alyra

sigh, so many useless posts in this thread. let me try to be more direct. 1) what does death mean to you, and do you fear it? 2) how did or does the fear of death affect you on a typical day? 3) how does the limitations of the human existence impact your drive, or do you find those two unrelated in effect instead? edit: and please, no posts about doing drugs. no posts about how things don't really exist or don't actually matter. no posts about how I need to contemplate or meditate or this or that or the other thing. those aren't what I'm here to ask for.

@SOUL thanks! a lot of food for fought. uh, thought, i mean, lol! since I posted this thread been practicing a little more adamantly towards the goal and I've at least managed to get an idea that if I pretend that I might die tonight in bed, it helps keep me in check. tho I know it'll only work for so long... hard to pretend to believe something which I do not really trust to be true. I guess, the real target of this endeavor for me is to find a way to kick my ass into gear, that I just don't value immediacy or punctuality or the merits of hard, consistent work. but I'm gonna keep framing it as the need to fear death, 'cause I'm kinda the opposite of everyone else, if their need to contemplate death is to realize how not to fear death, then mine need must be the opposite to reach a similar aspect of awareness. I have the yang problem to the common yin problem, lol! so thanks for the many words. it'll help open my vantage to be at a more diverse set of angles to pick apart what I'm concerned over!

I sleep on the floor every night. I prefer it! just be careful of drafts and be consious of the risk to breathe in junk from the carpet. tho I need to sleep on a mattress. I have bad habits during the day, that the hard floor aggravates body stress issues I am struggling to overcome. shameful me I would sleep on the floor. she wants you to, until she can trust you (and perhaps herself) to be in the same bed. so, then it is a good thing to do so. it isn't an insult but a boundary. a boundary is only an insult if you refuse to respect it she isn't comfortable with you sharing the bed. maybe ask, if you can sleep on a couch instead, if she has one. or ask if she can provide some bedding for you, to keep the dirt caught in the carpet, or if it is hardwood the heat-drain of the floor and the dust, at bay. don't wanna tax your sinuses and have cold-like symptoms from the floor. or even an actual cold

mistaken post. was going to say something and typed an @name to tag, and pressed space, and sometimes that creates a post. ironically I then decided to not say anything. I suppose tho I could clarify upon my previous post. after posting it, it really made me think. I know in theory that what I said is the behavior I want to have, but I am not so sure that it is the behavior I currently have. really made me think!

@Aquarius one thing to remember about addiction is that there's a difference between what medically is classified as an addiction and what isn't. I am no expert but it sounds to me like it is something along the line of = an addiction affects the brain in a physical/chemical way is such a way that it has long-lasting effects on the brain itself. potentially even permanent damage or limitation to the brain's capabilities. not even sugar and coffee are considered an addiction according to that classification, nor any normal dopamine-addictive behavior, for while there is some level of chemical and other dependency behaviors that exhibit in the brain, including tolerence and withdrawal, they do not reach the point of damage in most cases. like I said I am paraphrasing I am no expert, I am using my assumptions here - the point is that what we who self-actualize think of as addictions are not medically classified as addictions. they are simply bad habit. edit: of course like weed, sugar and caffeine do indeed have significant effect long-term if a developing brain is using or abusing them. but past childhood, and discounting extreme examples, they do not. again, I do not know these as facts but they are the hypotheses about addictions that currently seem most accurate to me. If your bad habits are so prevalent in your life that they interrupt your life or bring additional stress or energy issues or mood issues to your life, or aggravate existing ones, this is when - from a self-improvement standpoint - you want to intervene to curb the addiction or cut it out of your life completely. in my personal experience, it is a lot easier to curb an addiction by taking several days to several weeks to completely remove it from your life. there's been times when I've unplugged my computer and put it in the closet for several days, or removing all my non-essential apps Especially the games and social media for several days. reinstalling only the ones that most mattered to me afterwards. I even from time to time put my phone on airplane mode for several hours to remove interuptions (I use the phone for alarms and timers and as a timepiece, so I still wanted access to that - or music) The other thing to recognize is that what makes a habit unwanted when it comes to personal development versus consciousness enlightenment - the latter, everything that is part of our cultural involvement, including music and time pieces and coming here and etc - is certainly a potential distraction from that work. I wouldn't say nevessarily that you individual should cut music out of your life if you pursue enlightenment of your consious, as if you are not a yogi, being a part of the social world is what you are doing most of the time. if it is this case that you wish to pursue enlightenement at dedicated times, then it is when you spend your dedicated time to mediate and contemplate and other practices, that is when you would want to turn the music off and remove it from your experience. but I presume you are asking from the personal development standpoint, of improving your life as you go about it. so then, music IS a part of your life - you like and enjoy it, can't be a bad thing. maybe you use it in a way you wish to improve, then recognise that vantage and work from there!

