Forestluv

I'm not sure about crystals, intentions, beliefs, being receptive, energies etc. Yet I will say this. . . I saw a something with a Reiki Master on LSD with a Shaman Stone in the Cathedral Rock energy vortex in Sedona, AZ. It was impossible, yet it happened. And the Shaman Stone was the impetus. I don't know what impossible variables aligned, yet they did. I've never had any other time in my life in which it seemed like a crystal had an emergent property.

@theking00 Are you willing to let go? Or is there still some fight in there? . . . I say this as someone who had an epic battle for control of the mental narrative.

@Javfly33 "Is enlightment the only way to escape from being chained to states of mind?" I suppose people have different definitions and concepts of "enlightenment", yet the closest I could come is just an ISness. It would be like asking "Is enlightenment the only way to escape from what IS?". How can what is be escaped from? This was one of the most uncomfortable direct experiences I've had. I realized I couldn't change what IS. Anything I did was ISness. Anything that happened was ISness. I was in nature and went into an insanity zone. I wanted to jump off a bridge "ISness". I was afraid I'd start screaming. ISness. Yet if I didn't scream, ISness. I could throw things and break branches. ISness. I got online to send Leo a PM for help. ISness. Anything Leo would say to me: ISness. He couldn't not be ISness. He couldn't make it stop either. If I was chained to mind states of the mind. ISness. If I was unchained from states of mind. ISness. There was no escape. Period. And it was terrifying. After about two hours there was a type of surrender to what IS. There terror turned to joy. I started laughing and singing. I pointed to ducks gleefully saying "A duck is a duck!". "Hello cloud! A cloud is a cloud!". Yet the joy and bliss was equally IS as the terror. Enlightenment just IS. It doesn't care about whether or not my personality is happy, sad, blissful or crazy. What IS will always be what IS. Even if I try to think about things differently - it's one IS or another IS. IS always IS. There is no escape. You are zero steps from enlightenment right now. With this type of awakening, the min-body body changes. The relationship with reality changes. Many mind-body's many settle down and experience life differently. The realization may relax some blocks. Or maybe not. What if someone had that realization and went insane? Or the mind-body had a nervous breakdown? It's still ISness. It's still enlightenment. There is no escape. For my mind-body, there has been a major relaxation of the mind-body. This has opened up realms of experience I've never knew existed. Now that my mind-body realizes there is no way out of ISness, it chilled out and is much better going with the flow. At the human level, a curiosity about the personality dynamics has arisen. Much of the internal personality has been deconstructed, yet not all. As well, a desire to explore body sensations and connections to energies has arisen. There is much less wanting to get "my way" or to reach "my goals", or become something or to avoid something. One insight I've had is that I'm chained until I'm not chained. And it can happen in an instant. I've sat and just observed those chains. Sometimes they just disappear. There is noone that comes in and removes them. There is no guru or spiritual text. No achievement. No getting there. It always occurs in the moment. It's there and then it's not there. It's impossible. Yet it just happened. Once the mind realizes the impossible is possible a whole new reality opens up. Currently I am working to rewire my brain. Parts of me thinks "that is impossible" or "humans won't be able to do that for hundreds of years". Yet here I am, seeing the impossible arise.

@EmptyInside Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I also live alone and can relate to the emotions / experiences you describe. I used to group all the emotions into "emptiness / loneliness", yet as I've observed body sensations, I've noticed some nuances between the emotions. 1. Generic loneliness: sometimes my mind-body gets uncomfortable, bored and discouraged being alone. The mind may think things like "why don't I have more friends? Maybe I should go out more and try to be social. Chuck and Stacey look so happy together, maybe I'd be happier if I lived with someone". 2. Then there is a deeper loneliness and a yearning to connect deeply with someone. To really open up and explore who we are and bond. To share depth of experience - not the trivial noise of the rat race of life. I've felt this more as I've gone deeper into consciousness work. There are less people I can connect with. I've searched in my area for a year and found one person I can talk to this about. This type of loneliness is more of a deep sadness. I may have a profound insight and there is no one in my life who would understand. There is a profound yearning to connect on these deeper insight levels. I've tried to bring people along, like a gf, and it doesn't work. It's sort of like seeing the most amazing sunset of your life and wishing someone could appreciate and share it's beauty with me. 3. Then there is what I would call true emptiness. The stuff buddhists, mystics and spiritualists speak of. This transcends the above two forms of loneliness. This is an absolute emptiness that comes prior to all descriptions and emotions. Some people call it stillness, peace, bliss, nothingness. This is independent of external conditions. It transcends all. It is present whether I am alone or with someone.

