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@Leo-Tzu I am a runner, but not a very serious one. I've never done a marathon or anything like that. Usually only run for 30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. It feels like a lot, but it's not really. Still, it has a massive impact on my day. I feel heavy and achy if I don't run atleast a couple times a week. Murakami said everything he learnt about writing came from running. In some ways I think thats the same for meditation. You learn to accept discomfort and pain, how to deal with resistance, learning how to not listen to your thoughts, dealing with boredom etc. All transferable over to meditation. I don't use any gadgets except my digital watch the keep time. And I nearly always run on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning.

Interesting. Could you elaborate?

@Psyche_92 Try using a program called StayFocused to limit the amount of time you allow yourself to be on certain sites. Works pretty well, but obviously you can't rely on it forever.

Wow, such a great post! I love that insight about the beginner and the master. Also, I have never thought about meditation to be a subtractive process. We're always looking for 'results' from our meditation, or signs of growth. But it's not like that at all. Thankyou for sharing this insight. I may be able to offer you some advice regarding your painful back. When I went on my first Vipassana retreat around 6 months ago, I found sitting in this http://shiatsu-bordeaux.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/seiza.jpg posture to be extremely helpful in reducing a lot of the pain. I used the cushion rather than the wooden seat as it was much more comfortable for me. It's a great posture, but I found I needed to be seated quite high up to avoid tightly squishing my legs together. You'll need to play around with it to see what works best for you. There was still quite a bit of pain, but thats to be expected of course. Physical pain can be quite useful in very clearly seeing your aversion to discomfort.

@Shakazulu Sure, I find things always take longer than I expect and tend to over estimate my ability to get things done. One thing i've been doing recently is setting a timer for certain tasks/activities. You can relax and put all your focus into the task/activity at hand, without having to think about preserving time for other activities. Works really well for me.

I've always been confused by this. Correct me if i'm wrong, but is this not just a support for materialism? That everything we perceive is actually happening inside the brain. What is the source of the image inside your brain? And surely the brain itself must also be included into what is happening inside the brain?

@Light Lover Of course there is no one technique to get you on the path to Mastery. Each Master illustrator will have taken very very different paths to get where they are. You just need to be practising every single day with a focus on deliberate practise. Deliberate practise being work that stretches you beyond your current level. As opposed to just drawing what you're comfortable with.

No I don't think you're gonna get access concentration on LSD. It's a completely different experience. Cultivate it naturally through lots of concentration meditation.

@Seed Your life purpose/vision sounds amazing. No one teaches those things, not even most parents. I hope it works out for you, goodluck!

This is exactly the same for me. Too many ideas and things I want to create, and not enough time or focus to execute them. What has worked for me is to simply sit down and ask myself what I enjoy doing most, and what will be the best use of my time. There's no way I could do everything I want to do. What i've also found useful is to focus on doing small projects or 'small bets' that may only require a few months of time, or less, and thus don't require you to grind it out in the hope of getting some success. But, these small bets are big enough and challenging enough that they're developing your skills and actually making a difference, rather than just some half-assed piece of work you do in a day. For me this has just been working on a big painting over the past few months. It hasn't taken up loads of time, but has been very challenging at times. How good the painting turned out is not that important. What is important is that I sat down and actually created something. So my answer to your question is to do neither, in a sense. Don't pick one thing and grind it out, at least until you have a much clearer idea of what it is you want to pursue. But also don't divide up your time for everything because the necessary focus and momentum required for making good art/music likely won't be there. Instead, as I said before, maybe try a mixture of these and do a bunch of different small projects which require time and effort and build your skills (they should be challenging), but aren't an all-out commitment. The aim is to just finish the project and learn something, rather than thinking about whether it's the right thing to be doing, whether you made the right decision etc. Anyway that's my take on it, hope this helps. Goodluck!

@Leo Gura Sounds like an awesome idea! I'm from the UK unfortunately, but if you ever came to London i'd definitely be interested in attending. Also happy to pay more than $20 for a ticket.

Thanks for sharing @Afonso ! I've been giving the technique a go, as well as @Azrael's 'Awakening Anchor #1'. What i'm finding very difficult, in both techniques, is the visualisation or creation of a past experience or memory. You say to 'think of something in your life that makes you uncomfortable'. Azrael says to 'visualize a moment in your life in which you experienced the current emotion very strongly'. Well, there have been many many times where i've experienced an emotion very strongly or felt incredibly uncomfortable, but I can't seem to 'recreate' any of them. I can remember the events or moments and where I was and what I was doing, but I can't bring up the emotions or feeling associated with them. I can't put myself back in my own shoes, so to speak.

