askdfjnak

Notes Peak experience and permanent (?) shift in perspective. When I was a little boy I used to love sitting by the car window. My siblings and I would fight each other for the privilege of being able to watch the world zip past as we made the drive into town. When I was lucky enough to win, I would savor my view by moving my focus in and out of the world outside. I would start by watching things way off in the distance drift slowly by, like a mountain on the horizon or a cloud floating silently through the sky. I would then move my focus to something closer like a cow grazing under a tree and I would watch as they drifted past slightly faster than the mountain. I would then move even closer to the barbed wire fences and scrubs that skirted the road, struggling to concentrate on the barbs and posts that flashed in front of me. Eventually I would be watching the grass a few meters away from the car with a sore head trying to spot individual blades in the blur of green. My universe began to rumble with my forehead pressed on the glass. My intense concentration would always break into silence as my eyes looked at the scratches on the glass and I became aware that I was sitting in the car, somewhat relieved that the world was small again. I liked to hug my knees and make myself feel cozy as the trip went on. Somehow I would relish the paradox of being in a small metal box hurtling through a big world. This was part of my preparation process for what was undoubtedly the best part of the road trip. The hump. The hump was situated at the top of a hill just on the edge of town. There was a sharp decline that would produce freefall sensation as the laws of inertia lifted you out of your seat. My dad would hit it especially fast and we would careen over it like the dukes of hazard squealing with laughter as we “flew”. *** I was doing a long strong determination sit one morning. As the hours passed the sunlight began to creep through my curtain and onto the wall in front of me. I watched as the beam crept closer and closer to my head, eventually I could feel the warmth of the light hit my right ear and move across my scalp to the other side and back onto the wall. I burst out laughing when I realized that the beam never moved. What in fact was happening was that my entire house was moving across the path of suns light as the earth was rotating. Of course this is just a belief that I picked up from science but it was still a great shift in perspective. Later that day I was riding the bus back from university. The sun was setting over the farmland to the left of me, throwing up beautiful red and purple colors into the sky. To the right a full moon was rising along with the twinkles of a few bright stars in the twilight. I was sitting alone in the back of the bus and I remembered how I used to hold my knees. I curled up and watched the world passing by, admiring the beauty and moving my focus in and out like I did when I was a kid. The bus hit a dip and flung me into the air giving me the exact same feeling of freefall that I used to get as we drove over the hump. I don’t really know what happened next. I had a full blown overview effect kick in as I was floating above my seat. I realized I was watching the world pass by through the window but I also realized I was watching the universe pass by through the sky. The sky changed from being the sky to being a giant car window that I was looking out of! Some of the things way out in the distance like the faint twinkling stars were passing by slowly, others, like the sun were closer but moved much more quickly. The moon was moving past very rapidly. In an instant I went from feeling like a cozy boy in a small car to feeling like a cozy boy on a small planet. My entire body sprang up goosebumps and I began shaking with laughter, no sound came out of my mouth, I was just shaking. Tears began to flow down my cheeks and I was soon soaked in the most intense bliss I have ever felt. I’ve had plenty of peak emotional experiences before, but this was on a whole ‘nother level. I could feel some of my facial muscles tremoring. If someone had looked back at me they probably would have thought I was having a seizure. I have had a weird sensation in my body for a few weeks after this happened. It feels like I’m falling but I’m not. It’s like my being is falling into itself? I don’t really know how to describe it. I can’t look at the sky the same way I used to do either. Now when I’m walking down the street I’m not really walking down the street with the same mindset I used to have. I’m walking down the street on my little planet, as we drive by the sun. When I see the moon or Mars I wonder about the mountains and valleys on them. It would be cool to go for a drive in another planet. The silence of the sky washes away the noise of the world for me. I feel open, like I’m naked inside. It’s beautiful. ***

Start inquiring into this "thing". Keep dissecting this "thing" using inquiry as your tool (like a magnifying glass zooming in on it). If you find another "thing" start dissecting that. Keep going until there is no "thing" - nothing. It sounds like you're doing inquiry as a mental exercise rather than as an experiential exercise. If you are, remember you're not looking for an answer to pop up at the end of your questions. The answer you want is already there, even before you begin questioning. To use an analogy, it sounds like you're trying to figure out what 2+2 is, when the number 4 is already in front of you. Your job isn't to solve 2+2, your job is to just see 4 without calculating.

@quantum I'm glad you find it useful.

