Here’s the recording for those who couldn’t join or stay the whole show. It was an awesome talk I must attest

Book recommendations from MT:

1) Cupid’s poisoned arrows
2) Letting go (Dave Hawkins)
3) The bliss of the celibate (Julien)
4) The coiled serpent (Cornelis Johannes)
5) The power of now (Eckghart Tolle)
6) Autobiography of a yogi
7) Bhagavad Gita

Stay Inspired 🤎

How long will you remain society's puppet?

From the moment you were born, the world has continually conditioned you as it wishes. First your parents programmed you to adopt their beliefs, lifestyle, idiosyncrasies, anger issues, and whatever they have going on for them.

Then in school, you were taught how to be the perfect societal dummy. You went through intense compliance training and became docile. As you got older, your mind got hacked by social media. They influenced you into mimetic desires, over consumerism, fanaticism, and all kinds of sexual perversions. Now your life is purely driven by survival, pleasure and addictions.

Observe how you guilt trip yourself no matter what you do or don't do. Observe how you spend all your waking minute pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their validation, hope for their approval, rely on their guidance, and sheepishly emulate them. You are scared (or unable) to think for yourself, to wander and find you own truth. Congrats, you've been indoctrinated to life long dependency.

Not only did they program what to think into you, they built a fail switch to ensure you don't doubt your upbringing, talk less of attempting to break free. And this impedes your soul's yearning for true freedom. Now wonder you are always confused on what to do and how to live.

You have become a puppet to some very dubious people. Your freewill is only an illusion. They have you wasting your life, chasing fanciful illusions and serving false gods.

The purpose of this month long seminar (and book) is to deprogram you. To help you regain autonomy over your life. It's time to unlearn all the garbage that has been deposited into your mind.

WHAT YOU WILL GET

✔️Membership access to private group

✔️ Free spiritual books & materials

✔️Free guided meditation sessions

✔️Daily long form articles everyday of the month.

✔️Weekly Q&A and podcast sessions with some of the most enlightened minds on Twitter

✔️The become your own sage package for free (including all podcast episodes, meditations & BYOS book).

Earliest bird discount for Dojo members👇🏾

https://skantlee.gumroad.com/l/gzvsm

Love & Light...

Techniques to free you from the mind

1 - There are no mistakes

The most notorious habit of the human mind is to resist reality. We prefer to live in our little world of imagination (painful or pleasurable), than living in reality. Because quite honestly, reality is boring.

Yet all your frustrations stem from your mind’s inability to accept life as it is in the moment. You attribute all effects to your actions, and rarely consider the sheer magnitude of things outside your control. As a result, you expect your actions to be well calculated, 100% accurate, & effectuate only positive effects. Quite foolish considering the fact that you neither have the mental capacity to compute all possible factors per moment, nor the ability to predict the future. Simply put, you hate to err.

This fear of erring has deep roots in your upbringing. It was painstakingly instilled in you by your parents and school system. The school system fulfills its part of the quota by employing a grading system that destroys the confidence of students. A terrible and inaccurate method of judging intelligence.

Generally, society upholds a strong stigma against failure. Academics isn’t the only test society puts you through. Your lifestyle, spirituality, health, appearance, relationship status, career choices are always being scrutinized by people who should have no business in your business. Unfortunately that’s the world you found yourself in, and you’ve learnt to adapt… Or have you?

The price of “adapting” is far costlier than anything you can imagine. What it actually means is that you’ve learnt to suffer in silence as the countless voices in your head incessantly judge you. Yet these voices aren’t really yours - but a composite of your parents, religious leaders, partners, friends, and even influencers. With varying intensity depending on what group you are most subservient to. The expectations of these people constantly bombard your mind. You frantically try to act in accordance with their set of rules, beating yourself up mentally for any slip up. Paradoxically, when you are overly conscious not to err, everything you do would seem like a mistake.
To be free of this obsession with perfection, let’s look into the concept of mistake.

What exactly is a mistake? Psychologically speaking - it is the mere idea that reality could be different other than what it is. Read that again. An idea that you create in your mind of the possibility that things could have happened differently. There’s no such thing. All of that is just a play of your intellect & imagination.

Understand this: No matter how hard you imagine it - things will never be different than how they are presently. You are only able to change the past in your mind, it never reflects reality momentarily.
So why waste mental energy in fantasy land? Reality may be boring or painful, but fully accepting it as it is changes the quality of your mind, and in turn, the quality of the experience. See it as a way to sharpen your Stoics.

