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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.

Lately I´m wondering about a perceived "stupidity" in myself. Its like a dullness or a foggy mist that clouds my perceptions. What creates "stupidity"? Is it born from ignorance? Lack of love? Selfishness? The drive of self-survival and to persist as a certain "self-object"? I can see that my listening skills are affected by that. It seems like a part of me just does not want to hear truth. Any ideas?

During my introspection in the last couple of weeks, I had the realization that the reason I do most of the things that I do is to avoid bad consequences. I am constantly thinking: Do I really have to do this or can I just coast along and just do what feels most comfortable. I tend to only put in as much effort into my activities as is required to not have any bad consequences. For example, with work, I tend to wanna do only as much as is required to not get criticized by others or to not miss deadlines, trying to avoid what I imagine to be the hard, boring labor that would be required to produce excellent results. I can see that this is not effective and that it creates a lot of inner turmoil, since I am constantly reacting to external circumstances and since I relate a lot of my self-confidence to how effective I am. I can see that I have to externally derive the validation for what I am doing and that I tend to pick the easy and comfortable way instead of shooting for great results. I also tend to procrastinate on tasks and only start doing them when action is required to avoid immediate bad outcome. All of this is a source of suffering in my life. „Oh I am so lazy, I should be doing more/better work, but I just get myself stuck in a rut.“ It‘s a constant drag on my integrity. The main question that I have about this is: How can I become effective without using guilt to push myself to do the work and without using ideals to compare myself to? Any thoughts? Can anyone relate?

So last sunday brendan tried to explain a distinction is vs isn't. This whole week I was trying to understand what this means in my own experience and I faced few things i want to share and contemplate about. So basically when there was some situation in my life which felt "heavy" in my mind like getting overhelmed by my own thinking, i've tried using this as a calm down mechanism, like i've tried using "is" as primary state over isn't so my mind just stops from going even more into thinking. Then i've noticed that this itself felt like some some suppresion or ignoring my mind state as it is right now, it's like my mind itself tried to calm it down by using "is". Main difference is that in these situations it feels like i'm ignoring what comes up even tho everything in isn't is kind of unnesecary, it still feels like i'm somehow suppresing it. Like i'm ignoring my mind so mind itself doesn't feel ignored. Then i rewatched peters video of "how to stop self-destructive behaviour like for the fifth time to see what i'm missing into my integration. It seems to me that "is" is kind of state which you cannot get tuned into by wanting it to do something for you, cause it comes from the same place where things isn't right. It's like my own mind tries to use these hearsays, to stop thinking, but that doesn't resolve the problem, cause it itself is a same thing. "is" is just now as it is without needing to do anything about it. My mind seems to complicate itself by using beliefs and assumptions that feels "higher truths" even tho I don't comprehend it by myself. It's like my own mind plays these games again and again and again just using different faces. But again there's this problem comes up where i tend to fall into self-destructive behaviour like smoking ciggaretes, which i don't want in my life, but peter also explained that this whole frusturation happens as i understand from imagined future scenarios, like I have to be this monk like stop having these all sorts of addictions. Also he tells about the social domain which all of this comes up in the first place, like drinking coffee, smoking and etc is did only to be kind of accepted into our social domain, he mentions that living in society has it own consequences like what i've mentioned. For me it's a war between what i want to become(imagined scenario of future self) and what i want to do now(smoke a ciggareete for example, it feels wrong yet right at the same time, also there's a third voice that says drop all of this shit off(but it's also minds work. It's like what i've come up with it's always my mind doing these games on me even tho i'm the one whose doing the mind(according to peter). Even now my mind by writing this wants some clear way to get rid of itself, is just another face, another method of staying alive, another way of saying "hey something is wrong with me", "hey, im special I cannot smoke a ciggarete, am i so weak that even i(special) cannot resist from smoking?" it's like i'm living in a society so i have to have identity, which has to be protected and saved, and when this doesn't happen i suffer, and if it feels save then I face into destructive behaviour, cause I need something noticeable to fix. Mind is just so smart on deceiving itself, imagine using this power for something greater then bullshiting yourself all day long. Maybe i just need to understand that i will die no matter what I will be, i'm not special, i'm not unique, i'm nothing, just a grain of sand in a desert, but this leads to nihilism, like i'm worthless, what's point of trying, why do anything then, but it's always mind doing it's shit, can't i just smoke a ciggarrete for a damn sake and not go into existential shit my mind comes up with 😂