you experience back pain because of bad posture and holding stress in your body. maybe your parents stress you out, but it is your bad habits that have given you back pain. talk with a physical therapist, or a trainer. start working out regularly, in ways that target opening up and freeing your tension, getting your back to a healthy state. chances are you need a stronger core, to give your bod a chance to rest at regular times throughout the day, and to work on your hip flexors. chances are you need to improve your sitting posture, and stand up and walk for 5-15 minutes every hour or so.

i cut sugar and simple carbs out of my diet completely for a week. the first day of it I fasted for 16+ hours. let the system reset itself. makes a huge difference. no need to substitue sugar. the body doesn't need it. it is just energy, the body is more that prepared to create its own energy. there is nothing to sugar that the body can't do on its own, without sugar. but sugar affects the body in dramatic ways, and causes trouble... it is way more energy than the body even needs! the body has to do a lot of work to handle it.

you replace bad habits by starting good habits.

honestly.. most people don't realize the emotions animals feel. humans really don't respect animals at all, treat 'em like lesser beings. project assumptions about animals and find ways to convince themselves animals are not beings. that human are a different breed, set apart from the rest.

why do we need god? because we need the self. how can we have the self without god? pursuit of god is pursuit of understanding the nature of who we are. we find ourselves lost, and need some greater perspective to find ourselves again.

gotta want more, more more!

what is a distraction? is distraction bad? why would loving kindness be a distraction? why would someone want loving kindness if it ain't just a distraction? what do you want in life?

i dunno what happiness or why people obsess over it so much. makes no sense to me. there's more to life than happiness. seems people think happiness is some thing to acquire. if it is well, i don't care for it. I'm pretty sure it ain't tho. and i still don't care for it. it's nice when I feel happy, of course. I cherish it. but there's more to life than happiness.

well I mean... they are! edit: oh and to answer the original posed question. I come here when I am in search of perspective I struggle to find. I often find myself talking as if I know and worry others think i am full of myself. but i am just no good at talking. most my posts are a question in a disguise, or a statement posed to enable response, which is basically the same thing really... wait, is there even such a thing as not-a-question?

oh, i dunno, as i imagine what death is as the world continues on. it seems death is even more addicting, once you get hooked on it you don't come back.

I just heard Tai Lopez say on his channel, paraphrased: This is what defeats the ego. it is, humility. to be able to look out to the world and realize it holds wisdoms and truths that you do not. the first step to understanding the ego is to look and see how all is as one, nondual. but the second step to understand the ego is to see how the infinite nature of it all is greater than you. that the world around you, not just other humans but them too, is different from you, wiser, containing truth that you do not contain. I wonder recently if there is a challenge we face as a community, where we all try to race to say what is most novel, as if we are wise and the rest are lagging behind. But this is not the case. every single one of us, Leo included, is a fool in many ways. we can learn from each other no matter where we are in that blasphemed race! so rather than notice someone speak over you and feel competition to do it better in your response, instead work towards noticing them respect you enough to share a part of their life with you. and continue the conversation with the same respect. Notice them teach you perspective that they are aware of, and be humble enough to listen and learn from it. Something I learned in microeconomis. even the nation that produces everything better than the nation that don't can gain financially from it. and this is true of all forms of trade - wisdom is one of them! because the greater nation does not produce everything at equal efficincy to each other. so it can trade for one of the thigns it is inneficient at - and trade away something it can make so easy it has an abundance of - and the small nation can help "cheat" the efficieny for that big nation through trade. the small nation don't even have to do it more efficient - it just needs to be willing to trade. and trade sure will help that small nation too. This is humility - to look to others whether they are greater than you or smaller than you, and still love them. learn from them and share who you are with them. relative wisdom is not worth caring about. so as the first step of understanding ego is to learn to understand the absolute, nondual - the second step is to remind yourself of the relative, the dual. you are not the absolute, even tho the absolute is you. and this is an imperative to the nature of the dual and nondual.