Well at least they somewhat acknowledged this deficiency. Yet it’s not just “possible”, it did lack statistical power. Mostly because the yoga group deaths were so low (perhaps 3 or so?). And they had to do all death counts because their sample size was so low. They couldn’t filter out irrelevant death causes like traffic accidents. This looks like an incomplete data set that somehow got published in a low level journal. One of my concerns in science is that publication standards are dropping and stuff like this gets through the peer-review filter. If it was even peer-reviewed.

A few red flags; ”22,598 adult participants, 240 participants engaged in yoga” They had a sample size of 22,598 and only 240 participated in yoga? Are you kidding me?? 22,598 participants and they only had 240 that participated in yoga? That is only 1% of the sample size! Plus, they only stated the overall number of deaths. Based on the sample sizes, that would mean about 3 deaths in the yoga group. That is absurdly small. They had a highly significant P-value of 0.006 that dropped to an insignificant p-value of 0.6 after age adjustment because their yoga sample size was so small. Good grief. They had to do all cause mortality because the yoga mortality was so small and they couldn’t filter out accidental deaths like car accidents. . Very few yoga people died - and they didn’t state the causes. Of the approximately 3 yoga deaths, two could have been automobile accidents for goodness sake. The tiny amount of yoga deaths is skewing the data. They had to do “all death causes” because they had too few yoga deaths. That’s why they got a highly significant P that disappeared after age adjustment. They didn't have a large enough yoga sample size. Plus it’s in an obscure journal - with I predict low quality standards. I don’t have access to the full article, yet this smells like poorly conducted science to me. I wouldn’t give it much weight. Peeps: don’t believe something just because it has “science” stamped on it. Especially if it is used to support one’s existing ideology.

Explaining emotions with thought is like playing a saxophone with a kazoo.

I understand emotions deeper by observing and experiencing emotions deeply. . . without the analysis and thought stories. Without trying to figure emotions out or conceptualize them. If I read your post from the emotional line, it reads very differently than if I read it along the intellectual line. To understand emotions deeper and examine my development along the emotional line, I let go of the thought stories and analysis. I sit, observe and experience emotions. I also go and sit with other people and we experience emotions together - without trying to figure them out. Nonverbal insights arise. This is a deeper understanding than the verbal/conceptual intellect. I also started listening to spiritual teachers that are heart-centered - that speak deeply from the heart, not the intellect. As well, microdosing LSD helps. Ime, it's fine to intellectually think and conceptualize emotions, empathy, intuition etc. - yet that is the intellectual line of development. To evolve along the emotional line, I've got to put the intellectual instrument down and allow the emotional instrument to play it's tune without interference from the intellect. I can get a good sense of person’s stage of emotional development by how it feels. No thoughts are necessary. Just body wisdom. I can “listen” to a person along the emotional line without following what they are saying intellectually. And I can communicate fine, as long as they are not immersed in intellect and concepts.

Carl self-actualizes. . .

Nice.

That feels genuine to me. That is a huge deal. It may be uncomfortable, yet a genuine space is a good space. Your post brings forth similar feelings I had. One thing that helped me was watching Adyashanti videos. A lot of his videos are for the transitional stage of development you are in. To me, Adya felt very genuine and resonated with me at that time of my development. I also had no one to talk to and for some reason, Adya felt like a friend to me.

@DrewNows I started watching some j. krishnamurti videos this week. Great stuff. Thanks for the suggestion! It really hits the spot.

I don't think I know what this means in the digital world. . . Are you literally saying to discuss nonduality with hand puppets? Or does the phrase "hand puppet" mean something in online terms? Although nondual performances with hand puppets kinda sounds cool to me. . .

