Dr. Jeffery Martin, The Finders Course Works, Sorry Haters |406|

One subject relating to meditation that I think needs more investigation is the effect of diet on mood. I find that what I eat actually has a greater impact on my mood than meditation. I suspect there are people on medication for anxiety and depression who are curious about whether meditation could help them who would be helped more and get off medication by changing their diet.

Eating red meat reduces the risk of depression by 50%.
http://www.foodiejunky.com/eating-red-meat-reduces-risk-of-depression-by-50/

Eating the right amounts of carbohydrates and protein at the right times can increase serotonin levels.
http://www.serotoninpowerdiet.com/index.php

Too much sugar can cause anxiety
https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/causes/sugar
A study in 2008 found that rats that went on a sugar binge and then were deprived of food seemed to have a dopamine imbalance that lead to increased anxiety.

Another study published in 2009 found that long term sugar use seemed more likely to impair memory and reduce the ability to fight anxiety..

There are biochemical effects on consciousness that I believe cannot be changed by mental techniques such as meditation or cognitive therapy. And I think this fact is ignored in some systems to the detriment of those who are suffering. I believe this is also why some practices seem to have inconsistent results.

In my own experience diet and meditation are like the coarse adjustment and fine adjustment knobs on a microscope or a telescope. You use the coarse adjustment knob to get close to the right focus and the fine adjustment knob to get perfect focus.

Another factor that can affect the biochemical influences on your mood is exercise.

If my mood is affected by biochemical influences, I will try to use appropriate food and exercise to bring the biochemistry into balance before I meditate.
 
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right. totally get it. and that's the part that I find so interesting about jeffery martin's presentation I hear him saying "I don't give a f*** what anyone thinks about 'non-doing' or 'non-dual', or any other name you want to give to what you do, I'm going to measure you according to the best tools we have... and you may argue with these tools are crap, but that's what we're relying on right now within psychology... then I'm going to show you I can make the needle move regard to well-being."

I have to admit that I let Jeffery ramble on in the background while I did other things on my computer - it was the only way I could get through... until 1:25 when you started to question him about ψ phenomena, when he seemed to have a lot of interesting things to say. I think if you had placed that discussion at the start of the interview, it would have motivated many people to listen to the rest of it, so I'll probably listen again to the earlier part of the interview.

However, I think an important part of people's well being, is heir awareness (or not) of a larger reality, so Jeffery's lack of emphasis on this (until you pushed him) limits the value of his approach.

Also, the internet is chock full of courses that sound superficially similar to his, and he really needs to differentiate his 'product' (ugh!) from all that before people pay him money.

David
 
However, I think an important part of people's well being, is heir awareness (or not) of a larger reality, so Jeffery's lack of emphasis on this (until you pushed him) limits the value of his approach.

Good point.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articl...ect.html#articles_by_subject_benefits_meaning

Andrew Sims, past president of Royal College of Psychiatrists: "The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. ... In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks. ...
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html#lennox_individual

Belief in religion and the afterlife eases grief and fear of death. It deters suicide, and helps people cope with adversity such as unemployment and divorce. People who find meaning in life are healthier, but pseudoskeptics espouse materialism which says that life is meaningless.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-harm-caused-by-pseudoskepticism.html

Materialism: Meaning is an illusion. Science: People need meaning to thrive.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/08/materialism-meaning-is-illusion-science.html

Belief in religion and spirituality gives meaning to life in a way that atheism cannot.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/04/belief-in-religion-and-spirituality.html

Belief in religion and spirituality is enormously beneficial to the individual.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/09/skepticism-big-lie-activist-skeptics.html#well_being_references

Religion provides a solid foundation for ethics and morality in a way that atheism and materialism cannot.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/04/video-john-lennox-on-problem-of-evil_7.html

 
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“It is this inner self deception, the knowledge that we are not serving others, which makes one unhappy.”

