goldisheavy

The dichotomy is not false. It's baseless. There is a difference between something being false and something being without basis. Sounds good. Why would we want to let the ego escape the trap? If something can get caught in a trap, it's not reliable, and we want it caught ASAP so that we may move beyond it. Don't be scared of getting caught in my traps. I will cut your head clean off. Don't worry.

I have to give two thumbs up to walking. I don't know where I would be today if I didn't walk as much as I do. By law we have two 15 min breaks in the state of CA (although it might be federal law too, but I am not a lawyer, so don't ask me). I think originally those were meant to be cigarette breaks. But I take them for walking. That's not to say I worship the law or fear it. What I am saying is... even if you are law-abiding scaredy-cat of a person, a little frightened person (who never speeds on the highway, and pays all your taxes), you still get 2 golden opportunities to walk, right at work, besides lunch. It's definitely true in CA and might be true in your state as well. Of course even if it's not true for your state, you should still walk. If you don't care about your health, no one will... sad, but true. Many people, especially businessmen, will rape your health if it makes them extra 5 cents of profit. So take care of yourself. Walk. Walking is good. It's such a simple, humble activity, with so many benefits and is so underrated. Also, if you wear glasses, take them off while walking. Look at the world with new eyes. Relax and let your vision heal itself. Permit it to heal. It wants to heal if only you permit it. Other problems are often that way too... they want to heal on their own, just get out of the way. Everything is alive. We try to micromanage everything. We push energy here. We take forceful action there. What if the world is alive and knows what it's doing? Wouldn't that make all our actions ornamental, and wouldn't it make all desperate and/or forceful actions the equivalent of rape, at least in some small sense? I don't want to put limits on action and intent, but I'm just asking, are we overdoing it sometimes? Like when we agonize over which path to take, or which job is better, or which girl is the best, or if kundalini if flowing properly or not, etc. The universe knows. Just relax. And act playfully for fun, not so much out of desperation to prolong your life, but to enjoy your life, even if your life is short.

Hear, hear. That's the ultimate truth, but for this to be realized at a relative level, you have to have a very flexible self-identity. If you have rigid ideas about what you are, who you are, what it means to be you in the world, what it means to be you among others, etc.... then there will be the possibility of hurting oneself and causing oneself pain and doing "wrong" to oneself. It's not that it's totally wrong, but firm adherence to convention sets up (necessary but insufficient) conditions for inner conflicts, which are felt as pain. So depending on his stage of spiritual evolution, he may not be able to swallow that bit of advice, at least, not honestly, not where he'd actually benefit from it right away. But still, what you say is true, it's valuable, and it's good to hear anyway.

The real question is... what do you want to see? And then... how can you get to see it? Everything else is the long way around.

Who says I am driven by need? Don't I keep saying that what we think and do is ornamental? Within some conventions, what you say is true. But what I am saying is a lot more valuable and beautiful. What you are saying is just common knowledge that every moron knows. Every moron thinks that knowledge is measured in megabytes and gigabytes and thinks that 10 gigs of info is more than 1 gig. To propound and to defend such thinking is to chase mediocrity, boredom and spiritual uselessness. It's good if you're a software engineer, but utterly useless for the maturation of reasoning faculties, because it doesn't lead toward the tolerance of the inconceivable reality. Having no essence is not the same thing as being essentially the same. I believe I've been saying that phenomena have no essence of any kind. I've been saying that phenomena are baseless. This means that neither sameness nor difference can be established, except ornamentally. This means that knowledge with regard to phenomena cannot enter the extreme of knowing and nor can it enter the extreme of not knowing. What I am saying is vastly more profound and nuanced than what you make it out to be. You're arguing against straw men. This isn't the issue. The issue is this: are identities fixed, or are they in flux? If phenomena are baseless, identities must be in flux. If phenomena are backed by some essence, identities are fixed. If identities are fixed, certain knowledge is possible. It's then possible that there is certain absolute truth and that we can approach this certain absolute truth through the study of science. If identities are influx, that means we can never attain such certain absolute knowledge no matter how hard we try. It also means that unknowing is a fundamental and ineliminable part of cognition and is as night to day, part of nature. It also means that science then is of limited utility and is not the highest wisdom by far. It then means that science is mostly useful in the study of inanimate things, and is relatively useless for understanding life, intention and spiritual mysteries which are as real as day and night. So non-duality doesn't deny the process of denial then, right? Or does non-duality deny denying? Tsk Tsk Tsk! Bad boy. No treat for you.

