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Go immerse yourself in the ice cold water and notice how much you don't like it and how much you want to avoid it. It's just cold, the sensation of cold on your skin is fundamentally empty of any evaluation, like or dislike. It's you that makes it terrible. Sensation of cold = pain. Your aversion towards the cold (pain) and the urge to get back to the warm (pleasure) = suffering.

I meant that this is her selfish behaviour when she justifies her arrogance with being tired and stuff. That's an abuse of your feelings. Did she show any sign of regret for this later? Is she able to admit her fault when she did something that made you upset? First step is gaining your base level of awareness by meditation on emotions and starting to notice how you act and feel in conflict situations. Then you analyze why this is happening. I gave you the example of the "how to" analysis in my message about shadow. Try to contemplate my statements and find out what is actually the case, who is overreacting you or her or both and why. Also analyze your relationships with parents very thoroughly. Did your mother manipulate you? Did she shame you? Did she rise her voice on you? Did she make you feel unworthy/not good enough and stuff? Did that lead to overcompensation of these abuses in your adult life? Like trying to impress others, gaining your feeling of worthiness by external means (for example trying to justify for yourself that you are better than someone), being overly sensitive to criticism etc. etc. etc. That's the basics of how emotional trauma works. You were abused -> you suppressed the hurt and it became unconscious -> you overcompensate it by acting like the abuser because you don't see the real motivations of your actions and justify it in various ways. Always questioning and finding true motivations of your behaviour is the key. You can find helpful videos/books on those topics: roots of narcissism, psychological shadow, emotional healing, emotional maturity, Jungian psychology. It's a matter of practice, for me meditation and gaining awareness over my emotions and behaviour were really helpful. Plain analysis is not as effective. But both are necessary. Also gaining awareness is helpful to notice when people abuse and manipulate you in very cunning and hidden ways. When there's enough awareness with time you just can't tolerate various bullshit of others and start to protect your boundaries better. I think that if you put two greens in a wild forest they wouldn't eat each other, but if you do so with beige they would, although, who knows... That really made me ponder.

That's not progress or regress. If you take a yellow and leave him in the forest of Amazonia he will still remain yellow. And if you are a yellow gay in North Korea you would just not tell anybody and plan your way out of the country, still remaining yellow and not regressing to blue. If the environment makes you act like blue or beige it doesn't make you blue or beige. You can't unrealize your insights about how the world and society works. I think regress is only possible if you haven't realized them fully.

Oh yes, that sounds so right But what if he's a soft-skinned blue? If you stop judging lower stages and if you get to understand that you have to communicate regarding the stage of the one that you communicate to you actually are progressing. Or the better way of saying that would be that you understand that you progressed because of those insights. But I think that's right, this is kind of misuse of spiral dynamics. We could claim that this is the spiral conflict if she would try to convince him to go to the church or something. Most likely she's just highly (self)critical orange.

@Ar_Senses Here are my thoughts: 1) If you ask someone were they offended or not they may lie to not upset you. 2) Even if they were not offended it doesn't mean you weren't rude. (And I don't mean you were.) 3) The vibe matters, even if you told the truth but with intonation of judgment people feel that. 4) To me it seems that this situation requires understanding of psychological shadow more than spiral dynamics. Here is how the shadow perspective can help you to understand what's going on: Your GF was shamed by her parents and was always told to behave. She assimilated beliefs that she has to be good/perfect and now she is very critical to herself and tries to make you conform to her standards because she is afraid of what people think about her because she has such a "rude" boyfriend. Your behaviour may or may not be egocentric. If her assumption that you tend to be egocentric is right then it's your shadow side, and you may actually be rude and justify it with authenticity and breaking the rules. You need to break the rules only when it really limits you. Some rules are helpful. If your behaviour is not egocentric then she is projecting her false assumptions on your behaviour and this is her that is actually egocentric and sees egocentricity in the normal communication. I would suspect that you both are unaware of the shadow parts of your characters, but the question is to which degree each of you is egocentric and are you both willing to work on that problem? Or is that only you that is interested to find the truth? Dude! It's fucking selfish! You should find a better karting club!

None of you is right or wrong. You can choose to always act like society suggests or you can choose to be authentic. It's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of what makes you feel better. And if some perspective feels better it doesn't mean it's superior. Also, can you give a couple of examples of the subjects of your conflicts? I mean precise description of what caused the disagreement.

