abrakamowse

I think there are more dudettes here, but they are a bit shy of posting their pictures.

I didn't finish reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but it explains a lot of things about Hell and other demons, entities, etc...

It seems that everything you say is in what I am actually investigating or being curious to understand. I was watching a video to understand epistemology like two weeks ago.

Cool. I know "know thyself" is the key. I will be paying attention to those books. :-)

Ok, thanks. I will continue with it.

Yes... reading books and watching youtube videos about enlightenment. Lately I am only listening to Alan Watts. But not looking for anything, only because I like what and how he says it. That's true, I think is "my ego" being impatient or anxious for results. Lol...

Maybe I open a thread about it, to not hijack this one. But what is happening to "me" is that I am tired of listening. I can't find anything new in what they say. I see like I know what is needed but somewhat the identification with the ego is still there. I know is fear, what I am trying to do is to slow the mind the more I can.

Because I AM

@Faceless Thanks, it's really powerful to know that. Nice. :-)

"I wonder what you mean when you use the word 'I'? I have been very interested in this problem for a long long time; and I have come to the conclusion that what most civilised people mean by that word is a hallucination, that is to say, a false sense of personal identity that is at complete variance with the facts of Nature. And as a result of having a false sense of identity we act in a way that is inappropriate to our natural environment, and when that inappropriate way of action is magnified by a very powerful technology we swiftly begin to see the results of a profound discord between man and Nature. [...] and we have not realised therefore that our environment is not something other than ourselves. In assuming that it is we have made a great mistake and are now paying the price for it. [...] because we have the strong sensation that our own being inside our skin is extremely different from the world outside our skin. That while there may be intelligence inside human skins and while there may be values and loving feelings, outside the skin is a world of mechanical process which does give a damn about any individual and which is basically unintelligent [...]. But it does not occur, you see, to the ordinary civilised person to regard himself - or herself -- as an expression of the whole universe. [...] You go with your environment in the same way as your head goes with the rest of your body. [...] But in the ordinary way, we don't feel it; that is to say, we don't have a vivid sensation of belonging to our environment in the same way that we have a sensation of being an ego inside a bag of skin located mostly in the skull, about half way between the ears and a little way behind the eyes. And it issues in these disastrous results of the ego which, according to nineteenth-century common sense, feels that it is a fluke in Nature and that if it does not fight Nature it will not be able to maintain its status as intelligent fluke. [...] Using symbols and using conscious intelligence - scanning (Nature) - has proved very useful to us. It has given us such technology as we have, but at the same time it has proven too much of a good thing. At the same time we've become so fascinated with it that we confuse the world as it is with the world as it is thought about, talked about and figured about, that is to say, with the world as it is described. And the difference between these two is vast. And when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we are not related to ourselves at all. We are like people eating menus instead of dinners. [...] So then we get back to the question of 'What do we mean by "I"?'. Well first of all, obviously, we mean our symbol of ourselves. Now, ourselves in this case, is the whole psychophysical organism, conscious and unconscious, plus its environment. That's your real Self. Your real Self, in other words, is the Universe as centred on your organism. That's you. [...] You are not a puppet which your environment pushes around, nor is the environment a puppet which you push around. They go together, they act together.[...] We are only rarely aware of this as when in curious alterations of consciousness which we call mystical experience, cosmic consciousness... An individual gets the feeling that everything that is happening is his own doing, or the opposite of that feeling, that he isn't doing anything; but that all his doings - his decisions and so forth - are happenings of Nature. You can feel it either way. You can describe it in this two completely opposite ways but you are talking about the same experience. You are talking about experiencing your own activity and the activity of Nature as one single process. [...]" "Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence." Alan Watts

Can it be said that everything that "the ego wants" is wrong? @Faceless ?

Everything is just a story that the ego creates. You are not really narcissistic, the ego is created by our environment, our friends, relatives, colleagues, teachers, school, etc. In reality the ego is not something real. So anything you think that you are not worthy, that you are a failure or whatever it appears in your consciousness is not true. I suggest you doing mindful meditation, learn to observe your thoughts without getting in the "story" they tell. And listen to Alan Watts, he has tons of videos in youtube. This one is Key IMO

And the Earth is flat too!

@Nahm Thanks! Very interesting exercise. I will do it. Thanks again for posting it!

