Athanor

Well, you didn't help, but at least you made me laugh

Actually, I was joking. But since you take it so serious, energy without "message", i.e. without information in it, is pure chaos, a potentially destructive force, not a creative one. It is information stored in energy that makes energy creative. Don't be misguided by the usual thought about what information might be. It is not equal to words in a book, or data stored on your hard drive. Information, from a universal perspective, is more like the other side of energy. Energy and information are like waves and particles. Where something behaves like a wave, there it is energy; and where it behaves as a particle, there it is information. Whatever you perceive is never energy itself, it is the information stored in the energy. For instance, you don't experience sunlight, you only experience it's color (frequency) and intensity - i.e. heat (amplitude). So information is some sort of manifestation of energy, thus life energy has to hold certain information ("message") in itself. However, through the manipulation of information, we are able to manipulate energy. Thus, via changing the "message" of the water, we can change the actual energy stored in it, and the effect it will have on things.

The Internal Smile is a method developed by Mantak Chia. He's got plenty of books on the healing abilities of the Tao. I also tried that, but I found it too complex (partially because I didn't understand all of it due to language differences and I didn't want to translate the whole book). In my mind, my concept of healing is effortless, it's not about forcing yourself to do something. You see, forcing and pushing yourself around is something what actually leads to some sort of disturbance, it removes you from balance. You can't get balance back by pushing yourself the other way around, you can get it back by avoiding forcing things. Sometimes the only thing that keeps you away from health is the anxiety about illness. Sometimes you let this anxiety drive you when you try to solve the problem of illnesses and get back your health, but you'll never do it this way.

When I was dealing with the shift in my mind from negative attitude to positive, my main purpose was to decrease the influence of my ego on my daily thoughts, and try to stick to a more noble motive. Writings on compassion, especially Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion - written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche - was extremely helpful. Another thing is that I started to practice tonglen, which is a practice - its purpose is to learn to think of others as more important than yourself. The main thing is that there are one or two basic roots which are the sources of all negative thoughts (by negative I mean false, misguided, the kind which leads to a bad habit, a bad health, etc.). To recover and get back to full potential, you can't change each and every negative thought one by one. You have to change that one or two root concepts on which all of them rely. When you change that, your whole mind will turn, and you'll start to see different solutions, walk different ways, and think different thoughts. In my case the roots were my egoism, and the fact that I was afraid of failure. My daily practice is simple. I spend half an hour every day sitting and thinking of others as more important than me; trying to realize that they suffer just like me if not more, and trying to develop some compassion towards them. I don't really feel deep compassion - yet, it's still enough to change my attitude. During this practice I take a few minutes to practice tonglen, you can find many details on the Internet about how to do it. Trying to figure out a way which will lead to perfect health and lets me remain egoistic took too much time for me. I suggest you don't bother yourself with that, there is no such way. I hope I could help.

So, since the sum of organic matter is not equal to living organism - there is still something missing -, it might be certain information that can be carried in water. The information triggers biological processes in organic matter, and behold, its life Ancient mystery solved: life is message in the water

The whole concept is based on the work of Massaru Emoto, he created the process by which he could make a picture of the water molecules and thus actually made thoughts' effects on water proven. I find it quite interesting.

I have an illness which limits my life quite much, so my main purpose is to get healthy again. Everything I practice primarily serves this goal. A less direct reason of practice is to be able to show and teach others whatever I know. Learning from my own experience, if I can reach a higher quality of living, a higher degree of health and balance, then this knowledge can be worth sharing with others.

A most excellent response, Sarnyn, thank you. I must agree with you. Now I just need to learn proper meditation

In regard of the tao, the whole question of motivation is wrong. So what kind of answer do you expect to be given? I wrote that people strive to make things easier for themselves - although expectation might be giving more effort. If everyone was Wu Wei, nothing would get done. See, wu wei (as far as I can grasp it) is about letting the circumstances flow in their own bed, and letting ourselves go with the flow, without attaching to anything. However, civilization is based on changing circumstances, overcoming natural obstacles, giving effort into development, etc. Everything what has ever been achieved by civilized humanity was because of efforts put into it. Without that effort, following wu wei, civilization would vanish, and we just might live a joyful life though, but on a prehistoric level. You can decide whether you want to be happy or successful. Average people try to balance between the two. Tao might lead to enlightenment, and that is nice, but I don't see how humanity would survive if everyone would be a taoist. I'd love to read opinions on this

I don't know about analog/digital stuff. The point was that you can't store arbitrary amount of data in one bit.

Regardless how the mind works, one bit information is 0 or 1. You can't store different amount of data in the same one bit, you can only store one bit data in one bit. You can only store 0 or 1 in it. You might be able to be aware of all the directions, sounds, whatsoever... but your awareness then spreads to many thousands of bits of information, not just 5 or 7. The amount of data that you're aware of, and the time you can be aware of them, increases with the development of your awareness. That's the point of it I guess.

