Yarco

I've gone through the Life Purpose course entirely 2 or 3 times, and the results that I get are always similar and I always come to the same conclusion. I've also done Jordan Peterson's Future Authoring Program so I feel like I know what I don't want, as much as what I do want. I feel like I've set good, attainable goals based around my top values, signature strengths, high-consciousness virtues, and ideal medium. I feel like I have a good idea for what my life purpose should be and what I want for my life. I've even broken it down to specific steps that I need to complete each day to progress toward my goals. But I don't feel like achieving them or working toward them will make me feel happy. I don't know if they even make me feel fulfilled. For me, I would describe my life purpose more like a dharma. I feel like I have a duty or obligation to make specific use of my skills and strengths for the world, and that's my purpose in life. But I won't necessarily feel happy or fulfilled doing it. Is that normal, or is my life purpose out of whack and I should look for something that will make me feel happy and fulfilled?

After watching today's video, I'm worried that I'm intellectualizing the idea of awareness, emptiness, true self, etc and that I'm going to do it wrong for a decade before I realize. I'm concerned my mind is making false sensations or images of the emptiness, and I can't seem to get past the tricks of my mind. When I try to sense the emptiness inside my head, I go inside and try to see what the "perceiver" is that links at the deepest level to my senses like sight, hearing, and smell, and the general idea of being "concious". It gives me a weird feeling like there's a vacuum or negative pressure inside my head that's sucking my head and ear canals in on itself. That's a sensation so I know that definitely can't be it. When I try to sense the emptiness outside of myself, it's still just a single point of "nothingness" I'm imagining in space in front of me, as opposed so something that permeates everything. Even if I think I'm feeling pure awareness or stillness, it still seems like there's a physical sensation associated with that. How do I know for sure that I'm finding true emptiness / awareness / true self, instead of it just being my mind tricking me? Am I supposed to be able to find it? Or is this some neti neti thing where I'm supposed to struggle to find it for hundreds of hours, and then it will just suddenly click?

I think I may have been stage green in the past when the Zeitgeist movies were first being released and my younger self was dreaming of a utopia. And the popular culture seemed to be anti-war, anti-George Bush. But sadly, I feel like I've mostly regressed to stage orange/blue now, and can't seem to get back. For the past few years I've listened to people like Jordan Peterson, and much worse things like alt-right podcasts. I don't know what led me down the rabbit hole, but at its worst point I was listening to pro-Trump, anti-immigration, anti-refugee, racist, homophobic, antisemitic, transphobic messages for hours each day. And it's really infected my mind. I've since really tried to cut back. Unsubscribed from the majority of those Youtube channels, don't visit those subreddits any more. But my ego continues to rebel and refuse statistics and facts from "leftists", feminists, etc. And it continues to gravitate toward messages of the alt-right. Plus I feel like since 9/11, society in general has really filled me with Islamophobia which makes it hard to feel any compassion or empathy toward refugees, when my brain believes they're invading my country to ruin it. That's hard because I live in Canada, which feels like the general public has reached stage green in the past 3-5 years, and I'm fighting against the popular consensus of my own country. It's also a growing point of contention between myself and my girlfriend, who is a very liberal person. I know the answer is to cut off all the lower stage media I used to enjoy and immerse myself in higher stage things, but it's tough when it's been your worldview, way of thinking, and main source of entertainment for years. It's like an addiction and also linked with my self-worth and self-esteem. I don't know how to start fully living and embracing stage green values, let alone surround myself with stage green people, when my mind is still filled with terminology like "cuck" and "soy boy" whenever I see them. I don't know to start convincing myself of things like the wage gap when I've listened to people debunk it for months or years. My mind puts up a wall whenever I try to reconsider ideas like feminism, equality, diversity, etc and overwhelms me with facts and information that right-leaning figures gave me. I know a lot of it is bad info, but I still can't seem to actually convince myself that my old positions might be wrong. I can't stand to watch left-leaning media like Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah. It's actually triggering for me. Maybe the worst part is that my ego sometimes tries to rationalize that I've actually already transcended to yellow, and I can see the false right/left dichotomy. But I know that must be a trap, because I wouldn't have this much disdain for stage green people if that were true.

