Self Realization - 10/11

Aug 7, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Tripping on Hallucinogenic Frogs – VICE Documentary (Video)

Tripping expert Hamilton Morris is at it again; taking a journey through the Amazon forest in hopes of discovering the psychedelic potential of the Sapo frog.

In the Amazon rain forest, there lives a very special frog called the Phyllomedusa bicolor, otherwise known as the Sapo. Traditionally, the Mayoruna tribe uses this frog’s gooey secretions to gain superpowers that transform them into killer hunting machines. First they tie the frog up and scare it into releasing its venom (generally via the sophisticated method of poking it with sticks). Next the natives burn little holes in their arms and rub the venom into the wounds. Then they shit and vomit for half an hour, and then they (ostensibly) experience a sharpening and heightening of the senses and an ability to go for days without food or water. This helps them target their prey (which are monkeys, by the way—they eat monkeys).

Sapo Diaries: Tripping on Hallucinogenic Frogs

In part 2, federal agents, monster bugs, and an inept shaman keep getting in the way.

In part 3, a frog is caught, and a mind is blown.

Click here for a written Trip Report of Hamilton’s Amazonian Journey.

Jul 14, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Alan Watts – Is the Bible Used to Manipulate Self Worth? (Video)

Alan Watts provides a philosophical analysis of the bible.

Alan Watts – Notable Excerpts

The Gospel of Jesus, which of course was hushed up since its inception, was that, wake up everybody and find out who you are.

Is it not written in your law, “I have said ye are gods.” And if that is what the scripture says it can’t be denied. So why do you tell me I blaspheme because I say, “I am a son of god.”

“Son of” in Hebrew and in Arabic means of the nature of. When we call someone a son of a bitch, we mean bitchy. And so if you call someone a son of god, you mean divine.

What happened was, that this being blasphemous for the Jews. It became blasphemy for the Christians for anyone else than Jesus to say it.

They said, “Ok baby it was so with you, but there it stops. No more of this business.” And as a result of that Jesus was made irrelevant by pedestalization, by being kicked up stairs! In spite of the fact that he’s said greater works than these, that I do, shall you do; oh no, upstairs with you baby…because we just can’t have that sorta thing going on in a monarchical universe. We are not gonna have democracy in the kingdom of heaven.

This is why the gospel is impossible, because we’re suppose to follow the example of Christ…where he says for example, “Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink and what you shall wear. God will take care of you! Doesn’t he take care of the birds? Don’t the flowers grow? And they’re wonderful, they’re crazy, they’re great. What are you worrying about? I’ve never heard a sermon preached on that…never. Because it’s totally subversive the economy would crash! So they say, “That’s all very well, but that was the boss’s son!” See he had that colossal advantage…

He had an unfair advantage. So how can you ask us to follow the example of Christ. But supposing he didn’t have an unfair advantage. Supposing that was true about Jesus as a son of god is true of us.

Why talk about this? Is it interesting? Is it important for the human being to realize that in some sense of the word, whatever it means, he is god or one with god?

The importance of it is this. To know that you are god is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it.

If you don’t know that. If you don’t feel that. Well naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world and if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about to beat it up and to try and make the world submit to your will.

You obviously can blame someone and say, “I didn’t ask for this! Take it away!” And yet very few people are all too ready to take it away. Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide. And if you don’t, if you don’t say take it away. What are you gonna do? You really gotta assume responsibility for it, you have to say yes to what happens.

The real meaning of Karma, the word in Sanskrit means simply: doing. And if I say of an event, “it is your karma”, it is saying, “it is your doing.”

So the exposition, a book which would expound karma, would be not so much a who done it? But, a you done it. But that seems, fantastic.

Jul 11, 2013Jun 17, 2016

David Lynch – Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain, Transcendental Meditation (Video)

David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man) explains his understanding about consciousness, creativity and the brain. Transcendental Meditation played a crucial role in developing his consciousness and boosting his creativity.

One lady in the audience says: I teach film, I make films. I would like to know what does meditation or how does meditation connect to your creative process or to how it might help the creativity of my students.

If you have a golf ball sized consciousness, when you read a book you’ll have a golf ball sized understanding, when you look out a golf ball sized awareness and when you wake up in the morning a golf ball sized wakefulness.

