I found interesting video about consciousness. Can you give it 20 mins OP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvJyMmw2Thw

GL at the tables (and not only there)!

btw) Osho is the guy with incredibly expensive cards, wathces and luxuries?

Forget about Osho and the Upanishads.

Steven Seagal's experience of enlightment is the ultimate truth.

Thank you for this thread. Many of us are grateful.

I encourage all of the skeptics to open their minds. I was a hardcore materialist, skeptical to the bone, critical to the point of fault, and I'm pretty sure my left brain militantly overtook my right brain in the womb. I still retain these traits for the most part, but I'm less sure about materialism and believe there is more to knowledge than what can be measured.

I'm still very much a beginner in my mind training journey. I have had spontaneous, intuitive moments of clarity (I hesitate to say insights itt because of how Culadasa uses the term, but perhaps they were insights) during meditation. However, despite the fact that I do truly believe and even somewhat FEEL(if that makes any sense) anatta, I struggle with nondualism and many other concepts. My mom is my mom. Yes, she changes and is not a permanent, fixed self, but she's still my mom and I'm still me. Impermanence is obvious to me, but I still often have trouble understanding that I'm not the self I thought I was before entering the stream.

To folks who see more woo and opaque communication, again, I encourage you to open your minds. Like the psychedelic experience, much of this is ineffable to those outside of the experience. But that doesn't make the psychedelic experience any less true or real. Btw, very glad I used psychedelics, it greatly lessened my ego and made me see that things may not be exactly as they seem. Michael Pollan's newish book on the subject is excellent.

Will do next week. Going through some mind-****ing insight cycles at the moment, which, coincidentally, also include consciousness and how it works.
Primer: consciousness is not a thing in itself, it's just information exchange at the highest level of the mind.

Yeah, that's Osho. How people believed he was enlightened is beyond me.


That's pretty funny; I didn't even know the Dalai Lama did the deity stuff; wtf...


Thanks, friend.

I'm happy to hear and good luck on your path! Keep practicing, keep staying rational.

What trouble do you have understanding that you are not self?

Idk, but I think I'm just still early in stage 1 and can intellectually grasp the concept and have had moments of intuiting the concept in meditation but I just haven't meditated enough to intuitively feel nondualism most or all of the time. I feel the same about emptiness.

I once had a mushroom trip, and this is before I became interested in Buddhism at all, where I was walking in the woods and instantly and totally felt at one with everything. There was no mental build up or anything. I did not aim to do anymore than walk in the woods and feel good. But suddenly, in an instant, my ego completely dissolved. It was incredible. It was a powerful moment of clarity where I went all Dr Bronner and realized the great oneness of everything. I know I don't feel that way normally despite believing it to be true intellectually. I hope to one day. I look forward to hearing more about your journey and I'll be happy to share any major progress of my own if there's interest.

GL with your journey of optimizing. Fascinating stuff to ponder, lots of vocabulary I am unfamilar with, but I do get the gist of the things you are writing. I have not studied much buddhist literature but I do recall reading the Tao Te Ching a few years ago and it seems to mention the same types of things about the interconnectedness of our world.

Interested to follow along. How old are you and where do you live?

I feel I have to defend poor Osho as you don't seem to understand that his indulgence in luxury was a trolling of Western world materialism. He never actually owned all those Rolls Royces, they belonged to the Osho Foundation and he left them all behind when he returned to India.


https://www.quora.com/How-many-Rolls...o-have-and-why

This guy had the Rolls Royces. Very fascinating documentary.

Decided to update this blog once a month instead.
I'll post an update and respond to questions at the end of every month.

See you and take it easy
CRAI

Is it a poker blog or yoyo stuff? where are you at hs buddy

Thank you for this thread. Feel less alone

May

Poker

$


BB


Volume wise I was mainly playing 500z, 1K and a bunch of 2K. The bigger dips are from the couple of hands I played at 5K
The majority of the volume was played in the first half of the month.
Subsequently, I invested in a new setup and used that change in momentum to focus on some other things during the second half of the month.
Game-wise I would say that games at the higher stakes are reasonably tough but wouldn't be surprised if a 5ev winrate is sustainable.



Life
Now that we got poker out of the way, let's talk about the actually important things!
My main focus currently is self-development, which in my terms means optimizing well-being and maximizing potential, and, of course, enjoying the journey.
This has led me to spend some time thinking about the way I allocate my time, specifically my career:

When I eventually lie in my death-bed and reminisce about my life, will I smile or not? Will I look back to a life spent with meaning and purpose, dedicated to the things that truly matter? Will I look back to a life filled with love, joy and wonder for this beautiful existence that I so luckily got to be a part of?

