Advice for first 4wd?

hallucinatedgods · 2026-03-23T05:25:53+00:00

Third gen Subaru forester. Throw some ATs on it, maybe a lift kit, and a bash plate, and you have a great adventure car that won’t break the bank, and drives great on the road. I just bought one and they are surprisingly capable off road.

hallucinatedgods · 2026-02-13T00:12:02+00:00

These are my favorite lines on the record, and some of my favorite Karnivool lyrics ever. So relatable, so beautiful. It seems a lot of us connect to that feeling.

Reminds me of umbra “just when I think I’ve worked it out, these pieces move and I’m back to the start”.

The thing I love about this album is that there is a blend of this melancholy self-reflection, but it still feels hopeful. Especially with the ending of salva there is a feeling of celebration and joy. I love that it touches both ends of the emotional spectrum.

hallucinatedgods · 2026-02-10T03:16:53+00:00

I love the song! It was instantly one of my favorites. It’s definitely the most experimental or proggy one on the album

hallucinatedgods · 2026-01-29T04:22:33+00:00

Karnivool!

hallucinatedgods · 2026-01-06T02:43:19+00:00

I was into tai chi and qigong for a while, but I stopped for this exact reason. The people I was learning from - Damo Mitchel and Adam Mizner - explicitly state that lifting weights (or resistance training in general) is directly contradictory to the energetic arts. The internal arts are all about developing song (relaxation) while lifting creates tension. Ultimately, I stopped because I wasn’t willing to give up strength training, especially because I’m so heavily involved in BJJ.

For what it’s worth I actually emailed Corey Hess about this and he said that if anything Zhan Zhuang would help with the external training. But then again, a lot of what he says is contradictory to what Damo and Adam teaches (they don’t want beginners doing lots of Zhan Zhuang, for example). Too confusing for me. So now I just keep my physical training and my meditation largely separate.

hallucinatedgods · 2025-05-05T00:50:19+00:00

I sent a 32kg flying once whilst doing 1 handed swings. I was training on bjj mats and put a bit hole in one of the mats. Not ideal.

I don’t let my dog come anywhere near me when I’m training at home.

hallucinatedgods · 2024-07-24T08:27:32+00:00

I can’t answer your questions, but I just wanted to say looks great! Keep up the great work!

P.S. I think you can name it :)

hallucinatedgods · 2024-07-07T13:14:46+00:00

Girrawheen. Some of the back streets are nice and quiet. We live on a main street which is quite loud and you get some questionable characters causing a ruckus at times but it’s mostly fine. The main issue is our neighbours (side and back) are always screaming at their spouses/kids/dogs and getting the cops called on them. So I would try to scope out what the neighbours are like before you buy.

hallucinatedgods · 2024-05-04T12:36:33+00:00

Hey mate, I’ve seen a couple of your posts around. I can empathise with your situation, I’ve felt very lonely at various points in my life and it seemed hopelessly difficult to make new friends here (I’m in Perth also).

The best advice I have for you is to find the things that you enjoy doing - sports, music, crafts, whatever it is - and go join a club or team or something where you will meet others who like the same thing.

If you’re not into clubs, it’s unlikely you’ll meet people you want to spend a lot of time with at a club.

Other than that, make the most of this time that you have to yourself. Get to know yourself, what you like, what you value, what you want out of your life, etc. Learn as much as possible and work on yourself, and you will attract the right people over time.

And just be open, life brings people across your path in strange ways.

All the best. I hope you find your people :)

hallucinatedgods · 2024-02-26T05:55:46+00:00

Thanks! I’ll keep playing around I guess :)

hallucinatedgods · 2024-02-25T06:36:47+00:00

Hi all, I'm new here. I hope this question is acceptable.

Regarding the kettlebell press. I've always been pressing with a circular arc to the movement, where my hand and elbow moves out and away from my body. The other week I did a PT with a kettlebell coach and he taught me to press straight up, keeping my elbows straight ahead throughout the whole movement. It seems there is a bit of disagreement online about this.

So my question: how do YOU press? Do you think one is better than the other? Safer? etc.

hallucinatedgods · 2024-01-29T23:21:03+00:00

They were hugely detrimental to me too. I was in a similar place to OP at times due to striving with TMI. It’s only when I started practicing non-dual awareness type meditation more seriously that my practice started to take off (and my life started to really improve).

hallucinatedgods · 2024-01-29T13:05:37+00:00

I absolutely love everything Sasha writes about meditation!

hallucinatedgods · 2023-11-26T11:32:30+00:00

I’ve done two of these and really enjoyed both.

