In case you missed it or want to see what our Sunday meetings are like you can get the latest here. To access over 50 hours of additional consciousness sessions please visit the archive. http://chenghsin.com/consciousness-weekly-archive/

Today i was contemplating distance, and had the insight that distance is actually a concept. The idea of "me being in here behind the eyes" is conceptual, thus the idea of "me here, wall there" must be conceptual, and therefor the idea of "distance between me and wall" must also be conceptual. As I was contemplating this along with other aspects of mind like "inside the skull, emotions, sense of self, beliefs and thoughts" I began to wonder...Where does any of this actually exist? It can't be coming from inside my head or brain because even that notion is a concept that I am doing, so it must just be imagined out of pure nothingness "thin air" if you'd like. Anyone come across this? Cheers

I recently completed a 10 day silent meditation retreat, and on this retreat I had the realization that what we call the "mundane" is actual a beautiful place to be, possibly the best place to be. When most people sit alone with nothing to do they go to boredom, loneliness, self conflict and fantasy. Yet when we move through those things or stop doing them, we become present. We rest in Being. There is nothing to do but listen to the sounds, breathe, rest in awareness. This to me is the pinnacle of existence, just Being, presence. Yet, most people see this as hell, so they go on chasing trivial things. Yet to me the real hell is being a slave to some idea that you need to be someone, or live a unique exciting life and be special. Recently i've been contemplating "specialness" and dropping this whole pain in the ass notion that I am somehow special or unique and it's been a great relief. Thanks for reading.

A very common way to approach life is to adopt a "more is better" attitude. When we are stuck, we look for more techniques, more routines, more methods… Basically, 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. But if we're honest: after years of reading and learning, is a lack of information still the problem? I'd argue that, usually, knowledge is not the actual limiting factor. The real issue is that we always had a 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗸𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 to begin with. Even if we received, say, the "Ultimate Textbook" on how to live life, the following things would still happen: - Not really knowing what we want - Setting goals but not acting on them - Being stopped by external conditions and turning them into excuses - Constantly "shooting ourselves in the foot" in small or big ways Even with the perfect plan, we'd still waste massive amounts of energy fighting our own internal contradictions. That’s a structural problem, and there’s no way to fix it with surface-level techniques found in self-help books. We need to go deeper: we need 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀. Next week (Saturday, Jan 31st), we’re running our 𝗻𝗲𝘄 6-hour interactive online workshop: The 4 Principles for a Free and Powerful Life. It’s about identifying the core mechanisms at the root of your everyday experience. When you align with these principles: - 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 emerges: You know where you’re going - 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 disappears: You stop fighting yourself - 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 open up: You realize you may not be as stuck as you thought - 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 and 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗼𝗺 return: You stop leaking energy on things that don’t matter Most productivity "hacks" stop working the moment we become internally stressed, or when too much external chaos appears. Conversely, principles are 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 looking at what causes stress and chaos, and learning to navigate 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵. We're keeping this workshop affordable to make it a strong entry point for anyone new to this work. Even if you've worked with principles before, we'll approach them from a completely different angle, helping you integrate them in ways you likely haven't explored yet.

One of the most radical ideas I came across in Ending Unnecessary Suffering was in the section on loneliness. Ralston says one ideation is that we live in an existentially isolated inner world, which leads to a sense of disconnect and therefore we need others to complete the experience. I do see a possibility of feeling that your isolated inner world is complete as it is, so that you don’t need another to view it to feel as such. However, the idea that the private inner world itself is a concept is so radical to me. I don’t know how to wrap my mind around it. It is incredibly obvious to me that I have thoughts, beliefs, self-judgements, etc. that are simply not observable by other people. Only I can witness them unless I share them. Does anyone have any insight into investigating this?