Taavi

@Frogfucius My reply was aimed for the people who are still pretty much completely in the dark about the nature of reality, like myself and are thriving for understandment/experience or whatever one might call it. In such situation watching tv, Game Of Thrones for example would be hard to do while being conscious, because you know how it affects the psyche. When you are striving for better functioning psyche you do not put an hours worth of Games of thrones in your "subconscious", at least not when you are conscious of the consequences. I do not know what experience enlightened masters have while doing "low consciousness" activities but I have the opinion that it differs a lot from people who have not reached a high enough development and that they are not doing it to distract themselves. I might be wrong, I obviously do not know what enlightenment is. I am not trying to condemn anything, just trying to be pragmatic so I would stay on track and not bullshit myself about low consciousness activities.

@Frogfucius If you would be conscious you would not be watching tv or youtube. The time you spend and the information your mind receives while doing those activities would be too pointless for you to participate in them. It also depends on the content. There is a big difference between watching something that is helping you to grow and something that is just a way to distract yourself. I am guessing that the latter is the case for most of tv and youtube, tv especially. It is also a really good excuse to watch out for, "I am conscious while doing it, so it`s okey". I have used it so many times and still keep falling for it from time to time. You are not very conscious while doing low consciousness activities. You may do them to observe yourself while partacipating in them, so you would understand better how you feel while doing them and why you do them. That raises your awarness. Watching tv for an hour while thinking that "I am conscious " is just watching tv for an hour for the sake of watching tv.

I have been observing how my dreams are created by staying conscious in the moments when they start to form. Usually one would be completely unconscious already at that time. It is quite scary, once you realize that you keep dreaming in waking life. Your perceptions are not dreams, but the story in which you live is. Once I become lucid in my dream and start meditating in it, then shit hits the fan. I have very little to no memories of my story, only consciousness and often times terryfing emotions. All the stories that you keep living throughout your day, they are very little less arbitrary then the dreams you experience and you have pretty much the same control over them as you do over your dreams. You are right, your reality is basically a dream. Not reality itself, just your story which you experience as reality.

Go to a camping trip alone without taking any distractions along with you for at least 4 days, if you cannot handle any longer. Make no expectations for it. Just go and be alone for 4 days without distracting yourself. If you have not done it before it will be quite difficult and even seem tormenting. Why do that? Do it and find out.

Have you considered, that your categorization of "useful things" and "non useful things" might be a part of you belief system and that most of it is rather arbitrary? Once you categorize your time in a specific way you will feel compelled to act in a way according to that classification. If you have made an association between free/rest time and mindnumming entertainment (Tv and Youtube) you will be compelled to do so because it will be the "right" way to act for "you". It is always just now, all the categorizations of time you have are concepts that have been instilled into you. They do not actually exist. I am speaking from my own experience. Once I became aware that I was rubricizing time, the need to act in a certain way stopped to a large degree.

I am taking the life purpose course now, but I have been focusing heavily on consciousness work for the last 3 months and making some startling breakthroughs. My question is, how well do these two things go together since both of them require a lot of focus and work. I concentrate on consciousness work for about 3 hours a day, but try to observe/ remain self aware throughout the day and also when I manage in my sleep. I think that they should go together well, since increased state of awarness provides the ability to make distinctions that would otherwise not be made and thus remained unaware of. That in turn is the basis in which I can see myself discovering my life purpose, although I cannot imagine what "I" will be like once I have transformed, which is one of my purpose of doing consciousness work along with enlightenment. Maybe someone who has been in a similar situation can share their experience?

