Dragallur

So you do it without a single movement? Do you quit SDS if you move? I got today basically for the first time to 60 minutes in the same posture though I moved couple of time definitely. I do this on the advice of Marc Schinkel (1000 hours of SDS journal) where he said that it is ok to move after long time or change position and after some practice you can finally do it without those little break. Amazing

@Huz No, you still have your personal life and there is nothing wrong with going to university. Just be aware of the culture, what it does to you and other people. Culture is not a bad thing, it is just a thing that you might want to know about and want to get detached from during your self-actualization journey.

I just finished my first one about culture and it is great indeed!

Not so different. I talked about it with some friends and they are quite similar to what is going up here (ok fine, it is lower level ). I was surprised a lot about how often the people here use laundry machine.. many times a week.. while in Czech my family did that once a week and it was great. Probably in Czech you will just find more people that stayed behind on this new hygienic movement.

I decided to do all the worksheets, today I watched the video about culture. When I was on seminar before I got to my host-family on my exchange year.. they talked about culture a lot and they tried to learn us some food "rituals" in Germany. I pointed out how stupid it is to do all of these things, it was kind of neurotic from me, anyway I was already very aware of culture and I already spend one year in USA so I might consider myself a bit multicultural already, here is the sheet: A Rant Against Culture – Worksheet: Instructions: Contemplate each question and write down your answers in as much length as the question demands. Write thoroughly. Be honest, accurate, and concrete. Which cultural groups, or sub-cultures, do I identify with? I identify with subculture of people on the self-actualization journey, more accurately those who wonder towards enlightenment. I also identify with vegetarians which I guess is culture too. Or rational people. Part of European culture. The benefits I get from identifying with these cultures are… I can learn more from the culture when I am part of it. It does not really matter much. If I would not be part of the cultures and did my own thing it would not change much, probably it would be better. I think that to certain extent rationality helpes in life a lot and I hold it as useful tool. I like European culture (to certain extent) and I think that it is cool that it is more liberal than lot of other. How has my culture bullied me, or suppressed my authentic self? I have to go into their educational system. I have to cling into some direction of beliefs, I do not think that meditation is considered as the best way to integrate in Europe. I have to wear certain clothing and people expect from me to do certain things like politeness to authority and so on. What norms have I picked up from my culture that I take completely for granted? Do not kill other people. You "should" be fateful in relationship as long as it lasts. (I am ok with multi relationships but I think that it would be good to let all the partners know) Cigaretts, drugs and so on are not good at all. When you go to social event you need to be properly dressed. (I do not take it for granted but people around do, this is thing I would like to get rid of competely) People should wear clothes when they go out. Partly even in house. In what ways is my culture limited, closed-minded, or dysfunctional? Rationalists often think that rationality is the end of the world. Vegetarians often think that they are superior to meat eaters. European culture is not enough opened to other cultures, has lot of dogma as mentioned above. In actualization you might waste your time on the culture and create actualization ego. These cultures have lot of false dichotomies, shoulds, and generally think that they are superior to other cultures and opinions, general problem. What values or ideals has my culture mechanically programmed into me? You need to get job. You need to get education. You value people close to you more than others. You love only your cult (family) You need to be honorable. What are all the ways in which cultures shapes my day-to-day lifestyle? I eat this and this for breakfast. I speak these and these things to people. I greet others. I am polite. I am somehow respective to teachers in school. I am trying to be on time. I feel guilty for not following things that people/culture expect from me. My culture believes that reality is the following ways… Physical reality exists I am the mind, body, name. There is no place for mysticism in seriousness. Anything at all exists. Human lives have more value than any other lives. Some things are bad and some are good. In what ways does my culture shape science or knowledge? My cultures influence science a lot and add new concepts into it. They basically rise new people to do it. My cultures go basically in one direction. The cultures I like the most are… Actualization. Zen seems quite cool to me. Some states like Bhutan seems cool too but I do not have knowledge about it. Other open minded or seemingly open minded cultures. The cultures I dislike the most are… Religious cultures. Deniers. (Denying 11th September, global warming, Moon landing, flat Earthers, creationists) Non democratic cultures like China. (What I think about it is not so simple) Extremists How have my cultural influences shaped my identity and self-image? As said few times, I strive for certain goals. I try to match my image some ideals that my culture made. I behave this and this way with people. I still think that I am Dragallur (not my real name :D) I think of myself as rational person. I cling to certain believes and its rooted inside me that they are part of me. How many cultures besides my own have I directly experienced? Big cultures only three. (The thing is that after some experience I know that it actually takes more time then one week on vacation to get to know culture)... USA culture for 1 year. German culture as of now for almost 2 months. Brazilian culture 1 month (that is weekest of them all) How did my culture come into existence? European culture is the culture of local people and I identify mostly with the stuff from 21st century, which means stuff that happened after end of USSR. Vegetarians are here for quite a long time I guess but I am not so connected with this one so I do not know. Rational people came out of philosophy where logic and rationality is needed. (As far as I know) Who would I be and what would my life look like without my culture? If I had no culture at all and did not create my own I would maybe be very open to things that other people do. Did not feel awkwardness for example. Did not care about what others think. Freedom. Wow, this is quite interesting to do, really encourage you to try it Dragallur (I do not read the posts after myself before I publish them so there might be some things strange)

