JKG

I'm now figuring my passion(s) out by doing that what I just want to do in my free time. At the moment I am still loving learning maths. It inspires me. I am also thinking about starting to program little games again.

YouTube, apps and jigsaw puzzles. I am still struggling with YouTube

Who am 'I'? That's a good question. I didn't thought about this very much, because I intellectually know that there is no self in the enlightenment perspective. So why should I ask this? But then why should I find my life purpose? That's contradictory from myself. I am an introvert, personality tests say I am an INTJ, the RIASEC test (about occupational interests) says I am RIC. That means I want to do something actively, investigate into problems and organise stuff. I don't know if all of that says something about me really. I have to investigate more time into finding more stuff out about myself... I never thought about the life purpose this way. All the people there say it is necessary to fine oneself's to self-actualize. But you are right. I just wanted to find mine because I want to use my time better. There is a bit of time left throughout my day, when I have done my school stuff, sports, and am not meditating. Then normally I would surf around the internet and watch useless YouTube videos. This time can be used more effectively. Then firstly I have to find my passion. Isn't there the same problem as with finding my life purpose? Thanks @walt for this long and detailed answer. It will help me a lot.

Am I my surroundings, am I the table, the wall, the sounds? Am I everything, Am I consciousness? I somehow can understand this but just intellectually. I am not able yet to dig that deep in meditation / self-inquiry to create experience of it. There are thoughts all the time which are distracting me. When I ask myself a question and try to find answers in experience there comes a thought up and my consciousness is away. One or two minutes later I somehow become conscious again and think "shit, I wanted to do self-inquiry". This happens all the time. If I could stop the thoughts somehow, I could eventually dive deeper. But no meditation technique works.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit" - Aristotle

NRW, Germany

I tried to do a one hour strong determination sitting together with do nothing. Not consciously moving worked well, but I had to swallow my saliva three times. And its funny when the body want to burp on its one, while I want to not move, and keep my mouth closed... Since this forum was published I always think while doing do nothing about writing here posts about my meditation... why? Why are concepts not true? They have to come from somewhere. I hear my mother walking down the stairs and is doing something in the next room. The sounds I hear are real, true. But just the sounds, not the concept that my mother is doing something there, not even that my mother is doing it. The concept itself is false. And what is about the concept in my mind? There was certainly thoughts and images of my mother in my mind. Is that true or false? It is true, the concept as stuff in the mind is true.

Thanks for all these answers. I think it got me out of this nihilistic mood I had. I just didn't wanted to work so hard on something that I loose the real world, happiness, truth, enlightenment... out of my mind. Life has no meaning, I can choose my own meaning and be free. So everything has a meaning. Beautiful

My current plan is to try different things out and firstly try to find my passion. I'll try it this way. This passion should have something to do with my life purpose. I don't know whether this is the right way to do it. If not, I will still learn from the experience. I would buy myself the life purpose course but I have no possibility to buy it. I am 16 years old and have no credit card. I would have to ask my father to buy it for me, but he already things that I am crazy with all this meditation stuff... Maybe I'll buy the course in 13 months when I'll become 18. I recently thought about that maths and science could have something to do with my life purpose. Researching and contributing to humanity... I always have been good at maths, I love it. When I do exercises in class I get into a state of flow. I like doing maths in my free time and studying for exams. The same with physics, informatics and a little bit of chemistry. I assume now that maths and science is part of my life purpose. So I need to become good, very good at maths and physics. My plan now is to go through our maths workbook in school. I want to be ready or almost ready with the vector chapter, when I do this in class. I guess this will be in 4 weeks.

As described in Leo's video and from Shinzen Young while doing strong determination sitting you should not move. Just breathing and blinking with the eye is allowed. But I find there some problems: 1) With the time there comes a lot of salvia together in my mouth. And at a certain level the salvia would run out of my mouth ... So is it allowed to swallow? 2) And after a few minutes my back relaxes subconsciously and later I recognize that I don't sit nice and straight up anymore. And with the time my back gets rounder and rounder. At the end that is a pretty annoying position. Should I bring my back into a proper position again or is this against the 'rule'? Would this hinder my affect of this meditation?

Thanks for the quick answer. I'll try it out tomorrow although I know that it will be sooo uncomfortable

Honestly, I don't know. To become super happy I could also move into a little cabin and do just enlightenment work, until I am super enlightened.

@stalker I am in a very similar situation like your. Talking in a group is totally okay, I sometimes add something to the conversation and everything seems fine. But when people leave out of this group and I am left with another person alone, there is this awkward silence left. I am still in school and can talk with the people in school about stupid stuff like teachers, homework or other students. But I find this really annoying. So I say nothing. With the years I find this awkward silence very funny. I just don't care about it anymore and observe the other person trying to overcome the silence so much Try firstly not to care what the person things of you. Accept the awkward silence. I think you can only have a long conversation with someone, when you two have a topic in which both are really interested in. I have one good friend with very same interests but no one else.

@MonikaBcn We all are connected together, we are all one... And we (but only our atomic mass) has an influence on everything. I know all of this but there is still something in my mind that says that I am just a tiny tiny tiny tiny thing. My consciousness wouldn't have an influence, doesn't it?

So you mean that human kind should develop itself. From Orange to green and then eventually higher, in the way of Spiral Dynamics. Then the purpose of individuals should be to help human kind to develop, helping the people, helping the environment, having a positive impact on the world. Yeah, maybe developing to yellow. I didn't thought about it that there could arise new meanings. Meanings that we cannot even think about yet. I had a funny thought yesterday: I could become a hardcore scientist and try to communicate with other intelligent beings in the universe. With those human kind could try to interact and discover the universe even more, build a community of intelligent beings and so on

I tried to sit down, shut up, and ask myself what's true until 'I' know. What is true? Maybe sight, sound, sensation? Yeah, these things seem true. Oh shit, just my mind is coming up with these answers. I have to look in experience what is true. So is sight true? No, sight is just a word in my mind. The actual sensation is just there, maybe it is true. But the word in my mind is also true. The thought 'sight' is a sensation. The only false thing is the concept behind the thought 'sight'. Is the table there true? Mhm, there is just a visual sensation of a brown thing. The table isn't true, the table is a concept. The seeing of the table is true. Is being free from concepts enlightenment?

Do you use water fasting to become enlightened? To disidentify from the body? Did you get this insight just from fasting or did you also meditate?

I just looked at the website of this project. And I got some questions. How are they financing this whole project? Are there possibilities to participate? The vision of the project seems nice. Definitely better than our orange system. But is this even possible in the 'near' future? Isn't the orange society to stuck right now to become even just a little bit more green. Wouldn’t corrupt business men try to stop this project? I'm sure it will work out somewhen in the long term, but right now?

I can also just recommend it. I am not even very hungry in the fasting time. The hunger just comes for two or three minutes and then it is gone. I have no problems with not eating until 4pm.

When I ask myself these questions my mind comes up with these 'logical' answers like: Life is just there. Something in the brain is recording this life story. It is the memory. And the raw perceptions are also just there. And the voice in the mind is creating concepts. Very tricky from the mind to create these answers to stop the curious part of me asking questions. But these answers have no real sollution in themselves. They bring up more and more questions. The mind brings up answers but I want experiences.

I'm on this path too. But you are more advanced than 'I' am. Cutting out social media might be a very good idea. It saves so much time to do more enlightenment work, the most 'important' work to do.