Milos Uzelac

@Nahm @NahmThanks for the idea I will start doing it when I come back home tonight.

@Manjushri Thanks friend for the care good questions to contemplate on when I fall in that rut.

@Nahm Thank you a lot Nahm I rembered your and felt your words at some times in the past couple of days. Undiscipline, distraction, choosing to stick to addictive and heavily ingrained bad habits on the day to day basis (sleeping, porn or masturbation, theorising abstractly etc.) is what kept from enduring in meditating routinely. I will stick to it since I feel the lack of it now when I don't and I feel that I slip in a lot of unconscious acts when I don't contemplate or meditate routinely in the morning (self reflection on my past acts and habits creates less selfish thoughts and ideas for action that I have on option to fullfil during the day) . The beliefs that I hold are deeply deeply self fullfiling and ingrained in my experience of life and It is going to take a lot of time for me in my current life experience and effort to let go of them fully not only when I am meditating. But thanks again I saved your answers on my phone to have them to help me self-reflect more.

@ajasatya Thank you for this answer I contemplated for a bit in the past couple of days in my daily life on it It helped me a bit to accept some unpleasant events. As for the rest of the answer I cannot comprehend nor sense it in my expereince of life but as a guiding principle I'll try to hold to it and remember it for now in order to act more consciously towards others.

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This I became aware few days ago is a habit which I carried almost my whole life. Now I have a personal and family dillema of needing to pass 2 exams to stay state financed in faculty and to retain my family pension from my deseaced mother in order not to to start working to cover the loss and maybe not being able to continue the studies for a time and doing hard labour (since I only have highschool) and my mother pension covered the costs for the first time in my life with no prior experince. This would hurt my father and granparents a lot since they gave me everything, fed me and of me not having to make my own descions for the most of my life and spoiled me. I have to study for an exam in anthropology where there are fascinating topics about how ideas are formed in the human mind and how cultures classify reality there is also an exam question about death rituals and how diffrent cultures view death, of ancentors being reborn inside you if they lived a conscious and noble life (which I havent covered yet). The is that I haven't learned to study efficently large textbooks take important notes and learn and I passed exams using scripts, which because of my speed I started using on some questions again and I reinteperate a lot and explain perfectionisticly to myself too much and drain time that way. I have to build that habit and avoid mistakes in overcovering questions certain questions and learning to atleast explain slightly everything since I just want to pass since I have less than a month or a month in the second term to pass them. I havent started studying for the second one yet. The main issue is the hard sleep drive which took hold of me everytime I start to study a question I reached and losing focus on it, wandering on it and then i just automaticly start falling a sleep (I became aware that this the lazinees pattern habit which I carried and havent fixed for 2 years and my slowness in descision making and waiting for a miracle or others which I carried from my childhood) and i need to learn it, retalk it and retain it for the exam. When I try to meditate in this state and to uncover the root cause the sleep and cloudiness just pull me down and I start to fall asleep again. I try to stay awake as much as possble these few days 2-3 hours and to meditate in morning time for an hour in trying to become aware of the root and the correct approach to solve it again but I still lose focus and paralyze myself on a question and then when I read the text again to learn it and retain it or talk to myself to retain it a wander off lose focus a I start to fall asleep again during the day and during the night I just waste time on the same method. Im wasting a day on being stuck on question or covering questions painfully slow because of ineadquate reading or note taking and not seeing yet a way out of the loop. The main question I have is how not to fall asleep when trying to cover the question and when I meditate on it how to get past the hard sleep drive in the morining or afternoon in that state, and not just being cloudy in my mind and become aware. Just repeating the few sleep hours and just sitting and reading and reinterperating till the answer magically appears and meditating an hour at night or will I have to wait for the moment of action which I must take to come and let painfully let go of something which I am not aware and and follow it in order for my current state to improve and to have a steady tempo to learn questions in order to pass this exam. I apologize for writing this chaoticly I couldnt formulate it precisly since I am I had the anxiety of wasting time 40 minutes in writing it by doing so when I have to study for the question on which i am covering to slowly now. I thank anyone in advance and for the patience who can read this who can give me an insight on how to overcome this loop.