Hi, this is another self-inquiry.. lets see how it goes: Who am I? The thought says that I am not body, thought, mind or anything I can come up with. Why? Because I can not be something like that simply because these things are not either true or they are not stable. Who am I then? Asking this question only awakes another thoughts. Who does not want these thoughts? A thought says that it does not want them. So I am not a thought? Nope. Aha.. To whom do these thoughts arise? Nobody. There is nobody to be found whom they arise to. Who says so? This is not backed up by evidence much. Those are only thoughts, no other "entity" was detected. Only thoughts, thats why. I can not even say if Self is stable since I do not know what it is like. I can not say anything, because I am not even saying anything. These thoughts just appear on the screen. "I" have seen that many times. Thoughts observing thoughts and trying to get out of bubble in which they are stucked forever. Which is usually only few seconds at most since then they disappear. I thought could disappear like this too. But too many things are seemingly connected with it. I do, I like, I play, I learn... stuff and thoughts. This me is no different than anything else. Anything else also has consciousness. As Alan Watt says, if you knock stone it will answer with noise. To us, primitive type of consciouness but still. Arent humans just answering to things around? Why somebody calls this label, name, the body moves or speaks back. When it touches hot pane it will jerk and make a sound. Kind of predictable consciousness when you take it like this. Not very different from stone. Since there is nobody that would really identify with this body and if somebody exists, he is just everything... STOP Too many assumptions and I am trying to outrun my progress towards something I have heard from others. Who did? A thought. Thought says I. That is ok. It is not true but it is ok. Lost in thoughts. Who is lost in thoughts? Am I? There is nobody to be lost in thoughts. There is also nobody to get enlightened. These are all false. Of course they are. It seems so true but yet, ultimately this is not the way. Who says so? It makes sense so just shut up. Shuted up for some time, then helped cooking dinner. "I" thought all the time that it was "me" doing it. It is ok. I was listening to hang drums at the start of the continued session. I got very sucked up by it. Am I sucked up by what is going here, in physical reality? But I can not step back to somewhere like with the music. It feels like that. Maybe the "I" is not supposed to because it even can not. Maybe it does not exist and it can not do anything. Who am I? Am I asking this question? This question is being asked. To who is it addresed? Me, the thoughts? Which means not truly me. Thats why the question stops working. I have to search otherwise. When thought arises I ask to whom, and who is I. What a plan when I even think I do not exist. I do not really think it. It is just a concept anyway, not of any value, it is not worth to cling to it, not that I could do anything about anything. About clinging. I have to let go of letting go but even that is impossible. Any action is impossible, that is the hard truth of determinism. Truth? So it is part of reality? I think so. What the hell is this all. There is no I existing. It is only so developed consciousness that responds with thoughts to things happening around. This is based on the first self-inquiry insight I had couple of months ago, I thought it is useless at that time. Great. Time. Ego thing. There is no a place for things that happened in reality. Deal with that. I or anyone else do not exist. Yet we cling to all of these things that are here, we hold our beliefs so preciously we feel threatened when somebody does not agree with them. Beliefs, thoughts, memories, these things sum up the thing that we call "reality". Why do I write this? Is it even part of self-inquiry? Ahhh. I am still trying to get somewhere. But there is no road. No way I could actually do anything. Yet I am doing and hoping that the more hours I spent on this the sooner I will become enlightened. Isnt it perfect like this already? What do I need to change? I am looking for happiness, truth, end of suffering. There is nothing bad about these things but I think they are imperfect, which is ok. All is just fine, all is peaceful. Dragallur (I wrote this yesterday and I accidentaly closed the webpage but somehow it survived in cookies or something)

Funny, when I went to Germany for one year I decided to upgrade my hygiene a bit because here everybody showers and uses shampoo every day.. I made some compromise but still I would just love to let it be Hey cool, thanks for mentioning this, I will have to think about it to find out if I am not in that trap!