Do I really want to spend X hours per day thinking about cards? No, absolutely not.
What would I like to do instead? I would like to help people improve their lives and wake them up.
What gives?
I'm looking to hopefully retire from poker within the next year or two. In the meanwhile, I will start a blog that focuses on self-development and awakening to start moving in that direction.


Routine
After testing out the previous routine, I decided to change things up a little bit. I didn't like how my meditation sessions were immediately followed by poker and how poker in itself was taking away my time in the mornings. I decided to change this and reserve my mornings for things that matter.

7:00 Wake-up, Shower, Breakfast with GF
8:00 Meditation
9:00 Stretching + Workout, then Leisure
11:30 Lunch
12:30-17:00 Work
17:00-21:00 Free

(1-2 days per week off)


Recommendations

Essentialism - Awesome. Get the book.

Stretching - Awesome.

Personal finance - Awesome. Get the book. Matt's channel in general is awesome.

Meditation - Awesome beyond imagination. Just ****ing do it. I'm tired of telling people to get on it and they want to but still don't. I know it's hard in the beginning. I know it sucks. It will get better. A lot better. Trust me. Just ****ing do it.

I did an involuntary experiment last week and barely meditated. It sucked beyond comprehension. I felt like I couldn't think properly. It really felt like I was borderline ******ed. Ask my friends, I must have behaved in weird ways (and that says a lot in my case). Once you improve your mental clarity you will be angry at yourself for not doing it earlier. You will not want to go back. Also, don't be lazy; get the paperback, not the audiobook.



Go get it tigers
CRAI



Wholesome threadsaver

Cool update and thanks for sharing your introspections on things.
In regard to the quoted:
Why you could not maintain your practice within this week and you also said, that friends from you have noticed you acting in weird ways - why is the latter one in your case, particularly telling?

I also do wonder a bit about you recommending so much, imho super basic, mental-masturbating and newbish self-help-stuff bout psychology, finances and what not.
Tbh this seems to me pretty level_One in terms of self-actualization and more like 100 steps backwards to where I would picture you.
Maybe I do not get something there, but this area is usually where all we noobs have started already and have already found that there is nothing too interesting and mindblowing imo.

If it is all right, I would also like to ask for a very practical feedback and advice from you in terms of meditating:
I am still within stage 1 and do meditate now daily for 30min - wanna stretch it over time to 50 min and then move on with the book to stage 2.

I am a bit disappointed so far, that Culadasa gives lots of great basic advices, but does not go too deep into practical difficulties, practicioners might experience.
I give two examples:

1.) He says that our meditation-object is not focusing on the breath itself, but on the sensations (that was by the way for me something new and I got it all the time before wrong - so nice, have learned here something^^), which the breath generates.
Our main meditation-object are supposed to be the sensation which our breath generated on, at and within our nose, right?
Now I feel sensations when the breath comes in and goes out (stronger on the in-breath), but especially after breathing out, there is a longer break - on what do you focus then your attention when you cannot feel anymore any sensations in/around your nose which shall be generated by your breath?

2.) Do you have in general any advices how to avoid manipulating your breathing, in general - it sounds so easy to say "just let your breath naturally arise and go, without manipulating it", but somehow I struggle there.

If you one day will have your own website and coaching-service, I might see that diving deeper into practical difficulties, might be something where you could fill a void and take off from other teachers in this area.

One additional general question:
What is your opinion and what are your thoughts on TM?

Anyways, as said - great update and good luck to you, in the meanwhile!

Ridiculous variance today deserves a post imo




@Magistero:
Re self-development. Real advice is always simple and timeless; don't look for something complicated. My recommendations aim to help you sort out the good advice from the bad and refer you to material you can trust.


Stage 1 is just about establishing a practice. If you routinely meditate every day then you can already move on to stage 2.

1) focus on the space between the in- and outbreath
2) 6 point preparation; set the intention to relax; reduce stress in life in general
3) No experience with TM

stretchhh

Do you ever have intrusive thoughts along the lines of the Universe itself is causing you to run greatly below AI EV cause like we live in a predetermined self aware Universe and it is testing human consciousness (micro aspects of it's own self) to see if it has attained a certain level of enlightenment and if your consciousness gets frustrated at observing terribly bad luck streaks then that means it fails "the test". And if only you abandon your quest for inner silence and start to have hopeful expectations again will the Universe then allow you run at or above AI EV? You ever think about stuff like that?