You don’t have to let your own mind keep torturing you with could haves, would haves and should haves. Henceforth, whenever a thought pops up in your head saying you made a wrong choice or said the wrong thing, stop it dead in its tracks. Things are always exaggerated (positively or negatively) in your mind. There’s no way you could possibly know how things could have turned out alternatively. It’s guess work at best.

This habit of wanting or imaging things to be different is so deeply ingrained that it’s almost second nature. It’s not easy to break from, but you can start practicing today. Just don’t be interested or invested in your mind's stories, no matter how tempting they are.
Even in this you’ll err and your mind will try to guilt trip you. Remain detached & indifferent to whatever it says. Rather than participating in the discourse between all the voices in your head, be the watcher. Don’t even be the judge or corrector. Stand aloof, and gradually the ability of your mind to pull you into dream land will wane….
Hope this helps someone 🤎

If you want to learn how to read your mind and uncover true wisdom - enroll to become your own sage 👇🏾

https://skantlee.gumroad.com/l/gzvsm

Watch this 👇🏾

https://twitter.com/skantlee/status/1455624775842377747

Self awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it. The more you peel back, the more you’ll gain new insights on yourself. By exploring the different facets of your personality, you’ll begin to realize your one true face from the various masks you put on to function in society.

This self-knowledge is what compounds to wisdom. You’ll begin to receive direct guidance from the divine intelligence that organizes all of life itself.

The deeper you go, the more likely you are going to start crying randomly.
Become your own sage 🥋

Happiness is sustained by needing less and less things to be happy.

In solitude you’ll find peace. And peace is just happiness on slow mo - perfect contentment without the excitement.

You can’t always be happy, but you can always be at peace.
Inner peace is much easier to achieve and maintain (cos it needs nothing). Happiness / sadness are highs and lows of the same ladder - peace is when you’re unmoved by either.
Train tranquility, stay Inspired🥋

Happy Diwali to those celebrating 🤎

Times when life doesn’t feel real to me

- Watching lightning & dark clouds gather for rain
- Watching fancy colored lights blink or fluctuate in the dark night
- Listening to a dog bark over the silence of the night
- Kissing a crush
- Driving to an airport in the midnight
- Walking & laughing with friends on an empty street in the midnight
- Taking a nap in the afternoon and waking up in the evening
- Getting really high
- Burying a loved one
- Watching a firewood burn (staring at fire)
- First night in a new town or apartment
- Returning to earth after a long meditation session
- Stargazing while lying on my back
- Listening to the croak of toads at night
- Watching droplets of water fall from a tap to a bowl
- Staring into the eyes of a baby
- Being at a concert of my favorite artist

I feel we’ve all had one or two of these moments in life - when your mind is absent but you are fully present. When genuine gratitude and spontaneous joy sprout from your being. When the veil between real / unreal thins out. And real life starts to feel like a dream. Unfortunately we aren’t educated to watch out for moments like these, talk less of recognizing or appreciating them. It takes a level of awareness to catch them.

So which one have you experienced (doesn’t have to be on my list)?

Haha. Few would get this

When you are your own sage,this is how it feels 🥋

Happiness is the optimistic interpretation of everything that happens to you.

If you truly want to be happy, you wouldn’t put a condition on your happiness or tie it to any specific experience. You are only about as happy as you make your mind to be.

You don’t need to raise your vibration. You are already what you are seeking. Let go of the idea that you are anything less. Let go of the idea that you need to find love in any one person. And you’ll come to see that the happiness and love you’ve been searching for without, relies within in abundance.

Don’t want until your life is perfect before you are happy 🥋

2a.m Musings On Stillness

I went out to stare at the stars awhile before heading to bed. There was a plethora of them. The crescent moon shone beautifully and the night sky was a pleasure to behold. However my attention was quickly drawn to the silhouette of a strange figure. I couldn’t tell what type of bird it was, but considering its shape and the time it was, I’m guessing it was an owl. It sat majestically on a rope . I could feel it staring back at me, as if trying to analyze if I was an incoming threat or not. I sat on the balcony and began to watch it. A light fog pervaded the atmosphere, everything looked dreamy. Then I noticed that the bird was sitting perfectly still. As a fellow meditator, I was intrigued. And I thought to myself; if a bird can be so still, how much more the spirit of a man.