That's crazy. Everyone knows in 2009 that women can have many orgasms and being intimidated by it is just silly. On the other hand, a man can be intimidated by the looks+aura+presence+charisma+magic of a woman. I am putting so many descriptors with the plus sign because I don't think any of them describe properly what it is that's scary. Maybe it's a feeling like, "how can anyone be so sure of themselves and confident and comfortable in their own skin? don't they have any flaws and weaknesses?" Maybe that's what's scary? I don't know. But if you say it's just knowing that a woman can have many orgasms... I can't believe this is scary at all. That's nothing. Men can have many orgasms too, btw. Men can even ejaculate many times as well. Twice, for sure. But probably more with some training. And if you train not to ejaculate you can probably have orgasms without end, as a man. The thing is... at some point it becomes pointless. Sexual pleasure is good, but is it THAT good that it's worth training for it and structuring your entire life around it? That's why there aren't that many takers for tantric sex. It's too much work for not enough reward. Just my take. /random blurb mode off

It's OK that you think this. Just please understand that this is exactly what I disagree with. We don't know more about anything than we knew 200 years ago. We know differently. That's all. Just differently. That's all I am saying. In other words: I don't think knowledge, at the ultimate level, accumulates. Knowledge transforms. At certain specific relative levels knowledge can be said to accumulate; this is true about the realms where relativity forms a convention. Without convention one cannot be cognizant of accumulation. Perhaps not even then. I bet you need a specific kind of convention too. The kind with certain types of time concepts. Think about it this way. In the past, physics books could be written in 1000 pages. And today they also occupy 1000 pages. Just that the content of those pages is different. What changes is the character of the information and not the amount. Information doesn't have amounts. An amount is in and of itself information about something. Information itself is nothing at all. Information has no self. For example, if I say the apple is red, I am talking about the apple. It's information about the apple. What's information about information? If information amount increased, that would be information about information. Where is information about information stored and is that store a part of or the reason for increase? One more example which will only work if you're a materialist/physicalist. If you're a physicalist, then the universe contains a finite amount of particles. What changes is how these particles are arranged, and not the amount. So the raw amount of information is constant. Only its character/flavor changes. One more example is the brain, again for the physicalists. The number of brain cells is relatively constant, but how they are connected changes. A person 2000 years ago, whom we would consider to be a raving moron, had roughly the same amount of neurons and neural connections as people do today. Same amount of information but with different flavor. If you're a non-physicalist, like me, some of those examples won't work, and then we'd have to delve into what it means to inform. When we investigate what it means to be informed about anything, we will understand that this property cannot be measured quantitatively.

Here's my experience on that. I do get bored in some sense. In what sense is that? Well, obviously I know what to expect to a large degree. I can still get surprised, but I am 90% right about what to expect, OK? Part of what makes sex magic is relating to a NEW human being. When you find a new girl, you want to feel how she's like in bed. That's fun. Once you feel it, then you know how it is. So that part of fun goes away. However, how is it that people stay together? Well, first of all, if sex was reason why people got together, then I guess they answer is -- they don't stay together. But truth is, many people get together for more reasons than just for sex. Reasons like companionship, for example. Secondly, the sex doesn't have to become predictable either. It's possible to keep it alive and unique. I do that with my wife. It doesn't mean we go have sex on the roof or anything like that, but it does mean every session is somewhat different. So it doesn't get completely formulaic. So there IS some element of surprise and mystery, even if it's subtle. I always think about what it means to be together. I think, would I like it if someone dumped me at the first inconvenience? No I wouldn't. Would I like it if someone dumped me if I lost my penis? I wouldn't. Since I wouldn't like that, I don't do it to others. If I or my wife had the mind that marriage has to always be convenient, we'd dump each other like 100 times many years ago. It's because both of us are willing to put up with some inconveniences, that we can stay together. This includes sexual ones. Sometimes my wife complains I don't have enough sex. But I do masturbate a lot. So, for me the solution is to stop being lazy, masturbate less, and to have more sex with my wife. But that's just me. I also like to blame it on my wife too. For example, I tell her she needs to go to sleep naked. She likes to sleep in clothes. I feel that clothes are like armor. They are pain in the ass and hard to get off, and I don't want a big hassle. It's hard to get spontaneously touchy-feely with someone who has 2 layers of clothes. See? So I blame my wife for all my problems. That's why I am a good guy and why my marriage works so well.