Thanks for all the input

In regard to the quoted:
Would this not be only applicable if our object would be the breathing in itself, instead of the sensation which it causes around, in our noses?

I don't think the universe would test us like that. If it was self aware, it would already know where we were at. And assuming everything was predetermined, it would only play with our AI EV to get to some known outcome that is somehow beneficial for it.

I quote myself to annoy you one last time with this one, since this
breathing-pause after the breathout and before you breath again in, really is a struggle to me, but I done some testing and wanna hear your opinion on this one.

Your first advice did not work, since focusing on the break itself would involve the need to take the focus away of my meditation object which is not the breath itself as you should know according to Yates, but rather the sensations around/in the nosetrills/nose which is caused (not limited to it?) by the breath.

So what I have tried now in the break after the breathout is to keep my focus on the meditation-object (nose and are around) and either focus on remaining sensations there, or if noone are to spot on the break of sensation (nothingness) in/around the nose, until I breath in again and new sensations would arrive in the relevant area.

Do you think this makes sense and is a legit way to handle it?

I am by the way now at stage 2 and things are getting to make more fun.
Like the spotting (Aha-moments) whenever I notice that my focus has shifted away from my object and then bringing my focus back to it.
Can already see some progress in terms of an increased amount of those "Aha"/Catching-moments and also in a reduced length of where my mind wanders around, i.e. has forgotten my meditation object.^^

So that's already something, I

When you think your webpage might go online btw.?
Obv. will recommend it to my mates and also in a german meditation forum, which I have sometimes visited in the past.
Looking forward to your project

You're not taking your focus away from the meditation object (sensations). Your attention stays in the same place, while the sensations and breaks come and go.

Read chapter 3 where he talks about this, he calls it 'connecting'.

Ah thanks, man - that was exactly what I was wondering about -
cleared now^^
Still at chapter/stage 2 - but will read it up asap.

Just out of curiosity:
Have you (or still doing) done those techniques described in chapter 2 in order to keep your focus on the meditation-object, where you basically focus on the beginning/pause and end of each breath-in and breath-out (again, in reality on the caused sensations) and did it help you?
For me it somehow fukks things up, in terms of that it makes me controlling my breath (like breathing stronger in, controlling rhythm, etc.), which results again in tight, uncomfortable tension...

Seems, I am not the biggest talent of the world, when it comes to meditation

Your observation of the breath will change it. Just don't intentionally control the breath. This is mentioned in the book in the following the breath section.

You don't need talent so much as you need diligence and a (long-term) motivation to meditate.

In there like swimwear. PS not a single fekkn graph on page 1

June
Background music




Hello Friends, how are you doing? I hope you are amazing.

I haven't played much poker this month, life is just too beautiful.
However, I am going on a Vietnam trip with some friends to play a series there, so I will make up for it with a bink.

I told myself that once I make my next 200k, I will quit. Another quitting deadline is the next year period (End of July 2020).


Why you ask? Why would I quit such a money making opportunity?
Because life has so much more to offer!

There are a handful of people in this world that are living lifes beyond anything you can possibly imagine. I'm not talking about people like Dan Bilzerian. I am talking about the people that are shaping the future of our species, that are doing so out of love, compassion, that are living a life of pure meaning. I wish for all of you to experience a life filled with meaning.

Imagining the Future: The Transformation of Humanity | Peter Diamandis | TEDxLA



Additionally, please all of you give meditation a chance. Get the book. I don't gain anything from convincing you to start; I only want you to experience how utterly awesome it can really get.
2 years ago I wouldn't be able to imagine even the slightest % of how I am experiencing life now, and that's not because of a change in content, it's because you have the ability to experience from a level of context. You just have to train it. Context is indescribably beautiful. You are the universe becoming conscious. That's not just something cheesy; it's true. It couldn't be otherwise. And you can experience it like that.

Please have a sit the next couple days and evaluate your life and what's truly meaningful to you. To you. Not to your parents, not to your friends, not to society. What do YOU want to do in this life? What do YOU REALLY want?
No matter how outrageous it is. You can work towards that.
Start by cutting off all the bad habits that are self-destructive and are keeping you from realising your dream life. And then start introducing the things that will make it come true. Incorporate them in a routine. You won't get it perfect initially, doesn't matter. Just. Start. Now.


I'm offering free 15 minutes of life coaching to everyone who really wants to take ownership of the direction of their life; pm me.



Let's get it everyone! Let's live life to the fullest.




“If you think we can't change the world, it just means you're not one of those who will.”

You know how to inspire people
Good luck in Vietnam.