and duality is not separate from nonduality. after all, all is one. duh. I see often people talk about ego and it just all seems a little misguided. sure it makes sense that people want to "shed their ego" or however it is that's popular to say it. but you do not destroy what is ego and make it leave, you simply find a way to stop seeing the illusion of ego - the belief of it - you cease from being slave to it. if anyone thinks that even leo, or sages, or buddha, or the divine are without ego that you are gravely mistaken. look to what transcending means in other aspects of self actualization. everything is the same and yet it is all so different. what was true before enlightenment does not become false after enlightenment. chop wood before and after yada yada ... it is not to eliminate a lie of a belief and replace it with true belief. careful that this is not what you are doing! enlightenment may be to remove the illusion that you were trapped under before. but that illusion is ... idk... "morality" might be a good way to say. illusion is morality. the belief that one thing is right, is the limit to knowledge, that this is the best way and all other ways are wrong. The baby believes a boob is for food. and child understands that food is food, not boobs, boobs are for babies! a teen understands that a boob is sexy. an adult understands to not objectify the boob, it isn't an object to drool over, perhaps instead they come to see it as a symbol of motherhood and/or being a woman. and the woman who's had to face the sorrow of losing that symbol to breast cancer, she'll learn that the boob is nothing, there is no meaning to it, being without your boobs don't make you not be a mother nor woman, they are just flesh that we carry like all the rest. that who we are is not determined by the symbols we worship lmao. but clearly only one of those statements is true! no, no, they are all true, it is just that one holds more importance to you in your state of being. they do not stop being true because you have transcended past that viewpoint. they do not become less true. I like to think of it as, we remember various ideas and perspectives. and when it makes a difference to apply these as a practice or strategy or action or errand if you will, then they become useful. and that usefulness we call "truth" - see? once it has been found less necessary, it has been found to be nothing more than an idea to remember. this is what transcending belief is. to make it not THE necessary reality of it. to move past dependence on the belief. transcending the ego? it is to see that life is not limited by the symbols, the belief, of what we've worshiped all our life. those symbols and beliefs don't stop existing. there is just more perspective to it, that helps us to be wise in our behaviors. I use the word "I" all the time, the concept of the self is iconic to imply ego! but what other word would I use to describe the ego that I constantly experience? see - ego is duality. and nonduality cannot be... the absolute, infinite... without all of duality giving contrast to oneness. when does the ego go away? in your lifetime it won't. at best you'll get glimpses of the absolute. never be fooled into thinking you've obtained it. we always were within the absolute, but the absolute has always been greater than just the ego we experience as existence. that is what ego is. it won't go away. it is as fundamental as perspective itself. the ego isn't a bad thing. what is "bad" is for someone to get carried away by the ego as if it is the only truth. it is just one piece of the infinite truth. and yet it is the only piece we have to work with at all.

personally i am not addicted to music, I am addicted to escaping silence i am ok with that tho. it is only a hard addiction when my struggles with general stress or anxiety is at a peak, and music itself for me does not influence that very much. there was a time in which I used the context of music to symbolize my growth as I fought my severe anxiety. what was effective was the following three things for me - one, to open up multiple tabs of 10-hour music videos on YouTube, such as "rain and thunder" or "metalica - one ten hour" or "idenline together" or "he man heyeayea 10 hours"... etc etc i should list my whole bookmarks should I but when I had too much anxiety I would do that and two things occured - one, it helped me escape better, two it helped me see the nonesense of it and to find myself become seperable from the music. one time I put on 10 different streams and no longer could I pick out the individual sounds... that was so novel to notice - but so useless for the purpose! and in that moment I noticed how such a overuse of music was inherently a way to free myself from it. the the second thing was - to take baths without music. i could not at the time meditate or practice mindfulness, which both are great ways to practice breaking any unwanted habit or behavior. But since I could not, well, there was a bath, or later a walk, various ways in which my activity was inherently meditative despite not being meditations, in which my focus inherently could go to positive things instead of negative things, and my need for music was not present. and over time I became more able to be present with myself without the music, perhaps at the high-axiety location of shopping and be strong enough to handle that anxiety without breaking down. the pattern of practicing being without music was helpful. third - was to face what I was trying to escape. to sit and try to process the anxious emotions/sensations and thoughts that I was so afraid of, so abhorrent to. I could not do it even for a second at first - but that was ok - the intension to try, and to push my boundaries just the edge of it just a little, was enough. over time I could face it more - in fact it reached a point where i could sit with my anxious thoughts/feelings for an hour and notice how lettign them develop like this in awareness and facing them head-on would naturally resolve to a positive perspective, would pass its course. and even eventually this lead to a point where I could notice something negative and see the positive in it at the same time! anyway that is my story of addiction. it still unfolds now... now I have such a history of behavior, that I do not even know what to do in its stead.... so I am working on finding ways to have positive actions that I just don't know how to do. I cannot fully escape what bad behaviors I had, if I do not have the contrast to them down pat... and I don't. but I improve over time, with practice and with patience... with effort and with acceptance.