I think many women of a certain age would disagree with this. It is for many of us the expectation of constantly serving others that drove/drives our unhappiness. The first thing I knew was how to serve others—I was the oldest girl, housework and babysitting were my life from age 6. I had no idea what my own desires and preferences were until uni, but by then ‘the servitude’ was embedded in my psyche, so I spent another 2 decades ‘volunteering’ and supporting others, often at my expense. It was only through re-training, self-care and getting “selfish” that I rediscovered a sense of well-being I’d never known that was deeply buried and it is still a regular struggle to maintain a balance of self-service over service to others. Most of the women my age I know have still not individuated in this way and live vicariously through their children and the needs of others, giving them the only real meaning to life that they have.

We could say that this brand of service to others is not authentic and that lack of authenticity is the root cause of the unhappiness. It is based in group-think and securing safety through diminishing one’s own needs and desires and surely is born in familial and societal disfunction. Politically we can see the devasting repercussions of this as women rise to the top of a completely corrupted system b/c they are so addicted to serving others they are blind to the real game and continue to serve any leader/system without any critical thinking or deconstructive analysis of the state of the world. Enter: Collectivism

One thing that is clear to me: Enlightenment is a deconstructive process.
 
“It is this inner self deception, the knowledge that we are not serving others, which makes one unhappy.”

I think many women of a certain age would disagree with this. It is for many of us the expectation of constantly serving others that drove/drives our unhappiness.

I think you are talking about being burnt-out on one set of tasks inside a daily schedule where your peers are exploiting your acquiesence. This is not the same thing as serving. I get up at 5:30am and work continually until 1am, while presenting to buzzword brainwashed Harvard MBAs and MIT PhD's on most days and spending 6 hours in traffic and on planes while completing the presentation or speech for tomorrow's ungrateful and snide execs and capital venture firm. If I regard them as enslaving me - that is not 'serving'. I do this for the families in my company, the nation I am hired to serve, or the people who will benefit from the program which results.

But to your point, I have been in companies, where my willingness to do the hard work, was exploited by my peers, who stacked their staffing plans luxuriously with extra engineers and scientists for their projects. When I insisted on their leveling out the staffing plan fairly based upon work content, they were furious that their golf games and steak dinners were being impinged upon. Eventually all these clowns left or were fired.

To qualify my comments would require a book - however, serving in the context I had outlined involves common skin in the game, a variety of life missions, goals and challenges - of your reasoned commitment, and peers who are not abusive.

Sorry that you are caught in this. But you will find that stepping out of the cycle and not serving - is not the prescription at all.
 
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Hi, I'm new to the forums. I don't necessarily have a point to make (at least not a good one) but did want to respond following Alex's plea for more engagement from listeners.
Anyway, considering Dr. Martin referenced the "Headless Way" twice in his interview, somewhat approvingly to my ears, I found it interesting that his own approach seems much more convoluted. I'm basing that statement on the rumor, referenced in earlier posts, that his courses cost $2000 or so. Although the Headless Way won't bring you closer to Nirvana, it is a good and profoundly inexpensive method of controller your thoughts and ideas. It helped me a great deal with anxiety in public spaces. Perhaps no great shakes for many people but for me it was life-changing. So I can see why other commenters might be suspicious of his motives. To me, he sounded like he wants to be the Steve Jobs of the extended consciousness realms. I guess there's nothing wrong with that if he can create an extended consciousness iPhone. Such a device would be well worth the two grand.
Another great show overall and I think I'll be buying his book when it's available. Should be fascinating reading even if it does turn put to be a hardcover brochure for those courses of his.
 
New age movement is a crock of turd. It's turned the occult SCIENCES into a bunch of love and light gibberish while ignoring or suppressing the bigger picture. They took the actual science out of it and reduced it to a 30 minute Disney show. Calling themselves lightworkers and indigo children etc

There’s so much airy-fairy wishful thinking going on in some of these communities. Some say that Hitler and mass murderers are “good souls” who are just “teaching a lesson.” Or, “negative spiritual entities do not exist, we just create them with our mind. Stop believing in them and they won’t exist.” Or, “it doesn’t matter what happens or what you do on Earth, we are all absorbed into the light when we die and become Heavenly Angels.” It’s really childish and actually dangerous.
 
