lmfao

@Roman Edouard careful not to cut yourself with all of that edge.

@Benoit Jazy from my experience with stage green people, some of them are palpably hypocritical like some stage blue are. Some extreme stage green people will be very preachy and moralise a lot. Whilst they can talk the talk they may not be able to walk the walk.

I'm making this thread so that I hopefully help others in dealing with the dark side of meditation and the negative emotions that arise from meditation. I've been meditating for about 8-9 months and experienced a fair chunk negativity (but lots of positivity as well) with my practice. All I'm going to do is reflect on what are the causes behind much of the struggle I went through and maybe it'll cause an "aha" moment for someone. It's only recently I think I noticed the cause of so much of the unnecessary suffering I've went through. I might start off with a bit of a tangent in the next paragraph. Whenever you first get into personal development and consciousness work, you'll be exposed to all sorts of simple truths and fundamental ideas. E. G. Four noble truths, acceptance of the present moment, counter-intuitive moves and etc. When I hear these ideas it's easy for me to think "well of course, I know that". I'll say to myself that I understand something, but then the exact moment that I have to apply that truth I forgot about out. And I'll not even notice that I even forgot about the truth because of low awareness. I typed all of the previous paragraph to just come back to the simple truth you hear that happiness and enlightenment is about accepting the present moment. An extremely counter-intuitive truth is this (I'm making up the exact phrasing here): to "not care" (using quotation marks because there's a little bit more to what I'm saying than just this phrase as it can be misinterpreted) about enlightenment is what will get you closer to enlightenment. Or in other words, by remaining motionless ("motionless" in a metaphorical sense) you start moving towards enlightenment. As far as my personality type goes, I can be a perfectionist and I'm neurotic. A key point I want to emphasise is this: whenever you are meditating, do not be concerned with the progress you are making. Stop that completely. Do not become worried or anxious if your awareness is low. Do not become worried or anxious about trying enforce any of the advice I give here, because that will result in you not following the advice. You cannot force awareness. No, let me say that shit again because this truth needs to be unforceably embodied in every cell in your body if you're a novice like me. You cannot force awareness. Do you see how there's a bit of a paradox in what I'm asking? It's almost as if im asking you to try to stop trying, which creates a paradox. But don't stress about the paradox, just do whatever you want to do. There have been times where after a long meditation session I've felt a deep pit of despair and depression. What will happen is that during meditation I will experience negative sensations. To elaborate:I'll have intense waves of irretibility and restlessness, intense leg pain, feelings of sadness (as well as frustration and anger) arising, I'll have have frequent involuntary/subconscious muscle contractions (e. G. l'll be straining/contracting my facial muscles and as a result my face will be shaking. This sensations involved are more neutral than negative, its just that I associate a negative meaning to it. ). And as these negative feelings and sensations arise, I'll obsess about the fact that those feelings are there. I'll try to forcibly be aware of something and have limited success. This pattern of thought and behaviour can easily lead to temporarily exacerbating neurosis. I've had previous glimpses of enlightenment and my ego will be neurotic about recreating those same glimpses and non-dual states. I'll be obsessed with achieving my egoic perception of positivity and that will create the opposite effect to what I want. Within meditation we are often try to direct our attention and awareness, and it's the intent behind our attention that determines what will happen. To illustrate my point, I want you to try a little experiment. I want you to play as close attention as possible as you can to the words in this sentence and the meaning it is trying to convey. Just keep trying to focus intently on the words you're reading. And as you are reading this, is it perhaps the case that you've tensed up your eyes, forehead and face? (in conjunction with other muscles in your body?) Did the tensing up actually achieve anything? Or is it a conditioned reaction which is indicative of something deeper about your psychology? Awareness and mindfulness should arise from a place of genuine curiosity about reality. Trying to generate mindfulness and awareness from the intent of "fixing" your mind, fixing your experience, "improving" yourself, will have potentially disastrous side consequences. Many things will arise during meditation, and equanimity is of utmost importance.

@VictorB02 Yeah I liked that part too. He is a very eloquent speaker when it comes to addressing the distinction between self and other. I personally have two favourite Alan Watts lectures. 00:00 - 02:18 of this video is just amazing, it's one of the most simple and profound things I've ever heard spoken. The rest of the lecture is just as amazing. There is a shortened version of this video which shows Alan Watts in person https://www.organism.earth/library/document/89 This other lecture blew my mind as well. He just talks so brutally honestly and accurately about the idea of improving yourself.