Im writing this at 4:00am in my south-eastern european time zone. Since I cant fall asleep decided to write this instead of meditating because I don't understand the principles of experiencing,expressing and letting go of suppressed emotions and "deleted" traumas and events. I apologise for my laziness and ignorance for not researching about shadow work and how that differs from strong determination sitting until suppressed stuff comes up. Do I have to psycho analyse and question myself and my actions during the meditation or is that just mental masturbation. I write this because this my main issue that keeps coming up and up again in my life and inhibiting me for being even slightly present and more caring and interested in people.I feel must start doing some purging as a separate thing apart from focusing on mindfullness labelling and vypassana. I am supposed to go to psychotherapist in late september but until then I must at least start try to experience and express some of the suppressed stuff that has been incapacitating me. I will research this but can anyone give me quick advice or techniques of how to do efficient shadow work during a meditation. I would be especially grateful of someone can share their experience and results with some shadow work if they have the time and will to write it here. I feel like a lazy newbie when writing this topic so thank you for setting the time to answer.

Can you speak or even conceptualize about a hypothetical critique a 1000 year ahead sage would have of this channel. I find I would be speaking from my perspective again only tossing around whataboutisms. I find I can only talk what I imagine I could in my mind improve myself about this channel. If its about future abilities and learning I find I would be only imagining a superhero compared to a normal human which I don-t know if relevant for this topic.

Il keep that in mind then, thanks!

I just went to a cheap (economically) class of yoga for the first time. This yoga teacher before we started doing ashtanga yoga started talking about astrology, zodiac signs in determining character and the 4 basic elements and its connection to yoga and as a factor in influencing higher states of consciousness. I know nothing of the the topic and would like to know what some of you guys have read and learned about the viability and truth of this connection eg. Saturn or Jupiter influencing in awakening in the unconscious or zodiac sign determining spiritual inclination. I heard Sadghuru talk about the the effect of earths pole sand the benefit of full moon meditation and so forth and that to me (even though I am lazy about astronomy, geography and astrophysics and should definiatly research ) seems more already scientifically verified and backed than this talk. I plan on going even though hes pretty far for me because its so much cheaper than other private yoga centers until I switch to some closer yoga center later. Would be interesting to hear experiences and opinions.

Great quick stuff for swaying skeptic people and dispelling false rumours, thanks for sharing !

I have just read your post. I didnt have no problems even similiar to this, but what I am feeling and thinking from what seeing your writing that you should really avoid trying to fix this 1 on 1 with your brother but instead tell your parents of what happened or tell them at least you need counseling privacy and tell immediately a professional about what you are going through. Going alone to him and acting out of fear of your parents and peers feels like a bad idea and not a psychical and psychological safe course of action for you to do in your state of psyche. If you feel absolutely confident and with the intention of telling him and making him stop doing this to you then dont hessitate to free yourself from this situation. But I really do feel the best and personaly safest thing for you to do is to tell someone (open your suppressed stuff) be it your parents,friend or getting them to take you to a proffesional counsellor or psychiatrist to have someone to help you if it something goes wrong. Meditate in between to help yourself bear these feelings and detach from them that will help you tremendously in facing your fears! I hope this wasnt to commanding but I really felt that you shouldnt go throught this by yourself and that you need support from people around you to overcome this! I wish you to solve this problem and hardship for you as swiftly as possible and make a freeing and self caring choice!

Sorry I dont have a juicy title ? This is probably too news oriented and naive given the metaphysical foundations you already layed for understanding emotions , society and ego on Actualized.org. I think even though its narrow and too specific for this channel that collectively emotional identification is more powerful and therefore easily manipulated by the Ego of societal power structure and elites. Particularly the nuclear scare that the egos in government and it's trade associates use to exploit societal emotional and thought identification with visualizations' of a post apocalyptic globe for a period of time to advance and fulfil their materialistic passions (more selling of weapons, food and consumption of media outlets delivering the nuclear threat news). I understand that nuclear war of course can happen if it must. The nuclear scare has nothing to do with the now and it is a distraction for society that is being manipulated for materialistic and cultural gains. So the discussion would be how to detach from such egoic tendencies purported by egoic agendas in tendencies and how to see through the global collective paranoia that powerful egos cause for their gains and not succumb to it when it is forced to you by your society. This is as I said to narrow of a topic to discuss so maybe it can be talked about at a corelatory metpsychical level 'How egos exploit each other for their gains' or more to the topic ' How powerful egos exploit egos to act as they want them to act'. Bit of a stretch I know hope youl consider something along government and people lines ( if you already haven't of course ???) in the future. Like what is real power and the duality of the ruler and ruled ??

Amazing discovery, thanks for sharing man I will pass it on to Facebook to people interested!

Thanks a lot for finding and sharing this amazing book! I only started to practice some pranayama exercises and this book will help me a lot in correcting my breath and in moving forward in the practice.

Great stuff! I plan on sharing your words on social media with people if its all right with you?

