Mondsee

A while ago I asked this question. Today I found Peter Ralston's explanation on consciousness and awareness. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

Those three concepts are used a lot when talking about enlightenment. Do they refer to the same thing, to similar things or to different things? How do you specifically define them?

I have a clear intrinsic motivation and passion for languages. I speak 3 fluently, another one fairly well and I'm learning a fifth one right now that I absolutely love. I also give some clases and I enjoy preparing them and doing that... BUT: I don't want to dedicate to languages professionally. I have always seen languages as a tool for my own benefit, to be able to communicate with many people and understand them and their culture on a deeper level. Other than languages, I'm having a hard time to find something that I really do everyday out of pure joy. Everyday I do dedicate a couple hours to deliberate practice of languages. It isn't a fun activity, nor is it always easy, but it fulfills me... but what if I'm very clear on my mind that that isn't what I want to dedicate to? I feel as if I was Tiger Woods saying "I love golf, that's the thing I dedicate most of my time and effort, but I don't want to dedicate professionally to golf, I don't really know what I want to do, but it's not golf". What should I do?

@aurum I do get paid, I already give some clases... but giving clases is just a means of earning money at this point and becoming financially independent. In languages I haven't found a genuine interest that will allow me to make a great and noble contribution to the world. I do think knowing languages will help me as a tool to make a great contribution, but further investigating and studying languages isn't what I want to dedicate my life to.

@onacloudynight maybe they'll all go away when you're there, focusing only in raising awareness.

Day 23 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 10:10 a.m. Finish time: 10:40 a.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: I started dedicating a moment to connect with my breath and relax my body. Then, some uncomfortable thoughts about the past arose, and I felt my mind trying to resist them, so I focused in recognizing how it wasn't me who was thinking those thoughts. That was followed by a short moment of quietness, where some random images would suddenly appear (for example a bike or a schnauzer dog). The rest of the time, my mind went into story mode, thinking about how my perfect partner would be. I didn't feel any physical discomfort whatsoever, and the session definitely felt much shorter than 30 min.

Day 20 (Report from Friday the 14th) Days in a row: 6 Start time: ? Finish time: ? Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Eyes: closed Highlights: On Friday my yoga practice was a guided meditation focusing on gratitude. I remember I identified very clearly the gratitude feeling in my chest and my arms. That was interesting. I can't remember many more details. Day 21 (Report from Sunday the 16th) Days in a row: 1 Start time: ? Finish time: ? Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Eyes: closed Highlights: On Sunday my yoga practice included a short meditation again (at min. 40:00 more or less) I felt similar as on Friday identifying the location of my feelings in my body. Day 22 (Report from Monday the 17th) Days in a row: 2 Start time: ? (noonish) Finish time: 10 mins after Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Mindfulness meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Usually I meditate after doing yoga, that means that I have a comfortable outfit on, but yesterday I sat crosslegged to meditate after getting ready to go out, so I was wearing jeans. It only lasted 10 min, but it feel much longer than that and I was feeling quite inpatient towards the end. I decided to make the most out of the short time, I would do a mindfulness meditation on my breath only. I started doing so, but at some point, a fly walking on my hands was drawing my attention more, so I changed my focus subject to that. Once again, my lower back started itching, and that was a more salient stimuli, so I changed for a third time my focus to that. I didn't feel like I got very deep in contemplating the things I was focusing on, and in general, it wasn't a very high quality meditation.

Show them this article, and ask them if they can relate. Haha to love unconditionally you need to be able to hug wholeheartedly Stalin and Hitler, a rapist or a terrorist, and love them as your best friends, or as much as a kid loves his mum.

@Loreena No, that is not a definition, that would be the consequence of accepting the widely accepted definition of the word "unconditional". You can go and check any dictionary for that matter. Here is an example.

Hahaha no offense intended, but I'd say yours slightly included sometimes! (hint: the problem is, is that)

Nope, he wouldn't. Based on this, the problem isn't that he is lacking a noble purpose and has a big ego. I believe he might be at the point where regardless of what he is doing, he found the treasure and realizes that "shit, my happiness won't come from the outside", and therefore he says that people shouldn't seek to be like him.