I think that arrogance is a trick the ego uses to separate itself from other people. If you think you're better than others, you're separating yourself from them. When you say you want to be modest, do you mean that you want to be more modest than everybody else? If so, this is just another form of arrogance because you're trying to set yourself apart from others. True modesty begins to set in when you realise how connected everything is and how irrelevant you (as an ego) are in the big scheme of things. You begin to stop putting so much effort into separating yourself from reality. Have you ever been star gazing? It's a good way to put things in perspective.

Notes Manging my relationship with the web I’ve realized just how big of a distraction the internet is. I think the long term consequences of continuously binging on it will be quite severe. One of the first things I noticed when I left was just how much of my ability to focus has eroded away. I’ve been meditating a lot and I think I have much higher focus than most people, but I still noticed a huge difference in the quality of mind I was able to enter. The quality of my meditation increased significantly when I was no longer being distracted by thoughts that were inspired by what I consuming online. I really like this video by the Nerdwriter explaining how different mediums affect our consciousness: He is talking more about how the style of online video is different to tv, but I extrapolated what he was saying into how watching YouTube videos (which is where I spend the bulk of my internet time) trains me to focus for short periods of time and jump rapidly through different forms of content. This does have advantages when I want to quickly get an overview of something; all I have to do is search the topic and skim through a whole lot of varied content to get information quickly. The disadvantage is that I train myself to avoid looking at anything deeply. I give myself a handicap on the road to mastery which requires focus and discipline on one thing for years. This ted talk covers some interesting research around this issue. The key conundrum that I feel like I face internet is: Either you’re on and you’re distracted, or you’re off and you’re missing out on everything. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. I’ve tried to just be aware and use the internet mindfully but it doesn’t work. The pull is too strong and I'm not yet mindfull enought to stop it. I also self-interrupt a lot more than I initially thought. This cleared up pretty quickly when I went offline, but now that I’m back I know I’m going to need to set up some system of management to make sure I don’t lose any progress I’ve made. One technique I've started to use was Shinzen Young’s Trigger Practice which he describes below. It’s designed to make you become aware of that invisible sensory environment that media can put us in and the subconscious processes that take place when you’re in an environment like that. It’s really great to improve your base level of mindfulness. I have been wanting to get a completely regular sleep pattern for a while now but it’s been difficult because my meditation habit has brought up a lot of stuff that has given me random energy spikes. It seems to be settling down now so I’m going to try and go for it. My plan of action for the next month (starting tomorrow) will be to block out all social media and various websites (including this one) for 22 hours a day. What I’m going to do is grant myself access to social media for 1 hour in the morning (at 4am which is when I wake up) and 1 hour in the evening (at 7pm so that when I finish the day I can wind down). I can then meditate immediately after the sessions being mindful of how they affect(ed) me mentally. This will accomplish four things (hopefully) 1. I will get out of bed very easily in the morning (because I will be motivated by the internet). 2. I will be able to completely relax before going to sleep (because I will meditate after my evening session). 3. I will become much more mindful around media and the web which will serve me well in the long term (I will become better and better at focusing and eliminating distracting information) 4. I won’t have to miss out on stuff! I’ve found that 2 hours is more than enough time to cover all of the social media I want to in a day. When I limit myself I become much clearer about what I want to watch/browse/lurk and I don’t fall into the spiral of unconsciousness and reactivity so easily. It’s like I’m online with an objective as opposed to being online as an escape which is a completely different mindset. I have started using Freedom to block sites/apps in case anyone was wondering. If anyone knows of any others I'd be interested to try them out.

about 2 years, and yes

This video has some great insights into criticism and projections.

The dark side of meditation happened. I cut out pretty much all internet for about 2 months (I did cheat once or twice but ive been pretty out of the loop). I didn't see what was happening on the forum and I missed the latest video's, but I'm all caught up now I'm neither for or against haha. I was just suprised by the change of scenery around here. Don't hold onto anything ... let it all go.

@Rali You can always go deeper. That's like *counts fingers* 64 walls in under 20 seconds

@SimpleTruth cool tags

Don't know who the artist is.

@Dragallur It's going well. I'm not going to post my hours until December 31st (when 6 months is over). I don't want to get too caught up in numbers and achievement. Mental purification makes you change life direction about as often as you change underpants. Some days a I only do one hour, other days I do 12+. My current pb sds time is 7hrs24min though Right now I'm going to catch up on all the stuff I've missed: >Leo became god >People are doing rare drugs >Forum has become a hive of channel promotions/bashing >Leo's speech patterns are getting weird >I'm pretty sure some of my posts are missing >probably other stuff I haven't seen yet

Stages of meditation and freedom:

