Heart of Space

Yea, I almost brought the injury issue up. I run on concrete with shoes, which is probably going to give me minor injuries at some point. So, this is definitely something to consider. Swimming on the other hand is incredible in this aspect, but you'll need an olympic sized pool which probably means paying for a gym membership and having to commute there. Thanks for bringing that up.

I think there's a tendency for people here to kind of be stuck in their head coming up with mental methods trying to figure out how to increase progress, but there's some incredibly effective tools that lie outside of the mind using the body. 1) Cardiovascular work The health benefits of cardio work are significant. It affects your brain and nervous system in a profound way, almost mimicking the positive effects that meditation produces. Now imagine combining the two. My experience is that a solid amount of cardio work really does just amplify the positive effects of meditation by a massive 150 to 200% depending how much work you do obviously. The clearing of neurosis and emotional processing is a physical process in the brain and cardio speeds this process up massively. You're more than welcome to research the utterly massive amounts of scientific literature that backs this up. You can get an amazing cardio work out by just putting aside even just 15 minutes of your day (I do about 30). I have friends who do marathon running and they aren't spiritual people at all, but they rave about the profound mental states of consciousness that are achieved after 10 miles of running. I'm not a marathon runner yet , but I plan on achieving that level at some point. Recommendations: You can do this work in the form of running, climbing, swimming, and so on. It's ok to start small, even if you're just walking at first. But you're going to want to push yourself a little more every day. Listen to how your body feels, this doesn't have to be an extremely unpleasant experience. Just push yourself a little bit and don't be too concerned about comparing yourself to others or even to yourself on the run the day before. Just listen to the body and push to the point where it's uncomfortable and then slow down to a comfortable pace. The idea is to not punish yourself and burn yourself out (to create a long term habit). I run in intervals, because that's shown to be more effective than longer evenly sustained cardio. So I run for approx. 30 minutes, but it's intervals of walking and running. Because it's done in intervals, the intervals are more intense than they would be if sustained. There's a million ways to do this, if you have questions just ask I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability. 2) Cold submersion This one is pretty rough to do, I won't lie. But the health benefits are undeniable. The effects on the body, brain, and your meditation sessions are undeniable. A lot of the benefits are also similar to doing cardio work with added extreme anti-inflammatory benefits. Recommendations: Definitely, definitely start small on this one. Like just turn your shower to the coldest setting at the end of a warm shower. I started doing this one in winter here in Texas. I got into my pool around 7 AM when it was about 35 to 40 degrees F outside. I'd do about 10 to 15 minutes. Again I'd listen to my body on this one. Be very, VERY careful if you're going to do something similar to my aforementioned pool experiments. Hypothermia sets in after about 30 minutes if the water is below 40 degrees F possibly even less if you're thin or a female. Have a luke warm shower available immediately after. You can also get a few ice bags from a gas station and do it in your bath. If you do both of these things consistently for a month, I guarantee you will feel like a 150% superior version of your normal self. Way more mental and physical energy. Alert and long meditation session where your mind is so quiet you'll see a tumble weed blow by in your consciousness. I wanted to talk about diet, but that's complex enough to where I wouldn't want to graze over it. Feel free to add any practical things you do to help yourself progress, I'm curious what people are doing in this regard. There's lots of other things, but I'll save those for other threads. And if you want to do these things, but you're lacking the discipline and will power please ask questions, there is a way to tackle that too.

I relate to this as well. If I intuit a girl is a little bit emotional damaged she instantly gets like 120% sexier. I'm talking the type of girl that if you fail to have sex with her at least 3 times a day she accuses you of being gay. Good times. God speed, OP. God speed.

Oh, my made up story about Jim Carrey is not true? Fancy that. I was just annoyed with what he was saying at the time for some reason so I made a cunty post.

I'm not sure. My only concern would be the fact that the object your concentrating on is not one that has a consistent stimuli. That's something I figure is important in this work. I usually will use the object that is the skin on the tip of my right thumb when it's not touching anything at all. Or I'll use the breath. Both have a consistent stimuli to focus on, even though the breath is more dynamic than the thumb, there is still always something concrete to focus on. This is not to say what you're doing is necessarily bad or less effective. But it could potentially be.

Shit man, I relate to this so hard. In my office there's this problem where different parts of management are in this stupid political ego battle and it's hard not to get sucked into it. I'm not entirely blameless, sometimes I get sucked into it in some sort of fashion. It takes a ton of conscious effort not to assimilate into the patterns of the social group that you happened to be a part of. I'd love to hear other wiser people who've gone through this before talk about how they dealt with it. For the most part when I'm the most well behaved I try to relate to other's in a compassionate way and practice mindfulness consistently throughout the day. I also take random 10 to 15 minute breaks to meditate, which seems to help marginally.

