Presence

Well if you look over a couple inches to the right there's a binaural beats track I had developed :). It helps BIG time with developing bodily control as well as mental focus, though the track is powerful enough that the mental focus part isn't as difficult an issue. I do have some "not so heavy" binaural beats on the main site, pretty sure they're hosted on soundcloud and they help with focus and concentration during whatever task you've got at hand. 

If you've found during times of stress you go into thinking overdrive then yes you still haven't developed that most basic of self-actualized skills.. which is the point of pretty much everything out there on the topic whether it's Tolle or meditation or Buddhist practices or zen, etc. 

Btw do you meditate mw or is knowledge of tolle enough for you? I also found pick-up meditative...after one or two approaches i usually completely switch into being in the present moment and can do a lot of approaches in situations that would otherwise scare me.

manwhore are you supposed to stay awake during the track? cuz i play it before going to sleep and i always fall asleep midway

Knowledge of Tolle? Geezez man, no this is not something I read once and think I understand on an "intellectual" level. It's about maintaining immersion and consistency. "Presence" is not book knowledge, it's a lifestyle. The point of it is to actually practice it. So however you get it done and however it works best for you is what counts. 

It's either living a lifestyle of presence or living a lifestyle of shit.  It makes me sad that somehow we got to this point where no one is vulnerable enough to feel anything but we happen to be living at this period in history where things are starting to turn around towards authencity.  Meditation is a lifestyle, there is no pathway to happiness, happiness IS the path...

well that is what i meant... If you just practice tolle or if you also meditate.

So PT I think the real question you're wanting to know is, how do you channel your anxiety or inner tension into something workable. E.g. Tolle is sort of like.. wipe the slate clean, but when you're attempting to achieve those levels of super-productivity he doesn't necessarily guide you in the right direction. Amirite?

YES!!! I used to meditate in school and I did it for a month straight. I felt like I was controlling a character in a video game, totally detatched. But that's all I got from it. It felt very weird and 'empty' at times. I never felt any bad emotions, but the good ones didn't really come through either. Socializing was like a diologue wheel in a video game. Listening to Practicing the Power of Now did the same thing.

At the time I decided it wasn't helping and I was doing something wrong. I was 18-19 at the time and told myself it was a "young guy problem" and that I'd come back to it because pretty much every legit dude on this forum talks about the value of presence and Tolle, but no one has ever really verbalized what my problem was till now.

Have any of you guys dealt with this before?

Explain more the socializing while in a dialogue wheel. 

In a game like Mass Effect you have a select number of dialogue choices to choose from. Generally, you have the good guy option, bad guy, neutral, etc. Its very predictable and can be very boring and robotic simply because you don't have many options and it's obvious how the dialogue choices would play out. In games without a dialogue wheel like the Star Wars KotOR series you have a ton more options so generally you can find a response that matches what you want to say.

In other words, the dialogue wheel tends to make players apathetic about the outcome of conversations. It's like, "Now I'm gonna say the good guy option. Now I'll ask for more info. Now I'll say the bad guy option so I can get out of this and shoot something."

When I was socializing after meditating like this, it was like, "Ok, now I'm gonna say this. Hmm. Now I'll say this..." It was just pure apathy and 'detachedness' rather than outcome independence. I just wasn't feeling any emotion.

If I'm reading this correctly... I believe this type of over analyzing/detachment comes from "trying" to be present.... instead of actually being present and enjoying the moment - without future or past expectations clouding reality. Flow state or being 'in the zone', if you will.

Think of Now as foreverness that is always unfolding... instead of trying to pick out a "NOW" moment. Once you've found the Now it's already too late. lol. The next moment has already come and gone.

Focusing only on YOUR experience(like a video game where everyone else is just a mindless NPC) is not presence... that's introversion. Presence is awareness of everything as a whole.

It's completely possible that just I'm not communicating this properly. This was VERY strange.

I wasn't analyzing anything though. It was like watching my own movie through a first-person view but completely detached and apathetic. I had no future or past popping up, but no boredom either. No emotion at all. I went back to my thoughts and such because sometimes they were nice and fun.

Ok, I think you're on to something here. I don't remember putting my awareness on anyone else's experience. Just mine. When I meditated, I would put my focus on my body, the feelings in my body, the sounds and physical sensations of the world around me, etc. I never tried to put myself in anyone's shoes while meditating and I may have trained myself to just only feel my own shit and the physical world around me.