@DimmedBulb If you have one eye one the person next to you, you only have one eye on the road you're walking down. It's normal to want to compare yourself to others, but it's something that you have to get out of the habit of doing. It only slows you down. If you didn't mind that your friend was better than you at everything you wouldn't be feeling inadequate right now. You would just naturally spend time doing whats important to you. This is basically self love. You don't have to work to love yourself, you already do. All you have to do is stop getting in your own way by comparing yourself to others or by trying to live up to a "perfect self" in your head, then you will naturally start to think and feel much better. Paradoxically, when you start to think and feel better, you will start to perform better. Leo made a video on comparing yourself to others and worth/achievement. One of the re-frames is that everybody has zero worth (from memory) I'm pretty sure it's all in this video

Weeks 7-10 I’ve been struggling a bit recently and I wanted to share a technique that I’ve been using for the past year or so that really helps you get your shit together. I was really resistant to posting this but the technique is too powerful to keep to myself. It’s probably already a thing I just haven’t heard of before. It’s basically journaling but with a twist. You write to and from yourself as yourself. I like to pretend I’m sending slightly formal emails to a best friend. This is different to regular journaling because you have to question and answer yourself in a rhythmic back and forth dialogue, as opposed to just writing about anything. What you’re about to read is going to appear absolutely crazy but there are a few reasons that it’s really effective to raise your own self-awareness and resolve some unconscious issues. Sitting down and actually typing/handwriting to yourself forces you to really consider your thoughts and organize them into a clear message. It’s different to contemplation/meditation because in those practices your thoughts are usually so rapid and incoherent that you don’t resolve anything within the realm of thoughts. You might read what I wrote below and just brush it off as stupid mental chat but that’s because you don’t appreciate the pace at which you have to think when you write to yourself, especially if you’ve never journaled before. You’ll read this in a few minutes and it’s not really relevant to whatever your issues are but it took me about 30 minutes to write and it’s all about me, for me, to me, from me. Sitting and writing to yourself as if you were writing to a friend is a really good way to practice self-love and self-honesty. These are by far the biggest assets you can have on a personal development/enlightenment journey. I haven’t been doing personal development long but I have no doubt in my mind that self-honesty is like 99% of the game and it’s really difficult to practice self-honesty if you don’t love yourself so it’s just as important. I just start by writing about something that is bugging me or whatever the issue is and then I reply as a wise old friend/spouse and I see where it goes. It always delivers results. Just as long as I keep writing and letting the conversation go wherever it goes. I usually write a full conversation then I come back in a few hours or the next morning and I read it before deleting everything. This is also different to a regular journal, I think. This helps me keep the conversation absolutely free and open, which is the key. I haven’t done it for a few months, but I’m going to commit to doing it at least once a week from now on. *** >Hi Marc, It’s time we talked. There are a lot of things that you have been avoiding/half-assing recently, like your schoolwork, your meditation practice, your family, your job, your exercise. I would like to know why. Regards, Marc >Hi Marc, I don’t really know why, it’s just sort of snuck up on me. One minute I was killing it, the next I’m face planting into the dirt. You know, same old shit. I think the recent social validation I’ve been receiving has been a part of the problem. I was crafty enough to turn the good emotions from social acceptance into a new desire. The need to fulfill that desire led to the creation of a new self-image that I’ve been feverishly trying to maintain, once again. I’m even doing it now! I’m imagining how I’m going to post this on the Actualized.org forum and people are going to look at my vulnerability and they’re going to love it! They’re going to LOVE ME! And if they LOVE ME I WILL FINALLY GET TO BE HAPPY! I’m avoiding my work because it makes the people around me ANGRY and DISAPPOINTED or INTIMIDATED by me. If they’re angry at me they are paying attention to me, if they’re paying attention to me I have power! With power I HAVE CONTROL! Regards, Marc >Hi Marc, I see where you’re coming from, but I think you and I both know that’s a load of bullshit. We’ve been down this road before. I mean, it kind of works for a while. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t keep getting suckered into it, but it always fails. You know this, I know this and everybody around you knows this. How about we quit while we’re ahead and get back to authenticity and truth before this gets ugly? Regards, Marc >Hi Marc, I want to, I really really want to. … but if I’m honest I think I’d just be giving you lip service if I said OK. There’s still something I haven’t resolved yet … something feels off. I think because I’ll post this online later it kind of defeats the purpose. I’m not really having a private conversation with you, I have an imaginary audience so I’m careful about what I say. Half of my mind is preoccupied with constructing an example of my journal process that I’m going to show to people. Since I still have some insecurities about what people think of me I’m holding back. I can’t be truly honest right now because I’m afraid of what people might think. We’ve written some crazy shit before. Regards Marc >Hi Marc, That makes sense. You know, it’s OK to be scared. It’s perfectly natural, what matters is how you choose to deal with it. You can either move into your fear and purify your mind a little more, or you can regress back into a state of avoidance and neuroticism. With your current level of awareness that’s going to suck BIG TIME. I’m gonna save you some trouble and shoot you straight. You’ve gone off the rails a bit so the next few days are going to suck. If you think about it you don’t really have a choice right now, either you choose to move head first into whatever it is that you’re afraid of and make some progress quickly, or you can avoid it until the suffering forces you to do it anyway, slowly. You’ve always been a rip-the-band-aide-off kind of guy. This is who you are, you’re brave and I don’t mean that in an egoistic sense. It’s something in your very core you’ve always been brave. And not brave in that weird masculine Hollywood way either, brave in that you’re willing to be vulnerable, willing to be honest, willing to live in truth. The true kind of bravery. Regards Marc > Hi Marc, Geez you sure know how to turn on the water works. The people are going to think this is so weird, but fuck ‘em. Love you bro, Marc >I got you >Hi Marc, That was hilarious, but I think if you’re really honest you’re just trying to cover up your vulnerability with your sense of humor again. There’s nothing wrong with a good laugh, just don’t use it as a cop out. You’ve also been using it to bring people down a little bit recently. Not cool man. Regards Marc >Touché, my friend, touché > aww shucks I think that’s a wrap, anything else? >I want to talk about university. >Shoot >I fucking hate that place. The only reason I’m going is to keep my parents happy and so that the money I’ve invested isn’t just flushed down the toilet. I mean I’m nearly finished but I just can’t bring myself to do my work. I just want to walk away from it all. (I had to leave for a bit here, incidentally) >Hi Marc, Sorry for the late reply. If you ask me your avoidance stems from the same issue of maintaining your image, the image of the bad ass. You’ve seen the dean so many times now he might try to add you on Facebook, and for what? Does that make you cool? I read in your journal that the key to becoming extraordinary is to become extra-ordinary. You know what ordinary people do? They finish their degrees. Most of them drag their feet and complain about it, but they finish. An extra-ordinary person would do it joyfully, because that would require true mastery of the present moment. Something which you have not yet managed to do. Your work is therefore a tool that you can use to your advantage. That which stand’s in the way is the way. You know this, now embody it. Regards Marc >Hi Marc, Again, your theory is sound ... and I want to, I really really want to. ... but again I would still just be giving you lip service if I said OK. I don’t really know why I won’t do it. I’m still unconscious of something that is preventing me from truly embodying that ideal. I feel like if I sit now and try to type something for the sake of typing I am really still just evading it … No, that’s bullshit, I just don’t want to ramble in front of my imaginary audience. Fuck ‘em this is my journal and I do what I want. Wait … I just realized that I don’t want to write about myself because I like being mysterious and aloof. That’s another fucking identity that I live into. Jesus Christ. Regards Marc >Hi Marc, Oh, you’ve hit a nerve there buddy. I can totally see how you do that. What do you think that has to do with your school work? Regards Marc >Hi Marc, If I did my school work without a word or care in the world I would become more ordinary. Nobody would notice me. Nobody would ask about me. I wouldn’t hear people talking about me. I wouldn’t see people’s body language change when I walk into a room. I would be nobody. I know that’s where my freedom lies but it still scares the shit out of me. I think we’ve done enough for now. Regards Marc >Aww >we’ll talk later, when the kids are asleep *** I’ve spent the last few weeks without a phone so I’ve actually done more than this, but I’ll just pick up from this number. I’ll do the calculations next Sunday. I don’t have much time to meditate at the moment because of work/life commitments. New PB is 5.5 hours equanimity gainz. *** All of this reminded me of one of Sadhguru’s videos where he talks about the importance of self-honesty and a commitment to truth.