Do you think men would have all this great medicine if none of us ever got sick? No. Medicine seems amazing to a sick person. But medicine is anywhere between boring and poisonous to a healthy person. If the only food you eat is medicine, you are doomed. Part of getting better is eating something that's not a medicine. If non-medicine is not eaten, then the person dies and the medicine that is eaten is wasted. Understanding can be different, experience can be different. But different is not the same as "more". "More" experience attempts to insinuate something about quantity. Saying that experience is "different" attempts to insinuate something about quality. From the point of view of pure awareness, experience of time is qualitative and not quantitative. Time becomes quantitative for the thoroughly unenlightened people and for physicalists who need to measure time to make their theories of physics.

I've already explained my thoughts on this issue in another thread. I just hope you've read it, but other than that, I have nothing else to add except: hang in there... it will pass (everything passes) and while it's passing, just relax. Slightly longer version of "relax, it will pass": It's hard to relax though when there is pain. That's because you're thinking there is a possibility of damage to your quality of life or a possibility to a premature end of your life. This kind of consideration puts one in a state of panic. So in order to relax in times like these you have to be a little insane (or a lot insane). You have to go beyond the instinct of self-preservation. This does not mean you should harbor any kind of aggressive or violent thought toward yourself. Think kindly of yourself. At the same time, as you think kindly of yourself and your body, do not hold onto it. Let it be how it is, even if that means you have to die or become a cripple. Do you see what I mean? I don't mean you should think, "I will become a cripple and it's OK if I do." I don't mean that. I mean, in order to heal yourself you have to disentangle yourself from your idea of who you are and what it means to be happy and healthy. Unless this is done, you're just barely coping with your condition, and have no energy to heal it, since your condition, when one is entangled in it, is very very burdensome and it is all the person can do is to struggle for the next breath, and never mind healing oneself! So, to summarize: suffuse yourself with kindness and keep your mind open. Don't wait for an end. Don't try to hope for anything. Things will change anyway, even if you don't hope. But hoping just makes waiting more painful. This "not hoping" is not the same as being negative or hopeless. It just means you have faith you'll get better, but you don't agonize over when and how and you don't try to hurry up the time, so to speak. Try to realize insight from your condition. Don't let it go to waste. There is wisdom in all situations.

Ahh... we have a contemplator here. My god, you are a rarity in these parts. An endangered species. You are right. I don't know it clearly. Nor can it be said I know it unclearly. When you are no longer certain of the difference between knowing and not knowing, you'll be like me. Then thinking and not thinking are different only ornamentally, while being the same in essence -- in that they both have no essence of any kind. Ordinarily health is very important. A person doesn't want to hurt. But someone who doesn't know men is not aware that pain is bad. How is pain different from color red? How is discomfort different from comfort? Is it the same? Or is the world alive? If the world is alive, what was the same becomes different and quickly becomes the same again. In that case, does wisdom in terms of worldly advice have any use? If someone wants to achieve a certain concrete position within some certain and concrete framework, such as for example, convention, then you can advise such person. But if that's not the goal, then what will your advise be based off? Let me give you this example. Imagine a healthy sight. In this case, the person can see all the colors. But this person says, "My favorite color is green and I don't like yellow". Would your advice be, "Paint everything you have green and realize green-ness within all things and banish the yellow from your mind?" Wouldn't that just be imposing a limitation on a healthy sight? In fact, if the person could only ever see green and nothing else, wouldn't such vision become monochromatic and thus disabled? And so are we. Green to us is good health and other "obviously good" things. Yellow to us is all the obviously wrong things we want to eliminate. Maybe you're like an elephant trying to save the mouse from the dog. Still misguided, don't you think? But then again... I do belong to you. If you want to think you understand me, please do.