He's obviously just parroting some canned neo advaita phrases and ideas we've all heard over and over again. Like I said, it's pretty clear he's using this as a new belief system, a new religion, for himself to cope with personal difficulties in his life.

Wow, 100 days of that, huh? I think I'd need a few years before I could think of attempting something like that. Interesting that they found use in using a form of cold submersion as well. Fascinating stuff though, I like Shinzen.

I agree. My advice to listen to the body while you run is essentially telling you to be mindful of how your body feels. No need to torture yourself. Just be mindful of the body and everything it's feeling during the run and push a little past the point of discomfort, but not too much as you will burn out and end up hating the exercise. This is very important for a lot of people who may hate the idea of doing cardiovascular exercise. I also used to despise running and loved sports, but it's not so bad when you approach it with the correct mind set.

The satisfaction with the present moment is not mysterious to me at all. The present moment, consciousness, or the subjective experience itself is pretty mysterious, actually the most mysterious thing in the universe in my opinion.

I'd recommend transitioning to full on cold submersion. It's far more effective if you can have the discipline to endure the pain of the extreme cold. It's not so bad when you get used to it. Actually that's a lie, it only gets marginally less bad hahaha. Worth it though.

I'm totally open minded to some sort of mysterious divine peaceful-ness that is primary to experience and have experience states of extreme 'non-divine' peace and bliss. But, I've never had any experience of that and that's not what I experience now, so I remain skeptical that it's something that's achievable. That is, if this is what you're implying.

It's not all that mysterious if you think about it. It's simply that you're satisfied to be as you are in the moment. You're not looking for anything to add to what you are in the moment to make that moment better. It's the lack of habitual or addictive thought patterns and behaviors in that moment of satisfaction. Lack of mind agitation.

That's because he's not. I wasn't just being a troll with my posts. All this spirituality stuff is new for him coinciding with his wife committing suicide after knowingly giving her like 3 of his STD's. He's in a bad place and he's using it to cope. At least, that's the likely explanation.

No, I stopped caring about enlightenment recently. No point in worrying about it, I'm not sure I really buy into it anymore at all. My intuition tells me not to anyway based on how I've seen people who chase the idea act. I just meditate because I do it and it makes me feel calm, lessens neuroticism, increases intuitive thinking, and increases my self-discipline.

Nothing on my youtube channel at the moment brotha. I have some spiritual search /enlightement related bits though. Maybe I'll record something and you can let me know what you think. Hey, @AleksM you have any magical trinkets that make me funnier?

Yesth sir

Nah homie, it's genuinely not ego at all. I'm in an amazing mood and I'd love for magic alien crystals to be real. I'M READY TO BELIEVE. Please prove this shit so I can dedicate my whole life to gatherings jew jew rocks, woo woo crystals, and other interdimensional trinkets. My body is ready.

Nah bro, I just have a very small penis and lash out at others to numb the pain from my deep seeded insecurities. Jk, when I'm being crass it's a mix of my honest feelings and I'm just being a goof ball. I do it partly because I feel there's a disingenuous veneer of politeness here because people feel because they are spiritual they have to walk on egg shells. Even in your post, which was basically a criticism, you prefaced it with a compliment as to not perturb their ego's. And then you ended it by questioning your own state of mind as not being perfectly clear, which voluntarily lowers the effectiveness and impact of your criticism. I would hate a forum that's supposed to be for fully open exploration to turn into an echo chamber of disingenuous egg shell walking and completely unquestioned wacky idea's. And yes, I do stand up.

Translation: "You're a poopy butthole face" Enjoy playing make believe. I guess you're not hurting anyone. At least until you get a cancer healing crystal for your kid thinking it's going to exorcise his inter dimensional unicorn trolls that live in his body.

"How to divine your fuel" LMAO, it's looks like a parody, but it's not. There are legit ways of extending fuel efficiency, but based on my 30 seconds of looking at the video it's some kind of crystal magical alien technology? Let me guess, it hasn't been tested by an independent group of completely impartial researchers, right? Right. Ok, go home with this wacky cartoon shit, you're drunk.

This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen.

He's basically the new age equivalent of Christians who can't shut the fuck up about Jesus. Sounds like he's really trying to convince himself of this new view so he doesn't have to feel as bad about his sad fucked up life. Lots of people fall in that hole.

That was incredibly cringe worthy and awkward. New age spiritual religionists are some of the most socially awkward cringey and boring people I've ever seen.

I think I've accidentally gotten the first one several times. I can't do it on command though.