@Ar_Senses I guess you can regress to the blue by accepting her advice on how to act. Or you can progress to yellow by stopping fighting for your perspective and not judging her view. You try to convince her and it doesn't work. That's the problem that you try to solve by the same instrument. At least it seems so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGy2PdVzNMU

Even if the dude is not very narcissistic the work is impossible until the dude is not interested in this work. Again, no difference. Usual massage is not related to sex. Are all massagists fulfilling their clients' sexual needs? Do you think your mother was really getting wet because of your massage? I really doubt it. Validating looks in terms of clothes is not related to sex. Do all models dress to fulfill their sexual needs on the stage? What about arts? What about beauty? What about self-expression? Fashion? Can you appreciate looks of some model of the same gender? Is that homosexual? If a mother asks a daughter to validate her looks is that because she tries to get some lesbian sexual validation? Why do you still conclude that this is because of projected sexual feelings? Yes, it might be related to gender, but does that make it sexual? There's still nothing even closely related to sex. What if a mother abuses/manipulates some adult the same way, by validation and shaming? What is the difference? Does that stop to be an abuse? I'm afraid no. It's still an abuse. Therefore the term "covert emotional incest" is completely made up. Kids are easier to manipulate, especially by their parents. There's no any reverse of the roles, there's just an abusive selfish behavior of a parent. Noone is allowed to manipulate anyone to gain their wounded self image, and it doesn't matter if they manipulate a kid or an adult.

Here is my experience with this. The simplest way to test if a person is fascinated by the topic are very down to earth questions: "do you get lost in thoughts?", "can you stop thinking?", "who is conscious of the voice in your head?". If you ask one of those and they don't show any enthusiasm you'd better not insist on the topic because otherwise you will only get disappointed. I feel like it's better to not talk about this if you can't clearly see that the person is interested. You will very rarely find anyone who is really interested. If they do respond with some enthusiasm, ask some clarifying questions etc. then it worth talking about this. How it will go is just a matter of your understanding of the topic. If you can't explain it to the other the simple way then you don't understand it yourself. Yes, of course, enlightenment is not easy to explain, but you probably consumed a lot of information so far and this is a good test of your intellectual understanding of the topic. Just try to imagine that you tell it to yourself when you knew nothing about non-duality. How would you approach it?

Yes, that's right. What I mean by narcissism is any kind of selfish behavior. What you refer to is pathological level of narcissism. We mean different things by narcissism. I disagree on that. You resolve pathological narcissism by first gaining awareness over it, then retraining yourself. You resolve "regular self-absorbed behavior" by the very same means, again, those are the different degrees of the same problem and solution is the same but takes more work if you are self-absorbed to a degree of psychiatric disorder and less work if you are not that narcissistic. Narcissism is not a binary property that you either have it or not. You have it for sure, but to a certain degree. This is the same thing that I state about narcissism: everyone does it and everyone thinks it's no big deal. Despite that what you call "regular self-absorbed behavior" is regular it's still narcissistic behavior. And despite that everyone thinks it's OK it still hurts feelings of others. Also I wonder why what you describe is even classified as sexual abuse? What makes that abusive behavior sexual? How is your mother being related to sexual gratification when she tries to gain control over you by the manipulation? Only because you are male and she is female? All the examples that you wrote are related only to gaining control over a child, nothing sexual at all. If she'd be making you tell her she is sexy that'd be sexual. Many mothers treat their daughters the same way, they control them by the same manipulative means (the "good" and the "bad" mother, shaming/validation), are they trying to commit lesbian emotional incest with their daughters?

Incase when the one that you feel empathy towards is perceived as weak it is called pity, you feel pity toward someone because you want to feel superior. Who like to feel superior? Narcissists. If you want to gain your positive self-image by trying to be "good to others" that's called lack of self-esteem. Who likes to be better than others? Ta-daaa.. @Martin123 Both narcissism and what you're talking about are just different perspectives on the same problem. None of it is true.

Why would you try to change and push her if she doesn't want to? If she doesn't want to question her believes the only way to do so is manipulations. Why would you want to MAKE someone change who is not even considering this? Why would you continue relationships if you have such an incompatibility in values and both of you suffer because of this?

Porn and masturbation don't drain consciousness, it drains your mental and physical health. Rather lack of consciousness makes you overuse sexual pleasures. Lack of consciousness makes you unaware of the subjective unpleasant experience caused by the damage of overuse. If you are truly aware of the damage you prevent overuse.

