UnbornTao

Recognizing that you as a person are not special can be liberating, even though it might be fiercely resisted at first.

Then what are you pointing to? By "agreeing" do you mean adopting it as a belief? What would be the point of agreeing without being directly conscious of it oneself? I don't really know about those guys. Ken is smart and may have had enlightenment experiences. He's also pretty attached and stuck on intellect. Has Daniel expressed or mentioned if he's had enlightenment experiences himself? How does he talk about this subject?

Dropping the roles you play expands your sense of self and tends to empower your presence and vitality. For example, imagine you’re being hunted by a lion. In this life-or-death situation, you realize that your social concerns are irrelevant and not real--in the sense that they are not existential--freeing you from them, at least temporarily.

Poor wording. I meant that Windows hasn't been optimally adapted to unconventional form factors by Microsoft yet. New touch-focused features piss off desktop users and viceversa. No desktop OS has been made truly touch-friendly without having to compromise on usability in some way, as far as I know. Both Apple and Microsoft seem to be experimenting with their OSes in this regard. I didn't say that Macs were innovate but rather the PCs that you mentioned. You may have misinterpreted me. What about metrics like hardware quality (trackpad, screen, speakers, keyboard), weight, thickness, temperature, noise, performance, battery life? What's the touch experience like? Not as good as a tablet, I bet. Overall, the M1 Air is the winner, except for touch and graphics. Many people would prefer an excellent traditional device instead of a mediocre or even decent 2-in-1. I don't think this form factor has still fully developed. Yes, PCs are of course versatile, open, cheap and customizable. For gaming, they're pretty much the best platform. Besides, they can offer discreet graphics card support. Well, it's true and I frequently feel the same. A screen without touch capabilities, except TVs and other specific gadgets, makes you feel like living in the Jurassic era. Plays Jurassic Park soundtrack. Yes. Qualcomm is their main competitor when it comes to mobile processors. Apple has been at the top of mobile processors for more than a decade. Their custom silicon dev kit used an iPad chip! In a way, M1 was the culmination of a decades-old development that started with the first custom iPhone chip. They leveraged their expertise with their mobile custom processors and applied it to the desktop. That doesn't seem to be the case. The M3 has been rumored to be built on 3nm and ARMv9 technology. Apple might choose to use that new technology only in their "pro" devices, though. I'll be patiently waiting for an Intel or AMD processor with similar relationship between performance and efficiency as that of Apple Silicon. Both companies will likely have to switch to ARM sooner or later in order to achieve that.

You're confusing intellectual prowess with enlightenment. It is possible to be very smart but not enlightened. For example, Nissargatta was awake and also illiterate. There's no correlation between these two things.

What is intuition?

Getting lost in abstraction and intellectualization can easily become a trap when the subject matter pertains to the domain of experience. Experience belongs to a completely different domain than your notions about experience.

Do what you want and make it work for you. What purpose could you create for your life?

Being invested in something, especially on an emotional level, tends to hinder an impartial observation.

Do you presume your thoughts are true simply because they come from you? It seems we live under this unquestioned assumption most of the time. Because they appear to be yours--or so we believe--you may be blindly trusting in their legitimacy, without knowing where they came from or why they arise at all.

What about your book?

To change something, first you need to become aware of what it is and how it works. If you don't see it as it is, your ability to interact with it will be severely diminished.

Perceiving reality through models can easily become a trap if you regard that effort as more than simply "drawing an apple." When hungry, you go for the real thing. A representation may be mistaken for reality itself, causing you to miss what is actually happening by superimposing extra, unnecessary concepts onto your experience.

How you frame an event in your mind determines how you perceive it.

As much as you can, and when the situation calls for it, communicate in a way that the expression can stand on its own.

What creates depression is imagining a negative future for your life. Imagining a positive future eliminates the root of the depression.

@flowboy You don't eat sugar? What were the first weeks like after quitting?

What exactly is a perspective? Is it a way of holding reality? How could you shift perspectives in a way that's real and profound? How could you relate to something differently?

You jump into a pool, you get wet--instant karma! Notice the consequences of your actions. How you think, what you do with your mind, has consequences.

In the context of spirituality, "all roads lead to the same destination" is a mistaken notion. Not every path has the same purpose and goals. You can see that most of the time what people want is a better experience; in most cases, they're invited to believe in something that's assumed to be true by others.

Keeping your feet on the ground doesn't necessarily imply inflexibility or stubbornness. It means having your perception rooted in accurate, real distinctions, avoiding wishful thinking, and being present with the event as it occurs.

It's possible that your tastes, even your interests, are changing, or it might be an emotional struggle that will eventually pass. Do you still like it? Make sure that you choose something you like before committing to it. Remember that commitment demands going through plateaus and emotional "crises." Moreover, even if you like it, that doesn't mean that it's going to be constantly easy and enjoyable; pursuing your passion might even be the hardest option, so take these things into account. When you commit to mastery, no matter what you do, you're going to face these kinds of challenges. It ultimately comes down to you. Introspection is what I recommend.

How does the invention of language influence your experience? Without the context of language, what is your experience like? For example: Can your internal dialogue exist without language? Could most of your thinking exist?

Your concern is about sex and survival, which have nothing to do with the metaphysical. Animals gonna mate. This domain seems to involve primarily raw experience, not belief systems and intellect. So instinctive, animal behavior goes rewarded prior to other aspects like personality and intelligence. Not sure that helps.

How did this particular invention come to exist? What if I were to rebuild it from the ground up? 'Reinventing the wheel' helps you grasp its nature at every level. This, in turn, enables you to recreate it more effectively--opening the door to genuine innovation. Contemplate its foundations, which requires starting from nothing, as if it hadn't been invented yet.