@Corentin G has this week's Consciousness Weekly lesson. You can find this week's practice here: https://chenghsin.link/skool/cw

What do you mean it's not a giraffe???

I've had this insight 100 times already but it goes very deep. Wanting to have a certain experience or avoiding something during contemplation is a sneaky bastard. It's not obvious at all, usually hidden from sight, and is disguised as an emotional pull towards or away from something. Even if in the background, slightly. It highly influences the thoughts and the directions where I look. That said, a strategy to get rid of these is also not fruitful in my experience. Best not to give them attention. Good luck! V

Hello, Not Knowing community. This is my first proper post in here. I’m very curious to see what you think of my questions here. To start, I’ve realized that my perception of meditation is one of mostly belief. I grew up being told that meditation was a valuable way to spend one’s time, and that if one were to meditate with focus and discipline, insights beyond imagination could be found. I’ve heard meditation explained like this in many different ways, by many people throughout my entire life. A few years ago I started to take meditation more seriously, since around that time I decided I wanted to develop myself and change my life for the better. Since then I’ve meditated in phases, sometimes meditating for streaks of 100-200 days (30min a day). My current meditation practice is 30 minutes twice a day. So one hour, and I’ve been at this for two weeks now. Every time I get into a serious meditation phase I encounter the same experience. It’s rocky in the beginning, but the more consistent I am, the more peaceful the meditation is. I have had many peaceful meditations where I’ve let go of expectations. What I’m questioning now is: why am I meditating? I’m realizing that all this time I’ve believed that meditation was worthwhile. While I am meditating I feel that an am able to do so with openness and curiosity (sometimes) - I suspect that part of me is only meditating because I “know” that it is a good thing to do. I “know” that it can yield deep insights or other kinds of breakthroughs like access concentration or samadhi states. I still have not experienced these insights and states. I’m considering that, as I am and perceive right now, I might not be meditating with a committed interest in what’s true. I do think that’s what meditation should be about, discovering what’s true about the present moment and experience - but either my skewed intent or approach is holding me back from a true experience. This brings me to contemplation: The reality is, I prioritize contemplation less than I do meditation right now. Partly because I have grown up to place a high value on meditation, and not contemplation. While meditation is something I think about as “I should do this every day” contemplation is more like “I’ll get to it if I have time after I’ve meditated”.

Yes, toss out all of the ideas and fantasies about where it all goes, and even the notion of an "end." Pursue only the Truth— whatever is True, no matter where it leads. You will know where it goes when you get there. Prior to that it just speculation and hearsay, and these truly just get in the way. No matter what anyone says, whether they know, believe, or are just making it up, it is worse than worthless. How on earth can you pursue a "result" of consciousness without the consciousness from which it is supposedly a result? Planting the idea of the "golden light at the end of the journey" is more than a distraction, for then you end up pursuing the light and not the truth. For many decades, I didn't talk about lots of the things I was conscious of for fear it would interfere with other's open pursuit of what's true. Now I have decided to share a lot of it simply because I will die relatively soon and wanted it out there for anyone who might be able to make use of it, and to balance out the many fantasies that abound in this field. I recognize the dangers of this and repeatedly warn people off from them, asking that they not believe any of it, but instead seek out what's true for themselves. That has always been the course I advocate. Peter