Telepresent

Hi @Bruno, I've done very well by CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), which is entirely about learning to recognise how your behaviour and mental state are connected. To begin with, if you have the resources available to you, I would highly recommend checking out this kind of treatment (even if it's only an online course, you can learn A LOT) The best suggestion I can offer in terms of learning to recognise emotional reactions is to write them down. When you write something down, it helps you to remove yourself from the immediate situation: you can return to it later, and see things you weren't able to in the moment. So, for your question, I would suggest that you choose an area of life you want to improve: say, family life. Get yourself a notebook, piece of paper, or electronic doc, and make two columns: what happened / what did I feel? If you want, you can add a third column: why did I feel? Keep it with you! Every time you experience an emotion - good or bad - related to that category, write it down! Write down what happened, and what you felt (and maybe why you think you felt like that). The reason for this is that it can be very hard for us to see why we react to things in particular ways, as we get dragged around by our emotions. But as soon as we see it written down after a week or two... oooh boy is it clear! Incidentally, that's also why friends and family sometimes know you better than you do!

Truth is if you try to thrust anything upon people - particularly if it's significantly contradictory to their point of view - you're likely be be met with (at best) blockage, and (at worst) outright hostility. Think about what brough most of us here: it probably wasn't someone else saying "I can see your life is fucked up, and this will fix it all!" (which would have made us very defensive). It was much more likely a gradual realisation in ourselves that something wasn't right, and a search for something to help work that out, and for whatever reason Actualized.org - of all the hundreds of websites, books, videos, and products out there - resonated with us. Throw these ideas, and particularly Leo (no offence!), down people's throats, and they'll likely take it as criticism and resist. Help people to explore their own weak-points, and you may support them as they open themselves up.

@Peak This is the same issue that anyone with a particular hobby, interest, pursuit, or passion faces. Don't expect everyone to have the same passions that you do. Think about the bore who never shuts up about their stamp collection - do you think personal development nuts are any better? The problem isn't personal development, and it's not about wanting to talk about it: it's about holistically engaging in conversation, so that you not only talk about what you want to talk about, but listen, engage, flow with what is going through the group, and if your interests align and are right to bring up, bring them up. You're not their teacher, you're not their judge, you're not their guru, you're not their better, and you're not their window to a better world. You're their peer, with a different knowledge and experience set. Share, and allow sharing

Just look at how little Trump can handle a joke. Look at how little he trusts his own wife

From a purely meditation-based perspective, I think sometimes people confuse the spiritual idea of silence / peace. It has nothing to do with sound. You could exist in the noisiest environment and still find silence. I wouldn't worry about external noises

What everyone has said above is very valuable. The tricky thing with trying to improve concentration is that... it takes patience. You are not suddenly going to BURST into having a great concentration strength. It's like a muscle - it needs training, nutrition, and time to grow. So, similarly to exercise, you may benefit from some kind of motivational record to help see how you're growing. I'm not quite sure how you would do this for concentration (the equivalent for exercise would be weigh-ins, photos, etc.), but perhaps find a routine by which you want to improve your concentration (meditation, reading, whatever) and every day just write a one- or two-line description of how long you lasted, and how you found it. You'll probably find, after a few weeks, that you've improved without realising.

What leads to this belief? Not being aggressive, just curious

Is this true? Do you know this for sure? How has this been proven/recorded? I ask because I don't know either way, but something about it rings false to me. It's a bit like the idea that if you die in a dream, then you die in real life: how the hell would we possibly know that, as nobody would wake up to record that they died in their dream? I have a similar issue with this statement: I don't have a clue what my last thought before going to sleep is, and I can't report it because... well, then I'm asleep! Also I don't know what my first thought when I wake up is, because normally I wake up to an alarm clock and a confused jumble of thoughts which take a good 30-60 seconds to settle down into consciously recognised thinking. So how is this assertion recorded/proven? Even if it's based on what people report as their first/last thoughts of the day, I'd be very skeptical.

This strikes me as a great example of the terminalogical problem of the word "I". @dice, @snick, @leogura, I (heh) suspect you are all using the words "I", "you", and "we" with very different meanings. It may be tempting to say "you can or cannot such-and-so", but given the breath of interpretation of the simple word "I" why not check we're all on the same terms? @dice - you say 'you' won't feel anything when 'you' die. Strikes me you're assuming two different versions of 'you' there. Have you fully defined then?

Do you experience this, or does it come as a conclusion to a series of rational/logical thought-processes? If you don't experience it, then you're thinking it. Conceptualising it. The wall exists because your mind has decided it 'knows' what everything, nothing, infinity mean. Question those: open them up. What are they? Does the conceptual understanding of them hold up to deep dark scrutiny? Question everything, and don't accept any pre-packaged answers. When you reach a new conclusion, rip that one apart: find out what it's made of, and whether or not those building blocks are true. The posts you link to show a good approach to questioning things - just don't accept your first answer. PROVE your answer to yourself.