This is me when I was like 28-29, drawing as usual. And this one is me with angry face

Listing from A and noticing if it is a belief or experience? Is that right?

Yes, today I realized that. It's incredible how deeply sleep I was... and probably still I am...

Not enjoying anything you do, it's a consequence of not seeing or feeling any purpose in your life. IMO.

The title of the post says that you don't find meaning in your life. I think that's what makes you not enjoy anything you do. It happened to me, that's why I shared that.

Today I had an insight about that. I was thinking too that life is meaningless and I was feeling sad because I didn't want to do stuff I normally do, I was procrastinating and just not doing anything important. I was pressuring me into doing stuff anyway, but I didn't feel very happy about it. There was something deep inside me that was not happy with that. And today at work I was thinking about that. And suddenly I had an insight that said "the ego doesn't want the freedom, you have to get used to not having a purpose. That's freedom, you do whatever you want because you can do it". It really didn't come with words, I am trying to translate what it came to me, it's like a sudden knowing. The ego doesn't like to have no purpose, because that's what he needs to continue existing. If there's a purpose there's a "self" (lower self/ego) who want's to achieve that purpose. But once the ego reaches its purpose, it changes. It doesn't want that, he needs to look for a new one. And so on...

There would be some difference in the way Christian call themselves, they are not really Christians.

Maybe Adam wanted to be expelled because Eve was a bit ugly, who knows?

Today while meditation I got to a level of concentration that I never achieved before. Nice. I have to continue working on that.

Very interesting video @cetus56 I think I will have to watch it several more times and take notes. Super interesting. My take on the story of Adam and Eve is that this is what it is, a Story. The only way to point to truth is through stories. So, that's what the old prophets who wrote the bible did. There's two main reasons to do this, the first one as I said, it is not possible to write or say anything about truth. The second, is because of the understanding of those who received the insights and tried to translate it to others. They will write in a way that they and others can understand. In this case, the bible says that Adam and Eve where in paradise. This is for me the initial moment when we were all awareness. God was one, so there was no separation, we were in Paradise, Adam and Eve, the whole humanity were in paradise. But we were all one thing. Truth was all One. But truth wants to experience diversity... how does he does that? Introducing what is false. The false thing is the illusion. When that is introduced in reality, is the moment where Adam and Eve are expelled from the Paradise. because now they understand what is good and bad. In reality good and bad are just concepts. They are the same thing, but know they know there's different degrees in good and that creates the bad. The bad is the degree where there's nothing good. Good and bad are two sides of the same coin. Like darkness is absence of light. Badness is absence of goodness. Now they see as separated from God and out of paradise. The idea of the Devil here is the ego. The ego is introduced, and if you read the bible you will notice the mechanism of the mind very clearly in the way that the devil/serpent convinces Eva that she must eat from the tree of knowledge. It is like a punishment for the ego, because now the ego is separated, or sees itself as separated from the whole. So, now he has to work to feed the physical body. The women have to give birth with pain to continue the human race, all of this was seen by this old writers of the Bible as a punishment. And, don't we sometimes when things don't happen the way we want, don't we say... "God, what did I do to deserve this"? It's not a punishment, IMO but the ego will see it as a punishment, as a sin. The sin, is the way that God creates the universe. So, when we cannot see truth as it is, we see separation. We can't see reality the way it is, we see it distorted by our mind, by our ego and that's the sin, sin means "the act or state of missing the mark". It's our incapacity to understand Reality/God with the mind. The idea of Evil can be in certain way associated with Maya. The Bible says that the creation of the Devil was needed for a purpose. We cannot understand happiness without suffering. If we were all the time happy, how do we know it if we don't know suffering? Right now it seem ridicule, because we know both, but we only know by comparison with other states or feelings. You need the false (evil or maya) to experience what is good. You need to lose someone, a relative or a friend to know what is not having that person with you. If reality is one only, how are you going to experience loss? If there's nothing to lose? The Bible they say is written by God, and that is true in some way because we are also God, we are also part of the whole. But as humans, we only can see parts of the truth, we see the truth filtered by our knowledge and by our egos. That's like the Buddhist story of the Blind men who wanted to describe the elephant by touching different parts of the elephant, each one arrive at a different conclusion. But it was the same elephant that they were talking about. The Bible is inspired by God, but it doesn't mean that a guy sitting on a cloud with a white beard wrote it himself.