Thanks, I get it so far, move on please

OK, next time please use more grammatically correct sentences because this is really hard to get for me, I'm not native English. Thanks. So as far as I understand what you're saying, this looks a bit forced to me. I started to write down the whole thing but I realized that it wouldn't make much more sense than what you wrote. It probably doesn't matter whether we identify them with numbers, or elements, or colors, or whatsoever. And I agree with you that the process is the point, and not the objects involved in the process. But the process is still not clear to me. If you could explain it slower, please, it would be very nice. I never understood how can someone tell whether something is yin or yang, and what element it consists of. Because you know, everything has many characteristics, and all characteristics can be associated with a different element. So everything contains every element - how do you tell which one is the dominant?

The diet you're talking about is called vitamins The anti-depressant is called vitamin B and magnesium. Oxygen helps you to be energized, smog takes away oxygen. If you stop brushing your teeth then you will avoid an important chemical, but instead of making you motivated, it will make your teeth rotten I feel like you're trying to become motivated without actually doing anything for it. Like you're trying to reach something big without working much... One of the laws of physics taught in the very earliest lessons in school is the energy persistence. Energy means the capability to work, or the capability to change. Energy persistence means that you cannot get out more energy from a system than you've actually put in. Everything contains a certain amount of energy, we can measure how much energy is in your work, and how much energy is in your paycheck In other words, you have to do something to get something. Besides that you actually reach something if you really do something, your mentality also changes - hard work, hard sports, and such (things you do with great effort) build character. The changes it will make in you will help you get motivated in the future Many people, especially nowadays, strive to find easy solutions. We make everything safe, effortless, instant and persistent. Yet, we have more problems than ever. Looking for the easier way only makes things harder.

The thing that awareness contains the body and the brain, is a mere belief; awareness wasn't found inside the body, but it wasn't found outside either. To claim that our essential nature is awareness is not less ridiculous than saying that we don't have awareness at all. What happens with my essential nature when I fall down in a faint? I don't see how could I be aware then. These are ideas having no reliable proof. Not sure if they'll ever have... Materialism was an extremity, it failed, now we are heading towards the opposite extremity, we will most likely fail there again. Sooner or later we'll realize that there is no such thing as matter or spirit; there is only one thing what we perceive in different behaviors. Awareness, consciousness, soul, whatever name you call it, it doesn't matter. The point is that reality is just one. If we deal with two realities, like material and spiritual, then one of them must be illusory - one of them is merely the product of the interaction of our perception and reality. But of course, this is also just a theory which has no reliable proof. Not sure if it'll ever have... The only proof we know we can get for such theories is our own personal experience, but we must remember that our experience might differ from reality.

I know little about hypnosis, so I can't tell how related this is to what I was talking about. Well, the zombie part is the same

I hate to seem stupid, but what's the point in identifying metal as the fifth element? I mean metal is just a form of earth... I think that books and other sources on Tibetan Medicine could give you a fair insight on the issue of the five elements and their relation to one another, since traditional Tibetan health care is fully based on this concept. However, that system distinguishes water, earth, air, fire, and space instead of metal. I also like the western alchemy approach, it seems logical (although I don't know what its good for): water - liquid earth - solid fire - plasma air - gas quintessence - the element of thought, or idea, which is not like any other.

I didn't want to write two answers, so I wrote everything in response to your comment, sorry The original post was asking our help to create a list of the most motivated people. My previous comment gives a help to create such a list.

I don't think that a poet writes a poem for the sake of breaking a record... Although motivated people in different areas of life can all be considered great, greatness means different things for all of them. The one who tries to prove his own superiority is not as great as the one who feeds a country. Sustainable development means that the thing what a generation does for its development must not obstruct the next generation from its development. In the realm of spirituality, sustainable development can mean something what can be done by anyone and everyone so that it still makes civilization to develop. Now, if you take the person who achieves something great for his own sake, or to prove his superiority, then you can understand that it's something what is not part of sustainable development. If everyone would strive for that goal, no one would reach it. If everyone would strive to be the best in something, no one would reach his/her goal. If everyone would strive to own something, there would be lack, and lack would lead to revolution or war. That is not sustainable development. You can see that the only sustainable thing is that which you share. Sharing is the only thing what can be continued even if everyone is doing it. So greatness begins with sharing something, with giving something, with dedicating your life to others. But greatness is not the premise of being motivated, neither does motivation have to lead to greatness in a noble way

So you suggest that reproducible data about the organ of thinking should not be applied to the process of thinking? Hm... then how should we know more about thinking, if not this way? I don't think that there is another way beside this modest degree of science. However, we all know how far theories and "jumping into conclusions" can bring us - plasma TV is based on quantum theory, GPS is based on the theory of relativity, for instance... Of course what I've written down here is more like an idea, I wouldn't call it a theory. The certain isolated nihilists I mentioned are young people who finished the Buddhist College. But there is a Krishna valley near, there you can find the same type. Oh yes, I know that there are marvelous, sparkling people full of vitality and joy for life, with pure hearts, etc. - they are really admirable. I know that many (maybe most) Buddhist monks are like this. Well maybe we could find something in the way of life of these people, regardless of meditating or not, which could help identify the cause of their nihilism, but it might be off the topic... And what is IMO?

