Afonso

From what I heard, it's energy locked up.

@Leo Gura In your retreat videos, you do a lot of Mindfulness Meditation with Labeling. Does it boost the power of your Self-Inquiry? Do you use exactly the same technique as described in the video of Mindfulness Meditation? Where can we learn more about that technique and study it deeper? In the West, Mindfulness looks like another vague term for formal Meditation, but I'm seeing it's not the same thing. Thanks!

I used to be the Top Student in 10th grade an 11th grade in my school. Top Student! Literally! 12th grade has become another story... Now, since I've been raising my consciousness, working on myself and meditating a lot for over 7 months, I find myself with NO MOTIVATION to study. I think I only studied because I had nothing better to do AND because of extrinsic motivation. I find myself, now, in no position to study hard. Not interested, don't care about having top grades and don't find myself too much affected by lower grades. Is this a common theme for you guys? Don't get me wrong, my grades are not a disaster. They're pretty above average, but not Top Elite like they used to be. I seem to just not give a fuck anymore. I don't really know what to do.

ahaha that's fucked up, keep going you might start flying or something

Amazing

Metronome is the Way.

My head starts hurting a lot when I go beyond 40 minutes. A lot of tension builds up inside my head.

How did you feel in the end of it?

I just became conscious that I don't have a fucking clue of what all this is, yet I wondered around doing stuff thinking that I had it all figured out. Fuck....

@Leo Gura please answer this, I'm at the same position. I love growing, personal development and I have this thirst for TRUTH. but my flow states are writing and programming......

@Danielle @Shin @WelcometoReality Is this how the process unfolds? This is all very new to me. I was not intending for any of this. I am just meditating, self-inquirying, and going back to stillness every moment. It was just out of the blue. The feeling had been lingering around for some days. But somehow it has come stronger. I do not know. What the fuck. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

I have a basic idea of what enlightenment entails, and so I'm doing the practical work of meditating, concentrating, self-inquiry, etc. However, I cannot read more than 50 pages of books about enlightenment because I get so confused about the Self, Brahman, stages of consciousness, existence vs. non-existence, the ground of existence, reality. At some point I just give up. Any recommendations?

@Leo Gura I'm still doing the Concentration Practices so I can boost my Meditation and Self-Inquiry. But I'm not clear if I'm reaching Access Concentration or not. I use the same method as you (repeating sound in smartphone app). At some point in my session, I can "hear" the echoes of the beep in my head. Is this a sign of access concentration? Confused

@hinawashi I also experienced that shift in judgement thinking, although I didn't do any spiritual retreats. I just meditate, concentrate and self-inquiry daily. When I was judging others, I kind of went unconscious. Now I realize that all that criticism was nothing more than a revelation of my unconscious. Now, I know it's useless to criticize and I just feel compassionate towards others, knowing that if I had not done the work of raising my consciousness, I would be at the same place. Leo talks about this in his video Dark Side Of Meditation.

@Leo Gura If a bot in a game suddenly realized that it was not an entity in the game but the whole system at work, would that be analogous to enlightenment?

Systems of thinking, frameworks of thinking. I have to think along the lines of some logical principles and structures to create something! I love that. I really love that. I started programming when I was ~13, so I'm thinking of developing Artificial Intelligence. I have just articulated my life purpose and it is this: My ideal medium is certainly Writing/Programming. I do feel some excitement reading that statement.

I finished the part of finding my Zone Of Genius in the Life Purpose Course, and it all boiled down to this: "Learning and developing frameworks and systems." What has moved me since I was a child and to now (though I couldn't articulate it before) was to understand how things work and then create and build something upon that "framework/system", whether it is in mathematics, programming, personal development etc. I get my juices flowing when I'm constructing a model of all the principles and rules by which something works and when I'm creating my own meta-frameworks, whether it be on paper, computer file, etc. Is this too vague of a Zone of Genius? I think it does touch my core very deeply, but something tells me it's still too vague.

Cross the values that you definitely don't consider THAT important From those values cross the ones that you think you could definitely live without. Order the remaining values Choose the one on top

Could sharing be your Life Purpose?

Check if that's a reaction to something that happened to you early in your childhood. Just a possibility.

just shut up and do it you sucker

@Leo GuraHey, thanks! After contemplating on it, I found that forgiveness was a strength that I had developed over time because of many conflicts that I had when I was a turbulent child. That led to the need to forgive, for the sake of mental health. Although it was originally brought about through negative motivation, it has now become a part of my skills. I did another test in the same website + 1 children test (because I'm 17) + 1 children test on another website. I cross-checked those with my intuition and now I have a list that feels very authentic. It includes Forgiveness. Amazing course! It really opened my eyes to my authentic self! I'm on the ~57th video.

I have done the exercises and have 5 Character Strengths. From those 5, only 1 feels like a Signature Strength. It's not clear if the final Strength List is of all 5 or just the signature ones. Because I feel like this 1 strength is really within me but the other 4 are not.

@Leo Gura Ok, so I did that and got strengths that resonate more with me. Forgiveness and Mercy keep popping up on the tests. I'm skeptical to whether this is actually a strength or that I am good at stop caring about conflicts and accepting people after a while... (is that a strength?).

As I've been raising my awareness, I've come to notice more often gut feelings. These feelings become very apparent when I am about to do things that I don't really want to, but rationalize myself into doing them. When I became acutely aware of this phenomena, a word popped into my mind - intuition. After watching Leo's video on intuition and doing the exercises on the worksheet, I was blown away by the power of this phenomena AND how I've been suppressing it since I was a pre-teenager. Intuition As A Guiding System After a lot of journaling, I came to realize that you can decide ANYTHING based on your intuition! When you get in touch with that core feeling, you don't need to bully yourself inside your mind into doing stuff anymore. Nor do you need to explain to yourself in your mind (as from a friend's perspective) why you're doing what you're doing. There's no need for justifications, intuition is more right and more powerful than any rationalization! The biggest blunder for me was thinking my way around intuition and completely ignoring it. Acting upon life through logic-exclusive lens. If you're doing ANYTHING, whether it is deciding what you want to eat or what you should do with your life... feel your way through it. This was such an amazing insight for myself that I had the urge to share it in here, even though there's a lot of content on this topic. After having acquired this insight, I reviewed all the events in my life where I ignored my intuition. The same theme occurs again and again: ignore gut feeling of what's right and think, think and more think. What happens when you follow your intuition is that your Personal Integrity rises to the top. You don't boost your Personal Integrity by writing down laws by which you act. You do it by doing what feeeeeels right deep down inside. Intuition vs. Pursuing Comfort Don't confuse intuition with pursuing comfort. One thing is what you deep down feel it's right to do or pursue. Other thing is what's more pleasurable and emotionally easier. What does your Higher Self really want?