Well, you can PM me for an email or my IM id, if you like. You can talk directly to me, if that's what you want. But, I am aware of what the conventional approach is, why, and why it's also doomed to fail. Besides, what I am doing is not exactly unconventional either. Convention has records of similar approach as "mine" in many places, such as Zen's Lin Chi, or many crazy sages in Dzogchen. Like one time someone came to debate something with one of the guys, and he just literally showed the delegation his dick. And they all left. Etc. Not everyone was a smooth little pebble even in the traditions. And there is a good reason why. If you don't like it, try to axe it. See what happens. Learn from the subsequent experience. I will never understand the situations more than I already do. I may have an understanding that's different, but not MORE. Do you understand why? Did you read my first reply to you up above? In full? Anyway, I sense kindness from you, but it seems you are misguided. Like a mouse trying to save an elephant from a barking dog. Still, misguided as you seem to be, kindness is a good thing. I like it. May all your truest wishes come true.

I think there is great insight in this thread. One time I had a friend who was very wild. I loved hanging out with him. We'd go around and he'd make passes at all the women, eat things that he saw out around the office, talk to anyone about anything. I was very attracted to his uninhibited behavior, but I was also scared. I mean, I didn't feel safe. I felt like something bad might happen to me. Nothing bad happened, but that's the thing. We want to be uninhibited, but we don't want to pay the price of admission. Every time he'd snag some cake off the conference room table or some such in the office, I'd get nervous thinking someone will notice and yell at us.

I've enjoyed this post. I think you probably get a wrong image of me up there. And for that matter, the wrong image of all sentient life. We are all very mysterious even as it is. Even the most hard-core of physicalists is a magical being. Let me try to explain my approach to you, since I like you. Most people pick one aspect of themselves they don't like and try to improve it. In spiritual circles this almost always, unfortunately, falls on thinking. So the person gets real busy. They think, "My thinking is bad because I think too much, or wrong thoughts, or blah blah". And they have all kinds of problems they are happily busy with. But it's false busy! False.... false... and pussy-footed to boot! So I come and say, "no, your thoughts are perfect!" BAM! Now what??? Now you have nothing to do! You have nothing to fight with. Nothing to adjust, to slow down, to eliminate... you're left JOBLESS! You have a spiritual path without a path now. A job without any work. What now? Suddenly you're out there in here.... in the void. See what I mean? The satisfaction of the gradual daily struggle, of identifying with others based on that struggle, of having predictable days and predictable techniques applied... all that shit is GONE. You are perfect now... WHAT NOW? That's huge. The biggest break through I've had was when I realized I was enlightened. I realize I don't need to perform any more tasks. No more struggling. No more learning. No more adjusting this and that. WHAT NOW?? What now? What now? That was the biggest question. I was like, "HOLY CRAP!! I have nothing to do and I feel lost without a job... I want to get busy with something, but what?" This wanting to be busy -- that was a real problem, see? As long as I was "not yet enlightened" I could always blame something or someone except myself. For example, if I feel stumped, "Well, it's OK for me to feel stumped, because I am not yet enlightened after all." Or if I feel sick and I don't know how to heal myself, "Well, it's OK that I don't know this, because I am not enlightened." And the good thing was that I didn't foresee any enlightenment any time soon, so this excuse would be good pretty much indefinitely. Neat. And then BAM, and it fell away. I realized I AM BUDDHA. This is it. No more excuses. Suddenly the game is no longer chasing a perpetually receding goal that's perpetually in the future to "WHAT NOW?" That's a different game. Also, if you believe that there is such a thing as "extra-sensory perception" that's just an indication that your contemplation is weak. Just think it over. Even abiding body-lessly in the void is not extra-sensory. Just drop your prejudice with regard to senses. Exactly. People just can't believe it. It's too "good" to be true. It's actually not that good, because it also means you're completely responsible for everything. You're even responsible for how much responsibility you may want to take. Taking too little responsibility or taking too much responsibility may be irresponsible on your part.