What you quoted is no more of a belief than anything else. I still think what I said about what an illusion is relatively useful as a pointer to something but you of course have your view of things. Just because I can't define every word I use in a sentence doesn't mean that the sentence is useless as a pointer. As an overall impression, I can't help but feel a pointless game (ie it is non conducive to actually getting to a point) is being played with the line questioning and reasoning you've been posting. I don't see why you're trying to question my precise descriptions of a concept so vague and hard to pin down when I don't even take my own descriptions too seriously. I don't take the words seriously, I'm just coming up with them because you asked me to. Some things are beyond being able to simply explain with words.

@Roman Edouard LOL. I can relate. I think he's one of the few people I'd fanboy over.

@Nahm Well that's hard to answer. When I read your question its like you're asking me how language and definitions are formed, and to that I would say I don't know. "Illusion" is word that has a different meaning to different people, depending on the context they hear it in, what connotations they have with the word, what other words they know and etc. And to then try and describe what it means to ascribe meaning to words, my answer is who tf knows. I have no clue why words are processed the way they are. My cheeky answer to your question is "because I said so". This is simply the way I look at things, I can't verbally articulate to you why. In regards to the bit you quoted of me, something that I think I am currently incapable of adequetly defining is "resistance". I have, what is in my view, no good way of describing it off the top of my head. NGL answering this question feels a tad bit gay. It's like I've just danced around with words and said nothing of substance LOL. I feel like a fraud :p. I just need to shut my mouth and meditate.

@Roman Edouard Bitch please, you're pretty cool and interesting. If the first quote written here is instead phrased as "reality is consciousness" then I think I can more easily address the first question in your paragraph. In regards to the first question. Reality is everything you are experiencing right now is my perspective. Thoughts, 5 senses, attention, feelings, emotions, different sensations, other people and etc. It's just everything. And all of these things are in your conscious experience. "All concepts are in your conscious experience" is often something people on this forum are trying to get at when they talk about reality just being consciousness. People are trying to get at this to try and make people question their beliefs and assumptions of reality, their assumptions that there is an objective world and etc. In regards to your second question, I have no answer. I don't know what is meant by it either.

@Nahm I don't know its true. How can we a know anything to be "true"? But words will flow out of my mind anyway. The words flowing out of my mind have no more truth value than random colours or sounds I hear outside. The true origin of the definition I gave is nothing. But imma ignore that for know. The definition I gave for "illusion" in the context of Enlightenment and consciousness work is what my mind has based upon from my experiences meditating and practicing mindfulness.

@Nahm "reality as it is" is just "reality". Its irreducible. Is there something you're trying to get at?

@Nahm To me, an "illusion" is any belief or distortion in awareness that causes resistance to reality as it is.

@Shadowraix I am trying to talk from direct experience. I believe what I'm saying is just a natural extension of the realisation that everything is now. I would be lying if I said that my motive behind typing these messages wasn't ego driven, but I'm at least trying to make sure I don't let that distort what I say too much.

@Leo Gura I can't edit my previous comment with the desired quote so I'm sending this separate message to just elaborate. You believe that you are God right, and that you are reality and reality is everything in your consciousness right? You can't prove that other people have their own POV and their own thoughts. God is everything in your direct experience, right now. As far as God is concerned, the thoughts of other conscious beings do not exist! You seem to think that the existence of other conscious beings is a given and I think you use the word "God" (which represents all of reality) in logically contradictory ways in the sense that you think God is everything in your experience yet you also think that God is the point of view of "other people" when the point of view of other people is not in your experience. On the one hand you seem to be saying God is everything in your experience but then you're also saying God is this seperate experience and POV. But this separate experience and POV doesn't exist! It's a concept! The existence of another POV is a concept and is not in your direct experience, and is therefore not God.