Search for the option but didnt know how, but thank you a lot for tagging him for me!

Gave in to the self and mind (and went on to feel depressed that day because I felt I have deceived and made my myself return to homeostasis of my current unactive, unhappy, unsocial and apartment grounded way of living) of not going to continue NLP practioner which I felt was not beneficial at all or interesting for me. But the morning before I gave in to the minds decision to not go and cancel my in advance saying to my aunt that I am interested in going I couldnt sleep at night. I had an intense sensation in my heart that felt like love when I imagined commiting to go again just for my aunts sake even (doing something unselfish for here even at the cost of being somewhere I dont like being at the start) if it felt stupid and weak for me of going to it just for making my aunt happy and an intense rationalization of my mind that I already said to some people that Im not interested and will not go and that it will make me feel and look crazy or with unability to make my own decision. When I get the choice again what will give me the strength to follow the heart despite what I said in advance to people of what I am going to do and to do an unrational for the mind emotionally difficult move only by keeping and following an intense sensation in the heart. Thats why I feel now not give up on NLP all together because of that intense sensation in the heart of doing something for someone elses happiness despite my feelings at first glance. I would like to thank @Shanmugam for giving and sharing freely his great book (which I paused reading and want to finish) in which what I read about the path of bhakti yogi to liberation almost led me to follow the heart that night but this engraved insight I will keep with myself as faith to follow through only on the heart and not the mind when the choice between two is presented to me.

Hey I read your journal and I was thinking the same thing now that you stated at the start, the support structure of this forum is relevant for you to keep meditating and stop backsliding. I see it is useful also for me to start a journal again after I previously gave up and be more passionate about it and dedicate myself to write sentences and thoughts that will help me review my state and release thoughts out. and I am in almost the same position as you are struggling with fap addiction and porn craving, and backsliding to it and I also as well sometimes have insomnia and go on spending nights watching content on my phone. The reason I wrote this is that I noticed that I had the same pattern of trying to do SDS as way to end these addictions and I changed tactic from that to just do witnessing meditation more with less time and to try to find gaps where there is awareness not so much try to end my addictions with it. SDS makes you more tolerant to the mind and is a method of detoxing and becoming more aware but from my experience I think it cant be so useful if its done to much and if its the only technique. My advice is that you start doing witnessing meditation more and try after some time of that practice the letting go technique this is my strategy of trying to gradually shift form addictions and not try to brute force it so much about ending them by spending a lot of time meditating in terms of quantity. The SDS I feel is very useful but in measured and reasonable quantities. Monks do them regularly during the day but they have a support system that allows them to do so and they dedicate usually almost entirely to it (they do mindful manual work etc but we have to do also a lot of technological,bureaucratic, and intellectual during the day and interact with people you dont have a closed and separated corner in which you can only meditate during that is unless you go to retreats or buy off a weekend to do so). Witnessing is powerful in terms of curiosity and it can be done a lot in a single sit or it can be split during the day and done even when you do everyday chores (though that requires diligence, practice and awareness). What helped me a lot in my meditation practice is the subject/object distinction and awareness waiting and focusing check that out at Wikipedia about Buddhist practices and Buddha Wiki-quotes if you havent I think that can be an eyeopener and a meditation boost. Check this Leos videos out I recently re-watched it and started using it as my blueprint for meditating and I think it is optimal for a sense of direction when you start meditating. By no means am I not free of your troubles I cling to them as well but I wanted to try a new strategy and to stop SDS for this period (unless I separate time when I am alone to just do it for one weekend retreat of your own at your house, that could have amazing results) and start to see where this method is going to take me. I hope this advice helps I have written this out of the intention to share my pitfall that I have been stuck on to quantity too much and that I have to shift methods in order to get everyday results in my happiness and habits. Wish you and me the best in overcoming addictions and to start living more freely and passionately with a new sense of direction and new opportunities. P.S. Love the life moto: NOT DEAD YET!

Cracked under pressure and decided not to continue going on a NLP seminar today. Felt like I was being forced and gave in to that feeling. I wont be going to seminars for a while so how effective can this be when you learn about it and practice it on your own in everyday experience? Wolud like to know if some people are effectively practicing it on thier own.

I cant give you an exact definition check it out online. What it is good for (for me theoretically) to develop or emulate communication and mindset of succesful people by learning the principles and patterns that should represent that in theory and practice.

