FrgttnDeer

haha 'direct' is the right word

What they're trying to say is that you're trying to understand reality, which is absolute, by asking relative questions. Absolute reality is not organic or inorganic because these are distinctions and absolute reality is beyond distinctions (why is that?)

have you tried self-inquiry?

on the relative scale it's just a matter of opinion

'murder', 'shit human': these are distinctions, you are not a distinction

This is it.

@Outer From the materialist scientist's perspective: to make a distinction between what's obviously bullshit and what's proven.

@seeking_brilliance Let it do it's thing if it wants to. Who cares?

It has value. Don't expect to learn anything about spirituality in your courses though. But relative knowledge is valuable to live in the world. Actually I think spirituality should be a part of psychology. But it will take some time and some effort. Maybe you can help with that.

You can be enlightened and have a trauma. Enlightenment means seeing the nature of the self. The thing is, since animals very probably don't think conceptually, they don't construct a conceptual self. So there is no self to see the nature of. That being said, I heard that dolphins are very intelligent. It might be possible that they developed a conceptual way of thinking. Actually this is an interesting question, I'm going to look for some research on that.

@Serotoninluv This is actually a very good way to look at it. I don't agree that 'Samueling' is always happening though. It's a verb or an activity and sometimes you are not doing it. When you are in a state of flow, you are not doing it, or when in deep meditation, watching a movie, sleeping. These are all selfless activities. The fact that 'selfing' is not always happening is what makes it unreal. This is what the buddhists call impermanence: it comes, it goes. It is not you. That's why they say 'you're already enlightened'. You're already not the self. The self is already an activity that is not always happening. You just don't realise it yet. In my definition enlightenment points to having realised it, but it is true that nothing really changes with enlightenment.

@Gabriel Antonio hahah yes exactly

The thing is, anything you will find is by definition not you. But don't let that stop you from looking. Maybe you'll find nothing yes, now do it

@seeking_brilliance Please keep me up to date

@LaraGreenbridge We definitely need to make a distinction between the conceptual self, which is entirely conceptual and so can't be said to point to anything real, and what you really are, which definitely does exist because you are it.