I think that you do agree with me.. it IS important to be able to neutrally look at one's past and see it what it is; as one part of a mind's struggle to free and develop itself. Not to shy away from doing it because it feels unpleasant.. one can learn about acceptance even when looking at the past, no? Personally I've found I have a tendendency to rewind situations a bit too much (getting stuck) still but I think it will go away on it's own without me forcing anything. I've found that for me, allowing myself to consciously become sentimental has sometimes been the right choice for me. Because my usual way has been to be hard on myself and well that's even more sentimental. Acceptance goes a long way.

Regards networks striking, I've began Reichian exercises. They really hit the spot. I was struggling with "new" listlessness even having cut down meditation but then I realized that strong emotions are trying to surface. Now if I have a good Reichian session (an hour at this point) I feel pumped up, at least for some time..

My sense of self seems quite vague, said this before but now I can often tell that 'oh, this is not my energy/thought'. There's just so much of that shit that it boggles the mind. I think that when before I used drugs I got into this mind space of being able to KNOW what I THINK and FEEL. And now I can begin to do that in the company of others while sober. That is cool.

ABout all the time in the world.. I still have this sense of urgency but it is fading every day.. I do feel that sometimes already. It's kinda funny and sad to see some people deeply programmed into rushing. But then I'm not that free myself yet so .. better just concentrate on myself for now

Following through on ideas from this...

It's nice starting to see reality isn't it? The truth is really pretty cool and optimistic  :  )

I know you know the world doesn't need 'saving'; it's just fine. It's been through ice ages and meteor strikes and island-sinking volcanoes and getting whacked by comets and species coming and going and it's still here just minding its own business and getting on with all the stuff that planets do best.
 
Society doesn't need 'saving' either; it's a bad habit driven by anxiety, that needs replacing with culture. The more little bits of culture we can create and maintain for ourselves and our allies, the more the problem is solving itself. We're perpetuating intelligence and its output (culture) through time, and that's about the best job description for a human I've ever heard. I think it IS worth saving intelligence. Without it the future of humanity on this world is doubtful at best, and we personally are screwed.

Acting good because of guilt isn't really acting good is it? It's just a waste of time and energy we could be using to grow. Feel like I've reminded myself of this so often that I've done the book, the movie and the tee shirt of that one  LOL  :  )  I KNOW it's just a clue that we're being driven by fear of what others think, but realizing that in the middle of it all....not easy.

We ARE strong. I think if we weren't strong, we'd be dead. There is 3.8 billion years' worth of evolutionary ancestry of strength, endurance and success behind us, otherwise we wouldn't even be here. Getting stronger just happens with experience; we learn how to cope with more difficult things, it's not anything I've found we have to work at. But for me being strong isn't about how many bullets we can dodge, its about being mentally 'together' enough to avoid situations involving bullets.

I have managed to start to look on fuckups as “bunk-ups to a higher level of experience”. But I'm only just starting to remember that when they're happening, rather than in retrospect.
Onward!  :  )
AR

PS You might find a s/h thoughtstream on amazon/ebay? You have to keep checking, they sometimes turn up.

empathia Wrote: Maybe you Alex think this just covered up the sentiment but what it feels the opposite.

No this doesn't sound like repression at all; it sounds like a genuine relaxation response. It doesn't matter whether we get our RRs from placebos or tech or drugs or meditation or whatever. Different methods work for different folks. All that matters is that we use them.

Neat article out a couple of days ago about meditation:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-t … ation.html

On internal dialogue: It really helped me to give my mind something else to listen to, on the OUTSIDE. Your own real voice will do fine, read aloud to yourself or listen to audio books, podcasts, whatever. Keep the mind occupied with good input and it has less time to mess you about. Comedy is good. Cheerful music with good, discernable lyrics is fine. I use 'Rush'.

I think these sorts of experiences have taught me the flimsiness of what people think of as personality and how many folks simply behave like robots for their whole lives, I talk to them and I just hear whatever they saw on last night's TV repeating itself or their parents talking, not themselves. I think we're really lucky to have the autonomy to realise that the way we want to see ourselves and reality is up to us.

It has been suggested that the whole of early NH experience can be summed up in 2 directives we give to our minds: “Shut the fuck up” and “Calm the fuck down”. This was definitely true for me.  :  )

On thinking we know, then being disillusioned: This is the 100% normal state of affairs for all learning and science and researchers in general. Most people believe that learning is about finding answers, it isn't. It's about figuring out how to ask the relevant questions, and every time we think we know an answer or have solved something it turns out that (exactly as you say here), another layer shows up and we don't know anymore. But in that process we pick up bits along the way that we DO know, and that we didn't use to know, and that we can now use to our benefit and that's how we adapt and progress.

It happens on the level of whole cultures too -Ptolemy's ontology seems fine, then Copernicus comes along and causes trouble  :  )

On differences: we are all different from 'you lot' to the extent that there is no 'you lot'. If my colleague and I share this vial of morphine, I will get high and giggle all afternoon and he will experience nothing at all, as his genome is in that 10% that can't metabolize morphine. That's why its so useful to exchange methods and talk about results here, because some of us discover stuff that works for some others too.
Best,
AR

Nice summary of the concept of बोधिसत्त्व, 'my dear' Scalino, wtg! =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva

00010111
  MM800

PS.: I know this is not the right place to suggest this, but since you are around.. =) The addition of the login form here on the forums was a great idea and demonstration of technical expertise, wtg, however I find myself scrolling over and over, through lengthy posts, to login when I'm going to reply, so perhaps also adding it to the bottom of the page would make it even more awesome? =)

hmm... m'okay, I see your problem more clearly now...

so we need some kind of "ergonomy for alternative desks"

Scalino

empathia Wrote:
I will remember to keep my MP3 player with me so in case something unexpected happens


Damned fine resolution dude! Me too.

