing again from scratch (or it might feel that way). It will get easier but not in few days. You'll know when it gets easier. You can't assume that it's easier before it actually does. And additionally you can make it easier to by keeping the healthier food around, making it practical for you to eat healthy, working out which will create more motivation, in short having the right leverage that pushes you naturally towards where you want to go.

Since your medication has been prescribed and it's working so i won't recommend anything else in that area. Whatever the side effects are I think it's worth it. However regarding smoking, I quit smoking 10 years ago in 2015 it was one of those new year nights where I was able to do what I said I'll do. However, since I quit it due to health. So afterwards I wasn't satisfied since my health didn't improve so after a couple of months i realized that quitting smoking is just the start, I'll have to start eating healthy which I did and with some hit and miss but gradually i improved, which led me to working out and running. So since then I'm on a fitness journey. Which definitely added years to my life. I owe these healthy times of my life to those decisions that i made and stick to them. It's very probable that I may not be alive by now, If i didn't start that routine or would have a very low quality life (if any). I would encourage you to continue with your fitness journey, it will pay dividends down the line.

I feel it's fairly simple but frightening at the same time. Whatever that I call "me" has been acquired during this life. It's something that was not there before I was born. So I don't see any reason for it to continue after death. And even if "me" existed another time, it will acquire again something which isn't what I'm used to be now, So it doesn't matter. For me this understanding gets grounded when I see through different stages of my life, though it was me in early childhood, teenage and young age, but there was accumulation through all those periods of life, the "self" as whom I'm living now is not the same one in childhood. So growing further I'm going to acquire more and more and burden the "self" even more. It's an ever changing living thing, unless I wake-up to something new, which could be eternal or ever lasting, however who I am now might disappear in a little while maybe a year or so. So in a way I'm dying already just not noticing it.

Recently I had sometime on my hand and I noticed that the content that I was consuming last few years made me rather over-sensitive, discontent and have an exaggerated view of the world and it's problems. This happened so gradually that I didn't notice until I stopped everything and sat with myself without any obligations for few months. At first I thought that's what aging is and that's how things are getting worst, but it was much more then that. I'm kind of coming out of it gradually. My main recommendation is to "consciously consume content", this way you'll reduce the workload of your system. This is not about just online content, but offline too. Human system can be over-whelmed, people are spending enormous amount of time and energy (And with AI's help too) to hook you mentally, recruit or convert you for their petty agenda or just have you as a follower. Apart from that in face to face discussions too, people are more inclined to discuss problems (not solutions, just problems), because somehow problems attract attention. So it's whole lot of attention seeking content all around us. Until we are conscious about it, we could be drowned in it. I would add few points which helped me: 1. It's not necessary to have an opinion on everything, it's a matter of choice no matter how pressing something seems to someone it's your choice to ignore having opinion about it. I call this the "master key" to ignore. 2. It's not necessary to stay updated on current events. 3. It's not necessary that people agree with you. 4. It's totally okay if people don't like you, specially the hypothetical people that you meet online. 5. It's perfectly fine to die quietly, while no one knew that you existed. No 5, is particularly important, because nothing is done until you address death. And I'll be totally fine if you had no opinion about this post too.. Cheers.. Note: There are more points, but I don't want to write a longer post.

At times I do revisit this need to have people like me too or agree with me or have a generally positive view of me. It's something that is rooted in survival but it's an example where mind takes survival too far, since someone disliking or disagreeing has no impact on physical survival this could be understood deep down which unlocks the hold of ego, because at a subtler level that's how ego or self perpetuates survival, it gets threatened by these situations.

I agree with your point, to ignore implies resisting, which implies a kind of failing to ignore and a kind of efforting. The better phrase would be "benevolent indifference", I don't remember from where I got it, but it describes the state of mind better.

Thanks for sharing your time and attention. I agree our attention is the most powerful and precious thing we have. Though people say this about time, but mere time without attention defeats the purpose.

I understand it like this, when I welcome all my experience (it happens anytime out of interest or when it occurs to me during the day.) I can see that "me" is also a part of this experience and not the experiencer. So the "me" and his opinions and stories are just thoughts and concepts that are part of the experience. In that sense, if those stories are set aside, everything is "perfect", but it won't be to the liking of "me" for sure and it never would be.

Yes! "Importance" is always in a context things like survival, money, desire fulfilling, happiness, fear, beliefs etc. can create the context. In which certain things, outcomes become important. However once divorced from context, "importance" represents an urgency which isn't rooted in anything and in a way looses it's meaning, unless we try to create a broader context, like "survival" or "love" etc.