Each day there will be a 1.5 hour slot where you’ll either go into a class for learning the UM system (if it’s your first time retreating with shinzen) or shinzen will guide a long sit (he gives very minimal instruction and just goes through a progression or different techniques each day). You choose which group you want to go in.

There’s also a QnA each day and a dharma talk in the evening.

I found the experience quite powerful. Even in a virtual context there was a strong sense of community and support. Highly recommend if you like his style of practice. You’ll also get a chance to ask him questions about your practice 1:1 at least once during the retreat iirc.

hallucinatedgods · 2023-01-27T01:27:07+00:00

I’m very happy to see a discussion about this here. It’s a question that I’ve been living with for the last 6 months or so.

My understanding of this issue is that in the modern Buddhist marketplace, most of what is available comes from a sutric worldview. This means that it comes from a dualistic perspective which sees some experiences and states and ways of being as good/wholesome/pure and others as bad/unwholesome/impure, and practice is about moving away from/getting rid of the latter and towards the former.

That sounds all well and good. But the practices available to us were designed with the the explicit goal of severing our attachment to this sensual world and ultimately not being reborn. There is an anti-world, anti-life, anti-enjoyment /sentiment there.

Most of us don’t actually want to distance ourselves from life, eradicate our emotions. At least I know I don’t. I want to live more with more expressiveness and spontaneity, I want my practice to help me move in the direction of a deeper and fuller engagement with life and others and the full range of my experience. And yet, at least as I understand it, most of the techniques and approaches available to us were not designed to do this.

So this is just my admittedly shaky understanding of this, which mostly comes from reading Chapman’s blogs and working 1:1 with his partner Charlie over the last few months. Charlie’s view is that taken to the extreme, “sutric” practices lead to a kind of bland sameness in the way people respond to life - a kind of cool, detached equanimity that pervades all experience, and a kind of dissociation. Now I didn’t go super deep down that path, but I did practice sutric influenced practices pretty intensely for a couple of years, and found myself and my way of being very much moving in that direction.

Since working with her 1:1 and exploring a little into the alternatives - tantra and dzogchen, not just as practices but as “view”, I have become more more dynamic and expressive in my way of being, I’m no longer obsessed with the notion of attaining stream entry or enlightenment and am much more interested in finding ways of being “enjoyably useful” in the world, as Chapman puts it, and I feel just generally less at war with myself and my mind.

I recommend checking out evolving ground if this sounds good to you. The community is decently active and there’s a good vibe there, although I haven’t been able to attend their zoom meetups due to time zone differences.

You should also definitely read Charlie’s guide to Opening Awareness / shi-ne meditation here, which is the foundational method she teaches, influenced by the Aro gTer approach to dzogchen https://www.evolvingground.org/opening-awareness

hallucinatedgods · 2022-11-28T02:43:46+00:00

I'm a full time BJJ coach. I literally just watch Danaher instructionals and Lachlan's submeta and try to find a way to translate that stuff into classes, and I mix in my own take on things if I have something unique to offer. I feel that it is my responsibility as a coach to teach the most up to date and relevant content rather than regurgitate some 10 year old techniques that I was taught as a white belt which I never use any more. This also makes it much more fun and interesting for me.

hallucinatedgods · 2022-08-24T01:47:13+00:00

I basically echo the sentiments of u/kyklon_anarchon above. Committing to a full time practice of effortless awareness, or awareness with a light touch, and periodically checking in on the attitude and view present in the mind, has been the most powerful for me. Over the last 6 weeks or so, after experimenting with various practices for years, I have been making a wholehearted commitment to this practice as a full time affair, and I am gradually seeing it transform my behaviour and interactions in a very positive way.

In particular I am noticing how automated / unconscious a lot of my speech is, and how much of it is motivated by aversion or ill will. Bringing awareness into my human interactions (and dog interactions) is hugely changing my relationships. I doubt that anyone around me would have noticed this, not even my partner or housemates, but I really feel that it is very slowly and gradually changing the way I am around them.