ooh,, hehe, "who wants to defeat the ego" see it is every reader of this thread, who feel for the click baity title (also notice how in that way the click bait is actually instead the exact correct title to use) @Faceless well said! to answer your question from my vantage, I find that existence is thought, thought is awareness. the stone is aware of the earth by resting upon it. awareness is thought because thought is identity, and awareness is the act of noticing AKA identifying. Some can say that the nondual nature of some thing is unifying, in which there is only one consiousness, but I find that this in fact means that there is many discrete consiousness as well. what is the ego is synonymous with what is the absolute.... because the absolute is the unbounded existence of all that is limited and all that is unlimited... and all that is limited is absolute because it cannot be one identity without contrasting the other.... yin and yang... you can look at yin. you can look at yang. you can look at the symbol as a whole. you can see that yin and yang are as one. you can see that yin is yang. you can see yang while looking at yin. you can see yin while looking at yang. you can use these perspectives to see the symbolic meaning of yin in yang in al of identity as you try to increase your awareness of those identities. and then you can notice that the symbol of yin and yang is a yin-yang relationship between itself and the rest of the absolute which is not that! Edit: oh, and you can see also, that there is nothing to the yinyang at all, it is nothing. you can see it for what composes it, the ink and the blank page and etc you can see it for its image or concept, without applying any meaning or identity to it... you can see it as the camera sees it, capturing the entire field of vision as one inseperable thing... or perhaps as a series of color variations without any meaning beyond that... you can even fail to see it in anyway at all! you can of course also cheat by closing your eyes and distracting yourself from it and call that failing to see it

well said i can not know what your perspective is. but be careful... are you sure you are directly aware of all the kitties, or only aware of the concept and assumptions you have about them? I do respect the latter greatly! but I see people talk of consiousness in ways that raise my eyebrow. there is first the acceptence that we are the absolute, but there is also the inescapable behavior that we are the limited. that which interacts is limited. the absolute is that and that is the absolute... but to interact a self is created, an identity, limit. to be unlimited is not that, and that is not unlimited.... it's a hard topic to discuss, inherently like I said I only state this to facilitate its consideration in myself and others. it can be said that we are the absolute, but it also can equally be said that we are limited and not at all absolute at all! they are both accurate statements, both true, both imperative. it is nonesense imo to try to remove oneself from the dual, in pursuit of the nondual. the pursuit of the nondual to me, only makes sense under the intention of transcending the dual to be more present or more serene, to embrace the absolute into our being, but necessarily to not discard the limited. meow :3

very well said! I have all my life been noticing how hierarchies are not so meaningful as others push for it, or well at least since college, when I noticed how much difficulty I had at giving assessments such as rating a song or answering a survey with a scale. I have noticed since then about how meaning is subjective, especially in which somethings which are better in some contexts are not as good as alternatives in other contexts. and I have noticed too how things which seem as if they level up, well, those which have passed the level... have been that level at some point in the past. and what is at a lower level now, will become higher level in the future. further, what we choose to level up is our strength.. if we spend our time to become a good artist, we have not spent our time to become a good athlete, for example. and so if someone seems a little rude to me, instead of being resentful of it I wonder what skills/perspective they have gained that I have not! and I use my strength in my gained sensitivity of social dialogue to help keep the interaction a positive one, instead of allowing the tension to defeat it. er, sorry for the ramlbe there, off topic in a way i guess, notsomuch in another way tho... heh

the self the ego the dual ironic in a way

i see it talked about here. I do not have said desire, and am attempting to share why recently Leo posted a thread about changing the forums because he saw ego rampant. I also have seen many threads recently within the past two months of people trying to talk about it, and i wanted to say something but could not at the time. I also have seen some behaviors in the threads where it could be that people are competing, which could explain concerns about the ego. I have also seen in the thread about removing reputation of people saying how it was helpful to them, or directly how they were also concerned about the ego. this is the incentive for my posting this thread and my prior one this week regarding the ego. I am respondign to what is discussed edit: generally, good comments, thanks! helpful replies for sure! while I do say I do not desire the same sheddign of ego i see talked about around here, I know in the past I have found difficulty with the ego myself, and do notice within me a natural inclination to move towards a lack of it all my life, even now. before this struggle gave me stress, but now it is just the way I behave, nothing more. i both notice when it is meaningful to my behavior to embrace the dual and the identity, the self, the other, that whole paradigm. and when it is not. it is refreshing to hear the encouragement/reinforcement of healthful behavior so many have said here already

nope i said it wuite planely i want it back so i can get a notification when someone understands that i said something meaningful so that i can get outside assistence in my growth in an efficeint way. as far as i understand it, this forum is to enable growth from a source beyond the limits of our ego, is it not? when we make the egos imposible to arise, we make what is beyond it that much harder to transit just the same.

@Mighty Mouse but wait - your hand is up oh hehe i get it duh. you now see that fear = challenge to confront