Empathy = caring about others. Selfishness = caring only about yourself = not caring about others = not having enough empathy. If your mom is manipulative it means she is unable to feel empathy towards you when she manipulates, otherwise she wouldn't manipulate you. I would say that complete inability for empathy is called psychopathy/sociopathy. But those are really just extreme degrees of the same phenomenon - narcissism/selfishness.

@Martin123 I think what you described is actually narcissistic behaviour. Read about "good" and "bad" mother in the article that I posted. It's exactly what you're talking about. This is what narcissists do, they make themselves feel good by abusing others. By controlling them and manipulating, making others worship, making themselves feel important and powerful. Narcissism doesn't necessarily have to express itself as self-admiration. It can be just plain selfishness, manipulative tendencies, oversensitivity, neediness, attention-whoring and many other things. There's many degrees of narcissism. It's very sneaky and everyone is a narcissist to a degree.

http://www.howtokillanarcissist.com/narcissistic-mother/

@Christer Sounds like you're trying to brute force it. I achieved samatha this way once when I was 19, but it's of no use because you can't be this way always. It's like an amateur musician trying to play fast: it's very sloppy and he can't play long, his fingers hurt. When you train yourself with patience over longer periods the proper way you can play fast without so much tension. Same shit with concentration. The goal is to always gently return to the object of concentration until it becomes automatic. So what matters is not the amount of effort, but the number of that "returns" because that's how any skill is developed, by repetition. If you are interested in achieving samatha or just developing concentration I highly recommend the book called "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa. It describes all 10 stages in detail and provides clear goals and approaches to obstacles at every stage.

SDS combined with nofap gave me a state that was very close to psychosis. It's quite possible. Especially if you have anxiety. But I quickly recovered and it was okay. It doesn't matter that much what is possible. What really matters is how you will react on lots of SDS. Experiment with duration and quantity of your practice. Try some SDS and see what is your backlash level afterwards. Then decide if you have to practice more or less. You have to find the acceptible level of butthurt, it has to be easy enough to not quit and hard enough to grow. Don't worry so much, the chances that you will go nuts if you are not schizophrenic or something are not that big. If you will monitor your state and not push yourself too much it most likely won't cause psychosis. That's your anxiety mostly that tries to stop you. Also you have to be mindful that SDS is a heavy shit, you have to be ready to face heavy emotions if you want to practice that brutal way.

I've heard from many enlightened people that if you experience God there will be absolutely no doubt. Which means that you didn't experience God yet. God is non-dual. If you realized the witness you have created the biggest duality possible: witness vs. what it is aware of. This distinction has to collapse. Until then you haven't found any God. Who is aware of awareness? Who is witnessing the witness? If there's witness and everything else where do this two take place?

@Hello from Russia Great report! What was the price in roubles?

Oops. I overlooked that, I'm sorry. That'd be very weird, lol.

@tsuki Those questions were kind of a joke. It's impossible to answer them conceptually. So are zen koans. In Rinzai zen if you try to conceptually answer a koan or ridicule the question the teacher sends you to meditate further and you are considered to not solve the koan. Koan is kind of meaningless question, something like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?", "show me your original face before you were born". If you try to answer the question the normal way it means that you still cling to ideas instead of direct experience. You try to understand and answer what you actually have to experience and become. When I asked the questions I intended to make you investigate them in your direct experience. So.. The question "what is problem made out of?" entails following: What you call a problem is an experience, more precisely an image of the future that "you" want to get to This experience represents a thought (image of enlightenment) and a feeling (craving for it) If there's an experience there's awareness. But is that really the case? Is experience different from awareness? Or is that the same thing? Non-duality means non-duality, not two. The whole point is that the desire to "get somewhere" is not a problem at all, because what is that desire made of? Non-duality. You are the desire and everything else simultaneously. Everything is one. By "can we go deeper" I meant that what if we not just try to let go of the desire, what if we try to investigate/observe it in the direct experience and try to understand what it is? P.S. All that relates to that "problem" that people keep mentioning in this topic. The real problem is that most of the people are lost in conceptual understanding and don't practice nearly enough to even understand and distinguish common meditation techniques, but they rigorously keep projecting, arguing and thinking they "get it". P.S. 2. No, you don't try to observe the desire in do-nothing, otherwise it becomes noting technique.

@Jack River It's obvious that trying to reach enlightenment is like trying to poop when you clench your anus. Does that understanding make you enlightened? You still gotta meditate even if you understand that. "You're not enlightened till you're fucking enlightened." - Leo Gura

@tsuki