But if you could expand that consciousness then you would read the book with more understanding and when you look out more awareness and when you wake up more wakefulness – it’s consciousness. – David Lynch, Film Director

David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness Based Education
Introduction to Transcendental Meditation

Jul 8, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Inspirational Quotes to Refocus Your Mind

Inspirational quotes are perfect for refocusing the mind and reawakening the excitement that fills life with passion.

Happiness is Here. Not There

“The trick is to enjoy life. Don’t wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead” – Marjorie Pay Hinkley

Do Not Be Your Own Worst Enemy

“You are confined only be the walls you build yourself.”

Life is Not About Winning or Losing

“Take risks: if you win. You will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise” – Author Unkown

Moving Forward is About Moving Now

“Success will never be a big step in the future; success is a small step taken just now.”

Love Yourself, It Will Show

“Love yourself first & everything else falls into line.” -Lucille Ball

Laugh, Smile and Be Happy; It Does Not Need to Be Complicated

“Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.” -Lord Byron

Do What Drives You and You Will Go Farther Than Your Imagination

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

Focus, Experience and Enjoy. Everything Is Happening Right NOW

“No matter how hard the past. You can always begin again.” – Buddha

Relax, Be Yourself and Leave Your Mark

“Work for a cause, not for applause. Live to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt.” -Unkown

Let’s Fly Together Now

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” – Salvador Dali

Let Go Of Duality and Embrace The Delicate Balance of Life’s Infinite Nature

“Stars can’t shine without darkness.”

Jun 18, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Alan Watts – Voluntary Versus Involuntary Choices. Are We Really In Control? (Video)

Alan Watts discusses the perceptually blurred line between voluntary and involuntary actions.

Going through everyday life seemingly exercising free will while apart of a larger system of life and creation is wondrous. You are not only a part of the big picture, you are the big picture.

Alan Watts – Voluntary and Involuntary Actions Transcript

You see the problem is this; we identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

We have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary; we feel in control of those.

And then over against that there is all those things that are involuntary. But the dividing line between these two is very arbitrary.

Because for example, when you move your hand you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it. But then ask yourself how do you decide?

When you decide to open your hand. Do you first decide to decide? You don’t do you. You just decide. And how do you do that? And if you don’t know how you do it; is it voluntary or involuntary?

Let’s consider breathing. You can feel that you breathe deliberately. You can control your breath. But when you don’t think about it, it goes on. Is it voluntary or involuntary?

So we come to have a very arbitrary definition of self; that much of my activity that I feel I do.

That then doesn’t include breathing most of the time. It doesn’t include the heart beats. It doesn’t include the activity of the glands. It doesn’t include digestion. It doesn’t include how you shape your bones, circulate your blood. Do you or do you not do these things?

Now if you get with yourself and you find out that you are all of yourself; a very strange thing happens. You find that your body knows that you are one with the universe.

In other words, that the so called involuntary circulation of your blood is one continuous process with the stars shinning.

If you find out that it’s you who circulates your blood you will at the same moment find out that you are shinning the sun.

Because your physical organism is one continuous process with everything else that is going on. Just as the waves are continous with the ocean. Your body is continous with the total energy system of the cosmos and its all you.

Only you’re playing the game that you’re only this bit of it. But as I’ve tried to explain there are in physical reality no such things as separate events.

So then remember also when I tried to work towards a definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done, it’s just doing it. You don’t have to translate it into language.

May 30, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Wilfred – Opening Quotes, Themes of a Stoner Dog Best Friend

Wilfred is an extremely powerful show that combines great writing and off-beat characters, with a penchant for digging at the core themes of life.

Catch the Season 3 Wilfred quotes here. These quotes show up at the beginning of each episode and usually highlight the theme explored within.

