UnbornTao

It sounds like what he's pointing at there is our ignorance of the nature of things in and of themselves. In my view, he's essentially saying that what we call knowledge is entirely based on how things relate to ourselves, which is distinct from what they are in themselves. For example, we perceive and make sense of objects, and this is what tends to fall into the category of 'knowledge' for us, while the being or presence of the thing remains unknown. The conclusion at the end is reasonable, but ultimately mistaken - that's where direct consciousness comes in.

Definitely.

Lying on the floor with your legs on the bed?

That's good to hear. Yeah, it's happened to me with most ultra-processed foods too. And don't forget legumes! If you like them, they're just as great once you figure out how to prepare them in a way you enjoy.

Keep it going! What is actually context?

Relatable. I did the same... for five days last week.

The franchise has lost a bit of its initial appeal to me, but I will still watch the movie at some point. I like the world, the visuals, and the taoist vibe. The story, I have no idea where it's headed.

Sure! Done.

I wanted to start a shared contemplation with you: What is experience?

We're such jerks.

@zurew You didn't feel like I addressed your points?

There's also the option of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). As far as I know, there's not much difference for the average user. Preferably choose a distro like Mint, Pop!_OS, or Bazzite over Ubuntu - personal recommendation. Essentially, the main choices come down to Debian, Arch, and Fedora-based systems. I dual-boot Mint and Windows.

Once again, pay attention to the exercise. What do the excuses and storytelling accomplish? Quite literally, they help reaffirm the experience and keep it as it is. They validate the actions that produce suffering. What you're suggesting may be common - that we generally aren't very good at controlling our minds, except in certain activities or scenarios where we've developed some degree of proficiency. Yet, in broad terms, our minds seem to be like wild dogs. But consider who has been educating the dog - and who can train him. I'm suggesting these unconscious patterns are created by you, no matter how they show up. What the exercise does is force you to create them consciously, whereas before, you were irresponsibly feeling at the mercy of your own activity. You seem to keep wanting to reinforce your role as the victim in all this. It sounds like you've also made quite a lot of progress, though. Again, who's responsible for what you think? Surely you wouldn't say someone else is - not even something external to you. Attachment itself is something you do and maintain. There's nothing necessarily wrong with attatchment or with thoughts, by the way. Yes, exactly. You need to clarify this for yourself. What is it that you're actually looking into here? Is it suffering, fear, attachment, embarrassment? Or do you simply want to express your experience and connect with others? Both are valid.

Okay, thank you for sharing.

Please don't piss in your metaphysical soup. Which is to say, try to treat specific, relative topics on their own terms.

Oh oh, advanced topic.

I see. Sorry to hear that. No! Start calling your mind simply "you." You do it - not something other than you. You can stop doing a certain activity, rather than trying to influence something external to you in hopes that the activity will diminish. Again, you need to take responsibility for what you do. Without the willingness to do that, you'll keep seeing suffering as something imposed from the outside. Then your only option will seem to be manipulating your internal state in an attempt to manage the suffering, not dissolve it. Here's yet another seemingly silly exercise: think of a kiwi. Imagine the fruit. Now, stop thinking it - stop having that thought. Who did that? Seriously, who did? Now, it's just a matter of taking that principle into practice. I don't know whether some of these are biologically ingrained - pain, perhaps - but we're talking about mental-emotional suffering. Consider this: a baby has to learn to fear objects being thrown at them. If even something that seems like an instinct must be learned, how much of the disempowering stuff we do could we actually unlearn? I would reconsider that point. Go beyond the two examples. Just like with the pink elephant - you can essentially choose to think thoughts that generate suffering, or thoughts that don't. Which is which? It takes work and practice. Meditation can help develop mastery over the mind, so you may want to look into that. I hope this discussion doesn't trivialize the inquiry or make it seem easy. But it is simple. If it's true that you've transcended the myriad forms of suffering we usually engage in, notice: What do you not do such that you're free of those? What are you currently not doing such that they can't arise? Here lies the key to this whole matter. Let me ask: What does your experience tell you? That's something to question.

In the context of this thread, if you followed Hinduism and believed in hundreds of gods, you'd be fucked. And overwhelmed. "Which one do I pick now?"

@Carl-Richard The gist of it, in my view: you assume, deep down in your experience, that it is not possible for you to become absolutely conscious, therefore your focus and concern is mostly restricted to exchanging one belief system for another. Hence why I shared the video. It's got to do with the way you tend to approach these topics, and what that "says" about where your mind goes. It's essentially trying to think your way to what's true. For example, the fact that you posted this on the Consciousness subforum and not on the Intellectual one, may be hinting at this relationship. Zen stick for you. You are hearing that as an invalidation of thinking or some such. Answers are irrelevant. It's an odd thing to say, but have you ever done some long or intensive contemplation? This 'impossibility' sentiment is common but not necessarily easily located. That's what I'm pointing to. Yeah, direct consciousness applies to absolute matters. Since we're mostly dealing with existential subjects here, we can't really "get there from here," so to speak. We could think until our heads exploded - and that would be a good beginning of this investigation. Use every tool available for the job, but be aware what each is for. And be clear as to what you're doing and why. You can't think your way to what's existentially or absolutely true, because a thought is just a thought - it's never the thing it refers to. Don't let the apparent simplicity of this fact prevent you from recognizing the principle underlying it. That said, there's real merit to activities like thinking, planning, feeling, intuiting, testing frameworks, applying attention, drawing on memory, observing without bias, experimenting, and so on - when it comes to relative matters.

@Sugarcoat But why is the physical one your concern? Rarely is that the prominent form of suffering for most of us. There's not much that can be done about physical pain, except handling it in various ways that can hopefully decrease it or make it tolerable. Another pursuit is grasping what pain is at its root - but again, that's advanced shit. What you are suffering is fear, so your subject could be fear, first and foremost. Stop imagining a future and pain can't be feared. Whenever something physically painful occurs, you may well suffer that, but at least the double suffering of fearing pain is no longer present. Suffering has many forms. We generally can notice how such seemingly innocuous experiences such as craving something or being jealous can be based on suffering. So, lots to uncover in this domain. I invite you to consider, you don't. You think you do, but you have yet to make the connections in your experience. It happens because you do it. You are responsible for it. This may be difficult to see but it is an essential recognition. We're talking about mental-emotional suffering, not physical pain. Wonderful. That helps. Also, focus on your breathing, and breath from the center (slightly below one's navel). Who's doing your mind? Again, small experiments are useful here. For example, when experiencing discomfort while sitting down, can you find something that isn't strictly physical, such as annoyance or impatience? Stay with that a little and question it as it occurs. We can learn a lot from that, hopefully make new distinctions.