tsuki

@now is forever I'm not interested in the practices perse, but exploring the territory in general. Wishing for things to come to me is a double-edged sword in the hands of a fool such as myself. After all, one of my favorite sayings is: "be careful what you wish for, it might just come true". The interesting bit is about liberation and altered states of consciousness. It sounds like enlightenment textbook. I'm not reading it to become enlightened, but to better understand what happened to me. And what situation did you mean in May?

@now is forever I am a Shaman (albeit a modest one). So, today I purchased Lieber Null & Psychonaut: An Intorduction to Chaos Magic by Peter J. Carroll. This book is fucking brutal. It's like I'm reading my life explained in words I didn't know existed. Frankly, some parts of it scare me and that's a compliment if I say so myself. My favorite sentence thus far is: I remember that you used the term "chaos magic" once @now is forever . Did you come across some other books about it?

Despite what I said about my life purpose, I'm starting to understand it and perhaps, I have even given it a name. Or rather - A name popped up first, and then, after some research, I understand what I want to do. Should I spoil it?

@Zweisteinok, ok. Even if we helped you, you would still have to figure out our responses on your own .

I actually think that facing the inner child/madness is crucial in the process of growing up. Ending up as as disillusined, selfdestructive or lemming adult is a halted growth in my opinion. We desensitize ourselves to preserve the inner structure of identity. We kill the child to be the adult. That's not going to work. It's yin and yang. It has to flow. Build and destroy. The child is the chaotic soup from which personality arises. To kill the child is to kill the human. I also think that formalizing parenting in the form of school/license is not the best idea either. I don't have a child, but I think that parenting is highly customized to the child's needs. How do we account for that in a system that is supposed to encompass the whole of society? It same critique applies for schooling as it is right now. It is just outsourcing parenting to an institution. The saddest thing is that it cannot be done any other way without relapsing the way in which society works. With the hyper-specialization of adults, we just can't give our children too much attention anymore. I don't think that growing up can be a mass-production enterprise. It is an inner work. Either we want to do it, or we don't. Outside stimuli have nothing to do with it.

It's interesting when you think of it that way. There are dog schools! School is an institution that is usually thought of as a place in which you learn knowledge to be 'responsible citizen'. To me, they are just a place in which you socialize. With your peers and with society as a whole through the means of the authority-figure of a teacher. Peers convey the context of relationships, and the teacher provides the common context that is shared with the rest of the world that is absent in class. There are dog schools when we expect dogs to behave certain way (obey commands). There are no parenting schools, because we do not co-operate when raising children. When we leave school, we are 'properly' socialized and obey authority of TV/news/etc. I think that dogs are usually happier than our children because they have the luxury of remaining dogs. We expect children to become a responsible cog in the survival-machine. Not that it is a bad thing necessarily.

@Zweistein Lately, I realized that philosopher's greatest achievement is to remain silent and let the doing do the talking. When it comes to my life purpose - I haven't come across anything that does not bleek in comparison to death. Long time ago I realized that my understanding of LP is simply avoiding death by building myself a tombstone that would outlive me. Seeing that undertaking as futile (no tombstones are eternal), I came to conclusion that I will live to be the most authentic version of myself and die. No mark that I can leave upon the world will be as permanent as my own erasure. Oh, and I think it is worth noting that to me, authenticity became synonymous with presence.

@Zweistein @now is forever I don't think it's about equality, but sameness. All children are identical (in a certain sense). We are our children: by being something that is built around an inner child by building something around our children A child lives in its mother and its mother lives in her child.

Courage is not a lack of fear. Courage is action in the face of fear. What spirituality is about is dissolving that which we fear for. Ourselves. Enlightened being neither fears, nor acts courageously. It simply is.

@now is forever You're welcome

To interpret it as either good, or bad is to find meaninglessness meaningful. Both directions are a way to become a person. I think that this is what @SOUL hinting towards. Not knowing is wonderful. It had helped me a lot as well. Good luck. You're right. What helps my suffering is letting meaning and meaninglessness weave together. Suffering is not gone, I just learned to enjoy it (is it really suffering if I'm enjoying it though?). It feels as if there were two people inside of me, taking contradictory stances at the same time. I can't tell whether it is conflict or unity .

Is that an objective, or a subjective statement though? Perhaps, the only Absolute can be recognized as absolute relativity.

As if such labels make it any less vague. "Me" is defined by a boundary apart from "the other". Seeing a difference between Egoic self and God Awareness is egoic.

'Me' is defined against the 'other'. I am where the other isn't. Boundlessness is neither me, nor the other. Once there is no 'me' and no 'other', there can be no "Everything is me". Once there is no 'me', the only thing is 'everything=nothing'. Reconciliation of (1) and (2) is done via polar thinking. It will not make it any more meaningful though. It works only if egoic self is not the same as the Self.