Ahh... assuming this is genuine information (not all guys are 100% forthcoming with their SOs about their habits), he might have a genuinely low sex drive. As in... that's how he is and it may not actually be a problem. Obviously it's a problem for you. But have you asked him if he enjoys his life? If he doesn't masturbate and doesn't get his rocks off in other ways (like with other women or men or animals or... never mind), AND he is truly content and happy, he is not sick at all. He's healthy and that's his normal pattern or a normal phase that he's going through. By phase, I mean something that can last a few billion years before change, I don't mean something that's guaranteed to be over in a week. There is a guy described in "The Seven Taoist Masters" book who had so much sex in the brothel, that he genuinely got satisfied... as in... he satisfied his sexual urge 100%. He got it. It's like he wanted ice cream and most people eat one spoonful and they are done (leaving some desire unsatisfied). This guy ate gallons upon gallons for years and finally he could not have any more ice cream. He's over the ice cream. While it's just a story, I truly believe this can happen too. So if someone was extremely sexually active with many many women, it's possible they also lose interest due to extreme satisfaction and elimination of any kind of surprise or mystery from sex. But the guy above would not get angry if asked about his non-existent sex drive though! He's be quite happy to explain anything you want to know about it. So getting angry when asked about it seems like there is some kind of problem, although the problem might not be what we might think it is. Maybe he has conflicting thoughts about what it means to be a man and who/what he is, and anything that reminds him of that conflict gets him angry? If that's true, the real solution for him is not necessarily to start having more sex, but it could be to throw away his prejudice with regard to what it means for a man to be a man. Or not! I don't know. I am saying it's not something that always leads to more sex when resolved. Anyway, the real answer from me is, "I don't know!" You have to use your own understanding of human nature, your innate wisdom, intuition and the information available to you to figure it out. Sorry.

It's not a bad video, although I do think that Gangaji takers herself a little too seriously. She has a phony affect in her speech, but the message is good one. The fakeness comes from her thinking of herself as a Guru. Pretty much all Gurus have this problem to some extent. Call it Guruitis, if you will. The only exception might be those who don't take their title seriously. People, consciously or unconsciously act in accordance with their perceived social role/identity. For example, Obama has a phony affect when he gives a speech too. He goes into this, "I am the Prez" mode. In other words, by "Guru" I mean something very general, and not necessarily anything related to Hinduism. Your link is not the cliff notes version though. That's why I'm replying to you. Someone who wants a real cliff-notes version needs to keep looking. This is a really dumb argument. You need to wake up and recognize that all people have equally empty experience. Thinking in and of itself is an experience as well. When you're dealing with the ultimate concerns, such as what we do in spirituality, all experience is the same. There is no "better" experience or "more" experience. It's the same. The only differentiation is brought in by YOU as the consumer. YOU are making some of it better and some worse. You need to own up to that. Experience in and of itself, prior to you making a judgment, is not inherently better or worse or in the middle.

I disagree. It's just as easy to pacify the "kundalini" phenomena as it is to stir it. I've done both myself. I've pacified mine because I didn't enjoy the sensation and because I found that I didn't need to feel that kind of sensation in order to feel powerful or to feel healthy or to feel magical or to feel spiritually whole, or to feel any other thing. Whatever I could imagine as my goal, I couldn't imagine how "kundalini" sensation would help to further it. The only good thing I have to say about it is that it's fun and you can learn a thing or two from playing with it. However, all that can be done through other venues, like for example, lucid dreaming, or non-kundalini esoteric phenomena, which are not as annoying. You know, the hidden (non-public) phenomena are of many flavors. Getting wild heat/cold/electricity/whatever going up and down your spine or other body organs or up and down meridians is JUST ONE OPTION OF MANY. Many people read this or that master talk about Kundalini and simply assume, "This is IT, it can only be THIS WAY. For my spiritual progress to be real, I MUST HAVE THIS KUNDALINI THINGAMAJICKAMER-THINGY happening to me. If I don't get it, I am not as cool as the other kids." Once you understand that all phenomena are empty in the Buddhist sense of the word "empty", then all desire for energy-like feelings goes out the window. I still have desires, but they are simpler and more direct. I don't want an intermediary phenomena, and if I do want it, I will make it myself. I take full responsibility for these mind constructs and the physical world, never mind kundalini, is a mind construct. It's only people who think that some phenomena are truer than others, that some phenomena are emptier than others, it's only those people who are attracted to traditions with rigid, supposedly pre-existent energy structures. If you grok emptiness, you understand the fluidity, the mental-constructedness of everything, so don't construct something that annoys you just to fit in! People.... the sense of belonging might kill you if you want it too much.

