Don't think of dealing with your ego nor should you worry about being right or wrong when something comes up regarding your ego when meditating. Also, when meditating, you overcome mental/emotional blockages which naturally makes you energetic. Don't get attached to conclusions and stay calm after you experience a mental shift.
There is too much analysis of mindfulness and meditation. So you'll end up with analyzing yourself too much while looking for that glorious state of detaching your self from your self to get into that witness mode and apply all the philosophies, ideals, influences crammed into your head to each thought you have.
So my suggestion is while meditating, drop all that stuff, sit alone at home/indoor, or quiet outdoor area, and just be meditative while listening to your breath instead of "meditating", and trust you understand basic human decency. Being yogic-like, or whatever, doesn't mean you have to be what people commonly think that means. Just be you.
That's how I've always viewed yoga/tantra as at it's core. There is more to yoga and tantra than that but there is no need to go there unless you're interested. For most people, they just want to de-stress and heal their mind and body and be themselves. The regular practice of meditation like this extends into regular activities and has improved my productivity, tempered my reactivity to shit, etc.
I attribute that to strong judgmental attitudes towards people for making mistakes, not fitting in, etc. It creates a nasty feedback loop that has taken society a lot of time to overcome and we're not all the way through.
It might be cultural, but things like these start out from basic needs and just become absorbed into cultural standards. As is demonstrated by the fact that the introduction of better shoes led towards the change of heel-first walking due to laziness.
I disabled all facebook notifications and I don't get wrapped in other notifications. I just check in on stuff from my desktop when I feel like it instead of feeling compelled to do so. If waiting in a lobby then I might do something on my phone or just cross my legs and meditate (yeah I'm odd).
So now, what am I supposed to think of all those claims that the flu vaccine is essentially a step or two behind nature.
Then, for me, I worry about the adjuncts and other stuff added to the standard vaccines as I have autoimmune problems. There are alternative vaccines that are available but I don't remember their efficacy.
So I refuse taking vaccines unless absolutely necessary until I see viable alternatives without aluminum, any kind of mercury, and so on.
> Science is a tool for explaining what we observe. There is almost always more than one plausible explantion for any observation, and so it’s the job of the scientist to pit these against each other and see which comes out on top.
That is such a crude way to go about things.
It's been suggested before that there are larger influences from society on how men and women should act and live their lives. I still believe that. I don't think we've made a lot of progress on gender issues. A lot of them still lurk under the surface and the PC culture shields them and prevents discovery and resolution.
I see it was a matter of how you view your self-worth in the face of a mistake. Society in general likes to put one down for making a mistake regardless of how small or insignificant.
And one's inner dialogue tends to be the nastiest critic and chips away at motivation when learning something new.
It doesn't help that many humans tend to put down others more easily if they perceive them as weak regardless of similar or different identity. Being of the same age, gender, ethnicity, etc. doesn't matter. And people strive really hard to reframe their perspective to view others as weak too.
This is fascinating. I have for a long time been the introverted socially incompetent and weird (partially) one.
A lot of that has changed for me recently. Going to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for a year now and doing more yoga has really helped me to figure out a lot of traumatic issues from the past, especially with racism during childhood.
It's really reduced my fear of socializing with people. I'm now somewhere in between extrovert and introvert and I've noticed that self-disclosure happens a lot more and interactions have improved with strangers. Even small talk happens now and then. I've always hated small talk.
I don't like the extrovert/introvert/attachment type labelling though. Reading on them or discussing them with others has some kind of effect of boxing you in to self-limiting thought patterns. It can be a good starting point to figure things out, but I implore people to not think you're stuck in your ways.
Mental illness can cause physical illness. Anxiety can cause gastrointestinal disorders for example. So should someone having an anxiety attack not take the day off just because they weren't exhibiting any physical issues? And many gastro disorders can happen without being obvious until the situation worsens.
Waiting until the worst happens isn't sustainable and just makes things harder to recover. Perhaps burnout isn't just simply mental but a larger, systemic degradation of the body.
What if they have stolen your property. Do you not have the right to get it back by force? Does the value of the property matter? If so, who gets to decide that in the moment?
Since oxygen plays a rather vital role in our functioning, I'm curious why we can't detect low oxygen levels. Or perhaps we do detect them but only when it's dangerously low. How has it been confirmed that we detect CO2 levels instead of low oxygen?
I like meditation better. I want a meditation room at work, complete isolation, with options for sitting and lying down. Deep meditation has become useful for me to relax and recharge. Also, when you get good at it, it helps you solve things faster when you get stuck on a problem.
A gender breakdown for both single and married would also be useful. For marriages there should also be another dimension based on the health of the marriage.
Recent literature suggests that men are lonelier than women which incites my curiosity on gender differences in this topic. I've been theorizing that if true, those men who fall further below the envelope of social interaction end up having greater difficulty in developing and maintaining relationships as they age.
When I started meditating more often, I kept getting distracted by miscellaneous thoughts. At first I fought it to get back to the "quiet mind" but that was frustrating. And I would angrily judge myself for the distraction. I got tired of beating myself up and then I recognized that these distractions were the short and long term problems such as conflicts at work within the last few days, or deep seated trauma, like experiencing ongoing racism and violence as a kid during school.
I stopped resisting the distractions and just allowed myself to think about them while at the same time trying to focus on my breath. As the distraction faded my focus on my breath returned.
I've gotten better at this and I feel like I've rewired my mind into being able to maintain a "quiet mind" and self-awareness, at the same as talking to myself either in my mind or out loud. And so when I get anxiety I can stay grounded and now I just think about what is giving me anxiety instead of letting it go or forgetting it. It's helped me to get rid of generalized anxiety that I've been stuck with for a long time.