@quantum There is book about Ramana Maharshi's teachings called Be As Your Are. It is really cool and as Prabhaker said, he is basically the "founder" of todays self-inquiry so there is really nice description of the process. (I think it is available even for free as pdf.)

39th day: Meditation 60 minutes of SDS. Part of it was done in school, no problem. Self-Inquiry Went out walking and it was 90 minutes, quite interesting but nothing I can sum up in words. Basically very mindful and stronger inquiry then days before. Lucid dreaming No dreams. I forgot one. Quite ok with it. Tommorow I will finally try to wake up at 5:00AM. Physics Only had 1.5 hours at school, that is all. Mindfulness It kept hitting me in the morning which was cool but later on I was not so mindful and I ate very fast. There are some moments like when I walk around train station that I always get mindful because I remember that I was mindful last time, that is pretty cool indeed! Negatives I will try to solve somehow my procrastination. It was not so bad today but it simply annoys me a lot. Positives Great teeth routine. I feel proud of myself. Also nice mood throughout the day. People and relationships This is a thing I have been thinking about lately. When I planned to go here on the exchange year I really wanted to get to know new people and be more social. Now I am here and I did not find any friends after 1.5 months. I do not care. It is completely ok for me. I talk a lot with my host-brother who is kind of friend to me but that is all. I do not socialize much. It is also kind of hard for me. If I start to talk with some people I just feel like I would not make a good and deep friendship with them. It is just that I feel different. I think about things differently, think about different things and do not agree on most things people say. That is all ok. I just met some new people and I felt like the conversation was so shallow, I do not want to talk about Trump, I do not want to talk about how the school system is bad. All these things have been discussed 50 times over and over again and everybody just things the same thing anyway. So thats it. I am not really finding some new people here. If I really wanted to I would probably find somebody eventually, but.. others except me to find some friends here, I guess I will disappoint them, or maybe not who knows. Dragallur

38th day: Meditation 60 minutes. I will defintely do longer session soon. Meditation is great. Self-Inquiry Not good again. Did not have so much time. We will see how weekend goes, there will be needed some rewamp. Lucid dreaming Two dreams. Quite good and I have not slept long time. Physics Todays classes were great. Had 3 hours of physics in school, we did some electron tubes and I wrote some things on the math olympiade. Mindfulness Not very good. Just random few seconds mindfulness moments here or there. Negatives I was to dentist today. To put it shortly. My teeth are quite sensitive and Czech dentist system is not very good and my teeth are quite screwed up now. Interesting is how much relief came over me when I found out that it is not completely my fault. Well, what do I do? I have not much of protective layer and I do have places where cavities could very easily form. I got pretty depressed after I found out. Now I am relatively ok. I do not want to have teeth screwed up so soon. I will keep track here of strong teeth routine. 2 times a day brushing as always but doing nothing else during it! Also using dental fluss, making sure to keep teeth clean after food.. man I have done it always, I do not eat sweet much though I eat lot of bread.. we will see. I do not want to have more problems with this. Bad mindfulness and self-inquiry. Positives I survived all of this negative stuff way better than I thought. I already wrote it to my mum too which is cool. I kind of fear of completely dont caring about physical reality and what happens in it. I am not ready yet, but one day it will come. Right now I have healthy fear of my teeth and health, it will work, I wont underestimate it again! I did not mention yesterday that something interesting happened to me, I was just reading journals of Marc Schinkel where he had amazing experience, check it out and the journal of quantum (cool journal too ). I felt very good, Marc's stuff was simply beautiful and then I saw in quantum's journal how there are other people that have basically the same issues as me which nowadays does not happen very often. I felt so happy and in the moment, couple of tears appeared even on my eyes. It was beautifull, thanks. Dragallur

37th day: Meditation 60 minutes SDS as usual though I had to break it because somebody wanted something. I am creating this plan to do long sessios again. Self-Inquiry It is kind of crappy last days. I will do it more mindfully next time. I try to do it through eating or something like that but it is not a good approach at all. Lucid dreaming 1 dream, yesterday 2. Quite nice. I am now writting them in school which is cool since it saves up some time. Physics Some Khan Academy, finished all math olympiade problems succesfully! Now the difficult part, I have to write how I did it in German Mindfulness Quite good today actually. Had some moments with very good mindfulness and it took me a long time to eat lunch .. Positives Good mood. I have realised couple of days back how much I have changed. Nowadays I am basically thinking about the 5 things above, mostly then physics and generally enlightenment. Its like 90% of my time.. interesting. Also I wrote post on my blog today which I am for some reason proud of. Negatives Procrastination. Plans Try out interesting sleep schedules. Start to do visualizations. Think about The Grand Project! Dragallur

Wow, this is beautiful...

