Carl-Richard

Even if I have good sleep and eat animals, if I fap too frequently, I will feel like a snail (without its shell). That was my life from 12-20 years old lol. I have video clips from school projects when I was 15, and I was speaking so slowly like I had a brain disorder or something lol.

Those three are literally the Holy Trinity of raising your energy levels.

I was always an anxious kid. I was 18 when I got addicted to weed, started isolating myself, skipping school. Kept looping like that for almost 1.5 years, then came my turning point. I was getting more and more sucked into my own mind, my mental health was deteriorating, and one of my friends told me "you're acting weird", and it made me have a moment of self-awareness where I realized that I was going down the road of mental illness if I didn't do something about it. I had just started watching Leo's videos, and I stumbled upon "40 signs that you're neurotic", and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That is when I discovered self-improvement. Then shortly after, I discovered his videos on meditation and enlightenment, and I was instinctively drawn to that. The true turning point was when I traveled to the mountains with my family for a one-week winter vacation. To understand what I'm about to talk about, you have to view this through the concept of "disruptive practices", i.e. behaviors that disrupt normal functioning and creates a contrast or a change in perspective, and sometimes it can lead to deep insights into the workings of your own mind. So going to the mountains with family made me have to break my weed habit (which was intense, daily heavy smoking), which put me in a severely disrupted state of pharmacological withdrawal. A side effect of weed withdrawal is a complete lack of sex drive, which also plunged me into a week of nofap, which is also a disruptive practice. For that week, I had decided for the first time ever to engage in 24/7 active mindfulness practice (feeling into every bodily movement, being very deliberate and smooth about basic hand movements, intensely staring at objects as I would pick them up, controlling the breath, etc.). Also, skiing in the mountains cross-country, being in nature and listening to the silence was itself a disruptive practice relative to everyday life at home (sights, sounds, activities, etc.). Also, this was back when we had no WiFi, so no computer usage. Then as if that wasn't enough, after coming home from that week, I decided to start doing seated meditations instead of going back to my weed habit, yet another disruptive practice. Then on nothing less than the 3rd meditation, I had my first sober mystical experience, and it pretty much changed me forever. How much of that was due to genetics I can never know for sure, but I think it's undeniable that the massive amounts of disruptive practices prior to that experience definitely had an effect. So when people say that meditation doesn't work for them, maybe the answer shouldn't be "do it more", but rather "what else are you doing?".

I'm literally the proof of that.

I'm close to 300 participants already, so I'll close this

So I was coming up on a bachelor thesis in psychology, and I figured this was a viable option for a thesis: what is the relationship between mindfulness and physical activity? I looked up the relevant scientific research and was surprised to find a substantial amount of studies on the topic, but the research is still very new, a little more than a decade old. More research is needed, and my thesis will be an original (but small) contribution to that. I've now come to the point of having to collect data, and this community, among others, is a very good candidate for this type of study (everybody here is, if not directly interested in mindfulness, at least acquainted with the concept, and even if that is not true, you do share similar beliefs, values and interests). That is why I'm very thankful for the opportunity to share this with you guys, and I hope that you also appreciate the opportunity of contributing to my little contribution to scientific research on a topic that we all value very much and has changed our lives for the better. The survey is short and simple and only takes about 5 minutes to complete. It's completely anonymous and completely voluntary (nothing bad will happen to you if you choose to not participate), but again, I would highly appreciate your contribution. I would also appreciate if you could share the survey with other people you know who are also interested in mindfulness and self-improvement. The more the better Here is the link to the survey: https://nettskjema.no/a/311732 Thank you for participating! (For the people who are unsure if this is against the guidelines, I believe one thread like this is fine, and so did other moderators in the past.)

Just when you think life is about to become a lot better, it throws a completely new set of challenges at you

Bro, are we talking about orgasm or are we talking about enjoyable sex?

You seem to be using the word mystical in a non-traditional sense. Would you say you're not in agreement with tradition in general on this matter?

