Telepresent

@Actualizer That is a beautiful and cogent reply (and far better written than I would have managed) But can I be a little heretical, and suggest the spirit of my question was that it is impossible to answer? So, right now you've landed on an answer. Which leads to a wonderful paradox: you've answered my question fantastically, and yet I know your answer is wrong because it has joined the binary. You've written it, which means it says "X, not Y", and no matter how many caveats you write down, anything you write will also have that problem? I'm sure, from what you write, you see this problem: how anything you try to express is just... flattened. Although, I might be massively wrong. I am nothing but another player. But I will leave you with a challenge: You say "It's a good thing". Why?

Hello! Can you clarify something for me? In your description about dry-heaving because of an and, you say that it "wasn't really voluntary". But then you say" I'm not sure if it was the right move but I've had other things going on and it was all to much." What was the difference between these two moments of being?

Also, the very most important thing: forgive yourself. If you slip up, if you cave in, FORGIVE YOURSELF! It is in the past, you can't do anything to change it, so allow it to be what happened, and look forwards, not backwards!

Hello. You know, there's an idea in SMART therapy (Self-Management And Recovery Training - designed to help people deal with addictions) that cravings work as follows*: 1) There is a trigger 2) That trigger leads to a wanting 3) The yearning turns into a CRAVING 4) You engage (drink, do drugs, whatever), which then reduces what is necessary to trigger the next cycle. So, here's the difficult thing about this cycle: you can't reduce the craving. You just can't. What you can do, is learn to recognise triggers and avoid them, or learn to recognise when you are yearning, and distract yourself (or filter the yearning into something healthier/more constructive). Or you can take the hardcore approach, and fight the craving. Which is entirely possible. The thing about a craving is that it feels like it will last FOREVER. Most cravings last between 10 and 20 minutes. The problem is that the blighters keep coming, which is where recognition of triggers (and working out ways to either remove them, or deal with them) comes in. My advice would be to focus on the most basic thing first. You are concerned about school: that should be your first priority right now. Enlightenment will still be there (and you have a long life to focus on that), but school is temporary and should be taken advantage of. Now, meditation is bloody hard - no denying that - but the more you do it, the better your focus will get, so keep going with that. The other thing I would suggest, though, would be to connect meditation to your 'non-meditation' life. In other words, don't restrict being mindful to your meditations. I have found that the greatest value I get from mindfulness has been when I've been in the middle of a meeting or whatever, and suddenly remembered to watch! But the only way you get there is through a conscious attempt at building a habit. The most frustrating thing about all of this kind of work is that it takes time. So we encounter it, get excited, think "yeah, ok, a little work and a little time, and big results!"... and then we learn what time really means. But the most important phrase I have ever encountered is: "we over-estimate what we can do in one day, and under-estimate what we can do in one year." The only real answer I can provide is Focus, and Do Not Stop * Please note: I am not a SMART therapist or any sort of qualified spokesperson. I just have a little knowledge

Hi Rick, I do get a feeling, but without more information I can't offer any suggestions. Given that this is a bit of an old post I suspect I'm a bit late anyway. If the situation is still unresolved, are you willing to go into more depth? T

Hello. Everything I write below is from one amateur to another. Please don't take me to be an expert, therapist, or teacher. Slow down. You are saying a lot in that post, and it's in a bit of a rush so hard to un-pick. 1) I can entirely understand why a woman would respond negatively to pick-up. I won't pretend that some of the stuff that is discussed regarding 'inner game' isn't of value, but pick-up is not a healthy perspective on the world, and women shouldn't react well it it frankly. I think Leo has a video about this. (I will also add that the stereotypes of women that pick-up communities discuss are incredibly narrow). 2) SSRI's. Fair enough, you're on SSRI's - they're the most common anti-depressant variety, and as about 1/3 of us experience depression, I wouldn't worrk about it (your post makes it sound like you're quite aggressively unhappy about the idea). I've been on them a couple of times. My experience is that they give me a plateau of how low I can go: so they don't make me 'happy', but they stop me feeling like utter filth, which helps me sort myself out. I found the first week a little tricky: had both highs and lows. I hope you're doing ok? 3) Suicidal thoughts. I don't want to tell you how to approach those, because that would be very presumtuous. Just that you are not the only one, and the thing about ALL thoughts is that they pass - suicidal ones too. They may come back, but they also go away. Always wait 20 minutes, ok? 4) The best resource I can suggest to fix mental health is to take the widest approach possible. You've already gone to your doctor, otherwise you wouldn't be on SSRI's. Great! You're here, on this forum. Great! What else? I'm a big supporter of psychotherapy, both individual, and group, and of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Also, just reading self-help material. Understanding, understanding, understanding - that's the key! I'm going to be honest, and I hope you'll take it in the sense of friendship that it is offered: you sound like you are in a great rush. That is entirely understandable: you are at a point in life which you don't want to be, and you want to get out of it as fast as you can. But right now, putting this sort of extreme pressure on yourself (girlfriend, business, 3-hr meditations [which are RIDICULOUSLY hard!], emotional body-work, avoiding 'low-self') ... well, I hope that laying it out like that shows how ambitious your thinking is. Once again, you want to be somewhere else, and I understand and encourage your ambition, but change also takes time and patience, and your first priority has to be your health. So if I would recommend one thing, it would be to slow down. You know the idea that 'there is no finish line'? We constantly forget that. Our entire lives are based around the idea that there IS, in fact, a finish line - and it leads to all sorts of chaos and pain. But the beautiful thing about life is that we over-estimate what we can do in one day, and under-estimate what we can do over longer periods of time. Please, please don't chastise yourself for not being perfect right now. Instead, pick one area - only one! - which you think is the most important thing for you, right this moment, to start dealing with. Then sit down, and gently - as if you were writing to a close friend or family member - write down what you think the sensible next step is.