I have just noticed that your style is quite similar to that of YT channel Practical Psychology.. I guess you are taking inspiration from it right?

34th day: Meditation 60 minutes SDS before lunch. Another 60 minutes in afternoon! I felt like I really want to do the other 60 minutes so I did. Very steady but I was not able to hold nolotus for the whole time. It was hell, but cool. Self-Inquiry 94 minutes during the play of Settlers of Catan. Interesting how I got caught by the game. Its been long time since I had these reactions. I like how when I do things like play board games I step few months back in my development, but that is ok Lucid dreaming If I want to continue I will have to work more on this. No dream tonight though I went to sleep very late. Physics Lot of math today. Good job really. I figured it out. I will just boost up my math skills extremely as Neil deGrass Tyson says and then I will understand astronomy more. I did some things but I always got stuck on advanced (spherical) trigonometry, integrals, multiple derivations and so on. I plan to learn these things on high level and then return to it! Feeling very good about it. Mindfulness Again, not much. I was quite mindfull during my second meditation but I ate fast and so on, as usually, tommorow is school and I have chance to do it better! Negatives Low mindfulness. Lucid dreaming. Procrastination. Positives Lot of meditation. Math. Feeling good, interesting board game from which I have learned something. Watched 2nd part of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was way better than yesterday. Nice relaxation when you plan it from the start of the day and it is not unplanned procrastination on which you are angry. Dragallur

How long is it since you have started all of this stuff (meditation, enlightenment).. I mean, you are still on university right?

33rd day: Meditation Now keep your hats on... because... I did 120 minutes of SDS straight! Now to keep things clear I changed position two times and I moved quite few times but not generally. I did first 51 minutes in nolotus and then 39 sitting and 30 on knees. It was quite cool. I expected it to be much harder, mind you this was twice as much as I ever did! Self-Inquiry 60 minutes walking. Lucid dreaming 1 dream. Physics Did a bit of Khan Academy and otherwise some physics on internet, then I did Math olympiade, I will have to work on it tommorow more. Mindfulness Wow, completely forgot. Did only 2 times or so. Hopefully during school it will be better. The Grand Project I mentioned this a while back and The Dude reminded me to share what I came up with since. Basically as I said it would be a site to learn astronomy. The first idea was to earn money with it which I do not know at all how hard is. I would have to study for it a lot of course to build extremely solid background. I want to do such a thing in english which means that I would have to either send my texts to corrections or get better in english, but that is ok now, I am improwing. Also I would really love the idea of this whole page extremely nested with all these articles, explanations and tutorials. I bet that if it would work I would start to collaborate with people that would help me to expand it, one person simply can not keep track of whole astronomy and astrophysics field What I really like is the idea that one subject would be "completely" and proffesionally covered there and also I feel like there is no great source for astronomy on the whole internet For example Khan Academy does not have much at all and it is more of the "popular stuff". Negatives Interesting, today was the most procrastinating day since, well a long time. I even watched a movie, played some stuff. I think it was mainly because of weekend and because I felt like I did lot of stuff with the 2 hour meditation. This cut off my day a lot but I think I learned something from it. Positives Well definitely my 2 hour meditation. Also I found about this guy who is also 16 years old and is doing astronomy. He is from Czech Republic also. He is basically one of the best guys on astronomy of his age in the world, winning silver on international olympiade and bronze too. I got thinking about it during my self-inquiry and I was able to resolve some kind of feeling that I need to compare myself to him. That was nice at least. Funny thing is that I know that I will have much worse feeling if I dont do much things tommorow. Hmm. Dragallur

@dude Thanks. Yeah I have it in my mind and I am considering how should it look like and what do I need to do to make something like this. Right now I know that I have to learn a lot to be able to put good information into something like that, but I feel like I could combine two things (astronomy and teaching) together so well with this one. I am only 16 though, I consider starting to read some books related to business to get the idea how does it work and if it is even possible.