I have spent too much time watching mystics,sages and enlightened people on YouTube or reading their books and carving out an identity (thought story of being a mystic) that it has become a filter system of information that our much more factual or needed about the way I chose to live my life. For example when I listen to lectures at my faculty about sociological perspectives,historical figures or events I have thoughts that filter all this information as irrelevant and as distractions (for example remembering of years) to the problems that I currently see in myself and society as a whole to have and that its has had since the begining of mankind. I feel there is a lot of avoidance of burning issues in academia in general but this an assumption that I have due to lack of experience. I used these thoughts and feelings to justify laziness and my current non-involvement in studying sociology and I have due to this completely filtered the fact the possibilty of system studying within sociology and various other possibilities that one can attain of using information properly for example there are lectures about sufism within sociology of religion they are short but learning about facts founding of religions is a useful too the degree of having an idea at least. Information you hear in academia during lectures and study can probably help you navigate better in this rationalistic-paradigm shared world in order to eventually transcend it but still live functionally in it and helping it with a new outlook through consciousness and mysticism. I want find the way in which I can use studying sociology and the information that I gather from it in an unbiased and careful way as self-actualization path and to be open-minded and to plant an idea into academia of studying,helping and understanding society by viewing it as varying degrees of consciousness and as thought and emotion manifestations ( of institutions,law,religion,politics,states etc.) and writing about spirituality through my own journey on the spiritual path as way of overcoming this collective suffering of seperate selfs. I am having romantic ideas and theories of building an ashram or an open monastery that will serve as center for renewed spiritual healing of citizens in Belgrade and as Osho said having meditation masters accompany politicians, this is fantasy land but still I would like this to be a theory for the wellbeing of society that people in Universities would have and develop it in their own way. I see possibilities if drop my belief systems of only being relevant discussing about sages and mysticism through daily meditation (in academia also when I catch an opportunity and do it rationally without forgetting that I am playing a role of a student currently by my own choice) and be involved still and committed in studying and dropping my paradigms about what information is useful and judging and discarding academics because of listening too much from a sages perspective and forgetting about the facts of my current experience and life. My vision is writing through my own experience in spirituality the ways in which society can be healed and transformed through spiritual centers that would be of service and use to everyone and about changing the cultural values and norms and lifestyle of people in direction similiar to Osho's communes,ashrams around India and Zen monasteries. This is my undeveloped vision but I want to evolve it and to make it more real by learning more about the world and writing it as a Sociological Theory of wellbeing of society and transendence of its systematic and cultural dysfunctions caused by a value of multiple identity forming and of paradigms that discard theories of mysticism and consciousness- I will edit the title in the future, less long and random more to the point and concise

This journal gave me hope for a possibility of a similiar life that you have shared. I have to jump and do it! Thanks for revealing how amazing life can be!

I did techniques for flexibility that a member (Im sorry I don't know how to tag your name I am writing this early in the morning and on my phone) posted on of my posts as advice for SDS. The exercises have worked and my legs are flexible enough for my body to be able to sit in padmasana (name for lotus position in yoga and still not entirely with my left leg). I tried a couple of times during the last months and now during this night.The intensity of pain in my legs and then in other parts of my body combined with an urge to move and scream,bend down or move one of my legs are huge obstacle and I was unable to do mindfullness with labeling because of it. I want to be able accommodate this as a standard meditation posture the reason being the feelings that are suppressed come up faster and feel more authentic. I want to investigate them and to be in a position to actually let them go and to act with more love. Im sometimes unable to meditate in this way but a few times I felt equanimity but very briefly and my memory has faded of that experience. The main thing that I do that breaks the meditation after approximately 10 minutes (not every time sometimes the whole 30 minutes session is finished though not always with meditation) I start moving my torso from side to side or I start bending my back and waving my hands. The urge for this during the intensity goes beyond my mindfulness with labeling willpower. Is it maybe smartest to do this posture only with an intent of mindfulness with labeling for a couple of minutes and to train myself gradually with this method to able to have a meditation or should I do mindfulness in a chair and after that try the lotus for meditation. Im interested in learning to know how people on this forum who meditate in lotus go beyond the intensity with mindfulness or maybe in some other more obvious way? Also is the mindfulness method applicable to asanas in yoga? I'm curious to know how people with experience with it cope with intensity and pain since I was dismayed by it( but went through it a couple of times) when I tried some asanas on my own. I would like to stick with it but I also realize that the point is to actually sit everyday and meditate which I haven't done everyday and in a scheduled time or when things in me are to be investigated and realized. Thanks for reading , would really appreciate experience and advice if it is needed at all in this case.

I will look up the Burmese posture and try it. Step by step but to be * a meditation is key. Thanks for sharing! ?