I didn't knew about this before but i'm living on level 2 since 2017. And period before covid hit I was in my best health, though my age was way past the usually accepted prime age. My reasons were health based only. But i'm not sure about level 3 or level 4, i would be curious though about the practicality of it. If you care to answer my question is that if level 4 person doesn't eat most of the time, from where they are deriving the energy to continue living? All sages were eating something.

I had so much expectations of Sam Harris at one point, but apart from an introduction to meditation he didn't do much.

Done!!

If you have serious health problem, you need to fix them by getting professional help. However I have one advise from my personal experience, i.e. problem of lack of energy cannot be solved in the head. At one stage in of my life i used to be lethargic and sleepy whole day. I had alot of opinions and long medical history of many problems too. But I just started a basic gym routine, Nothing fancy just going to gym daily and doing whatever i could, Running, walking doing few machines and Moving along to difficult stuff as it got easier. Wasn't thinking about any progress at all. Gradually i improved my eating too. Only thing i did was being consistent and over the period of 2-3 years i was able to make huge progress. It turned out all my learned beliefs about myself were wrong. Most probably i wouldn't be alive by now, if i didn't start that routine. I wasn't able to solve all my problems, some are still there, but i wasn't my best self by a long shot. Basically you learn a different way of living by doing it and it takes time.

I don't define ego so broadly, for me, If i just look at my experience. I just see an awareness of perceptions, thoughts and sensations. The experience is still there if don't talk about it or even think about it. If i just let things are happen as they are, there is no making sense of things there for "ego". Thought isn't always organized and sensations if there is an awareness of them along with thoughts they appear as body. However sometimes when I sit and thoughts subside, sensations are just pulsations and a kind of amalgam of vibrations and there is no body there. The reason I'm mentioning this is because, I don't a see point of creating such a broad thought object called "ego" and then mapping whole reality around it. I would rather stay with my direct experience and move from there one step at a time. It's just a matter of language that "I" appears everywhere and all-around, but it doesn't mean that's the actual experience as well. Making sense of things is not an exercise of "ego", Only making "sense" of things in relation to "ego" is the exercise of "ego". Understanding isn't an activity of "ego", ego comes afterwards and takes credit, understanding just happens in a timeless moment that "ego" has no recollection of. Sometimes this process is more pronounced, you look at something an you get it. You don't know what knowledge you are collecting, there is no "you" there, "You" is a very surface phenomena. There can be an awareness that, there was no you at the first place. It happens intermittently to me and during those periods i have no resistance, the sensations are totally open, no resistance to any feelings.

It's about what's more easier, living there each day or trying to move somewhere else. I have been through this, i thought grass is greener on the other side. it's was definitely better initially some of the time went by well. However then i started seeing issues here too, which made me even more unhappier. I used to write stuff in a diary years back. One day i was particularly unhappy and suddenly occurred to me that I'm un-happy because I can't now imagine a better place, since the place I earlier imagined to be better doesn't proved to be "better", now I must face it. Now when I think through this, It seems happiness eludes us at times because of what we become chasing it. We become a competitive grunty person, someone who lacks good luck and has to fight through the ordeals to be a happy person. Such a person doesn't have a relationship with living that is conducive to happiness. Personally i would be way happier now to be in your place , To give it a fresh try. I would start by reading more and follow my enthusiasm and won't resist whatever that i call "ugly" in the society rather i would try to make sense of it and would go all in. Not chasing some eluding happiness but start from what makes me happy. Life is what it is, Why do we have an expectation of it to be something else?

I don't think ego makes the knowledge coherent and in it's absence it's disintegrated. Things work as they are ego is a perspective through which we look at this living. I like the notion that, ego is like a "joker" that appears after the circus show to take credit for it. We don't create our thoughts, they just appear. We don't decide which thought will appear. Even the things that we feel that we are in control of, for example decision making, again it appears with conviction that this is the right decision. Decision occurs to us. Even if one goes down into weighing options at a granular level, again we don't create the thoughts of all options and then the process and how we feel about a certain thought options. It just occurs, Ego is just a perspective on it that just jumps form thought to thought as a wrapper around it giving a sense of control.

This is a good post, and in a weirdly ironic way the post talking about "fake" itself is synthetic and in a sense fake . You made your point and proved it too. Just a side note: ============= The problem with GPT - 4 and later versions too specially the chat interface. is that it wastes your time, by engaging you in a large response, particularly the bullet points, i have system instruction added to it where i trained it to be mindful of the fact that i have finite life and every second that i waste while reading synthetic distraction is killing me slowly. So I do get better and short responses mostly.