abrakamowse

I am reading it (actually listening to it, I found it as an audiobook in my local library) and I recommend it a lot, it helps to clarify a lot of things about religious beliefs and spirituality. https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636024

Yeah, he's good... and it helps a lot to have one's feet on the ground and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I took a selfie today...

Cool @Nexeternity I am very happy for you, although there's no one to be happy!!! hehehehe... Cool! I I would like to know a bit of the story about how was your path to enlightenment.

@Emerald Wilkins Same thing happens to me. I think is just moments when those states arise and we get caught by them. Yesterday something like this was happening to me, I was very susceptible, I got angry and I realized it was just stupid because there's nothing to get angry or no reason to feel that way, but anyway it was there. And my mind began to ask to "my non existent self", why is this happening to you if you saw that nothing is there? The mind is trying always to "understand" or make sense of those states that arise, but in reality there's nothing to understand. I know you know that, but maybe to know that others are experiencing the same thing make you feel better. What happens to me is that I see those feelings, or I notice them, but I'm not affected by them. I feel an space between the feelings and awareness, like they are not mine. But anyway there's like a kind of clinging to them, very subtle but I notice it. Anyway my mind is also, like trying to make me doubt, like... why are you perceiving this if you are supposed to know that there's no one there? I think I have to understand that the feelings, thoughts, are going to continue arising and I have to get more and more detached from them. Right now I am working on that, I am still like looking in the dark, I don't know what's next but I know something will appear in the right moment and in the right time to make more parts of the illusion fall away. Hope this helps, :-)

I found this koan on reddit, I thought it would be nice to share it, here it goes: Koan of the Month: Tôzan Unwell Introduction: The lower do not discuss the higher; the humble do not move the dignified. Even if one rules over oneself and follows the others, One should not burden the heavy by the light. When the four elements are not in order, how would one attend and serve? Case: Tôzan was unwell. A monk asked, “Your Reverence is unwell. Is there anyone who does not become ill?” Tôzan said, “There is.” The monk said, “Does the one who does not get ill take care of Your Reverence?” Tôzan said, “‘The old monk’ is properly taking care of the other one.” The monk said, “How about when ‘your Reverence’ takes care of the other one?” Tôzan said, “[The old monk] does not see that there is illness.” Verse: Casting off the stinky skin bag(1), rolling over the bulk of red flesh; Right here the nostrils are straight, right now the skull is dried up. The old doctor(2) doesn’t see the previous traits [of illness]; The young one(3) can hardly encounter and approach him. When the water in the field becomes meager, the autumn lake recedes; Where the white clouds are no more, the old mountains are cold. It must come to a complete annihilation – don’t cheat! Fully exhausting non-accomplishments, he attains his state; Lofty and solitary, he does not share the same scales as you. 1 the physical self 2 the essential self 3 the phenomenal self

We are not real also @Christian if you think about it. Having a physically appearance doesn't mean we exists. The idea of identity, of being something is a thought too. IMO thought is what gives us the possibility to interpret the world in certain way, then when we grow up we have to realize that the idea of "me" is like the idea of "santa" in some way. There's no "me". Mooji talks about that, I think it's interesting.

I agree with @Naviy one will tell you "kill the ego" , others will tell you "love the ego"... and both are true and false depending of the perspective you are talking from. You have to follow your intuition, meditate and only trust in your experience, not in others. Others can give you just "pointers". That's why is called "the pathless path".

I agree with @Swede the best solution is meditate. That will give you what you are looking for effortless.

No in that text that I found, I really know about Fromm but I am not an expert. If I find something I let you know. But what I understand is that the natural tendency is to preserve life, that's why we have the preservation-instinct, for us as individuals but also for us as human race as a whole. Someone who goes against that instinct is a "perversion" (using Fromm's words) and it happens when the individual cannot "see" the natural state of things, that is "reality". In reality everything is perfect, our distorted view because of the thought process we can't see reality the way it is, so we see us as separated selves, that we are in "danger" because someone is going to "attack" us, or "steal" from us or whatever our distorted view of reality wants to see.

@Orange did you read the part that I marked in bold in what I posted? What do you think about it? I will post it again here: the pleasure in destruction is a "Secondary potentiality," a perversion which occurs necessarily when the primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop. That's the important point for Fromm not the one that you choose to remark, think about why are you doing that. That doesn't show that peace is unattainable, on the contrary. It gives us hope that those perversions can be transcended by our true nature.

Peace will never be attainable if we act through our person-hood or false idea of self. There will be always victims and wolves in the world as long as the world continue believing in a false idea of a self who tell them you are "this" or "that". We are really nothing of that. We are consciousness. So, there's hope. It will take time to reach at that point, but it will be done.

I thought the same thing at your age. And I have to say I was sooo wrong. When you are free of desires you will find your true desires. Right now you desire what it was programmed for you by the environment, your parents, friends, etc. When you have no desires a true desire appears and that is your real self. If you think this teaching is very advanced, it's Ok. You will learn it with time, I am sure of that. Who says that? Isn't that another thought? How do "you" create "your" thoughts? Can "you" stop thinking?

Huike, the Second Patriarch, said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is not yet at rest. Master, I implore you, set my mind to rest.” The master replied, “Bring your mind here and I’ll set it to rest for you.” Huike said, “I’ve searched for my mind, but am unable to find it.” “There,” said the master, “I’ve set your mind to rest.”