Wilfred Opening Quotes – Season 1

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” – Mark Twain

“Trust thyself only, and another shall not betray thee.” – Thomas Fuller

“Fear has its use but cowardice has none.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” – George Orwell

“Seek respect mainly from thyself, for it comes first from within.” – Steven H. Coogler

“Conscience is the dog that can’t bite, but never stops barking.” – Proverb

“In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.” – Steven H. Coogler

“Anger as soon as fed is dead — tis starving makes it fat.” – Emily Dickinson

“Make no judgments where you have no compassion.” – Anne McCaffrey

“Isolation is a self-defeating dream.” – Carlos Salinas de Gortari

“Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.” – George C. Lichtenberg

“Love is a willingness to sacrifice.” – Michael Novak

“The value of identity is that so often with it comes purpose.” – Richard R. Grant

Wilfred Opening Quotes – Season 2

“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” – Thomas Edison

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” – Herman Hesse

“Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Guilt: The gift that keeps on giving.” – Erma Bombeck

“Be here now.” – Ram Dass

“The master understands that the universe is forever out of control.” – Lao Tzu

“Our biggest problems arise from the avoidance of smaller ones.” – Jeremy Caulfield

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” – James A Garfield

“The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change is service to a fellow human being.” – Lee Iacocca

“Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.” – Mother Teresa

“If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers.” – Edward Hodnett

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” – Malachy McCourt

“If we knew each other’s secrets, what comfort we should find.” – John Churton Collins

Apr 18, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Neuroplasticity, Meditation and Happiness – Willoughby Britton Ted Talk (Video)

Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

In this Ted Talk, Willoughby Britton focuses on neuroplasticity and mindful meditation through the scope of happiness.

The practice of meditation builds stronger and healthier neural pathways that lead to better habits.

Willoughby Britton – Neuroplasticity, Meditation and Happiness Notable Excerpts

If we get everything we want and get rid of everything we don’t want; we’ll be happy. It makes sense. Totally logical. Totally wrong. That’s just not the way the data has turned out to be. We’re one of the richest countries on the planet but we’re not really one of the happiest. And the people that are the richest in our country are not necessarily happier than the poorest people in our country.

Getting what we want doesn’t necessarily equal happiness.

Another thing that we know about happiness…it seems to be inextricably linked to the faculty of attention, or more specifically; our pervasive tendency or habit to not pay attention.

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Our brain changes with experience and we get good at what we practice…if you exercise your physical body certain muscle groups get stronger, certain movements get easier and they become effortless and automatic. The brain is no different. The neural networks that you exercise becomes stronger and the thought patterns and mental habits that are represented by those neural networks get stronger and become effortless and automatic…

The most powerful way to change your brain is not medication, it is behavior.

Apr 12, 2013Jun 17, 2016

In The Fall – Animation on Ditching a Soul Sucking Job For Your Passion (Video)

Steve Cutts presents a short hand-drawn animation on how a lame job can consume your life.

In a bearable but uninspiring job, the days slip by so freely that suddenly you wake up to find a decade has gotten behind you and you’re nowhere closer to anything you love.

With the exception of what simple pleasures you can cram in on weekends and evenings, it isn’t life, it’s a slow death.

There is too much up for grabs for the intelligent and passionate individual to pass the years that way. – David Cain, What Passion Will Buy You

Apr 12, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Alan Watts – The Connection Between Dreams and Consciousness (Video)

Alan Watts describes the nature of consciousness through a series of dream analogies.

Reality is a dream we share as one.

Alan Watts – The Connection Between Dreams and Consciousness Transcript

If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death; or shall I say, death implies life. You can feel yourself not as a stranger in the world. Not as something here on probation. Not as something that has arrived here by fluke. But you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.

I’m not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it; I want you to play with it, I want you to think of its possibilities. I’m not trying to prove it. I’m just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about.

So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes, you would have every kind of pleasure you could perceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say, “Well that was pretty great, but now let’s have a surprise! Lets have a dream which isn’t under control! Where something is going to happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be”. And you would dig that and come out of that and say, “Wow that was a close shave wasn’t it!”.

Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today; that would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have, of playing that you weren’t god. Because the whole nature of the god head, according to this idea, is to play that he’s not. So in this idea then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not god in a politically kingly sense but god in the sense of being the self; the deep down basic whatever there is. And you’re all that! Only you’re pretending you’re not.

Apr 2, 2013Jun 3, 2016

David Choe – Take a Risk By Saying “Fuck It” (Video)

In this clip from Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe, Ice T describes the inspiration that pushes people out of their comfort zone. David Choe is mostly known for his awesome street art, but he’s also respected for saying “Fuck It” and living a lifestyle full of risks, failures, and rewards.

Well, to take risks you got to go, “Fuck It.” You know, most men who met their wives, it was a “Fuck It” before they walked up to her, it was that moment where she won’t talk to me, but “Fuck It,” I got to just take the risk, put myself past what I normally would do.