@Loreena you are taking away the meaning of words. Of course saying that "unconditional = having no conditions" is restricting that word to mean only that, but I am discussing all this on a semantic level, and on this level, people claiming to love unconditionally are bullshitting themselves. Edit: if you want to make your own definition of unconditional love, maybe as "loving only my left pinky finger" for example, you're free to do that, but you're not discussing that on the semantic level everyone understands, then.

There is no expectation at all, you're making that up. My only claim was that unconditional love has no conditions whatsoever. If it has conditions and you call it unconditional, you're tricking yourself. Hummm, I never said you should test love in any way...

@Vladimir your ideas on the symbol associations seem to be interesting. I'd just recommend you to not get lost in thoughts by finding symbols, meanings and associations between them. Usually, we tend to have enough monkey mind to add even an extra layer to that. Just keep it to the point where it won't make you neurotic.

There are a couple wrong assumptions and irrelevant ideas in this thread. My intention was to say that the next time you hear some mother claiming to love her children unconditionally, you recognize the mistake there, for loving unconditionally is loving everyone and everything without a single restriction, and limiting your "unconditional love" only to your children automatically turns it into conditional love.

@Edvard I haven't watched Leo's video on successful unhappy people, but in Elon Musk's case I am guessing that he went all out for the material shiny success, and he is very smart and a real hard worker, so he attained it, but now that he has it, he realizes it isn't the treasure what will make him happy and satisfied. Maybe that answer of not being sure if people should strive to be like himself is himself starting to notice that money and "success" as normally defined isn't really the treasure he is looking for. He has now two paths, to keep his work and his life as it is, not feeling quite realized, or giving up that kind of success and start looking for what will make him whole. That doesn't mean he will stop doing what he does, but that he will give up doing it for economic growth. Also: his purpose deep down, maybe isn't so noble, and it should for him not to feel empty. If you consider his research on taking humans to Mars, it's like a desperate attempt to save humanity's ass even if we destroy planet Earth, so that actually encourages an unsustainable lifestyle here, and "it doesn't matter, 'cause we'll solve it with technology that'll take us away, at least to those of us who can pay for it" (this is not a quote from EM). It is even as if he was doing the Tesla cars just to give him some extra time to work on the Mars project, I mean, a lot of speculation here, but why care so much for green energy if you're working to leave the planet anyways?

If the only thing you care about is how far you can raise your consciousness/awareness, then why don't you become a monk? That way you can have a lifestyle fully dedicated to that, and you won't need a lot of money. This isn't meant as a joke or anything, I do think that could be a genuine solution in your case ??‍♀️.

I'm also currently starting the path of becoming economically independent, and it goes without saying that it is ok to work at McDonald's or some other shitty job that you don't want to do for life at the beginning. That is just until you have enough resources to sustain yourself and start something that is more aligned with your values, just don't loose your vision in the process, but it sounds like you won't. Good luck!

Not really a joke, but have you noticed how most of the allegedly "enlightened teachers" ALWAYS have a vase with flowers next to them when they give talks? Haha is as if that was your enlightenment license. So if Leo starts putting flowers next to him in his videos one day... you'll know

Day 19 Days in a row: 5 Start time: 3:06 p.m. Finish time: 3:36 p.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open and then closed Highlights: Same posture as the last days. I started focusing on the same single point as yesterday, not letting my eye balls move at all until my eyes closed. A fly was walking on my legs and arms for a long time and I didn't move to send it away, but at some point it started tickling me and I couldn't help to laugh a bit, it felt as if it was out of my control. My mind was focusing most of the time on the sounds I could hear around me. Some voices coming from the first floor, the hammering from a worker fixing something, some birds, the kids of my neighbors playing, and a machine or a motor sound coming from very far away. At some point a thunderstorm started, that is only the thunders, because it wasn't raining and I could focus on the continuous thunders for a long time. For a do nothing session, I feel that my mind was very controlled, because it didn't lost focus by itself for most of the time.