@Mr Lenny Hi again! I won't spend long here as I know I've made my thoughts known on another thread of yours about this subject. All I'd suggest is that, if your thoughts run away from you, consider writing things down.

Great: and I meant what I asked. Apologies if I sounded argumentative, I really didn't mean to. It sounds, from what you've said, like you've reached an awareness I haven't. I'm being genuine when I ask if you have any advice?

And this is the critical thing, that so many people don't recognise. So they end up singing from someone else's songsheet, and wondering what went wrong

Yes, and I'm starting to hit touches of what I suspect might be that remebrance. The problem I have is of language: you talk of "I", or "you", and that gets interpreted by my thoughts as the mental pattern which my thoughts think I am. I sometimes think this is the problem that spiritual teachers have: they seem to forget that the "I" to which they refer is not the same "I" that interprets/imagines the message

HA! This is a hugely important point, though. Exactly why are we ascribing to this idea that enlightenment, or whatever, is the ultimate truth, and what we should be piloting towards? I mean, really, why? A lot of people have been doing this so long it's default and they don't remember why. What's your reason? Mine is that it struck an inner chord that said "yes, this is true, keep investigating", and I haven't satisfied that chord yet.

Congratulations! I echo your encouragement to others to stick with it! You describe that 'for some reason' you're way more chill: I'd suggest trying to pull back meditative consciousness in though high-stress situations (maybe take a deep breath through the nose) - you might be surprised at the depth of self-realisation you're playing with on a subconscious level!

Thank you for this reply. As someone who is still 'pursuing', but who is aware of my pattern-making mind, what advice would you recommend as my next exploration? Cheers!

Adyashanti talks about how he still experiences ego reactions, they just get recognised for what they are very quickly. Jed McKenna talks about how he still has to 'wear' his old ego in order to funtion as a person. It appears as thought the enlightened state - if it exists - is far more alien than most people want to believe/imagine

And yet I am not. Because the I that reads these words and interprets them as I is not the I that you are talking to. Madness

I have no idea! I'm only taking it on others' words that there is a bedrock, and as I'm not accepting anyone else says without checking it for myself... I'm either going to reach a point where I satisfy myself that, despite all my efforts, I cannot go further (and in that satisfaction, I will have to reconcile myself to the possibility that I might be wrong); or I'm going to keep digging forever. Neither seems like a worse pursuit that living the consciousness I lived five years ago, though, so I'm going to keep going and maybe I'll remember to post a reply on my deathbed

I am as well. Absolutely. I'm just questioning the perspective we take on evolution. Of course, personal evolution is a whole other thing, which I guess is where you're coming from? If so, apologies for my earlier tangent. So, tell me (and again, please take this as one amateur to another, I don't want to come over as arrogant): what do you think enlightenment means?

I sometimes wonder whether this whole 'spirituality' game is the biggest practical joke ever pulled

For the most part, I'd say yes. All I see is people wanting to answer questions, and when they question those questions they want a slightly deeper answer they find more comfortable. 99% of traffic on this forum is people wanting comfort, not truth. That's where the myths come from. An answer that is good enough, comfortable enough. And that's what most people are asking for. You question @Prabhaker's answer. Good. Never take anything he/she says, or that I say, or that Leo says, or that anyone else says, as true. Because anything that we ever say to you can only be interpreted in your mind as a concept, an idea. For all I know @Prabhaker is enlightened. For all I know @Prabhaker is full of shit. I don't know. But I can take on those words and investigate them per my experience. If I can go back to your original question, there is a lot of need to KNOW in there. I would suggest (from one amateur to another) that you investigate that need to know. What is enlightenment to YOU? What does it mean? What are you imagining, expecting, remembering maybe? We can't answer for you. Hell, I don't even know that you exist. You don't know that I exist. So why trust me?

It's not suppressed by law enforcement. It's suppressed be believeing in law enforcement. Which is not to say that law enforcement is wrong, it's just that law is interpreted by everyone (and law always is an interpretation, not a fact, and any good judge would agree with that statement), and in the position of enforcement it's often better to err on the harder side. Ultimately if you disagree with the law you can disobey it. There may be consequences, but they don't stop you from acting in the first instance. But from the individual side, it's often better to err on the side of bending rules, and treating them as guidelines rather than sharp edges. It's really the importance of rules that you need to investigate. You mention ancestors having fought for it, which is true, but often that argument gets used as a barrier when it comes to opening a new gate in freedoms ("our ancestors didn't fight for this country to be flooded with immigrants taking our jobs", for example). The same is true of bosses, parents, police, governments. Once again I'm not saying "break the law" or "ignore your partents", but be sure to investigate the importance of what they insist on in their lives, in your life, and in your current reality (particularly in this economic climate). We often spend so much time wrapped up in rules we don't look up to breathe. Look up

Poking fun is always good I can be a mean git on hear as I'm really only concerned with the GRAND QUEST (... or something like that) and so always assume all questions are coming from that point of view! I wouldn't be surprised if the cavemen DID spend all their time mentally masturbating, though: all those old religions and myths came from somewhere