@Leo Gura I 100% agree. What I'm having an "issue" understanding is your definition of "creature". I'll use words other than "creature" to communicate my view. Edit: I do not know if other people in my conscious experience are centres of conscious experience or are not centres of conscious experience. Either way, the thoughts and actions of my ego are as much me as the actions of other people. However, I do not know if these other conscious beings exist and have thoughts to begin with. To believe such a thing is to be conceptualising. All I know for certain is that reality, which is me, is this cloud of thoughts, feelings, sensations and is just a happening. What do you mean by "forever"? "Forever" implies the existence of a infinitely extended past and future. The notion of "forever" is rooted in the concept of "time". I might come across as pedantic but I think I'm pointing to something important. Who knows if the big self it will take on an infinite number of forms. The way "I" see it , all I know for certain is that the big Self has the one form in my present moment experience because the past and future don't exist. The idea that reality is in flux and hence constantly changing form is an illusion if you accept that time is an illusion. I feel like with any discussion/debate on this forum, if the two of us were to sit with each other and shut our mouths and listen to the sound of a gong we'd reach a mutual understanding of the beauty of existence but the moment that mouths open there's always misunderstanding. Words are a tricky thing.

@Roman Edouard I haven't watched that video of Leo's but I agree that Leo's claim is unsubstantiated if that is what he said (all beliefs are technically unsubstantiated but you get the point that I don't agree with it). However I perhaps have a different line of reasoning to you? I'll just put out my view of things in contrast to trying to "debunk" what you said because I think we might be agreeing with each other. For you, Roman Edouard, everything in your experience is inside of your consciousness. People can conceptualise all they want about reality (ie saying that it is material, spiritual, logical, infinite, finite), but all reality is for a fact is this present moment experience you have with your thoughts and concepts about reality being subset of all the information that composes reality. You can think of reality as literally being mathematically equal to the mathematical sum of all sensations, thoughts, sense data, and emotions in your consciousness. I used the word "mathematically" in my previous sentence to show that I'm conveying the idea that reality is LITERALLY 100% composed of all the contents in your consciousness. Reality=consciousness. If you're familiar with maths and like to mentally masturbate then you can think of reality as a vector composed of an infinite number of dimensions, since you would need an infinite number of numbers to define the exact configuration of reality. I can elaborate more on that claim if you want. All of reality is just this amalgamation of stuff in your consciousness. You only have your present moment precisely because the term "present moment" is refers literally to how everything is. Your thoughts and concepts about reality are another facet and component of this one consciousness, which makes the truth value of your thoughts no more greater than random sounds or colour you experience. And paradoxically enough I'm trying to use words to communicate this to you. Time doesn't exist because all you have and ever will have is now, this "truth" is extremely clear its just that our minds are always distracted and are attached to thoughts which is why we always forget this. Tomorrow never comes. Realising time doesn't exist isn't a matter of scientific inquiry, its a matter of introspection. To feel in your bones that time in is an illusion is extremely profound and hard hitting. It makes you see that causality is an illusion since causality needs a past, and all you live in is uncaused, completely and utterly spontaneous moment which you did nothing to create. Random tangent, the spontaneity of reality is extraordinary. This is because there is something, our present moment experience, in contrast to nothing. Why is there something in contrast to nothing? Back to the thread topic. In my first person experience, I cannot prove solipsism to be false. This alone is enough to say that the idea that the idea I will live the same experience as another person around me is not "provable". All there is is this now experience, all other concepts (e.g saying "I will live as a bird") are just noise within this experience. @Leo Gura I agree with what you are pointing towards. The true self is all of reality, as it is right now. OK Leo, but what do you mean by "creature" here? The idea that there exist external biological organisms which are centers for conscious experience is a concept which I cannot prove. You, Leo Gura, are appearing in my consciousness as a creature but I do not know that you are actually another conscious being. I am Leo Gura but I do not know if Leo Gura is conscious. The falsehood of solipsism is a practical truth but when aiming for Enlightenment we want the person to stop conceptualising and abstracting all together. To even say a statement like "you'll live forever" is extremely fuzzy verbal territory to root in actuality because implicit to that statement is notions of time when time is an illusion. I'm not saying that the statement is "wrong" it's just that that the verbal communication comes across as too complicated

@BreezeWW the closest thing I use to an aid for meditation is just gong sounds. It's simple but I think it does the job depending on my mood.