I think that video games might actually speed up psychological development through the graves model. If you think about it, most modern MMORPG's are basically just world orange simulators. You create an identity and plug yourself into a world with a virtual economy, high status items, preset goals and objectives. Then you sink a few thousand hours into them and it's fun while it lasts until you've explored every pixel and then it dawns on you that it's all meaningless and the real world is exactly the same and then you kill yourself because you haven't met any hippies. lol 4:20 miright?

@hedge I recommend you watch Lucy. It's a documentary about an English teachers journey to level 100,000. You can do waaay more than teleport, you can even teach surgery and learn Chinese. Can't go wrong with this technique. Remember: You have to COMMIT bro. I don't recommend granite until you're at about 90K, but you're a grown ass man and you can make your own decisions.

I watched a video of a driver-less car and I saw that it has a camera/radar device on the top that spins around quickly. I assume that it translates visual data from set points to calculate distances and movement somehow. I thought that it might be possible to get a computer to translate that information into sounds with varying intensities based on distance. If that data was then fed into 4 speakers in some headphones blind people would be able to "see" through sound in three dimensions. A bit like in this video (you need headphones): I drew a rough schematic to explain it better: I don't have the skill set/resources to implement this so i thought I would share it here for someone who does. I also have zero passion for technology/engineering, this was just a fluke idea that I had. Basically technology assisted echolocation. Shit, I just realised that there needs to be a front/back element to make it 3D. The headphones would need 8 speakers - 4 in each ear- 2 for up/down and 2 for front/back and then regular left/right like in the video.

I've been tossing and turning over this shit for so long now and I've finally come up with an analogy for the relationship between the two: Enlightenment work = Swallowing the red pill Personal development work = Learning Kung Fu Babies don't sleep this good.

If you're into enlightenment, treasure hunting and video games then you cant afford to ignore Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

Case study: A neurotic teenager in search of treasure fails to notice the multiple meanings of words within different contexts and ends up finding death at the hands of a Serial Killer in Wales. Or does he?

Notes The many dimensions of meaning and meaninglessness The higher order meaning contained within a sentence is one form of thought. It’s still overly simplistic because there are other dimensions to thought like mental images and emotions, which I will cover later. I will continue with meaning that arises from the relationships between words for now. The algorithm that determined the semantic neighborhoods in the TED video did so by analyzing groups of text which had multiple authors from multiple time periods. This means that the semantic neighborhoods presented are like an average of the relationships between words for a group of people over a long period of time. In reality every individual has their own unique semantic maps that they have created throughout the course of their lives, and each individuals map is constantly changing as they move through life. This means that the same word literally has different meanings to two different people and the same word can have a different meaning to an individual between two points in time (and this isn’t even yet considering the other dimensions of thought) For example a person raised by gypsies who were really into astrology would have different words in the neighborhood of the word “astronomy” than a person who was raised by parents with Ph.Ds. in astrophysics. This would then be demonstrated by the words that they use in their sentence structures whenever they are discussing “astronomy”. If the gypsy kid was asked about their beliefs surrounding astronomy their sentences would have words that would be very different to the science kid. Since thought is governed by an individual’s semantic map that individuals beliefs are also governed by their semantic map. A belief is just a higher order thought that a person habitually thinks. Therefore the fastest way to change a person’s beliefs is to change their semantic map. An individual’s semantic map is informed by their environment: the people that surround them. And the individuals that comprise a group inform the average semantic map of the group. The fastest way to change an individual’s semantic map is to move them to a different group. This is uncomfortable because initially there is a low transfer of meaning between individuals from two different groups. The fastest way to change the semantic map of the group is to assert yourself and constantly repeat the same things over and over again, without wavering under group pressure. This is also uncomfortable. As the lady in the waking life clip suggests. "There is an almost spiritual communion that happens when we feel like we’re understood, and in a way, that’s what we live for." If a French person went to Wales and started trying to interact with the people there the group wouldn’t understand the Frenchman and the Frenchman wouldn’t understand the group. Both would feel slightly uncomfortable in each others presence. If an old English speaking person from New York started hanging out with a group of Welsh teenagers there would be a higher transfer of meaning than between the Frenchman and the people of Wales but there would still be a disconnect because of the differences in semantic groups that have evolved within a language over time and within two separate groups of that language. To understand people better you have to pay very close attention to the frequency of words that they use within a particular context. There’s one more aside that I want to add regarding the higher order meanings that arise from sentence structures. Different languages literally provide the native speakers with different thought abilities. This guy explains how some Aboriginal Australians always know which direction they’re travelling and how people who speak English and Germanic languages are literally forced to refer to everything within the context of time – something that is extremely limiting especially when trying to explore spirituality.

ATTENTION ALL Enlitenment PLUS © SUBSCRIBERS! We value our customers and have been working hard to ensure that you get the most out of your Enlitenment Plus© experience. For a limited time only self aware sheep can participate in the beta testing of our new product. Introducing Cosmos Laundromat! Is your overconfidence coming back to bite? Tired of walking in circles? Tired of the sheep lifestyle? Cosmos Laundromat is for YOU! No more need for hooves! No more sheepy business! Variable spin speed, excellent tumble performance in one handy device. Morph into any character you want! Live all the adventures of all the lives you could ever dream, forever! Click here to listen to Frank’s story. Cosmos has changed my life! I'm eternally grateful to Casper.. er.. uh.. Hector and the team. - Frank Offer valid for the next minute only. Conditions apply* *Must be a sheep (preferably black). Must be a loner. Suicidal candidates preferred.

Musical interlude