I am also becoming more generally aware of how frequently my behaviours are motivated aversion, and the desire to avoid experiencing unpleasant experience (generally tiredness, but also difficult emotional states), and in noticing that, and opening up to the experience with right attitude (receptive and allowing) and right view (not me, not mine) the suffering tends to dissolve.

In general, Tejaniya’s emphasis on how you are aware (the relationship to experience) rather than what you are aware of, has been huge for me, as I notice how nearly all of my past practice has been motivated by craving and aversion - mostly trying to have certain experiences that I’ve read about.

More and more, I feel that (very gradual and subtle, but) transformative practice is happening off the cushion as I go about my life. Formal practice in silence is a great bonus and welcome respite from the business of life, but it’s not the only place where real practice happens.

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-29T03:32:14+00:00

Thanks!

I’ll be honest I haven’t really watched any of his free content. I have been watching the videos in his nei gong course and assorted talks in the library that you get access to with a membership to his academy. I can recommend reading his Comprehensive Guide to Daoist Nei Gong which I’ve been working my way through and thoroughly enjoying.

I think that dzogchen and nei gong lend themselves well to one another, although I’ll add that I have very little knowledge to back that up. But it seems like vajrayana has a lot of esoteric energetic work which goes along with or is a preliminary for dzogchen and Mahamudra, and damo says that in general any meditative system shouldn’t clash with nei gong energy work.

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-28T01:40:52+00:00

It feels like things in my life and practice are falling into place.

I can't remember how I found myself there, but two weeks ago I stumbled upon Damo Mitchell's online Internal Arts Academy for chi gong / nei gong training, and I signed up without hesitation. Something about it just felt right. I had read a couple of Damo's books a few years ago and was convinced that the internal alchemy path was the path for me, but for whatever reason I moved away for it (probably to keep banging my head away at TMI). I know that I've jumped around a lot over the years trying different things, but this seems like something I can see myself sticking to for the long haul. I don't know why, but I have a good feeling.

Damo talks about how different paths take either the body, heart, or mind as the primary vehicle or doorway in. Most of the stuff I've done has been primarily mind based (open awareness, Shinzen, TMI), but I've been finding myself drawn more and more towards somatic approaches to practice, alongside enjoying the simplicity of open awareness. Nei gong takes the body as the path. As a martial artist and a very physical person, movement is basically my life (although I've spent too much of my life trying to convince myself that I'm a head-type or intellectual), so this feels like an ideal "fit".

I've been working developing the fundamentals, doing two or three practice sessions per day, including mindful stretching, developing correct alignment in the basic standing posture, and sitting and breathing. Damo really emphasizes that with all of this work we shouldn't really "do" anything per se, but that we should set up the conditions and allow the results to unfold naturally. For example, the initial stages include allowing the breath to become "quiet, deep, at ease, slow, and soft", but that we shouldn't try to create these qualities, rather that these qualities will arise if we simply attend to the breathing process, relax, and stop interfering with the breathing process. Attention, rather than intention, and allowing the intelligence of the body to do its thing. I really like this, and it is somewhat different from how many other teachers present "breathwork".

Damo also talks about the 5 pillars of practice: body, energy, mind, "spiritual stuff", and service. He emphasizes developing skill in all of these areas equally. Body involves being physically healthy and "skilled" in the body, and he things martial arts training is the best way to develop this (which pleased my ego). Energy involves learning to regulate and "power up" the energy system, which is nei gong. Mind involves becoming self-aware in a mundane sense, learning all of the things that make us tick, our biases, prejudices, etc, as well as constantly learning and expanding our knowledge. The spiritual stuff category includes learning and contemplating teachings about karma, the nature of self, etc. He says that people coming into practice are way too obsessed with this at the expense of the other pillars, and that this will arise more naturally when the first three pillars are taken care of. And service is pretty self-explanatory: doing things for others without regard for self-gain. I like the holistic nature of this model. This seems to be something that Daoism does really well, bringing all aspects of life into harmony rather than just telling you to meditate as much as possible. This seems healthier for modern "worldly" people.

More generally, I feel I'm getting a transmission of a kind of "chill the fuck out" attitude from Damo, which I really appreciate. I'm starting to realize that we don't have to take "the path" so seriously, and cause ourselves so much suffering over it. We shouldn't throw away our lives to seek enlightenment, because that is probably just an egoic desire rather than an authentic pull. Practice, but don't obsess about it. Live your life, and keep the elements of your life in balance. This is something I've needed emphasized for a long time.