Re: Rush lyrics, That's a band with a long long history containing some very different stuff. I don't understand most of their early stuff, but the album 'signals' always seemed to me the one most relevant to NH, particularly the track, “The weapon” which has the immortal line, “We've got nothing to fear but fear itself”, and does a good job of explaining how anxiety controls people (“They talk about love but when push comes to shove, they live for things they're afraid of”).


Empathia wrote: 'shut the fuck up'/'calm the fuck down'. Yes, good lines. Although I do have some trouble with the swear words, N2 nonuse probably.

Swearing is a tool, and can be a life-saving one, so it's worth mastering. Swearing with good cause (ie pain or distress) is congruent. It works with the body to improve your situation. Helpful in humor and social fun, it also reduces anxiety hormones if you do it immediately after accident or injury, and it can also control pain quite considerably. Check this out:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBkptLQOwA
(experiment starts about 3 minutes in)

Empathia wrote: I come to understand the searching is the thing, not the destination'.

Totally; the aim of the game, with both life and intelligence, is to stay in the game. Or, “The point of the journey is not to arrive”*

Re: crystals etc:  There is no spoon. So we can choose whatever type of cutlery looks most beautiful to us individually and that we have the most personal associations with, as long as we remember it is the mind that's doing the rule-bending and that's where the power lives. It's very easy to confuse understanding theories of tool use with understanding the user (know thyself).
If you remember that the end goal is to train yourself to achieve the same changes WITHOUT needing the spoon (or drug, or tech), you'll keep a healthy perspective on tools.

Beauty in the dark:
You will need: some red lead powder, some chromium yellow powder paint, a candle, some tongs or tweezers, and a rod of clear quartz.
Light the candle and put out the lights. Wait till your eyes adjust.
Mix the powders together. You will get a lovely orange shade.
Hold the crystal in the tweezers and heat it up in the candle for about 10 seconds.
Hold the heated crystal over the powder and watch what happens.

All the red powder will move to one end of the crystal, and all the yellow to the other. In the dark you can actually see the particles of powder separate, as though the crystal were a pigment magnet.
This is nature bringing order out of chaos. It is science, it is beautiful, it is a piezoelectric property, and it looks quite amazing. It will work for anybody, anywhere, at any time. That's how we know it's reality; even if people don't believe in it, it won't go away  :  )

A crystal or a GSR machine; both are spoons  :  ) It is not the GSR machine that heals by reducing my blood pressure; it is ME. Once we grab that bit, the behavior of spoons is up to us as long as we remember there is no spoon.
I'm not sure if that made any sense at all, I'm just hoping  :  )

Empathia wrote: But a child can't get enlightened without growing up and making something towards that end

A healthy child starts off enlightened. The light only goes out when crap gets in the way.
Best,
AR

*Rush lyrics  :  )

Gotta love this speed of progress. I have now entered space (I now intuit this is N3 you talked about..) and must say it's quite an experience. Well I already unloaded on another forum a little but suddenly lyrics make sense and when I move to the music, I can really feel it.

It really was about stopping the bending of that spoon, wasn't it.. I think it's incredible how fast all the stuff (tools) I used accomplished the transformation. It's incredible how much self-hate I have had inside. And I guess I still do but once I get the level of the crap around me lowered to the level my head stays above it, I can stop identifying with it and that's where it all begins... life I mean.

It's interesting how it went.. Thought I was supposed to go into psychosis but no wasn't like that at all. No need to use big guns. The jungle knife proved to be plenty. There was a lot of truth in how I perceived things to be in a way but in the end, it wasn't really the life-death struggle I expected. More like a summer camp ghost-story telling ring where youngsters get thrills by telling each other exciting stories. This time the story was my way of thinking and learning to accept that even though it was, from one point of view, silly to have this or that disfunctional thinking pattern, the person having them was still Me (capital for respect) and I all I needed to do was a) to see that those patterns are not me and b) learn to acknowledge and then let go of any sentiment connected to them. After that you get to play and then it's all downhill from there. Or so it feels. No guarantees ;) (strange thing is, I don't feel the need for it. I know I can hack everything given enough time.)

The entity problem was experienced once more, this time sober, when for the first time in an emotional group situation where I was expected to behave in a certain way, said NO and denied doing what was expected of me. I suddenly had an experience like all these people I knew to be very friendly would actually be demons. Thankfully I was already in a stable enough state to knew it wasn't true. There must have been a pretty great pressure in my past to just be compliant..

Interestingly though, I want to add, that I read that one of the experiences related to 'infinite' is a vast space. Maybe I just experienced this? but these traumas were blocking me from experiencing this space.. and haha, now I know that this space is exactly the same space you Alex referred to.. Nice one..

I would be very interested in hearing if there are any techniques for this ghosting phenomenon because that is exactly what I experience a lot. Maybe it could be included in the tutorials? (it is not a rare problem is it?)

Maybe you understood the 'cleaning oneself' to be sentimental? One way to understand is to think of the bad programming as crap on us, and by programming ourselves we become clean and can feel our self to be pure. Or is it just me who has experiences of their essence being pure?

Big thanks Alex Wonderful to get that off my back and that's partly due to you.