And there are certain people in life, like you say Hunter Thompson, that live in that – that realm of the edge, and everything else is boring, other people are like, how do you do it? You know you see mountain climbers, those mountain climbers are saying “Fuck It.” – Ice T

Mar 27, 2013Jun 17, 2016

Methods of Meditation for the Busy or Impatient (Guide)

If you are struggling with fitting meditation into your daily routine, this guide will help you ease into the practice.

Change Your Mindset About Meditation

Lower your expectations of meditation. Often the reason we are impatient about meditation is we want instant gratification. Replace that expectation with a desire to experience a “slow melt” of your stress.

Be open to non-traditional meditation. Meditation doesn’t have to be done in a seated position. Any activity in which you can slow down your mind, become more inwardly focused and more rooted in the present moment will pass the test for meditation.

Be kind to yourself. Don’t berate yourself for not being “good” at meditating. If you make the effort to meditate, then by default, you are good at it. It’s more a “do or not do” thing versus a “good or bad.”

Commit to slow down your mind for 10 minutes each day. You can obviously do this for longer if you want, but just take your time in building this habit by starting with 10 minutes per day.

How to easily incorporate meditation into your day. Transform some of the things you are already doing each day into mindful meditation:

Exercise Meditation

Any continuous physical activity over a period of time can work. Some great choices are walking, jogging, or yoga. Chores can work too such as sweeping, folding laundry, stacking wood, and washing windows.

The way to transform any of these activities into meditation is to first focus on your breath. Observe it. Modify it. Try long inhalations, holding periods, and slow exhalations if you can. Observe how each part of your body feels. When you start to feel the exercise endorphins kick in, you might also want to express those good feelings with a big smile, a raising of the arms and/or a deep “Ahhhh” sound. Silly? Maybe. Feels good? Definitely.

Bathing Meditation

The next time you shower or take a bath, create your own spa experience simply by flipping the switch in your mind. Let go of any limits. No time limits, no temperature limits. Breathe deeply. Close your eyes. Feel the water. Feel the sensations it gives your body. Allow the water to heal you by transforming your bathing time into a meditation. Focus on your breath and how your body feels. If thoughts involving the past or future come into your mind, observe them and send them packing by returning to your observations of your breath and body. What do you see, feel, smell, and hear?

Let go of words and labels by expressing your good feelings through meaningless sounds such as “aum,” “mmmm,” or “ahhhhh.”

Music Meditation

Listening to music naturally brings us into the present moment. It can also bring us to good memories or daydreams of the future. You can bring more meditative elements to your music experience by noticing how you feel while you listen, play or sing. Add full diaphragmatic breathing and some cannabis too.

Some other music ideas are to pick up that instrument you haven’t played in a while. Don’t worry if you play well or not. The point is simply to become immersed in it and to enjoy it. You also may want to try singing or playing percussion along with your favorite music. Don’t have a drum? Make one. Any object can be a percussion instrument. Just start tapping! Lastly, consider going to a music based event and enjoy. You will be engaged in meditation without any effort at all. No wonder we like music so much!

Hobby Meditation

Similar to the exercise, bathing, and music, immerse yourself in any project that you enjoy such as model building, knitting, car restoration, drawing, painting, crafts, etc. As you enjoy your hobby, add the elements of deep breathing, awareness of sensation, and focus on the current moment and you’ll be meditating. And in the end you’ll have a physical manifestation of that mediation.

Massage Meditation

Schedule a massage for yourself. As you enjoy the physical sensation, be aware of your breath. You may want to focus on one word such as Peace, Calm, Love, Ease, or perhaps a sound with no meaning such as Aum. As everyday thoughts enter your mind, pour them out with the simple mantra “empty the mind.”

> Meditation Techniques for the Busy or Impatient | Dumb Little Man

Feb 14, 2013Jun 17, 2016

A Visit to the Largest Floatation, Isolation Tank Center (Video)

Brian Rose & Nic Gabriel of London Real go Floating in an isolation tank for one hour @Floatworks, the largest floatation tank centre in the world. Watch as we enter into a weightless, soundproof, and completely dark chamber to induce theta brainwaves and a meditative state.

A very informative introduction to Floating for newbies. The video covers all the prep before going into the tank and the awesome benefits you get after your session is done.