If it works for you fine and dandy, but I think you're stepping under an umbrella and claiming it stopped raining.
I just don't think you're doing what you think you're doing, and I'm sure an EEG would prove me right.

If you focus intently on something with full concentration like I talked about before, the time flies by and you block out all thoughts and inputs that don't concern what you're focused on. That's why you don't notice Mom walk in during an orgasm.

I can see it being a handy tool when you have too many things going on at once and want to concentrate your thoughts on just one. But if you could shut everything down it's like hiding in the bathroom with three kids waiting outside the door. When you come out your back where you started, and if you don't come out you're a vegetable.

I'm thinking on the page here so feel free to correct...


A lot of work has been done on that. We're talking about at least two different states. If I remember correctly, Tolle is focused more on the narrative in our heads. We don't suppress that voice, we acknowledge it, accept it, and stop playing with it. It's that obsessive play with unproductive thoughts where pain resides. I'd call it a meditative state that we carry into the active world. It is still raining but we don't obsess about it.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0319210631.htm

A new study suggests that nondirective meditation yields more marked changes in electrical brain wave activity associated with wakeful, relaxed attention than just resting without any specific mental technique.

The other state is flow, which is where Toad is when he is laying down that sweet bass line. This is a fully activated task focused brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...and-creativity

Technically, flow is defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” It’s also a strange state of consciousness. In flow, concentration becomes so laser-focused that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Our sense of self and our sense of self consciousness completely disappear. Time dilates—meaning it slows down (like the freeze frame of a car crash) or speeds up (and five hours pass by in five minutes). And throughout, all aspects of performance are incredibly heightened—and that includes creative performance.

How this all works comes down to neurobiology. Flow is the product of profound changes in standard brain function. In the state, our brainwaves move from the fast-moving beta wave of normal waking consciousness down to the far slower borderline between alpha and theta waves. Alpha is associated with day-dreaming mode—when we can slip from thought to thought without much internal resistance. Theta, meanwhile, only shows up during REM or just before we fall asleep, in that hypnogogic gap where ideas combine in truly radical ways. Since creativity is always recombinatory—the product of novel information bumping into old thoughts to create something startling new—being able to slip between thoughts quickly and combine them wildly enhances creativity at a very fundamental level.

That's neat.

Bruce, maybe it was just a poor choice of analogy, but I'm not shielding myself at all. I'm just not mad that I'm wet.

I'm opening myself to the reality and surrendering to it. If I can do something, I'll do it. If I can't, I'll accept it. Like Kung fu. You don't resist the opponent's attack, you yield to it and use his energy against him.

It also may be just that you are thinking that I'm talking about walking around all day in a daze. I'm not. For the vast majority of my day, I'm engaged in activity. I work. A lot. At those times, I'm giving my full attention to that task, that moment.

When I step outside for a smoke, I'm trying not to dwell on past or future. Or being mad about how fucking humid it is. Gah.

Yeah, that makes sense rather than taking random incoming you're working hard at keeping shit out.
That part I understand, I've had it happen to me many times. Evidently when it does I make faces, I've had people kid me about that.

I'm sure you're never in a daze at work, you're too good at what you do not to be on top of it.
The only thing I was questioning is the process, it's not magic something is actually going on and I think Griff got a handle on it.

When somebody tells me something happens I immediately want to know how/why. That's how I roll, fat people always roll ya know. :blush:

you read about the stages of grief. they lead to acceptance. but each step is some form of resistance to the reality. bargaining, denial, anger, etc. all are resistance.


this just gets ME to the end of the process without spending a lot of time in the other stages. I did do those things for about 2 weeks until I remembered...or was ready to stop suffering.... to pick the book up again.

Part 2 is up

That last question and answer... At about 33 min.

He does a pretty good job summarizing the idea of awakening. And the hand trick is new to me. I found that illuminating. All that inner body awareness stuff was a little weird to me the first few times I read this book (s). But now I kind of get that more.

And then it seemed he wrapped it up a sentence or two short of giving us the meaning of life. I've heard that answer in another Q&A and it rang true. Ready? Meaning of life ahead.

Set up :
We are part of the universe. Every element consisting of 30 billion year old carbon. You've heard that before. The universe was very simple at the beginning. Then bang. Since that point, it has been increasing in complexity. The alpha is the singularity of the pre bang and the omega lies in ultimate complexity. He doesn't say any of that, but I've read it elsewhere and agree.

Our purpose, as sentient brings is to bear witness to the existence. I think, therefore I am.

Which is widely accepted as a truth. I think it's a little off... Might be better as, I am aware, therefore I am. You don't need to think to be aware. You do need to be aware to think.

But yeah, the universe wants to be aware of itself. We are it's proof that it exists. That's why we are alive.

Could be a translation issue. A Frenchman, trying to articulate himself in Latin, getting translated into English. According to my vast research reading the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia entry on this, he also wrote "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt...."

Yes

It's been a long time since PHI 101 but "I think, therefore I am" is at a base level trying to establish a proof that there is truth and that we exist. This is not just a dream world and we can make sense of it. Something like that

Rubin's next move should be bringing together Tolle and Peterson. I wager that will happen and it will be spectacular.

That would be interesting. I'd never heard of Jordan Peterson. I spent some time watching him on a panel in Australia and he seemed pretty sharp. I've just downloaded his 12 rules book, and am listening to his overture.

First impression is that he is a very sophisticated thinker. Complexity of thought espousing simplicity of living. Whereas Tolle espouses minimal thought to create inner calm and thereby simple living... They may agree on the goal, but diverge in method. 12 rules vs 1 rule.

I'll say more once I know Peterson better.

Whew. Listening to a clinical psychologist talk about the hierarchy of lobsters and the status counter in our brain stems is exhausting.

I feel like I'm rowing upstream.