Duuude, I can do that??!! That's spiritually legal??!! Oh man, it's time to saddle up. . .

I don't think this is a unique situation. I only have two people in "real life" that I can talk nonduality and one of them is a bit unstable, so really just one person I can talk with on a regular basis. And that is after about a year of searching. . . I spent two years with nobody to talk to about it in real life. Just people online and I traveled to Peru to live in a high conscious community for a while. The question about personal identification is hard to answer. I would say about 70% of what most people consider the "person" has dissolved. For example, in the past when I went out with people, I would talk a lot about me and my story with an underlying intent to serve self needs - to look good, get approval, get the gal to like me etc. I was really immersed and identified with the story. Now, it just kinda feels like a movie I watched or a book I read. Somebody might ask where I grew up or what I do in life. It just sounds differently to me now, like I am talking about a movie character. I also don't have all the opinions and beliefs I used to have. There isn't such a desire for things to go "my way". I'm much more fluid with the flow of life. Yet, I talk about "my" story often in spiritual contexts - yet it is more like talking about a movie I watched. I tell "personal stories" as examples, because I know them best. They can be useful for human interaction and connection. Letting go of the attachment and identification was really hard for me. My mind-body experienced a lot of anxiety and fear. Especially about the unknown. Yet walking through that and letting go, is sooo much more peaceful and easy-going. Trying to protect and maintain a psychological self is sooo draining and causes so much suffering. I would say that the personality is still around in a sense. I used to think that I needed to get rid of anything "personal" and I needed to be like some empty no-self monk that was in a state of empty bliss all the time. . . That isn't my experience. My mind-body still gets grouchy. It still gets annoyed. It still experiences fear, love and sorrow. It is part of the human experience. Yet the attachment, identification and desire to meet self-needs and wants has greatly reduced. This opened up a whole new realm I never new existed. I should also probably add that my environment is pretty calm and peaceful. I have a steady job and feel financially secure. I live alone in a quiet house and neighborhood. I don't have the responsibilities of being a parent. So, in that respect it may be easier for my mind-body to relax and go with the flow. Who knows, I'm just following intuition and "winging it" at this point. . . It's just getting created out of thin air and I don't know where this train is heading. . .

Who let the dogs out Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof

Perhaps try what I did. I got exhausted and asked for a break from the thought stories. Not all day long, just some breaks. Like I would do yoga and ask for the next 20min., can I just get a temporary break from the thought stories? For me, it helped. Once I started seeing what comes prior to the thought stories, I liked it. It felt right and I wanted more of it. There was still resistance, of course. It's step by step. It took me three months of practice to reduce thought stories by 50%. And it's really just the "me, me, me" thought stories that caused my mind-body turmoil. When I walked through nature, I would get curious about how all the beautiful nature exists in harmony. I would admire dragonflies and get curious about what consciousness is like for them and whether we can connect. I'm sure some thoughts arose, yet those don't cause my mind-body problems.

I would make a distinction here between self-centered, self-need based pleasures and life's pleasures. They are on two different levels for me. My self did not want to give up self-need and self-centered pleasures. Yet when it did and life started pleasuring itself through my mind-body.. . yowzers. Batten down the hatches cause things get magnificent and magical. . . It's like the universe having sex with itself. No words. . .

@Mu_ That rascal @Nahm started me down a cowbell rabbit hole. . . It's actually been really helpful though. I didn't realize how loud the cowbell guy was in my mind. . . Reducing the volume of cowbell from 99 to 50 is amazing. . . It always space for magic to enter.

@Emerald Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately, branding, production and professionalism are not skills I have - and I don't like it at all. I'd be more likely to just do a live stream, post up the recorded video and hope to attract people by word of mouth. Yet it sounds like that would be unlikely and I'd be more likely to have a few dozen subscribers. You mentioned that there are a ton of Youtubers with low branding, production and professionalism with only about 100 subscribers. Do you think that the "quality" of those subscribers may be higher? If I only had a few dozen subscribers, yet they were really into it and I was contributing to their lives in meaningful ways - I think I'd be cool with that. Like if they wrote questions and called in during live streams. Kinda like a small, intimate audience.