Okay, this video left me with a few concepts and ideas that I can't seem to reconcile. Sorry, this is going to be a disjointed rambling mess... The video seems very focused on visual perception to determine what's actual. But how does it work with the other senses? If I put my hand behind my back and wiggle my fingers, is that actually the hand, or just sensations of the hand? If I see my girlfriend in the same room as me, she is actual. But if I turn around and she leaves my vision then she becomes just a concept. But if she speaks and I can hear her voice, is that actually her, or the only actual thing is the sound I am hearing? It's just a concept to infer the sound I hear is coming from my girlfriend? All the things I think about other people are just concepts. Such as their personality, the fact they are conscious, their preferences and expected behaviors. Even the idea that other people exist is a concept. Their body is actual when I'm looking at it or touching it, but everything going on inside is just concepts and ideas. There is no person, there is just a physical body there but everything else is just different overlapping concepts working together to create the illusion of one. This creates a really weird, empty world. All living things are just actual hollow shells like every other object. Well, hollow is a concept. It seems like something more than what I see is going on, but I can't say what. People aren't alive because life is just a concept, they are just pieces of flesh that are somehow animated. I can't even assume they are made of flesh/meat, meat is just a concept. Assuming people are alive is a concept. A living person and a dead body are actually the same thing from my perspective, the only thing that separates them is concepts? They look the same, they feel the same, except one is not animated. The same would be true for me, although obviously it's much harder to separate the illusion of my own self. Because it feels like I'm the one thinking and experiencing these things. ------------ If the inevitable conclusion that I am supposed to come to is that there is no "me", then how can this approach work if it's so me-centric? I'm saying that the only actual things are in my immediate awareness. Like the whole universe only exists because I perceive it. At any given moment, the universe is only what I'm actually concious of. But to function in life, I need to make assumptions. For example, if I actually put food in the oven and set a timer and go into the next room... I can reliably expect that my food will continue cooking and the timer will go off at the desired time. They still exist, to some degree. There is seemingly a continuity to things. I can leave my house and come back expecting everything to be where I left it. If I have pain inside my body, a doctor can cut me open and fix organs that are actually there. Where does stuff come from? I can't assume the pen on my desk is made of plastic, let alone that it came from oil that was drilled out of the ground and manufactured into a pen in China and shipped across the ocean. All concepts. Does it matter where stuff comes from? It's just here. Time is just a concept too... but I can't even wrap my head around that one. How do I reconcile the fact that God is infinite (concept) with the fact that actual things are only in my immediate awareness? If we are to assume that God (concept) is viewing the world through every other set of eyes on the planet (concept), then isn't everything that any other being sees actual as well? How can actuality be localized to my field of awareness? I guess that's my main question in all of this. How do I know the hand is actual when I have to rely on my eyes to see it. Is seeing through my eyes a concept? How do I know the actual is actual and not just another concept? If I was in virtual reality right now looking at my hand, that's not actually my hand. Literally nothing I could see or hear or feel would be actual. But how do I know that if I can't remember putting the virtual reality headset on? If I'm actually God that has slipped my body and mind on like a VR headset, how do I take it off? (Btw thanks for the video, it's getting me to actually think hard and take time to evaluate this stuff instead of just watch videos. I feel like by asking these questions I'm banging my head up against a wall, but maybe actually about to break through. Don't worry, I know there are 30 more walls behind that one. Look forward to literally descending into madness to figure this all out.)

Does anyone have experience doing Kriya yoga in a regular cross-legged sit? I'm not yet flexible enough to do any of the 3 positions in the book... Lotus is nigh impossible, Half Lotus immediately causes a lot of tension and pain in the knee, and Perfect Pose isn't much better. I'm looking into stretches and other exercises to help loosen my hips and knees, but it will likely be months before I can comfortably sit in any of these positions for 20 minutes. The book mentions sitting in a chair or laying down, but what about using a regular cross-legged position instead? I've not been able to find any info on how this would affect my practice. I don't want to sit cross legged if it will render all of the other practices ineffective, or if it can dangerously affect the energy work aspect of the practice. Edit: Just found the blog post about sitting posture... don't think even that easier posture is going to work, because I can't reach my heel to my perenium without knee pain, but I'll keep experimenting. I'm also overweight which may be adding to the problem... hopefully as I lose weight it will become easier.

I know that more developed people will probably say that they don't like to assign labels to themselves at all. But for the sake of convenience, how would you explain your beliefs when regular people ask you if you believe in God, or what your thoughts on spirituality are, etc? I can't really say "I'm trying to gain direct experience of Enlightenment as defined by Actualized.org" or "Everything is nothing" without giving rise to even more questions. Lately, I feel like I would most closely identify with the ideas of Pantheism, but I feel like people here consider that a negative word that doesn't fully encompass it or misrepresents the idea, why is that?

So I've been meditating each day for a couple of weeks now, and something interesting happened last night. Everyone here will know what "the voice" is. I've become pretty decent at emptying my mind and can go 30+ seconds at a time without a thought, but last night something weird happened and I saw through the silence between thoughts. There was another, more faint voice underneath the silence. This second voice was quieter but a true "monkey mind." The regular voice has a thought arise, then there is silence/pause between thoughts, then another thought arises. I've always thought I had good control over my mind and it was easy enough to silence thoughts, but this voice is uncontrollable. This second voice is just 100% constant crazy babble nonstop. I'd describe it like Gollum from Lord of The Rings, not in a nefarious way but just that level of constant crazy muttering to itself. I can't seem to silence or influence it, only observe it. If we describe the regular ego as a "drunk stung monkey" then this base level is like a schizophrenic drunk stung monkey on crack and PCP. It's like regular meditation on hardcore mode. It's almost like a deeper source that the ego is getting it's information from. I can only catch glimpses of it, then it is drown out either by silence or the regular more prominent thoughts. Is this a known phenomenon with meditation? Is there any name for this either in secular meditation or Buddhism? How do you address and silence this "inner INNER voice"?