WAIT WAIT WAIT!!! You there! You have a healthy contemplative mind! Do not abandon it! Do dwell on the nonsense of the traditions! Probe deeper. Don't stop now! It's not unhealthy! You're one of the FEW healthy people. Please continue as you have been. Don't try to change yourself to fit into this or that tradition. They are all baseless. How do you behave with baseless things? It's not that they are "fake". Fake means its intent is to deceive. For example, works of fiction are baseless too, but they don't intend to deceive. The intent is to entertain, so they are good. When phenomena are understood to be baseless, it's not that they are fake! Rather, they are OPEN. So the possibilities are WIDE OPEN. Now you can choose something that's more entertaining, something that leads to a healthier, from your point of view, life, something that you actually enjoy and want to practice... and maybe that something is not any of the traditions you know? The mind has its own structure. That structure, while is dynamic and malleable, is nonetheless not a non-structure. So respect it. Learn what makes you tick. And whether you want to remain the same or want to change who and what you are, respect your current incarnation. It's not all you can be, but it's not fake either. You have good instincts though! Sharp mind! You are not unhealthy by any means. You are healthy. Oh yea, I have the same "problem" as you. Except it's not a problem at all. It's a blessing. You may find it hard to fit in, but the long term bonus of this psychological make up is amazing.

This merely reveals your conceptions with regard to mind. Your statement has nothing to do with mind as it actually is, but only with how you currently understand it.

May I? Ok, first of all, I recommend not to use any specific visualizations until your contemplation has been firmly established. You're not much of a thinker yet. You don't really understand phenomena. You don't understand your own feelings and you don't even know what you believe. You have thousands of unexamined, taken-for-granted beliefs right now, floating in your mind and affecting you. So if you attempt to visualize specific things in that situation, you risk doing bad things to yourself. Why? That's because your visualization is too specific, so you are like playing with some specific part of a car engine without understanding how it works. You can get your hands cut off, or the car might blow up... You best not do that. So what is a safe beginner visualization? It has to be abstract, generic. For example, visualize kindness. Focus on love. Focus on peace. Focus on a vision of diffuse gentle light -- non-specific light. It shouldn't be some concrete and specific light. It should not be in any specific location. It should be closer to the idea of light than to something that appears next to a lit light bulb. Keep it general. Do not touch your body organs in a specific way. Like don't focus on your kidney. Do not focus on your spine. That's too specific. You can visualize your body brimming with health. That's SAFE. That's general and non-specific so it can't hurt you as easily. And don't overdo it either. Too much of even water leads to premature death. And finally, don't just follow meditations uncritically. You should become a contemplator. Think! Deeply. Quietly. Peacefully. Think. Contentedly. Playfully curiously think. Every day. For years. Ask questions. I don't mean ask people questions. Ask yourself questions! Yourself. Ask yourself. Then quiet. And listen. You will see. Much bullshit will fall away. Many unexamined beliefs will melt into irrelevance. New insights will emerge. After you do this for many many years, eventually you'll develop great, GREAT sensitivity and insight. When things happen, you'll know why. You'll also know many alternatives. For example you'll know how things could have happened and how they can develop in the future along many alternative paths and you will also know how to pick one path over the other etc.. At that point, you'll also have good insight into the specifics of various details. THEN it is safe to do specific, concrete visualizations. Then you may understand your body so well (if that's a topic of your contemplation that comes up often during the years!) that it's OK and safe and even good to do some specific body organ visualization to tweak something in your body. Until then, don't tweak what you don't understand. Let me give you this example. Imagine you arrive before a big orchestra. The orchestra players know how to play. But you're a newbie conductor who doesn't know how to conduct. If you try to tell individual players how to play (giving too specific a direction) you will create garbage sound. But if you just generally say "guys, play faster", then it will be OK, because the orchestra players can naturally play fairly well even without help, and just telling them to play faster will not have a disastrous effect. You won't be micromanaging them. Then, after much, much experience and study, you will understand every orchestra player in and out, and THEN and only then you can safely give directions to speed up only the TUBA player or to make only some violin a little louder and nothing else, etc. But if you try to micromanage without understanding, the obvious result is failure. So in the beginning, let your direction be general, abstract. Good luck! And don't take yourself too seriously.