Ohhhh..... an interesting quote. I will think on this for a while.

ES,
IMO, everyone has a different idea of what "enlightenment" is (or would be). I think that is one of Dr. Martin's points too. To some, it's feeling happy or good. To others, being a good salesperson. To me it's understanding, exploring and enjoying the totality of one's self. To yet others it would be dissolving their "ego" and melting into the supposed "oneness of all things". Others still think it would be having a convo w/ God.

That said, deconstruction does seem to be involved as the first step in the process; whatever enlightenment means to you. If the box you're in isn't working for you, you need to deconstruct that perspective about what the world is, how it works and who you are/how you work - at least to some extent - before you can adopt/construct a new perspective and path.

But that is where the danger lies. A ship at sea with no compass, no nautical map and no clear destination is not a good thing. To go where the wind blows and the current flows might work out and...well...there are ship wrecks aplenty. You either need to take a massive leap of faith, good luck and a basically solid core sense of being (and you still might get dashed on the rocks) or you need a system/guidance.

IMO, those who are seeking tend most to needing the system/guidance. If they already had a solid sense of self, then the need to seek wouldn't be so prominent or desperate. This is not a blanket statement. Just a tendency. Some have a strong sense of self and wish to push further into the exploration and adventure and growth.

IMO, most rules and systems - in any aspect of life - are built to protect the weak, the stupid, the lost, the ignorant, the misguided from themselves and from others with the same ailments. For every one who is getting it right, there are a thousand who will get it wrong. The thousand need the rule of law and spiritual systems.
 
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Hi, I'm new to the forums. I don't necessarily have a point to make (at least not a good one) but did want to respond following Alex's plea for more engagement from listeners.
Anyway, considering Dr. Martin referenced the "Headless Way" twice in his interview, somewhat approvingly to my ears, I found it interesting that his own approach seems much more convoluted. I'm basing that statement on the rumor, referenced in earlier posts, that his courses cost $2000 or so. Although the Headless Way won't bring you closer to Nirvana, it is a good and profoundly inexpensive method of controller your thoughts and ideas. It helped me a great deal with anxiety in public spaces. Perhaps no great shakes for many people but for me it was life-changing. So I can see why other commenters might be suspicious of his motives. To me, he sounded like he wants to be the Steve Jobs of the extended consciousness realms. I guess there's nothing wrong with that if he can create an extended consciousness iPhone. Such a device would be well worth the two grand.
Another great show overall and I think I'll be buying his book when it's available. Should be fascinating reading even if it does turn put to be a hardcover brochure for those courses of his.
hi Stephen... welcome. I think you nailed it... and one of the reasons I'm very supportive of what he's doing is that I want to see somebody drive that iphone of consciousness transformation stake in the ground. I want someone to say this is what is possible when we think about consciousness in this way. it's really quite a radical position. it basically says psychology as we know it is b*******. this may not be a big deal to us because we're past the mind= brain stuff, but it would be a huge cultural shift.

of course, this probably means this won't ever happen. it seems counter to the culture shaper agenda as we've come to understand it :)
 
In the interview JM talks about the lack of motivation that arises after the ‘finding’. As someone who has become highly motivated to serve without being ‘in servitude’ how would you describe this transition and define the nuances between them?
this is a great question and I'm sure the answer is very personal for everyone... service in awesome path.

the distinction as I see it is an addition by subtraction kind of thing... remove what blocks the divine within me. my mantra for today :) it's not about getting what I want
 
ES,
IMO, everyone has a different idea of what "enlightenment" is (or would be). I think that is one of Dr. Martin's points too. To some, it's feeling happy or good. To others, being a good salesperson. To me it's understanding, exploring and enjoying the totality of one's self. To yet others it would be dissolving their "ego" and melting into the supposed "oneness of all things". Others still think it would be having a convo w/ God.

That said, deconstruction does seem to be involved as the first step in the process; whatever enlightenment means to you. If the box you're in isn't working for you, you need to deconstruct that perspective about what the world is, how it works and who you are/how you work - at least to some extent - before you can adopt/construct a new perspective and path.