I am not sure how to start so I just will. This will be my journal, the main purpose of it will be to bring me back to writing down my experienes and to sort out my thoughts regarding my development. Feedback and discussion with other users is naturally welcomed. A little bit of backround about me. I am a 22 years old man. I live in Estonia so english is not my first language, but I will do my best to explain myself as accurately as possible. I have always been interested in psychology and how to world works. My interest in psychology is partly credited due to OCD which I had for about 10 years. I was pretty much forced to understand myself and my thoughts better, so I could rewire the thought mechanisms that caused my OCD. I have done that succesfuly and the main key to accomplishing it was increasing my awarness. The increase in my awarness has led me here actually, writing this journal right now and integrating self-actualization work more and more in to my life. A quick description on what I have been doing for the past 4 years and how I got in to self-help. After finishing high school at 18 I got a job in a neigbouring country that payed the years average salary of Estonia for 5 months of work, so I got finances to live quite freely for 7 months of the year without working. That freedom and change in enviroments opened up my world view quite a lot, since I was pretty much broke before that and had only visited a foreign country once or twice. Working abroad and the constant changes of enviroment also caused a lot of stress which increased the intencity of my OCD. So I started reading up on psychology more, writing down my thoughts trying to put together somekind of picture of what the fuck was actually going on, keeping a very messy journal of sorts. I was doing self-inquiry work in some sense, but my awareness level was so low that I could very rarely get glipses that allowed to see through the beliefs my ego had created. I was also smoking pot quite a lot and doing self observation while under it`s influence. I did get some very valuable insights while doing it but it truly is a double edged sword when abused, in the long term taking away the things it gives in the short term. I recently quit smoking pot once I became aware what I was actually doing, but like all habits, especially habits including using psychotropic substances it still lurks somewhere in my mind. The second year I returned to work I decided to use some of the money to enter a college which required me to move to another city. I entered the college to study marketing and business management. I have distant learning, so I have to attend only for about 4 days a month and study independently most of the time. I moved in the end of october of 2015 and took a direct selling job, going to peoples home and trying to sell them a very good and also quite expensive vaccuum cleaner My goal was to become a really good salesman since it sounded like a logical thing to do ( good money if you are good at it, a lot of independance, very interesting job, goes well along with marketing, get to understand people better, more confidence etc.). So I concentrated very intensly on becoming a great salesman for about three months, reading sales books, listening to sales tapes in my car, watching videos, making myself believe in the product, actually read The Greatest Salesman In The World for 3 months as it should be read trying to reprogram myself. That salesjob was actually how I got introduced to self help. I even joined a program where collage students go to USA to sell books from door to door, payed all the fees, bought the plane tickets but backed away from it a few weeks before actually going. I got some self-help books from that program which I read, made a lot of notes, applied some of it but all the self-help took place in the context of selling, how to become better at it, what to believe, how to think, how to respond, how to tough it out and so on. I realized after quiting the program that I was after self-development and most of all self knowledge, not sales. I made a plan after quiting to go on a 5-6 weeks hike alone to get to know myself, read and concentrate solely on my being. I was able to be alone with myself for 2 days, living in a tent with no distractions, doing basically only self-inquiry. The intensity was too much for my ego to bear much longer then 2 days. After that hike I have been increasing my awarness constantly, everyday. I ordered books from Leo's list, I read the "The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution: P. D. Ouspensky", had great realizations from that book, now I am reading "The Book Of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston" and have 18 more books waiting. I basically don't do much right now besides being, observing myself, what triggers me emotionally, how my thoughts appear, what are their patterns, how my mechanical nature works, how I form beliefs, I'm becoming more and more aware in my dreams, sometimes being lucid in them, I watch a video almost everyday and conteplate on it or try to apply some of the knowledge. But I feel like I have to get back to "practical" chores of life. I also took the life purpose course which I will start concentrating more intensely on. So this is also what this journal is for, to keep track on my pursuit of my life purpose, "practical" everyday routines and enlightenment work. As I grow more aware and piece a bit more together I will soon make more detailed plans with goals that I will add to keep track on. For now I will concentrate on instilling a proper sleeping and meditating schedule. I will add to this journal daily most of the time writing down my experiences, thoughts, progress or backsliding and whatever else I deem to be necessary.

I do not know anything anymore. All my beliefs are just that, beliefs. I do not know what experience is, what my thoughts are or how they come to be experienced, who or what I am. It is becoming harder and harder for me to fall back in to sleep. I know nothing, I do not even know how to write about it or even if it is possible to write about it in a way to convey the implications.