Ignoring material aspects of anything also gives a dull result. I was talking about the effects of meditation on the brain, not on the mind. I know some other information. Namely, there are 400 billion bits of information perceived from the environment every second awake, and about 2000 bits are which we are aware of. Just think about it. One bit of visible information is not even enough to show one colored pixel - for a 16.7 million color rate you need 32 bits to represent the color of one single pixel. Now imagine that your sight is better than a 1600*1200 dpi true color (16.7 million) screen. If you count a little, this screen needs 61.440.000 bits just to show an image for one moment, and the image before your eyes changes every instant. Even if you're aware only of one tiny dot of the whole image, you still need more than 5 bits (you need 32) to store that information. And you see a much larger area than 1600*1200 pixels, and we didn't say a word about the other senses. So yes, perception consists of a much larger amount of information, and it goes on even if you're not aware of it. I don't think that "space" should be considered as something between "stuff". Just as well as space is a key on the keyboard and not the absence of keys, so is "space" actually an object of mental process, just like "stuff". Existence and non-existence are not the opposites of each other, but they are complementary - together they form reality; just like matter and space together form the universe.

Well, the Dalai Lama, or Mother Theresa, or Martin Luther King seem to be (have been) motivated. Or Benjamin Franklin could be an interesting one, he motivated himself regardless of any circumstances.

Well... Although I understand why you took all neural firing stimuli under the name of thought, I'd like to contradict you. Although thoughts and other firing processes work the same, they are not the same. The difference is that thoughts have a meaning for us, while others don't. Those which do not form a mental image or inner sound have little to do with our thinking. The control of vegetative functions in the brain is like this. The process by which your brain drives your heartbeat or digestion isn't really much of a thought, is it? So I think it's rather adequate to define thought as the stimuli of neurons which lead to a prolonged way of thinking that can involve awareness and free will, for thoughts also have the characteristic of changeability, but you (usually) can't change your vegetative functions by will. There are the same kinds of neurons (nerve cells) in your brain and in your spinal cord, and they all use the same firing sequence to forward stimuli. Yet, you wouldn't say that you think with your spinal cord, do you? Although not all the synaptic connections break up and synaptic firing doesn't end since many functions of the brain still work while not forming any conceptual thought, many other synapses which hold thoughts we used to think of literally loosen up while meditating. We can argue about whether focusing on your sensory organs' stimuli is a form of thinking or not. Probably this question could divide the global philosophical community in two. So let's correct and say that meditation is a mental state which is void of conceptual thinking. This also might need to be defined, for memory might be a form of concept. It might be possible that we can only experience things we already know - there is a theory for this. So we might have an associative thought for everything we currently sense. Whether this associative thought is conceptual or not, I don't know. But if we accept these as non-conceptual, then this definition should be adequate. Thank you, and you're probably right. This happens when one has no possibility to learn from someone who is already on a high level in these things. I learned from books, which aren't really the best source to learn anything in relation to spirituality. Then I needed to wipe out lots of garbage I read, and figure out some things which weren't adequately explained - like what it means "don't think", or "focus on your breath". Focusing can be done in many ways, you can even involve physical tension in it... So figuring out how to do it properly, or how to meditate properly, is not so easy without a teacher. I still didn't reach anything unusual via my meditations, and I use my searching and creating theories to help step forward. So if I'm really wrong in something then I'd like to know that. For this, it's really nice of you that you took the time to respond, I appreciate it. Btw, I know that there are many ways of meditation, even types in which a specific kind of thinking is necessary. I think it's obvious that in this topic I was talking about the kind of meditation which doesn't involve thinking...

Being able to overcome deadly fears, quit bad habits after 60 years, recovering from cancer without medical treatment, Earth revolving around the Sun instead of the Sun around Earth, or Earth being spherical instead of flat, might also be (has been) counterintuitive, or hitting off the mark (whatever that means). Yet, those things also happen. What you think of as counterintuitive depends totally on you, it's a fully subjective matter, so it doesn't really matter in the question of truth and reality. This theory was made up by me after quite a while of research on the processes of thinking and feeling inside the body. This doesn't mean that it's true, it just means that it is the mostly right I know, and I wanted to share it. I'd read contradictory theories if there are any. I don't know of the gray matter thing, I didn't read that study.