Thanks!

I have a lot of experience with this. First, if you simply take off your minus lenses, and spend as much time without them as is humanly possible, you'll get an improvement right away. It usually only takes about 1 hour to 2 days to see a marked improvement. Secondly, I believe that the body is not just some dumb matter that gets stuck. The body has a way to refashion itself based on how flexible the mind is. So I firmly believe that myopia can be cured completely at any age. BUT.... and this is a big but... you must be dedicated! To cure myopia, you don't have to rely on the physicalist explanations of phenomena, such as how the lens works and what shape the eyeball is, etc. It's just like when you play tennis, you don't need to know the ins and outs of the function of calcium in your bones -- that's just a distraction. What you need to know is how it feels to serve the ball correctly, etc. You don't need to know what happens to the ligaments, etc. -- that's the western, mechanical-engineering approach. The body is beyond mechanical engineering. If you rely only on the physicalist explanations, then something like www.myopia.org is the best you can get, because it stays within the bounds of the physicalist mindset -- and it's only obvious why, the guy was studying electrical engineering. He's an engineer by profession and thinks that everything is like an engineering problem to be solved with an engineering approach. That's not to say myopia.org is bad. But it IS very limited. To cure myopia you have to develop a different relationship with the world, and with visions in particular. Think about it -- many people read books, but not all develop myopia. Many people use computer 24/7, but not all develop myopia. Why not? That's because those people have a different relationship with the world. Consider this: I developed myopia when I was 5, pretty much before I read anything! How? Why? Obviously not from reading. Not from computers. I had perfect vision though! I remember seeing clearly when I was a child (I have memories from 3 and younger). Something happened in my mind to create a rejection or fear of the world. After this my vision worsened. I can probably write a whole book about this. Long story short... relax. Relax. And... after you overcome the fear of seeing, the second issue for me has been, I no longer care about seeing. So once the fear is gone, I was like, "OK, I am not afraid, but I have no interest... blah". Ok, so then the interest must be restored too. You have to have the right attitude to see clearly: 1. Interested and playfully curious. 2. NOT obsessed (no attachment). 3. Not scared (no aversion). Often one psychodynamic shows elements that go hand in hand: obsession for example can be the result of fear. So if I am afraid I might get attacked by a monster, I am obsessed with seeing that monster before it comes... Thus I overfocus. It can become an ingrained habit. Etc. A different person can have a different psychodynamic going on. Some people refuse to see the world at all. These people's vision cannot be corrected AT ALL, by ANY lens. You give them minus lens, and the eye lens over-flattens to get back to the blurry state. You give them plus lens, and the lens over-focuses. You try to correct one type of astigmatism and another quickly appears. So in this case, there is a very strong determination not to see, and no instruments and no lens can fix this even a little bit. This is rare, but it happens sometimes. So watch yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be a little playful. Be interested and don't be scared. Walk around without the lenses and enjoy. Don't become desperate to see. Gently and carefully gaze. Don't strain. Blink and gaze. And just really enjoy yourself. Don't judge your vision. Don't say "blah, this is all fuzzy garbage... I cannot succeed.... this is hopeless ,etc." Do not say that to yourself. Learn to enjoy how you are and at the same time know firmly that you will get better. And you will feel a big improvement soon. The first improvement comes quickly, so it will give you a lot of faith that the process works. Allow yourself to explore. From my experience the only limit to this is reverting back to bad habits. For me, it was that I became scared of seeing too clearly. I thought I had done the impossible and it must have been a hallucination or I was going crazy. I made myself go back to fuzzy because this is closer to "reality" in my idiotic mindset. Later I overcame that problem, but another problem appeared.... I just didn't give a damn. Etc... So I would give up, lose interest in gazing, etc... I'd get lazy and put big minus lenses on, etc. My prescription is -9, but I wear -5.5. You should do this too. Get yourself a weaker prescription first. Improve your vision as I described. But you must remember to constantly go to weaker and weaker prescriptions and don't give up. If you persist, don't give up, you will for sure, definitely overcome myopia. Just don't get lazy or scared and revert yourself to strong minus prescription. Keep those for emergencies and avoid using them.