Cool. I was wondering because I read all of your posts about month back and then I wondered what happened. But thats cool, looking forward to 31st December then I guess I am partly stucked in "how many hours do you have?" thing. I am on the journey to enlightenment (if there is such a journey :D) too but quite few steps back (if you can be any step back :D) I see what you mean about the forum. Not that I would care about the drugs much, I am not planning to do them and probably it makes some difference, its more the separation between people for and against For Leos pattern speech, I have noticed it too.. I liked what @Emerald Wilkinssaid about this in the thread about "Dark side of meditation, Rali's response video". Thanks for answering back and keep on working I hold my thumbs for you!

@dude I do not know if for book reviews it would be so helpful but I think that it really attracts audience when you put lot of intonation and ethusiam into your sentences, like you would explain your most favorite thing to your best friend. Check out how this guy talks, it really wont get you bored, but as I say there is difference between football match and book review (its just a random video I thought of)

@Marc SchinkelHow is your meditation work going?

Hey, I have seen your videos (not whole) and it is pretty cool. I really like the interface. How you draw is amazing, I really like the animations and how there are no distractions around, arrows and so on.. this really has future. If I were you I would work mainly on my talking because it seemed to me that in for example the video about Managing Oneself you stopped quite often which made the content less interactive. Check out how Leo talks or some popular youtube channels. Their voice is clear and whole talk is very smooth. Otherwise, great job, keep improwing

31st day: Lyrics of song: The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one: Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done -Insomnium (Drawn to Black) Meditation I am really doing great SDS finally. No moving until it hurts too much. Also today quite interesting thing happened. I was doing SDS and it hurt. But it was ok. It was just a feeling! I did not get totally detached to be honest, but I was like, ok no problem. I even almost started to laugh when I was on todays Yoga and my muscles hurt and I did not care. It was completely ok! I really want to explore this in future days. Self-Inquiry Cool. I did walking during it two days back. No exceptionall. I do not write more than few sentences now, its because there is nothing to write. Its all just a lie anyway. I rather inspect thoughts when they arise and send them BACK TO SHADOWS! Lucid dreaming Sucks, One dream today, no dreams past two days Today I will try MILD in the night, hopefully I will wake up. Physics This is a ride! I did some astrophysics but I found out that my skills are way too low. I need to finish calculus it is the key. Otherwise most equations look like a picture to me, what do you do with this triple integral followed by this row of greek symbols? Next two week I will have hella lot of physics. My class is going on internship and I can not participate since my German is not so good. I picked up some classes that I want and I will have 12 classes of physics per week 6 of math .. yup when you want you can Also I am doing some contests! Mindfulness Went better than I thought. Not so much today but otherwise ok. I am trying to be generally aware of what is going around me and no auto-pilot mode. It is quite interesting but I get distracted a lot in school. Dragallur

Wow, thanks for sharing this. Never heard of this guy, but.. he seems to really know what he is talking about!

27th day: Lyrics of song: And this fall set requiem for my way Away from other's paths, I turned to desolation Away from other's thoughts, timid and surpassing Away from the others, beyond caring -Insomnium (Devoid of Caring) Meditation Interesting. I did 107 minutes today. Since I was this weekend on hike trip I did 80 in a car (that is quite easy and lazy way to do meditation). And when I was at home I did this urge to just start SDS and stop after whatever time I want. I did that, I was extremely not moving and staring at one spot basically for 25 minutes. Cool. Self-Inquiry Did almost 2 hours during hike as well as the day before. I am returning to the way of letting go of thoughts and trying to find "I" without talking all the time. I even had this sudden surge yesterday that I want these thoughts to shup of for a minute, interesting. Physics Almost none though I discussed some things when I was hiking and in hotel. Lucid dreaming Today nothing special though I had 2 dreams and I forgot lot of stuff.. but yesterday! Yesterday I had a Lucid dream! I was one Mars but I was comparable in size to it. I was there with friend and some other people. Whole Olympus Mons was under my feet and I was just chilling there. Then when I became even more aware that I am in a dream I started to lose it and then I woke up. At least I thought so but it was just a false awakening. Interesting, very cool indeed. Mindfulness Hell yeah, new section. @quantum inspired me to try harder to do mindfulness during day, I did that before but I kept forgetting about it all the time. Negatives Played a game once I returned home. Otherwise quite ok. Nice insight: I am starting to have nice list of things that get me into cabin fever and I want to work on that. Right now I am pretty conscious of it and it needs solution too! Positives I just stopped playing the game at one point because of dinner but I had actually no desire to continue, it was so pointless. Great meditation. Nice mood. All going fine and especially the lucid dream made me happy Dragallur

Do you do self-inquiry? I remember seeing here only SDS, though you commented on my journal and you seem to have some experience with it.