(Apologies if I'm dragging up an old and irrelevant post: feel free to ignore!) Can I ask whether you're concerned with your website/channel as a business at the moment? I ask because you talk, in one of your blog posts, about the idea of painting - how it's not about being concerned with what people will think of the picture, but the painting of the picture. If you're not concerned about monetizing your channel any time soon, if you're trying to understand your own approach to spirituality and work out how to cast all these areas under your net, why should you be concerned with refining your audience? I would have thought, if you're looking for understanding and perspective, that a 'refined' audience is a hinderance?

Ok, everything that I am about to write is from one amateur to another. I only speak from my own personal experience, and a lay understanding of everything I discuss below. Please do not think of me as an expert, authority, or teacher. I have also experienced many problems with extremely low self-esteem (and many suicidal thoughts in my early twenties), and self-hatred. I tell you this so that you may recognise that I come from a position of a little understanding of what this kind of thinking is like. I'm going to be honest - and I come here from a position of immense respect for the power of meditation: meditating is not enough. Have you seen Leo's video about "what to do next after learning about enlightenment"? If I remember correctly, he says that if you are in a difficult place in life, it may be better to deal with your immediate issues first. I wonder if that's the case for you. You know what's wonderful about what you've written here? You understand. You may not be in control of things, you may not be on top of things, but you recognise what is happening and you've come here to ask us if we can help. That is freaking incredible, and I want you to know you should give yourself credit for that. One of the hardest things about living surrounded by pain and fear is that you can forget that they are not the only things. You can forget that you do not 'deserve' them. And yet here you are! What I am going to suggest is rather medical, but I think crucial: if you have not gone to your doctor, do so as soon as you can. Talk to them about how you feel, what is happening in your life, and possible ways they can help. Going to the doctor doesn't have to mean drugs or pills: it can lead to various kinds of support, groups, therapy, or even simply possible reading. There is nothing to lose in talking to someone whose job is to help you in times like this. The other thing I would suggest is that your thinking, right now, is hurting you. You are at a tremendous advantage right now, because you know this too! Believe me, being able to understand this may make all the difference - if you can recognise that your self-hating thoughts are thoughts, and not the truth, that's the difference. But if that's hard, you don't need to fight through it on your own. Again, there are groups. There are forums. There are books and communities and doctors and psychiatrists. I found CBT (Cognative Behavioural Therapy) to be one of the most valuable things I ever did.

It's a nice highlighting of conceptual duals - of the black and white of definition. That things must be either/or. What really grabs me, though, is that I want to focus in the bit in between the two. In a world of binary definitions, what exists in the gap between 1 and 0?

I find autolysis to be the most radical discipline I have ever tried. But there are caveats to that. 'Write the truth' can be a little misleading, if you approach it from a detached standpoint. There is value in asking questions about perception, what you see, feel, how it all IS, etc. But a large part of autolysis is about peeling away falseness, and you can't see falseness by asking detached questions about the universe, the 'outside world', how you see, hear, touch... You have to get more personal. 'Expose un-truth' is much closer to the mark, in my opinion. You're never, ever, going to write something true. The idea that truth cannot be stated is not just a spiritual cliche - it's remarkably obvious when you peel off even the most basic veneer of self-concept. I would already struggle to try to describe the [very basic] updated understanding of *what is* that I currently have (and I wouldn't want to try because it will only get turned into another mind-construct by everyone who reads this, because that's the ONLY WAY I can communicate it). So, back to the point: the temptation with 'write the truth' is to try to write something about existence, or the universe: the Ultimate Truth of Being. About sights, sounds, colours, textures; about depth, and width, and time, and past and future. These are all valuable, but as far as my experience goes, they need to be juxtaposed with the deepest deconstruction of EVERYTHING that you call 'you' - and EVERYTHING you call 'other'. Expose un-truth becomes a process of deep, dark introspection. As deeply personal as it is possible to get. And I promise you you won't want to publish it here. You have concerns about Jed McKenna's nihilistic way of writing: from my limited experience, he's both telling the truth, and big fat fibs. It is uncomfortable, and hard, and unpleasant, and upsetting at times. But it is also incredibly beautiful, and that's something he goes to great length in his books to not discuss - presumably because he doesn't want to encourage people to IMAGINE a state of beauty to be obtained. But the point is that there are moments that you come face-to-face with a question: are you willing to look behind the curtain of this very, very, very central, important, comforting notion of 'me' that you have? To the point that you can't actually picture what it's like behind that curtain. And it can be hard - really, really freaking hard - to answer in the affirmitive. But... well, I have zero regrets so far!