Fragmentation = separation = difference = identification = self. Is there a difference between self and no-self? is there a difference between time and timelessness? Is there a difference between pre-enlightenment and post-enlightenment?

@tashawoodfall Recognizing meaninglessness of existence is an important part of the path. For me, freedom from it came from recognition that suffering because of meaninglessness is absurd. To suffer because of meaninglessness is to suffer because of the lack of meaning. If the life is truly meaningless, then why is the lack of meaning, meaningful to me? To fully realize meaninglessness of existence is to find the meaninglessness meaningless. You can go either way. Reject it and become a person once more, or embrace it and die. I took the second option.

Thank you . I will take this at the face value. Hm, and why is realizing enlightenment the ultimate purpose? Aren't you imposing things on other people this way? Wouldn't it be okay if people did whatever they wanted, like they always did and always will? Some of them would become interested in spirituality and perhaps it would be easier to become enlightened because of fewer technology?

Semantically, yes. It feels like we're mismatched on what we mean by 'situation'. A highbrow discussion on the situation in the middle East may better correspond to 'perspective', but I was referring to more practical situations. If the situation is the possibility of losing a job we care for, we have to be willing to become content with being unemployed, or even homeless. If the situation is such that our child is being held for ransom, then... calling it just a change in perspective seems a little underwhelming. This is why I was talking about changing identity. When identity and circumstances are equivalent, there is choice but there is no chooser.

That's surprisingly insightful. What I meant is that once we recognize that changing ourselves in response to a situation is the same as changing the situation (solving the problem), then there is no 'me' that can benefit from anything. There is choice, but there is no chooser. All options are equivalent once we recognize the possibility of changing identity. Also: the fact that there are problems is not a problem in itself.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. Progress is not an imperative. It is a choice. It is a choice in the sense of selecting a reference point and believing that it is constant. It is a choice in the sense of selecting a method of measuring properties that describe it. It is a choice in the sense of selecting the objective towards which we want to progress. You cannot get rid of suffering through progress. If you lower suffering, a new baseline emerges and instead of suffering because of hunger, you suffer because of tinder. All of the world's problems come from the lack of recognition of what any problem ultimately is. A choice. It is a decision whether you want to change the circumstances (being ass-to-bellybutton with trying to control experience), or whether you want to adapt to them. God awareness has no problems. It is not a dichotomy of being vs doing. @Joseph Maynor seems to be struggling because he is under the impression that you can acquire. or lose it. Being a monk, or being the CEO of Apple makes no difference from this perspective.

@lmfao @here-now Nansen created an impossible situation. In order to save the cat that two monks fight for, they have to do the right thing, without knowing what to do. There is no 'word of Zen'. The word of Zen is presence without attachment to the past. Not even attachment to what Zen is (as defined right now). The monks were fighting for the cat. They could have fought for it in the spirit of Zen, or not. In order to save the cat, they had to be not attached to it. The word of Zen is not getting caught up in the situation. By being trustfully non-attached, regardless of whether the cat would have been killed or not, they would have been saved. Nansen tells the situation to Joshu, and Joshu plays a trick on him. Joshu asks: are you attached to that situation? Nansen replies: yes.

I was always wondering how enlightenment is possible, if a man is bound by karma. Wouldn't enlightenment be karmically bound as well? As the result of the karmic cycle exploring a particular nook that leads to its end before the death of a body. Perhaps, that is the meaning of the phrase that no man is ever enlightened. The man dies with karma.

I don't think that blissful observation is in opposition to working. Doing (working, talking) is not opposed to being. We are when we do. It is a matter of finding being within doing and staying centered. Not getting sucked back into Maya. Having said that, I do not really think that it is possible to tell whether a person is just doing. In my experience, it is incredibly difficult to talk about certain topics with people. Not because they resist it consciously, or unconsciously, but simply because we use different languages. Whatever I call Being does not hit any notes and (out of respect for themselves) they would assume that I'm out of my mind. That would not be too far off . Finding the keys that hit the right notes is what deep relationships are about. I really am under the impression that all relationships are about enlightenment, but we all start with different languages.

@MM1988 Stop playing. A girlfriend is not a substitute for loving yourself. Feelings are not pointers to the stuff that you should acquire to silence them down. If you hate yourself, then you will always need something to silence the hate down. Once you have the girlfriend, you will hate yourself for something else (not earning enough money for example). Sit your ass on a couch and feel the self hatred until you cry yourself to sleep. Wake up, rinse and repeat. Do it until the self hatred becomes indistinguishable from self-love. Anything you acquire out of a need to silence an emotion down, you are better off without.

Today, I understood that the diagram maps onto Enneagram. 9: Body, 6: Mind, 3: World Enneagram is samsara expressed in terms of personality.