But that is where the danger lies. A ship at sea with no compass, no nautical map and no clear destination is not a good thing. To go where the wind blows and the current flows might work out and...well...there are ship wrecks aplenty. You either need to take a massive leap of faith, good luck and a basically solid core sense of being (and you still might get dashed on the rocks) or you need a system/guidance.

IMO, those who are seeking tend most to needing the system/guidance. If they already had a solid sense of self, then the need to seek wouldn't be so prominent or desperate. This is not a blanket statement. Just a tendency. Some have a strong sense of self and wish to push further into the exploration and adventure and growth.

IMO, most rules and systems - in any aspect of life - are built to protect the weak, the stupid, the lost, the ignorant, the misguided from themselves and from others with the same ailments. For every one who is getting it right, there are a thousand who will get it wrong. The thousand need the rule of law and spiritual systems.

This is indeed very different from my experience. Becoming a good salesman has nothing to do with becoming enlightened and having a strong sense of self, willing to explore outside the normal paradigm, is what drives the individual toward enlightenment. Is ‘well-being’ the same? Not sure, but desperation and lack of sense of self lead more often to sheep-like behavior, immersion in the crowd, not toward finding one’s true path. It’s far easier to follow orders and go along to get along than it is to wade against the current.
 
Greetings! My radar is giving me warning signals here. Dr. Martin says he originally interviewed ordinary people who, he said, “weren’t selling something”. But this guy is clearly selling something. He talks a lot, but it’s a smokescreen, or a seamless curtain. There’s nothing there. It’s just a stream of glittering words, set just above the ordinary threshold of comprehension. Perhaps if one dives a little deeper, or tries a bit harder (or antes up a bit more), understanding will come. But, shades of L. Ron Hubbard, understanding will never come.
“Bring bricks of clay”, ordered Pharoah to his chief minister, “that I may mount up (to the heavens) to bring down the God of Moses”! It’s an old, old story.
Actually, I went back and looked at the Quranic verse (28:38) and what Pharoah says first to his ministers is, “O, my chiefs, I do not know of any god for you besides myself!”
I know no one here likes to be preached to, but c’mon!

I agree. I automatically become suspicious when I see marketing hype (the use of psychological techniques that influence people to buy). Maybe to other entrepreneurs it looks reasonable, but to ordinary people who are constantly bombarded by scammers trying to separate them from their hard earned money, it looks shady.

I never buy anything on-line without reading the bad reviews first.

I summarized my concerns about the Finder's Course in a previous thread:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...nlightenment-be-taught.1953/page-4#post-59350
 
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Sorry that you are caught in this. But you will find that stepping out of the cycle and not serving - is not the prescription at all.

Not at all! My experience has moved quite organically and gracefully from serving others to serving the greater field of life, the divine if you will, my connection and contribution to humanity as a whole is through my unique aptitudes and preferences, not through the ephemeral desires/needs of those pulling on me in any given moment. The balancing issue I mentioned is caused by old guilt programming of not serving others’ ego drives, which is like a security blanket of approval, as long as you keep giving and never needing in return.

The deconstruction for me is an on-going process, for life. Englightenment is recognizing the ‘unbearable lightness of being’ and never ends in the material world, the old/useless is continually being sloughed off before any regeneration takes place, which happens in never-ending layers.
 
In the interview JM talks about the lack of motivation that arises after the ‘finding’. As someone who has become highly motivated to serve without being ‘in servitude’ how would you describe this transition and define the nuances between them?

Gad, yeah - a great question Mishelle. I love a good mystery, and have never numbed myself to the extraordinarily unlikely phenomenon of being here in the first place. After that it is simply a long list of things which all play into resilience I guess. The universe is asking 'Who are you?' So I am gonna answer it.
 
