Hey everyone! As we settle into the holiday season and the world slows down a bit, it’s the perfect opportunity to use this quiet time for some real work. We’ve got two major opportunities to practice together this weekend: 🗓️ Saturday, Dec 27th: Online Contemplation Intensive We are gathering virtually to bypass the analytical mind and get to work. Whether you can make the whole day or just a few blocks, we’d love to have your energy in the room. Click here to reserve your spot: https://chenghsin.link/workshop/ci-weekend 🗓️ Sunday, Dec 28th: Community Session with Peter is joining us live for a Community Session! He’ll be discussing Mind Training - a fundamental topic for Consciousness Work. Note: This is a great chance to ask Peter questions directly. Let me know in the comments below - who is planning to drop in for the Intensive on Saturday or the call with Peter on Sunday? 👇 -------------------------------- Thanks. Brendan, Dimitar, and Viktor

Just being very honest here, in noticing my motivations, and my "deeper thoughts," on a very "down-low" level, what I've got going on is some sort of activity of "needing" to be "the best" in some kind of way. Status attainment somehow. Now, I know this isn't unique to me, and it seems pretty glaringly obvious in a lot of people's cases, but why is it there?? What does it contribute? How come so much of my self-mind activity and so much of what I do ends up giving energy to this? Because let's say it straight right now. For most of us, actual physical survival, ergo not dying, isn't something we have to think about almost EVER. We've got food shelter water this and that to take care of us. Even if it fell apart a bit we most likely wouldn't die. Yet SO much of our energy and attention is being given somewhere else! Where is our attention going? What is it we're doing? Is that what keeps us from being free and happy? I don't know, but I would appreciate some guided thoughts on the matter as I really want to bang a hammer over the head of this issue. It is so much of like, my entire experience! From impulse to emotions, to... Who knows what else. It's just so central to my experience. I even find, when it comes to dedicating my life force to something, if it doesn't gain me status, "is it worth it?" Or some such. I guess all this really feeds into the question, for me, what actually is a Self? What is it's Goal or Purpose?

Hi, I just wanted to maybe start a discussion on the dynamics of self inversion vs expansion, since this is something I've been working on for a while and I realized that this is the weekly assignment. Something I noticed right off the bat that stuck out to me as very significant is how it is described as "a focus on personal needs that leads to dissatisfaction." I'd like to share some personal experience as someone who has probably experienced a lot of this dynamic. It seems that for me personally, whenever I actively participate heavier into "self agenda" kind of stuff, I go into this self inversion place. Or when I'm in my head trying to figure something out or "fix something," or some such. Essentially it feels like I'm trying to do something for myself. Something "good for me." I have tended to confuse it with discipline in the past, since the mindset might seem like I'm working hard to get something for myself, but it almost seems like an obsession on self needs more than anything else upon questioning it. It we're going off of a definition "a focus on personal needs that leads to dissatisfaction," then that would mean I've got a lot of that going on. It would make sense why Brendan would tell me to come "out here" a lot during the spring retreat. It seems like my experience hovers around these "personal needs," which may inherently lead to deep self inversion. I have actually noticed that when I humble myself and live for something greater than myself my happiness goes way up. My experience is actually freed from having to serve these bullshit needs. And live for something greater than myself doesn't mean like I commit my life to feeding the poor of something. It almost just feels more in alignment in a more direct sense to something more fundamentally true or important. Anyway, don't mind my ramblings I just wanted to contribute

Hey, I am not sure how to word this so I will just jump straight in. Have you ever noticed how our thoughts are, as if, received? Obviously there's an aspect where we generate some surface level thoughts, but there is another aspect we have where shit just pops up, and I wanted to take a look at that for a moment. What I'm trying to say but having a hard time is that our thoughts, especially on the level of what seems to be "received" by us, feels as if a consequence of whatever "mode" we're being in. That is, whatever we have "going on" for us tends to pop up in little, or in big ways in the day to day experiences we live, whether when we think things or whenever we experience things. And this shit does not appear to be in the same vein as the thoughts that we think consciously. As in "I summon the image of a blue banana" kind of thought. These thoughts and emotions appear to be tied in some way to "unconscious" or deeper thoughts in some kind of way. In a sense, these kinds of thoughts tend to arise as a consequence! In a sense. That's what I'm trying to get at. And, when we are trying to consciously contemplate something, or even just change our way of doing things, these kinds of emotions and thoughts tend to just scramble up in reaction or in upset. These things taken with a grain of salt may be the best attitude towards them. Curious, open and prodding, but not regarding them beyond the sputter of a machine we want to more fully confront and understand. (Maybe "following the line" back to it's source could be useful?) Now, I also want to extend that a bit further and question whether our entire experience of our lives as we know them are like that too. A "consequence" of something "else"... It's an interesting thought experiment to take a look at our entire experience and wonder what the fundamental base that allows them to be that is. That's an interesting question. What are the components that found my experience to be this?! Is my experience a consequence of something else?

I’m currently reading Ending Unnecessary Suffering. In the first chapter Ralston says that we need to grasp that a significant portion of our experience is muddied with concepts. When I’m reading the book and consciously trying to do this, I don’t find it difficult. If for example, I am feeling grief towards a person no longer in my life, I can investigate the mental image of that person and realize it is not the same as them. It’s a distorted, inaccurate representation, and it’s literally NOT them. I can also play some games where I imagine them wearing a giraffe hat. When I put the book down and go back to normal life, I go back to my default of being affected by my internal mental images as if they are accurate representations. I don’t know how to access this state of continuous realization. Is it done through practice? Should I spend some time every day doing this exercise and then eventually, the deeper insight will come?