I don't think it's a good idea to refer to your mind as if it was an entity that's different from you. This gives your mind a unique and distinct-from-you personality and can create a big problem for you. You might get a split personality disorder if you're not careful. Your mind IS you. It's not something other than you that's sabotaging you. It's you. Embrace it. Listen to yourself. What's probably happening is an internal conflict. On one hand, you want to pass some test, which means you want to get along with convention. On the other hand, something deep inside is telling you that convention is not a good thing for you, so it doesn't want to study for the test. Believe me, if you thought convention was a wonderful thing, you would enjoy studying for the test. You'd not be able to sleep because you'd be thinking how cool it will be to study for the test the next day, then you'd wake up and get to study right away because it's so wonderful. But that's not what's happening, is it? Face the truth. The test probably sucks and is useless, and you don't like how life is structured right? You need to look into those feelings. Don't try to control them by brute force. Understand them instead. There are a couple of solutions, but they all follow the same principle: 1. You understand your feelings and authentically, honestly and without any tricks or subterfuge convince yourself that you don't need to feel like you had. So the conflicting feelings vanish. In that case, you will easily study for the test and pass it effortlessly without a second thought. 2. You understand your feelings and realize that you feel correctly. You realize that what society is doing or what the situation is trying to impose on you is not good. You then become at peace. Conflict vanishes because you no longer strive after two mutually exclusive things. You might decide to skip the test and do something more worthwhile instead. 3. You realize that convention is not as horrible as you felt, but you also realize that your feelings are not as wrong and as interfering as you thought. Both side of the conflicting emotions/beliefs come to the common ground. There is harmony. This might mean you study for the test, but not as hard. You settle for a B or a C+, and you enjoy life knowing it's good enough and you do other productive or relaxing things with the rest of the time you saved. And there can be other options too. But the principle is always the same. You investigate the conflict, and you create more congruency or at least more harmony in dis-congruency. This can only work when your contemplation is of utmost sincerity. There must be no bullshit and no self-lies of any kind. You have to stop trying to isolate a part of you and stop trying to brand it an impostor. It's all you. All of it. Internal conflicts happen all the time, and it's good to learn to understand them, what they are, how to feel them out, how to resolve them, etc.

I enjoy reading Mak Tin Si's posts. And I also think that Mak Tin Si brings a valuable contribution to this forum. Do I disagree with some or many things that Mak Tin Si says?? YES, OF COURSE. But this forum would be missing out without Mak Tin Si. Mak Tin Si is at his best when he brings information here from his tradition as he was trained in it. He's not a great contemplator, but he's a valuable distributor and preserver of his tradition. And besides, if only great contemplators were allowed here, this forum would only have about 2 or 3 people here. Most of you morons would be banned. So if all of you are not banned, as dim witted as most of you are, and as full of fake pretentious superficial politeness as you all are, then Mak Tin Si should be allowed to stay. To ban him would be the height of hypocrisy and a heavenly retribution on this forum for such action would be absolutely certain. Learn some tolerance.

Don't seek the ultimate truth in the relative truth. But then...maybe that's exactly where you should look for it... just not how you have been doing so far! Try a different approach.