My Grandpa is in a very delicate health condition. He doesn't have any serious illness, but at his 91 y/o he barely can't eat alone, and he needs help for every single thing he does. Lately his condition has been worsening, he is extremely weak and he doesn't want to eat, to take his medicines, to shower or do anything at all. Now, my Grandmother told me he is starting to repeat very often that he wants to die already. What should be the approach to someone in this condition? Until now, my Grandma, his nurse, my mother, his doctor and so forth have been constantly telling him to eat a little more (he literally doesn't want to eat anything at all) and that if he doesn't take his medicines he is only going to feel even worst. I feel like everyone is fighting to keep him alive, this is wrong, isn't it? I feel like we should be giving him only what he asks for, and if he lives only one week more because of that, so what? Don't get me wrong, I love my Grandpa, but why should everyone around him be holding on to his life so tight? Wouldn't it be better to let go?

Day 18 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 11:40 a.m. Finish time: 12:10 p.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: Sitting in the same posture as the last days, today I tried to focus in one single point, not letting my eye balls move at all. I feel like I did it really good, but I know that for sure that feeling is a trap of me not being sharply aware of when directed my view somewhere else, even just for a few milliseconds. For a while I was visualizing the words that I was thinking as if they were coming from the outside, dictated to my brain, but that didn't last for the entire time. The rest was just random thoughts about different things, including me wanting to end the meditation already because my left leg got numb.

Just a few days ago, I realized I might have strong daddy issues. The figure of my father has always been a very dominant one in my family. I have seen my mother being afraid of him since I was a child, and I was and still am occasionally also scared of how he might react because he literally explodes in anger and looks for a threat or punishment. Also, he likes to have everything under his control, and for example gets especially mad when he calls me and I don't answer the phone. He absolutely hates feeling like he is loosing control over someone. My relationship with him isn't always bad, sometimes it is actually really good, but from time to time we have serious discussions that mainly start in him heavily criticizing something about me, the most common is about the way I do/did something, and how that is terribly bad and should be improved. I know the reason why he still has some power on me and actually scares me, is because as I am on the transition of becoming financially independent and right now, his economically support is still crucial for me. On the other hand, he knows that when I am independent, his power on me will be heavily reduced, so he already is trying to compensate in other fields, I guess. I'll add in here that when I was a child, I actually sometimes fantasized of an adult man falling in love with me. The reason is probably very related to this issue. Now, this isn't only about me. Probably many other members of this community have daddy issues of some type, and hopefully some others have gotten themselves out of that hole. Please share here your experiences and advice on how one can get over that trauma, that oftentimes is an unconscious one. Thank you very much.

Day 18 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 9:00 p.m. Finish time: 9:30 p.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open and half open at the end Highlights: Todays meditation was amazing. I adopted the same position as the last days. It was exactly after the sunset, so it started becoming darker and darker gradually. That way everything started losing color and form. The door of the balcony was open and the wind blew in, constantly moving the sheets of the bed and the curtain. At some point close to the beginning a mosquito bit me on the leg, but I did not move to scratch, although I could feel the urge for a while. In my mind I said, "focus in the now", and then I could hear the eco of "now, now, now" one in every inhale, and one in every exhale. Then my mind adopted a narrative of how I was going to report about that, and it said "this is quite a disciplined meditation for being a 'do nothing' one", and it answered itself in, "oh yeah, I can do whatever I want" that was half said, and half just done. A part of my mind actually thought "no, don't!" but then it started singing "Philadelphia freedom" by Elton John in a vivid way, of course, in my mind. After the song finished he main verses, it started questioning if the bed could be alive. It was moving so much, and there was no evidence that it wasn't, so was it alive? And then I started feeling less alive than my bed, since I was not moving and my bed was. I felt like I was becoming a rock, and at some point, my right hand didn't belong to me anymore. I tried to extend that same feeling of my hand being just an external object through my body, I wanted to find out what would be left when my whole body started feeling as if it wasn't mine. The feeling extended successfully to my legs and then to my breath. I was fighting to extend it to my vision field, and I almost did, only the top of my head, with my mind in it was left when the alarm went off. At that moment I was so surprised, I wasn't expecting it because I was so focused in noticing how the only thing left being mine was the top of my head with my thoughts in it.

@Henrik_Sahlen Thanks for sharing! Those are nice words, and hopefully nice and helpful for someone going through a similar situation out there. I'd just remind you that it is also helpful to contemplate on and actually notice the fact that we hold on to people egoistically and for our own interests and illusions. That maybe will be a more painful process than the peace state that the video suggests, but if you achieve a breakthrough you'll notice that you are no more or less with or without that person. I'd say same applies for relationships.