Carl-Richard

It's your vision that is adapting to constant stimuli. Your senses can only measure changes in stimuli: it's dualistic and relativistic that way. Keeping your vision focused on one point without moving will make the colours fade to white. That tends to happen during open-eyed meditation. It's the same reason why you don't really feel the sensations of your ass when you've been sitting for a little while.

Creationists

What is the goal you're trying to achieve when you're doing a task that requires thought? Well, the goal is to think and do what is necessary. There is nothing else you have to do. This compulsion you have of wanting to "stay conscious" is just another thought that is interfering with the task at hand. If you're required to think, then you should think. If you're not required to think, then don't think. The former should be easy, but the latter is what requires practice. You seem to be trying to fix the latter by interrupting the former, which may be perceived as progress, but it's really just counterproductive. I would discourage any attempts at trying to force "consciousness" into daily activities that require your fullest attention. It's just classic neuroticism, nothing spiritual about it. If you want results, then set off time each day to where you can focus 100% on becoming aware or whatever you think is necessary. Then when you're not practicing, let it go. The worst attachment you can have is the attachment to spirituality itself. Don't make it harder for yourself than it has to

@How to be wise What if you're a virgin?

This dude has got something to say about that.

It's honestly the witch he posted

You would have to define what "zombie mode" means, because that is certainly outside of my vocabulary haha. An unruly mind is what most people have. It's when the mind can't stop talking to itself about the same things over and over unless it focuses its attention towards some object or task. The opposite of that would be a quiet mind that is silent even though it isn't focused on anything in particular. If your mind is constantly active and digging up memories about past events that have no relevance to your current situation, that is when you lose contact with the spaciousness of awareness, and instead your relationship to awareness becomes choppy and contracted. Now, whatever type of object you focus your attention on, whether it be the breath or the sensations in the body, these things are not essential to awareness. You don't become "more conscious" when you focus on an object. Your consciousness actually narrows in on a specific point and excludes other input. Only when you relax your mind, only then you will return to spaciousness. However, you can establish such a deep relationship with this spaciousness that it will eventually start to make itself present even when engaging in objects, but that isn't something you can force or control. It has to be cultivated through practice in order to manifest itself naturally.

Blue tends to come online at 7-8 years of age according to this map: Of course you don't grow out of red immediately either. Red is a big reason why adolescents struggle with impulsivity and respecting authority. Just because you've entered a new stage doesn't mean you've left the others behind.

Criminality is widely driven by a rejection of stage blue values (law, order, rules, purpose) and a cultivation of red (egocentricity, power, greed, impulsivity). The reason that you're following rules is that you're doing it for a higher good. When you're stage red, you are already the highest good. Nobody can tell you what to do unless they dominate you physically. The idea that the main characters are good and that Team Rocket is evil is fundamentally a blue concept. The reason why training and discipline is blue is that it presupposes the idea of working towards something greater than what you currently are (another form of higher good). When you're stage red, you'll just do whatever you want. Discipline, training, and confinement requires the ability to look beyond your immediate impulsive desires and worshipping an ideal. Stage red only worship themselves. They believe they're the best. There is no need for any improvement. Trump is a good example of that.

Pokemon is generally blue with some red/orange competitive aspects. A fight doesn't end in the death of a pokemon. It emphasizes the importance of training, discipline and character. Team Rocket is red

@Leo Gura

@Bernardo Carleial Brilliant!

I have a step sister who is 14 and she likes to talk about murder, death, and suffering at the dinner table. She has very little empathy, superficial charm, is manipulative, egocentric, hard to get along with. She used to frequently throw severe temper tantrums when she was younger. Her biological dad had similar traits (he died a couple of years ago from a drug overdose). She has an older brother who lacks these traits. He is very friendly and considerate of others. They both have a loving mother, so it seems to point towards a biological predisposition rather than social conditioning.

I don't know. One of my first memories was when I was 3 years old. My mom told me I was starting kindergarten, and I vividly remember asking her "is that a thing where you do things at home?" and she said "no" and I got really upset

Do you see the contradiction there?

Fluffy doesn't like SD, so many of his arguments are confirmation bias - what'd you expect?

I don't even know. What I wrote has like 10 different interpretations LOL

Come to Norway

This is the cutest post I've seen I love forum newbies.

The only thing you can really trust is that everything is an illusion

I'm not an expert, but the way I see it is that you can condition a specific contradictory response to something if it comes from a higher mental level. It's essentially a mental desire being fullfilled instead of a physical one, and that can cause a lot of pleasure aswell. Arousal associated with the mental anticipation before/during sex is a very big part of the experience, more so for women than men apparenty.

"Becoming aware of the breath" is just a trick to pull your mind away from compulsive thinking and focusing it on an object in awareness. However, awareness is much wider than the object in focus. If the mind is able to quieten itself naturally without having to constantly recalibrate its focus, then you'll start to experience the "spaciousness" of awareness, which is essentially awareness in its base form: undirected raw experience. This awareness is synonymous with consciousness. "Becoming aware" is only done in order to condition an unruly mind. If the mind subsides on its own, then there is nothing to "become" aware to. Awareness is all there is.

Happenstance, repeated exposure and habituation. You've essentially been conditioned by your environment to prefer certain types of familiar stimuli over others. Whatever you entertain, you'll strengthen your connection to that thing, and you also get more used to it. You're also naturally more inclined to some things than others. This is why people have so many different hobbies. Your ability to derive pleasure from something is completely relative to previous experiences. This is why some rich dude can feel depressed while getting a blowjob on a 50 millon dollar yatch and why some buddhist ascetic can feel the pleasure of 100 orgasms just staring into a concrete wall.