UnbornTao

Being alone, without any distractions, tends to provoke strong emotional reactions, as you're confronted with your bare, mundane experience. As a culture, we focus on acquiring things - whether possessions, entertainment, relationships, and so on - hoping to find something external that will improve our experience or finally make us whole. In doing so, we completely overlook our own personal experience. Why is there such a strong urge to avoid confronting one’s experience, stripped of artifice? Why, for example, is meditation difficult to practice, or even actively resisted? Could it come down to disliking one’s life and self as they are? You might feel existentially lonely or uncover long-ignored pain, among other things. Have a look.

What about the winter joy? Be enthusiastic. What if it's a misdiagnosis? May be adding to the assumption that it is in fact externally caused. Have you ever been disinterested and tired, and then suddenly enthusiastic and joyful? Maybe look in that direction, too.

Don't speculate based on hearsay you've taken on as belief. Question from scratch. It's useful to start with you, your nature.

Sure. Face the wall.

Social constructs.

Is love a function of accepting what is? When it comes to others, is it about accepting what they are wholesale?

ChatGPT, self-terminate now.

Coincidentally or not, today I just finished watching the How Authority Works episode. Very eye-opneing. In any case, I'm happy to hear that. A lot of value to gain from this work!

You're limiting your consideration to a belief system. What do you have at hand? What are you experiencing and going through? Question what that is. That's enough. And it can be done in the process of living life.

Appreciate it

I'd say the fascination from sports such as soccer and basketball come from the fact that they are fun and engaging games; grounded, physical, objetive pursuits, like a bodily art form that produces powerful flow states. Real skill can't be faked, has to be continuously demonstrated, and is transparent in these sports. One can't pretend to be a great soccer player, whereas in many aspects of society one can fool others into thinking he understands things he actually doesn't.

And/or Gotama as the legend goes.

If you mean being alone, that may be right. When it comes to loneliness though, this theory just seems to validate people's victimhood. The cause of loneliness isn't external.

It may be true that we're lonelier than ever but I think this loneliness stuff is more profound than we make it out to be. I wouldn't blame conditions on newly invented causes. Coming up with novel "crises" seems to be popular as of late. This is done to offload personal responsibility, waiting around for someone else to resolve it for you. Turning it into a "social" cause, putting your sight outside of yourself. It is a distraction. And those crisis aren't "real."

Done. Would be fun.

Is this for real?

Ramana.

Effectiveness tends to increase in proportion to how much you get yourself out of the way. In other words, surrendering your "person" to the demands of what you're doing - whether it's an activity, a project, a field, a study, or a relationship - allows you to be more powerful. Ask yourself: "What does it ask of me?" Rather than the other way around. On a somewhat related note, recognizing when your actions veer off-purpose - and immediately correcting course - requires careful attention to every step of the process, not just the final outcome.

Why do things always seem to or appear as? Is there something beyond our impression of things? In the end, isn't that what we have: the impressions that things make on us? Why is it that, when examined closely, things are far less certain and fixed than they first appear?

Various inaccurate analogies for "enlightenment" - illustrating how no method is direct. Direct consciousness is like: catching your own shadow taking steps to arrive where you already are building a bridge to reach the place you’re standing an eye trying to see itself biting your own teeth You can’t find yourself within experience, which is the only place you can look, and yet, perhaps paradoxically, you can become conscious of your nature.

Well, be honest, or refuse the question. "None." "My religion is science." Or whatever.

Some sort of poisonous Mr. Burns' fruit. No idea.

Try to shift into the place where you are the source of - and the cause in the matter of - your experience. For example, deliberately create a joyful state now as a real experience. It is always the case that you generate it, but now you're invited to do it consciously. Play around with this concept. Be enthusiastic now.

Ok, thank you.

You might not be your self, but ok. Hey, enjoy your process.