Stillness is the only cure to restlessness. There are 3 levels - body, mind, being. A completely still mind is undoubtedly the hardest thing to come by. In fact, the very nature of the mind is movement - of thought and of time.

Your being is ever still, effortlessly. Investigate this yourself by closing your eyes in a space where you can safely walk or run. Keep your attention inwards and take a few steps. You’ll start to feel like a part of you isn’t moving. A field of being that’s just simply there. This is a mere glimpse. The depth of this innate stillness can be further exposed by stilling the body

1 - Still the senses: Light a candle, or choose any random spot in your line of vision. Then try to imagine your eye balls and pupils settling on that spot. Don’t think of it “focus”, as that would strain your sight. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. But you can also peek through them from within - until there’s no distinction between the seer and the seen. Another way to train this awareness is to catch every blink of the eyes (much more harder, but even for a minute is appreciable).

2 - Still the tongue: Thinking is subvocal communication. Thinking produces the same effect as speech articulation does - tongue movement. When you sit to meditate, open your jaws as wide as you can. Stick your tongue out and keep them open for as long as you are comfortable with. Then gently close your mouth and let your tongue fall in nicely. Let the roof of your mouth and the top of your tongue touch lightly. Observe how your tongue vibrates as it subtly articulates the thoughts in your head. Don’t try to stop this (you can’t ). Just observe, the rest of the work would be done for you.

3 - Still the breath: Exhale out powerfully & rapidly, keeping the same tempo. Imagine your tummy is trying to empty any residue CO2 inside. After 10-15 out-breaths, slow it down and return to normal. Then try to keep a nice rhythm of breathing. Let your in-breath reach your navel. When you breathe in, imagine the universe breathing out. And when you breathe out, imagine the universe breathing in. A time comes when the boundary between in and out thins out, and you become like a revolving door.

4 - Still the body - When you sit to meditate, imagine your body petrifying to stone. Meditation is hard because the mind becomes agitated. If you aren’t comfortable in silent sitting, you’ll feel the urge to move or get out of the pose. This is totally natural, but as with everything, you’ll only get better with practice. You must resolve not to move till your session is over (even 5 minutes of stillness is a huge W). You can also practice the stone technique while lying on your back on your bed. Every thought alters your brain chemistry & body cells. You’ll notice that certain thoughts trigger certain movement. If you imagine something annoying, you'll feel your entire body stiffen as if ready to fight.
Whatever comes, relax through it.

As you develop body stillness, your inner stillness will deepen and your presence will expand. The after effect is that you'll start to gain more control over your mind as your thoughts become more organized & diffused.

Stay Inspired 🥋 (1:50am - 3:05am)

Namaste 🤎

The fear of consequences is how they keep you compliant. That’s how they keep controlling you - the government, the pharmaceuticals, food industries, religious leaders, family members and the likes. Everyone is trying to manipulate you by exploiting a certain innate fear that you have. It could be the fear of being lonely, the fear of being punished, or the fear of dying.

He who cannot lead himself, will inevitably be enslaved. A highly evolved human lives completely on his own terms. He acts courageously & without hesitation, accepting whatever consequences his actions incur. That, to me, is the hallmark of responsibility and maturity. Unless you attain peak levels of sovereignty- people will go on dictating what you should and shouldn’t say, wear or eat. They will enforce a career path on you, and even choose a life partner for you if you are really docile.

You’ve been blessed by nature with all you need to guide you through life - instinct, intuition, intellect & intelligence. Do you have such little faith in yourself. Granted you’ll make a lot of mistakes, but you won’t gain true wisdom otherwise.
And what is the fear? We live on a floating rock, drifting through an ever expanding nothingness. There are no rules!

Everything in life is already a gamble. Fall in love, and you could get hurt. Start a business, and you could go bankrupt. Eat, and you could choke or be poisoned. The most beautiful thing about life is that nobody gets out alive.

If you love to smoke - do you & cherish every high.
If you are very sexual - don’t be ashamed of it, there’s nothing more natural.
When you refuse all external interferences aimed at improving you, that’s when you blossom into progressive perfection.

Living dangerously & consciously with increase the quality of your life & character way more than living cautiously 🥋

A distillation of Navals thread on how to meditate

https://twitter.com/wisart_in/status/1453069224864145413

https://twitter.com/skantlee/status/1460308296833900549

I’m back ninjas 🖤