Rather than trying to get rid of you, I've found it more helpful to simply relax the you. For me, it comes back to that darn cowbell guy in the audience. Trying to make him stop playing the cowbell or trying to kick him out of the cafe just doesn't seem to work well. I've found it better to simply ask him to settle down and put the cowbell down from time to time and let the other band members do their thing. For example, a year ago I estimated 99% of my life was spent thinking and identifying with thoughts and stories. It was just too much. It drove me crazy.I had been trying to figure all this shit out and was immersed in thought stories. It was miserable. Yet trying to have 0% thought stories was overwhelming. It was too much expectations and pressure. So, I imagined "What if I reduced the thought stories from 99% of my life to 50% of my life?". This seemed like a reasonable, doable goal. I practiced throughout last summer and felt like I reached that goal (or was in the ballpark). I can't tell you how much of my life changed. My quality of life and health skyrocketed form that reduction. That's just my experience. I'm sure it broke all sorts of spiritual rules and was spiritually incorrect, yet it really helped my mind-body out.

@playdoh A few thoughts and keys about Yellow: 1. The transition to Tier2 has a "trans-personal" quality to it. There is far less attachment and identification to thoughts, ideas and beliefs. It's not so much "my ideas" or "my beliefs". It's just ideas floating around without ownership. This opens up major doors to openness, curiosity, exploration and discovery. Debates become less frequent and exploration of ideas become more common. 2. Once entering Yellow, a mind generally starts to recognize and resonate with Yellow in others. There is an attraction to the open-mindedness, ease, flow, curiosity, integration etc. of Yellow level thinkers. For me, I used to be attracted to thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Then they stopped appealing to me and I became more interested in Yellow-level thinkers. I also started watching Joe Rogan. Not for Joe Rogan, but for his Yellow level guests. 3. Coming up with your own Yellow-level ideas is more advanced. Seeing connections and creating integrated holistic models oneself is more difficult than seeing it in others and having yellow-level conversations with others. 4. There are different lines of development. For example, there are emotional, spiritual and intellectual lines of development. It's common for people to be more advanced on one line of development. For example, you might be Yellow intellectually, yet still Orange or Green emotionally. That's how it went for me. Emotionally, I didn't want to leave Green. I was cool with Yellow on an intellectual level, yet not an emotional level. 5. Another hallmark of tier1 stages is that each stage thinks their way is best and other stages are the problem. Part of Yellow-level is a deeper understanding of relativity and the relativity of perspectives. This Yellow level thinking gets coupled to the Yellow level emotional line and a new relationship with tier1 stages emerges. My sense from your post is that there are a lot of Yellow-level qualities. It's a small sample, yet my intuition tells me that the judgement arising is mostly along the emotional line. Notice how you wrote that you are constantly cringing and referenced anger issues. You associated the judgement to emotions - not to an intellectual rationale. This may indicate that you are further along on the intellectual and spiritual lines of development and not as far developed along the emotional and empathetic lines of development. Yet that is just my intuitive sense. If it resonates with you, great - go with it. If it doesn't resonate with you, ditch it

I've been thinking of starting a channel, yet I don't want to put much production time into it. I don't need it as a source of income, yet it would be nice to reach out and have a decent audience size. It seems like the majority of your production time is to make the video professional. How important is it for vloggers in the spirituality niche to create videos that look and feel professional? What if a vlogger had quality spiritual content yet just spent about an 30 minutes to make themself and the video look decent? How much would you say this would reduce the viewership? And do you think it is equal between men and women - do you think in general women need to bump up the professional feel a bit more than men do? Also, do you think it is important to post consistently - for example, every Saturday morning?

This is just my take. . . There is recognition that the self is an illusion and there is no "doer". That's it, end of story. No more thought story. The cowbell guy with the thought story puts his cowbell down and there is simply being. . . Yet, then the self tries to reclaim ownership with a new thought story. . . "Wait a minute, if there is no 'doer', then I can do anything!!". To me, it looks like a self trying to regain control of the narrative.