Today is my third time taking modafinil: Just writing this post to say that I think negative effects of armodafinil I experienced have gone away. I woke up at 4:30 am today [ 4 hours ago from this post upload] and took 150 mg of armodafinil at 6:30 am. I felt armodafinil kick in, but its not nearly as overwhelming as the first time I took it. Its a good drug since it doesn't feel overwhelming at all really. Its potent yet during my second and third taking the drug as a full pill, I don't have much side effects like racing thoughts and monkey mind like I did when I first took it. Armodafinil is strong but I think that in most circumstances you won't be getting in negative effects, although everybody is different. The wakefulness you get can feel somewhat subtle depending on your dosage and how long it's been since you took it and your personal tolerance. Like even 12 hours after I've taken a full dose, I won't notice that I have anything in my system until I come around to doing any task involving attention and I think "damn I feel hyperfocused".

@Atic Wow its like you read my mind and know what I do all the time. @Charlotte although I think the example conversation wasn't detailed and in depth enough to give me a satisfactory understanding of what's going, I think I have one anyway. I mean of course you were also being hyperbolic and were just conveying the essence behind your conversations in contrast to how your conversations actually plays out which would make the sentence I typed before this one false. Like @Aticsaid @Charlotte (I accidentally typed "@Charlotte" instead of just "Charlotte"), what's going on is that what you find interesting about a particular topic is not what other people find interesting. It is for this reason that your attempts to discuss a topic with someone results in you going in a direction which is not what the other person expected and is familiar with. To elaborate what I said in the previous paragraph, its almost as though you and the other person are talking past one another. I know that when I have discussed a topic with friends, I tend to take a topic to a deeper philisopical and logical level then what other people are interested in with regards to that topic. Here's another way of looking at it which is a bit different from what I said above. The information a person has about an objective topic is tightly associated and joined to their subjective perspective on the issue and they think that their subjective perspective is an objective given from the information, when in fact that is false. We all do this to a degree and the degrees to which we do it vary on the subject. When you say something which questions their subjective perspective the other person thinks you are questioning something objective. Imagine a Turqoise hippie trying to talk to a hardcore atheist materlist about spirituality and the nature of reality.

@Equanimitize Yeah exactly. This comes back to the question of whether sociopaths and psychopaths are born or made and whether anything can be done about it. From the research I've seen online, sociopaths are made yet there are a small fraction of people who are born with low/zero empathy and are called psychopaths. On Quora you have self professed psychopaths answering questions and writing in detail what their emotions are like and how their mind works. One example is https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker . In conjunction to zero empathy and impulsivity, psychopaths also feel no anxiety and sadness generally (there are always degrees to which you are a psychopath as well). However, not all psychopaths end up becoming "evil doers" and neither is that the case for sociopaths.

@Outer I can't get rid of the video I've accidentally embedded below because it's on mobile. A lot of what you said might be right. I scored 1st percentile from understandmyself.com The description didn't really jive with me but I assumed that the description was just innacurate but the test and results were valid. If I do have autism though it is very discreet to the point where no one suspects or notices it except for me and one other person. I think that "autism" is just the excuse I use for not having the same temperament and interests as those around me.

I wouldn't mind seeing you make a video on sociopathy and psychopathy. Gives people a guide on how to spot them and it also might be a good for you to communicate advice to people you think "suffer" from sociopathy or psychopathy. Sociopathy might just be something you decide to reference in a future shadow work video, I know I'd find it interesting at the very least.

@CreamCat it's always been my impression that most people in the west go through stage red as very young children and quickly get absorbed into stage blue religion. At least that's what happened with me. But to be fair puberty and testosterone could make you red.

@CreamCat It wouldn't surprise me if what you said was true. I feel like I have a red "shadow" in me which partially motivated me to ask this question. It makes me wonder what exactly "empathy" and "conscience" is. One way which might be useful of phrasing it is that if I was in stage purple my empathy would have a very small area of range (the tribe) but if I'm in Turqoise my empathy extends to all of reality itself. I find this topic interesting because I wonder how other people experience things compared to how I experience things. Like I wonder how if I process empathy is different from most people because I'm 1st percentile in agreeableness and perhaps mildly autistic (although no one usually picks that up). I wonder if I have or used to have some sociopathic traits as well. It is for that reason that I detect aspects of "zen devilry" in me.

Zen seems hella hype.