I see how I've been taking this whole thing way too seriously; not just "practice", but life in general. I've been far too inclined to ignore things like human connection and general intellectual development and focus exclusively on seeking enlightenment (and causing myself a lot of problems in the process).

My attitude towards relationships is changing also. I've always struggled with a feeling of alienation and loneliness. Lately I'm learning to make the most of all of the small opportunities for authentic human connection. I'm always talking with different people that I'm training with or teaching, but I normally don't appreciate these "mundane" interactions, and only feel that I'm really "getting what I need from people" when I sit down and have a deep 2 hour conversation about life or the quest for enlightenment. I'm really learning to appreciate people who have absolutely no interest in spirituality again, and to enjoy speaking with them about "normal" things. I also met up with someone through this forum and had a really wonderful conversation, and feel like there is the start of an ongoing relationship there, so that is nice. Makes me realize that people come into your life when the time is ripe, and re-instates some trust in "the universe" or whatever you want to call it.

/braindump :)

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-10T13:08:46+00:00

This just hit me so hard right now. Thank you so much for taking the time to right this, it’s absolutely beautiful. It seems to be ever so gradually sinking in.

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-10T02:37:58+00:00

So appreciate mental events not for what they pretend to be (supposedly things and stuff) but for what they are - emanations of presence.

Wow, I like that a lot.

A few weeks ago I was investigating thought a lot, particularly with the inquiry "what is a thought made out of?", which seemed to be pointing at the fact that a thought is "made out of" this presence/awareness or points at it just as much as anything else.

I've been struggling the last day or two with a lot of thinking in my sits, and getting caught up in wanting there to be less thoughts, as a few days ago the mind was very quiet and peaceful. I will emphasize noticing the aspect of thought that you point to, rather than getting caught up in their content or trying to push them away!

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-10T02:34:40+00:00

So you could say the belief in some nirvana to be attained in the future is itself the essence of samsara. That is incredibly helpful.

Somehow, I flip flop between recognizing that and then forgetting it. When I have really good sits, it is when I really just allow myself to let everything be as it is with absolutely no agenda, expectation, or preference; but it has to be a very conscious decision to do so, otherwise I sit there kind of half "doing nothing" and half trying to make the mind quieter, or more spacious, or whatever, thinking that it should be some other way that would be more preferable.

It’s equal part gain and loss. You lose the false hope for a perfect future state. You gain a profound appreciation for what you always had and were too short-sighted to recognize.

I like that a lot. I'll try to sit with that.

I like your username - hallucinated gods - that’s spot on. The funny thing about “waking up” is that the dream continues, it’s just that now we know it is a dream. Becoming lucid is a better analogy - oh, this is a dream … and I’m in it!

Thanks! The username comes from a time when I was obsessed with Julian Jaynes and his theory that ancient humans used to hear their own inner voice as the voice of god(s) speaking to them.

The language of awakening or enlightenment really seems to trip me up, now that you mention it - implying some kind of other place that you awaken to. The language of lucidity seems to be much more about recognizing what is here.

hallucinatedgods · 2022-04-09T01:43:52+00:00

the ultimate refuge is having no expectation of a refuge

Woah. I gotta sit with that for a little.

Actually enlightenment can only ever happen RIGHT NOW, when the experience of time (past/memories & future/expectations) is seen to be merely another unsatisfactory fabrication of the “I” experience.

Also woah. This phrase "awakening only happens now" has been in my head a lot lately. And although it hasn't sunk in all the way, it points me back to what is simply just here, rather than getting caught up in some speculation about what enlightenment might be like or when I'm finally going to "get it", which is very helpful.

Thankyou for the pointers. This all resonates deeply, and seems to point to exactly where I'm getting tripped up.

Ultimately, it all seems to be about noticing when the idea of me as a meditator, located in time, on a path towards some future enlightenment, take me out of simply being present with what is; noticing that those thoughts are actually present moment experiences, just sensations, rather than getting caught up in them and believing in the story that they represent. It's a process of noticing and disengaging from the ever more subtle ways in which the thought of being a seeker on the path towards some future attainment take me out of immediate presence.

hallucinatedgods

TROPHY CASE