You can do that if it's situationally appropriate, but if something is a part of you and it wants to come out, a part of being conscious is generally giving it some space. I don't think that people who are embodied in human form ever completely transcend impulses like sexuality or the moral impulse. Even a saint has sexual energy, but it's usually expressed in a different way than say an animalistic sociopath. Even a sociopath has a moral impulse, just an amputated one. If you're talking about a cessation, yeah, the body literally disappears. But mystical states can be integrated into waking consciousness as well. Ok, let's say they take the religious vow: will their capacity to be moral generally be lesser or greater than the average person? It's true when you actually transcend your body, but not when you're still in it, because again, you have a moral impulse connected to survival. Then we actually agree.

I would use pot sometimes if it wasn't fat soluble and if it had a shorter duration and if it didn't cause an adaptation response (the last one is basically impossible, and I would maybe omit that one).

Man, you're the farthest thing from an asshole. You're only being an asshole to yourself by saying that

No, just morality on the level of abstraction. Yeah, and I'm saying morality is on our DNA, so it's intrinsically linked to survival. Mystical states are in a sense beyond survival, but to the degree the mystic is tied to their human body and surrounding society, their state of consciousness will generally be in service of it. That is the insight of the Bodhisattva. It's of course possible to "neglect" your own body in such states, but this will generally be a conscious decision and as a part of a disruptive practice (asceticism, renunciation, etc.), and it doesn't really hurt other people. That's accurate, and I'm saying the Bodhisattva is not a Bodhiasshole. Being tied to a human body is not impartial, so if you go around pretending to be impartial in that realm, you're not really getting it.

It's not that they drop away. It's that you become a fully authentic embodiment of these things without having to consult your self-referential narrative to maintain them. Morality is in our DNA. The denial of morality is done on the level of abstraction.

Haha I also questioned that one. I forget people's names all the time. There are many components to remembering somebody's name, but how preoccupied your mind is when you're being introduced to someone could certainly play a role. I would prefer to not discuss the particular survey items too much though. It has the potential to impact the validity of the results if people read the discussion before taking the survey.

There are certainly slight differences within the high consciousness range, and a highly conscious person knows when it's appropriate to act viciously and when it's not, etc. But there is a limit to that range, and I think one example of that limit is when somebody is consistently acting like shit, and people will tell you when that happens. Who would ever want to consistently treat themselves like shit? Not many people. What happens when you're highly conscious? You're more aware of things, you experience the world through a broader scope, you feel other people more deeply, almost as if they are yourself. So given these criteria, what does it take to consistently treat somebody else like shit? You would have to be unaware of them, unable to feel them like yourself, i.e. you would have to be unconscious. Let's say a conscious person is more in control of their actions than the average person. What conscious person would consciously choose to act in a way that makes most other people hate you? Certainly if there is an alternative way to achieve your goals, why act that way?

It's really not. He has certainly had very deep experiences on psychedelics, he has built a hugely successful self-improvement platform with great quality content that covers a broad spectrum and also dives deep philosophically, and he is good a teaching those things. But that doesn't make him a saint.

Less integrated = less conscious. Do you think unconscious people act a certain way?

Understanding relativity does not mean a lack of discernment. Having to integrate your shadow means you're not highly conscious. I just think highly conscious people act a certain way.

Sure, the guy was in a mentally unstable place, so he was more sensitive than usual. But if you're not severely interpersonally challenged or consistently delusional, it's not hard to know when you're being treated like shit, and highly conscious people generally don't treat people like shit. Or at least I don't care about that definition of high consciousness.

If somebody poses as highly conscious but you feel that something is off, you're probably correct.

It's not even been 24 hours and I have 58 entries ? I think most of those are from the various spiritual reddits I posted in. This can be really good

My favorite technical death metal instrumental song

I'm oldschool :> It was my girlfriend in middle school who made it back in the MSN messenger days lmao

I remember one time on MDMA with two buddies of mine, we smoked weed at the end of the trip, and one of them said "weed is so dirty in comparison to MDMA", and I was like "huh? it's not dirty, it's mystical"... in between our short-term memories refreshing every 15 seconds and nobody being able to remember what we were just talking about