Very interesting. Thanks.

You don't and can't know anybody elses experience, its just mental masturbation, and a cheap high.

I repect Tolle in a "having a better lucid dream" kind of way, but if you're beyond that, and some are,  better crap that i have read is Jed Mckenna (i know, i know), Peter Ralston, Goran backlund and Steven Norquist.

Presence is childsplay.

^ That is so unbelievably naive I hope you're not serious. 

There is a such thing as shared experience... or people probably wouldn't interact with each other so much. The experience of reading a book (introverted) vs talking to a girl in a club (extroverted) is different. This isn't mental masturbation. Communication can be felt. It's easily demonstrated and ties directly into the spiritual concept of "oneness" or being one with everything.

Dead serious. Im not really bashing it, im not saying all that isnt "there", but there is a beyond that, and a beyond to that beyond, and to some people its just seen through lets say, like im guessing woberdor maybe is.

Im pretty sure not even Tolle discovered wheres he at by presence, it was a by-product.

Its like any other "substance", to some its helpful, to some, its better to be off it as it will be a crutch. We all know which one we are.

Feeling feels a bit better/deeper than thought, but all in all, they are not that different. You can feel all sorts of things, dont make em true. Shit, i better shut up :).

Negative, that's just a rationalization by the ego, putting it off by saying there's always something "more" so why bother, and what about Jed McKenna. A pretty typical chode ego response I've heard it lots of times before. 

Everyone needs to go into and experience presence and become an adept at active mindfulness. You're going to be a lost boy your whole life without it. You made it very evident you have NO idea what you're talking about, calling it a cheap high and mental masturbation. That's utterly fucking naive. Nothing taught me more emotional and mental control and discipline than Eckart Tolle, not being a military leader, not college or sports or anything. 

I wrote and spoke on this stuff for years, you can go back to 2007/08 I'm talking at conferences explaining the role of mental and emotional control.. and then Tolle comes along and BOOM we're all floating in zero g gravity. I stopped talking about that shit I didn't have to anymore I wasn't the teacher. But I can't have some rando on an internet forum who's probably got the equivalent life experience of a 16 yr old girl trying to downplay active mindfulness. DURR 

The truth is you don't know what you don't know, and to attempt to describe it as such means you've not even come close. You've got to let that crap go mang. Got to drink the kool-aid. 

I've had 2 absolutely fucking insane experiences meditating. I don't know what  they were, but they definitely changed me. And I have to say one of them was the most amazing experience of my life. They did not really change my actions or make me any more of a boss in real life though, just a deeper peace "behind it all". I think there is definitely a difference in "active mindfullness" and having astounding transcendental experiences. 

Yeah dude, I see people write stuff like this and get a lil frustrated because I can't get myself to experience it. Of course my ego wants to pop up and be like, "HURR DURR ITS BULLSHIT," but I've seen too many badass guys talking about how great presence is.

People talk about looking at your emotions, the environment, and other people all being shitty and being able to ignore all that with presence and do what you want in spite of it. And its like, YES, meditation and presence gave me that to an extent, and its an extremely valuable skill, the loss of which would make my life several orders of magnitude shittier. But then people wanna talk about "the third eye" and "the joy of presence" and crazy meditation experiences and I just do not know what the fuck they're on about.

What do you know about ego, seriously, what does anyone know about ego?

Im not saying don't bother, im saying there is a place where you dont have to bother anymore, its just there, well, that doesnt really cover it.

For me all experience are the same crap, even if they are different on the surface.

This is purely a distinct lack of personal self-expression, creativity, and "vision" e.g. an end goal. You were basically stripped of everything, and.. there was nothing there. Get training bud 

So you're saying that I removed all the bullshit, but I didn't have anything to work toward, no fun stuff to enjoy, no 'life', etc. This DOES make sense. It looks like I removed all the distractions and was forced to see my life as it really was... empty and without direction. The bullshit distracted me from my life and once it was gone I didn't like what I saw.

Meditation can't give you direction and purpose. I guess this is what everyone meant by saying meditation on its own is masturbation.

My life is a lot different now, but this helped a ton to show me what the hell was going on there. Thanks. Looks like its time to get back into it.

Yep exactly. Good shit