If you read the 4 agreements and you liked it , maybe you will like the mastery of self: https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Self-Toltec-Personal-Freedom/dp/1938289536/

You feel unfulfilled because there's no "you" to be fulfilled. And you want to maintain a false idea of "me" or something who needs to feel fulfilled. There's no a "self" that needs to feel fulfilled.

I found something interesting too, maybe it can be of help: Eric Fromm regarding human nature: “...we do not have to be satisfied with general and abstract speculations about the inherent goodness versus evilness of man. Depth psychology has offered us ample clinical material and useful hypotheses which can help us to establish the following facts: there is a special type of personality, not rare, yet not the rule, which loves destruction and death. Men who belong to this type find their most intense satisfaction when they can kill or torture; all of their energies are directed to the aim of destruction - although they often do not permit themselves to be aware of the nature of this passion. This "necrophilous," death-loving orientation can be described and understood in its dynamics, its manifestations, and its genesis. Such inquiry leads us to see that destructiveness is neither the nature of man, nor is it contrary to his nature; that it is also not one pole of a Manichaean-Freudian dualism of good and evil. I shall try to show that the pleasure in destruction is a "Secondary potentiality," a perversion which occurs necessarily when the primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop. There are those in whom destructiveness has become the dominant passion---they are the true killers; there are the many in whom the passion for destruction remains secondary in strength to the life-furthering tendencies, yet is strong enough to be aroused by the killers under special circumstances. Finally there are those in whom the life-loving tendencies are so strong and dominant that no circumstances will make them join the killers.”

Sorry to interrupt, but the problem here is not that Bundy doesn't have the brain structure to process a feeling. He created that brain structure because he didn't know he is not his thoughts. He was unconscious as most of us, but he didn't even have the awareness to know it. So he continue feeding those thoughts who came to his mind, like it came to all of us, but some don't pay attention to them. The thoughts are feed on attention. And if you don't see that those thoughts are not you, you begin to think "I am this, I am a serial killer" and then you act as a serial killer. Check this video on youtube how the way we think modifies our brain, and not the other way around. It is a process called "brain plasticity" and shows how we "rewire" our brain with our thoughts.

@MalAbout Personality disorder I found that Suzanne Segal had a similar experience that was diagnosed as depersonalization disorder. I think that the girl you've mentioned really had a strong "no self experience", but that doesn't happen because she read something or because someone told her about that. There's thousands of people who watch videos on youtube and nothing happens to them. That's clearly her consciousness getting awakened on her, but if she's not really prepared she can think that shes going crazy, I tell you that because it happened to me too. Now I see clearly what happened, and I know that even at that moment I needed the therapists, they were really confused about what happened... and let me tell you that I am still taking pills and now I feel much better than my own therapist. I know I won't need those pills never anymore, because nothing in my mind is real, nothing in my mind affects me the way it used too. So my mind can go fucking crazy and people will see me outside like a normal person, because I am focused on my "being-ness" I don't pay attention to thoughts when they go crazy, the monkey mind as we call it. Check this link, this is what happened to Suzanne Segal, it's interesting. I don't think Leo has nothing to do with the problems of other persons, he can't create anything or make anyone believe this or that. Same thing about anything said or written on this forums. Everything is what it "is". Nothing wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Segal I'll post some fragments here because I think it can cast some light about this: "One day in 1982, while boarding a bus in Paris, the 27-year-old Segal experienced a sudden shift in her consciousness. She described the experience in her book, Collisions With the Infinite: "I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called 'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. 'I' was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body's eyes." Segal described this first period of her experience as "witnessing", since she was aware of herself but also critically detached from it. This was tremendously unpleasant for her, full of anxiety and fear: The moment the eyes opened the next morning, the mind exploded in worry. Is this insanity? Psychosis? Schizophrenia? Is this what people call a nervous breakdown? Depression? What happened? And would it ever stop? ...The mind was in agony as it tried valiantly to make sense of something it could never comprehend, and the body responded to the anguish of the mind by locking itself into survival mode, adrenaline pumping, senses fine-tuned, finding and responding to the threat of annihilation in every moment."

Think about it... what Buddhism says that the root of the problem is, the root of the problem is that we see ourselves as separated beings. You "think" you are a separated being so you act in that way. If you are not the others, of course you will doubt if having empathy is the right way to go. Think about all the common things on the different religions or philosophies. All of them talk about "transcending the self". When you transcend the self you will see that you and your neighbor are the same. Do you think you won't have empathy for someone who is also you? When you are doing something "wrong" to other, you do it to yourself. I am not "conscious" or awakened, but I can see a commonality on religious, spiritual stuff and I think it make sense. That's the only way you can "love your neighbor as yourself", otherwise is pretty difficult. We are what we think we are. That's something Buddha said too. And I don't say it like because they are awakened beings we have to follow them blindly, there's something behind that idea of separated self that transcends all and love all without conditions, and that can shine through you too. It was always you but you (and me) let it be obscured by thoughts about being separated selves isolated from the universe and from other human beings. We are all one.

So... we are all enlightened here.

Well, I could finally "see" that there's no one doing anything. But I didn't have a non-duality experience. They say when you see there's no one there doing anything or controlling anything, everything begins to fall by itself. But really, once you know there's no one, anything else matters. You don't search anymore, there's no thirst to read more, you just let things happen. And it's really nice. Some people prefer to call it self-realization. I think that's more appropriate.

I would like to add that this is one of the best articles I've read about enlightenment, thanks for sharing it @Patrick I'll post it again here, everyone should read it. http://www.spiritualteachers.org/norquist_article.htm

That's really good @ashleigh :-)