Mishelle said:
In the interview JM talks about the lack of motivation that arises after the ‘finding’. As someone who has become highly motivated to serve without being ‘in servitude’ how would you describe this transition and define the nuances between them?
Gad, yeah - a great question Mishelle. I love a good mystery, and have never numbed myself to the extraordinarily unlikely phenomenon of being here in the first place. After that it is simply a long list of things which all play into resilience I guess. The universe is asking 'Who are you?' So I am gonna answer it.

When you see that everything in your mind is a consequence of cause and effect it changes what you believe about free will.

People think getting things or attaining things will make them happy, But when you can control your own happiness by meditation, you see that happiness is not dependent on attainments. Realizing that diminishes your ambition.

And when you observe what kinds of things dislodge you from a state of happiness, you see that striving for attainments is actually the cause of unhappiness not happiness.

You may have heard the expression, "Everything is perfect just as it is". That really means, "I'm so doped up by my own brain chemicals that nothing can upset me, I can't feel that anything can be wrong. Why should I do anything when there is nothing that needs to be done?"

And when you realize that most people are fooled by an illusion, of one kind or another to the point that it is almost impossible to help them, it takes the steam out of your crusade.

Although a common effect of Buddhist awakening is that the experiencer wants to drop everything and teach everyone how to get enlightened:

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/7146949#_19_message_8071737
Alot had changed
- I Just want to become monk and entire life meditate peacefully.
I asked to my mentor to be that , he do not allow as i have human duties left , being married, and only son so to look after parents .
...
- I want to spent my life teaching others and bringing enlightenment as possible (but we have a rule that if you can't
responsible for your disciple's outcome , progress , should not teach , especially Samahta )
- I can be contented easily than before (both good and bad thing).

I have a section on my web site about the dangers of meditation and I recommend people read it before they start learning to meditate.

When I used to go the Zen Center there were often talks by members who gave up high paying careers so they could devote themselves to practicing Zen. I thought they were crazy until I did it too.
 
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From the transcriupt:

Dr Martin: It’s frustrating, I think, for people that make legit self-help products that actually do help people, because those people will often get to the end of the process and they’re clearly happier but they’ll insist that they’re not, and it because they’ve forgotten how unhappy they were at the beginning of going to that course or whatever it was that shifted them.

When you are happy, you are not feeling any unpleasant emotions. Even if you had a lot of suffering up until a point when you are happy you are unable to remember that suffering because to remember an unpleasant emotion you have to relive it in your mind (re-experience it). But if you are not feeling any unpleasant emotions, you cannot relive it in your mind. It is like a life time of suffering is wiped away. And you cannot regret past mistakes or time misspent if you are not experiencing unpleasant emotions because regret is an unpleasant emotion.

It can seem like the past is an illusion. This is one reason people will sometimes say time is an illusion.

But suppose after experiencing this, something happens that causes suffering or regret again. You might recognize that it can vanish at some time in the future if you are happy again, and you will not believe this new unpleasantness is real. You know it is an illusion even though you feel it. It changes your attitude to suffering.

The same kind of thing happens with happiness, it is also an illusion. And too much of anything, including intense happiness, can be tedious. It's like a stereo - the kids like to turn up the volume to high but as they mature, they still play music but they turn it down.
 
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I think jeffrey saying completely different. he saying you can have all of your preconceived notions and beliefs about how much money should factor into this and what spirituality is and all the rest, he's just going to measure whether you were happy before, and whether you happy after and then he's going to figure out a way to productize the difference.

I'm totally cool with that. I want that option in the marketplace. better in the hands of jeffrey than the underground MKUltra folks.

I don't believe most people really want to be happy. They want things. They want attainments. They want to satisfy their cravings. They tell themselves that doing what they want and getting what they want will make them happy but in reality striving for those things makes them unhappy. They could stop striving in an instant and be happy right now (if their brain chemistry is healthy). But they don't because they don't want to be happy, They want things and attainments.

This is not bad.

It is not good.

Maybe that is why it takes a slick marketing tricks to sell happiness. It is a product most people don't really want. You have to sell it as an attainment, as a status symbol, as a mystery.

Meditation does not just produce happiness. It change your understanding. It shows you that your cravings are illusions that have no value. Happiness by itself doesn't do that.
 
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