@Anthony1000 Ignore the 10,000 rule. If you want to become truly world class then sure it applies. But for actualizing your life purpose it's not as important or necessary, in my opinion. You can create an amazing life in much less, but only if you focus on using what hours you have wisely and effectively. I wish I had known this a year or two ago. Deliberate learning and practise of skills is key. Read DW by CN on Leo's book list.

@Leo Gura Yes I think this would be a good idea. It would definitely encourage people to make their own judgements. Maybe we could have a trial period with these changes for a few weeks, or a month, and then make a final decision after that. Edit: After thinking about this a bit more here is what I think would be ideal: I don't pay much attention to the chimp titles so for me whether they are removed or not is not too much of an issue. What I would say is to just completely remove the reputation points and the number of posts under the user image. But keep the thumbs up under each comment. Being praised for writing a good comment is not such a bad thing I don't think.

@Max_V Great, thanks. So as I understand you're just putting a lot of focus into, or atleast starting with, really nailing down what you identify with, what you identify as 'me', and trying to get a very clear answer to that? And then inquiring into that.

@Max_V Seems like you've got a knack for self-inquiry. Got any advice for the rest of us? Whats you're general approach? Do you ask questions or spend more time in silence? I've been working on it much much longer than 2 months but haven't felt like i've made any big leaps or gotten remotely close to what you've described.

@-Rowan Read 'So Good They Can't Ignore You' by Cal Newport

@Petar Yes I have been experiencing something very similar. I haven't experienced any pain so maybe it's not as intense as what you've had, but there's definitely a strong pressure-like feeling. I also know what you mean when you say you feel more conscious. I haven't quite worked out what might be causing it, but I think, as you said, when I do very hard mindfulness labelling it becomes more noticeable. Recently i've been doing more Do Nothing and the pressure feeling hasn't been so prominent. Maybe I should be doing more hard mindfulness. I guess if it's really bad my advice would be to do some Do Nothing and maybe some grounding physical exercise to help move the energy around.

I could spend a long time replying to this comment, but I won't because you need to figure this stuff out for yourself. Keep self-inquiring, meditating and studying everything Leo teaches. It's good that you're questioning everything.

Be careful not to blindly believe what you've heard about what you are. As far as you're concerned right now everything you've been told could be bullshit. You must throw out all beliefs and ideas about what you think you are or might be, and just focus on what is true in your direct experience. Don't try to recognise that you are 'nothing' or that you don't exist. Who says that's true? Discover the Truth for yourself.

@Dino D Try paying more attention to what is actually true in direct experience. Notice that in direct experience any type of thought comes from no one and nothing and falls back into the same place. That is literally what is happening in your experience. You might say, yes some of my thoughts just appear by themselves, but others come from 'me', 'I' am definitely creating these thoughts at will! But notice that every single thought is the same in that they all appear completely spontaneously from nothing. Where is this I-thinker? What is this I-thinker? Is there really an 'I' that is the source of thinking? The same goes for speaking and moving the body.

@Colin Yea I enjoyed it too! I really like the more casual, informal style stuff, like the retreat vlogs Leo did a while ago.

Ahh I totally missed that. Thanks!

@ppfeiff Yea I've been using Outline every since Leo brought out his Commonplace Book video. It's been great so far I'd definitely recommend. I went along and bought the full version after using the trial. From seeing OneNote in Leo's video I'd say Outline is about 80% the same, functionality wise. However, there are a few differences which I've noticed after using it for a month or so: 1) Quite limited search function. Doesn't have the Find Tags function that OneNote has. 2) You can't use custom fonts. Not a massive deal obviously, you're just limited to 11 presets. 3) Doesn't have some of the more advanced tools that OneNote has like the drawing tool, voice recording etc, the ability to drag bullet points up and down the list as Leo shows in the video, or the linking to different pages function. Can't say I've needed to use these though. Aside from those points, I don't think there's much else. It saves everything into one file on your computer which is exactly what I wanted. Means you can backup everything onto an external hard drive super easily. Very clean, simple, easy to use interface. Let us know how it works for you.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. 3.5 grams outside in a busy city, with a chaser of beer?! If I did that I'd almost certainly have a bad trip. Sounds like you managed it pretty well though.